my life as a musician: designing a vocational preparation strand to create industry-prepared musicians diana tolmie bmus, grad dip perf, mba queensland conservatorium griffith university submitted in fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of doctor of philosophy june ii abstract for the last two decades, the discourse surrounding the education of the professional musician has increased as traditional forms of music employment become more competitive and the portfolio career has returned as an accepted mode of working for musicians. criticism of the nineteenth-century conservatoire model, which in turn has led to the recommendation to embed an employability focus within degree programs that fosters the development of industry-prepared musicians. to date, however, there are few successful examples of this. this study investigates the design, development and delivery of the my life as a musician (mlaam) vocational preparation strand of undergraduate courses that assist student musicians to prepare for their likely employment, both before and after graduation. the thesis makes an original contribution to higher education teaching and learning by documenting the processes involved in developing employability education within an undergraduate music curriculum. data collection involved a suite of research methods based on a grounded theoretical approach that included autoethnography, practitioner action research, focus groups of queensland conservatorium griffith university (qcgu) students, and interviews with faculty plus three australian arts leaders, three australian higher education leaders and three australian music industry lecturers. further to this, interviews with south-east queensland portfolio career musicians informed the design of a -question survey to which australian portfolio musicians responded. the findings revealed a shrinking and territorial music industry that has been affected by macro-environmental forces, an increased professional musician population, a lack of respect for the portfolio careerist, and cannibalistic employment practices. the musicians indicated that opportunities exist to provide formal and informal vocational preparation in the form of experiential learning for the acquisition of an extensive set of hard and soft skills that support career sustainability. however, the research revealed barriers to the success of this employment education. these involved students’ romanticised career aspirations, varying degree approaches, and professional identity development from music student to student musician. in addition, the influence of a master-apprentice model largely subscribing to an art for art’s sake approach to career iii development, rather than acknowledging the realities of the changing profession, further affected students’ acceptance of formalised vocational learning. combined with this qualitative and quantitative inquiry, an extensive literature review of the music industry, musician identity, career theory and educational practice has contributed to the development of a conservatoire student lifecycle model as the foundation of the mlaam strand. implications for the further development of these courses, ethical extracurricular programme activities, curriculum restructure and the call for industry reform are discussed. the results of this study may hold relevance for those wishing to instigate similar vocational preparation courses within undergraduate tertiary music programmes. iv statement of originality this work has not previously been submitted for a degree or diploma in any university. to the best of my knowledge and belief, the thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made in the thesis itself. signed: diana tolmie date: / / v contents abstract ........................................................................................................................... ii	 statement of originality ................................................................................................ iv	 contents ........................................................................................................................... v	 list of figures ............................................................................................................... xii	 list of tables ................................................................................................................ xiii	 list of abbreviations ................................................................................................. xviii	 acknowledgements ....................................................................................................... xx	 chapter : introduction ................................................................................................. 	 . a personal account of a portfolio musician .......................................................... 	 . a personal account of teaching mlaam .............................................................. 	 . thesis overview ..................................................................................................... 	 chapter : literature review ....................................................................................... 	 . national and international trends in the music profession, industry and employment ...................................................................................................... 	 . educational publications on the music profession, industry, enterprise, creative entrepreneurship and legal management ........................................ 	 . . australian texts. .............................................................................................. 	 . . other texts. ..................................................................................................... 	 . . online resources. ............................................................................................ 	 . . discussion. ..................................................................................................... 	 . the twenty-first century student musician ....................................................... 	 . . student aspirations. ........................................................................................ 	 . . student identity. ............................................................................................. 	 . musicians’ careers ................................................................................................ 	 . . defining the musician. ................................................................................... 	 . . the working musician: ‘art for art’s sake’ v. a commercial approach. ......... 	 . . the portfolio, protean and boundaryless musician and applied career theory. .......................................................................................................... 	 . . . the portfolio career. ................................................................................ 	 . . . the protean career. ................................................................................. 	 . . . the boundaryless career. ........................................................................ 	 . . . career theory. .......................................................................................... 	 . . sustainability skills of the twenty-first century musician. ............................. 	 . curriculum design recommendations ................................................................. 	 . music industry and entrepreneurship education: a design in question ............. 	 . higher education in australia .............................................................................. 	 . . higher music education. ................................................................................. 	 . . institutional change. ....................................................................................... 	 . . employability within the curriculum. ............................................................ 	 . summary ............................................................................................................... 	 chapter : methodology .............................................................................................. 	 vi . research questions and sub-questions ................................................................ 	 . overview of research design .............................................................................. 	 . . autoethnographical research: personal lived experience informing education practices. ..................................................................................... 	 . . action research. .............................................................................................. 	 . . . sec and set survey analysis. ................................................................. 	 . . . student assessment analysis. ................................................................... 	 . . face-to-face interviews. ................................................................................. 	 . . . industry-active portfolio career musicians. ............................................. 	 . . . faculty staff. ............................................................................................ 	 . . . australian arts advocates and leaders. ................................................... 	 . . . industry-preparation tertiary educators. ................................................. 	 . . . higher music education leaders. ............................................................. 	 . . focus groups of qcgu students. ................................................................... 	 . . quantitative inquiry: online and paper-based surveys. ................................. 	 . . . online surveys: industry musicians. ........................................................ 	 . . . paper-based surveys: students. ............................................................... 	 . . data analysis. ................................................................................................. 	 chapter : the qcgu student lifecycle .................................................................. 	 . learning support activity .................................................................................... 	 . . data collection process and limitations. ......................................................... 	 . . overview of results. ....................................................................................... 	 . . . intrinsic motivation. ................................................................................. 	 . . . career identity. ........................................................................................ 	 . . . primary motivation. ................................................................................. 	 . . . extrinsic motivation. ................................................................................ 	 . . . career reality. ......................................................................................... 	 . . summary. ....................................................................................................... 	 . year-specific focus groups and surveys ............................................................ 	 . . degree perceptions. ........................................................................................ 	 . . . first-year students. .................................................................................. 	 . . . second-year students. .............................................................................. 	 . . . third-year students. ................................................................................. 	 . . . the mid-degree slump. ............................................................................ 	 . . . fourth-year students. ............................................................................... 	 . . . summary. ................................................................................................. 	 . . a segregated conservatoire. ........................................................................... 	 . . experienced embedded vocational advice. .................................................... 	 . . advice to first years. ...................................................................................... 	 . . student industry activity. ............................................................................... 	 . . . first-year students. .................................................................................. 	 . . . second-year students. .............................................................................. 	 . . . third-year students. ................................................................................. 	 . . . fourth-year students. ............................................................................... 	 . . . summary. ................................................................................................. 	 . . degree design: student opinion. .................................................................... 	 . . transitional planning and future goals. .......................................................... 	 . . . first-year students. .................................................................................. 	 . . . second-year students. .............................................................................. 	 vii . . . third-year students. ................................................................................. 	 . . . fourth-year students. ............................................................................... 	 . . . summary. ................................................................................................. 	 . . the non-musician perception of a music career. ............................................ 	 . . perceived career sustainability skills. ............................................................ 	 . curriculum vitae analysis ................................................................................. 	 . . duration of employment. ............................................................................. 	 . . performance employment. ........................................................................... 	 . . . classical students. ................................................................................. 	 . . . jazz students. ......................................................................................... 	 . . teaching employment (classical and jazz students). ................................... 	 . . professional and community profile (composer and cross-studies students). ................................................................................................... 	 . . . . ...................................................................................................... 	 . . . . ...................................................................................................... 	 . . extracurricular activities. ............................................................................. 	 . . community music. ....................................................................................... 	 . . future projects. ............................................................................................. 	 . . summary. ..................................................................................................... 	 . chapter summary ............................................................................................... 	 chapter : perspectives and experience of music industry education and employability .................................................................................................. 	 . faculty ................................................................................................................ 	 . . perceived industry change. ........................................................................... 	 . . perceived tertiary music change. .................................................................. 	 . . . education. .............................................................................................. 	 . . . students. ................................................................................................. 	 . . . universities. ........................................................................................... 	 . . . summary. ............................................................................................... 	 . . communicated student aspirations. ............................................................. 	 . . changes in career aspirations. ...................................................................... 	 . . staff contributions to career reality. ............................................................. 	 . . impressions of the future of music and student impact. ............................... 	 . . defining a successful graduate. .................................................................... 	 . . what should be included in vocational preparation in the conservatoire environment (mlaam)? ............................................................................ 	 . . general understanding of mlaam. .............................................................. 	 . . opinion of mlaam (following explanation). ............................................ 	 . . required skills of a vocational preparation lecturer. .................................. 	 . . required skills of graduating musicians. ................................................... 	 . . summary. ................................................................................................... 	 . industry leaders .................................................................................................. 	 . . industry changes. .......................................................................................... 	 . . future of the music industry and employability. ......................................... 	 . . tertiary education: what should students be learning? ............................... 	 . . definitions of a successful musician. ........................................................... 	 . . opinion of mlaam. ..................................................................................... 	 . . advice for current graduating musicians. .................................................... 	 . . summary. ..................................................................................................... 	 viii . higher music education leaders ........................................................................ 	 . . changes in the music industry. .................................................................... 	 . . future of the music industry and the impact on current musicians. ............. 	 . . employability learning agenda for student musicians. ................................ 	 . . successful musician qualities. ...................................................................... 	 . . opinion and suggestions on mlaam. .......................................................... 	 . . advice for current graduating student musicians. ........................................ 	 . . institutional history of vocational preparation. ............................................ 	 . . implementation of mlaam in other tertiary contexts. ................................. 	 . . summary. ..................................................................................................... 	 . music industry lecturers .................................................................................... 	 . . perceived industry change. ........................................................................... 	 . . perceived industry future. ............................................................................ 	 . . graduate skills required. .............................................................................. 	 . . course breakdown and comparison. ............................................................ 	 . . comparative assessment, coursework and texts. ......................................... 	 . . perceived student lifecycle and student observations. ................................. 	 . . industry lecturer skills. ................................................................................. 	 . . student feedback. ......................................................................................... 	 . . summary. ..................................................................................................... 	 . chapter summary ............................................................................................... 	 chapter : western art musicians’ attitudes and industry practice relating to vocational preparation design ................................................................. 	 . introduction ......................................................................................................... 	 . research participants and tools ......................................................................... 	 . demographics ..................................................................................................... 	 . career stages and employment trends .............................................................. 	 . identity: scrutinising the portfolio career job description ................................ 	 . examining the career motivations: initial to current aspirations. .................... 	 . . initial motivations to pursue music. ............................................................. 	 . . current motivations to pursue music. .......................................................... 	 . . initial v. current roles and domains of music employment. ......................... 	 . understanding career strategy ........................................................................... 	 . . ‘say yes’. ...................................................................................................... 	 . . setting goals. ................................................................................................ 	 . . . setting attainable v. dream goals. ......................................................... 	 . . . considering reality and financial influence. ......................................... 	 . . . avoiding planning. ................................................................................. 	 . . . a multidimensional approach to career. ............................................... 	 . . . factors inhibiting planning and sustainability. .................................... 	 . . examining career versatility. ....................................................................... 	 . . proactive v. subconscious networking. ........................................................ 	 . . fake it ‘till you make it. ............................................................................... 	 . . unpaid employment: devaluing the vocation to create a valuable career. .. 	 . . summary. ..................................................................................................... 	 . exploring the value of the portfolio musician ................................................... 	 . . the value of a portfolio career: interviewed musicians’ experiences. ......... 	 . . objective v. subjective income. ................................................................... 	 . . summary. ..................................................................................................... 	 ix . how much does an australian portfolio career musician earn? ...................... 	 . . highest and lowest experienced earnings (interviewed musicians). ............ 	 . . highest and lowest experienced earnings (surveyed musicians). ................ 	 . . does money matter? ..................................................................................... 	 . . navigating salary peaks and troughs: ‘feast or famine’. ............................. 	 . skill analysis and transferability .................................................................... 	 . career sustainability ......................................................................................... 	 . . the ongoing threat that the phone will stop ringing: perceptions of career sustainability by contract v. self-instigated musicians. .................. 	 . . adopting ‘skills of initiative’. .................................................................... 	 . . self-created employment perceptions. ....................................................... 	 . . contract work perceptions. ........................................................................ 	 . . perceptions of full-time work. .................................................................... 	 . . fallback careers or teaching-artists? .......................................................... 	 . . non-music employment. ............................................................................ 	 . attrition and perseverance ................................................................................ 	 . . measuring resilience. ................................................................................. 	 . . passion v. burnout. ..................................................................................... 	 . . career anxiety. ........................................................................................... 	 . . catalysts to continue. ................................................................................. 	 . . ageism. ...................................................................................................... 	 . . the ‘calling’ of a music career. .................................................................. 	 . . exploring perfectionism. ............................................................................ 	 . . summary. ................................................................................................... 	 . the ‘gig’ economy: has the industry changed for the western art musician? ...................................................................................................... 	 . . a shrinking and territorial industry. ........................................................... 	 . . exploring potential industry growth and positive change. ......................... 	 . . . venues. ................................................................................................. 	 . . . festivals. .............................................................................................. 	 . . . social media. ....................................................................................... 	 . . . technological impact on the master-apprentice model. ..................... 	 . . . the future of live music. ...................................................................... 	 . the twenty-first century musician. ................................................................ 	 . . the ‘business’ musician. ............................................................................ 	 . . perceptions of emerging musicians. ........................................................... 	 . . adopting professional behaviour. .............................................................. 	 . disparity ............................................................................................................ 	 . . marching to a different drum. .................................................................... 	 . . gender. ....................................................................................................... 	 . professional perspectives on undergraduate vocational preparation courses. ......................................................................................................... 	 . the prac-ademic ............................................................................................... 	 . required twenty-first century musician skills .............................................. 	 . chapter summary ............................................................................................. 	 chapter : employability within the curriculum .................................................. 	 . championing vocational preparation ................................................................. 	 . . internal barriers. ........................................................................................... 	 . . . large-class teaching. ............................................................................. 	 x . . . a one-to-one educational culture. ......................................................... 	 . . external barriers outside one’s control. ........................................................ 	 . . . compulsory education. .......................................................................... 	 . . . student degree engagement. .................................................................. 	 . . . faculty educating within a changing professional landscape. ............. 	 . . . millennials. ............................................................................................ 	 . . . learning environment—class size. ........................................................ 	 . . . learning environment—class time allocation. ...................................... 	 . . . learning environment—lecture medium. .............................................. 	 . . . learning environment−learning motivations. ....................................... 	 . . external barriers within one’s control: lack of appropriate course texts. ... 	 . . summary. ..................................................................................................... 	 . course design ..................................................................................................... 	 . mlaam ............................................................................................................ 	 . . lecture activities. ......................................................................................... 	 . . assessment. .................................................................................................. 	 . . . online quizzes. ....................................................................................... 	 . . . opportunity research plan ( a pages). .............................................. 	 . . . networking report ( words) and reflection ( words). ................ 	 . . reflection and student feedback. ................................................................. 	 . . . lecturing. ............................................................................................... 	 . . . quizzes. .................................................................................................. 	 . . . five-year career plan. ........................................................................... 	 . . . networking report. ................................................................................. 	 . . overall implications of mlaam . ............................................................... 	 . mlaam ............................................................................................................ 	 . . lecture activities. ......................................................................................... 	 . . assessment. .................................................................................................. 	 . . . grants and self-promotional tools. ........................................................ 	 . . . project plan. .......................................................................................... 	 . . reflection and student feedback. ................................................................. 	 . . . lecturing. ............................................................................................... 	 . . . grants and self-promotional tools. ........................................................ 	 . . . project plan. .......................................................................................... 	 . . overall implications of mlaam . ............................................................... 	 . mlaam ............................................................................................................ 	 . . lecture activities. ......................................................................................... 	 . . assessment. .................................................................................................. 	 . . . case-study presentation and analysis. .................................................. 	 . . . creative pitch presentation and report. ................................................ 	 . . reflection and student feedback. ................................................................. 	 . . . lecturing and assessment presentation. ................................................ 	 . . . case-study presentation. ....................................................................... 	 . . . creative pitch. ....................................................................................... 	 . . overall implications of mlaam . ............................................................... 	 . chapter summary ............................................................................................... 	 chapter : conclusion ................................................................................................ 	 . research summary ............................................................................................. 	 . . student-to-professional transition. ............................................................... 	 xi . . musicians’ employability experiences. ........................................................ 	 . . vocation preparation and best-practice design. ........................................... 	 . research conclusions: mlaam design .............................................................. 	 . research limitations .......................................................................................... 	 . research contributions ....................................................................................... 	 . recommendations ............................................................................................... 	 . future research .................................................................................................. 	 . final word .......................................................................................................... 	 appendices .................................................................................................................. 	 appendix a: mlaam course evolution and class population ................................ 	 appendix b: consent forms ..................................................................................... 	 b. tertiary music educators. ............................................................................... 	 b. musicians. ....................................................................................................... 	 b. arts industry leaders. ...................................................................................... 	 b. faculty. ........................................................................................................... 	 b. assessment audit: students. ........................................................................... 	 b. student focus groups. ..................................................................................... 	 appendix c: face-to-face interview questions ....................................................... 	 c. musicians. ....................................................................................................... 	 c. faculty. ........................................................................................................... 	 c. industry arts advocates and education leaders. ............................................... 	 c. music industry tertiary educators. .................................................................. 	 appendix d: focus group questions ....................................................................... 	 appendix e: student focus group paper survey ..................................................... 	 appendix f: musician email invitation and survey questions ............................... 	 appendix g: coded responses for first-year advice ............................................. 	 appendix h: focus group five-year goals ............................................................ 	 appendix i: paper survey results of students’ required career skills .................. 	 appendix j: faculty-recommended graduate skills for music employment ......... 	 appendix k: music industry lecturer course assessment ...................................... 	 appendix l: coded survey commentary ................................................................. 	 references .................................................................................................................... 	 xii list of figures figure . . first-year wordle of positive future self. ...................................................... 	 figure . . first-year wordle of negative future self. ..................................................... 	 figure . . age distribution of survey participants. ..................................................... 	 figure . the rrri model ......................................................................................... 	 xiii list of tables table . research timeline .......................................................................................... 	 table . dreamer, realist, artist and unclear categories quantified ......................... 	 table . student focus groups: year level, gender, age and major study .............. 	 table . the student musician−music student identity continuum ........................... 	 table . degree expectations and development: weighted averages by year .......... 	 table . first-year employment identity ..................................................................... 	 table . third-year employment identity ................................................................... 	 table . fourth-year employment identity ................................................................. 	 table . lecturer employment referral: weighted averages (out of ) by student year level .......................................................................................................... 	 table . peer employment referral: weighted average (out of ) s by student year level .......................................................................................................... 	 table . future employment referral: weighted average (out of ) by student year level .......................................................................................................... 	 table . perceived relevance of business skills: weighted averages (out of ) by student year level ........................................................................................ 	 table . perceived relevance of degree: weighted averages (out of ) by student year level ............................................................................................. 	 table . employability perspectives of focus groups: weighted averages (out of ) by student year level ............................................................................... 	 table . categorisation of the and mlaam classes ............................... 	 table . sub-categorisation of the and classes ..................................... 	 table . employment activity in the whole class .................................................. 	 table . teaching employment domains of classical students (multiple response) .......................................................................................................... 	 table . teaching employment domains of jazz students (multiple response) ... 	 table . teaching employment of the total class, including composition, music technology and crossover genres (multiple response) ................................. 	 table . the conservatoire student lifecycle ......................................................... 	 table . faculty participants ...................................................................................... 	 table . industry leader participants ......................................................................... 	 table . higher music education leader participants ............................................... 	 table . music industry lecturer participants ........................................................... 	 table . descriptions of one-to-one interview participants ..................................... 	 table . location of survey participants ................................................................... 	 xiv table . relationship status of survey participants ................................................... 	 table . living arrangements of survey participants ............................................... 	 table . tertiary study of survey participants .......................................................... 	 table . undergraduate training of survey participants ........................................... 	 table . duration of music-related employment of survey participants ................. 	 table . first experienced employment of survey participants ................................ 	 table . professional identity of survey participants ................................................ 	 table . initial v. current employment of survey participants ............................... 	 table . survey participants’ strategies for gaining initial v. current work ......... 	 table . self-acknowledged career identities of survey participants .................... 	 table . survey participants use of ‘full time’ in relation to non-linear career employment ...................................................................................................... 	 table . survey participants ‘ initial motivations v. current employment activity ............................................................................................................. 	 table . survey participants’ initial aspiration v. current reality ......................... 	 table . survey participants current v. initial career aspirations—likert rating . 	 table . survey participants career path approach ................................................ 	 table . survey q : portfolio career musicians’ methods of sustainability ........ 	 table . survey participant sustainable career strategies by age range ............... 	 table . styles of music professionally engaged in by survey participants ........... 	 table . survey participants’ versatility of engagement and predominant style ... 	 table . survey participants’ undergraduate training and no. of styles engaged with .................................................................................................................. 	 table . survey q : the portfolio musician’s career—likert results ................ 	 table . survey q : non-musicians’ view of the portfolio musician’s career— likert results .................................................................................................... 	 table . interview participants’ income: lowest to highest experienced earnings and related trajectory ...................................................................... 	 table . survey participants’ core/undergraduate music training v. income range ................................................................................................................ 	 table . survey participants’ career stage v. highest and lowest experienced incomes (averaged) ......................................................................................... 	 table . survey participants’ income trajectory v. career satisfaction ................. 	 table . non-music skills and knowledge needed to assist music careers (multiple response) ......................................................................................... 	 table . survey q : confidence regarding employment self-creation .............. 	 table . survey q : preference for contract work v. creative project/work instigation ......................................................................................................... 	 xv table . survey q : perceptions of full-time (institutionalised) employment ... 	 table . ratio of teaching v. other work by survey participants .......................... 	 table . survey q factors influencing musicians to leave/consider leaving their profession (multiple response) .............................................................. 	 table . survey q : negative influences on music employment ......................... 	 table . survey q : positive influences on employment sustainability ............... 	 table . survey q : perception of personal resilience ......................................... 	 table . survey participants’ burnout v. resilience ................................................ 	 table . survey q : passion for music .................................................................. 	 table . survey q : degree of confidence ........................................................... 	 table . survey q : degree of bravery ................................................................. 	 table . exited musicians’ reported confidence .................................................... 	 table . exited musicians’ reported bravery ......................................................... 	 table . non-exited musicians’ reported confidence ............................................ 	 table . non-exited musicians’ reported bravery ................................................. 	 table . age as a career sustainability prohibitor .................................................. 	 table . survey q : vocational ‘pull’—response to ‘i believe music is my “calling”’ .......................................................................................................... 	 table . survey q : ‘what i love about music’ .................................................. 	 table . survey q : beliefs about the music industry ......................................... 	 table . survey participants’ self-perception of entrepreneurialism ...................... 	 table . survey participants’ non-music skills and knowledge ............................ 	 table . survey participants’ opinions of business skills ...................................... 	 table . survey q : acquisition of non-music skills and knowledge ................ 	 table . survey q v. q : current (n= ) and further skills/knowledge required (n= ) .............................................................................................. 	 table . survey q : musicians’ strategy for future non-music skill attainment ........................................................................................................ 	 table . survey participants’ hindsight perspectives of initial music degree engagement ...................................................................................................... 	 table . survey q : orchestral musicians’ non-music skill set ......................... 	 table . mlaam lecturer skills .............................................................................. 	 table . non-music skills required for current undergraduates ........................... 	 table . survey q : degree reflection .................................................................. 	 table . mlaam fail rates by gender ...................................................................... 	 table . lecture and assessment sequence for mlaam ........................................ 	 table . self and career analysis template .............................................................. 	 xvi table . mlaam lecture and assessment sequence .............................................. 	 table . an aligned mlaam vocational preparation strand with the conservatoire student lifecycle ...................................................................... 	 table g. coded responses for first-year advice ..................................................... 	 table h. first-year focus group five-year career goals ........................................ 	 table h. second-year focus group five-year career goals ................................... 	 table h. third-year focus group five-year career goals ...................................... 	 table h. fourth-year focus group five-year career goals .................................... 	 table i. paper survey results of required career skills by year ............................. 	 table i. paper survey results of required career skills by major study and gender .............................................................................................................. 	 table j. faculty recommended graduate skills for music employment ................. 	 table k. music industry lecturer course assessment .............................................. 	 table l. q coded commentary on ‘say yes’ ........................................................ 	 table l. q coded commentary on saying ‘yes’ to all opportunities ................. 	 table l. q coded commentary on dreams and attainable goal planning ........... 	 table l. q coded commentary on realistic and financially influenced approaches to career sustainability ................................................................ 	 table l. q coded commentary on avoided planning .......................................... 	 table l. q coded commentary on a mix of career approaches .......................... 	 table l. q coded commentary on family commitments .................................... 	 table l. q coded commentary on career sustainability: versatility v. specialisation .................................................................................................... 	 table l. q coded commentary on career sustainability: high standard of work and professionalism ................................................................................ 	 table l. q coded commentary on fake it ‘till you make it ............................. 	 table l. q coded commentary on accepting unpaid work .............................. 	 table l. q coded commentary on musicians’ consideration of the portfolio career profession .............................................................................................. 	 table l. q musicians’ perspective of non-music consideration of the portfolio career profession: likert results and commentary ......................... 	 table l. commentary on the use of non-music skills and knowledge ................. 	 table l. q coded qualitative responses ............................................................. 	 table l. q coded qualitative responses on contract v. creative projects/work ................................................................................................... 	 table l. q coded responses on full-time v. other forms of employment ...... 	 table l. musicians’ coded reflective perspective of undergraduate vocational preparation education ....................................................................................... 	 xvii table l. twenty-first century musician skills required (coded—interviewed musicians) ........................................................................................................ 	 xviii list of abbreviations amcos australasian mechanical copyright owners society apra australasian performing right association ce creative enterprise cee creative entrepreneurship education cv curriculum vitae diy do-it-yourself dra? dreamers, realists, artists and unclear eoi expression of interest gfc global financial crisis gpa grade point average imp investigating musical performance lsa learning support activity mba masters of business administration mlaam my life as a musician paces peer assisted course enhancement scheme play plans and aspirations of young musicians pro-teaching peer review of teaching qcgu queensland conservatorium griffith university qcso queensland conservatorium saxophone orchestra qso queensland symphony orchestra qut queensland university of technology rmp resilient musical professional rrri real, relevant, respectful and inspiring sec student experience of course set student experience of teaching swot strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats teqsa tertiary education quality standards agency tile teaching, identity, learning and employment uk united kingdom us united states usem understanding, skills, efficacy beliefs and metacognition xix vet vocational education training voip voice over internet protocol wil work integrated learning xx acknowledgements first and foremost, i would like to profoundly thank the queensland conservatorium griffith university students who participated in this study. i sincerely appreciate your precious time and trouble, as well as your candid and considered responses, which have contributed valuably to my research and professional development. your passion for music remains a refreshing inspiration and feeds my motivation to become a better educator in support of your lives as professional members of society. as i say in class, ‘you are the awesome people’, and i am in awe. i would also like to sincerely thank the many musicians, faculty staff, industry lecturers, higher education leaders and arts industry advocates who generously gave me their trust, time and wisdom. in particular, i was overwhelmed by the response i received for the survey and the depth of the musicians’ written responses. it was not what i was expecting and i am very humbled by your support. further gratitude goes to my supervisory team, professors huib schippers and don lebler. not discounting huib’s contribution, for it was he who originally asked me to design and deliver the mlaam courses, i wish to especially thank don for his counselling and mentorship while i navigated my own identity transition from portfolio musician to prac-ademic, as the tertiary education environment, like the music profession, presents many challenges. i appreciate your abundant experience, time and patience with my phd candidature. you are a wonderful role model to emulate should i ever be fortunate and brave enough to supervise doctoral candidates. capstone editing provided copyediting and proofreading services, according to the guidelines laid out in the university-endorsed national ‘guidelines for editing research theses’. i would like to thank my sister, amanda bressow, who has helped me considerably throughout my doctoral research despite her personal tragedies. this challenging phd journey has allowed us greater mutual understanding and deepened our sisterly bond, for which i will be forever grateful. to the masterchefs gordon ‘gordo’ hughes and andrew rayfield, who supplied me with bountiful pre-cooked meals to get me across the finish line, thank you. your belief in me contributed to the self-confidence i sorely needed at the time. xxi finally, i would like to thank my dear husband, jason hawkins, whose tolerance and support for the many hours i have been absent as a wife, musician and academic has been relentless. fingers crossed, this has been worth the sacrifice. i humbly dedicate these doctoral efforts to the memories of my brother-in-law ian bressow, my grandmothers gloria lamb and lilian tolmie, my mature-age clarinet student ian gillespie, and musicians stephen stanfield and scott griffiths, who, like ian bressow, died tragically too young. chapter : introduction the amalgamation of australian conservatoires with universities to absorb financial cost and share resources (dawkins, ) has, in some ways, pre-empted the music industry’s future. the western art music industry in the last years has witnessed a reduction and limitation of large performance institutions via mergers, funding cuts and declining audiences (association of british orchestras, ; kelly, ; lebrecht, ; j. morgan, ). for independent, especially non-professional, musicians, accessible technology has assisted self-promotion and exponentially increased online competition. the rise of music festivals (gosnell, ; vedelago, houston & quinn, ) has attracted large audiences (delic, ; reddy, ), but many would speculate that reduced-cost ticketing strategies have affected the value-perception of live music performance (page, ). the perceived value of recorded music has also been affected by file sharing and electronic music sales, prompting veteran musicians like david bowie to state ‘music itself is going to become like running water or electricity’ (as cited in pareles, ), that is, regarded by all as easily accessible and/or perceived as virtually free. for western art musicians, career sustainability measures such as teaching for base income, network reliance/development and opportunity recognition remain unchanged. many complain that income has increased only nominally since the s and that specialisation can be the death of one’s career (myles-beeching, a). in short, a music career is a hard sell to those aiming for artistic and financial sustainability. yet, more than students are enrolled in undergraduate and postgraduate music degrees in australia at one time per year (bartleet et al., ). despite the ongoing discourse on the responsibility of tertiary education institutions to embed employability within the curriculum (bennett, richardson & mackinnon, ; bridgstock, ; knight & yorke, ), few best-practice first- year strategies have been published beyond broad university-wide initiatives (fallows & steven, ). formal industry courses are usually offered in the final year, some as capstone or work integrated learning (wil) courses, and informal and non-formal employability learning within tertiary education can be hard to quantify. the statistics for australian music tertiary institutions who do not utilise formally embedded employability courses (daniel, ; tolmie, ) demonstrate that they continue to produce musicians who are unprepared for the realities of portfolio careers, disregarding the increasingly apparent need to mitigate this problem. in recognition of the volatile economy, technological developments and declining linear career opportunities, which have led to an increased need for self- managed careers, in the queensland conservatorium griffith university (qcgu) instigated a vocational preparation strand titled my life as a musician (mlaam). designed to prepare bachelor of music degree students for diverse career realities, the mlaam core courses are delivered in the first, third and fourth years, inviting students to consider degree transition and engagement, industry awareness/transition, career development, and the supporting management tools required. most importantly, they introduce the realities of musicians’ lives to encourage efficient planning, goal setting, opportunity recognition and professional identity transformation. the purpose of this study is to research the elements contributing to a best- practice model of formal vocational preparation delivered within a conservatoire environment. this thesis strives to contribute to higher education teaching and learning by documenting the processes involved in developing employability education within an undergraduate music curriculum. limited research on such processes currently exists. sections . and . recount my life as a musician and my experience in teaching the mlaam courses to contextualise this study. section . describes an overview of the thesis. . a personal account of a portfolio musician my parents, who are now retired, were both business owners. my mother owned a travel agency and wrote a weekly newspaper holiday column, and my father was an entrepreneur who grew a start-up business into the largest film developing company in the southern hemisphere. thus, i grew up amid conversations about promotional and advertising deadlines, marketing strategies, monthly budgets, project management, networking lunches and human resource management. my older sister aspired to be an accountant, which did not raise an eyebrow with my relatives or me. at the age of , i announced that i wanted to study at the qcgu and be a musician. when my parents informed me of the fierce competition and questioned the available employment, i assured them that i desired employment in an orchestra. however, my desired career and the available jobs were two completely different realities. i also had no idea what a job in an orchestra entailed or whether there were other options. my compulsory career counselling session in year (wasn’t it a bit late for that?) ended up being a role reversal in which i counselled the counsellor in the degree process and career options. he suggested i was well informed. i was not. since then, i have experienced diverse music training and performance genres, and amassed various skills, opportunities, educational roles, scholarships, product endorsements and travel experiences. i worked for two years with a music publishing company in composition, score-arranging, business development, sales and marketing roles; i consulted for start-up arts companies and individuals, assisting business growth and career direction; i completed a masters of business administration (mba), majoring in arts administration; and i worked on curriculum design for tertiary courses. i also experienced some wonderful, unusual encounters with various personalities during music performances, spectacular examples of career trial and error, and an emerging academic focus as a phd student. reflecting on my life as a musician, i am grateful for a rich and diverse career that differs greatly from my original vision of becoming an orchestral clarinettist. while my aspiration was based on a lack of understanding of the music industry/profession and the employment opportunities available, it was perpetuated by a conservatorium learning environment that promoted a strong european and american orchestral tradition for my instrument. i could have adopted a more independent approach, but no one suggested it. nevertheless, i taught at a private school and privately from first year, began casual work with two professional orchestras by second year, formed my own gigging ensembles, always said ‘yes’ to everything (almost too much really), and continued to learn more instruments and music styles, much to the distress of my performance teachers. although my performance results were excellent, i found the music degree challenging psychologically, and in third year i seriously considered quitting. it was hard working towards something that possibly did not exist or that others may be more capable of attaining, and thinking every day that my high school results enabled a high-level professional degree for an equally, if not more, respectable profession. the schoolyard commentary, ‘but you should do something with your brains’ echoed in my head, but even when i vocalised ‘i want to quit’, i could not bring myself to do so. music was part of me and i was committed. little did i know it was only the beginning of several thoughts of exiting this tough profession. i had considered an orchestral position purely because it ticked the prerequisite boxes of my relatives’ and non-music friends’ career expectations of full-time pay and benefits. during my regular sessional orchestral employment from the age of , i noticed the full-time musicians’ polite tolerance for the other gigging work i undertook, and an element of disdain for anything that was not a masters series (high-profile/high art) concert. several unsuccessful orchestral auditions spurred interest in permanent employment with an australian defence force band. i passed the audition, but after viewing the training video, understanding the contractual restrictions and gaining an insight to the environment, i realised full-time performance with this—or any performance institution—was not for me at that time. had i researched music employment thoroughly, or had mentors that enjoyed an assortment of music opportunities, perhaps my outlook of my employment status and future would have been broader and more positive earlier on. like my fellow undergraduate peers, teaching was just something to bide the time until success—full-time performance employment—occurred. my networks expanded, providing an opportunity for a six-month contract in musical theatre. although friends and relatives congratulated me, the job did not hold any value for me artistically at the time, only financially. yet i am deeply passionate about musical theatre now. in hindsight, my perception was built on a hierarchical perception of artistic success and, for the others, on their perspective of ‘real’ employment. meanwhile, others my age were struggling to be employed at all. if my undergraduate training had encouraged diverse music- and non-music-related activities rather than focusing on a single career, would my colleagues and i have had a healthier career perspective? would i have been more open and accepting of employment opportunities? would my performance outcome be better, worse or the same? my career path does not appear to have had a clear linear progression. my underlying, ongoing goal has been to be the best musician i am capable of being, but the various courses that this led to would seem at first to have been purely governed by luck, or arbitrary judgement at best: i was always open to any opportunity offered. my career success has been due to my strong, far-reaching music networks, interpersonal behaviour, assorted instrumental skills and genre capabilities, and diverse education. at the qcgu, i learned how to play the classical clarinet well, thanks to an excellent performance teacher, but i hardly gained the other skills i have required in my career. like most institutions of its kind, the qcgu was largely governed by an unspoken mission to produce musicians for linear career trajectories where others took care of the administration such as marketing, promotion and financials. my introduction to these non-music skills was facilitated by an mba degree and ‘real-world’ opportunities to apply this newfound knowledge. i was lucky to have the portfolio employment to learn the more subtle aspects of the music industry such as professionalism, which otherwise did not occur within my degree. i found these continually updated capabilities empowering and increasingly valuable to sustain my self-confidence to continue with music, particularly as technology continues to drive a changing professional environment and government artistic support remains precarious. this personal account describes the evolution of a portfolio career based on a misguided single career ambition, incubated by a nineteenth-century conservatoire training, leading to a mid-degree crisis for this otherwise passionate and successful student musician. although i was professionally proactive during my degree, it was not enough to facilitate a healthy professional identity because of a personalised ‘must-win- an-orchestral-job’ goal that was supported by my peers and educators. my portfolio identity would have been easier to embrace if accepted as ‘normal’ by my teachers, peers, family, friends, work colleagues and self. this acceptance was facilitated by the acquisition of enterprise and entrepreneurship skills that enabled self-instigated career confidence. . a personal account of teaching mlaam teaching mlaam in a conservatoire has been a challenging task for someone who identifies more as a portfolio musician than as an academic. with no prior model to follow, within the last six years i have gained new skills in such areas as curriculum and assessment design, aligning educational strategies with students’ career values and higher education perspectives, negotiating staff employment perspectives and opinions, and navigating the overarching tertiary education bureaucracy. this only occurred via trial and error, as the university’s training support available for new academics conflicted with my highly active portfolio music career and sessional tertiary employment. i value my on-the-job training, which allowed opportunity and scope for deep learning, but i do worry that my errors adversely affected the students. when i was finally able to attend formal training in the form of short seminars and symposiums, they provided new information and ideas, enabling me to create more effective courses. i located publications and online forums to supplement my knowledge but literature relating specifically to teaching vocational preparation within a conservatoire environment was still very limited. the people i knew who taught such elective subjects focused more on music business than career planning, and the cohort was usually late-year undergraduates who were concerned with the financial aspects of their careers and usually interested in popular music or jazz. their course design did not apply as well to the mlaam student cohort, the majority of whose intended employment outcomes were situated in western classical, contemporary art and jazz music, and to a lesser extent in production and technology. i initially approached teaching the mlaam course naively, thinking that my varied and local career experience would suffice as a solid foundation for industry guidance that would appeal to a diverse tertiary music cohort. course evaluations indicated the students agreed real-world experience was valuable to them, but the inclusion of publications and statistical data was limited in the initial offerings and the courses were viewed as ‘made up’ (first-year student, qcm, sec, ). at that time, the lecture as a traditional medium of learning was undergoing an identity crisis (berrett, ), and this study reveals (see chapter ) that ‘digital native’ or ‘millennial’ students entering tertiary study were presenting themselves as rather entitled (sinek, ), an attitude that was possibly exacerbated by their fee-paying status. their educational undergraduate expectations were very different to what i had experienced. my one-to-one teaching and small-class lecturing had not prepared me to recognise that the ‘sage on the stage’ was not appropriate (mcwilliam, ) and i had to unlearn my learning in order to communicate to students with diverse career aspirations and education expectations. i had abundant music industry experience, but no education skills to enable me to communicate its value to a large class of students. bridgstock and carr ( ) identified with this problem in discussing the related topic of teaching creative enterprise (ce) to first-year creative industries students: tertiary educators must be provided with sufficient support and professional development to implement cee [creative entrepreneurship education] curricula into their programs. it is valuable but not sufficient for teachers to be creative practitioners themselves—while teacher-practitioners will have useful entrepreneurial expertise to share, being competent in ce themselves does not necessarily mean that teachers are capable of teaching ce. (p. ) this may appear to be common sense to seasoned academics, but my practice as a one-to-one lecturer and long-standing music industry participant had never exposed me to the level of pedagogical knowledge required for this role. as others have recognised, the introduction to university teaching usually does ‘not include discipline specific content’ (carbone, , p. ). for these reasons and those discussed in this study, i can state that not many of the – students would think too highly of the mlaam courses or feel they had an impact irrespective that the courses achieved above the university standards. although my teaching was considered exceptional, i was not satisfied with the course ouctomes and thought course design, content and student engagement could be improved. . thesis overview following practitioner, qualitative and quantitative research methods, this study aims to investigate student and portfolio musicians’ current and proposed employability practices. these practices will be aligned with an evolving vocational preparation strand and embedded employability education. the thesis consists of eight chapters. chapter reviews the literature on national and international trends in the music profession, industry and employment; educational publications on the music profession, industry, enterprise, creative entrepreneurship and legal management; the twenty-first century tertiary student musician; musicians’ careers; curriculum design recommendations; music industry and entrepreneurship education; and the status of higher education in australia. gaps identified in the literature are used to subsequently formulate the research questions. chapter outlines the methodology of this study, answering the primary question: taking into account current and future realities for music professionals in australia, which elements incorporated into a tertiary music industry preparation strand are likely to be most effective in preparing students for successful careers? authoethnographical contributions are embedded throughout this thesis, as well as participatory action research on the evolution of the mlaam vocational preparation strand from to , and a case-study exemplar of a conservatoire ensemble applying mlaam theoretical concepts from to . analyses of student assessment, student experience of course (sec) surveys and student year-specific focus groups are used to determine the qcgu learning culture, further informed by faculty interviews. course design is informed by interviews with three australian arts advocates, three higher music education leaders and three industry preparation lectures. interviews with south-east queensland musicians inform the design of an online survey of australian portfolio musicians working in diverse genres. the quantitative data are utilised to validate the qualitative methods of this study. chapter discusses qcgu students’ career aspirations, degree engagement, mitigating strategies for the mid-degree slump, industry activity, perceptions of vocational preparation outside of mlaam education, transitional planning and perceived career sustainability skills. a conservatoire student lifecycle is ascertained from which to align a vocational preparation strand. chapter reports on qcgu faculty, industry leaders, higher education leaders, and tertiary music industry lecturers’ perceptions of industry and tertiary change, future industry trends, the sustainable skills required by graduating student musicians, vocational preparation and the mlaam courses. this is used to determine a timeline and typification of vocational delivery within an undergraduate bachelor of music degree. chapter outlines the online survey results, affirming the interviewed musicians’ responses. the portfolio musicians’ demographics, career paths, strategies and sustainable skills are scrutinised. the musician identity and its contextualisation within the wider employability landscape are discussed, considering attrition and perseverance with the profession. the current state of the music industry and profession is examined to determine the required skills of the twenty-first century graduate musician. chapter reveals barriers to the success of formal vocational preparation courses within a conservatoire environment. the processes and assessment of the mlaam strand, striving to fulfil the aim to vocationally prepare student musicians for their career realities, are aligned to the research results and described in relation to the real, relevant, respectful and inspiring (rrri) model of course delivery. chapter summarises the study’s research methods and findings and discusses implications and recommendations for future curriculum and industry reform. chapter : literature review this chapter reviews journal articles, theses, reports and online industry sites according to seven categories that have been identified to inform this research: . national and international trends in the music profession, industry and employment . educational publications on the music profession, industry, enterprise, creative entrepreneurship and legal management . the twenty-first century tertiary student musician . musicians’ careers . curriculum design recommendations . music industry and entrepreneurship education . higher education in australia. . national and international trends in the music profession, industry and employment the media has reported that many external environmental forces have placed pressure on the global music industry and the western art music profession. in australia, government funding for the arts has declined, placing significant stress on small to medium arts enterprises and the independent musician (dow, ). larger organisations such as opera queensland have been in a similar position (n. cooper, ) with funding under review (westwood, ). a positive key outcome of the national opera review has been the call for an ‘appropriate balance’ in the number of australian and international singers on stage. oa [opera australia] in particular has engaged international singers in greater numbers, from last year to this year. singers have retired early or left the profession, the report says, because there is no work for them. (westwood, ) notwithstanding an emerging creative economy (cunningham, ; howkins, ) highlighting the growing economic value of the ‘creative class’ (florida, mellander & stolarick, ) and the existing experience economy driving a perceived increase in experiential consumption (tschmuck, pearce & campbell, ), the aftermath of the – global financial crisis caused irreversible damage to international orchestras and opera houses (jones, ). musicians have experienced wage freezes, lockouts and dismissals throughout the united states (us) and europe as institutions file for bankruptcy (flanagan, ; kennicott, ). as such, ‘there is perhaps no other feature of life among orchestral musicians that is as variegated as its precarity’ (b. long, , p. ). guus mostart, a touring opera manager in the netherlands noted that, like australia, ‘the loss of smaller companies who support younger artists and young composers is even more worrying than what’s happening at the bigger companies. they are the breeding ground for the future of music’ (as cited in service, ). conversely, areas of traditional employment growth include china, where western classical music is gaining more prominence (huang, ; r. tang, ) and contemporary music performance in australia (bowen, ). in some ways, australia is better positioned than its european and us counterparts—all orchestras and opera houses are still currently active. yet accessible technology, digital downloads and illegal file sharing has had a negative impact on the recording industry (alexander, ; buzacott, ; norbert, ) and royalty income, and contributed to the ‘get-it-for-free’ consumer mindset (page, ). subsequently, live performance and touring remains the last bastion of artistic income (kusek, leonhard & lindsay, ; pareles, ), but audiences of western art music are ageing (letts, ; ‘musical briefing: ageing audiences’, ; page, ;). in an article by s. l. brown ( ), musician and researcher sarah taylor, reported the prevalence of live venues remained reliant on liquor licence costs and noise restrictions, and while melbourne continued to thrive, sydney’s live music scene was precarious. no current live music venue trend reports exist for other australian cities. economist david throsby and his colleagues at macquarie university have conducted several studies of australian artists since the s which ‘paint a bleak picture of artists’ circumstances’ with respect to creative income (throsby, ). report titles reflected this: when are you going to get a real job? (throsby, ); but what do you do for a living? (throsby, ); and don’t give up your day job! (throsby, ). throsby and zednik’s ( b) study, do you really expect to get paid?, was based on artist surveys and interviews, and cross-referenced australian census data. it reported on musicians’ and composers’ mean ages of and respectively, with a male gender bias ( % and %). income was categorised as creative work, where one works in their principal artistic occupation (pao); and artistic work, which includes ‘teaching in the artists’ artform’ (throsby & zednik, b, p. ) and was most common for musicians. the mean creative income was $ , (musicians) and $ , (composers), and arts-related income was $ , (musicians) and $ , (composers); therefore, total artistic income was $ , (musicians) and $ , (composers). total income included income from non-music related fields and was reported as $ , (musicians) and $ , (composers). in general, women earned less; however, this trend had declined since the previous study. first income for musicians occurred prior to basic training ( %), during basic training ( %), within three years of training completion ( %), and after three or more years of training completion ( %). throsby and zednik’s ( b) report also defined the career stages of the australian artist as: beginning/starting out, becoming established, established and established, but working less intensively than before. however, while the mean and median age of the established musicians and composers was discussed, the mean income was not. training was designated as a separate element not included within the notion of career, despite acknowledging that artists began their professional practice during this time. for many, training is considered ongoing throughout an artist’s career (bennett, ; smilde, ). overall, throsby and zednik ( b) concluded that even though australian artists earned less than the general working population of australia, the number of artists has not fallen. positive career influences included intrinsic factors such as passion, persistence and artistic talent, as well as extrinsic factors such as support and encouragement from friends and family. intrinsic factors were most dominant. in addition to low financial returns, negative career influences included lack of time for creative work, and/or available artistic employment opportunities. the report also indicated the impact of the digital age, which throsby affirmed in an interview with the australian, suggesting ‘the term “portfolio career” may falsely glamorise the trend, but for many artists such a working life is now almost inevitable’ (as cited in sorensen, ). while this is regarded as generally understood, the report is problematic in that the study included relatively small numbers of musicians surveyed/interviewed ( ). furthermore, it could be argued that those making a living from western art music practice would experience different career paths and income compared to those working in popular music, yet the musicians’ and composers’ preferred genre was not noted. cunningham, higgs, freebody and anderson ( ) criticised such reports to the australia council for the arts because they worked with a ‘small sample size’ and presented an alternate ‘creative trident method’ (p. ) when working with census statistics. unfortunately, while this method considered specialist creative, embedded creative and support workers, it did not discern what area of music these artists worked in or their portfolio of work. the census categories are simply too broad. this view is supported by australian researchers bartleet et al. ( ) who agree that ‘much of the activity undertaken by musicians with diversified work patterns is not captured’ (p. ). the working in the australian entertainment industry: final report (van den eynde, fisher & sonn, ) described an australian entertainment and cultural industry ‘in severe distress’ (p. ). based on interviews (n= ) and a survey (n= ) during , it affirmed the findings of throsby and zednik ( b), which identified a passionate and committed art workforce supported by family and friends. however, it reported a lack of support from their ‘toxic’ industry, with participants reporting ‘difficulty negotiating their negative and critical work environment’ (van den eynde et al., , p. ), despite possessing strong employability networks. targeted groups were performers (including musicians and composers), performance arts support workers, and technical operators. in many ways, this study was more thorough in understanding the longevity of primary income, as well as their usual employment (tenured, freelance, employee, full time, part time, volunteer, casual, self-employed, contractor and other), but the latter was not further divided into musicians and composers. neither did the researchers distinguish between ‘art’ (e.g. classical music) and ‘entertainment’ (e.g. musical theatre). they did ascertain that ‘ . % of musicians, . % of singers … earn less than $ , annually’ and ‘ . % of musicians, . % of singers … earn less than $ , ’ (van den eynde et al., , p. ). however, like the other studies, there was no description of the quality, genre of music or distinct employment portfolio of the musicians and composers. parker’s ( ) report, results of the musicians’ well-being survey, explored the psychosocial factors of music employment experienced by australian musicians of a younger average age than throsby and zednik’s ( b) participants— . years. parker’s ( ) participants possessed an average professional experience of years, % were located in queensland, and, like my study, there were none in northern territory. their most common instruments were guitar, voice and piano, probably because of the dominant employment genres were rock, eclectic, jazz, classical and popular music. key findings included a ‘precarious work situation’ supplemented with ‘additional work’ (e.g. teaching, retail and other creative work), high workload and low income (parker, , p. iv). in comparison to throsby and zednik’s ( b) report, teaching was considered supplementary rather than artistic income. it concluded: job insecurity and career uncertainty poses [sic] the largest threat to musicians’ life and work outcomes, as it was associated with lower life satisfaction, and higher psychological distress, burnout, and intentions to leave the industry. workload was also associated with higher psychological distress and burnout, and interpersonal conflict was associated with higher psychological distress. (parker, , p. v, emphasis in original) my concern with this study is that the most common reported age was years. this suggests that the majority of these musicians have only just begun to feel established in their industry, and the progress towards establishment would naturally be fraught with the stress and angst of developing their career. in addition, while the primary genres of music employment were ascertained, the type of training (e.g. classical, jazz or popular) was not described. just under a quarter had only completed high school as their highest education accreditation, compounding the issue observed within this and the above studies as to how the term ‘professional artist’ is defined. while life satisfaction was reported, career satisfaction was not. in addition, there was no indication as to how this category fluctuated throughout the duration of a career. in designing a vocational preparation strand, specific information would be useful to accurately describe career processes for students while ensuring the relevance and best-practice application of course content. what can be discerned from these publications is that the emerging western art music professional is not entering the same global environment that established musicians initially experienced. as indicated above, it would appear musicians can no longer rely on public funding or traditional income streams, and expected income is not comparable to other professions. rather, they will need to seek performance employment beyond their linear career expectations and localities in new and entrepreneurial ways while embracing diverse genres and a portfolio of employment. to achieve more autonomy and wider audience access, independent artists will need to further embrace technology. as noted by weller ( ): ‘today’s artists have greater power to affect their own career trajectories but more competition and less clarity in determining appropriate and sustainable paths’ (p. ). . educational publications on the music profession, industry, enterprise, creative entrepreneurship and legal management there are many texts, associations, websites and blogs on the ‘how to’ of the music profession and industry, which provide a rich source of information for the ‘what’ or theoretical knowledge an industry preparation course could include. the majority of them relate to becoming established or established musicians who possess a well-defined employability agenda and strong musician identity, and are at a career crossroads or seeking further stimulus for their already successful careers. texts geared towards undergraduate students of western art music are only recently becoming available, more so as the traditional conservatoire model is increasingly questioned (burt, lancaster, lebler, carey & hitchcock, ; dunlop, ; hannan, ; harvey, ; lancaster, ; letts, ; roennfeldt, a, b). . . australian texts. hannan’s research into the availability of over music employment career paths in australia culminated in the australian guide to careers in music in . he identified broad categories, describing the training and skills required, employment availability and opinions from those active in each field. he concluded that the australian music industry was a culturally rich environment that provided many career options. in addition, he endorsed the portfolio career, reflecting, ‘i believe that my own subsequent career—as an academic and music educator—would have been quite different had i not been forced to work in many different parts of the music industry’ (hannan, , p. ). even after years, the majority of his employment descriptions seem to retain their currency. an additional chapter, digital & online is available with an updated version of the book online (hannan, ). this resource is appropriate for students owing to its informative and broadly applicable content and australian context. written by a portfolio career musician, letts’ ( ) book, the art of self- promotion: successful promotion by musicians, was commissioned by the australian council for the arts, who recognised the growing need for musicians to develop sustainability skills beyond performance excellence. while most of the advice retains its core relevance to western art musicians, it was written prior to the social media boom. therefore, it does not include this form of self-promotion or other emergent technologies. of note, this book includes a questionnaire for the reader to determine their career aspirations, goals, core identity and self-promotional ethics. music and film lawyers simpson and munro’s ( ) music business: a musician’s guide to the australian music industry is an extensive edition that helps emerging and established musicians navigate the murky waters of tax, copyright, business structures and passive income streams such as royalties. relevant to the digital age, it is a very comprehensive text and references current australian legal procedures. beard and o’hara’s ( , ) and o’hara and beard’s ( a, b, ) texts favour commercial and popular music genres where objective outcomes such as finance are more likely aspirations (zwaan, bogt & raaijmakers, ). information on business planning is valid but requires a personalised adaptation and the marketing advice is out of date. bennett’s ( c) understanding the classical music profession: the past, the present and strategies for the future is an ideal resource to inform educators working in vocational preparation courses similar to mlaam, particularly for those teaching within a conservatoire environment with a classical student cohort having strong aspirations for performance professions. her edited book, life in the real world: how to make music graduates employable (bennett, a), draws on the expertise of professional music education scholars to discuss the central question of how to make music graduates employable and supplies workshop resources useful for in-class activities—suitable for both undergraduate and postgraduate courses—and personal reflection. while there is discussion of the australian, us and european employability landscape, it is mostly applicable to the western classical music traditions. china and other emerging countries are not mentioned. the above texts largely focus on performance and composition plus merchandise and income activities, but exclude education employment. p. johnston’s the practicespot guide to promoting your teaching studio ( ) and the practice revolution: getting great results from the six days between music lessons ( ) offer promotional and teaching strategies to develop a thriving private practice, but do not consider the impact of skype technologies or online studio business. . . other texts. us-based cutler’s ( ) the savvy musician provides enterprising tips for social capital development, basic promotion, marketing, finance and fundraising suitable for the training and emerging musician. likewise, myles-beeching’s ( a) beyond talent: creating a successful career in music considers such topics in great depth in addition to case studies of musicians with diverse careers. however, the employability transition from undergraduate to graduate is only marginally considered in both of these texts. klickstein’s ( b) the musicians’ way: a guide to practice, performance, and wellness is largely focused on the mental and physical wellbeing of the musician and achieving effective practice strategies. it is mentioned here for its chapter on ‘succeeding as a student’, which encourages students to ‘ . draft a career plan, . educate yourself, . network, . fill many niches and . polish your image’ (klickstein, b, p. ). while the advice is worthy, the detail is lacking. however, klickstein ( b) does consider why career planning is important, suggesting that it avoids perpetuating career delusions that ‘prevents them from exploring their capacity for creativity, service, and income in other areas. in addition, their unrealistic outlook buys them a ticket to emotional pain’ (p. ). the uk-based text preparing for success: a practical guide for young musicians (hallam & gaunt, ) considers the education processes that students in a conservatoire or music school environment will experience, musical identity development, possible career prospects and health. it is largely for training and emerging classical musicians and possesses a nominal reference to enterprise management. beyond sound: the college and career guide in music technology (s. l. phillips, ) is a us publication that draws on the inspirational stories of music technologists to guide college students to maximise their degree experience and strategise their unique career paths. it is quick to debunk the recording engineer dream, but espouses the multitude of other independent opportunities available. it is a very useful book upon which a first-year music technology career syllabus could be designed. in general, these texts appear to possess a core message of career, enterprise or musicianship; no text appears to equally embrace all three. however, one that appears to at least interpret these varying concepts is music, markets and consumption (o’reilly, larsen & kubacki, ), which successfully maintains a non-geographic, non-genre- specific approach to the marketing of music, considers art and popular music making, and explores the evolution of the musician-as-marketer. the digital environment and the role of festivals are also considered. for students experiencing their initial cultural cringe when dealing with self-promotion, this book is ideal because it invites the reader to consider the core values of music and music-making. . . online resources. websites and blogs designed to inform and educate about the music industry and music profession are prevalent. examples include www.thebiz.com.au, www.artshub.com.au, www.qmusic.com.au, www.apra-amcos.com.au, www.musicbizaustralia.com, www.musiccareer.com.au, www.bulletproofmusician.com and www.berkleemusic.com/school/courses. these are useful for inspiration and as supplementary resources for entrepreneurial students with greater initiative who are keen to immediately operate within their music industry environment. they can be categorised into ) online learning (e.g. us-based berklee college of music); and ) industry awareness and resources (e.g. australian-centred arts hub, music career, q music, australasian performing right association (apra) australasian mechanical copyright owners association (amcos), the biz and music biz australia). the latter category supports all disciplines within the music sector, but the biz and q music lean more towards the popular music domain. . . discussion. this literature review has so far determined that there are many considerations when choosing supplementary resources for vocational preparation courses. while common business topics are practical for the development of a portfolio career, it would be hard to perceive how to deliver this in a tertiary setting as stand-alone information without understanding the students’ base knowledge, attitudes and progressive development as musicians. rather, in a conservatorium context, more desirable are texts that are applicable across musical disciplines and assist with the starting out and becoming established stage. this is evidenced by throsby and zednik’s ( b) report, which confirmed that the most common age of establishment is (musician) and (composer) (p. ). as this is roughly five years after graduation (based on a three-year degree), it would be a mistake to focus solely on hard skills within any vocational preparation course. therefore career planning is needed. furthermore, as many scholars have found that the motivations for musical careers are not primarily financial (bridgstock, ; daniel & johnstone, ; hall & chandler, ; menger, ; nagel, ; throsby & zednik, a), only focusing on the commercial nature of the industry may alienate undergraduates. publications by myles-beeching ( a), cutler ( ), hallam and gaunt ( ) and hannan ( ) provide an additional element towards the ‘how-to’ of the music industry. introducing ‘why’ musicians aspire to a career, bennett ( a) myles-beeching ( a) and hallam and gaunt ( ) aimed to prompt readers to explore with reflective questions and ensure that undergraduates develop an awareness of self and are open to self- development in order to know what it takes to be a musician, thus promoting the positive aspects of the diverse nature of a portfolio career. hallam and gaunt ( ) considered how to best utilise an undergraduate degree, offering practice hints, short- and long-term goal evaluation, and strategies for maximising individual lesson time. overall, there is plenty of information available assisting the emerging and established musician, highlighting that the non-music skills of vocation education are of value. the literature review also reveals that there are few australian-specific texts, and even fewer relating to training and beginning music careerists. however, with increasing value on education designed around authentic experiential learning (bennett et al., ; herrington & herrington, ; huhtanen, ; d. kolb, ), course designers run the risk of over-developing their courses. furthermore, it is possible content can be covered elsewhere within the degree, delivered within one-to-one teaching, or built upon the students’ current knowledge and experiences. . the twenty-first century student musician research on awareness and support of students’ transition from secondary to tertiary education is broadly recognised as valuable to educational curriculum design for student-led rather than teacher-led learning (burland & pitts, ; kift, ; lizzio, ; winterson & russ, ). while student musicians’ social integration, a key driver for a successful transitional process, is acknowledged to be more positive than non-musicians’ (winterson & russ, ; yorke & longden, ), it could be argued that their degree experience is more complex than considered (a. seidman, ). upon entry, students’ initial music career aspirations are challenged and recalibrated, largely owing to self-comparisons and increased performance expectations (juuti & littleton, ; j. miller & baker, ; pitts, ). this process has been articulated as the ‘development of a music student’s sense of professional self-concept’ (m. long, , as cited in hallam, , p. ). bennett and bridgstock ( ) argued that ‘understanding student and graduate perceptions of work, career, and identity might enhance our ability to offer timely and meaningful support’ (p. ). . . student aspirations. a longitudinal research project titled the plans and aspirations of young musicians (play), was developed at the guildhall school of music in london, involving semi-structured interviews with undergraduate and postgraduate music students and surveyed music student participants ( % undergraduate and % postgraduate). while no report exists, all research leaders published the various findings (gaunt, ; gaunt, creech, long & hallam, ; hallam, ; hallam & gaunt, ; m. long, ). the interviews revealed that while students had defined aspirations for a career in music, just under half ‘could not articulate specific ideas about what kinds of work they would pursue, and were taking more of a “wait and see what comes along” approach’ (gaunt, , p. ). this attitude was also not related to any particular student year. of note, piano and string students were more inclined towards defined music careers. from the survey, positive employment aspirations were reported as mainly enjoyment, financial sustainability and professional performance. these aspirations did not change by second year; however, there was less ‘i want to be a star’ dialogue as they progressed through their degree and career plans were modified according to the realities of their instrument and chosen genre (hallam, ). similarly, g. carey’s ( ) study of australian undergraduate piano students revealed a process from idealisation to realisation of career employment, comparable to juuti and littleton’s ( ) study, but the degree did not support this transition: the pattern across three years from entry to exit showed students’ expectations moving from being trained for success in elite musical performance to graduate disillusionment about the dubious relevance of much of the program to what they were now seeing as the reality of their future work. (mcwilliam, carey, draper & lebler, , p. ) m. long ( ) quantified the play participants’ ‘idealistic’ aspirations, reporting that ‘approximately two-thirds of students aspired to a career as an international concert artist or as a soloist’ (p. ). the participants’ possible feared outcomes, however, were either not investigated or not mentioned in these studies. freer and bennett ( ) argued that ‘early career musicians often hold stereotypical images about artistic life that can impede their development in workplaces that require additional tasks and skills’ (p. ). bennett and bridgstock ( ) identified ‘poor career preview’ (p. ) before and during tertiary arts studies of dance and music students whose desired career aspirations for high-level performance and composition careers (musicians) were at odds with their expected careers and the eventual reality of portfolio employment. their investigation into ‘aspired’ and ‘expected’ career realities adapted what markus and nurius ( ) termed ‘possible selves’, which ‘represent individuals’ ideas of what they might become, what they would like to become, and what they are afraid of becoming, and thus provide a conceptual link between cognition and motivation’ (p. ). perceptions of positive and negative possible selves can equally influence career motivation and need to be recognised and incorporated into career planning. bennett and stanberg ( ) reported that students’ perspectives on teaching as ‘fallback’ careers clouded their perceptions of success and potentially inhibited identity formation throughout their degree and their subsequent career satisfaction. regarding pianists’ perceptions of career success and failure, huhtanen ( ) distinguished those who regarded teaching as financial support (dreamers) from those who welcomed it as part of their portfolio identity (realists). music psychology scholars lehmann, sloboda and woody ( ) advocated that aspiring musicians need to know ‘why’ they are involved in ‘task-evolved and ego-involved goal orientations’ (p. ), and leadership counselor simon sinek ( ) commented in an online video: ‘if people learn their ‘why’, it makes them better qualified and, more importantly, more confident to choose the careers, the jobs, and find companies that create environments in which they are more likely to be inspired and fulfilled’. in a study of six large public state universities in the us, parkes and jones ( ) identified four main themes from responses by students as to why they were planning a career in music performance: . they enjoy playing music (intrinsic interest value) . they have the ability to succeed at playing music (expectancy/ability) . they believe that music performance is useful (extrinsic utility) . they view themselves as musicians (attainment value). (p. ) parkes and jones ( ) aligned their results with the four components of the expectancy-value model of motivation (i.e. expectancy/ability, intrinsic interest value, attainment value and extrinsic utility value; see eccles, ). point four relates to the students’ innate sense of musical identity, which only applied to . % (n= ) of participants. although the study did not ask what area of music performance the students were considering, or whether they were considering performance and teaching as part of a portfolio career, it is useful to my comparison of students’ career aspirations. . . student identity. in musical identities (macdonald, hargreaves & miell, ), scholars distinguished identities in music (iim) such as ‘musician’, ‘composer’ and ‘performer’, which, reinforced during tertiary training, form ‘an important part of the self-concepts of professional musicians’ from music in identities (mii), that is, ‘how we use music within our overall self-identities’ (macdonald, hargreaves & miell, , p. ). bennett’s ( ) doctoral study revealed a process whereby a musician’s initial identity tends towards the original and intended specialisation, evolving to include multiple identities throughout their career, thus further identifying oneself as a ‘musician’. this timeline appeared to depend on the individual and their musical experiences, but it was unclear whether it began from undergraduate training. daniel’s ( b) study of australian creative and performing arts students enrolled in a regional university found that a student’s identity as ‘student’ rather than a ‘musician’ or ‘photographer’, for example, usually remained as such throughout their degree. however, there was no discussion of whether students were involved in professional work or internships that could influence this result. while finding that ‘most students perceive artists to be relatively misunderstood or marginalised in contemporary australian society’ (daniel, b, p. ) there was no further investigation of what authentic experiences had contributed to these students’ opinions. in addition, it was noted that students accepted ‘thinking and operating in a business or commercial way’ (daniel, b, p. ) was crucial to future employment activity and identity, but how they perceived the reality of learning such skills or how those skills had contributed to their current identities was not discussed. kadushin’s ( ) study of undergraduates from juilliard and the manhattan school of music revealed their professional work during their undergraduate training contributed to their identity transition from student to professional, and that their training, while important, could not successfully assist the process alone. rather, he proposed that ‘students who do not engage in “clinical” activities (professional work) do not generally acquire a high [professional] self-concept’ (p. ). explaining the relationship of self-concept to identity, hallam ( ) proposed that ‘historically, the term self-concept was used to refer to how individuals perceived and evaluated themselves in different areas of their lives’ (p. ). with respect to employability, kadushin ( ) argued that the answer to the question, ‘what do you do?’ ‘is whether [the person] earns his living, or most of it, from the practice of that profession’ (p. ). more recently, scholars have argued that ‘musical identities are performative and social—they represent something that we do, rather than something that we have’ (macdonald et al., , p. ). hallam ( ) explained that ‘the self-system is made up of a number of self- images including those relating to self-esteem, self-efficacy, ideal selves, and possible selves, which are often context or situation specific and, which develop in interaction with our environment’ (p. ). the concept of possible selves is regarded as highly relevant to musicians’ formation of musical identity (bennett, b; bennett & freer, ; bennett & stanberg, ; burland & pitts, ; burt-perkins & lebler, ; daniel, b; hallam, ; huhtanen, ; macdonald et al., ; meijers, ; nagel, ; o’connor, cunningham & jaaniste, ; o’neill, ; oakland, macdonald & flowers, ; parkes & jones, ; pitts, ; roennfeldt, b; weller, , ), as possible selves ‘provid[e] a sense of direction in relation to education’ (hallam, , p. ). while student musicians’ learning identities have revealed prioritisation of performance-based experiential learning over academic studies (burland & pitts, ; colwell, ; presland, ), the research into developing career identities throughout undergraduate training, beyond kadushin’s ( ) and the play study, is more recent. scholars generally agree that musical identities ‘constantly change and develop throughout the life-span in response to cultural norms and the feedback received from interactions with others’ (hallam, , p. ). hallam ( ) noted the play project revealed that ‘the students’ musical identities were constantly reformulated in response to comparisons made with the performance of their peers and feedback from teachers and others, which impacted on their motivation and self-belief’ (p. ). macdonald et al. ( ) noted that such identities are influenced by external environmental forces and ‘will develop, change, and diversify still further and more rapidly as … technology develops’ (p. ), therefore creating new ‘musical domains and phenomena’ (p. ). oakland, macdonald and flowers ( ) recognised that a portfolio career identity label contributes to greater perceived adaptability to a changing employment environment, which could create less struggle with a musician’s identity transition and transformation, therefore less psychosocial stress, particularly for opera singers. however, they questioned the ‘implications that being a ‘jack-of-all-trades’ has for musical excellence’ (oakland et al., , p. ). hallam ( ) suggested that ‘professional musicians who have a portfolio career may perceive themselves primarily to be performers, but with less central identities as teacher, coach, or arranger’ perhaps because they ‘see themselves as outstanding performers, but only adequate as a teacher’ (p. ). this correlation of musical ability to performance identity has its initial foundations in a uk qualitative study of people’s perceptions of musical ability, in which % of responses related musical ability ‘to being able to play a musical instrument or sing’ (hallam & prince, , as cited in hallam, , p. ). this was confirmed in a follow-up study of people (hallam, ). research into the influence of non-musician peers and family on student musician identity formulation is minimal, but societal perspectives and their ramifications on musicians’ lives is more prevalent for jazz and popular musicians (c. cooper & wills, ; kubacki & croft, ; page, ; stebbins, ) than for classical musicians. nagel’s ( ) study of musicians (university of michigan) suggested that while parents had supported their children’s musical education, they feared ‘that a music performance occupation would lead to an unstable lifestyle, dictated, in part, by economic insecurity’ (p. ). nagel ( ) correlated this lack of support with their degree and employability experience, noting that % of the participants ‘were experiencing conflict or dissatisfaction regarding their career choice in music’ (p. ). given the vastly changed economy since , it would be interesting to contrast contemporary students’ aspirations and subsequent identity formulation. . musicians’ careers . . defining the musician. the definition of ‘musician’ as ‘a person who plays a musical instrument, especially as a profession, or is musically talented’ (‘musician’, ) in the oxford dictionary or ‘a composer, conductor, or performer of music; especially: instrumentalist’ (‘musician’ n.d.) in merriam-webster’s online dictionary is rather limiting, ambiguous and not indicative of current contexts of music making such as technology. bennett’s ( c) definition, ‘a person who practises in the profession of music within one or more specialist fields’ (p. ), is based on her thorough exploration of the meaning and history of the classical music, the history and gender bias of the classical musician, and performance-based classical music education and training (bennett, , , a, b, a, c, , ; bennett & freer, ; bennett & stanberg, ). it also well defines the portfolio career musician and is appropriate to this study, as it facilitates the inclusion of teaching within the identity of musician. o’neill ( ) argued that regardless of the ambiguity of ‘what constitutes a musician, contemporary theorists from across these disciplines appear to agree on the need for the term to encompass more than the ability to demonstrate music performance skills’ (p. ). huhtanen ( ) concurred, stating ‘presenting virtuosity in one’s playing added with pedagogical competence does not suffice anymore. the professional has to gain a large set of other competence skills’ (p. ). . . the working musician: ‘art for art’s sake’ v. a commercial approach. the attitudes of the working musician are central to this study. as a professional musician, i have observed an ‘art for art’s sake’ ideology versus a commercial approach to one’s career. while the two are not independent, i find these opposing perceptions lie at the crux of career development, music education, employability and industry health. art for art’s sake was the slogan of the bohemian culture in the mid-nineteenth century when artists were not motivated by profit and had retaliated against insubordinate approaches to the listening of music (bradshaw, mcdonagh, marshall & bradshaw, ). this initial music-as-function evolved from the preceding agricultural age, summarised by o’reilly et al. ( ) as when the professional musician enjoyed a varied and increasing professional status. the subsequent industrial age further developed the concept to music-as-product with the sale of sheet music and rise of publishing houses. this coincided with a change in audience demands for silence during performance and between musical movements (bradshaw et al., ), an additional perspective of music-as-art. these values led the to ‘the stereotype of the artist as starving, deviant, alcoholic, suicidal undiscovered genius’, which bradshaw et al. ( ) described as a ‘romantic musical intention’ (p. ). commercialisation was further embedded within the profession with the introduction of recording technologies and the sale of physical music products, which created a wealth of new types of professional music industry employment (throsby, ). becker’s ( ) study of jazz musicians identified a close-knit art community from the s, which felt segregated from other areas of society and music-making. the act of ‘go[ing] commercial’ was viewed as ‘selling out’ by professional colleagues (becker, , p. ). holbrook ( ) described this art-versus-commerce debate as ‘those who fancy themselves connoisseurs ready to hurl accusations of philistinism at the plebian tastes of the hoi polloi, while those who support the dignity of the common man defensively attack their critics with charges of elitism’ (p. ). this argument has been exacerbated by the digital age reformation of the music industry to include a less tangible and more widely accessible product, otherwise described as music-as-experience (tschmuck et al., ). throsby ( ) recognised the difficulty in defining the term music industry because ‘no single standard industry classification adequately encompasses the diversity of musical activity and commerce’ (p. ). i argue that with the inclusion of educational entertainment possessing a music industry market share (e.g. the wiggles), the definition between what is industry versus profession is becoming as opaque as art versus entertainment. for example, teaching has been long included within musicians’ portfolio of employment (rohr, ; salmen, kaufman & reisner, ) and contributed to their social capital maintenance and development (cottrell, ). where it is considered a profession, its function within the music industry cannot be discounted, particularly as it can be argued that teaching as a service can also be construed as an experience. therefore, the definition of musician depends on the impact on the profession by an industry affected by the broader employability environment. . . the portfolio, protean and boundaryless musician and applied career theory. scholars have noted the increasing need for musicians to strive towards non- linear approaches to their career, broadly classified as protean, portfolio or boundaryless (bartleet et al., ; bennett, ; bennett & freer, ; bridgstock, , , b; cunningham, ; dunlop, ; hannan, ; teague & smith, ; throsby & zednik, b; weller, ). the following sections explore each term. . . . the portfolio career. a portfolio musician is described as one who derives their artistic and financial income from a variety of sources and has been widely adopted since the middle ages (rohr, ; salmen et al., ). while some scholars have investigated the transitions of portfolio musicians from student to professional (bennett & bridgstock, ; creech et al., ; welch, duffy, whyton & potter, ; weller, ) the exploration of the types of initial employment during undergraduate training, by what means it is accessed, and if there is a predictive portfolio pattern is virtually non- existent. scholars have been useful in identifying the challenges and mitigating strategies of transitioning musicians (see section . . ), such as the time pressures, competition, self-doubt and financial hardship most commonly encountered by undergraduates and portfolio musicians of jazz, classical, popular and scottish folk genres (creech et al., ). creech et al. ( ) found that ‘musicians representing a range of diverse musical genres have much in common, sharing similar fears and obstacles throughout the transition process and benefiting in similar ways from supportive professional networks and performance opportunities’ (p. ). however, there was no report of portfolio musicians’ perspectives of the availability of contract work, its genre-specific relationship, their approach and attitude towards employment (self-created or otherwise), and the relationship to health, family and work-life balance, as found in studies by weller ( ) of american music graduates, hesmondhalgh and baker ( ) of six to multi-genre london musicians, and teague and smith ( ) of british drummers. as reviewed in section . , the formulation of the musician identity appears to be crucial in negotiating a successful transition from training to professional, but given the technology-driven change for many areas of employment, the portfolio career musician identity requires further scrutiny. overall, researchers have largely acknowledged the who, how, why and where of portfolio and other areas of music employment, but not the what relating to the when. . . . the protean career. in , hall coined the term ‘protean career’ in contrast to the ‘traditional career’, describing it ‘as one in which the person, not the organization, is in charge, the core values are freedom and growth, and the main success criteria are subjective (psychological success) vs. objective (position, salary)’ (hall, , p. ). he predicted that protean approaches would be more likely for all sectors of employment influenced by the volatile external environmental forces of the twenty-first century. this is significant to this study, as it indicates there will be a broader acceptance of a casualisation of employment (hesmondhalgh & baker, ), which is more likely to facilitate a positive transition to a portfolio musician identity and bodes well for student musicians’ degree planning and engagement. . . . the boundaryless career. bridgstock’s ( b) largely quantitative study explored australian undergraduate arts students’ attitudes, predictive employment success capabilities and outcomes upon graduation, identifying their need for psychological (creative fulfilment or intrinsic motivation) over objective (financial or extrinsic) success. applying arthur and rousseau’s ( ) term ‘boundaryless career’, career paths that ‘may involve sequences of job opportunities that go beyond the boundaries of single employment setting’ (defillippi & arthur, , p. ), ‘where uncertainty and flexibility are the order of the day’ (littleton, arthur & rousseau, , p. ), bridgstock ( b) described the protean careerist as an acute version of the boundaryless careerist, possessing additional intrinsic motivational traits (p. iv). although her work only involved a small percentage of music-related participants, it is valuable to the design of undergraduate mlaam courses for developing artists, particularly in the process of career-identity building. her results make a strong case that ‘many emerging creatives may need support to develop an adaptive and realistic career identity based on knowledge of themselves and the world of work, before they engage in advanced disciplinary learning’ (bridgstock, a, p. ) because ‘final year undergraduate students who report having well-developed career self-management skills experience higher levels of subjective and objective career success after graduation’ (bridgstock, b, p. ). . . . career theory. daniel’s ( a) investigation into factors influencing the career paths and locations of queensland arts graduates determined that more than one career theory was potentially applicable to artists’ developing careers. he recognised the inclusion of such knowledge would ‘allow [undergraduates] to more effectively prepare for what is a complex and constantly changing field of employment’ (daniel, a, p. ). the dilemma is: what career theories should be included in vocational preparation courses? holland’s ( ) theory of career choice has suggested that each person is one of six personality types (realistic, investigative, artistic, social, enterprising and conventional), which one can align with a work environment and produce ‘vocational satisfaction, stability and achievement’ (p. ). this does have some merit for linear careers, but is not entirely applicable to those with portfolio careers who could have more than one personality element owing to the nature of their diverse employment. in contrast, krumbholtz’s ( ) happenstance learning theory proposed that ‘human behaviour is the product of countless numbers of learning experiences made available by both planned and unplanned situations in which individuals find themselves’ (p. ). krumboltz ( ) advised that ‘being undecided [about one’s career] can be reframed as open-mindedness’ (p. ), and advocated lifelong learning, exploring options, and understanding that employment satisfaction is not static and that career and personal aspects are strongly correlated. in many ways, this is suited to the life of a musician, especially to the precarious nature of freelance performance employment. savickas’ career construction theory, which builds on the work of super ( ) and super and jordaan ( ), resonates with the formulation of musical identities in that ‘individuals construct their careers by imposing meaning on their vocational behaviour and occupational experiences’ (s. d. brown & lent, , p. ). this aligns with a music career as a ‘calling’ and its involvement with subjective or psychological success (hall & chandler, ; menger, ). perhaps increasingly applicable to many areas of employability is bright and pryor’s ( ) chaos career theory, which considers the key elements of nonlinearity (chaos) and recursiveness (repetition/order). based on this theory, such careers can display ‘a lack of predictability at micro level, while at the same time appearing to have a degree of stability at the macro level. in addition, their nonlinear nature means that minor events can have a disproportionate outcome’ (bright & pryor, , p. ). for example, a chance meeting with an influential celebrity could potentially open up a wealth of new opportunities for music employment. bright and pryor ( ) also argued that chaos theory acknowledges ‘some of the neglected realities of career decision making, such as chance, unpredictability, the limits of knowledge at the point of decision making, the limitations of goals, and the nonlinearity of change (p. ). from this perspective, manturzewska’s ( ) life-span development based on polish musicians is perhaps not as applicable to portfolio careers. . . sustainability skills of the twenty-first century musician. scholars and researchers appear to broadly agree on the most appropriate career sustainability skills for musicians, but the details vary. bennett’s ( ) doctoral research reported the opinions of cultural industry practitioners (n= ) and music professionals (n= ) residing in western australia, highlighting reasons for career attrition and suggestions for career sustainability for classical musicians. both data sets understood attrition occurred because of ‘insufficiency of regular employment due to a lack of practitioner diversity, a lack of career mobility, irregular working hours, high rates of injury, and low financial rewards’ (bennett, , p. ). both groups agreed successful career sustainability required business skills, teaching skills, industry experience, professional development/mentors, entrepreneurship, peer networks, community cultural development and related technology skills. however, the cultural industry practitioners placed higher value on entrepreneurship, peer networks and related technologies, compared to the musical professionals placing value on business skills, teaching skills, industry experience, professional development/mentors and community cultural development. while these differences were not discussed, it could be hypothesised that cultural practitioners possessed a proactive or developmental approach to career sustainability, whereas music professionals identified with a reactive or maintenance approach regarding their current employment and skill-base. dha communications’ ( ) report, commissioned by the musicians’ union in the united kingdom (uk), concerned approximately musicians ‘from a wide range of industry sources’ (p. ) and argued ‘there is no such thing as a typical musician’ (p. ). yet it affirmed bennett’s findings were relatable to those working within diverse genres and employment: many musicians develop a portfolio career of different jobs, which ‘invariably involves developing non-music skills such as business, marketing, teaching and community engagement’ (dha communications, , p. ), and just under two-thirds ( %) ‘were using web-based technologies to produce, promote and distribute their music’ (p. ), indicating a need for technological skills. while bennett ( ) considered the classical music profession, she acknowledged that a portfolio career musician might need to cover many genres and skills for performance employment, let alone other aspects of their career. although her research statistics and outcomes may be transferable to other genres such as jazz, composition and music technology, there is a comparable lack of literature exploring these genres. hannan’s ( ) study of undergraduates in an australian contemporary music programme revealed their perceived understanding of ‘musicianship’ included ‘understanding’, ‘putting theory into practice’, ‘listening skills’, ‘aural skills with focus on pitch and rhythm’ and, of note, ’professionalism’ (p. ). he identified a staggering array of skills required within a contemporary music programme congruent with the scholars reviewed here and argued, ‘but is it really different for the classical musician, or any kind of professional musician?’ (hannan, , p. ). he also reasoned all musicians required marketing skills: ‘even classical music performers with full-time jobs in orchestras or music theatre companies will invariably be involved in freelance performance and teaching’ (hannan, , p. ). bridgstock’s research has largely contributed to the discourse concerning the graduate attributes required for sustainable employability (bridgstock, , , a, b, , a, b, a, b; bridgstock & carr, ). her longitudinal study of queensland university of technology (qut)‘beginning/starting out’ arts graduates concerned those one year following graduation and revealed predictors of career success for protean artists, including: . self-management skills—self-image, lifelong learning, life balance . career-building skills—finding and obtaining work, locating and using career information, and making career-enhancing decisions. (bridgstock, b) in another study of nine in-depth interviews discerning the career paths of highly successful established artists, she categorised their ‘career capabilities’ as: . discipline-specific depth—that is, extra education and curricular learning occurs throughout one’s undergraduate training . disciplinary agility—where arts and non-arts diversity is embraced . social network capability . digital savvy . enterprising orientation . ‘passionstance’. (bridgstock, a)	 ‘passionstance’ was explained as a: paradoxical balance between: (a) passion for career, often expressed as wanting to ‘make a difference’, characterised by strong intrinsic career motivation and goal-directed action, and (b) planned happenstance (mitchell, levin & krumboltz, )—an ability to adapt proactively, be resilient, and make the best of both positive and negative chance events. (bridgstock, a, p. ) this resonates with bennett’s ( ) findings of ‘personal attributes crucial to the achievement of a sustainable career’, consisting of: . confidence and strength . openness and adaptability to change . motivation and drive . resilience/determination . enthusiasm/passion for the field. (p. ) comparatively, throsby and zednik ( b) reported that the top six factors artists perceived advanced their career (in descending order of perceived importance) were intrinsic (‘hard work or persistence’, ‘passion, self-motivation’, ‘artist’s talent’) and extrinsic influences (‘support and encouragement’, ‘critical timing’ and ‘training’) (p. ). bridgstock ( b) concluded that artists’ professional capabilities consisted of career self-management, enterprise and entrepreneurship, transdisciplinarity and social networking capability. she distinguished between ‘enterprise’, including the skills of contract and freelance employment, and ‘entrepreneurship’, relating to creating new employment. her advice to emerging artists included ‘go in with your eyes open’ and use informational interviewing to gain a more informed understanding of career possibilities; ‘immerse yourself’ in the degree experience and add to the curriculum; ‘find or create a niche’; consider learning another language to aid mobility; ‘look for hidden opportunities’ rather than highly competitive traditional areas of employment; discover the path less trodden; ‘it’s who you know … and also who knows you’; ‘every creative product needs a market’; and gain business know-how (bridgstock, a, p. ). zwaan et al. ( ) confirmed the importance of social capital development in their longitudinal study of dutch popular musicians experiencing diverse career patterns (upwards, downwards, stable successful and stable unsuccessful) and that ‘successful pop musicians experience more social support, have a stronger professional attitude and a more extensive professional network’ (p. ). taking inspiration from defillippi and arthur’s ( ) boundaryless contexts and careers: a competency-based perspective, bridgstock ( ) argued that portfolio careerists need to be ‘knowing what, knowing why, knowing how, knowing when, and knowing whom’ (p. ). this was adapted into the resilient musical professional (rmp) model (creech, ) following the – uk study, investigating musical performance (imp): comparative studies in advanced musical learning, which examined ‘how western classical, popular, jazz and scottish traditional musicians deepen and develop their learning about performance in undergraduate, postgraduate and wider music community contexts’ (welch et al., , p. ). in order to study the ‘development and learning of musicians in other-than-classical genres’ (welch et al., , p. ), it included a survey of musicians of which % were undergraduates and the remainder were portfolio careerists engaging with performance and teaching. knowing why was considered the most relevant, involving ‘a deep love and enjoyment of music … underpinned by perseverance, self-confidence, dedication and continual striving for the highest possible standards’ (creech, , p. ). knowing what and how ‘comprised musical skills and knowledge, practice strategies and versatility’, whereas knowing whom, where and when ‘encompassed communication and organisational skills as well as a sense of belonging in a community of practice that offered authentic workplace performance opportunities’ (creech, , p. ). yet throsby and zednik ( ) made an ironic observation of artists, of which % were undertaking freelance work: overall, half of them believe their skills to be good or excellent, but it is a sobering thought that more than one-third of artists describe their skills only as adequate, and a further percent regard their business skills as inadequate. composers seem to be somewhat less confident of their skills than other paos. most artists are aware of the need to possess business skills; almost percent of artists say that it is likely that they will improve their business skills within the next months. (p. ) further to this, the appendices revealed that % (musicians) and % (composers) planned to improve their business skills, but specifically what and by what means was not mentioned. there was no mention of the type of business training, if any, the artists had previously received. equally, while it has long been acknowledged that artists work in non-arts domains (bridgstock, b; cunningham & higgs, ; cunningham et al., ; menger, ; throsby & zednik, a; wassall & alper, ), the need to acknowledge their transferable skills has recently been included in academic discourse (bridgstock, ; smilde, ) but very few have specified what these skills are (bassett, , ) or advocated the education and application of such within and beyond the degree (dockwray & moore, ). . curriculum design recommendations following the analysis of interviews, case studies, focus groups, email diaries, and instrumental lessons, core findings within the investigating musical performance research relevant to this study and mlaam curriculum design revealed that undergraduates were more realistic about the skills required for portfolio careers later in their degree (welch et al., ). further, an ideal higher music education environment was inspirational, positive, enabled academic, professional and personal growth assisted by ‘a supportive community of learning’ that allowed students to develop their personal interests (welch et al., , p. ). in addition, there needed to be a move away from the current narrow understanding of the working musician, and music institutions were advised to introduce a variety of opportunities within performance engagement including cross-genre collaboration (welch et al., ). likewise, faculty need to: remain industry active, encourage their students to network within the industry, and be proactive in their students emerging professional identity (welch et al., ). finally, students should initiate their own small creative projects and continually provide peer support (welch et al., ). this concurred with bennett’s ( , c) research, which suggested the inclusion within curricula of self-awareness and deeper understanding of what it is to be a classical musician in the broader community and economic environment. bennett and stanberg ( , p. ) also addressed the need for tertiary education to assist student attitudes towards becoming a music teacher while maintaining career aspirations as performing artists. likewise, bridgstock ( b) identified the need for employment skills training within tertiary arts institutions, to encourage intrinsic career motivations and self-management (p. ), and she was specific that this career identity building process should happen from the first year of an undergraduate degree to enable relevance and purposeful degree engagement aligned with career goals. from this students would be able to understand, initiate or accept supplementary learning opportunities, further developing their career. she further suggested ‘the second half of undergraduate creative industries courses should be involved with the development of industry-specific knowledge and know-how, including how to build industry networks, and how to find and obtain or create work (including portfolio creation)’ (bridgstcok, b, p. ) bennett ( c) also identified the need for change within the tertiary music environment to support non-music education. while not detailing curricula content, she acknowledged the breadth of skills required and the challenge of delivering all of these within the curricula, acknowledging that at least students will know what and where to get information from should they need it (p. ). yet, realising the performance-focus of the students, ‘[i]t is to be expected that there will be a degree of reluctance among undergraduate performance majors to expend valuable time learning broader skills required to sustain their careers, especially when the intended career is entirely in performance’ (bennett, c, p. ). likewise, some students may not appreciate course content dealing with such matters as self-promotion. one study of in-depth interviews with female classical musicians residing in london and berlin concluded they were reluctant to engage with self-promotion as it was perceived as ‘pushy’, ‘unartistic’, threatening to future employment, and likened to prostitution (scharff, , p. ). paraphrasing heikkinen ( , p. ), huhtanen ( ) considered that perhaps one will never be industry or professionally ready upon undergraduate completion, and deliberated the value of ‘on-the-job’ training: ‘one does not learn to be a professional in any university nor conservatory. becoming a professional requires an individual to find himself by working and becoming a part of a certain community among other professionals’ (p. ). yet hannan ( ) countered the idea of ‘trial-and-error’ learning: ‘being thrown in the deep end is one way to learn, but it is more enjoyable and less stressful to be well prepared’ (preface). while both observations have merit, it must be remembered that a potential professional needs to initially have the tools to understand how to obtain employment, and in the current music employment environment developing an educated competitive edge would be prudent. knight and yorke ( ) in employability and good learning in higher education gave a rather robust view: ‘the student learning that makes for strong claims to employability comes from years, not semesters; through programmes, not modules; and in environments, not classes’. this indicates a strong case for work integrated learning (wil), mentorship activities and/or revised curricula where employability is embedded throughout the programme. bridgstock ( ) concurred with this perspective, recommending that because the skills developed in career management programs are highly personal, applied and depend on reflective processes, traditional instructional methods are unlikely to be as successful as more personally engaging methods. these may include activities such as role-plays, self-audits (e.g. of career skills), problem-based group work, work-integrated learning and peer review (e.g. of résumés or portfolios) (watts, ), strategies that tend to be time- and human resource−intensive and require extensive planning. (pp. − ) likewise, bennett ( c) reasoned that knowledge of one’s own aspirations, strengths and interests needs to occur through self-directed, peer-directed and group learning. following their study of musicians and dancers, both bennett and bridgstock ( ) suggested a healthy understanding of career reality could be aided by ‘guest lectures, class discussion, site visits, interviews with professionals, and industry-based projects’ (p. ). myles-beeching ( b) acknowledged best practice approaches of uk and us tertiary institutions similarly included: . interterm—a shorter term of several weeks or a month allowing students to focus on entrepreneurial or career-related projects . entrepreneurial incentive programs . profiles of student, alumni, and faculty music entrepreneur success stories beyond those of traditional success . degree portfolios . annual career conference convenorship . degree recitals requiring both written and verbal programme notes . off-campus community engagement. (p. ) such research is an invaluable foundation and reference for the research methodology of this study. it emphasises a strong call for—and exposes an opportunity to explore in a more concentrated way—the developments and benefits of an industry preparation strand for a music degree that covers genres beyond the classical realm. . music industry and entrepreneurship education: a design in question while many scholars have called for greater enterprise, entrepreneurship and career awareness within tertiary music training (beckman & essig, ; bennett, ; bridgstock & carr, ; g. carey & lebler, ; huhtanen, ; lebler & carey, ; myles-beeching, b; teague & smith, ), there has been very little reporting of such undergraduate activities within the conservatoire or music school environment beyond my own experiences (tolmie, a; tolmie & nulty, ). many appear to be extracurricular programmes, additional career centres, combined music and business degrees, elective industry courses, or postgraduate programmes (beckman, ; myles-beeching, b). myles-beeching ( b) posited there is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ solution and that ‘each institution needs to create the plan that best fits its culture’ (p. ). beckman ( ) analysed over us institutional approaches to arts entrepreneurship education and acknowledged there was little consensus on the most effective approaches, but found it was agreed that the benefits of instituting entrepreneurship education in the arts far outweighed any encountered obstacles (p. ). to my knowledge, the mlaam strand is the only one of its kind in the world, delivered from the first year of a bachelor of music degree within a conservatoire environment. music industry electives are prevalent within conservatoires and music schools throughout australia, but core vocational preparation courses are not (daniel, ; tolmie, ). some scholars have suggested an over-crowded curriculum is one reason at undergraduate level; however, students, if fortunate, are most likely to learn career sustainability skills via their on-the-job experiences (bennett, c; myles- beeching, b). regardless, undergraduates need ‘to develop skills beyond their musicianship and every student must take action and responsibility for his or her own career’ (myles-beeching, b, p. ). weller’s ( ) doctoral study involving semi-structured interviews with emerging musicians determined that those ‘who started professional work prior to graduation demonstrated a clear advantage over those who waited, providing strong models for current music students to emulate’ (p. ). while this study concerned mostly popular music graduates, this is most likely applicable to western art student musicians, particularly as a significant number of australian musicians indicated they began professional employment during their training (throsby & zednik, b). however, there has been no research exploring this hypothesis. weatherston’s ( ) doctoral research with postgraduate participants of three uk university music schools acknowledged such prevalence of ‘nascent entrepreneurship’ (p. ), elsewhere discussed as ‘self-directed career behaviour’ (bridgstock, b, p. ). weatherston ( ) also argued for explicit entrepreneurship education that utilised the skills and knowledge student musicians bring to their training: ‘our students frequently arrive in a nascent state with existing skills and capital.… [and] were thinking and acting in ways which can be defined as entrepreneurial’ (p. ). yet she recognised that ‘there appears to be something about music students that is inherently enterprising, they “perform” entrepreneurship, but at the same time exhibit a natural disinclination to be seen as entrepreneurs’ (weatherston, , p. ). other labels arising in the literature confirm student and professional musicians’ similar attitudes towards entrepreneurial learning and activities: ‘micro’ (menger, ), ‘enforced’ (bennett & bridgstock, ), ‘accidental’ (coulson, ), ‘cultural entrepreneur’ (o’connor et al., ), ‘creative entrepreneur’ (howkins, ) and ‘musicpreneur’ (kubacki & croft, ). during his audit, beckman ( ) observed two approaches of vocational preparation education: ‘new venture creation’ and ‘“transitioning” students to a professional career in the arts’ (p. ). the first described the creation and sustainability of a project, and the latter the ‘focus on the intangible and less explored aspects of the typical entrepreneurial curriculum (innovation development, entrepreneurial behavior, etc.), arts culture, and the contextual integration of intellectual skills to prepare a student for a professional career in the arts’ (beckman, , p. ). both styles had received criticism, the first for working from entrepreneurial business models that are not arts- based and the other because of its lack of long-term experiential component. huhtanen ( ) argued that business—what bridgstock ( b) would call ‘enterprise’—and entrepreneurship were a unified concept that should not be separated, as the musician’s ‘product’ was borne of individual creativity and was the primary fundamental of all business/entrepreneurial activities. she recommended the steps in training as ) the product or discipline, ) the development of career identity and ) development of entrepreneurial skills and attitudes (huhtanen, , p. ). similarly, bridgstock ( a) recommended a third element of arts entrepreneurship education in addition to career self-management and being employable, acknowledging that: there is of course significant overlap between the three senses–for instance, in order to be employable and creatively fulfilled (career self-management), an artist may find they need to set up a business (new venture creation), which meets a certain market need and adds a certain type of cultural value (being enterprising). (p. ) derek mithaug ( ), past director of the julliard school career development centre (now known as the alan d. marks center for career services and entrepreneurship) identified two career approaches adopted by graduating students— find-a-niche and create-a-niche. his use of the term find-a-niche is not generic, that is, in business terms, finding a niche would usually encourage musicians to find a lesser- populated employment area within which to capitalise market-share (steidl & hughes, ). rather, mithaug ( ) suggested students adopting such an approach include those who are ‘interested in finding a job in an orchestra or ensemble, a teaching position or some other work such as directing, presenting, producing, marketing, consulting and so forth’ (p. ). myles-beeching further suggested, ‘most schools celebrate only the more traditional versions of career success, the find-a-niche as opposed to the create-a-niche’ ( b, p. ). mithaug ( ) perceived create-a-niche to involve new ventures or projects within an untapped market or market-gap, in line with beckman’s new venture concept. of the us universities audited, beckman ( ) encountered obstacles to entrepreneurship and vocational preparation course implementation, such as faculty resistance, the acceptance of the term ‘entrepreneurship’, and student attitudes. faculty resistance was predominantly caused by major study lecturers who felt that such a course not only distracted students from their chosen craft, but also hindered their development and outcomes. this has also been highlighted in weatherston’s ( ) discussion of uk music schools: their tutors for the most part do little to alter the perception of the entrepreneur as someone sitting firmly within the music business with all its associations, as the promoter or manager, adding to the danger of students being alienated by the presentation of entrepreneurship both within and outside the university. (p. ). bridgstock ( a) and others (bradshaw et al., ; fillis, ) recognised this incongruence between commercial and ‘art for art’s sake’ values. weatherston ( ) observed this paradox in faculty perspectives: colleagues will react intensely to the political implications of the word itself, and exhibit confusion about its wide-ranging usage and yet at the same time they are highly supportive of initiatives designed to help their students to prepare for their future careers as musicians. (p. ) further to this, gaunt’s ( ) research reported that it was more likely for faculty to hinder students’ developing career perspectives: the processes of learning at the conservatoire did not seem generally to be stimulating entrepreneurial or creative approaches to professional work. one fourth-year student suggested that, if anything, she had experienced a process of becoming narrower in focus before regaining a breadth of vision. (p. ) in a conversation with business week, ramon ricker, the julliard school of music director, discussed his introduction of entrepreneurship education ‘took some effort to convince some old-guard faculty—firm believers in “art for art’s sake”’ and managed to mollify faculty by pointing out their own nascent entrepreneurial strengths and activity suggesting such skills were ‘vital to the future of classical music’ (k. miller, ). during a media interview, mithaug admitted that a misperception of industry preparation contributed to the challenge of convincing faculty that ‘entrepreneurship’ was not a dirty word: ‘some in music education still firmly believe that the role of the conservatory is to train musicians, not businesspeople’ (k. miller, ). beckman ( ) noted that bloated curricula and students’ attitudes towards spending hours perfecting their craft for uncertain outcomes encouraged a de- prioritising of entrepreneurship classes (p. ), and faculty believed ‘a less engaged student population would both slow classroom tempo and dilute content over time’ (p. ). . higher education in australia . . higher music education. the nineteenth-century conservatoire model was initially conceived in europe as a linear-career vocation preparation institution for opera houses and orchestras (‘conservatory’, ). australia adopted this form of training, but it has changed over the past years from state and privately funded independent institutions to schools amalgamated with universities as a consequence of the dawkins reforms in the late s (dawkins, ). while the one-to-one master-apprentice education remains the cornerstone of conservatoire or music school education, the inclusion of diverse genres and styles beyond classical reflects the music industry demands. acknowledging this shift in philosophy, weber et al. ( ) stated, ‘students are encouraged to develop versatility as well as specialist skills: composition, arrangement and work produced in electronic and recording studios are increasingly part of their experience’ (p. ). the global trend of massification in tertiary education (scott, ) has also affected the arts. many sources confirm that nationally there are over students enrolled in tertiary music institutions (bartleet et al., ; harvey, ; letts, , p. ). in queensland alone, there are competing tertiary institutions delivering bachelor of music qualifications, and vocational institutions offering similar preparatory and industry accreditation (the good university guide, ). the pressure on host institutions to ethically ensure vocational preparation is relevant considering the supply and demand of trained musicians versus available employment. without it, some recommend it can also confuse the goal of best-practice education: ‘in my work as a tertiary educator i have often wondered what industry we are training musicians for’ (hannan, , preface). . . institutional change. the tertiary education environment within which australian conservatoires and music schools reside has changed over the last two decades. university budgets have been reduced, and large classes and ‘breadth’ subjects have become more common resulting in reservation and resistance from staff and students alike, citing a challenge for teachers to conduct student-centred lectures and students to optimally engage (hogan & kwiatkowksi, ). the student cohort across all university schools is identified as increasingly diverse (biggs, ) and the teaching quality perceived as reduced compared to smaller classes (gibbs & jenkins, ). while the literature lacks specific investigation into large class teaching in music higher education, a. kolb and kolb’s ( ) study identified that arts and, for example, management education possess opposing learning styles and spaces. they generalised that arts learning and teaching is ‘individualised, with small classes and individual attention, while management education is organized into large classes with limited individualized attention’ (a. kolb & kolb, , p. ). overall, the conservatoire model remains completely at odds with the large class medium, but this is how mlaam is currently delivered (see appendix a for class size). the concept of the traditional lecture has also been broadly challenged since the rise of technology and accessible information. mcwilliam ( ) suggested that lecturers are no longer the ‘sage-on-the-stage’; others suggest the flipped classroom is considered more effective (berrett, ; herreid & schiller, ) and educators look to the advice that student engagement is highly reliant on the constructive alignment of course design with assessment (biggs, , ; lebler & mcwilliam, ; meyers & nulty, ; meyers, nulty, cooke & rigby, ; stefani, ). . . employability within the curriculum. teaching for quality learning (biggs & tang, ) outlines the past practices, current obstacles and solutions in the ever-changing environment of university education and is a popular instructional book for course design. given the recent focus of industry preparation to music tertiary curricula, literature on the design of such a course as mlaam beyond the previously mentioned is minimal. however, while not specific to musician education, knight and yorke ( ) outlined four ways of enhancing student employability as work experience; entrepreneurship modules; career advice; and portfolios, profiles and records of achievement. they also argued that the term ‘employability’ needs to be reconceptualised because it involves more than having understanding, skilled social practices and well-developed metacognition; rather, it is made up of self-theories ‘particularly attributional patterns (how we explain what we experience), locus of control (whether we think we are generally able to affect our experiences) and their motivational concomitants (whether we therefore strive, comply or resist)’ (knight & yorke, , p. ). they bundled these concepts and more into the understanding, skills, efficacy beliefs and metacognition (usem) curriculum model. considering the similar shared goals with vocational education, inspiration may also be found in wil curricula theory. using n. miller’s ( ) adaptation from newble’s model, orrell, bowden and cooper ( ) suggested that wil curriculum elements need to consist of knowledge, skills, professional dispositions, professional practice, with wil assessment set/defined in a workplace context. orrell et al. ( ) even highlighted that wil assessment has four stages: . declarative knowledge: what a student knows . procedural knowledge: an explanation to demonstrate that a student knows how to proceed . conditional knowledge: in a simulated environment a student shows how to perform and . contextual knowledge; the student performs/does. (p. ) wil concepts have some merit and a place within mlaam, or at least can be used as a design framework. the literature has more to offer on wil programmes and its increasing occurrence within the higher education sector regarding employability. lizzio’s ( ) seminal work in student identity development, the student lifecycle, determined the student’s degree transition towards, in, through, up, out and back, and their related ‘evolving identities, needs and purposes’ (p. ). this provided a framework for embedded employability adopted by baas and hensby’s ( ) griffith’s employability framework. they aligned these transitioning phases with career development tasks, suggestions for career development learning curriculum, industry connection and student actions (largely portfolio-based). the idea was to invite educators to embed such tasks within their current programmes and courses, in addition to instigating independent student activity. more recently, in graduate employability . : connectedness learning model—a networked approach to employability, bridgstock ( ) identified the three areas of connectedness: capabilities, pedagogies and strategies, suggesting the ‘“ . ” … signifies the central importance of social connections and relationships to all dimensions of life and work in the st century’. given the networked nature of music education and employment, this model is applicable to mlaam design and student musician identity formulation. while not discounting these educational models, govers ( ) also made a case for the value of personal professional experience and advocates that the course designer be industry active: ‘personal experiences are used all the time and play a valuable role in programme design practice, and it would be unfair to say that the use of these experiences is a problem’ (p. ). overall, there is a growing and recent body of literature from which to draw for tertiary education course design with an employability focus, as well as a growing interest in general vocational higher education training and wil programmes. however, extensive searches suggest there is nothing specific on music or arts-related vocational preparation course design such as what mlaam is proposing to achieve within the conservatoire culture and large class setting. . summary this literature review has identified significant information to assist the framework for research into designing an industry preparation strand for tertiary music institutions. the following gaps in current knowledge have been identified: . the lack of australian-based music industry publications . the deficiency of ‘art-music’ industry-specific publications . a need for a narrower field of research to provide specific economic and vocational statistics of the australian art-music worker . a need to consider australian tertiary music institutions’ lack of industry preparation inclusion within course curricula . a need to investigate enterprise and entrepreneurial activity among student and professional musicians in australia . further research into tertiary student musicians’ attitudes towards their aspirations, degree, identity, professional preparation and current/future industry activity . a need for research into attitudes of tertiary music faculty staff towards industry preparation and their perceptions of professional education . a call for focused research into australian active musicians’ attitudes towards industry preparation the following chapter will discuss the research questions emerging from this literature review and the methodology used for this study. chapter : methodology this chapter presents the research questions and additional sub-questions, and explains the research methodologies chosen to best inform the design of a conservatoire vocation preparation strand. . research questions and sub-questions following the identified gaps of knowledge within the literature, the central research question for this study is: taking into account current and future realities for music professionals in australia, which elements incorporated into a tertiary music industry preparation strand are likely to be most effective in preparing students for successful careers? related sub-questions include: . what are considered the key skills and capabilities of sustainable portfolio career musicians in australia? . to what extent are these skills and capabilities explicitly or implicitly represented in the qcgu tertiary undergraduate curriculum? . how can i improve my teaching and learning practice of mlaam? . what additional components need consideration, and how do they fit within typical conservatoire curriculum design? as there has not been a series of courses of this kind or magnitude in other conservatoria of the calibre of the qcgu, there was no specific prior model on which to base the research design. therefore, i adopted a grounded theoretical strategy of inquiry ‘using multiple stages of data collection and the refinement and interrelationship of categories of information’ (creswell, , p. ). . overview of research design this study adopted a straightforward research design: a mixed-method, multi- strand approach supported by quantitative research. as creswell ( ) stated, ‘there is more insight to be gained from the combination of both qualitative and quantitative research than either form by itself’. bryman ( ) also suggested that ‘if the two are conducted in tandem, the potential—and perhaps the likelihood—of unanticipated outcomes is multiplied’ (p. ), and creswell ( ) argued that ‘problems addressed by social and health science researchers are complex, and the use of either … approach by themselves is inadequate to address this complexity’ (p. ). the methods were integrated firstly ‘to triangulate the findings in order that they may be mutually corroborated’ (bryman, , pp. – ), secondly, to explain all aspects of the portfolio career musician thoroughly, and lastly to explore (creswell, ) the music industry and all those that function within. qualitative and quantitative data were collected sequentially, and the former was prioritised to explore the ‘how’ and ‘why’ research questions. quantitative research was mainly timed at the end of the research stage, functioning to verify the qualitative research. the methodology incorporates five key elements: autoethnography, action research, one-to-one semi-structured interviews, focus groups, a qualitative case study and quantitative surveys. this research design is comprehensive to consider an mlaam strand currently delivered to qcgu students with multiple career ambitions and realistic prospective outcomes. it covers a broad range of concepts with respect to vocational processes and lifestyle, which the research needs to acknowledge and reflect. portfolio musicians’ careers can be very complex beyond what is outwardly assumed, and cannot be completely defined by a predominantly quantitative approach or isolated qualitative methods. in addition, there are many potential subcategories of portfolio careerists or processes of becoming one, which may not be identifiable via a single method. one major objective of this study was to investigate and succinctly define portfolio career musicians’ core skills required for industry sustainability, their current and future employment development pathways and the environment within which they work. another was to understand tertiary music students’ vocational aspirations, attitudes towards industry preparation, and industry knowledge, to consider the students’ knowledge and skill base from which to develop key portfolio musician skills. as demonstrated in chapter , publications to date tend to reveal an awareness of the lack of realistic vocational preparation within undergraduate music education. therefore, the perceptions, beliefs, opinions and attitudes of the performance study lecturers and other faculty staff will be examined. as these individuals potentially act as explicit or implicit unofficial career guides and mentors, they possess an alternative perspective of student aspirations and what vocational preparation advice is currently being delivered externally to mlaam. the opinions of key arts advocates and policy makers provide an alternate understanding of the music industry’s present, past and future. as their roles within the music industry and broader arts community are significant, their input complements the data analysis of other participant responses, research conclusions and subsequent recommendations. likewise, the experiences and opinions of music industry lecturers from other institutions are compared with my mlaam experiences to reveal potential additions and opportunities for development and consideration. the overarching purpose of this research method is to align and contextualise current and future industry skill requirements with the successful implementation of a higher education music vocational preparation strand, minimising the disparity between university and industry realities. the timeline of this study on the design and development of mlaam from – is outlined in table . . table . research timeline research tool participants no. of participants date autoethnography myself until march practitioner action research of mlaam: reflective journal, curriculum redesign, student evaluation of course and teaching responses, lsa and related assessment analysis myself and students enrolled in all mlaam courses (mlaam qcm, qcm, qcm) march –march face-to-face semi-structured interviews qcgu faculty january–february face-to-face semi-structured interviews australian arts leaders january–february face-to-face semi-structured interviews higher education music leaders january–february face-to-face semi-structured interviews music industry lecturers january–february focus group first-year qcgu students september focus group second-year qcgu students september focus group third-year qcgu students september focus group fourth-year qcgu students september face-to-face semi-structured interviews south-east queensland portfolio musicians december – january online survey australian portfolio musicians december – january notes. lsa = learning support activity; mlaam = my life as a musician. prior to research commencement, ethics was applied for and approved by the office of research griffith university, reference number qcm/ / /hrec. any variations to the initial proposed study were also applied for and approved. all participants were invited to sign informed consent forms (see appendix b) or agreed to participate online. these documents outlined the purpose, processes and questions of the study, and the potential risks in participation. students and surveyed musicians were ensured de-identification, while all other participants were invited to choose whether to have their identity disclosed. for the sake of consistency, all participant names, with the exception of mine, are withheld. identifying elements such as instruments performed and references to other musicians have been de-identified to retain the candid responses of participants and preserve their professional reputations. . . autoethnographical research: personal lived experience informing education practices. ellis and bochner ( ) defined autoethnography as ‘autobiographies that self- consciously explore the interplay of the introspective, personally engaged self with cultural descriptions mediated through language, history, and ethnographic explanation’ (p. ). following chang ( ), i chose this method to ‘gain a cultural understanding of self and others’ (p. ) and add value to the suite of research methods for this study, highlighting a deeper, insider perspective of the broad spectrum that music employment engages with. ellis and bochner ( ) noted that ‘autoethnographers vary in their emphasis on the research process (graphy), on culture (ethno), and on self (auto)’ (p. ), and chang ( ) explained that ‘autoethnography should be ethnographical in its methodological orientation, cultural in its interpretive orientation, and autobiographical in its content orientation’ (p. ). nevertheless, as ellingson and ellis ( ) pointed out, ‘the meanings and applications of autoethnography have evolved in a manner that makes precise definition difficult’ (p. ). my life as an established portfolio career musician and vocational preparation academic, as recounted in chapter , inspired the primary research questioning and positioned me as a full participant observer. my interactions with other musicians, students, faculty, arts leaders and higher education decision-makers will aid my recollection and reflection, enabling deeper analysis. theme validation via the perspectives and career paths of others mitigates the problematic nature of memory recall and research bias. as chang ( ) explained: memory is both a friend and foe of autoethnographers. whereas it allows researchers to tap into the wealth of data to which no one else has access, memory selects, shapes, limits, and distorts.… memory also triggers aversion when it attempts to dig deeper into unpleasant past experiences. (pp. – ) although clandinin and connelly ( ) called the documentation of recollection and reflection field texts, chang ( ) was cautious in using such terminology, preferring the term data, despite acknowledging potential confusion given its association with quantitative research. he also suggested that ‘autoethnographical “fieldwork” is different from other qualitative inquiries’ chang ( , p. ). two techniques of autoethnographic data collection were used. the first is my previously described music-related ‘history’ (clandinin & connelly, , p. ) and perspectives relayed throughout the thesis, focusing on early music influences, vocational training, emerging and establishing my career, and ongoing career activities as a portfolio career musician. while this is arguably an autobiography, it outlines the journey as a freelance musician, the influence on career decisions, my observation of other musicians and insight into the variety of styles and cultures of music experienced. throughout the study, deeper themes and the catch-cries of a musician’s world inform my questioning elsewhere within the research. this includes the tenacity required for a music career, professional behaviour and norms, the perception of other musicians’ professional careers and attrition. the second approach involves ‘reading and responding to other auto-ethnographies and self-narratives’ (clandinin & connelly, , p. )—in this case, the musicians’ interview transcriptions, which include their career stories and professional perspectives that validate my own. therefore, autoethnography is not used in the traditional sense of reflective writing, analysis and triangulation; rather, my reflection informs the research questions, upon which deeper reflection is triangulated from the other participants’ life stories of this study and is embedded throughout the results. my purpose for using autoethnography follows chang’s ( ) observation that ‘autoethnography is becoming a useful and powerful tool for researchers and practitioners’ such as educators, and that it is ‘an excellent vehicle through which researchers come to understand themselves and others’ (pp. – ). thus i sought to improve my skills as an mlaam strand designer and educational decision-maker. . . action research. although the primary question is central to this study, the sub-question ‘how do i improve my practice?’ forms its foundation. therefore, i incorporated an overarching methodology of action research as introduced by kurt lewin (coghlan & jacobs, ), or practitioner research, which has been simply described by cain ( ) as follows: ‘practitioners (such as teachers) decide what is worth researching, carry out research and thereby become research-informed’ (p. ). kemmis and wilkinson ( ) explained that it ‘helps people to investigate reality in order to change it’ (p. ) and ‘can be used as a means for professional development, improving curricula or problem solving in a variety of work situation’ (p. ). additionally, cain ( ) stated, ‘action research positions practitioners as constructing their own knowledge’ (p. ) with the general understanding of the process as plan–act–evaluate–reflect and cycle. this is a simplistic comparison to kemmis and wilkinson’s ( ) ‘spiral of self-reflective cycles of planning a change, acting and observing the process and consequences of the change, reflecting on these processes and consequences, and then re-planning, and so forth’ (p. ). however, rather than experiencing a staged process, participant or practitioner action researchers experience overlapping and ‘initial plans quickly become obsolete in the light of learning from experience’ (kemmis & wilkinson, ). it has been debated whether the process is collaborative (researching with a co- researcher/educator) or solitary. watt ( ) stated, ‘when the same teacher who is responsible for implementing the change does the research, a real fit is created between the needs of the specific learner or learning community and the action taken’ (p. ). kemmis and wilkinson ( ) posited: at its best, it is a collaborative social process of learning, realised by groups of people who join together in changing the practices through which they interact in a shared social world—a world in which, for better or for worse, we live with the consequences of one another’s actions. (p. ) as action research is usually a study involving one population, with no control group to allow for internal or external validity, it is often considered the ‘weakest form of research process in any type of research hierarchy’ (k. h. phillips, , p. ). k. h. phillips ( ) argued that the resultant information has ‘limited use or application in the greater social or educational paradigm’ (p. ), but countered, ‘[i]f instruction in that classroom can be improved, why not use it?’ (p. ). this study considers five years of my curriculum design and teaching of mlaam, enabling repeated action research cycles of all three courses. somekh ( , as cited in cain ) identified eight principles of the authentic process of action research. . integrates research and action ( a) in a series of flexible cycles . is conducted by a collaborative partnership of participants and researchers . involves the development of knowledge and understanding of … change and development in a natural (as opposed to contrived) social situation . starts from a vision of social transformation and aspirations of greater social justice for all . involves a high level of reflexivity and sensitivity to the role of the self . involves exploratory engagement with a wide range of existing knowledge . engenders powerful learning for participants . locates the enquiry in an understanding of broader historical, political and ideological contexts. (pp. – , numbers added) bresler ( / ) acknowledged the use of qualitative and quantitative methodologies within action research, beyond observation and reflective analysis. in analysing music education studies utilising action research, cain ( ) reported the primary action to include: curriculum, resources, assessment, behaviour management and teaching approaches, with participants including teachers, parents and students: the very young, school-children, adolescents and adults … [yet] most common data collection methods were qualitative, including reflective journals, interviews and participant observations, [and] some studies also employed quantitative methods. (p. ) to avoid ‘anecdotalism or selective treatment of data’ as can occur with reflective journal writing (cain, , p. ), this study incorporated a mix of action research and additional methods of qualitative (bias-laden) and quantitative (bias-free) research (creswell, ). therefore, the collaborative process of action research was aided by verbal and paper-survey feedback from students in class, analysing select assessment, peer review of teaching (pro-teaching) participation, and reflecting on course and teacher evaluation surveys. my pragmatic worldview approach (cherryholmes, ; rorty, ) from the perspective of an experienced educator and established industry musician has also been incorporated throughout this discussion of the evolution of course and assessment design. year-specific focus-group interviews with students (kitzinger, ; d. l. morgan, ) and paper-based surveys discussing industry and degree engagement have assisted the broad understanding of the emerging student musician, which in turn has influenced the action research process of plan–act–evaluate–reflect and cycle of course evolution and design (cain, ). the strengths and weaknesses of the teacher and course evaluation surveys, and the assessment analysis are discussed in the following sections. . . . sec and set survey analysis. marsh ( ) suggested that student experience of teaching (set) surveys are ‘primarily a function of the instructor who teaches a course rather than the course that is taught’ and are ‘multidimensional, reliable and stable … relatively unaffected by a variety of potential biases, and seen to be useful by faculty, students, and administrators’, but he argued they should not be used as the sole indicator of effective teaching given the complex nature of such an occupation (p. ). aleamoni ( ) reviewed journal research articles discussing student ratings of instructors and instruction and concluded likewise, noting the false myth that ‘students cannot make consistent judgments about the instructor and instruction because of their immaturity, lack of experience and capriciousness’ (p. ). however, whether this was applicable to course evaluations was unclear, and no information was provided about whether the teacher evaluations were online or paper-based tools. sets are a minor focus of the present study. however, they are relevant for their suggestions on assessment and process following my request to provide constructive feedback in the course evaluations to enhance the mlaam strand. rather than interview the students directly regarding this topic, i considered there would be less bias and risk to the student and a potentially more authentic outcome when utilising the end-of- semester sec surveys implemented by griffith university. further to this, such a method is anonymous and likely to gain a greater reach than a call for focus groups and interview volunteers, but i could not find any other research or publications reporting its use. therefore, i focused on the qualitative commentary and ‘idea-mining’ to aid course design and development, rather than the quantitative data to indicate course success. . . . student assessment analysis. the student assessment analysis aimed to gain understanding of students’ career aspirations, relationship with and commitment to the music profession and their understanding of realities and possibilities. therefore, the selected assessment for deep analysis included the first-year learning support activity (lsa) and the curriculum vitae (cv) adopted in third-year mlaam . the other assessment processes and outcomes were discussed, but more so regarding broad themes and educational developments. to date, there is very limited literature on the analysis of assessment in relation to student professional activity and consideration of employment. macleod and chamberlain ( ) discussed the reflective journals of students enrolled in a social enterprise strand within a bachelor of arts degree at griffith university. similar to this study, they acknowledged the use of the sets and secs in curriculum reform, but placed higher value on the qualitative commentary and the assessment of reflective journals. they noted that ‘while it is possible that some responses are designed to give the lecturers what they want to hear, there are distinct patterns that emerge from analysing the dozens of journals kept from the three years’ (macleod & chamberlain, , p. ). this also occurred in the present study, but to minimise this informational risk i deeply analyse, for example, the lsa, a non-compulsory formative assessment of career aspirations and music identity from to (see section . ). the action research cycle has rendered the mlaam strand a ‘moving target’ (see appendix a). for and , the cv task was part of the mlaam course held within the students’ second degree year. during , the course was for third-year students, but the cohort was very small. i have chosen to only present the findings of the students’ and one-page cv analysis, as i felt the teaching of the task to be superior to previous years’ and the higher population and location of the task in third year to produce more authentic indication of student employability and extracurricular activity. unlike the lsa, this task was summative and therefore compulsory. . . face-to-face interviews. as stated by kvale ( ), an interview’s purpose ‘is to gather descriptions of the life-world of the interviewee with respect to interpretation of the meaning of the described phenomena’ (p. ). gubrium and holstein ( ) paraphrased kvale, rubin and rubin to suggest that ‘qualitative interviewing is a kind of guided conversation in which the researcher carefully listens “so as to hear the meaning” of what is being conveyed’ (p. , emphasis in original). they also stated that researchers choose this form when ‘their topics of interest do not centre on particular settings but their concern is with establishing common patterns or themes between particular types of respondents’ (gubrium & holstein, , p. ). the comparative benefits to quantitative research are also espoused by opdenakker ( ): ‘social cues, such as voice, intonation, body language etc. of the interviewee can give the interviewer a lot of extra information that can be added to the verbal answer of the interviewee on a question’ (p. ). interviews were recorded using multiple technologies: hd zoom camera, iphone recording application and audacity computer recording software (audacity team, ) to ensure back-up in the case of failing technology. the devices were small and unassuming to avoid inhibiting the participants’ responses (i. seidman, ). recordings were then transcribed by a professional transcriber following clear and explicit instructions concerning the recorded detail (kvale, ), such as verbatim, ‘coughs, laughs, sighs, pauses, outside noises, telephone rings, and interruptions’ (i. seidman, , p. ) to enable accurate interpretation. upon transcription, both the transcriber and myself would listen through the recording again to correct any errors, jargon or terminology as well as punctuation. the five categories of interview participants for this study were industry active musicians, faculty lecturers (performance and academic lecturers), recognised australian arts leaders, higher music education leaders and tertiary music industry lecturers. each category’s purpose was to explore different themes related to their position within and contribution to the music industry, be it direct or indirect, and music education. the process followed kvale’s ( , p. ) seven stages: thematising, designing, interviewing, transcribing, analysing, verifying and reporting ( , p. ). to gain deeper meaning from participant responses i adapted i. seidman’s ( , pp. – ) rigorous interrogation of the data by asking the following questions: • what connective threads are there among the experiences of the participants interviewed? • how do i understand and explain these connections? • what do i understand now that i did not understand before i began the interviews? • what surprises or confirmations of previous instincts have there been? • how have their interviews been consistent or inconsistent with the literature? how have they gone beyond? key themes were informed by relevant autoethnographical data and literature review outcomes and were respondent driven. . . . industry-active portfolio career musicians. fifteen portfolio career musicians residing in south-east queensland encompassing a broad demographic with respect to age, gender and income were purposively (patton, ) selected to each participate in a – -minute face-to-face semi-structured interview from december to january . interviews were located in various places: at the qcgu, backstage of the queensland performing arts complex, in participants’ home studios and at my house. i preferred the interview location to be chosen by the participants and considered that it ‘plays a role in constructing reality, serving simultaneously as both cultural product and producer’ (herzog, , p. ), that is, the location and context of the interview related to the interview discussion, enabling a richer dialogue. portfolio career musicians were purposively selected using a theoretical sampling strategy, that is, i aimed to ‘seek out respondents who seem likely to epitomize the analytic criteria’ (gubrium & holstein, , p. ). their primary career focus was guided by the categorisations in hannan’s ( ) the australian guide to careers in music. these participants were identified by their skill set, ability to cross genres and continual activity within two or more related music employment areas (e.g. performance, teaching and composing). all but two taught and many had either direct teaching contact or indirect industry contact with current and past students of the qcgu. as they were musicians i had worked with during my own career, i had inherent knowledge of their status as portfolio musicians and the diversity of their skills and employment experience. s. m. miller ( ) warned against ‘over-rapport’, where the researcher is too close to the participants and subjects, thus contaminating the data (p. ). in addition, s. m. miller ( ) was aware of the various ranks of participants (in this case, industry leaders v. musicians v. students), and believed the observer can ‘become so attuned to the sentiments of the leaders that he is ill-attuned to the less clearly articulated feelings of the rank and file’ (p. ). while having insider knowledge of the music industry and those that participate in it may be considered limitations to this research, it may also be regarded as a valued asset. the earlier autoethnographical account outlined a complex divergent career trajectory forewarning what other paths portfolio career musicians may have traversed. an implicit and active understanding of the portfolio musician in australia for this study is therefore considered an advantage, particularly when considering the problematic nature of current statistical data of australian artists, as discussed in chapter . furthermore, taylor ( ) affirmed that the data ‘gathered from friend-informants compared with informant-friends is significantly greater in volume and depth’ (p. ). the interview participants’ primary genres represented the current qcgu student career aspirations and offered training programmes—classical, jazz, opera, composition, education and music technology. they also had experience in musical theatre, folk, popular and contemporary music, and were able to contribute broad knowledge of the current australian music profession and industry. responses to questions concerning their employment, career pathway, undergraduate training and opinion of mlaam (see appendix c) affirmed or contrasted with my own career experiences, and informed the following online survey. such a focus on career and employment experiences can align with the definition of ‘oral history’ described by atkinson ( ) as ‘most often focus[ing] on a specific aspect of a person’s life, such as work life’ (p. ). in addressing musicians’ career paths and skills, i propose that the responses formed a significantly different classification such as ‘life story’. as explained by atkinson ( ), ‘telling a life story makes the implicit explicit, the hidden seen, the unformed formed, and the confusing clear’ (p. ). regardless, in consideration of the autoethnographical input of this research, the interviews served to ‘understand experiences and reconstruct events in which one did not participate’ (rubin & rubin, , p. ) and, as dilley ( ) suggested, ‘place an emphasis upon comprehending and conveying understanding of the interview and interviewer’ (p. ). open-ended questions sought to understand the training-to-career development trajectory, and the economic, social, psychological and demographic aspects of each individual’s working life. themes include opinion of an industry preparation strand, perspectives of the current graduating twenty-first century musician, and attitudes towards career sustainability and attrition. questions were based on, but not restricted to, self-theories as outlined by knight and yorke ( , pp. − ). most questions were consistent for each participant, but digressional questions were introduced to identify obscure information and/or emerging phenomena of which i was less aware. because freelance portfolio employment is largely based on strongly related networks, all participants were de-identified by name and instrument in consideration of the sensitive material, such as opinions of the music industry and some colleagues. lack of de-identification could place the participant and the researcher at risk of future employment, particularly in a closely networked environment such as brisbane. to aid a comparative discussion, one participant followed a portfolio music career while engaging in part-time non-music employment, and one possessed a full-time orchestral role in addition to leading a portfolio career; however, none had discontinued their music career completely. i acknowledged the retired, exited and linear careerists in the survey for a quantifiable and illustrative statistical comparison. . . . faculty staff. owing to the nature of the one-to-one studio and closely networked music industry environment, conservatoire staff can develop solid educational bonds with their students (gaunt, ). thus, their contribution to the study was to add an alternate perspective of student attitude towards industry preparation, degree and industry engagement and mlaam acceptance. twelve qcgu faculty staff (major study and academic), representing their fields of classical, jazz, opera, composition, research and education, were invited to participate in face-to-face interviews incorporating the same research processes as section . . . . interviews were situated at the qcgu from january to february . similar to the musicians, faculty were asked questions (see appendix c) regarding their personal career pathway, opinion of the music industry and their perspective of institutional change and the contextual environment. questioning aimed to discover the career paths faculty were encouraging for students, perceived music industry obstacles and trends, and the extracurricular industry preparation the faculty implemented accordingly. where applicable, the data was triangulated with the other participants’ responses. as all participating faculty at the qcgu were permanently employed as continuing full-time or fractional staff, study limitations may include the lack of candid responses owing to our ongoing working relationship, the politics of university employment and the potentially negative ramifications of a forthright interview. conversely, the permanent nature of their occupation is a comparable advantage to interviewing sessional faculty owing to their higher employment security. as mentioned in section . . . with regard to rapport, maintaining my presence for the sake of data consistency and quality potentially outweighed these limitations. . . . australian arts advocates and leaders. three influential decision-makers in large arts institutions participated in - minute one-to-one semi-structured audio/video interviews: a prominent australian arts advocacy leader, an opera company artistic director and a major arts funding body director. these key stakeholders have a broad experience and understanding of industry trends in western art music, as they govern funding and event programming. their responses added value and integrity to the design of course profiles from a futuristic perspective and a historical lens. travel to an australian capital city and skypetm enabled face-to-face interviews at their workplace. hanna ( ) noted that skype has an advantage over telephone interviews, as ‘a neutral yet personal location is maintained for both parties throughout the process’ (p. ). i had previously worked with one of the three participants; the other two were ‘cold-called’ via email. questions were similar to the faculty questions in seeking an understanding of their career paths, perceptions of career success and the requirements of student musicians, opinions of current and future industry trends, and mlaam course design (see appendix c). . . . industry-preparation tertiary educators. three higher education lecturers with significant experience in teaching industry and career identity courses participated in one-to-one interviews. one interview was held in my home while the participant was travelling interstate and another was held at the participant’s workplace; one interview, owing to long distance, was conducted via skype. to maintain consistency of the research project, all participants were de- identified, including the institution where they taught. these participants were purposefully selected because they represented a range of higher education learning environments and locations: a conservatoire, independent academies, and a music school embedded in a university. they all fit within my employability networks, active in either the jazz or classical performance and teaching profession, with between and years of national and international industry experience. their perspectives were sought regarding future industry trends, the student lifecycle, and their course and assessment experiences and observations. at the time of interview, one participant no longer taught industry-related subjects and clarified: ‘most of my work is going into other people’s courses and getting students to think in a different way and that is really what i do now’ (lilian, he industry lecturer). limitations include not wishing to divulge intellectual property of course curricula, avoiding factual disclosure due to embarrassment with unsuccessful education attempts, and/or fabrication of student reaction. however, interviews were very candid, and the weaknesses and strengths of their courses and programmes were discussed at length (see appendix c for questions). . . . higher music education leaders. three higher music education directors were purposefully selected to participate in one-to-one interviews held at their institutions in interstate australian cities. two directed conservatoires of a similar size and metropolitan location to qcgu and the other a postgraduate music institution. only one of them was active within my employability network; the interview was the first time i met the other two participants. similar to the other interviewed participants, they were asked their opinions of the music profession and industry change, its future, their impressions of graduate and music success, institutional change, and the mlaam courses (see appendix c). they were also asked to consider their staff’s opinion of vocational preparation in a higher education setting and the ramifications of implementing an mlaam strand. . . focus groups of qcgu students. d. l. morgan ( ) defined focus groups as ‘a research technique that collects data through group interaction on a topic determined by the researcher’ (p. ). kitzinger ( ) suggested that ‘group processes can help people to explore and clarify their views in ways that would be less easily accessible in a one to one interview’ (p. ). madriz ( ) viewed it as a way to ‘access research participants who may find one-to-one, face-to-face interaction “scary” or “intimidating”’(p. ), such as in a teacher-student relationship where the teacher is facilitating the interview. therefore, the primary reason for choosing this process was that ‘focus groups are particularly suited to the study of attitudes and experiences’ (kitzinger, , p. ), and greater depth and breadth of data could be achieved compared to face-to-face interviews or surveys (d. l. morgan, ). selected undergraduate qcgu students were invited by a generic email (see appendix d) to voluntarily attend year-specific hour-long semi-structured focus groups during september , moderated by myself. i identified three students per year level, choosing a diversity of music disciplines, gauging level of interest in their degree and asking them to construct their own teams of seven to people from their networks. students were guaranteed anonymity and agreed to audio and video recording to aid expressive interpretation and the transcription process. light food and beverage refreshments rewarded their participation in the study. during the focus groups, paper-based surveys (likert and open-ended question design) were distributed to participants (see appendix e), designed to affirm conversation topics, assure all participants opinions were recorded accurately, and offer qualitative comparison from year to year. all students had completed their courses with me for the year with no assessment due. therefore, my status as teacher was minimised and the risk to themselves nominal. perceived power roles were reduced when considering focus groups tend to be about the discussion between the participants rather than between the participants and researcher (d. l. morgan, ). by using students’ collegiate networks, the focus groups were based on established rapport to capitalise on kitzinger’s ( ) notion that ‘friends and colleagues can relate each other’s comments to incidents in their shared daily lives. they may challenge each other on contradictions between what they profess to believe and how they actually behave’ (p. ). in addition, this method ensured the focus groups retained the integrity of homogeneity within the team, and diversity between teams/year levels (kitzinger, , p. ), allowing for insight into the ‘sources of complex behaviours and motivations’ (d. l. morgan, , p. ). discussion topics included degree transition, degree engagement, the value placed on academic versus skill-based courses, and music industry engagement. i chose to avoid direct questioning regarding whether they liked or disliked mlaam because some still had to enrol in the courses. however, i was more interested in how they engaged within their degree, their employment activity, and their emerging identity as musicians and whether distinct approaches would result that could contribute to the design of mlaam. questions and procedures were standardised from group to group; however, the differing year levels led to an emergence of themes that allowed ‘the questions and procedures [to] shift from group to group in order to take advantage of what has been learned in previous groups’ (d. l. morgan, , p. ). this allowed identification of why perceptions and attitudes of their degree and employment activity shifted from year to year. although kitzinger ( ) stated, ‘the ideal focus group size is between four and eight people’ (p. ), k.c. tang and davis ( ) suggested ‘the ideal group size is four to participants’ (p. ) but acknowledged that the number of questions, time- constraints and the subject at hand can all affect the potential data gathering. in short, there is no ‘ideal’ group size. in adapting kitzinger’s ( ) seven aims of focus groups, respondents’ attitudes were highlighted, students were free to generate and explore their own questions and share experiences, a variety of discussion existed between the students, and ‘groups norms and cultural values’ were identified (p. ), as well as what was not discussed, to allow critical appraisal and identification of student perspectives. the analysis of the focus groups followed similar processes to the other forms of qualitative research of this study (thematic coding), with careful consideration made to ‘indicate the impact of the group dynamic and analyse the sessions in ways that take full advantage of the interaction between research participants’ (d. l. morgan, , pp. – ). rather than presenting isolated quotations, the written/transcribed focus- group report maintained the integrity of the conversations by including the dialogue between participants. as kitzinger ( ) has suggested, coding of participants’ responses included types of narratives such as jokes and anecdotes, and types of interaction such as questions, deferring opinion, censorship and changes of mind. . . quantitative inquiry: online and paper-based surveys. creswell ( ) identified quantitative research as ‘a means for testing objective theories by examining the relationship among variables. these variables, in turn, can be measured, typically on instruments, so that numbered data can be analysed using statistical procedures’ (p. ). he then paraphrased babbie, suggesting survey research provides a quantitative or numeric description of trends, attitudes, or opinions of a population by studying a sample of that population. it includes cross-sectional and longitudinal studies using questionnaires or structured interviews for data collection, with the intent of generalizing from a sample to a population. (creswell, , p. ) . . . online surveys: industry musicians. this inexpensive cross-sectional method (creswell, ) was chosen to confirm qualitative results and to discover more information on a broader geographic scale of australia over a short time period. k. h. phillips ( ) explained that this form of descriptive research confirms ‘“what is” rather than “what could be”.… descriptive research presents information on one group or compares factors between or among groups and determines trends, needs, or changes’ (p. ). the analysis of the research to date and the literature review influenced the design of an online survey tool (sue & ritter, ; tuten, ) of questions directed to australian musicians from my own employment network residing in australia and abroad. musicians were sent an email titled ‘the australian portfolio musician ’, including an invitation to participate via a personalised email link, with anonymity guaranteed. as per ethical disclosure, the description of the study and its potential application were included within the email, including a choice to opt out of the study at any time, or choose to prevent follow-up email prompts for survey completion (see appendix f). to test the functionality of the questions, a pilot survey was released on april to single-reed musicians of australia, concerning their employment and career aspirations, resulting in responses. errors in question design, sequencing and navigation were considered and modified for the survey, which was then tested by five musicians who reported the survey to take − minutes to complete. questions were a combination of multiple choice, multiple-select choice, yes/no, true/false, likert rating, and open-ended text response. some questions filtered answers, that is, answering ‘no’ led to other applicable areas of the survey. some were designed to verify previous answers and enable various perspectives. the respondents were active, exited and retired music professionals who had current or historical high-level portfolio musician activity. i chose to approach my own networks of employable musicians, primarily because i had an understanding of their quality of employment and level of musical standard. this is something that has not been widely acknowledged in other studies. while the initial selection was largely purposeful, there was an opportunity to add more to the email list. however, email contact details were either out-of-date or not available, and i only had the musicians’ mobile phone numbers. full-time orchestral musicians and teachers working within a portfolio of employment were included in the initial email invitation; however, such musicians were not specifically targeted but added a linear rather than non-linear career component to the data set for comparison. two hundred and sixty-one finalised survey responses were collected via survey monkey, a web-based survey software, between december and january –a response rate of . %. survey monkey is the online survey tool of choice of many researchers, used for its privacy guarantee, encryption software and reputation for security. participants were provided a link to view survey monkey’s online data storage and were assured respondent answers would be collected, stored and accessed only by myself. potential survey participants were prompted to complete the survey once on january and again on january. non-participation could have been because of email spam filters, the holiday season, unwillingness to complete a large survey or disinterest in the subject. conversely, for musicians, this was an ideal time to send the survey as school and private teaching studios had been in recess for two weeks, and performance commitments, aside from new year’s eve, were beginning to diminish for the quiet january period. the results were downloaded to a microsoft excel spreadsheet and coded for ease of data interpretation. respondents included australian musicians working within the areas of jazz, classical, opera, composition and technology. questions concerning demographics, training, employment activity, income, skills acquired and used, career aspirations, and sustainability sought to inform all courses of the mlaam strand. . . . paper-based surveys: students. within the year-specific focus groups, paper-surveys were administered to the participants to determine their five-year career aspirations, their relationship with music, professional employment engagement, perspectives on the functionality of their degree in preparation for employment and required sustainable skills. the survey involved likert, two multiple-choice/select and four open-ended questions (see appendix e). threat of bias, or writing what the researcher/lecturer wished to hear was minimised as neither the focus-group conversation nor the survey entered in discourse specifically regarding mlaam. however, unlike the set surveys, these paper-based surveys were not anonymous and administered within a small group. once again, these were adopted to discover trends over the lifecycle of the undergraduate degree and confirm or contrast focus-group discussions and previous researched opinion regarding the student-to- professional identity transformation. paper-based surveys delivered within the focus group also ensured these were at least answered. although researchers have noted a higher likelihood to participate in online compared to paper surveys (carini, hayek, kuh, kennedy & ouimet, ), an overall decline in online student participation is evident given the increase of the proliferation of junk mail to the rapid growth and ease of large-scale student assessment.… given today’s increasingly fast-paced culture and the growing demands on students’ time, undergraduates simply may be less willing to commit themselves to a voluntary activity such as completing a survey. (sax, gilmartin & bryant, , p. ) . . data analysis. data analysis involved categorising, coding and reviewing chronologically all transcripts, reports, field notes identifying keywords, themes and visual cues, and using rich, thick description (creswell, ) in the write-up of participant responses. all forms of qualitative data were analysed descriptively to reveal emergent themes beyond the general demographic information of income, employment and training to include music industry career aspirations, attitudes and opinions. the auto- ethnographical account was attributed as ‘ground zero’, and the polarity or concurrence of data from subsequent stages was identified and continually compared. these were cross-referenced with the quantitative results to highlight further gaps or opportunities for research. the findings are then represented in the current iteration of the mlaam strand; that is, the findings are embodied within the courses. aside from the triangulation method, verification of research involved consulting with the participants where necessary throughout the study to ensure validity of my interpretations and conclusions of the data, thus retaining the integrity and credibility of research findings. published book chapters, conference presentations and paper submissions ensured ongoing peer review and research feedback. chapter : the qcgu student lifecycle enrolments in bachelor of music degrees are increasing, not only in australia (bartleet et al., ), but also abroad (dempster, ). this is surprising considering the decline of linear work and general negative dialogue concerning western art music careers. it provokes the question: what is the primary motivation for students aspiring to a music career in the twenty-first century? the inspiration to learn music is deep-seated in early childhood (lehmann et al., ; mcpherson & welch, ). one’s music career identity is influenced by intrinsic and extrinsic experiences prior to tertiary education (creech, ; creech et al., ; macdonald, hargreaves & miell, ). from my observations as a performance and academic lecturer in a conservatoire environment, the initial career ‘dream’ is not just powerful and long-harboured, but a fundamental justification for sustaining repetitive hours in the practice room and enduring strong weekly criticism from peers and mentors. therefore, mlaam may be perceived as a threat to students’ primary motivation and an inhibitor to their tertiary music education. in a user-pays education environment, this is worth considering. how does an undergraduate course introduce the reality of the music industry, respect and retain ‘the dream’ and vocationally prepare for both? how can it align with the students’ experience of their degree, professional expectations and career realities? this chapter will discuss the selected mlaam formative and summative assessment, year-specific focus groups and paper surveys. from this, a qcgu culture of learning and the associated process of career development shall be ascertained. the results will assist the design of a vocational preparation strand that is mindful of the attitudes and opinions of student musicians in relation to their lifecycle of degree experience and current industry activity. . learning support activity . . data collection process and limitations. data collection utilised a non-compulsory, non-graded written lsa, initiated in the first week of semester one for consecutive years from through to . the guiding questions in this formative assessment, inspired by bennett and freer ( ), invited all mlaam first-year students to briefly reflect on elements of their chosen career paths. students were given the opportunity to clarify their intrinsic/extrinsic motivations and their purpose for enrolling in a music degree, and to consider their career prospects and the process required to achieve their goals. one limitation may be students perceiving the task as ‘assessment’ rather than a formative activity, possibly responding with their perceived lecturer expectations. however, it was made known prior that feedback would be limited to writing style and grammar to assist future assignments. for years – , career advice was also offered. response rates were acceptable (nulty, ), between and %, with class numbers ranging from to enrolled students. the reasons for non-completion were considered. using an online assignment collection interface may have been a challenge for some students, and others may have felt the reflective task either confronting or trite. some students may have chosen to adopt a strategic approach to their degree, which included participating only in summative tasks. therefore, it is possible the participants in this study may be more engaged with the purpose of the course than non-participants, and more confident with sharing their career ideas. to encourage researcher objectivity, the lsas were revisited between one and seven months after submission, read with a content focus, then descriptively (miles & huberman, ; saldaña, ) and from a values perspective (gable & wolf, ). responses were coded according to common key themes, guided by the question topic, in parentheses, which was not visible to the students. the lsa questions were: . what do i currently love about music? (intrinsic motivation) . what do i want to do long term with my career? (career identity) . why? (primary motivation) . who inspires me to be a good musician? (extrinsic motivation) . what skills am i going to need to achieve my dreams? (career reality) the initial codes were refined to develop more concentrated topics. themes were then grouped into categorical codes. responses are quoted below, identifying respondents by the abbreviation ys (first-year student), a number and the year. . . overview of results. generally, the students’ commentary appeared detailed and sincere regarding their aspirations and sources of inspiration. the word-count limit was – words, but many chose to write beyond this. students’ reasons for career path choice spanned a continuum from self-gratification to altruism. financial motivation was minimally mentioned or deemed not important. linear careers were a particularly common response, with orchestral and opera the most dominant choice among the classical students. music technology and jazz students demonstrated more acknowledgement of the portfolio career, but included full-time studio-recording production or jazz reknown as possible careers. the majority of keyboardists wanted to become concert pianists. . . . intrinsic motivation. using maslow’s ( ) theory of human motivation, students’ responses to what they loved about music indicated a high propensity towards self-actualisation. self-expression/gratification/satisfaction were keywords used throughout, whereas safety and psychological needs were barely mentioned. responses encompassing the social sphere were secondary, as many students identified with the communicable nature of music and the social aspect it provides. self-esteem was less important but present. the coded categories of the students’ responses to ‘what i love about music’ is listed as follows: • creativity • it is just who i am, it’s innate, it is in my blood • its ability to help and heal • its accessibility • its beauty • its capacity for collaboration and non-verbal communication with others • its capacity for enabling self-expression • its capacity for entertainment • its capacity for escapism • its capacity for perfection • its capacity for story-telling • its transformative power (on myself, on the audience etc.) • its unpredictability • that it is continually evolving • the challenge it provides in learning and achieving • the competitive opportunities it provides • the emotion it creates • the rhythm • the satisfaction it provides in learning and achieving • the sound • the thrill/adrenalin rush it enables • the way it makes you feel . . . career identity. students indicated primarily one to four optional domains of music employment—performance, composing, education, and production—demonstrating that they either sincerely wished to achieve all these career opportunities, or acknowledged the need for a portfolio career/plan b. other ambitions such as music therapy, audiology, arts administration and business, and music research were mentioned, but less so. all responses were categorised into dreamers, realists, artists and unclear (dra?): • dreamers: with aspirations for highly competitive careers usually within performance and production • realists: aspirations for diverse non-linear and/or teaching/self-employment • artists: career risk tolerant, rather seeking personal creative fulfilment • unclear: either no career motivation was communicated or it was suggested the time spent in undergraduate study would reveal a career idea. response rates for these categories were not related to particular genres or instruments, though the mature-age students were consistently realists (see table . ). table . dreamer, realist, artist and unclear categories quantified first-year career ambitions / = % response / = % response / = % response / = % response / = . % response dreamers % % % % % realists % % % % % artists % % % . % . % unclear % % % . % . % dreamers comprised between and % of the respondents. these students had ambitions for competitive careers that produced a secure or high wage, exhibiting a subconscious aversion to financial risk, but they were risk-tolerant considering their gamble to obtain it. for example, ‘i’d like to be the principal bassoonist of the berlin philharmonic, vienna philharmonic or the london symphony orchestra’ ( ys , ) represented a very ambitious goal. another jazz guitar student similarly stated, ‘i want … to play with world-renowned musicians and to also write my own music to play in front of people all over the world’ ( ys , ). teaching was occasionally mentioned within this category, but indicated as something to add after the ‘dream’ had been achieved, concurring with manturzewska’s ( ) biographical study, or as a fallback career, as huhtanen’s ( ) study of classical pianists revealed. regardless of whether these dreams may or may not occur, this indicated that students from this category were highly driven; but, like preparing for a trek to the peak of mt everest, training and preparation would take considerable time and there may be deviations or cancellations of the plan owing to unforeseen occurrences. the reality is that not all students will achieve their original career dreams immediately post-graduation (throsby & zednik, b) or for some, ever. however, the mlaam course objective should be to not destroy these aspirations, but rather recognise them as a valuable motivational tool for degree and overall career success as well as preparing students for additional alternative forms of employment. realists comprised – % of the cohort. teaching (private and classroom), gigging, singer-song writing/arranging for one’s own band and self-release of music were predominant themes throughout the students’ responses. they recognised the need for a portfolio career, and a theme of employment security was evident throughout. mature-age students who had returned to complete their bachelor degree as a prerequisite for future teaching accreditation often related previous activity in the music profession/industry and their belated realisation for employment and financial security. some realist examples are as follows: ultimately i would love to run a music school where i teach piano, theory, brass and have other teachers working alongside me too. ( ys , ) i would love to work in a school or with students of high-school age and do some conducting and arranging. i would also like to play in a professional orchestra part time and play in local ensembles and meet the music community in all its forms. ( ys , ) i always want to be involved with teaching and mentoring the next generation of musicians (more than just flautists). i want to be involved with performing in a variety of ensembles and venues—from casual, fun events to professional concerts. ( ys , ) i want to do music activism with my music. ( ys , ) like the dreamers, these realists were goal driven. degree planning was crucial to maximising employment possibilities as defined by their realistic and diverse career options. for example, those aspiring to teaching could design their degree to include pedagogy and additional instrumental education, technology and production courses, and perhaps begin studies in a non-music course to teach in a school environment. there is also a risk that some possess these realistic aspirations because of an inability to dream of other possibilities owing to a lack of awareness and perhaps belief in one’s capabilities. understanding the broad array of future possibilities helps to develop the ability to recognise opportunities when they arise. the artists represent those who did not possess career goals and adopted an ‘art for art’s sake’ perspective to developing their craft, similar to the stereotypical bohemian. irrespective of their artistic value system (comunian, faggian & li, ) such a single-minded approach is less likely to be tolerated in a competitive industry with high economic pressures and economical value of the arts (o’reilly et al., ). their writing style was considerably more poetic compared to those of the other categories. for example, one student, a jazz drummer, wrote: ‘i hope to pursue music honestly, as far removed from capital and ego as possible’ ( ys , ). another, a classical violinist, wrote: ‘ultimately, i want to inspire people with my music and empower them to follow their passions, to become their true, authentic selves’ ( ys , ), but did not mention how this might be achieved. artists’ approach to career can be likened to boarding a boat with a finite amount of water and food supplies and seeing where the current takes it. on one hand, minor occurrences during the trip could eventuate into a surprise wonderful destination before the supplies run out. on the other, major catastrophe, frightening weather and starvation could occur before the boat capsizes and a call for rescue or, at worst, death. the latter would be quite a story, but possibly could be avoided if there was at least a proposed destination accompanied by appropriate planning. if anything, these students most require an education in future employment possibilities and how to integrate their artistic integrity within the current socio-political-economic environment. interestingly, this category was consistently between and % of the participants from to . however, from their numbers substantially dropped. it will be interesting to see whether the artists continue to decline in future years. it is possible that the impact of the economy has affected students’ worldview of employment and more students are adopting a pragmatic perspective. nevertheless, there has not been a decline in dreamers. rather, there appears to be an increase in those who possess no clear career perspective or options. those in the unclear (?) category struggled to answer the question ‘what do i want to do long-term with my career?’ examples include: this week, i’ve sat down repeatedly, looking inside myself and seem no closer to answering these questions in any way that is specific. however, i have decided that not knowing what i wish to do might be a strength as i won’t limit myself and will always be open to trying new things and it would be foolish to not submit a response—no matter how vague or inadequate i feel the answers to be. ( ys , ) whilst i am unsure of exactly what i want to do as a career, i know that i want to try everything i can and not limit myself to any one aspect of music making. ( ys , ) one of the reasons i chose to study at the conservatorium was to help me best explore exactly what career path i may want to follow. ( ys , ) these unclear students have developed expectations that the conservatorium and their degree experience will reveal a career pathway for them to follow. it could be argued that the dra? model is a continuum on which students adjust their position throughout their degree experience, depending on how they reassess and re-evaluate their career goals. . . . primary motivation. overwhelmingly, students reasoned their career choice from what they loved about music. that is, their response to question (why?) was the same as their response to question (what do you love about music?). while it is understood that a core driver for arts career sustainability is passion (bennett, a; bridgstock, , a; throsby & zednik, b), many students could not articulate insight to the career beyond their passionate relationship with music. for example, one student explained that he wished to become a full-time composer ‘that will accompany various forms of media and entertainment, such as films, games, and theatre’ because ‘these are the areas of the most interest to me’ ( ys , ). another classical vocal student stated that her dream was ‘to play christine in phantom of the opera on broadway’ because ‘it was the first musical i ever saw and since then it’s all i’ve wanted to do with my life’ ( ys , ). this is somewhat in contrast to another student who wished to become a professor in a university and was able to articulate a reasoning and process: i want to do my honours on exchange, as it is a chance to learn under some of the best musicians in the world. learning on exchange also gives you the chance to network with musicians you might not have otherwise met. becoming a professor is one of my lifelong goals as it symbolises that i have become the highest i can be in my field. ( ys , ) likewise, another student who wished to ‘travel overseas and enter into an orchestra as a clarinet player’ justified her choice: ‘this is ideal as such an environment of professional musicianship and beautiful music would be a breathtaking, honourable and stable environment to work in, as well as being able to work together with like- minded musicians’ ( ys , ). while she was yet to understand the realities of the profession and the process of obtaining such a position, she had at least considered the work environment and the people involved. . . . extrinsic motivation. students gave multiple answers to: ‘who inspires me to be a good musician?’ while a small number of them were inspired by the repertoire they study (opting for ‘what’ rather than the instructed ‘who’), the majority of each cohort claimed to be inspired by living and deceased musicians, peers, family, friends, and past and current teachers. the latter was the most prevalent, closely followed by high-profile living musicians, of which youtube artists began to be mentioned from onwards. . . . career reality. students strongly identified that they required dedication to pursue their dreams and solid grounding in the rudiments of their craft to support their vocation (i.e. technique). a degree in itself was regarded as minimally significant, but networking, communication and work experience did rank more highly throughout the years of data collection. a minority considered the financial realities and concept of sole-trader activity, at odds with the majority’s preference for employment security. time management was considered an important skill by many. further or enhanced education was not as significant to them despite the long road to opera, orchestral achievement, or jazz and recording fame. the data from the last two years indicated further awareness of the skills required to achieve as a musician because of their required reading of the first two chapters of hallam and gaunt’s ( ) preparing for success. however, the students rarely specifically aligned the skills appropriate to their stated aspirations, giving broad answers. for example, one student aspiring to jazz bass performance simply said, ‘i will also need to acquire skills that don’t relate to music. skills such as business management, organisation, networking, and time management’ ( ys , ). . . summary. analysis of five years of lsas revealed that most mlaam first-year students have high aspirations for linear or highly competitive careers, are focused on their primary craft, and are highly influenced by mentors, teachers and their living ‘heroes’. these students broadly understood the value of networking and communication but had not considered the stresses of finance or applying self-promotion. the concept of a portfolio career is understood, but perhaps more in relation to others rather than themselves. their focus is on their current degree and the core musical development it offers. further tertiary education or employment options were usually not factored into their long-term career pathways beyond fallback teaching for those with sole performance ambitions. . year-specific focus groups and surveys qcgu undergraduate students were invited by a generic email to voluntarily attend year-specific hour-long focus groups during september . students’ gender, age range, major study, genre and years of prior training are outlined in table . . table . student focus groups: year level, gender, age and major study focus group n gender ratio (m:f) age range major study st year : – x classical clarinet; x classical saxophone; x classical piano; x composition; x classical trumpet; x harp; x classical percussion; x viola; x jazz voice nd year : – x jazz trumpet; mutech; cross-studies percussion; jazz saxophone; classical bass trombone; cello; violin; classical guitar rd year : – x composition; x classical saxophone; oboe; classical percussion; jazz drums; classical voice; mutech; classical clarinet th year : – x classical clarinet; jazz saxophone; classical saxophone; classical guitar; horn; x violin; classical flute; classical piano the gender ratio remained equal for first and second years, and favoured males for third and fourth years. this was not deliberately considered and does not reflect current gender trends of the music industry (throsby & zednik, b). the age range typically represents the age-group of australian tertiary undergraduates (australian bureau of statistics, ), but the fourth-year range was skewed by one mature-age student. major study preferences were diverse, spanning classical, jazz, composition and music technology genres. discussion topics included degree transition, degree engagement, the value placed on academic versus skill-based courses, and music industry engagement. students were guaranteed anonymity and agreed to audio and video recording to aid expressive interpretation and the transcription process. during the focus groups, paper- based surveys were distributed to participants (see appendix e), designed to affirm conversation topics and assure all their opinions were recorded accurately. responses are quoted below, with respondents identified by their year level (first year = y, second year = y, etc.) and the abbreviation fg (focus group). . . degree perceptions. . . . first-year students. overall, the first-year students demonstrated enthusiasm about their degree thus far, citing the dedication of the teachers and the new people they encountered as ‘fantastic’ (ronald, yfg). tina ( yfg) found the tertiary music education more satisfying than in her overseas hometown and was surprised that the lecturers focused on the individual ‘rather than part of a whole study [body]. you are not student number —you are someone’. while one mentioned his strategy of performing with the older musician to gain ‘a steeper learning curve’ (charles, yfg), the pianists mentioned the isolation of practice, and subsequent lack of socialisation with the older students: ‘everyone who plays orchestral instruments, you know you have your orchestras and quartets and all that different stuff. we don’t have that’ (loretta, yfg). other degree realities included general surprise as to how much work was required to pass: ‘you are having to work hard and practice several hours a day’ (charles, yfg) and, for some, surprise that some students were less than dedicated: ‘i found the attitude of the older students wasn’t particularly inspiring’ (tim, yfg). students from this group had already made decisions on how to approach their degree based on their career aspirations. felicity’s ( yfg) approach was performance- focused: ‘my goal was ’s in performance, pass everything else. because my goal is not to be an academic or do honours or do a phd. i just wanna be a performer’. amanda ( yfg) aimed to maintain a balance between performance and academic study because ‘i might end up as a classroom music teacher and a lot of that stuff will actually be absolutely useful—i’ll need it and i’ll need to teach it’. grace ( yfg) suggested her performance study teacher influenced her to prioritise her practice: ‘at the start of the year it wasn’t so much … but then janelle was like [pulls a mean/angry face] and now it is definitely [that] piano is a much bigger focus than all the academia’. the reconsideration of career was nominally evident—student composers were already strategising additional career support options: we are probably not very sure if it is going to lead directly to a job. a lot of us are considering moving to an education strand so we can still compose … but we are probably not going to become composers as soon as we come out of our undergraduate degree. (simon, yfg) . . . second-year students. students described the second year as ‘very different’ (ralph, yfg) to the first. maree ( yfg) suggested: you don’t feel out of your depth … you sort of know what to expect but it’s still really busy. you just want to do everything but then you realise that you can’t and you get really run down or something. many students found juggling the increasing demands of their degree, their emerging employability and their personal life was a challenge. for example: i am freelancing—i am doing everything you know. and trying to keep up with the fam[ily] and [my] sister lives in sydney and oh, it’s just … hectic, you know? and then personal practice—it’s terrible. i am just going to say it right now—i’ve probably had hours of personal practice. (lenny, yfg) they were also aiming to continue their academic success from previous years, but found it increasingly challenging. for lincoln ( yfg), who received the highest results in his first year, degree success represented the likelihood of career success: i’ve been super critical of myself because i had a pretty good first year and i felt really good [thinking] ‘cool i can keep doing this’ … and then i didn’t top the classes [in second year] so i kind of felt down about that.… if i am not going to be the best in brisbane out of other music technology people, how can i expect to be one of the best people in the world—what i’d like to be … so i set myself an even harder goal in this semester. i am doing six full subjects … and i am trying to get straight ’s [highest possible result] in all the six subjects. deanne ( yfg) felt the pressure to succeed was driven by the expectations of others, and confessed to occasional breakdowns, describing her second year as follows: it’s wanting to learn so much as well as impress and get to the standard that everyone wants you to be at … even if they don’t emphasise that they want me to do well … teachers or family, friends and my favourite co-workers. in general, there was a noticeable change of degree experience for these second- year students, including a genuine attempt to succeed at all tasks, but they found it challenging to prioritise their commitments, and some suffered negative health effects. . . . third-year students. there seems to be a big difference between second and third years. the first and seconds seem to be on one level and i don’t know what happens and then they come back after the break and then it’s there.… i don’t know what it is, but that’s just how it feels. (maree, yfg) the third-year students communicated a mix of experiences. almost all were professionally active and relieved that there were fewer academic subjects such as aural and theory. some had consolidated their skills and placed more of what they had learnt into practice. julie ( yfg) suggested her music technology degree was designed to facilitate this: this semester for our final year, it’s very self-directed—kind of putting everything into practice in a real sense, more sort of real-world sense and finding areas that we want to continue with—which has been obviously really helpful because we are finishing up. christian ( yfg) found he had more space in his degree to explore new options and learning: this year has kind of been a year for new skills for me. i have split up my performance studies with two teachers across the classical department as well which has been really good. i haven’t done as many subjects as i needed to so it’s kind of given me more time to do other things … school teaching and stuff. get a feel if i want to go down the education route. many third-year students had experienced setbacks either in third or late second year. this included a realisation of ability: ‘at the beginning of the year i was told that my technique was not up to scratch, which was very hard for me’ (bert, yfg); the ongoing work ethic required: ‘just the hard slog. i just lost my love of music, i didn’t really care anymore i just wanted to leave’ (john, yfg); and for some the challenge to separate their identities of student musician and future possible selves: ‘i just think you are kind of in the middle, you are still working on stuff that’s not necessarily working … it’s really hard when you tie your happiness to your success and maybe not succeeding’ (kylie, yfg). this mid-degree renegotiation of identity, facilitated by the harsh reality of the future, the ongoing hard work required and the grit and determination needed to continue is something i have coined as the mid-degree slump for students. . . . the mid-degree slump.	 students reflected they overcame a mid-degree slump that initiated thoughts of exiting music, when ‘something happened’ (jonothon, yfg). for harry ( yfg), this was in the form of guest artist collaboration: last year, after mid year, surprisingly i had my motivation dwindle and was thinking of not … just quitting after a third year and moving on to something other than music but … having the hindemith quintet … playing with them, just intense rehearsals and intense performance … was thrilling … that really kind of set in my mind—‘this is in my dna and this is what i want to do’. others relied on their own initiative: ‘i’ve kind of come to the decision of doing a lot of my own stuff outside of uni and not relying on things in uni’ (bert, yfg), and for others to not expect their institution to provide all learning opportunities, ‘i think i just realised ... hang on the comp[osition] department’s not going to do anything, i just need to do something myself then so that’s what i do’ (jason, yfg). sam ( yfg) realised his slump in second year resulted from adopting an attitude derived from comparative analysis where, ‘your goal is for the next three years is not to be “good”, it is to be “not shit”’. he suggested some deep self-reflection assisted his motivation to continue and subsequently improve: [regarding disassociating success from personal happiness] and i found that as soon as i figured [it] out—and this it has affected everything in my life, personal relationships, intimate relationships, friendships, professional life—[it has been] managing to re-position where i found happiness from and to know exactly what to be hard on myself about. (sam, yfg) lincoln ( yfg) had quit two degrees after two years: ‘one of them was a music degree for exactly those reasons [mid-degree slump]’, and was on to his third. he described the mid-degree slump thought process as ‘well, i am not going to ever make any money or have a career because i am useless at everything’. the difference he experienced for his third degree was the realisation he did not have ‘anything else to do’ and proposed to ‘just keep going’. this ‘point of no return’ approach to one’s degree was echoed by another second year, heather ( yfg group), who could not see any other prospects beyond her saxophone quartet and teaching. she declared, ‘i am so stupid, i have got nothing else going for me’. therefore, despite low confidence and self-efficacy, heather persevered with her degree. because of this, the concept of the mid-degree slump differs to the sophomore slump as first termed by feldman and newcomb ( ) in that the latter instigated degree attrition. conversely, these music students have completed their degrees irrespective of the mid-degree slump. for kylie ( yfg), it was a conversation with her teacher and the result of organising a planned and committed practice timetable that influenced her to continue: ‘i was all set to leave … till we had that conversation today’. however, john considered the institution was to blame for his lack of passion, and chose to finish his degree then pursue a different employment pathway. he reasoned: it’s literally everything is wrong. i have written huge performance evaluations. i have spoken to all the higher up members of staff … ‘this is wrong, this is wrong, this is wrong, this is wrong’ a lot of them agree, [but] it’s just really hard to actually change a whole course’. those who were industry-active (see section . . ) or created their own projects, compared to those who were not, appeared to avoid the mid-degree slump experience or managed to successfully progress through it. overall, they also possessed one or more of these traits: a comparably higher level of confidence, internal locus of control, high resilience, clearer understanding of music vocational pathway and a genuine passion for music. i have termed those who exhibit these traits as student musicians. those who choose to solely rely on the university for their education and employment outcomes, exhibit an external locus of control, and place greater emphasis on grade point average (gpa) weighted subjects are described as music students. the student musician−music student identity continuum is described in table . . table . the student musician−music student identity continuum description related quotes student musician • the degree is but one tool to assist career development • what-can-i-do-for-me? (strong internal locus of control) • seeks learning opportunities outside of the degree • aims to understand the relevance of degree design to vocation aspirations • is task -> goal-oriented (i.e. life is the voyage not the destination) • seeks and/or creates ‘industry ‘i think that theory and aural especially build everything with your awareness in your major study. and i think that if you see how well that will [relate to your major study] then you are really going to become a better musician’. (lily, yfg) ‘uni is doing courses and getting a degree, but it’s really a time in your life when you can build up everything else in your life. so you really gotta do other things and be able to complement what you are doing in uni. activity’ not just be doing stuff at uni’. (julie, yfg) music student • chooses to learn in finite time- frames (i.e. reluctant to consider lifelong learning) • what-can-the-university-do-for-me? (external locus of control) • is not yet confident to take responsibility for their own learning in addition to their degree • chooses to place more effort on gpa-credited subjects • is goal -> task-oriented • is not confident to involve ‘industry activity’ during one’s degree • struggles to find relevance of degree courses to vocation aspirations ‘it is kind of cheeky that they put the subjects that are compulsory that you have to repeat if you don’t pass, and put them as -credit points—even though the workload is very definitely more’. (jane, yfg) ‘this sounds real bad but if you were doing it [small ensemble], to become a better musician, you would put a little effort into it. if you were looking at your gpa i would put jack shit effort into it because it’s not going to give you a ’. (kylie, yfg) ‘literally everything is wrong [with this degree]’. (john, yfg) . . . fourth-year students. the fourth-year cohort largely consisted of honours students. possibly owing to the impending thesis deadline and imminent end of their degree, this group did seem much more reflective and mature than their younger colleagues, and possessed a realistic understanding of their future. much of the conversation considered life after study and reflection on professional identity development. lauren could not wait to graduate and embrace her passion for performing without the extra stress of recitals: i am also feeling that stress and worry about what’s coming up but relief as well to be honest. you get to the stage (i don’t know, most people i’ve spoken to about this agree) you love music and that’s why you are here, but sometimes you really hate it while you are here [others laughing] that comes along with ‘i am really looking forward to where i don’t have to get ready for any exam’ … i enjoy playing but i hate playing for-mark recitals. it’s just this whole anxiety thing about it and my performance anxiety has gotten worse while i have been here, to be honest. so i am hoping that you can get back to that and just … play … do what you like and take some time out. for most, the reality of graduation was not just symbolic of becoming an independent musician, but deciding whether to persevere with their vocation: ‘fourth year is really … [asking the question] “do we go ahead with this career choice and this life?” … it’s not something you can half-ass. and i don’t know whether i have the ability to whole-ass it’ (vivienne, yfg). for some, it was not only the reality of graduating but loss of their conservatorium community, and the realisation that more work was still required. for harry ( yfg) this was more evident once he realised the standard of the profession in a broader context: now that we are in fourth year, and it’s just that bit closer that you are going to be graduating from this little nice little community called the con that’s going to shelter you from the outside.… after being to europe this year and seeing at what stage i need to be, i kind of panicked when i came back here and thought, ‘i am still nowhere near where i need to be to get where i want’. others agreed that the impending end of their degree symbolised a considerable motivator to work towards higher industry standards. anne ( yfg) viewed fourth year as a good year to ‘kick myself in the buttocks!’ peter ( yfg) suggested the end of his degree was the catalyst for improvement: ‘i realised how close it was to the end of my degree: i was like “oh no i need to work really hard” so i do feel like i’ve made a bit of a leap’. . . . summary. in summary, students communicated a positive introduction to tertiary education and intimate teaching environment. they began to formulate their strategy for degree engagement from their first year, influenced by perceived realities of their vocational aspirations and teachers’ educational values. those with the least defined career paths had begun to recalibrate their aspirations. the hard work required was accepted but the diverse levels of commitment the older student musicians represented was questioned. however, they had yet to experience the second year’s developing realities of a portfolio career and struggle to maintain all commitments at the high standards previously experienced. for some, this led to burnout or the mid-degree slump, when students experienced their first consideration to quit the profession. the data revealed that low confidence or self-efficacy did not necessarily relate to the likelihood of quitting the degree. third year was a time to consolidate the skills learned, owing to a more flexibly designed degree, to mitigate the mid-degree slump and to further experiment with future career options. this could be likened to experiencing the final progression from adolescence to young adulthood when one ‘is typically required to make major adjustments, to develop new skills, or to learn to cope with new experiences’ (lenz, , p. ). some arrived at young adulthood, adopting a student musician mindset, and others remained in adolescence as a music student. while the fourth years possessed a more realistic understanding of the music industry and profession, they recognised the end of their degree did not necessarily equate to being industry-ready and expressed an understanding of ongoing development in a broader industry context. . . a segregated conservatoire. within their lsas and the focus groups, the students often referred to music as ‘a universal language’ (aaron, yfg) and found the transition to university socially less stressful compared to what non-music tertiary students report (see, e.g. kift, ; krause & grimmer, ). comments such as ‘i kid you not i had zero friends in school. [now] it’s great’ (loretta, yfg), ‘i’m allowed to be who i want’ (kate, yfg), and ‘it is like when you come here, you are one of the “normal people”’ (tina, yfg) were prevalent for the first-year students. however, they were quick to acknowledge a segregated and hierarchical conservatorium environment that endorsed vastly different processes from instrument to instrument and genre to genre. one first- year student affirmed: ‘one thing i didn’t expect when i came here, was how separated the departments would be. but there is no collaboration—not even with wind or brass?’ (amanda, yfg). another recognised ‘the composition department is the “forgotten department”’ (jemima, yfg). there was much discussion about the varying methods workshops incorporated, the ‘hierarchy of first, second and third year’ (jane, yfg) that the pianists considered ‘terrifying’ (grace, yfg), and the proactive-versus-passive approach various lecturers used towards extracurricular activities. one student suggested that the ‘universal language’ was not so widespread: ‘i catch the train with an opera student and it is so funny because we go to the same uni and we have no idea what the other is talking about’ (felicity, yfg). unfortunately, despite a small undergraduate programme of about + students located within the one building, the students suggested it was too easy to progress through their degree and not meet students from other departments: ‘classical and jazz are foreign. i was saying to one guy the other day, that i have been here for two years and i have only now met you for the first time!’ (felicity, yfg). the main offenders were ‘especially mutechs [collective agreement]’ ( yfg), that is, music technology students. . . experienced embedded vocational advice. the students appreciated that their major study teachers were exemplars of their career aspirations: ‘it is good that a lot of the teachers are also practising performers and we have the opportunity to watch them do that side of things rather than just as a teacher icon’ (jane, yfg). julie ( yfg) held the perspective that the music technology students regard their lecturers as future work colleagues: ‘we [mutech] don’t really see our lecturers as ‘lecturers’. we see them as … future industry peers’. however, when asked what industry advice or direction the music technology students received from their teachers regarding employability, it would appear there was ‘not a great deal of discussion about it’ (lincoln, yfg). the general opinion was, ‘after mlaam there isn’t really … you get to here, and then you survive on your own’ (jane, yfg). some students had approached their teachers, who were only too happy to discuss their experiences but ‘the details of what was happening when they did it are reasonably unclear’ (lincoln, yfg). one thought highly of his teacher but suggested, ‘when it comes to the workforce he knows absolutely next to nothing’ and rationalised: ‘i think he’s actually just achieved what he’s wanted [orchestral musician] and he just wants to stick to what he wanted to achieve’ (ralph, yfg). additionally, there was some talk by the composition students of teaching methods that encouraged a movement away from functional music, such as film score writing, towards their less preferred art music. the saxophonists recognised the extracurricular employability activities i had organised (tours, recordings, concerts and school workshops) as useful: ‘i am very grateful that that happened because it’s making me a more versatile musician and it’s a lot more practical … (my goodness, it sounds like i am just sucking majorly up, but i am not at all)’ (leigh, yfg). ronald ( yfg) suggested his teacher incorporated discussions of employability within workshop sessions: ‘it’s not just about playing, it’s also about what’s happening in the industry right now’. conversely, tina, also from the first-year focus group, experienced ‘one [instrument] specific workshop during project week’ organised by her teacher, who discussed the employment options available to them. she suggested it was not ‘the most encouraging workshop because it’s very realistic’. . . advice to first years. for further insight into the degree experience and subsequent trial-and-error process, the focus groups were asked what advice they would give to new first years. emergent themes included seek help and remain connected, work hard, avoid comparative thinking, maintain professionalism, consider time management, stay open and remain independent (see appendix g for coded responses). lenny ( yfg) explained the positive outcome of a strong work ethic as, ‘i would not be … doing what i am doing, if i didn’t work my ass off in the first year’. kylie ( yfg) indicated a lack of life balance caused her burnout and subsequent mid- degree slump: ‘[if] you don’t have any time for yourself you are going to burn out and seriously be in a pretty dark place’. jonothon ( yfg) regretted not working harder in first year, tim ( yfg) advised to do so, and peter ( yfg) considered some needed a ‘kick in the butt’. students were also asked to rate their overall degree and major study expectations (see table . ) in the paper survey. the likert scale ranged from strongly disagree ( ) to strongly agree ( ). table . degree expectations and development: weighted averages by year statement st year nd year rd year th year i am currently achieving what i expected to since the beginning of my degree . . . . i am happy with my major study development as a [first/second/third/fourth] year . . . . first- and second-year weighted averages were substantially higher than the third- and fourth-year results, perhaps indicating a reason for the regret of lack of practice for some, as well as the realistic understanding of what is required for future employment in performance careers. of note was the prevalence of fourth years advising against comparative thinking and of third years encouraging students to initiate their own work and self-direct their learning. likewise, the older students understood the value of remaining open to opportunity and keeping initial aspirations to be flexible. these focus groups’ advice to first years would appear to be good strategies to avoid the mid-degree slump. in addition, their responses indicate there is an opportunity for vocational preparation courses to include professional identity development, career awareness, opportunity recognition, time management, networking and connectivity, and creative entrepreneurship. 																																																								 	an average resulting from the multiplication of each participant result by a factor reflecting its rating within the likert scale.	 . . student industry activity. . . . first-year students. many first-year students reported they had not yet engaged in significant industry activity owing to a strictly timetabled first-year curriculum, lack of available resources, and their choice to focus on their major study instrument. their employment identity is outlined in table . . table . first-year employment identity i currently identify myself as: no. of responses . did not answer this . full-time employment . contract worker & portfolio careerist . new-employment creator & portfolio careerist . non-music ‘day job’ and casual professional musician . non-music ‘casual job’ and no music industry activity . non-music ‘casual job’ and some music industry activity . no employment at all—just focusing on my degree half of the focus group considered they were active within the music industry. this concurred with the in-class first-year mlaam poll. usually their employment was either performance or teaching or arts administration. a portfolio of employment was yet to occur. industry activity included string quartet gigs for weddings and functions, self-created originals band, community music theatre and, surprisingly, coordination of a music camp in one student’s hometown overseas. one student indicated her dissatisfaction with her education experiences led her to create her own, acknowledging this independent approach was very rare in her year and department: ‘it is weird how very few of us there are gigging—whether it be either covers or originals or standard gigs. the number is ridiculously low. i find that so bizarre’ (felicity yfg). . . . second-year students. the second-year students’ emerging music employment was considerably more active than their first-year cohort’s, with one student describing work requiring full-time commitment. the emergence of a portfolio of work combining usually two domains of employment was evident. second-year employment activity consisted of private and music school teaching, small ensemble gigging for functions and events (jazz and classical), pro-amateur musical theatre work, big bands, scratch orchestras, in one case casual work with the local professional orchestra, live sound engineering, arts administration, non-music retail and hospitality employment. community music, start- up ensembles (jazz and classical) and internships were described as unpaid employment. one student affirmed, ‘it’s where it [paid employment] starts’ (ralph, yfg). another described his approach to gaining live sound engineering employment: getting that job i drew a lot on stuff—i think it was in mlaam where it was ‘you have to say yes to everyone and take risks’ and that’s exactly what i did.… i went into this bar, i was dropping off a keg of beer and i saw they had a sound desk, i was like ‘oh you do sound, can i come along and help you out?’ … he called me two nights later.… i was nervous as hell but i did it and then i got regular work there, and i still work there. and then that kind of gave me confidence to say yes to other gigs. (lincoln, yfg) one student chose to work in retail rather than music, stating, ‘i had gigged myself out until i just died’ prior to her first attempt at her degree and felt that non- music employment helped her to focus on her studies upon her return to her degree. second-year students’ employment identity outlined in table . demonstrates % of them were working in music-related employment. multiple answers were chosen to reflect their diverse employment.table . second-year employment identity i currently identify myself as no. of responses . full-time employment . contract worker & portfolio careerist . new-employment creator & portfolio careerist . non-music ‘day job’ and casual professional musician . no employment at all—just focusing on my degree . . . third-year students. most of the third-year cohort ( %) demonstrated industry activity very similar to that of the second years. there was a distinct increase in professional contract and self-instigated work situated locally and interstate, spanning jazz and classical performance, composition and teaching. this percentage was very similar to the cv analysis ( – %) of the third-year students of and (see section . ) and portfolio diversity had also increased to between two and three employment domains. as a result, they also chose multiple answers in the paper survey (see table . ). table . third-year employment identity i currently identify myself as: no. of responses . full-time employment . contract worker & portfolio careerist . new-employment creator & portfolio careerist . non-music ‘day job’ and casual professional musician . no employment at all—just focusing on my degree jemima ( yfg) and her colleagues formed a small opera company during their second year ‘because we were told that we were going to have our mid-year recitals cut’. as any paid performance work via the conservatorium was given to those later in their degree or to postgraduates, the younger students realised the need for self- instigated opportunities to gain industry experience earlier in their degree. likewise, bert ( yfg), training in classical percussion, had developed his own paint-drumming show and other percussion quartet initiatives. there was comparatively more discussion of the pathway from unpaid to paid work. jonothon ( yfg) said one contact offered him ‘two gigs after doing some free work for him, which is really good’. jemima ( yfg) suggested opera singers were used to not getting paid because they were usually in a choral setting and ‘they are not going to pay everyone in the choir. forget it!’ she said her small opera group had been pleased to be given some work that was ‘just marginally under what it should be per hour’. julie ( yfg) had developed a varied portfolio of paid employment, but it did include an unpaid collaboration with a film student for a local film festival. students discussed the range of financial reimbursement they had experienced and confessed they had been asked to perform for free. christian ( yfg), a jazz drummer, reasoned that there was a point where he said ‘no’ to work that was promoted as ‘great exposure’ because ‘[in] a year and a half time you kind of get over that’ but he acknowledged that his view were not shared by others: ‘some of the jazz guys—even you know the older third- and fourth-year guys—they will just play for any amount. lots of people say it wrecks [the industry and] it hurts other people’. leigh ( yfg), a classical saxophonist, said she had been paid ‘different amounts of money’ as ‘different things can pay $ for minutes and then $ for half an hour so it’s hard to put a price on it’. she justified her experience of preparing a three-hour unpaid performance with her quartet as ‘valuable’ to her employability development because she had ‘never done that before with that amount of playing’ and could see the future benefit: ‘we got a good reputation for future gigs with the guy who gave us that gig’. with teaching employment, she was not as flexibly priced and further justified her lenient approach to performance rates with: ‘i want to get more performance practice so i am going to ‘say yes’. i think i am very open to ‘saying yes’ to anything i get right now’ (leigh, yfg). sam ( yfg) declared he had not ‘bothered trying to figure out how to crack the professional nut really yet’. he had performed unpaid employment up until mid-third year but chose to ‘kindly say no’ to spend more time working on his orchestral instrumental skills. he reasoned that if he were to work it would be ‘in something unrelated to music probably’ because he could not ‘be bothered to try and figure out how to do gigs and everything’. where sam’s reasoning to disengage from music- related employment was based on music priorities, john ( yfg) chose not to try, stating: ‘i don’t really like doing things that make me miserable’. kylie ( yfg) had begun quartet work and teaching in music education camps; however, after experiencing the mid-degree slump, she stopped and preferred non-music administration employment. she also found her instrument limiting: ‘i play [classical] saxophone so i can’t really do qso’. interestingly, some of the third years discussed how certain career assumptions had been proven wrong. leigh ( yfg) thought she would not enjoy teaching but found it ‘a lot more fulfilling than it was going to be’. she recognised the value in such work and its mutual benefits: ‘especially like one that you started with from scratch and you see their progression—that’s just been [amazing] … i have learnt so much about my playing, just from doing that as well’. jonothon ( yfg) did not expect to gain casual professional orchestral work in his third year, but had: ‘i thought this all happened so much sooner than i expected. i thought i wouldn’t have a casual position for another five years at least’. jason ( yfg) was studying composition but had aspirations for high-level conducting and was already conducting his own student-run orchestra to develop his skills, ‘well i didn’t expect to become a conductor. i walked into the degree thinking i would come out being you know, a film composer or something but now …’. christian ( yfg) had anticipated an arrival point that would visibly signify his status as a professional from which ‘that’ll be it’—he could rest on his laurels, but discovered, ‘it's not like that at all—you just got to keep going’. . . . fourth-year students.	 all the fourth-year students worked in diverse areas of the music industry, similar to the third years, in performance, composition/arrangement and education, as well as non-music employment. comparatively more students reported an increasingly diverse portfolio of employment that included higher profile professional teaching and performance. one classical saxophonist was performing casually with the local professional orchestra. additional work included accompanying, teaching in private schools and, for astrid ( yfg), busking, though she questioned its status: ‘i don’t know if that counts’. some chose to also work in retail, hospitality or government. anne ( yfg) rationalised her choice for additional non-music work: ‘because i like being able to buy things’. their employment identity is outlined in table . . table . fourth-year employment identity i currently identify myself as: no. of responses . full-time employment . contract worker & portfolio careerist . new-employment creator & portfolio careerist . non-music ‘day job’ and casual professional musician . no employment at all—just focusing on my degree although half of the students were working with self-instigated creative employment, none chose that category as their current identity, possibly because ‘you might get paid for them, you might not’ (anne, yfg). unpaid work was accepted by many as a means of expanding social capital and kick-starting paid performance employment. anne ( yfg) said it was ‘the easiest way to get work and then if you do a good job of something, then you are going to get more work from it’. when a lecturer gave her ensemble a free festival engagement, we did that and then we got two other gigs out of it so hey, that one was free—two paid so that’s good!’ . . . summary. the population of focus group students active in music-related employment rose from % in first year, and % in second and third year, to % by fourth year. in addition, their portfolio of work and sources of income became more diversified as they progressed through their degree. the majority of work was contractual. self-instigated performance work arose out of a need for more performance experience and dissatisfaction with current activity, but was not specifically related to either the classical, jazz, music technology or composition domains. the students’ reasons for not engaging with music-related employment was not because they could not obtain it; rather, it was to focus on their musical development, for financial gain, to avoid music- related employment, or because they could not be bothered to engage with music related employment. those who chose to avoid music-related employment had completed their degree and retrained in a non-music professional domain (john and kylie, yfg). teaching employment appeared to develop in a pattern originating from paid private teaching, then progressed or included music school employment, followed by peripatetic work in private schools. conversely, there was an understanding that paid performance work originated from unpaid performance to gain industry experience and develop employability networks. however, there was a finite timeline of how long one tolerated lack of pay despite wanting to gain performance experience. hierarchies of types of performance were indicated when the topic of busking arose. furthermore, one student felt her instrument limited how much professional classical performance was available to her but was unwilling to diversify. while one lecturer’s referral of unpaid work was welcome, it would appear that paid work is rarely referred by faculty. when asked in the survey to rank the statement the majority of my music employment has been offered via my conservatorium lecturers from strongly disagree ( ) to strongly agree ( ) the weighted average results indicated that generally this was not the case for all year levels (see table . ). table . lecturer employment referral: weighted averages (out of ) by student year level statement: st year nd year rd year th year the majority of my music employment has been offered via my conservatorium lecturers . . . . students suggested that it was more likely that their immediate networks, conservatorium peers, would refer employment (see table . ). table . peer employment referral: weighted average (out of ) s by student year level statement: st year nd year rd year th year the majority of my music employment has been offered via my conservatorium peers . . . . more importantly, the majority of these students felt they could rely on their conservatorium networks for future employment (see table . ). whether this was peers and/or lecturers was unclear. table . future employment referral: weighted average (out of ) by student year level statement: st year nd year rd year th year i believe i have developed strong networks during my degree and can rely on these for future music employment . . . . . degree design: student opinion. students were keen to offer their opinion of the curriculum design of their degree. generally, they related a greater need for relevant education to their current employment aspirations but did not consider industry trends or the possibility of a music profession further affected by external environmental forces, such as economic and technological. jason ( yfg) suggested composition students required further keyboard and conducting skills, stating these electives had ‘helped me a lot [with conducting his orchestra and compositions] ... it helped me reduce a score’. leigh ( yfg) considered that pedagogy should be ‘compulsory’ and regarded it as ‘the only subject i have done here and actually used in real life’. jonothon ( yfg) considered the need for more chamber music but could not articulate why. it was interesting that these students used words and phrases such as ‘push’, ‘you should be pushed to do it’, and ‘compulsory’, implying that the university ‘knows best’ and is responsible for equipping students with the most relevant skills for employability. other students argued that one should not be ‘spoon-fed’ (felicity and simon, yfg). felicity ( yfg) rationalised this as, ‘the con will give you this information [points to one area], but that does not mean you will not need this information [points to another area] in the real world’. simon ( yfg) recognised the need to be more proactive with tertiary learning as it related to one’s specific career interests: ‘if you want to study counterpoint you have to go to the library and find books about counterpoint and read about that. they are not going to actually spoon-feed that to you’. similarly, bert ( yfg) argued for a more flexible degree design, acknowledging that students have a preformed understanding of what education they require for career success, but he debunked the myth that students abhor compulsory subjects because they were so: a lot of people will come into this [degree] and say ‘i am not really classical, i am not really jazz, i will go classical because this’ll cover most of the things that i will do but for the most part i don’t like the music … i think more than anything the university needs to provide opportunities for us to do what we want to do without saying ‘you have to do this’ because some people don’t want to. and it’s not that they don’t want to because it’s been forced upon them and it’s a subject that they have to do–they don’t want to do it because it’s something they don’t want to do! many advocated for more ‘business stuff’ (marian, yfg). anne’s ( yfg) commentary concurred: ‘i think we need to learn even more mlaam—the skills that are actually so very important’. deanne ( yfg) resented that it was excised from the second year because she valued the ongoing reminder of a professional approach to employability ‘because sometimes you forget and then you go into the real world and stuff up’. kathyrn ( yfg) also agreed, but suggested as a return student she had enjoyed the course more when she did not need to do the additional courses such as aural and theory: ‘i really enjoyed mlaam because i had done all of the subjects that everybody stresses over … and being able to actually sit there and go, “oh yeah, this is going to be useful, better take notes”’. student opinions of the perceived relevance of business skills to their careers in the paper survey (see table . ) were consistently positive across the year levels, but this does not necessarily indicate that more business skill development would be appreciated in their undergraduate degree. table . perceived relevance of business skills: weighted averages (out of ) by student year level statement: st year nd year rd year th year i will need to learn more about the business side of the music industry for future activities . . . . i believe non-music (business) skills are important to the sustainability of a career in music . . . . there was some discussion about the performance assessment, its relevance to real-world activity and the subjective judgement of music. harry ( yfg) rationalised, ‘what your panel thinks is different to what an audience might think and i think that’s something that needs to kind of be re-evaluated. i mean it’s hard with any art to mark’. he considered the performance exams every semester was irrelevant to career success: ‘it just doesn’t give you the ability to really look at it in the long term as opposed to all these short term goals’ (harry, yfg). however, vivienne ( yfg) considered the performance assessment process more relevant to real-word application because it was ‘actually marking … your ability to be a predictable and a reliable performer’. christian ( yfg) described the difference between being a good music technician, which julie described as ‘ho hum’, and an entertainer in suggesting a difference between ‘being a good musician’ and ‘a good performer’. subsequently he felt that ‘performance isn’t taught here’. bert ( yfg) described performance as ‘building a rapport with an audience or with your other performance members’, which he viewed as more real-world relevant than technical proficiency. to confirm their discussion of effective curriculum design, students were asked to rate the statement i believe my undergraduate degree is preparing me for a career in music, using the same likert rating as previously used. the perceived relevance of their degree appears to decline throughout their degree as their understanding of career reality clarifies (see table . ). table . perceived relevance of degree: weighted averages (out of ) by student year level statement: st year nd year rd year th year i believe my undergraduate degree is preparing me for a career in music . . . . . . transitional planning and future goals. . . . first-year students. the first-year students did not discuss their transition from degree to industry as extensively as the others. jane ( yfg) was concerned that by the end of her degree she would prefer to do ‘something else instead’ and that the degree would have been ‘a waste of time’. shane was already considering further study in germany and loretta had observed graduating piano students fretting about lost resources and lack of achieved performance skill. the paper survey asked students to consider their five-year goals (see appendix h) situated one or two years after degree graduation, depending on their choice of a three- or four-year degree. students anticipated gaining full-time employment ranging from orchestral, teaching and portfolio careers; however, most aspired for only one to two areas of employment. some wished to travel abroad either with their music or for further study. one indicated that non-music related employment was an option to supplement creative activity. one student hoped for happiness and employment enjoyment, but was not specific about the details. there were some very ambitious goals such as concert pianist and full-time orchestral employment. concurring with these findings, in students were asked to communicate their perceived positive future self (markus & nurius, ) via online polling in their mlaam class. i placed responses in a wordle picture for them to discuss (figure . ). figure . . first-year wordle of positive future self. personal happiness and successful performance employment were the most common. there was no mention of financial status. the same exercise was conducted on their negative future selves (figure . ). figure . . first-year wordle of negative future self. the students revealed a strong fear of unemployment or employment in less desirable roles, music failure and lack of financial capability. it would appear that along with their romanticised understanding of the future, the possibility that their ambitions could not eventuate was of great concern. kate ( yfg) suggested this depended on the area of the music profession in which one was interested: ‘i will be going into education. i have no fear whatsoever about going into it’. shane ( yfg) rationalised the fear of becoming a failed orchestral musician stemmed from ‘an extremely competitive industry’. while he valued the role of networking, ‘you know someone who knows someone who can get you a gig’, he also felt that high-quality performance skills trumped one’s social capital: ‘to really get anywhere, you have to be really better than anyone else. that is just the way it works’. however, tina (iyfg) was concerned she would have to ‘start from scratch’ upon returning to her country and envied the network development her colleagues were achieving during their degree. . . . second-year students. the topic of graduation was more prevalent among the second years than in the first-year focus group. two students had no idea whether they would stay for the third or fourth year, one planned to continue her music-business degree, another in fourth year performance, and others were considering honours with a view to transition to a phd. their five-year goals (see appendix h) revealed similar expectations to the first years, but with increased preference for portfolio and self-instigated employment. most anticipated gaining employment from two or more sources. further study and overseas travel were also anticipated. one student expected performance with the local orchestra, although it was unclear whether this would be full-time, and another indicated the need for financial security. one student was considering music therapy. students of this focus group understood the outcome of employability from strong networks. taylor ( yfg) affirmed, ‘it’s mostly who you know’ and lincoln ( yfg) added that the strengths of one’s inter/intrapersonal skills was also an important basic skill: ‘the bare minimum is being good at what you do and then the rest is being personable’. . . . third-year students. many third-year students wanted to remain for a fourth year, for honours or further focus on their major study instrument. two were graduating with plans to pursue other degrees in non-music domains, and one chose to decline an honours scholarship to travel abroad for contract work in america and london. one had auditioned for postgraduate study in national and international institutions and was waiting to hear results. no one communicated concern about leaving the institution and, rather, looked forward to the future. similar to the second years, the paper surveys revealed five-year goals that included overseas travel for employment and study, portfolio careers and self- instigated work (see appendix h). only one mentioned the teaching profession and one reported their high aspiration to conduct a ‘major professional orchestra’ was preferred to social welfare support. these students anticipated their employment would derive either from one source or a large portfolio of sources. this ‘either/or’ approach to employability did not occur with the other years. sam was not even interested in freelance performance employment: ‘i can’t imagine wanting to do freelancing all the time, because it feels just stressful. i would much prefer a full-time job’. . . . fourth-year students. as mentioned in section . . . , the topic of graduation was more prevalent than previous years. some students described their perspective as ‘stress and worry’ (lauren, yfg) and ‘panicking’ (harry, yfg), but the majority were ‘postponing the stress’ (astrid, yfg) by means of a master’s degree, an australian national academy of music scholarship, study abroad or taking time off from study to save up for the travel by working. others were enrolling in a diploma of education, one was staying to resolve a previously failed subject, and three others were taking some time off study to consider their future options. anne ( yfg) had a pragmatic perspective regarding life after undergraduate study and the lifelong learning required to sustain a career in music: i just don’t think graduating this year is going to be the end of the world. we’ve just always gotta be kind of pushing forward and you can’t be just like ‘well i've done my bachelor, i am going to get a job’ because you are not. you have to really work for it [employment]. you’ve gotta network and you’ve gotta do further things like do more study because we are not going to get anywhere with just a bachelor in music you know? five-year goals appeared to realistically consider a portfolio of work, family, and finance (see appendix h). personal happiness and career satisfaction were mentioned more than in previous years, but not what this would specifically entail. two students mentioned further study, of which one considered music therapy. . . . summary. overall, the focus groups revealed students demonstrated an increase in a realistic understanding of potential future employment as they progressed through their degree. concern for impending graduation was more significant in year four, relating more so to graduates leaving their community and close network of student musicians rather than their concern for prospective employability, as all were achieving active and proactive portfolio careers within and external to the music industry. students’ five-year goals consider employability from minimal sources in the earlier years to several in the later years; however, there is a general lack of reliance on one type of activity. it is unclear why teaching was only nominally referred to as a possible source of employment by third-year students. self-instigated work and the future prospect of such was mentioned in all focus-group conversations and surveys. the paper survey revealed that students re-evaluated their career ambitions following their first-year experience of their degree, had a strong understanding of the music industry by year four and generally felt confident they could successfully instigate their own creative projects (see table . ). whether these results were impacted by mlaam is unclear; however, as mentioned in section . . . students recognised the value of supporting business skills and considered more was required within their degree. unusually, all but the third-year students positively considered teaching to be a part of their career in five years’ time. second-year students reported the most confidence in the music industry and in their ability to work with their colleagues. that the fourth years ranked the lowest in both categories was possibly influenced by their anxious perspective of graduation. table . employability perspectives of focus groups: weighted averages (out of ) by student year level statement: st year nd year rd year th year my career ambition has changed since the beginning of my degree . . . i feel i have a solid understanding of the music industry . . . i feel confident i can successfully instigate my own creative projects if required . . . i envision teaching to be a part of my career for the next years . . . . i have a positive attitude towards the music industry . . . . i have strong inter/intra personal skills . . . . . the non-musician perception of a music career. the focus-group participants identified dissimilarities to their non-music peers, colleagues and family members. students reported that their non-music friends possessed ‘less drive’ (kate, yfg), did not understand their rehearsal regime and could not comprehend what a student musician gained upon degree graduation, as jemima’s ( yfg) said, ‘what are you going to get at the end of it? so, what does that give you?’ students described non-music ambitions as ‘clearly defined career paths’ but observed their non-music friends were not enjoying their degrees. harry ( yfg) explained, ‘i look at my friends who do law and it where they have got a five-year double degree and they are just kicking along regretting [it]’. loretta ( yfg), who lived in a college residence, also observed, ‘very, very, very rarely do i see anyone that actually wants to do anything to do with their study’. the student musicians considered themselves to be more connected and natural networkers: we play with people all the time whereas they [non-music students] go to a lecture and then they go home. whereas we have more time here in a way. so you are not necessarily networking but you are making friends as well. (maree, yfg) they agreed that friendships formed quickly owing to similar interests and a like-minded approach to their music, and many suggested they felt more personally developed than their non-music friends because of ‘the self-driven aspects of the con’, despite the lack of career ‘destination’ (kylie, yfg), and the proactive career approach required, as described by julie ( yfg): ‘we all face the sobering fact that when we finish we are not going to intern at a hospital [for example]’. jane ( yfg) highlighted the degree of competition and effort required to gain entrance into the institution for student musicians’ compared to non-musicians’ career motivations: you need to actually want to pursue it but the majority of people [who get] op or better can do a business course at cqu [central queensland university] or an online university. so there are a lot of courses where even if you have absolutely no interest you can still do that course. harry ( yfg) stated the exception to the rule was ‘biomed science, or pre-med science … [anything] that is a super-selective process’. bert ( yfg) thought the organisational psychology of the institution contributed to student musicians’ perceived superior development: the institution gives us a setting where we can interact with other like-minded people. so i think being surrounded by people who love doing what you do gives a lot of power and that’s probably what would have propelled us in terms of feeling more comfortable with ourselves and feeling more developed. the students stated that during their undergraduate degree, their education and career aspirations were queried and misunderstood by most of their non-music peers. for example, grace ( yfg) said, after telling her mentors, teachers and friends she would audition for tertiary music, ‘without exception everyone seemed to react as though it was a waste of time. [they said] “how dare you waste your intelligence, your skills on something that doesn’t matter”’. it could be argued that these opinions of non- musicians negatively affect the student musicians’ developing self-concept and their degree experience, and in turn their mid-degree slump and subsequent career choices. . . perceived career sustainability skills. the focus groups were asked, what skills are needed to sustain a successful career? likewise, in their paper survey, they were asked the open question, what skills are required to be a successful musician? responses included: • professional ‘hard’ skills: marketing, budgeting, business, promotion, industry knowledge, entrepreneurship • professional ‘soft’ skills: networking, inter/intrapersonal skills, communication, time management, ‘good attitude’ and personality, open mindedness, humility, reliability, professionalism • personal ‘soft’ skills: dedication, perseverance, resilience, passion, patience, motivation, discipline, commitment, work ethic • technical/music skills: musicianship, instrumental, aural awareness, talent, technique and creativity. no preference for a specific category of skills by degree year, major study or gender was discerned (see appendix i); however, only one person mentioned ‘creativity’, and there was no bias towards specific skills by those with perceivably less- defined career paths. one student suggested she had learnt interpersonal skills during her conservatorium performance activities: ‘my first year was not really so much about playing the horn … my first year was learning about the hierarchy of the section … how to navigate the … protocol’ (vivienne, yfg). jane ( yfg), who had experienced a business degree the year prior, agreed ‘life skills’ were fostered within the conservatoire environment and that ‘music replaces that life experience in a way’. deanne ( yfg) noticed other students were yet to realise the importance of such skills and considered that explicit discussion was needed at undergraduate level: there’s some people who don’t realise it even now.… because they are so good as musicians it’s so upsetting to see it.… somewhere it’s going to happen and they are going to finally realise that it’s too late. it’s good to notice now. peter ( yfg) warned against spending too much time in the practice room and considered life-balance as a skill to mitigate, ‘a distorted picture of reality’. according to harry ( yfg) developing this skill enables one to ‘keep up with the times’ because ‘the way music is being approached these days is so different’. anne ( yfg) also found the value in learning the ‘hard’ skills within the mlaam courses and criticised the younger students who did not: when people are young in their first year, they don’t think so as much and they [say] ‘oh i have to do this assignment …’ and i just say, ‘you are an idiot because you are going to need that kind of stuff!!!’ ralph ( yfg) acknowledged the ‘learning how to learn’ approach to major study was a transferable skill utilised in his own teaching: ‘my students can actually improve a lot quicker than other students because i am teaching them these things that [my major study teacher] has taught me’. dockwray and moore ( ) identified ‘a growing need to highlight the non-subject-specific skills or, more specifically, the transferable skills that are acquired in a music degree and are necessary for post- university employment’ (p. ). lincoln ( yfg) recognised the transferability of these musicians’ skills into non-music areas of the workforce, but was resistant to do so: if you don’t want to transfer them, that’s more of a problem than not having the skills in the first place. for example, i don’t want to go and do anything else really…. because there’s heaps of stuff i can do and there’s heaps of stuff i have done but i hated my life during that time and this [music] is what i want to do. . curriculum vitae analysis the cv was set as a one-page task because educational, funding and auditioning institutions often require this length. it included standard information such as education history and results, personal contact details and referees. students were able to select the cv purpose (e.g. school teaching, grant and/or audition application) and encouraged to include applicable industry experience. they were counselled in class about sequencing their experience (e.g.. teaching first, performance second) to align with their employer audience. it must be noted that all students have participated in the first course of the mlaam strand addressing degree engagement, career theory and pathways, sustainable musicians’ health, networking and strategies for career entry. ninety-two students were enrolled in mlaam in , of which submitted assessment, and in , of which all submitted the task. as the course convenor and lecturer, i analysed and coded the cvs, investigating the nature and duration of professional industry activity, additional internal/external and extracurricular training activities, referee choices, and community music engagement. for ease of identification, professional activity was defined as an exchange of money for services. students were further classified as classical, jazz, composition, cross studies and music technology students to identify trends in their chosen industry activities. at the time of writing, there were no published studies using this form of data collection that could inform this process. therefore, the merits and limitations of the methodology are considered below. in using student formative assessment responses as research data, the accuracy of what the students include is a risk. however, within class it was discussed that a cv can contain what has been actioned to date, in addition to proposed future projects. this enabled students to describe their aspirations without misrepresentation. like the lsa, aside from spelling/grammatical/chronological/format errors, there was no wrong answer. however, inappropriate elements may be unnecessarily included. for example, regardless of the implied transferable skills, it was undesirable to include hospitality experience if writing a cv for a competitive national grant. conversely, it is possible that pertinent detail had been left out to meet the one-page limit. students considered that some information, such as busking, was not suitable for inclusion or that cross- genre activity was not relevant to their intended cv outcomes. my three decades of international/national music industry experience in a wide variety of domains was useful in the recognition of valid industry activity. my lived experience and extensive industry knowledge helped to inform and form conclusions regarding student employment behaviours and processes; no unreasonable inclusions were noted in the students’ responses. as course convenor and lecturer, my personal class observation also contributed to the findings. in and , the mlaam students submitted their cv assignment. table . indicates the breakdown of major study focus; subcategories are listed in table . (percentages were rounded to the nearest whole unit). table . categorisation of the and mlaam classes category no. of students ( ) % of cohort ( ) no. of students ( ) % of cohort ( ) classical jazz composition music technology cross-studies table . sub-categorisation of the and classes category no. of students ( ) % of class ( ) no. of students ( ) % of class ( ) classical voice classical piano classical violin classical flute classical guitar classical horn classical saxophone jazz saxophone jazz trumpet jazz voice classical oboe composition classical cello classical clarinet jazz bass jazz drums classical and jazz percussion classical bass trombone classical double bass classical harp classical trombone classical tuba classical viola jazz guitar jazz percussion music technology classical bassoon classical percussion classical trumpet jazz flute jazz piano the assignments were analysed to determine what employment and extracurricular activity students incorporated during and prior to their degree. considering the higher population of jazz and classical students, their results are discussed in greater detail. the composition, music technology and cross-studies students’ employment activity is broadly summarised to preserve anonymity. table . indicates that classical voice, piano and violin contributed to over a third of the class. this is not surprising, as both the piano and violin are widely recognised as instruments that can be begun from a very early age, enabling a larger population at a competitive standard. it can be argued that classical voice is a larger category owing to its subcategories of opera, soprano, alto, tenor and baritone voices. . . duration of employment. the duration of professional performance experience spanned – years ( ) and – years ( ), and for teaching, – years ( ) and – years ( ). approximately % ( ) and % ( ) of the classes were working in one or both domains (see table . ). engagement as both performers and teachers was reported by % ( ) and % ( ). table . employment activity in the whole class employment no. of students ( ) no. of cohort ( ) no. of students ( ) % of cohort ( ) no professional work at all teaching and performance teaching only performance only . . performance employment. . . . classical students. of the classical students claiming professional performance activity, % ( ) and % ( ) began during their degree and the remaining % ( ) and % ( ) began prior. the former category largely involved sessional contract work with professional orchestras perhaps because their degree enabled access to new networks and opportunities previously unavailable or not envisaged. conversely, the activity prior to the degree was more self-instigated work such as chamber music and gigging employment, though exceptions existed for mature-age students possessing prior study in other countries and/or universities. upon closer scrutiny, classical student performance work consisted of a large quantity of sessional contract work with orchestras throughout australia, opera queensland chorus, pro-amateur (paid) theatre work and scratch orchestras, and as church organists. self-instigated work consisted of piano accompaniment, gigging (band singer/member, chamber musician, soloist/piano recitalist, guitar/saxophone quartet), touring, and vocalist in a heavy metal band. some of these students operated outside of their major study. to illustrate, one vocal major performed and taught stringed instruments, and a cellist also taught saxophone at a music school. many students maintained music activities initiated prior to their degree enrolment in non- classical genres such as performing in covers bands as a vocalist or guitarist. this study revealed the stereotype of the classical student pianist aspiring to a life of a solo recitalist might not be justified. only three of the ( ) and two of the seven ( ) classical piano students placed performance as their cv focus. however, the entire piano cohorts’ employment did demonstrate a variety of self-instigated performance work such as recitalist in various venues. in addition to teaching, roles of accompanist, songwriter and church organist were listed. . . . jazz students. for the jazz students, % of the ( ) and % of the ( ) professionally active began their professional performance employment prior to their degree and the remaining % ( ) and % ( ) during. for , this is more than twice the classical percentage, indicating an alternate employability mindset; was less extreme. performance activity was higher than for the classical students— % of students ( ) and % of students ( ). however, contract work was not as prevalent as it was for classical students. exceptions included established jazz orchestras where the pay is significantly less structured or secure compared to professional classical orchestras, and one vocal student’s voice-over artist activity. self- instigated work was of a similar nature to the classical cohort, with gigging in the form of duo and band work for weddings, corporate events, festivals, venue residencies and touring. there was one obscure reference to burlesque show performance. only one jazz student mentioned she performed in a classical string quartet; otherwise all students remained in employment related to their major study. . . teaching employment (classical and jazz students). teaching employment for both jazz and classical students occurred through music school enterprise, students’ private music studio practice and in local primary/secondary schools (see tables . and . ). table . teaching employment domains of classical students (multiple response) employment type no. of students ( ) % of ( ) no. of students ( ) % of ( ) private studio teaching music schools (businesses etc.) schools (primary/secondary) tutor for music camps table . teaching employment domains of jazz students (multiple response) employment type no. of students ( ) % of teaching ( ) no. of students ( ) % of teaching ( ) private studio teaching music schools (businesses etc.) schools (primary/secondary) tutor for music camps n/a n/a fifty-five per cent of the ( ) and % of the ( ) of the classical students had begun teaching during their degree, compared to % of the ( ) and % of the ( ) jazz student teachers. many students taught a multitude of instruments plus music theory. private studio teaching was the most common form of teaching employment for all students, particularly within the jazz category, second to music schools, followed by primary and secondary school peripatetic employment. overall, over a third to just under half of the third-year students participated in private teaching practice, with over one quarter employed by music school enterprises and – % were engaged in primary and secondary schools as peripatetic music tutors (see table . ). furthermore in , % were employed as tutors for music camps. table . teaching employment of the total class, including composition, music technology and crossover genres (multiple response) employment type no. of students ( ) % of ( ) no. of students ( ) % of ( ) private studio teaching music schools (businesses etc.) schools (primary/secondary) tutor for music camps . . professional and community profile (composer and cross-studies students). . . . . for , the three composition students submitted cvs relating to professional performance in bands and compositions for film, radio, television, and their own projects. one teaches in a music school and a primary/secondary school. their extracurricular training was limited, one citing composition for departmental lunchtime concerts and playing violin for a training orchestra. overall, the cv focus varied between production, performance and composition students. their choice of genre was very diverse and two out of three began their professional performance/production activity during their degree. one had engaged with performance as a rock guitarist and singer for three years prior to degree commencement. the cross-studies student had engaged with both professional performance and teaching for three and two years, respectively, and was beginning this work during her degree. her performance work was self-instigated, whereas her teaching ranged from private classes to general schools and music schools. . . . . of the five composition students enrolled in , none was actively teaching and only two were engaged in paid professional work. this included short film, tv, eps and opera composition, in addition to performance work as a session musician and, for one, a street artist. community engagement included work in community orchestras, music societies, amateur theatre and film festivals. . . extracurricular activities. many students mentioned activities that were supplementary to conservatoire training. classical students indicated involvement with youth programmes such as australian youth orchestra, queensland youth symphony, queensland youth korean orchestra and opera queensland young artists. these exist as partly government funded, auditioned, paid-membership organisations with a long tradition of providing youth with extracurricular music training opportunities. surprisingly, the queensland philharmonia orchestra, a student-led group based in brisbane, received the most mention beyond the other activities. unlike the other orchestras listed, at the time of writing this ensemble was not government funded, membership based or entry auditioned. it did not operate in . the jazz students had only minor references to the queensland youth orchestra big band and one listed amateur music theatre. this lack of extracurricular engagement could be attributed to the limited local extracurricular high-level jazz training organisations available in queensland compared to those for classical student musicians. . . community music. community music involvement was mentioned by many of the classical students. this included community orchestras, choirs, churches, music theatre production companies, brass bands and music societies. the jazz students did not declare as much community activity by comparison but were involved in more diverse groups such as community big bands, brass bands, music theatre productions, choirs, and a celtic fiddle club. . . future projects. proposed future projects included further study (primarily from classical student musicians), festival engagement, touring, recording projects and event management (jazz student musicians). it is apparent that a strong distinction between these cohorts exists beyond the degree. the jazz musicians felt confident to continue their self- development using the industry as their platform, whereas the classical musicians preferred to hone their self-development using institutionalised study. . . summary. this cv analysis confirmed that % ( ) and % ( ) of third-year qcgu bachelor of music students were actively employed in the area of their major study. this indicated a high capability for self-employment between one to two domains of the music profession during their undergraduate degree. of note, students’ employability skills were developing alongside, rather than away from, their major study education. however, whether these employability skill sets were being achieved at an acceptable industry standard was not determined. this analysis did not investigate the students’ weekly hours of work or the quality and professional level. where the classical cohort relied more on contract work with larger organisations, the jazz students were more self-reliant owing to the lack of institutionalised opportunities. that stated, jazz musicians might have the added advantage of perceived accessibility of music by generic audiences compared to the classical students. however, there is no research to date that can confirm this. given the discourse surrounding declining audiences and the reduction of orchestras and opera houses, there appears to be a substantial amount of contract work for undergraduate classical music students in brisbane, queensland. . chapter summary students reported they entered their undergraduate music studies with clear visions of their positive and negative future possible selves and half of the cohort had already begun developing their professional performance and teaching employment portfolios. students’ romanticised career aspirations remained relatively unchanged until the second or third year of their degree when they either experienced the mid- degree slump or considered the realities of their future. this process involved a progression from a music student to student musician identity where their self-concept, self-efficacy and professional identity was challenged and recalibrated. this transition occurred irrespective of their growing professional activity in the domains of performance, teaching, composition and production. fourth-year students expressed further anxiety about graduation; however, this did not relate to their fear of entering the profession as they were already active, but more to the loss of their network and conservatorium community. their portfolio of work usually expanded during their degree from one to more music domains and, for some, included non-music related employment. in addition to quantity, the diversity and quality of professional work increased throughout their degree. by their third year, to % of students were active in music-related employment. students also supplemented their degree curriculum with extracurricular and community music performance activities. in their desire to further attain performance experience, there appeared to be an accepted process of achieving paid work via unpaid performance. students did not have the same approach to gaining teaching employment. conservatorium faculty were unlikely to recommend employment to the students. furthermore, their industry advice was minimal if at all present. however, given they are the primary source of extrinsic motivation for students, there appears to be an opportunity for the faculty to further assist with students’ professional identity transformation beyond static role models. although the students reported initial support by their non-music friends, family and colleagues, they also suggested these people could not understand the value of a career in music and similarly lacked passion for their own non-music linear careers. arguably, these perceptions influenced the student musicians’ professional identity formulation process. nonetheless, the students’ reflective advice to the incoming first years to seek help, remain connected, work hard, avoid comparative thinking, maintain professionalism, consider time management, stay open and remain independent throughout their degree could mitigate the mid-degree slump and apply to career sustainability. whether this advice had been ascertained via mlaam education is uncertain; however, older students did speak favourably of the course and identified business skills as necessary to their career sustainability. in addition, they argued for a more flexible degree curriculum and assessment process relevant to their current aspirations, audience connectivity and changing music preferences. students’ self- created employment activities and perception of appropriate sustainable career skills were various and not specific to their year level, gender, instrument or genre of training, despite their perceptions of a segregated conservatoire community. however, classical student musicians were more likely to proceed to further postgraduate music study than jazz student musicians. from this, a conservatoire student lifecycle can be ascertained. lizzio’s ( ) student lifecycle framework provides an agenda for ‘describing the constellation of evolving identities, needs and purposes as students enter into, move through and graduate from university’ (p. ), and can be adapted to include the qcgu students’ degree and industry experience (see table . ). table . the conservatoire student lifecycle year level degree stage degree approach career considerations industry activity transition in music student high/clear aspirations in general. %: teaching or performance or non-music employment. core skill development and a restrictive curriculum inhibits further work. transition through music student => student musician (mid-degree slump) considering more study, a mix of realistic and high aspirations. %: developing a portfolio of teaching and/or performance and/or non-music employment (transition from unpaid to paid work). transition through/out student musician (mid-degree slump) considering more study, a mix of realistic and high aspirations. recalibration of professional relationship with music, consolidation of skills. – %: increasing portfolio of teaching/composition/ performance and non-music employment (some choosing less unpaid music employment). quality of professional experience improving. increased self-created activity. transition out student musician => music professional consideration of personal happiness and further professional development. a realistic understanding of future pathways. %: increasing and diverse portfolio of teaching/performance/ composition/non-music employment (mostly paid). many involved in high-quality professional employment and self- created activity. the identity transformation from music student to student musician, or mid- degree slump, could be regarded as the tension between ‘claimed identity: what our students may wish to be/want to become’, in this case a dreamer, realist or artist, and ‘required & encouraged identity: what we know our students will need to be/what the wider and future contexts require them to become’ (lizzio, , p. ), as informed via their one-to-one lecturer role models, vocational preparation education and growing professional experience. lizzio ( ) suggested that ‘“identity transactions” between educators and students that are complementary or conflictual … may have positive or negative consequences for student maturity’ (p. ), advocating for ‘partnered professionalism’, where educators ‘encourage a broader and deeper educational agenda and our student[s] claim the associated identity space’ (p. ). his proposal that effective identity development can be assisted by effective partnerships or working relationships, between academic and professional staff; academic colleagues; profession, employers, discipline; and teachers and students, bodes well for conservatoires, as students are already well-placed to interact with these people. therefore, there is an opportunity to create professional partnerships and utilise the students’ professional practice not only within vocational preparation such as mlaam, but also more broadly throughout the degree curriculum. chapter : tertiary music educators and arts policy advisors’ attitudes and professional practice relating to vocational preparation design this chapter reports the industry knowledge, attitudes and recommendations of selected qcgu faculty, notable arts industry leaders, higher music education directors and vocational preparation lecturers. questions were asked to gain an understanding of the current and future industry trends, the organisational and administrative processes within which educators function, and participants’ perspective of student musicians’ career aspirations and appropriate undergraduate music education for employability outcomes. one-to-one semi-structured interviews were held between january and february in person and via skypetm. . faculty twelve qcgu lecturers participated in semi-structured one-to-one interviews during february (see table . ). questions sought information on their attitudes and recommendations relating to the music industry, tertiary music education environment, student aspirations and skills required, the career advice they consciously impart to students, mlaam awareness, and course design. participants had national and international careers in their field in a range of current and previous activities such as performance, composition, music technology and research. unless otherwise specified, all personal names in this section refer to the pseudonyms in table . . table . faculty participants name (pseudonym) age (as of ) gender area luke male research and literature studies jill female research and literature studies john male music technology boris male music technology dean male performance janelle female performance bruce male performance mark male performance sharon female performance eric male performance miles male performance helen female performance and research . . perceived industry change. faculty, for the most part, appeared to be informed about the current music industry and communicated their views on a mix of positive and negative influences on music industry change, primarily technological and financial, along with changing artistic values and increased competition. those more academically oriented in their tertiary roles appeared less confident in venturing an opinion about the industry dynamics: ‘my understanding of the music industry has been very coloured by the queensland con, so in terms of those broader issues my main experience has been through the filter of tertiary music education’ (luke). the most notable observations included the impact of macro-environmental forces such as audio technology developments that influenced ‘cut[s] to the bands or [theatre] pit bands in size’ (bruce), and reduced funds: ‘the orchestras have had funding cuts, casuals are required less. even the opera and ballet try to do it [perform] on reduced instrumentation to save money’ (bruce). mark suggested diminished funds also occurred ‘from both the government sector as well as the private sector’ and john further explained: we have had this blip in human history where the public has funded high-level arts-making for about years and because we have grown up in it we think it’s normal. but it’s essentially been a private philanthropic scene for most of human history and i think we are moving back towards it. the reduced ‘audience size and support’ (mark) was considered ongoing, but boris suggested, ‘i think peoples’ needs and desires for participating in music and being entertained by music, these things really don’t change fundamentally. it’s the forms of that, the delivery of that changes’, referencing technological developments in file sharing and downloads as a direct contributor to lowered income streams for musicians. static income was discussed by john, who indicated it was a driver for the versatility and flexibility required by so many musicians: when i started out, even before i trained, you could get $ –$ per gig in the s and you get the same now—money has stalled. even publishing deals went to a quarter of what it [sic] was and film and tv music work decreased significantly as well. so suddenly you no longer had the budget to hire an engineer—so you had to become an engineer. although janelle agreed that a ‘more and more versatile kind of musician seems to be needed in the current society’, she countered that priorities remained the same: ‘however for me nothing really changed because i believe that unless you are professional, in the way you play your instrument, you can’t really consider yourself a quality musician’. yet, mark, along with other faculty staff, noted that the standard and competition had increased for orchestral musicians: ‘for every two players when i was a graduate you probably have now that play at that standard. so, it is a far more competitive process for ever-decreasing positions i think’. miles noted the opportunity for self-promotion via online social media platforms had changed the scope of rising competition: ‘it’s like the independent musician has a lot of advantages, there are a lot of tools that can be used, but at the same time everyone has those tools, so everyone is on the same playing field really’. john also recognised the recording technology had increased user accessibility, which meant a change in sound quality and listening preferences: so many players have realised that they don’t have to pay the guy in the suit to make their music—they have more control from the beginning to end. having the means of production means stylistically the music changes as well. the means of making music has changed. while miles acknowledged that ‘the big record labels aren’t controlling the industry as much—which is good and bad’, he lamented that ‘all that wonderful equipment and that situation [recording studios] is not getting used’ and therefore the quality of production was diminishing. further to this, john described an ‘exciting’ change as ‘the walls are crumbling between art music and popular music at a magnificent rate’. boris reflected this had an impact at an institutional level: ‘so that is just with an institution that reflects the broader culture, so there has been a shift i guess, or sort of an expansion in the number of genres of music that are fairly widely practised’ and ‘a sort of focus on the arts and culture as an industry which wasn’t probably there previously’ otherwise known as the ‘creative industries’ (caves, ) or ‘creative economy’ (cunningham, ; tschmuck et al., ). for those more active in art performance such as opera, the movement away from an ‘art for art’s sake’ mindset was not welcome: ‘in my own jaded view, it has become more insufferable, the people you have to work with, the conditions, the expectations, the priorities—[all] not geared towards the music. i don’t see it as having improved in any way’ (sharon). sharon suggested priorities had been replaced by a ‘superficial’ focus on ‘looks’, ‘marketing’ and a lack of ethics within the industry: it used to be that music was the god, now it is money and sales and i think as long as the quality of music making is the goal there will be integrity, but i don’t think there is much integrity in what goes on internationally. yet eric suggested australia was doing well by international standards and its ‘fierce’ competition. he suggested the current australian pre-tertiary music education was to the benefit of its music industry but the employment opportunities (performance or otherwise) naturally did not remain in the capital cities: ‘we need people who are enterprising and they see and find out the need for music where it exists … go to the smaller communities, go to the outback, go up north’. in summary, music employment remuneration had not grown by comparison with the consumer price index, which could be attributed to the growth of high-quality competition and inclusion of the non-professionally trained musician. in addition, the faculty acknowledged the decline of available contract and full-time work largely influenced by the introduction of technology, a reduction in arts funding, and the disintegration of traditional barriers to market entry. the increased competition was perceived to be greater abroad, and by comparison australia was doing well; however, one needed to seek alternate locations and be prepared to travel. absence of funding was driving traditional art forms to seek greater revenue at the expense of historical integrity. music genres were continuing to be redefined, which affected how institutions delivered undergraduate music training. boris was more pragmatic about the overall industry change: the arts, the music and people find itself in its familiar territory over the last several hundreds of years, which is economically marginalised. again, if you take the broader picture it is just business as usual … i am saying that you could get depressed about it but i don’t think it helps. . . perceived tertiary music change. faculty perceived three key areas of tertiary music change: the delivery of education, student engagement and the overarching impact of the university environment. the general consensus was that change was ongoing and not necessarily resulting in the creation of better performers and teachers of western art music owing to political, economic, social, technological and legal influences. . . . education. higher music education was viewed by faculty as less rigorous than previously experienced, owing to the revision of bachelor of music degrees from four to three years (association européenne des conservatoires, ), and it has ‘become a little watered down in recent years especially’ (helen). increased class sizes and increased online delivery were a global trend in higher education. a change from the ‘sage-on- the-stage’ to ‘guide-on-the-side’ or ‘meddler-in-the-middle’ approach to teaching (mcwilliam, , p. ) was understood to be because ‘students come to the classroom or learning space with tremendous life experience and music knowledge and we have got to tap into that’ (jill). this also had an impact on programme design, as helen considered the ‘conservatorium doesn’t direct your time quite as ferociously as it once might have’. luke suggested that ‘there is not enough space to fit in to a [degree] the things one feels should be there’, and he felt ‘saddened’ that in the name of diversity, so much was omitted at the expense of ‘harmony, theory, and the understanding of the cultural context’ of music. describing it as a ‘vicious circle’, luke warned, ‘as soon as you don’t have that then the tradition is less widely understood and less graspable and then its relevance is then perceived to be less’. conversely, he recognised that one degree ‘can’t do everything for everybody’ and there remained a need for ‘flexibility to allow people to focus on their interests, their skills and where they want to develop’. faculty concurred that degree offerings had expanded to include jazz, classical and popular music and the choices within these programmes were quite diverse to suit the needs of the changing music industry focus. this extended across the university with an overall expectation of increased vocational outcomes because universities: were originally set up as scholarship for the privileged few who didn’t have to worry about economics … so the expectations of students about their vocational outcomes are much higher now than they were previously, and so that has required a shift in curriculum pedagogy in order to accommodate those shifts. (boris) john stated that conservatoires were no longer ‘pedalling the myth … that there is enough work’, which also contributed to the changed teaching approach in the master-apprentice domain. the idea of ‘learn from the master to then obtain work’ has now shifted to ‘learn from the master but employment is precarious’. the master- apprentice model continued to be valued by faculty, but increased student numbers, and fewer and shorter lessons were observed as trends towards extinction, ‘so you get more students and less time with them which i find is a negative experience’ (janelle). . . . students. faculty indicated the students appeared distracted by the growing social media technology and educational choices available, and ‘practising goes down the list of priorities’ (bruce). eric also lamented that the pressure to work while at university was ‘a crime’: ‘they have to earn money, because some parents even make them pay to stay at home, what a mentality!’ dean recognised they have an increased ‘need for a career at the end of graduation but at the same time they are less realistic about it’. regardless, there seemed to be some disagreement regarding the skills and capabilities of the current student musician. miles reflected his experience of australian and us contexts: ‘the quality has definitely increased over there and here—across the board’. dean felt the standard of those auditioning had dropped within his department, but internationally he perceived it as more competitive than years ago. he worried about the students’ lackadaisical approach to their studies: ‘they need to be sharper about it, not more relaxed about it. but that’s here [australia] specifically’. bruce suggested that his higher rate of student attrition was due to a lack of commitment to the craft: ‘they are not interested in putting [in] the time to do it properly’. helen suggested that in spite of the reduced lesson time and degree duration, it was those students who invested more time in practice and networking who were ‘really successful as performers’. she also suggested that ‘school education has probably changed more than university education’ in that it has moved from ‘highly rigorous rote learning and repetition’, which to a certain extent is valued within performance development. she saw this as a degradation of the entry student skill-base: ‘they are very comfortable and relaxed but maybe not as technically proficient and it’s a bit of a shock when they have to really kind of snap into it and there is no shortcut to being a professional’ (helen). jill felt frustrated with her colleagues’ discourse on the lack of literacy skills the current generation bring to university level and held an alternate perspective: if you look at the way that these young people are operating in such a complicated and dynamic world, they are doing pretty well, and i don’t think we are doing enough to tap into those skills that they already have there when you just actually ask them and hear what they have to say. the dilemma is whether teachers should increase a hard-nosed ‘tough love’ approach to teaching and learning, and drive students to raise their standards within the competitive environment. john warned that in an environment where students subsidise their education, ‘you also have to be slightly paranoid of what students think of you because the concept of an anonymous sequential questionnaire with bullet points can be the difference between you getting a promotion or not getting it’. more so, for sessional staff, it is whether one is re-employed the following year or not. therefore, the student- as-customer was perceived to retain increasingly more power within the teacher-student relationship. john ventured that the biggest change was yet to come when ‘the full user pays, with the deregulation of the market which is coming in now’. . . . universities. the faculty identified their institution had fundamentally changed its core values of professional music education upon entering a federally funded university environment and perceived as increasingly litigious. john reminisced about ‘a golden period’ that was no longer apparent ‘where you got a tertiary appointment and could explore the real love of your life and the uni would see that as quite legitimate’. the dawkins reform (dawkins, ) and subsequent redirection of federal funding to research drove what mark perceived as ‘a massive change in focus from performance to research output’. although it has been vigorously argued that performance can be presented as research (schippers, ), one faculty member suggested that ‘the university is looking for more research-oriented administrative staff than performance staff’ (mark), which had influenced change in tertiary music education. another felt the original conservatoire identity was lost in catering for the diversity of industry vocations and ‘musical education has suffered’ as a result: in the institution’s intentions to become all embracing and all-inclusive there is now no place for the really gifted people who we want to bring in, because we are weighted down with bureaucracy and all that other crap that goes on and in fact doesn’t matter. (sharon) luke reflected sharon’s frustrations: ‘do we want an institution just for the sake of an institution if it isn’t actually good for the quality that comes from it?’ . . . summary. the faculty participants’ responses generally noted that with major changes to tertiary education, students were offered shortened degrees encompassing greater diversity, and therefore choice, which were delivered with an increasingly realistic perspective on current likely employment outcomes. perhaps faculty were too hasty to blame social media and the diversity offered for what they saw as lowered practice, fluctuating standards and the drive to earn an income during and immediately following their degree. it could be that some students had a perception that a degree will enable employment, but lost confidence and motivation upon discovering the reality. a four- year degree would allow more time than a three-year degree to develop foundational skills that would aid career confidence. one could introduce longer degrees as recommended in bennett’s ( ) doctoral research, but changes in higher education fee-paying policies may further prohibit students from enrolling, as i have observed. students might opt for degrees with higher employability outcomes that are not affected by the changing cultural attitudes towards the arts. from these perceived changes within education, the student dynamic, and the university environment, it would appear that faculty found the conservatoire transformation challenging their core values of the music profession. this was more so for those wishing to cling to the more traditional forms of performance. however, it would seem there is no choice but to continue to adapt, as the macro-environmental forces of the employment environment have proven to be too strong and dynamic. . . communicated student aspirations. faculty participants acknowledged audition interviews were the most likely time when students expressed career aspirations. career goals were very ambitious and often without a foundation of reason. helen often heard: ‘i would like to be a soloist’ and ‘i would like to be an orchestral musician’. but if you dig slightly deeper and ask what that means, they don’t actually know what that means; it just sounds like the right thing to do if you are a musician. further, eric heard aspirations to be like famous musicians: ‘i want to be like jacqueline du pré’. while he appreciated such idealism was a strong source of motivation to ‘get better’, he advised ‘it’s our business not to let them study music because they want to be a star’ and recommended the reality of the process beyond ‘practising and hard work and good luck’ needed to be communicated. his common, and rather brutal, response: ‘you will never be jacqueline du pré because at your age she was already a star. yo-yo ma too. but let’s see what i can tell you in one year’. in addition to a lack of realistic career understanding, sharon suggested there was an absence of self-awareness or consideration of alternative careers should the first aspiration not eventuate: oh well they all want careers. they probably think that’s what’s expected of them to say that—i don’t think they know actually. they all want to sing really well and they all hope they do well. i don’t know if any of them have considered what might happen if they don’t, or if they have the right character or nature to be singers. the faculty revealed a timeline of increasing awareness of career reality that students experienced throughout their degree. john recognised first-year music technology students possessed ‘beautiful dreams, and a level of delusion’, wishing to be music producers or pop stars. however, ‘by the end … lots say they want to be teachers’ (john). boris concurred, stating aspirations were related to the ‘things that they see are happening in the industry at the time’ and included dj, film composition and game audio design; however, he later acknowledged that ‘students are often anxious in their final year about what the future might hold for them’. mark suggested his students appeared more informed in third year, understanding the details of the orchestral profession and more importantly the viability of their aspirations in a global context: ‘there are a lot more [orchestral positions available] in germany, and they like to pursue their studies over there too, given that’s probably a centre of the style in which we trained in in australia’. bruce suggested his undergraduate students were keen to teach, progress to further study, or apply for defence band positions. luke felt the students’ aspirations to be a soloist or concert pianist had been communicated during one-to-one lessons rather than in his current role as academic lecturer: ‘these days i am mainly teaching in large classes so that doesn’t really come up’. however, janelle affirmed that a concert pianist career was the most popular choice, with the fallback comment ‘but if not [i] will teach’. she countered: ‘most of them don’t really know when they come, i think they want to explore and see how far they can go’. miles said he would like to know more about his jazz students’ career aspirations and broadly understood that they ‘have a simple view of that … either teaching or playing’. by nature of the instrument, dean’s students have realised ‘they have to do more than one thing. none of them say i just want to do orchestral’, and included teaching, casual orchestral, chamber music, recording and cruise-ship work. mark recognised that second year was viewed as a ‘make or break’ year where ‘they are on fire’ and ‘all they want to do is practice’. he acknowledged the student perception was ‘if you want to be on the audition circuit in a couple years, every hour you spend doing anything else is an hour that someone else is practising’. from the students’ initial high aspirations and romanticised understandings of career paths, it would appear they have either not experienced pre-tertiary education on the realities of the music profession or chosen to ignore such discourse. conversations about vocation and alternate career paths are more likely to occur during auditions and one-to-one lessons than the large class setting, suggesting the topic was considered personal. at first glance, while authentic career awareness is more likely in third year, it is more a result of the students’ perceived success or failure of increased second-year effort towards their high aspirations, rather than information from faculty staff. nevertheless, for some genres and related industry careers, the students have no choice but to be mindful of the viability of employment from the outset of training. . . changes in career aspirations. despite the romanticism encountered, some faculty had noticed a historical shift in career aspirations. bruce noticed a change in preference from performance to teaching outcomes: ‘now there is more of them going, doing a three-year [performance] degree then doing the dip ed and going and getting a teaching job’. eric thought students were more aware of the economy and heard less ‘i want to be a star’ dialogue: they are more down to earth and that’s a good thing. they know it’s not easy to survive in any profession, because there is so much unemployment, and that of course sinks down into the schools, into the families. my own observation of the pre-tertiary and tertiary music education environment concurs with eric’s. witnessing their parents endure the – gfc and the − brisbane floods also had an impact on students’ economical awareness and subsequent career choice. however, other faculty members did not dwell on this influence. mark considered that ‘most of them know they have to aspire to a portfolio career’, which he felt was valid in the ‘current [economical and artistic] climate’, stating ‘i don’t think it is going to change. i really don’t’. janelle suggested curriculum milestones indirectly guided the students’ career aspirations, explaining the ‘three strands’: the very best go to c strand, then we have b mainstream and then a for the people who gradually understand they are not so good at performance—they are better at other areas, [so] they have to find their strengths. she affirmed that teachers do counsel their students as to which strand is more appropriate ‘but if they don’t get the right mark they go there [strand a]—they don’t have a choice’. while this suggests that the current industry, economical environment and assessment outcomes communicate career realities, boris cautioned that designing tertiary music education of any kind should not be reactive to current influences but proactive to future possibilities: what students want to do is a ‘lag indicator’. in my view, it is not a very good indicator. they are technically not very good at anticipating trends in the industry changes because for them it is right in their face and they don’t yet have a perspective—a long time perspective—of trends. so they see things which are interesting now, and want to do that, and that is what drives particularly the tafe sector for example. hopefully the universities are slightly less influenced by that immediate scene and have a longer-term view and try and prepare students for the careers that will exist when they graduate, rather than the ones that we need. less performance work has created an increased interest in teaching and portfolio careers and, as boris has identified, tertiary music providers have adjusted to suit current industry trends. it is currently understood that portfolio music careers can include a diversity of full-time, part-time, contract or self-created music and non-music employment (cunningham et al., ; throsby & zednik, ); however, as the census categories continue to change, retrospective analysis is difficult and further inhibits future trend analysis. therefore, designing an appropriate vocational preparation strand in anticipation of future industry employment, contrary to students’ current, often-unrealistic expectations, is an ambitious task. . . staff contributions to career reality. regardless of industry change, current or otherwise, i considered it possible that vocation preparation courses were not necessary within the conservatoire curriculum. alternatively, it may exist informally elsewhere within the degree and the concept of formalised vocational preparation could be redundant. helen felt she contributed to the students’ perception of career reality by providing ‘as many different stimuli through their four-year degree so they can have as many different musical experiences’. her goal was to not only create a great musician ‘but the most open musician to opportunities, and learning to see what an opportunity is’. she also suggested students looked to her to review their cv and cover letter. in addition, she embedded the development of school education workshops within principal study activities and set tasks where students write their own music for their final semester recital. for the music technology students, boris had placed a very strong emphasis on the wil program to ease the transition from degree to industry. beyond this, advice was not sought: ‘sometimes they seek our advice, but i wouldn’t say that is a general thing’. faculty agreed it was themselves who often initiated career conversations: sometimes i have to … sometimes i find myself making a lot of suggestions. it seems sometimes that students don’t have the awareness that things are possible. i will say to them why don’t you investigate a national tour or make a recording. (miles) miles reflected the jazz students perceived such self-initiated employment activities to be beyond them: ‘something you did when you are good, or that is something that someone comes and asks you to do, maybe i thought that actually’. he regretted brisbane did not have as many exemplars or role models for these activities compared to new york, which affected the students’ confidence to be proactive: it’s like there is a template—[in the us] if you want it this is how you can do it and those people know how to do it really well. whereas here, it’s like, how to figure out how to do that. it’s like you’re flying blind and working in the dark. mark suggested the conversations were more initiated by the students’ parents prior to and during conservatoire enrolment asking pragmatic questions regarding available employment and prospective financial earnings, whereas his students commonly preferred to ask, ‘should i study overseas?’ faculty communicated their advice via shared personal stories, revealing pay rates and showing contracts, but largely the theme was undistorted truth: i make that clear from the first day, they will probably never get a[n orchestral] job. but there seems to be no [instrumentalist] graduating that is unemployed. so, there is so much work, especially in queensland, for instrumentalists and those that can tap into self-generated employment will always ‘make it’. (helen) some chose this strategy but delivered the message with optimism: ‘not by demolishing them, that’s of course the worst thing, but you always have to encourage your students that there is always a way to go’ (eric). others chose a more gentle approach, ‘oh i am never brutal. i try to be compassionate and humble actually’ (sharon). eric considered that australian students started their degrees very early in comparison to european students and that three years of study at that age was described as ‘you smell the little bit of air of what we do in music’ compared to the lifelong journey of music making. while aspirations were more likely communicated within the one-to-one setting, conversations regarding career concerns were less likely. as eric explained, the decreasing lessons and lesson times meant, ‘to cover the repertoire it is even not enough time, so we spend very little time talking about general issues’ and rather these would come up more broadly within the workshop environment. in short, informal conversations and processes regarding vocational preparation consisted of broader career perspectives rather than the basic skills of career management. some staff were proactive in embedding such skills and experiential learning within the curriculum; however, industry awareness was more likely to be discussed within a workshop context even though a one-to-one setting would be ideal for career discussion. it would appear the parents were more interested in their children’s employment sustainability than the students themselves and continued to be instrumental in career guidance and influence. therefore, an argument in favour of formalised vocation preparation within the degree curriculum remains valid. . . impressions of the future of music and student impact. following the faculty’s understanding of the music industry’s impact on tertiary music education, i was keen to consider their perspectives on future trends and subsequent ramifications on potential graduate employment. bruce considered community music was on the rise: ‘it’s just blossoming’. however, he suggested the future was a ‘bit bleak’ for professional performance and that australia, queensland in particular, did not have an arts culture: ‘well yes, we do, it’s called rugby league’. he felt that as tertiary music educators there was an opportunity to ‘spread that word [cultural education] more thoroughly throughout the community that people are aware of what we do and do embrace it’ in order to ‘improve the situation’. mark concurred with a bleak financial future of sustainable art music performance employment, where ‘in australia, arts will never be in a place of audience prominence’, and suggested the boundaries between art and entertainment were blurring as ‘we are all vying for the same dollar, the entertainment dollar’. rather than preserving current music practices, mark was more of the opinion that ‘we should be engaging and developing the art form’. he ventured, ‘i think we need to be looking at alternative ways of presenting music. and that is not to dumb the art form down, that is to give it relevance in our society, which is unique’, and advocated the commissioning and performing of australian music. helen described this as ‘to understand the scene you are working in’ and noted audience members can ‘shut off very, very quickly’. mark attributed this to changing preferences in music, by musicians and audiences, and that ‘the listening model’ is not enough: ‘i think the thing we need to feel the music as well as hear it—see it, taste it, feel it—have it make an impact on you’. john also acknowledged that while music remained largely unchanged as ‘an innate need for all of us to process the world and reflect the world back’, it possessed a more commercial meaning in society introduced from the twentieth century, which in turn would affect how musicians relate to their art form: the new model is that music is functional, you know because music is in supermarkets, it’s on tv. so, music to fulfil someone else’s desire or representation of a form of reality is a big change. for the future of making a living in music is for musicians to say: ‘i don’t call the shots but i am giving you, mr advertiser, what you want’. although music institutions have been adjusting their degree programmes according to the changes in the music profession, john indicated supply versus demand was something that needed to be ethically and openly challenged: we are creating a glut in the music institutions [of students]. it’s like pyramid selling, we just keep growing exponentially, but it’s a ponzi scheme because there is no work. at some point, we will have to own up to the fact. in spite of his indecision regarding the future of traditional classical performance, luke was wary of future conservatoires and the quality of graduates: i feel ambivalent about the future of these [traditional music] institutions because the institutionalisation of music has in many ways contributed to the nature of the problems in the first place. on the other hand, i do think that if we don’t have training institutions that train to pretty high standards, if we don’t have employment prospects that will value and enable people to dedicate large parts of their life to making this music in a really serious and committed way, then i have really genuine concerns. having remained active in a variety of professional music fields, i have yet to encounter one that does not demand standards of excellence, particularly in competitive freelance employment. perhaps luke’s perception that excellence is only retained in high art forms is due to his lack of experience in other forms of music making. eric predicted that western classical performance will flourish in china and provided a convincing argument citing population, the number of orchestras per city, and the use of western instruments even for chinese music. he suggested traditional art forms were not as successfully preserved in europe as widely thought, as pre-tertiary instrumental music was not as accessible. rather ‘the genuine interest in music, i see it in europe, is falling down as music becomes more elitist’. conversely, janelle was recently performing in germany and did not notice a decline: ‘it was a good audience as a whole, it was nice, and i didn’t feel it was dying’. however, eric summarised: so, there is a big shift now from a classical music interest, in classical music investment, in classical music, from the west to the east. which i find interesting. i blame the west to let it go, but if this is history—let’s be it. as a jazz musician, miles possessed a more ‘it’s what you make of it’ mindset: ‘the future of music is in the hands of whoever wants to put it in their hands’ and valued self-instigated employment in a global context: ‘you can create a subset of whatever you want and if you do it really well the world is your marketplace’. dean was also optimistic about his students’ future possibilities, but realised the concept of self- instigated work was yet to gain traction within the tertiary culture: ‘they can’t create an orchestral position that doesn’t exist, but they can create their own work. maybe not so much here, but in the us, it’s a big thing’. calling herself ‘jaded’, sharon was unimpressed with the current trend of opera in open public spaces: ‘i can only hope that people will return to real music, live music, not piped music … maybe there will be a return to smaller music groups, to chamber music, more intimate venues where singers are able to make a living as singers’. some of the faculty predicted a movement away from european art forms towards the investigation and development of australian music with relevance for the national culture and an opportunity to nurture community awareness of the value of music. however, in the interim, student musicians would need to acknowledge income streams would not necessarily be the same as those of their predecessors, but from self- created niche market employment. markets such as community and functional music were proposed to expand, but those wishing to retain traditional western art classical music may not necessarily seek refuge in europe, and would need to look to china or other asian countries. therefore, australian conservatoires would need to again rethink their training methods, retaining the integrity and importance of excellence alongside the development of creative entrepreneurship skills in support of self-instigated employment. the latter is adopted more readily within the us, and australia would take some time to culturally adapt, which has ramifications for courses such as mlaam. omitted by faculty was the growing development of cross-genre art, upholding viable collaborative employment options. . . defining a successful graduate. in asking the faculty participants ‘what is considered to be a successful student graduate?’, i hoped to gain some insight into their teaching agenda for employability and perceived hierarchies of employability success, which could be useful for communicating an aligned faculty opinion in mlaam lectures. their impressions of what entailed a successful student graduate were quite diverse. some staff valued intrinsic success and broad capabilities over high results: it’s not necessarily the best student, it’s the student that has been unbelievably supportive of everyone in the community, it’s a student that probably has a fairly diverse range of performing talents, and it’s a student that has a degree of humility in what they are doing, as well as great confidence. (helen) eric also valued ‘confidence’ as a driver ‘to succeed in their personal life and of course in professional life’. john valued ‘free thinkers’ and jill defined a successful graduate as those who were ‘open-minded’, ‘who can adapt’, ‘see a world beyond themselves’ and have a ‘sensitivity towards context, culture and the … powerful ways in which music operates in the world and can tap into that’. she also felt that ‘passion’ and ‘drive’ were a requirement for sustainability. bruce considered ‘success’ as one who demonstrated a high level of professionalism. he described this as ‘a consistent musician’, ‘a reliable person’, ‘is prepared’, ‘able to play’, ‘is flexible’, and ‘has to be someone that the other musicians want to work with and not just in the playing situation’. for miles, total immersion and commitment to the vocation defined success, ‘making a life in music, that’s important and it encompasses everything’. luke felt ‘the successful ones are the ones who keep doing it through their lives, and that is not always the ones that come out with the best results or the best external signs of things’. conversely, sharon suggested: the successful people are the ones who can make a decision to stop because they have decided that it’s not worth the effort or they have reached a certain point and won’t progress past it. reaching a decision that is definite is very successful and they save themselves a lot of heartache and a lot of money. some discussed extrinsic successes their graduates experienced such as high gpas, competitions, overseas studies, tertiary positions and full-time income. mark did not necessarily consider full-time orchestral employment as a strong indicator of success: ‘that is nice to do, and you have to be good, but you only have to be good at one thing … some of the most dysfunctional people i know just play the horn very well’. he also acknowledged this as a realisation that had occurred later in life: if you had asked me this question years ago it would be ‘all my students who are in principal positions in major symphony orchestras’, of which there are many, but some of those are not doing very well personally. as mark has demonstrated, these diverse views are personal and do change. overall, the faculty responses indicated an opportunity existed for students to be informed by the varying nature and hierarchies of success (intrinsic v. extrinsic), staff expectations and the challenges associated with attaining them. . . what should be included in vocational preparation in the conservatoire environment (mlaam)? there seemed to be a distinct separation between those who preferred a practical music skill focus within vocation preparation, and those who acknowledged the benefit of a career and business management agenda. eric spoke of including elements related to rhythm, movement, stage presence and communication, and how to sell oneself musically. he considered business skills more appropriate to students with greater confidence and evidence of high music capability, such as competition awards. he could not see how business skills assisted the developing musician or could possibly assist the development of their confidence: ‘i find it the most natural for real musicians who do music by love of music, that they grow in a way musically into the music, not by business thinking’. eric would prefer to increase musical grounding within their degrees, predominantly choir. sharon concurred with the idea of ‘practice-based things for the kids’ and suggested ‘four years of being [in] a choir and faced with sight reading, and practising what they are taught’. some of the faculty also saw the value of increased musical skill, and proposed ideas to create increased employment flexibility and versatility via experiential learning: ‘making sure that people who don’t improvise—improvise, and people who improvise—read scores. experiencing the things directly where the work is, joining a scoring session for example, having meaningful introductions to the technology of music’ (john). as it would be challenging to conduct such tasks in large classes of over students, they would be better placed in smaller courses or as the responsibility of the major study teacher. in addition, the majority of the faculty considered how vocational preparation would be relevant to their own genre, rather than a diverse student cohort. mark initially suggested a largely classical music performance-focused mlaam where the course would be broken down into modules such as ‘performance, teaching, studio teaching, one-to-one teaching, ensemble direction, musical performance, amateur performance’ in first year, from which aspects of philanthropy, advertising, application writing, and audition tape preparation could be introduced. jill acknowledged that one needed to cater for diversity, as not all students would want to solely perform. mark’s solution to the diverse styles offered throughout the degree was to include a teaching team that could teach to the specific genre (jazz, music technology, opera etc.) and mused, ‘i don't think any one person can teach the subject properly, it is actually farcical to think the one person can do it’. this would be ideal should a sustainable budget exist. conversely, segregated classes could hinder students’ social capital development and perpetuate perceived hierarchies of music employment. helen and luke both advocated that a philosophical understanding of the ‘context of what a musician is’ merits inclusion within a vocational preparation strand. luke felt such concepts ‘should have happened in school’ and were possibly too late to introduce in tertiary education. luke considered it particularly pertinent because: mlaam is not just about the monetary, financial, occupational opportunities— fill out a grant, doing an application—which is obviously really important. but actually what i would want, which is recognition that being a musician is a part of your life and it involves a certain discipline, a certain dedication, a certain involvement of what you do, that it will actually involve all sorts of hard work and [you’ll] have disappointments and frustrations and difficulties. but it has that enormously satisfying sense of long-term building towards always trying to be a bit better and actually to have the ability to have some sort of artistic statement and be sensitive to our art form throughout your life and dedicated to lifelong learning. helen added that students need an awareness of ‘what venues exist’, ‘the reality of the culture of what music is’ and ‘what does it mean to attend a concert and how does that support the musicians? how vital is it to build communities?’ she suggested these ideas were best suited to first year because without it students ‘don’t have the ability to dream, right?’ bruce also saw the need for students to gain awareness of employment opportunities available: ‘not necessarily saying which direction you are going to go, but these are your options and have that spelt out early’. in general, second and third year were considered by faculty as better placed for event design, funding and management, grant writing, invoice preparation, ‘business and life skills’ (boris), thus leaving first year for foundational understanding of a musician’s life and possible career paths. dean advocated experiential learning over simple theoretical delivery: ‘i think practical experience of doing it, setting up a concert, not just being told how to set up a concert, and learn from it. they need to know the territory too’. dean acknowledged that they needed to ‘get out of the walls of the con’ for it to have impact: ‘it doesn’t have to be successful [for students] to learn something’. . . general understanding of mlaam. overall, an understanding of the mlaam strand was not evident prior to their interviews. several staff members answered the question ‘what do you know about mlaam?’ with what they anticipated it should include: ‘well i am guessing it is a course that is designed to prepare musicians and music students for the realities of the music industry’ (jill), and ‘i expect that it is doing pretty much what i just described, or attempting to do what i described’ (boris). there was openly confessed ignorance: ‘i have no idea what’s in the curriculum’ (miles), ‘to be honest, i am very embarrassed that i haven’t done more at looking at the way in which it has been structured’ (luke), and, although the course had been running for two years, ‘not a lot, that it is new’ (sharon). faculty’s knowledge was based on what their students had disclosed and whether they had participated in the networking assessment. it would appear the negative aspects were more likely to be discussed ‘but that is with any subject’ (mark). student complaints were from those already more informed about career and industry pathways, and those struggling to find the relevance: ‘i am just going to be in orchestra, so i don’t need to know this’ (mark). however, mark did advise them, ‘you’ll be thankful for this not tomorrow, but probably in years’ time’ and rationalised that irrespective of student opinion, ‘we know through experience that this is stuff they need to know’. john had also observed mixed reactions to the courses: some students don’t get it, and i think that’s right you don’t have to make all students get stuff. some students are at that stage where they just want to learn to play and they resent having to think about their larger career. and for some students it’s like the light bulb goes on and they see that they can be whatever i want—i don’t have to be what my teacher tells me. dean suggested the student feedback was ‘mostly positive’ and considered the course as ‘i guess it’s a good idea’; however, he implied its impact was not enough: ‘i still think deep down they don’t really believe it’s going to be that hard—hard for others but not for them’. an opportunity exists to involve the faculty within the course delivery process, and for them to engage in constructive employability and career conversations within one-to-one and workshop times. ideally, career awareness should be further embedded within other courses as well as the pre-tertiary market to develop a culture of student and staff acceptance of an employability agenda. 	 . . opinion of mlaam (following explanation). following the explanation of the mlaam strand, most of the faculty were positive about the course design. upon reflection, i am surprised there was not more negative feedback, as i now note errors in the previous design of these courses, particularly in assessment weighting and inappropriate staging of career support skills, even though the overall intent of providing career support skills was sound. the second-year assessment of self-promotional tools and a marketing and audience development plan were considered premature in the lifecycle of the training musician, ‘because i don’t know that they have a sense of self yet’ (vanesssa). mark suggested the ‘heavily performance-focused [second-year] students’ would consider it ‘a waste of my time’ and wondered how this indifference would be dealt with. during my teaching, i had noticed a differing culture in second year compared to first and third, and initially associated it with puberty. john found this cultural barrier to be locational, ‘i have noticed coming to queensland that there is that element of middle-class apathy. i think people in sydney and melbourne are hungrier. so, i can understand why you see some of that’. bruce also likened such courses to ‘like brussels sprouts. they are good for you, no one is going to dispute that, but not everyone wants them’ and that delivering these would be a ‘tough road … on a couple fronts [staff and students]’. eric was generally resistant to the idea of mlaam, which he perceived as encouraging students to nurture overly ambitious career dreams rather than their career confidence development. like helen, he suggested students ‘don’t really know what they talk about’. he criticised the career planning within first year as counter to real- world experience ‘because it has [using hand motions signalling various spaces] that, this and then sometimes this’. he appreciated the concept of interviewing the musicians: ‘it’s good to make them reflect … and make contacts with professionals at an early age’. however, he did not agree with introducing too much reality too soon: ‘it’s like you have children and you don’t like to tell them at the early stage how dirty the world is, you know?’ i would argue that students are not children and would appreciate the honesty. sharon felt it should be contained within two years and could not see how it related to the classical voice students: ‘this stuff preparing for a career is a bit wasted on singers as most won’t have a career for some time to come. their immediate needs are other’. nevertheless, she did support cv writing as ‘extremely important’. faculty participants had further suggestions for inclusion. mark suggested more guest lecturers and musicians discussing their own lives would aid the problem of perceived irrelevance: ‘the more people you get in talking to them the better off they’ll be’, and it would ‘give the subject credibility’. however, luke was wary: ‘it’s a double- edged sword because as soon as you send it off to too many people the continuity gets lost and you don’t have that sense of building on what you have done before’. boris agreed with the career planning assessment but was interested in factoring in ‘plans b and c’ career strategies to empower students with multiple opportunities. bruce considered that a greater financial emphasis would be useful but realised it would be better placed in second or third year ‘if you went into superannuation and … life insurance [in first year]—no interest’. john suggested weekly physical health education was vital, but others wanted a greater music focus such as the inclusion of ‘stage behaviour’ for pianists (janelle) and ‘language’ for singers (sharon). mark regarded the courses as ‘really important’ but realised the responsibility of a successful outcome should not remain with one person: ‘it needs to be funded better, it needs a larger teaching team and we need more freedom with curriculum development, and that needs money’. conversely, dean considered the principle of the course to be sound: ‘it’s just up to them [the students] to make the best of it’. once again, faculty participants represented a divide between what is considered relevant to students’ current relationship with the music profession and what is required for the future. helen likened this to ‘genre-ism’ within institutions: people tend to think that their area has different needs or is superior or is intrinsically better. there is all these kind of hidden details in that and i think the good part about this course is that it doesn’t engage with that rhetoric at all, and it’s a really good chance for students to … hopefully learn to respect each other and what they are contributing rather than trying to make it into a hierarchy, which you know, is so much of what these institutions are based on hierarchy, whether we intend to or not. consequently, these hierarchical attitudes pervade the music industry and profession, in turn cycling back through to training institutions, perpetuating an ‘it doesn’t apply to me’ or closed approach to career management education. for many faculty participants, the perception of their students’ future was based on personal current and past industry experience rather than anticipating industry trends or the need for a broader understanding of the music industry at training level. many offered further suggestions, which, as mark recognised, would be impossible without suitable funding. . . required skills of a vocational preparation lecturer. faculty participants generally agreed that a person teaching vocation preparation needs to be currently or recently active as a musician, engaged within the community, understanding and accepting of all genres, and the embodiment of a portfolio career musician. miles suggested that someone who has also worked beyond the realm of contract musician and created his or her own employment is preferable. others suggested the person required a ‘positive outlook’ (boris) on the music industry and should not be ‘demotivating’ (dean). john valued one who could ‘see the bigger picture’ in a university environment where the ‘little picture … gets checked on’. mark also recognised the magnitude of the role and detailed the need for someone with knowledge of ensemble direction, philanthropy, advertising, copyright restrictions and tour management, ‘a psychologist, a psychiatrist … and someone who doesn’t like to sleep … and preferably no home life whatsoever’. sharon argued there is ‘such a varied number of subjects, you would need different lecturers for different things’. others were quick to add who should not instruct the course: someone who has worked as a teacher full time in the education queensland ... who has worked with the qso as their primary income source, or who’s worked in the conservatorium or who has been a student and done their undergrad, masters and phd without going outside the walls of the con or even studying overseas. (bruce) helen also realised someone solely working in a life in academia is not ideal, ‘[what] drives me crazy in academia is how many people are not active participants in their community. or have been more than years ago, so it’s not really relevant’. therefore, the onus on the lecturer would be to remain an active portfolio musician and be supported by their hiring university to remain as such so that the students ‘get taught from real authenticity and authentic outcomes, just the same as most [performance] teaching participants’ (boris). dean felt that real-world experience held more currency: ‘in the eyes of the students of course it’s more credible … it speaks more to them’. . . required skills of graduating musicians. faculty participants’ ideas of the skills graduating musicians should possess to some extent echoed the ‘griffith graduate attributes’:: griffith university prepares influential graduates to be: . knowledgeable and skilled, with critical judgement . effective communicators and collaborators . innovative, creative and entrepreneurial . socially responsible and engaged in their communities . culturally capable when working with first australians . effective in culturally diverse and international environments. (griffith university, ) the faculty (see appendix j) perceived that graduating musicians should have a strong grounding in fundamental music skill, communication and inter/intrapersonal skills, and established systems in business management. less popular were related skills such as pedagogy and career planning. janelle encouraged her students to ‘say yes’ as the opposite could hinder one’s career path. some unexpected skills included ‘cooking’ by john, who rationalised early career musicians needed to live cheaply. . . summary. overall, mlaam was considered a positive addition to the degree programme by faculty. their interviews revealed several external and institutional challenges that presented barriers to its success. of note were a lack of pre-tertiary education regarding the realities of the music profession; minimal career and employability conversation between faculty and student; an uncertain future for traditional art forms; and, for some, a reluctance to embrace new methods and markets of cultural expression and relevance such as community music and the multi-sensory approach to music appreciated by audiences. faculty responses indicate the mlaam content should be staged as follows: • first year: career awareness and investigation • second year: the introduction of further music support skills • third year: business management • fourth year: experiential real-world learning. . industry leaders three industry leaders were invited to share their understanding of current and future music industry trends and their impact on training and established musicians. they were purposively selected based on their current or past industry experience, leadership roles and involvement with iconic arts institutions, which had had an impact on the australian arts landscape. all were male, and had led long and active national and international careers in various fields including performance, arts administration and education. two of the interviews were conducted in person in their home capital cities and the other via skype. de-identified names, industry affiliation and age as of interview are presented in table . . unless otherwise specified, all personal names referred to in this section refer to these industry leaders. table . industry leader participants participant position age henry upper level management arts funding body jack upper level management of an opera company ken ex-upper level management of arts advocacy institution . . industry changes. the industry leaders identified similar industry trends as those of the conservatoire faculty: a declining recording industry, reduced government funding, stagnated remuneration, reduced and terminating orchestras, and an increase in musical standard along with an increase of professional competition. their answers appeared more informed and considered the causes of such industry change in more depth. henry communicated what he considered a ‘good news story’ from his institution’s research regarding audience behaviour, that ‘people are interested in music and there is a strong appetite’. however, because music options were increasing and types of music practice were diversifying, he noted, ‘it’s very hard to find that mass audience or even a large audience anymore’, explaining the perception of declining audiences and loss of arts appreciation as described by faculty. alternatively, music festivals are on the rise. henry classed the audience approach to music consumption within this medium as ‘dipping in and out of music’ where: you don’t have to stay and listen to the whole concert, you can dip in and out of a performance and if you get bored you can move on. or if you discover something you didn’t expect, you can immerse yourself in it. likewise, he suggested mainstream consumers of music on the internet paralleled this approach: ‘they roam through the corridors of the internet, and discover things by doing that’. while some musicians were continuing to specialise, there are those influenced by the growing diversity and collaboration, creating and writing new music: ‘you can’t put in a [category] that you don’t know what it is but it sounds great’. this could indicate that marketing and educating audiences would be challenging, requiring new and savvy strategies by independent musicians. in addition, satisfying a declining audience attention span required considered programming, particularly if wishing to stay within traditional classical and jazz genres. ken was also positive about australian arts appreciation, observing ‘much more general acceptance’ and how music was increasingly featured in print media: ‘we [haven’t] made it up there with sport yet, [but] i don’t think it’s looked on as some sort of pansy preoccupation anymore’. in contrast, henry commented on musicians’ static income: ‘a lot of musicians are earning similar money to what they earned years ago’ and ‘the value that is placed on the musicians’ effort seems to be constantly driving down and that is a real challenge to the career’. this affirmed one of the challenges highlighted by music australia: ‘valuing and respecting music in our “get it for free” age’ (page, ), derived from the file sharing and online accessibility of music. jack suggested the music industry was a ‘very competitive and difficult marketplace’ and noted a move from the ‘british or european model [of anticipating linear careers] … towards an american model where musicians, and that includes singers … have to be a lot more self-reliant. they have to actually go out and find their own work’. this was the first i had heard of this categorisation, but it was similarly described by ken as ‘an intrusion of the market’ of the ‘recent mindset’ ‘to teach students to be more entrepreneurial’. prior to this, he suggested, ‘that you’re expected to be a successful small business person was not really language that you would hear’. once again, although the industry increasingly demands a musician ‘with other skills apart from being able to play’ (jack), this cultural shift from an ‘art for art’s sake’ mindset to a more commercialised approach seems to be progressing. unlike the faculty’s responses, positive trends in the current industry environment were identified. . . future of the music industry and employability. all three did not anticipate the music industry growing for the financial benefit of musicians. henry suggested: ‘the notion of a paid position in the music world is going to become more and more scarce’ owing to the financial pressures placed on organisations. jack called it a ‘casualisation of the industry’ similarly reflected in other non-music areas of the workplace environment (marin-guzman, ). ken had concerns for musicians’ passive royalty income ‘of any dimension’ and anticipated more dependence on live performance. he debated whether this affected the classical musician as much as the popular musician. irrespective of genre, jack suggested the outcome would be ‘musicians will be on the road a lot more, it will be a very different sort of existence’. one could argue that musicians’ lives are already challenging (see chapter ) and further changes to financial and locational stability could be a tipping point for increasing attrition. jack agreed that one’s passion will be tested and ‘some people will leave, but it’s always been a very competitive business and i suspect there won’t be any greater percentage leaving the industry in the future from what there always has been’. jack also recognised the future of music creation was going to change how artists interact with each other. no longer would it be necessary for some to engage in face-to-face communication: ‘we are developing an internet opera here, so that will mean that composers [will] work in a very, very different way’. henry also surmised: musicians are going to have to think of themselves as a small business and take responsibility for their own situation a lot more, and all are going to get smarter about how they exploit their work and take money from it. perhaps as musicians increasingly understand diverse revenue streams, more business advice written by musicians will flood online platforms, generating not only a culture of industry facilitation but also an increasing acceptance in australia of the american or entrepreneurial approach to employment. if not, an opportunity exists to instigate such an australian online forum or expand on those currently available. . . tertiary education: what should students be learning? like the faculty, industry leaders generally concurred that graduate musicians need ‘to be the best musicians they can be, obviously’ (ken). ken argued that some musicians’ ability and reputation will remain valuable for career survival: ‘for some, being a good musician is enough, as the colleagues will seek them out, for others they have to be more entrepreneurial’. there was a greater emphasis on career management. henry regarded the concept of a portfolio career as ‘critical’, and suggested musicians will need to consider their lives beyond six-week time frames: ‘so when you say to them where do you want to be in five years they go blank, or they go “we’ll get more gigs” and i think that’s going to have to change’. ken advocated that pragmatic knowledge would retain currency: ‘there must be a set of basic, take-care-of-business skills that every musician should have, even if they are not business-like’. in addition, he supported those learning about marketing, new social media platforms and the inter/intrapersonal skills that are valuable to collegiate music making. jack also suggested the changing nature of music will drive graduate musicians to learn diverse styles and be open to new forms of art making. contrary to the faculty, these industry leaders perceived learning requirements to be related more to the end-product musician—that is, the working musician. although jack acknowledged the traumatic adjustment from degree to industry immersion, there was otherwise no mention of the need for education of the undergraduate student musician in the form of career identity development, career reality awareness, or support skills such as resilience training and musicians’ health. . . definitions of a successful musician. given these participants’ considerable experience with diverse musicians, i anticipated an informed perspective on the successful australian musician. all concurred with the faculty participants’ opinion that ‘making great music’ was ‘fundamental’ (henry) to success. ken suggested a combination of a ‘good musician’, a ‘good marketer’ and ‘keeping good networks’, but primarily valued ‘loving your work’. henry identified with the commitment to continue and improve, ‘still doing it and getting better’. he also suggested that ‘a talent for collaboration’ ensured a creative protean career based on strong social capital and growing networks: people who can put themselves in new circumstances and new partnerships end up having a more sustainable career and relates back to that portfolio idea … those sorts of collaborations and partnerships with people working in other art forms expand your work opportunities and refresh your creative practise a lot more. jack acknowledged he had performed and worked with many outstanding musicians but concluded, ‘it’s utilising the talent that you have been given and the skills that you have been able to develop in the best possible way’. in comparison to the faculty responses, it would appear that the industry leaders advocated intrinsic music successes with no mention of extrinsic achievements such as awards or financial gain. these included a sustainable artistic livelihood, collaborative artistic relationships, strong social and employment networks, and an understanding of personal strengths and weaknesses for maximised employability outcome. . . opinion of mlaam. like most of the faculty, the response to the mlaam description was positive, with particular approval of the grant and creative writing component. ken further appreciated the focus on portfolio careers as he understood students to be blinded by romanticised options: ‘this bauble of the international career as a soloist has been hung in front of everybody … that’s sort of the driving image or vision and they really wouldn’t have any notion of [other] options’. further suggestions included mentorship, of which henry had witnessed positive outcomes throughout his organisation’s early career artist programmes: ‘i suppose even just getting them to think about when is a good time to have a mentor, how do you manage a mentorship relationship’. he also considered passive income such as royalties and the processes of registering one’s intellectual property. he criticised current informational events as too broad and suggested a more relevant method using active musicians as examples: i have seen copyright done in forums and traditionally they have taken it in big picture view: ‘you know there is this thing called copyright’ and explaining that type of stuff. actually, making it real is the thing that i would like. for example, this is the form you fill out for licence rights with apra. you have made a recording and you may be due rights from it. this is who you need to speak to, and you need to do this every six months to check in and see. and even doing case studies on people who started out small and made small amounts of money but over the aggregate of their career those small amounts of money have turned into modest top ups once every six months. ken and jack emphasised experiential learning. ken suggested group learning whereby students initiate and implement an event. he acknowledged that while not all students would be receptive, it represented reality: ‘i’d conceive that they’d do it in teams and of course, it’s how life is, that some people do the work and others freeload’. similarly, jack valued workplace training for musicians to gain experience in arts administration roles and understanding of employment possibilities in the industry, as well as the systems and processes supporting sustainable music employment: if people came here for a day, two days, then it would give them a very, very different perspective on what it’s like. and also, seeing an organisation as big as this, which is fundamentally an industry in itself, i think … will enable people to see that they don’t have to work if they don’t want to—because some people aren’t suited to it—just on their own. they can be part of a huge organisation where they may be much happier. while ken recognised starting mlaam in second year may be more relevant to students who have a ‘more “grown up” sort of view of the world—not that it’s that grown up in second year’, he did acknowledge the value of a first-year delivery to aid ‘the transition from high school’. however, he was concerned about the credit-point weighting of mlaam within the degree. unfortunately, i errantly communicated a degree based on credit-points of coursework per year as opposed to . that he regarded such emphasis on mlaam sacrificed the practical development of training musicians was unsurprising and echoed some faculty concerns: ‘but this is the time in their lives when they really can give everything to be a good musician and taking too much away from them is valuing other things too much, doesn’t quite sit with me’. conversely, ken recognised that one cannot rely on the faculty to take the responsibility to teach industry awareness and prepare students for diverse forms of employment. however, when he suggested this to another australian conservatoire faculty, he was told, ‘this is all very well, but we have enormous trouble just fitting in what we have to do into the available time and i’m not gonna find time for the things you told me’. in addition, ken acknowledged introducing mlaam would create a culture shock among the students, ‘i imagine it’s totally foreign to most of them, to be thinking in that way. i’d be worried if it wasn’t’. jack understood this generational cringe: this is one of the most exciting periods in history and there are phenomenal opportunities i think, within the music industry at the moment. it’s just that they are very different to the opportunities that presented themselves to people from a generation previously. jack suggested that the more informed the students were, the more equipped they would be to make confident decisions about their careers: ‘they will be able to make the choice, without the usual ramifications that come with making the wrong choice, a lot better than other people’. henry recognised that those with non-linear pathways such as jazz musicians would benefit from courses such as mlaam to ‘take more responsibility for their careers and be more entrepreneurial and with a little more organisation and direction. but they might also expect more from the support [amateur organisations] that is provided to them’.	 . . advice for current graduating musicians. industry leaders communicated three domains of advice for graduating musicians: career development, goal setting and passion. henry recommended students ‘should seriously look at’ the australian council for the arts’ art start grant to kick- start their career. (sadly, this ended following the wave of government cuts to arts funding in .) he also recommended the development of employability networks, a strong work ethic and a ‘say yes’ approach to employment: ‘get out there and meet people. work as much as you can. you can be more selective later’. jack recommended that strong aspirations drive motivation: life circumstances change and then you need to do different things but it’s a wonderful thing to have a dream and to be able to pursue that dream. sometimes the journey is better than the destination and for people to enjoy that journey i think is really important. ken recognised that passion lay at the heart of a sustainable music vocation as well as the reality of its obstacles: ‘stay in love with your music.… it will carry you through. all else is frothy [laughs] apart from age and starvation’. . . summary. these industry leaders identified a future where musicians will utilise a set of skills attributed to an independent portfolio musician who possesses a significant ability to collaborate, create and work within new genres, develop employability networks, travel, and maintain high-quality standards. these musicians are more likely to adopt the american model of creative entrepreneurialism rather than a less proactive perception of linear employment. industry leaders consider the latter to be a declining model; musicians who are more knowledgeable and skilled within a diversity of employment environments are more likely to thrive. while they predicted resistance from higher education music institution faculty and students to the training of ‘business’ skills, they felt it should remain within the undergraduate curriculum, particularly if presented in experiential form. future audiences were described as increasingly small, holding diverse interests and engaging with online forms of music making. therefore, industry leaders suggested that musicians will need to consider careers beyond those that support large audiences of traditional genres, be well versed in technology, and be mindful of opportunities such as festivals and collaborations with alternative art forms. . higher music education leaders three higher music education directors (see table . ) were purposefully selected to participate in one-to-one interviews held at their institutions in australian cities. similar to the other interviewed participants of this chapter, they were asked to discuss their opinion of the music profession, industry change and its future, impression of graduate and music success, and critique of the mlaam courses. they also revealed their staff’s opinion of vocational preparation within a higher education setting and the ramifications of implementing an mlaam strand. unless otherwise specified, all personal names in this section refer to these higher education leaders. table . higher music education leader participants participant age institution institutional focus toby conservatoire performance: classical, jazz, composition, technology. research. laurence conservatoire performance: classical, jazz, composition, technology. education. research. victor academy performance: classical. . . changes in the music industry. participants were asked what changes in the music industry they had observed and experienced. two out of the three referred to the classical music profession. toby noted that more musicians within the profession had achieved tertiary education, reflecting a ‘great maturing in attitudes’. furthermore, in comparison to the us, higher music education staff qualifications were ‘not there [yet] in australia but i think we are very quickly getting there’. he was not sure if there were more opportunities to be a professional musician in the music industry. however, to objectively understand the state of employment, he was curious to see the scale of musicians per capita compared to other countries. when referring to opera and orchestral art forms, he felt the industry was ‘a lot more robust’, owing to a benchmarking of international standards, and the ‘cross-fertilisation’ of employing performers and management from abroad. victor noted a change in ‘the way [classical] music is listened to, the way it’s presented, who’s presenting it and combinations to varying degrees of those three things’. he reflected on changed audience expectations, rise of technology, increasingly conservative programming of orchestral music, and the decline of live orchestral broadcasts and australian music performances. he observed an increase of commercial work for australian orchestras, but did not comment on its ramification on freelance musicians or general available contract work. laurence noticed a movement towards a more entrepreneurial approach following a change in media, recording and distribution, suggesting that ‘things are much more visual now than they were when i first started out’. dvds, youtube, and other forms of online distribution meant that ‘how you look and how you act, and that whole part of the business is much more important now … whereas before it was just … how you acted or looked in a live concert’. victor illustrated this point, describing the australian chamber orchestra’s release of dvds and embracing new technologies with ‘ d [installations] of the orchestra playing where you can walk around the players and stop and turn some instruments up and stop it and walk around it further and hear other instruments … all that sort of stuff is just phenomenal!’ while toby saw an increased internationalisation of australian art music, laurence noticed a global trend of musicians blending genres: ‘you were [once] either a classical musician or a jazz musician or a pop musician and now, you know you can do it all and incorporate it all into what you do and still be taken seriously’. victor observed this break away from generalised expectations in graduating students with more ownership of career path choosing to develop the australian art form: it’s just been a mushrooming of students who are leaving [my institution] or conservatoriums—they are not getting jobs in orchestras, or they don’t want to get jobs in orchestras, so they start a new piano trio and they start getting gigs, or they start a string quartet or a wind quintet or a brass quintet or percussion quintet. and so, we’ve had this complete mushrooming of this … it’s almost like an underbelly of australian music. . . future of the music industry and the impact on current musicians. toby recognised that the declining government funding for the arts and other sectors would create a future ‘where we will have to be more independent … and resourceful’ but could not articulate what that would look like. he suggested the decrease of federal funding had left ‘universities stretched to the limit. i don’t think there is any fat to peel back into anymore’ and likened solving the problem to ‘global warming. we just don’t know where it’s going to go’. aside from the change to the higher education landscape, he commented that changes in australian traditional art forms may reflect international trends: ‘we have a number of professional orchestras and we don’t want to lose any of them, but the signs overseas aren’t too good and how that will impact on australia i am just not too sure’. conversely, victor argued that ‘music is not the only profession that’s changed. every profession has changed significantly. so, i think there are great challenges ahead for us but i think we need to be optimistic and a lot smarter about why we do this’. he advocated savvy marketing and an entrepreneurial approach to arts management. laurence also chose a more hopeful perspective, likening future music employability to finding a parking place in new york. you know, there is always a parking place, you just have to find it. they exist. and i think there is always going to be room for talented entrepreneurial and deep-thinking musicians. victor recognised the ‘art for art’s sake’ mindset of teaching student musicians was a result of those who had ‘come up through the culture of the s, s, s, s’ and lamented that ‘some of them will never get it—that music’s changed—and this whole belief that just helping you to play an instrument and you will be all right, is probably really off the mark’. however, rather than considering that business knowledge should be developed within music training, he preferred to critique the current method of the aural and theory training and offer improved strategies. in short, it would appear these higher education leaders were not considering proactive changes to their institutions’ education delivery in response to current and future trends, in spite of recognising weaknesses in faculty, funding and competition, and the need for an entrepreneurial approach to one’s career. . . employability learning agenda for student musicians. when asked about placing a stronger employability focus in his own undergraduate music degree programmes, laurence was more concerned with ‘teaching as much of our art as we can’ at undergraduate level: i am not a big fan of putting a course together on how to write a resume. and i don’t mean to trivialise it because resumes are important, but i think we can do that in other ways and other avenues and not sacrifice [anything] in the curriculum. toby seemed to be torn between the two mindsets i have observed emerging from industry and faculty interviews: an ‘art for art’s sake’ or performance-focused mindset versus an embedded entrepreneurial skill approach to professional training: part of me is saying protect and preserve and let them do four years of artistic training, and get as high a standard as you can, and let them do that. the other part of me says be realistic because at the end of the four years what have they got? they have to find a job and they have to have the skills and resources and resourcefulness to actually be able to get out there and find a job and be successful because they are not going to have anything coming across the table [when they graduate]. twenty years ago, they did, currently they don’t. oddly, while waiting in the corridors for laurence’s interview, i ran into some familiar faculty staff. upon telling them what the interview topic was about, several staff members replied, ‘oh, but we need that in our undergraduate degree!’ conversely, when i discussed the possibility of training faculty to consider embedding an employability mindset within their teaching, victor suggested: ‘that is exactly what i am trying to do and it takes years’, and likened it to turning the queen mary around ‘with an egg whisk’, affirming myles-beeching’s ( b) observation that every institutional culture is complex and diverse. . . successful musician qualities. when asked what they considered successful musicians to be, toby mentioned the musical skill he promoted for undergraduate training but felt the foundation of its success lay in one’s attitudes and beliefs: ‘it’s about particular attitudes—working with passion that you know how to do it and you do it because you want to do it, that self- determination’. laurence concurred: ‘great technique, great ears, a breadth and a sense of that anything is possible’, which was fuelled by ‘a really keen sense of curiosity’. victor simply stated, ‘a real love for music’ and ‘how you can affect the lives of others in a positive way’, but recognised that one’s perspective of success was personal and, as other participants had mentioned, evolved over time: it took me until i was at least in my s before i worked that out. i thought it was all about the job, the reviews, the audience, … but it’s not. it’s also about supporting your colleagues, and it’s about supporting the culture of your own community and country, your own composers. these participants identified that successful musicians possess a mature sense of identity and confidence. victor had admitted his was developed over substantial time and experience. . . opinion and suggestions on mlaam. all of the higher education leaders were doubtful they could make a well- informed value judgement on the mlaam strand from the quick read-through of the course profiles and hearing my descriptions. however, toby described mlaam as ‘informational and descriptive’ and recommended a greater interpretive and reflective focus so that ‘[the students] can start to identify their strengths and weaknesses or the things that might promote, or demote, or facilitate, or impede, what they want to do’. he recommended peer-learning reflective assessment because ‘they might open up to you [the lecturer], but they will open up more to a friend or a peer or a girl they might be living with’. another suggestion included online learning where students: can really open up and dialogue, and write some questions. so instead of writing words, someone might write words and read the others and others might write words because they really into what they are in. it’s how you empower them to really reflect. (toby) laurence disagreed with the self-reflective component of the course: ‘i don't know, i just think asking a kid who is just out of high school ‘where am i now, where do i want to be and how will i get there? it’s just the wrong questions’. he suggested that this form of self-reflection and career support was better derived from their teacher: i don’t think these are bad questions, i think they are good questions, but i think they are also the kinds of questions [for] the one-on-one relationship, the mentoring, which is what we are famous for.… and the more that suzie jones’ piano teacher or trombone teacher or flute teacher talks about these things, the better. especially as a freshman or a year one student as they call them here in australia. unfortunately, as this research has revealed, the faculty either do not have time for these discussions, or the students do not ask these questions. in addition, pre-tertiary career education is misinformed, non-existent or ignored. victor appreciated the content of mlaam; however, he recommended a greater inclusion of musicians’ health education. in describing the health programme at [the academy], he confessed to a budget supported by a successful foundation grant. his total student enrolment of , compared to qcgu’s approximately bachelor of music students, allowed for a more reasonable cost and realistic acquittal. the minutiae he described of the health education programme simply could not be achieved within the mlaam strand and would need to be a separate course supported by an onsite clinic. when i asked toby whether mlaam began too early in the degree, he wondered, ‘is it better to have a little bit all the time, and i think it probably is, rather than a huge amount of depth for a shorter period of time’. he also recognised the hierarchy of the other subjects within the programme and suggested the process of delivery was more important: ‘it’s not about the content, or the topic, it’s about how can you do this in a way that is different to other musicology and history courses that are available, that “ok this gets me thinking in a different way”’. he recounted the process of where various lecturers of the same institution were invited to visit courses and tell the students how they achieved their careers and ‘that means a lot to the students’. overall, he felt the mlaam courses sounded ‘really busy’ and warned against over-assessing. the challenge of implementing mlaam appears to lie beyond curriculum reform to include the organisational psychology of faculty attitudes, university ethos and directorship agenda. while i agree that musicians’ health education is very important, it is useless to the musician with no employment. the master-apprentice model is a vital process within a performing musician’s training but is currently redundant in its original nineteenth-century sense of vocational education training (vet) where the master supplies employment, or employment is available. in offering solutions to avoid over-assessing, i am doubtful that toby’s online group forum is an appropriate solution given the intimate and personal nature of career conversations. it could also work against the cultural acceptance of the course, where the more vocally opposed students could ‘herd’ others into disengagement. . . advice for current graduating student musicians. toby responded that his advice for graduating musicians would be to retain clear career goals and avoid setting limits. he encouraged students to embrace risk, grit and determination because ‘i have seen too many careers where they haven’t taken chances because they were scared and in years’ time they are still doing the same thing’. laurence also understood a career path needed to begin with the strategy of ‘take any and every job you can get.… further down the road you can start being discerning’, and in general to remain open to opportunity. he vouched for inter/intrapersonal skills because ‘the really, really successful ones are the ones that figure out how to get along with people’ and ‘understanding that can make or break them’. while i agree that this is good advice, i cannot help but wonder who is going to advise these students beyond their farewell graduation speech to do so? most students will find a significant difference between their career experiences and their teachers’ simply because of the post-digital age and changed arts environment. therefore, advice in a one-to-one environment will retain some currency but may not be entirely relevant to future career pathways. the value of inter/intrapersonal skills is universal in all employment domains; however, i am concerned that while laurence realised its ‘make or break’ ramifications on employment, he is happy to let graduate students ‘figure [it] out’ rather than learn it explicitly within their undergraduate degree. this would incur a reliance on one’s immediate professional network, thus perpetuating the trial-and-error approach. this beyond graduation experience is valuable, but would not necessarily available should no employment occur. . . institutional history of vocational preparation. toby suggested ‘ to years ago you didn’t see this sort of course in a degree’. for his own institution, they offered a music industry elective in third or fourth year to which not all students respond well: ‘some students aren’t ready but the majority of them are i think’ (toby). he did query whether the course should be elective or compulsory, but felt the staff informally cover the content within other areas of the programme. he recognised his faculty had changed from focusing on orchestral employability to a more pragmatic approach of, ‘ok let’s find your feet and think of what you like to do and what the opportunities might be’. student outcomes were largely portfolio-career oriented. laurence noted that his faculty sustained both methodologies (art for art’s sake v. entrepreneurial) but felt the programme design was not his decision: ‘i don’t own the curriculum, the faculty does. so, they have to make a decision. but what i do own is the budget’. from his interview, it was unclear as to what employability outcomes graduating students attained, and he did not mention the music industry studies elective his institution offered. victor recognised the need for the current generation to be good performers and self-managed savvy musicians who are able to source a variety of funding streams, irrespective of their linear versus non-linear career paths or further overseas study. he realised his institution did not possess an mlaam course but claimed a more liberal approach to vocational training than the past: ‘we go a long way towards giving them a range of skills that i think starts to prepare them for what we call “the portfolio career” and of course everyone calls it the portfolio career but we talk a lot about that now’. vocational preparation was introduced in the form of guest speakers to the students. the institutional objective that they would provide australia’s next generation of orchestral musicians was considered ‘completely impractical’ (victor) and taken out of their charter, primarily so that the employability measurement would not impede their federal funding. however, he did suggest his institution’s employability success rate was higher than undergraduate music institutions and questioned the efficacy of the nineteenth-century model that other conservatoires continued to uphold. in short, past historical processes and attitudes at an institutional level impeded the acceptance of formal and informal vocational preparation learning. . . implementation of mlaam in other tertiary contexts. toby was doubtful that mlaam in its current state could be ‘parachute[d]’ within his institution’s bachelor of music degree without a complete curriculum renewal. his experience in the us was that such courses were a postgraduate initiative. while he regarded mlaam a ‘worthwhile thing to do’, he noted the need to consider the subject areas already within the curriculum, the faculty and their educational priorities; however, he did not mention the related students’ possible future employment. he suggested if he were to include vocational preparation subjects, he would consider: the long-term implications of the course: is this worth the effort and the time spent put into it and is the course making an impact long term or is stuff sticking? and to answer that, it will be different for different sorts of students— some will almost have no use, and for some it will be an incredibly powerful thing. these are valid questions; however, i cannot see any difference in student attitudes to other courses within their degree programme. more importantly, the argument for inclusion should be strong if it is ‘an incredibly powerful thing’ for some. laurence was of the opinion that mlaam concepts were achievable within his institution if embedded throughout existing courses: those skills should be woven into the music history class or the theory class. i mean, why can’t a student instead of writing a paper, learn how to put together a youtube video on an analysis of a twelve-tone piece by webern.… so, there all of a sudden you are learning these kinds of skills that we need now, and musicians who are going out and breaking into it, need, but they are also not sacrificing learning about schoenberg in a very in-depth way. i agree with laurence’s idea, but once again feel these initiatives should be in addition to formalised vocational preparation courses, largely because the music industry and subsequent profession has changed so dramatically since the technological boom and will continue to do so. i am not convinced one can rely on the total faculty to remain abreast of these changes enough to continually upgrade their courses and cater for diversity. if tertiary music institutions were to properly prepare student musicians for their future employability environment, undergraduate degree programmes would formally embrace career management and entrepreneurship and make significant effort to change their organisational culture. . . summary. these higher education leaders presented themselves as informed of the broader industry changes mostly regarding linear employment. despite understanding the impact of technology, a more visually oriented audience, the blending of genres, greater need for job creation and a growing ‘underbelly’ of australian art, their impression of the future of the music profession seemed rather unclear and generally viewed with apathy. within their institutions, it would appear there was a minimal employability agenda, consisting of an industry studies elective, informal or guest lectures, or reliance on the one-to-one teaching relationship. while there was general approval of the mlaam concept, the leaders did not indicate willingness to implement it within their programmes owing to curriculum design and faculty attitude barriers. given the historical and bureaucratic processes and educational ethos of their institutions, it would appear an employability focus would be adopted slowly, if at all. . music industry lecturers three higher education lecturers possessing significant experience teaching industry and career identity courses participated in one-to-one interviews (see table . ). unless otherwise specified, all names in the subsections below refer to higher music education industry lecturers. these participants were purposefully selected because they represented a range of higher education learning environments and locations: one taught at a conservatoire, one at independent academies, and one at a music school in a university. all participants were active within either the jazz or classical performance and teaching profession, possessing between and years of national and international industry experience. their perspectives of industry change were sought regarding future industry trends, the student lifecycle, observations and experiences with their courses and assessment. at the time of interview, one participant no longer taught industry-related subjects and clarified: ‘most of my work is going into other people’s courses and getting students to think in a different way and that is really what i do now’ (lilian). table . music industry lecturer participants pseudonym age gender institution type location course titles status year offered enrolment genre enrolment gender bias nigel male academy; institute capital city academy: music business & ; institute: business studies & academy: compulsory institute: compulsory rd year academy: − institute: − academy: popular institute: jazz neutral zac male conservatoire capital city music industry studies elective rd year − jazz, classical, music technology neutral lilian female music school (university) capital city music in community (full- year course); identity development compulsory nd year − jazz, classical, education, music technology neutral . . perceived industry change. all participants observed the technological impact on the music industry and profession, ‘big changes in a small amount of time’ (nigel), and they noted decreasing cd sales and royalty income. they acknowledged the increased incidence of independent musicians and how technology has aided easy connections with the industry in a global and competitive context. however, zac suggested other environmental forces influenced this independence. the decline of federal and state funding had additionally created ‘risk-based performance’ employment, explained as ‘all the risk has been pushed down to the lowest common denominator which is the musician’ (zac). in short, the musician retains more responsibility to develop and maintain business skills for self-promotion, where historically others were responsible: when i first started, there were managers and agents and third parties that would do all the promotion and marketing work for you and now almost exclusively you have to do all that yourself unless you have the money to actually pay someone to do that. (zac) nigel suggested this allowed ‘more control as an artist and more expectation about what you have to do and what you can do on your own’. he welcomed the changes but did not know whether he perceived more opportunities existed because he was ‘more aware of them’: ‘i don’t feel like venues are closing down and there are less opportunities’. from his international touring, he observed that the music industry of australia was in a better position than the uk. conversely, lilian suggested that the classical music scene in the uk seemed to be increasingly more accepting of independent portfolio career musicians than in australia and maintained: ‘i think musicians have a lot to give aside from getting the notes in the right order’. . . perceived industry future. zac appeared to prefer a performance focus on employment sustainability, suggesting that independent or portfolio musicians’ need to adopt further skills meant their ‘effort now is directed away from their craft. so, to survive they need to have had to develop these skills that haven’t traditionally been aligned with being a musician’. conversely, lilian argued: ‘it’s a myth that musicians are performers. musicians have never been just performers, and [yet] we keep saying that it’s a new thing’. she continued: the essential life of a musician is being something that is multi-faceted and responsive. [it] has always been that way, so i guess the implications for me are not so much that the profession is changing, more that we need to change our nineteenth-century way of training musicians to be that eclectic individual. regardless, zac had noticed past successful eccentric geniuses of the music industry were being overlooked for ‘all-rounders’, whom he described as ‘people who are succeeding with a music career now. you know—organised, congenial, hardworking people’. mavericks who were perhaps incapable of self-management skills would previously have had some kind of external assistance, as in the case of charlie parker (russell, ), but this was no longer the situation, which zac considered ‘a shame’. it could be argued that the increased competition within diverse local, global and online domains, technology shifts, increased cross-genre-ism, diverse forms of music consumption, and greater economic pressures is creating an environment that can no longer sustain those musicians who cannot manage themselves. echoing darwinian theory that it is not the fittest that survive, but those most adaptable to change (darwin, ), it would appear that even the genius musician needs to upskill. nigel believed that irrespective of these greater opportunities and responsibilities, musicians could not afford to sacrifice their core skills in an industry in a ‘state of flux’: [you] still have to be good. [but] maybe you have to be more creative how you negotiate your way and what you do, [be]cause there is [sic] all the traditional things but there is [sic] all these new things, and stuff in the middle…. doesn’t mean it’s easier—it’s probably harder. it’s hard to know what it’s like in five years—probably the same but times . where previously henry (industry leader) had suggested musicians needed to plan ahead and not live within a six-week time frame, nigel’s perspective reveals a dilemma that perhaps this is virtually impossible, or at least more challenging than first envisioned, irrespective of low-risk portfolio employment. . . graduate skills required. zac identified core business skills required by graduate musicians: marketing, administration, organisation, motivation, technological capability, graphic design and finance. he also acknowledged the jazz musician will require ‘a secondary skill set that they can be employed to use so as to subsidise their jazz careers’; however, he did not offer examples. nigel concurred and further valued the fundamental ability to be able to ‘play … their instrument’ and ‘have the basic understanding and skills’. he also suggested graduates needed ‘an awareness of the local industry, [and] an understanding of how to access the bigger picture’, which would benefit from strong communication skills. project management was perceived as better learnt within undergraduate training rather than the trial-and-error experience following graduation: ‘you and i, we just had to do it, which was hard. there were all the comebacks that we learnt in retrospect: “oh that’s what that was, i should have done that a while ago”’ (nigel). lilian valued personalised skills of self-efficacy, self-confidence, self- knowledge and understanding of ‘how to situate themselves in the context of the industries in which they work’. while she acknowledged that business skills were useful, she suggested they should not be prioritised as the predominant skills required: to me it’s not about teaching them everything they need to know. it’s about creating graduates with a self-confidence and self-concept that they are able to cope with whatever happens out there. and resilience. and an ability to keep on learning. they really need to have that willingness, that concept of lifelong learning as a matter of course. . . course breakdown and comparison. the two-hour weekly classes conducted by these participants were small and gender neutral (see table . ), and delivered within classrooms without associated tutorials. zac’s course demographics consisted of males enrolled from the jazz strand and females from the classical strand. those to drop out of his elective were classical students who ‘become more determined to get a symphony job because they don’t want to deal with all the crap that they have to now’, whereas those exiting nigel’s compulsory courses cited ‘personal reasons’. lilian did not mention an attrition rate though she did note that for the initial iteration of the course the ‘[student] composers, conductors and performers by and large thought it was a waste of time’. nigel and zac’s courses were offered within third year, and lilian’s music in community course spanned the entire second year of what was then a four-year bachelor of arts degree. no online delivery was available for any of the participants’ courses, and only nigel’s special project and lilian’s music in community courses included practical placements or experiential learning external to the university. course aims were described as offering tangible skills to develop employability knowledge and planning within the local and national music industry. communication and entrepreneurship were key outcomes for zac and nigel’s courses. lilian’s music in community course included fostering reflective capabilities: aim: by the end of this unit the students will understand the basis on which music in the community has emerged, be able to articulate ideas about this domain and understand its practical application and have a repertoire of knowledge relating to the focus studies articulated in reflective practitioner views. (lilian) her course no longer existed as it was excised from the degree when the university adopted the bologna model of three-year degrees. although the course appeared to have very relevant and positive benefits for the students, it is telling that the university prioritised other aspects of their programme design in the downsizing process. although the course title may seem unrelated to industry skill development, its assessment involved similar activities to the other two participants’ courses. . . comparative assessment, coursework and texts. appendix k outlines the assessment as described by the participants. the assessment draws from four key areas within creative entrepreneurship: self-promotion, financial management and application, planning (marketing, business and touring) and experiential learning. experiential learning is in the form of fieldwork followed by reflective consideration with lilian’s course, and within nigel’s, project acquittal and reflection, case-study analysis and presentation. all courses appear overloaded with complex tasks and conceptual learning; however, these tasks are highly relevant to portfolio career musicians. industry lecturers appeared very resourceful in sourcing content material, designing tasks and engaging specialists to interact with the students. zac suggested suitable textbooks for such courses were an ongoing problem in the jazz, classical and technology context ‘because they can’t be published and move quickly enough with the current trends particularly with information technology and the way marketing is done now’. he chose to use richard lett’s ( ) the art of self- promotion: successful promotion by musicians, although it was published before the digital impacts, because ‘some of the basic principles still apply’. to maintain appropriate and current content, he invited guest specialist lecturers representing finance, graphic design, marketing, the musicians’ union, apra amcos and the australia council for the arts. he was concerned that much of what was discussed was based on his current industry experience, not on research or recognised as best practice, but he was heartened when the guest lecturers affirmed his knowledge to the students. likewise, nigel made sure his lectures were not too content heavy and were supplemented with personal examples, ‘about what i did and what i should have done’. for zac, paying the guest lecturers presented a problem, as the university did not wish to fund what they expected one lecturer to do. however, zac justified, ‘being an educator and a top-level performer and all sorts of things and a parent, i can’t be an expert in all these things’. therefore, a bequest reserved for performance masterclasses was used to fund the visiting specialists. to solve the problem of redundant texts, nigel chose to source a variety of content relating to both popular and jazz music from various american and australian texts, online forums and music associations upholding their responsibility to members to maintain relevant material. lilian had developed many learning tools from her work with career identity and applied them within her course. named tile (teaching, identity, learning and employment) she incorporated these exercises to allow the students to reflect on themselves as individuals, themselves as musicians, themselves as students. we got them to think about the skills that they have, that they possibly hadn’t thought about, things that they enjoy doing, that they hadn’t perhaps aligned with a music career, a life in music, and we had them experience a lot of different things from informal peer presentations, to community events, to working with older people, to the marketing. rather than instruct the students to read screeds of content, students were directed to conduct their own research for their savvy musician challenge (attributed to david cutler) choosing to answer: . are musicians truly important? . attracting new audiences . music solves real problems. they had to pick a pressing challenge that related to their own community or to australia … write submissions of words, and they had to be ready to defend what they were thinking. (lilian) lilian confessed to some focus on social media and branding; however, she preferred to maintain an engaged class utilising in-class activities and a flexible lecture sequence: ‘i make it up as i go along, because you get one student group and they really love one type of activity and others don’t’. she also incorporated a careers panel using university lecturers and principal study teachers. i made the comment the course was ‘jam-packed’, to which she agreed, ‘yes it was rather’. all of the lecturers taught in classrooms rather than lecture theatre environments. lilian adamantly refused to teach in a lecture theatre ‘because there is an immediate student/teacher divide, which i think is very damaging, because there is that assumption that it is completely teacher directed and i just don’t work that way’. lilian also suggested the lecture theatre was disagreeable because it is then required to be recorded, which allowed the students a choice to attend or not, and ‘you can’t do this work if they are not there’. as it was, her course had a non-graded compulsory attendance requirement. likewise, one of nigel’s courses had a % assessment weighting attributed to attendance. this is surprising that third-year students require an incentive to attend what would otherwise be considered a relevant course. such assessment weighting may also breach tertiary education quality standards agency (teqsa) standards. regardless, the message was made clear to the students: ‘you need to be here to learn effectively’. zac suggested what he taught in one course could be easily spread across two semesters and unpacked in more depth: i always feel constrained, time wise, with what i can cover, even the basics of how to invoice properly which is the first class that we do, and we talk about public liability and superannuation, the basics of running and invoicing business, even that could take four weeks just to do it correctly, to impart the experiences and to explain all the anecdotes, and everything that comes up with regards to that could go for four weeks but we cover it for two hours. likewise, nigel would love ‘more time’ beyond his two-hour lectures, and agreed that the content ‘has to be constantly updated’ but did not see it as the students’ responsibility but the lecturer’s, ‘so that’s something that’s up to us’. nigel was asked if there were any elements of his courses that disengaged the students, to which he suggested ‘tax—that’s not fun’. rather than go into great detail, he steers the topic towards earnings and savings supported by ‘discussion … and visual [aids] and chatting about real people with examples and keep things light while still being informative’. interestingly, he stated, ‘it’s not a business course. i don’t think we can go into that amount of detail. i just want it to be relevant’. for example, he chose to only focus on partnerships and sole trader business structures in a non-profit context: ‘that’s all they need for the next five to ten years, if you are going to form a company they need more than that. i tell them that they will need to go see an accountant’. . . perceived student lifecycle and student observations. in discussing the relevance of industry studies training, zac noticed: i am finding a lot of the classical musicians and chamber music groups are promoting their own concerts, composers are putting together scratch orchestras. one of my students wanted to perform this thing called counter claim and it’s great he was starting to get it happening, and now he is getting great funding and getting good houses, putting out records. so, i can see a lot of classical musicians that don’t want to go into the pit, or that they don’t want to become orchestral musicians, they are going down the same road as a lot of the jazz musicians which is really good. victor (a higher education leader in section . . ) had acknowledged this independent behaviour within his institution, and classed it as ‘an underbelly of australian music’. i personally find it strange that this form of employment choice should be classed as illicit. however, lilian explained her anecdotal observation of students entering the degree with ‘an already established hierarchy of what success is. this isn’t something that we create in post-secondary education’. as these students progress, she noticed ‘some of the students start to expand those horizons, often without telling their principal study teachers … because there is an expectation that they are good enough to make it eventually in the performance world’. thus, the faculty’s performance focus within their teaching, inadvertently prohibits an independent employability mindset. both lilian and nigel observed student trends relating to each year level. in particular, lilian noticed a first-year transition adjustment. like mark (faculty participant, section . . . ), she also observed the second-year students focusing more on their primary passions and third years beginning to consider realistic pathways: so, the first years are starting to come to terms with this bigger environment, and are starting to appraise against a whole new cohort, for some of them that can be quite a shock because they are no longer the best and the most talented. there is the exception to the rule. by second year they are starting to get more serious about study, but really don’t seem to be looking outside beyond study until they get to third year.… this is very generic, that i think possibly in the second half of second year they start to look outward a bit. in third year, there is kind of a reality hit that hits students where they suddenly think ‘oh, ok, what am i going to do after this?’ and the ones that it’s hit in third year hit harder for, sorry this is in the four-year degree, i am talking about the four-year degree model. i know in the uk they commonly have a three-year model and they find in the second half of second year then the students start to have that same reality check. then those in the third year who haven’t thought about it, it hits them hard. whenever that reality starts to hit is largely, i think, influenced by their experience. students can only imagine what’s within their knowledge, they can’t imagine things they don’t know to imagine, it is somehow exposed to them through their regular gigging, or by getting out there and seeing things, or maybe by amazing teachers who have exposed them, then they start to develop all kinds of good ideas. they don’t always tell us about them of course. nigel acknowledged these trends also reflected their engagement with their tertiary education. in particular, he noticed a dramatic reduction in second-year attendance in all degree courses, and a subsequent shift in attitude during third year: [during second year] they don’t come. it takes them a year to work out they are not at school, they actually don’t need to go, they can leave, they can walk out halfway through, no one is going to say anything even. amazing!.… they realise that there are probably some subjects they can probably skate by or they just generally think they are just too good. in my opinion, some of them might be, some of them are not. and then they get to third year and they go ‘fuck! i actually do need to come and i am actually not very good and these people are actually very useful because they know lots of people and have actually done it and i should come’. by that stage, it’s either too late or they have dropped out or the good ones are still there. nigel refuses to teach any industry courses in second year: ‘i avoid them on purpose because i am so over them’. one could attribute this to teacher-related class disengagement, but just days prior to our interview nigel had visited every second-year course and each demonstrated ‘fairly average attendance’ [australian idiom for ‘bad’]. . . industry lecturer skills. both zac and nigel believe an industry lecturer needs to have previously been, and to remain, active in the industry. the latter was largely owing to the ongoing environmental impact on industry change and subsequent knowledge feeding one’s course. nigel recognised that the students valued his class delivery that engaged with personalised and recent case analysis. zac also suggested that one’s industry activity needs to be within a variety of contexts in addition to performance, including: ‘producing and having served on boards, administrative functions, someone with a really broad skill set who has also managed to hold it together as a performer or a producer’. lilian argued that while the industry lecturer needs the knowledge attained via industry connection, this could be achieved via many forms such as ‘working with the music council or within community music, or with their students in the community, as well as performing, but not all of those things’. she wondered what defined an inactive performer: ‘if they haven’t performed for six months, do they no longer count? or is it six years or is it weeks?’ lilian also felt that someone teaching mlaam needs further skills that aligned with education design and career counselling: the ability to listen, and be responsive to student needs, a working knowledge of educational psychology and developmental psychology, not just working knowledge, you don’t need to be an expert but i think we all need to know enough that we understand the types of changes physiological and neurological and emotional that students are going through, traditional aged students, and a lot of patience, and organisational skills. therefore, those teaching industry subjects need to be active, proactive and multi-skilled musicians with a strong grasp of educational design, student awareness and superior knowledge of the diverse skill sets demanded of portfolio musicians. it would appear music industry lecturers face greater expectations than their academic peers, as they need to retain diverse private practice in addition to their full-time roles. . . student feedback. overall, student feedback on the participants’ courses was communicated as positive. zac said the students of his elective course indicated they appreciated the relevance of the assessment and its ability to be used in an immediate and ongoing fashion: ‘so, they don’t feel like they are doing assessment for the sake of assessment’. nigel suggested some students resisted some of the tasks because compared to their performance assessment, ‘there is too much writing’ or ‘the assessments are too hard’ or ‘things [are] moving too fast’. while he did adjust due dates of assessment to allow for more time, his response to such feedback was to inform students to ‘suck it up’ knowing that the assessment demands were far less than what they would face upon graduation. lilian also cited positive feedback on her work, particularly the reflective tasks and in-class activities: ‘i think it gives them space to think about themselves and we don’t do very much of that in higher education because we are so busy’. of the minimal face-to-face complaints regarding relevance, she would challenge criticisms and ask the students: ‘who is your favourite composer? go and have a look at what that composer did for a living’. they often say bach, or mozart or vivaldi and that’s fantastic, very useful. ‘so, go and have a look, and you will find he did more teaching than actual composing, or performing’. . . summary. the participants’ responses indicated they were well informed about music industry and professional developments and accepted a responsibility to equip their students with skills to aid sustainable independent career management within diverse domains. their recognised challenges of teaching vocational preparation within the higher education environment included appropriate teaching space, funding, student attitudes and lifecycle, a bloated curriculum, accommodating diversity, as well as subsequent time-poor course delivery sacrificing deeper learning, unrealistic expectations of the lecturer, performance faculty influence, and the ongoing development of course tools due to a changing industry. their similar choice of assessment related to current and future trends of the music industry. for those implementing compulsory courses, it was recognised that non-attendance was detrimental to future employment capabilities irrespective of negative student feedback and included assessment strategies to mitigate absence. no course was larger than enrolments or offered online, and the courses included very little online assessment. all the lecturers preferred in-person small classes delivered ‘on the flat’ for more engaged delivery and learning. they communicated some resistance to adopting career management skills from students who preferred either performance-focused outcomes or linear career aspirations. while these lecturers anticipated a positive yet challenging future for independent or portfolio career musicians, they recognised the industry was less conducive for eccentric geniuses and declining for orchestral musicians. from these interviews, it can be concluded that the sequencing of content for vocational preparation courses within the student degree programme is crucial. an example of shifting focus throughout the degree could be: identity exploration in first year, increased performance skills and experiential community engagement in second year, and placing career and project management skills in the later years of the degree where related student career activity is more likely. in summary, these industry lecturers were highly active within a variety of fields within the profession, worked closely with the students to understand their career development, and possessed educational design skills enabling revised course delivery to suit current and future trends. this situates them in an ideal position for superior education and industry perspective, arguably an underutilised resource that could positively contribute to curriculum and programme renewal. . chapter summary there was no denying by industry leaders, higher music education directors, faculty and industry lecturers that technological, economical and sociocultural forces had predominantly influenced the music industry and subsequent profession. they agreed that musicians would need to further understand audiences’ increased visual and selective approach to music consumption, possess excellent musicianship, adopt portfolio careers, travel beyond their current locations, develop an entrepreneurial mindset, consider careers beyond those within the linear domain, and engage with cross-genre collaboration. in other words, the message to musicians had changed to ‘if you want it all, you have to do it all’ and for static income. the skills required to support such employment sustainability were seen as significant; however, no participant mentioned the pedagogical skills required for teaching, common within many musicians’ employment portfolio. therefore, a greater employability focus is required within undergraduate training. aside from qcgu, tertiary music institutions seemed resistant to formalised and compulsory vocational preparation owing to pre- existing bureaucratic processes and faculty’s performance-focused approach versus an american approach to career management. a combination of both mindsets was never discussed. if anything, their faculty inadvertently prevented students adopting an employability mindset. an education of students’ music careers was more likely to occur prior to higher education during entry auditions, with only nominal engagement during the students’ degree in the form of workshop discussions, the one-to-one relationship and arbitrary informal talks. students’ career aspirations were largely initially unrealistic and faculty clearly communicated the realities of the profession, but did not usually incorporate strategies to navigate the industry. faculty also acknowledged that career aspirations had changed over time from ‘i want to be a star’, to ‘i want to have a job’. they had also noticed a declining understanding of what it takes to succeed as a musician, and greater distraction of social media, creating a lackadaisical attitude to practice. despite mixed perspectives by faculty and higher education and arts leaders on the mlaam description, lack of curriculum space and time, and the priority of artistic development were considered primary barriers for further vocational preparation focus by faculty. in addition, they expected ‘culture shock’ by the students, particularly in first year, as such courses and employability language were not previously common within undergraduate music training. industry lecturers’ vocational preparation courses demanded skills at times beyond the lecturers’ capacity and course budget, and potentially involved a reluctant student cohort, requiring compulsory attendance to be embedded within the assessment. self-promotional business planning and grant writing were the most common assessment tasks. classical students were more likely to resist business management and entrepreneurial education; however, many participants communicated their students had begun to shun linear career aspirations and adopt portfolio career attitudes, involving self-created employment and developing the australian music art form. industry lecturers reported an overall positive student response to their teaching and course assessment. from the data, a timeline of vocational delivery relative to the students’ approach to their identity, degree and industry activity was revealed: career identity and exploration were more appropriate in first year, expanded music skills, community music and experiential learning for second year, and business and entrepreneurial skills for the final years of their three- or four-year degree. vocation preparation that engages with mentorship and real-world examples could help minimise the degree-to-industry transition stress. second year was considered by many as a time for heightened performance focus, discovery of independence and, to a certain extent, a denial of the realities of the profession. the fact that vocational preparation courses need to prepare students for the employability trends of the future will be challenging to initiate in a conservatoire environment where, as the data has revealed, there is a need for further reform of solely performance-focused nineteenth-century undergraduate training. in addition, it would appear that there is a need to educate pre-tertiary, tertiary and current professional musicians on potential employment opportunities in the music industry and the skills required in order to break down the hierarchies of perceived success and attitudes to what is initially perceived as non-music skill acquisition. an online forum and informational site would be able to assist such facilitation. while only one person continues to deliver mlaam in large classes, staff will need to be more proactive in supplying experiential employability learning opportunities beyond the standard curriculum activities held within the conservatorium to validate mlaam principles and create specific impact. if faculty were recruited for a shared model of course delivery, those more likely to champion the core purpose of mlaam would be preferred and a budget to support this is needed. as it was recognised universities struggle to supply funding for such initiatives, private funding will need to be sought to aid such developments. chapter : western art musicians’ attitudes and industry practice relating to vocational preparation design . introduction musician and blog author christine beamer ( ) enthusiastically invited student musicians to embrace ‘the age of the portfolio career’ and advocated the benefits of multiple short-term contract and/or protean approaches to employability rather than long-term linear career expectations. be it by choice or by default (mallon, ), many more musicians are carving out diverse careers owing to the many environmental forces affecting the music profession and industry. this chapter will explore the music training and employment experiences of australian musicians currently and previously active within the music profession, and their implications for vocational preparation course design. . research participants and tools fifteen portfolio career musicians residing in south-east queensland participated in one-to-one semi-structured interviews. their pseudonym, age, gender, instrument family and fields of employment are described in table . . they are referred to by their pseudonyms throughout this chapter. their transcriptions were analysed and categorically coded in themes which in turn influenced the design of a survey tool of questions directed to australian musicians residing in australia and abroad. these active, exited or retired music professionals were purposively sampled from my employability networks and had current or historical portfolio musician activity. full-time orchestral musicians and teachers were included but not specifically targeted, and they added a linear rather than non-linear career component to the data set. two hundred and sixty-one finalised survey responses were collected between december and january , arguably a high response rate of . %. respondents included australian musicians working in the areas of jazz, classical, opera, composition and technology. questions concerned demographics, training, employment activity, income, skills acquired and used, career aspirations and sustainability. the results influenced the design of a vocational preparation strand in a conservatoire environment (see chapter ). all survey participants are referred to in this chapter with the abbreviation ‘sp’ and a participant number (e.g. ‘sp ’ for survey participant # ). table . descriptions of one-to-one interview participants name age gender instrument family fields of work and genre category aaron m strings performance, composition and production in multi- genres including technology self-instigated/ contract bruce m composer composition, performance and teaching in multi-genres including technology self-instigated/ contract robert m strings performance (full-time orchestral and session musician): in multi-genres full-time and contract james m woodwind performance, production, composition and sound design, teaching: in multi- genres including technology contract/self- instigated darryl m woodwind performance, education, and instrument sales: classical and music theatre contract simon m brass performance and education: classical and music theatre contract troy m brass performance, teaching (multi-genre) and owner of a non-music franchise contractor derrick m percussion/ drums/ wind/ keyboard performance, teaching self-instigated/ contract chris m opera performance, teaching and production: classical self-instigated/ contract jane f keyboard/ voice performance, conducting, teaching: multi-genre contract/self- instigated lula f voice performance, teaching, composition, production: jazz self-instigated/ contract heidi f strings performance, teaching: classical and folk contract/self- instigated tina f strings performance, teaching, community music: multi- genre self-instigated/ contract nerida f voice performance, composition, production and retail assistant: jazz and world music self-instigated/ contract margaret f wind/ electronics performance, teaching, production: multi-genre self-instigated/ contract average: . m:f : % . demographics the survey participants were between and years old, although two chose to withhold their age. the average age disclosed was . years (see figure . ). figure . . age distribution of survey participants. the male-to-female ratio was : , or . % male to . % female. over % were located in australia, and % resided in europe, asia or the us (table . ). table . location of survey participants country/continent state city/region participants % australia act canberra . australia nsw sydney . australia nsw metropolitan . australia nsw regional . australia qld brisbane . australia qld metropolitan . australia qld regional . australia qld rural . australia sa adelaide . australia tas hobart . australia vic melbourne . australia vic regional . australia wa perth . europe n/a n/a . us n/a n/a . nz n/a n/a . asia n/a n/a . transient n/a n/a . total % 	 	 	 	 	 	 – 	 – 	 – 	 – 	 – 	 – 	 – 	 – 	 – 	 – 	 – 	 – 	 – 	 – 	 n o	 ag e	 gi ve n	 age	distribution	 survey	totals	 one participant lived a transient existence overseas. the majority of participants ( . %) resided in queensland, of which . % were in brisbane. of the australian residents, . % lived in metropolitan townships and . % in regional areas; only one lived in a rural location. (classifications are as defined by the australian institute of health and welfare, and based on population. see http://www.aihw.gov.au/rural-health- rrma-classification/). australian capital cities ( . %) were the most common locations, indicating the likelihood of music-related employment is geographically dependent. no survey participants resided in the northern territory. the majority of participants were in relationships ( . %) (see table . ) and living with their partner ( . %) (see table . ). table . relationship status of survey participants which of the following best describes your current relationship status? response % no. of responses partnered . single . divorced/separated . widowed . answered question skipped question table . living arrangements of survey participants please select whether you live: response % no. of responses with partner . alone . in a shared house . other living arrangements . with parents . with another family . answered question skipped question most of them ( %) had experienced tertiary music education, of which . % studied at the qcgu and slightly fewer had ( . %) graduated from it (see table . ). table . tertiary study of survey participants have you ever studied at a tertiary music institution? response % no. of responses yes . no . answered question skipped question the majority ( . %) reported classical undergraduate training, . % reported jazz undergraduate training and the rest reported varied training such as informal, cross- genre, performance-focused, arts administration and army training (table . ). although some misunderstood the question and mentioned other performance degrees, . % of participants had completed non-music tertiary education, including graduate certificates, postgraduate diplomas (education the most common), bachelors, masters and doctoral accreditation in health (audiology, speech pathology, midwifery, nursing, optometry, psychology); law and court reporting; it; business, marketing and economics; engineering; and arts and humanities (theatre, creative writing, education, languages, journalism). table . undergraduate training of survey participants undergraduate training no. of musicians % of total classical . jazz . informal . opera . army training . popular . arts administration . classical/jazz . instrument making . total almost three quarters ( . %) had been in music-related employment from to + years (table . ), indicating they were highly experienced with understanding of the notable changes the australian music industry and profession has undergone. table . duration of music-related employment of survey participants how long have you experienced music-related employment? response % no. of responses less than year . − years . − years . − years . − years . − years . − years . − years . − years . − years . − years . − years . − years . − years . + years . answered question skipped question . career stages and employment trends survey participants’ first music-related employment began between the ages of nine and . the average age was . years. females were marginally below the average at . years with an age span of to years, and males were marginally above the average at . years with an age span of nine to years. the majority of these experiences occurred during secondary school ( . %) or undergraduate tertiary education ( . %). only % claimed first employment following graduation (between one day and years following) and . % during primary school (see table . ). table . first experienced employment of survey participants was this first experience during: response % no. of responses secondary school . undergraduate tertiary education . after secondary school (no degree experience followed) . after undergraduate education . other . primary school . pre-primary school . answered question skipped question first employment experience during primary school was largely busking, ‘gigging’ (string quartet) and live performance (restaurant/weddings/corporate function). during secondary school, less busking occurred and employment was somewhat more professionally oriented in the form of church organist, accompanist (dance classes, ballet, other students/exams), hotel lounge/bar pianist/singer; string quartet (gigging, restaurants, functions, weddings); bands (big bands, rock groups, trios)—nightclubs, rsls, parties, corporate functions; private teaching; and professional, amateur (usually below award) and community music theatre performance. one mentioned casual work with a professional orchestra, another at a music festival, and two mentioned live television performance. there was reference to referral by teachers and opportunities initiated by family members. pay was generally described as equal or below award, and/or cash in hand. work for those who did not attend tertiary education following secondary school was very similar to those in secondary school, including instrument making, training orchestra engagement, and composition commission. in addition to the types of employment previously mentioned, participants indicated increased professional activity and higher remuneration during undergraduate education compared to the employment experienced during secondary education. this included professional casual and full-time work with their local orchestras, established band residencies, professional music theatre performance, gigging work via agents, composition commissions, sound design and work in music school businesses. using the categories identified by throsby and zednik ( b), the majority of the surveyed musicians ( . %) considered themselves to be established (table . ). table . professional identity of survey participants i currently consider myself to be a: response % no. of responses beginning/starting out musician (e.g. very early in my music career—my foot is on the first rung) . emerging musician (e.g. starting to get my name known, getting work and my work is gaining momentum) . established musician (e.g. people know who i am and what skills i possess, work is relatively consistent and/or i know most people i work with) . established but working less than before (e.g. i have been in the industry for a while and am happy to pick and choose my work) . someone who was a musician but has left the profession . other . please feel free to comment on your answer answered question skipped question survey participants began their careers either in a contract or sessional context ( . %), created their own work ( . %), or entered full-time ( . %) or part-time ( . %) employment (see table . ). musicians’ current employment notes a decline in contract/sessional (by . %) and self-created (by . %) work and an increase in full-time (by . %) and part-time (by . %) employment. a small percentage had exited the music profession completely ( . %), or remained in some kind of music- related employment while conducting full-time non-music careers ( . %). those within the other category ( . %) discussed a variety of full-time and part-time teaching, and non-music and performance work. table . initial v. current employment of survey participants initial current change answer options % n= % n= % n= contract or sessional work i.e. short- term employment by others (with no holiday or sick pay) . . - . - self-created i.e. i was my own employer, sought my own work and i perhaps employed others . . - . - full-time i.e. i was full-time employed by an institution/business (with employment benefits such as holiday pay) . . + . + permanent part-time i.e. part-time employed by an institution/business (with employment benefits such as holiday pay) . . + . + other . . + . + i am full-time employed in a non- music profession, but engage with a music career outside of these hours as a contractual or sessional musician . i have left the music profession completely (i.e. no engagement whatsoever) . i am full-time employed in a non- music profession, but engage with a music career outside of these hours via self-instigated work . i am full-time employed in a non- music profession, but engage with a music career outside of these hours via self-instigated work in a permanent part-time position total respondents surveyed musicians predominantly relied on the referral networks of their friends and colleagues, teachers and older musicians for their initial employment (see table . ). a third either auditioned for, or sought employment ( . %), and just under a third ( . %) created their own. as indicated in the description of their first experience of paid work, non-music friends and family also played a part in providing their early employment experiences. table . demonstrates that musicians’ employability networks developed over time to become strong and heavily relied upon ( . %). irrespective of the increase of full-time positions, they are increasingly self- reliant and seek to create their own work ( . %). there is less reliance on older musicians ( . %) and teachers/mentors ( . %) to aid their employment and family members ( . %) are not as functional in referring/providing employment opportunities. auditions ( . %) are not as valued or relevant, whereas other participants discussed applications and interviews, tenured appointments, word-of-mouth referrals, headhunting and artistic collaborations that enabled more employment. table . survey participants’ strategies for gaining initial v. current work initial current change answer options % n= % n= % n= referral/(reputation) − music/similar experienced friends and colleagues . . + + referral – teachers (past and present) and mentors . . - referral − older experienced musicians . . - . audition . . - . - sought/seek employment − networking/ approached others/advertisement/social media . . - . - created my own . . + . + referral − non-music friends and colleagues . . . - referral − family . . - other . . . + i do not engage with music as a profession anymore . please feel free to provide details - answered question - skipped question . identity: scrutinising the portfolio career job description as determined in chapter , there are many definitions of the term ‘musician’ spanning from ambiguous to rather limiting and not indicative of current contexts of music making, such as technology. bennett’s ( c) definition embraces a holistic perspective embodying the term ‘portfolio career’: ‘[a] person who practises in the profession of music within one or more specialist fields’ (p. ). to explore this definition further, survey participants were asked to describe their current career identity (see table . ). table . self-acknowledged career identities of survey participants no. of career identities no. of musicians % of n = . . . . . . . (retired) . average roles – . total = . % identities ranged from zero (retired) to seven roles with an average of . career identities for the survey group (n= ). a portfolio of performing and teaching was the prevailing career description. many scholars have concluded that more musicians will need to adopt the portfolio career as an employment strategy, but they have not examined the diverse array of applications implied by the term ‘portfolio’. one could perform, teach, compose and uphold a portfolio spreading financial risk from the more guaranteed (teaching) to the more perilous (e.g. composition). conversely, one could have a portfolio of performance that, like a share portfolio, may be set for higher risk for higher financial and/or artistic return. for example, in performance a variety of contract, self- instigated and full-time employment could still be classed as a portfolio of income and artistic activity. without full-time employment, the risk portfolio increases. the level of risk can also be subject to factors such as music genre, location, versatility of skill set (music and non-music), artistic and/or financial values, plus flexibility of lifestyle. the interviewed musicians’ descriptions of their careers similarly ranged from simplistic to complex. some opted to indicate one primary area of employment using specific categories (e.g. associate musical director, casual teaching staff). others used more encompassing terminology such as ‘independent musician’ (tina). however, some divulged careers that were quite complex and hard to qualify, described by scholars as ‘messy’ (bennett & freer, ). aaron offers an example of this: i am currently employed as a freelance musician who happens to play predominantly the violin, but string-related instruments. so by that i mean viola, obviously related to the violin, and occasionally guitar, and occasionally piano, some arranging, some composing … it all mixes into what’s called a freelance musician slash slash slash. so, like a ‘slasher’ is another way to describe me, because i can’t just say ‘oh yeah i do violin for a living’ because it’s a jigsaw puzzle of work—one minute i have got a violin gig and the next minute i am playing piano for something or a [composing for and with a] high school opera or something and then it will be back to viola or something with [my electronic string quartet]. it mixes up so, i’m what’s called a ‘slasher’ in the industry, but for the sake of what i do most of the time i am a ‘violinist’. other interview participants acknowledged their diverse portfolios, citing broad areas of employment: ‘i am a performing musician: a viola player and sometimes a violinist (very rarely), and i am a music teacher’ (heidi) and ‘i am a freelance oboist in brisbane and i work in various orchestras from popular musicals and classical/baroque orchestras. i also teach in a variety of schools from primary to senior school’ (darryl). with my prior knowledge of their careers, i prompted further responses if only one employment area (e.g. teaching) was mentioned. lula explained, ‘outside of that i would like to think i am a full-time musician and so i do gigs and a little bit of private teaching’, indicating her identity as a musician could change depending on available and secure work, or the predominance of the activity. similarly, james described his employment in a hierarchy from stable (low-risk) to unstable (high-risk) work: first is, i am a senior [school] music teacher at the [a school] teaching classroom [music] and looking after the extracurricular program—but that is a shared role, so there is two of us who look after the program. i am also a casual lecturer or sessional lecturer for [a tertiary institution] lecturing a third-year subject in game audio and additionally i am a freelance musician primarily a saxophonist and i double on flute and clarinet working a variety of different shows, genres, sometimes orchestral stuff. heaps of different stuff: sometimes festivals sometimes corporate, sometimes … whatever. derrick gave two versions of his self-identification, ‘musician and teacher. or music teacher and musician’, simon, a portfolio musician, initially excluded teaching: on a contract basis, whether it be with the symphony orchestra or a stage show, that’s basically my main thing are those two orchestras. (simon) teaching? (diana) oh and yeah teaching. even that is contract basis from year to year, so i have actually not ever had a full-time job or a position. (simon) heidi listed a portfolio of extensive performance work ranging from high to low risk: ‘session musician for recordings, and contract player with the orchestra, for freelance, for pit work and concert stage and visiting artists and i do quartet work, or trio work for weddings and corporate functions’. the interview participants’ answers further confirm the ‘messiness’ of portfolio music careers in description, preference and hierarchy. the survey participants’ responses revealed three categories of career terminology that can indicate the individual’s employment identity and subsequent approach to their career: . specific: this relates to their core skill identity with descriptors such as audio engineer and producer, cellist, composer, flautist, band manager, classroom music teacher, instrumental teacher, and private studio tutor. . employment status: this represents the level of financial risk in their portfolio and included terms such as casual, full-time, sessional, freelance, gigging or contract musician. . career image: this describes a broad category of the profession projecting their perception of artistic value: performer, performing musician, professional musician, self-employed musician, independent musician, session musician, studio musician, touring musician, commercial musician, jazz musician and portfolio musician. portfolio careers are messy, but identities may at least begin to be diagnosed using these three subcategories. although the survey was entitled ‘the australian portfolio musician ’, ‘portfolio musician’ was only used by four of the survey participants, compared to simply ‘musician’ ( ) or ‘performer’ ( ). in spite of the participants leading their lives as ‘portfolio career musicians’, the term was yet to be widely adopted. however, the term ‘musician’ seemed contentious for some. only one out of the musicians who had trained as composers used the term ‘musician’; others remained with the more specific term ‘composer’ as their identity. singers also preferred to be identified by their voice with only five out of using ‘musician’ in their career description. likewise, out of drummers and percussionists preferred to be identified as drummer/percussionist rather than ‘musician’. as lula indicated, ‘full-time’ did not always equate to the security of employment by generic assumptions. while many used it to indicate their employment with teaching or performance institutions (schools, universities, orchestras, police bands etc.), four established portfolio musicians preferred this term (see table . ). they indicated a portfolio of work that has created low financial risk. table . survey participants use of ‘full time’ in relation to non-linear career employment participant no. description gender city full time [sic] cello tutor, conductor, composer, arranger, director and performer f brisbane full-time [sic], professional, trombone player m sydney full time [sic] sydney based professional saxophone and woodwind instrumentalist performing in jazz ensembles, pit orchestras, tv and studio session recording m sydney full time [sic] musician − pianist, conductor m sydney understandably, new and emerging musicians did not use this terminology. a larger research study would determine if the use of this term was geographically influenced; however, given that most survey participants were from capital cities, it is reasonable to assume that the possibility for ‘full-time’ freelance performance employment is greater in more populated locations. it is interesting that only one participant used it to refer to a portfolio of diverse types of employment. . examining the career motivations: initial to current aspirations. . . initial motivations to pursue music. survey participants were asked to consider their initial motivations to pursue a career in music (see table . ) by selecting all applicable music employment domains as identified in the australian guide to careers in music (hannan, ). table . survey participants ‘ initial motivations v. current employment activity initial current change category % n= % n= % n= performance . . - . - teaching . . + . + composition . . + . + production . . + . + arts administration . . + . + writing and research . . + . + music business . . + . + broadcasting . . + . + digital & online . . + . + instrument making and repairing . . + . + other . . + . + retailing and wholesaling . . + . + libraries, archives and information services . . - . - music therapy . . - . - total respondents: - for this theme, . % of respondents suggested a performance career was the primary motivation to pursue a career in music, followed by teaching ( . %) and composition ( . %). there was limited interest in other categories and retailing and wholesaling was not considered. one participant chose other, suggesting arranging, while the other gave a non-descriptive answer. . . current motivations to pursue music. regarding current employment performance ( . %), teaching ( . %) and composition ( . %) remained most common. comparatively the performance category decreased by . % as did music therapy ( . %) and libraries, archives and information services ( . %). all other categories increased, most notably teaching/education by . %. understanding the nature of each category may not be straightforward. for example, of those stating music therapy, only one was actually engaged as an accredited therapist. given the employment activity of the other two participants, they had chosen to view their music making as therapy, rather than the formal understanding of the employment. . . initial v. current roles and domains of music employment. musicians initially aspired to work an average of . (i.e. one to two) domains of music employment (see table . ). table . survey participants’ initial aspiration v. current reality no. of employment categories chosen initial aspiration (no. of participants) current reality (no. of participants) (retired) not answered where the average number of self-identified employment roles for a portfolio musician was . (two to three, more likely two), surveyed musicians suggested they currently experienced . domains of music employment, that is, also two to three, but more likely three. initial aspiration did not necessarily reflect current reality. in addition, survey participants were asked to respond to the statement: ‘my current career represents my initial/early music career aspirations’ ranking out of five, strongly disagree ( ) through to strongly agree ( ). of the respondents, the weighted average resulted in . , where . % answered positively and . % answered negatively (see table . ). table . survey participants current v. initial career aspirations—likert rating q my current career represents my initial/early music career aspirations answer options strongly disagree disagree unsure agree strongly agree rating average no. of responses . . % . % . % . % . % answered question skipped question to illustrate the negative, none of the seven who aspired to become a music therapist was currently active as accredited therapists. one had experienced the training and employment, but exited that field of work to teach instrumental music full time. twenty-seven survey participants initially aspiring to a performance career were not currently active in that field. five had exited the profession completely, one was retired, two were working predominantly in repairs and retail, two were composers, seven were teachers, four worked in arts administration, five worked in higher education and one worked in allied health. of note, two had not chosen the performance category; however, elsewhere within the survey they had identified active performance employment. therefore, what constitutes performance employment is most likely influenced by a financial perspective, that is, whether they are paid. one further commented that a move to a different city had caused him to cease performing. one expressed remorse at not continuing with performance as a core practice: ‘my playing is no longer related to my employment (something i regret, and half-heartedly look for ways to rectify)’ (sp , established musician). some reported conducting performance and composition activity, but did not feel it justified choosing the related category. 																																																								 ten survey participants who chose teaching as an aspiration declared they were no longer active within this field. one had retired, two had exited the music profession, four chose to support their composition, project management and performance activity with non-music occupations, and only two reported solely freelance performing work. one did not choose this category but declared himself a university lecturer. they did not choose to comment on this career decision in these two questions, and neither did the survey participants who initially did not aspire to teach and were currently doing so. these considerable changes from initial aspirations to current activity indicate an obvious shift in career path and greater portfolio of employment. further investigation into the contributing influences follows. . understanding career strategy participants were asked to respond how they had approached their career in q. of the survey. highest to lowest preference is displayed in table . . table . survey participants career path approach q during my career i have (please check all that apply) response % no. of responses always said ‘yes’ to opportunities presented to me . set attainable goals . set large ‘dream’ goals . been realistic about my capabilities and possible employment . remained focused on art/music rather than finance . avoided planning, rather decided to see where life takes me . other . please feel free to comment on your answer answered question skipped question further to this, in q. , i asked survey participants to comment on the statement, to date, i have sustained my music career by (please check all that apply). the most common responses were maintaining a high standard of work ( . %), and maintaining professionalism ( . %) (see table . ). it makes sense that maintaining a high standard will ensure continuing employment, supported by ongoing professional relationships and a reputation as someone who is easy to work with and reliable. many scholars and music professionals agree this is a key role in sustainability. table . survey q : portfolio career musicians’ methods of sustainability category % n= maintaining a high standard of work . maintaining professionalism . being versatile within the profession . accepting work that may lead to other opportunities . adopting new skills and knowledge . nurturing my networks − remaining mutual and connected . saying ‘yes’ to all opportunities . accepting unpaid work . specialisation . supporting it with an alternate income . adopting a ‘fake it ’till you make it’ attitude . other . none of these choices . total respondents: the following will discuss the career approach and strategic planning of musicians. this discussion will also affirm common music career adages such as ‘say yes’, ‘playing the game’, ‘fake it ‘till you make it’, ‘earn your stripes’ and ‘it will be good for exposure’. . . ‘say yes’. as a developing portfolio career musician, it was impressed upon me to grasp every opportunity, as one did not know what or when future possibilities could arise. in a competitive and network-based freelance environment, this process of increased visibility maximised my likelihood of employment, thereby decreasing risk within my portfolio of work. i have been ‘fondly’ referred to as a ‘gig whore’ or ‘gig pig’ and perhaps less insultingly, ‘versatile’, ‘busy’ or ‘a hard worker’. yet, my career approach has resulted in a diverse array of learning, teaching, life and musical experiences, genres, travel and income. unfortunately, it has also contributed to breakdowns, burnout, illness and exhaustion. notably, the ‘say yes to everything’ employability mindset appeared to lie at the crux of many of the interviewed portfolio musicians’ career choices, career trajectories, industry attitudes and experiences, and they advocated current graduates still needed to follow this mantra. indeed, it was the most popular choice ( . %) of career approach (see table . ). from this question, only four of the beginning/starting out and emerging musicians did not elect the ‘say yes’ method. one who was developing a concert soloist career justified his choice by acknowledging the beneficial influence of financial security: ‘i've always been careful to say no to things that i felt were not helpful to advancing my career or didn’t reflect the level i was at, at the time. fortunately, i’ve been financially ok so i didn’t need to do that’ (sp , emerging musician). it could also be argued that, given the profile of this musician, he was established, not emerging. while interview participant tina acknowledged that the ‘say yes’ strategy advantages emerging musicians’ careers, she also questioned the benefit for established musicians, concerned that the resultant distractions ‘can all take you away from actually what you should be doing’. thus, such a process required an expiry date. one survey participant suggested ‘say yes’ could support the employment mindset of remaining open to new experiences, rather than an action strategy: ‘although i have ticked the always said yes box, it is meant as more of a state of mind—one can’t say yes to everything, nor should one! however, i have always believed in taking genuine opportunities when offered to me’. (sp , established musician). yet, it can be argued that early career and established musicians working in the music industry can rarely afford to say ‘no’. however, undergraduate students are perhaps yet to understand what they should be doing and ‘saying yes’ is more conducive to the exploratory phase (super, ) of their career. as one musician affirmed ‘early in my career i would have ticked “always said ‘yes’ ...”’ (sp , established musician). commentary to this question also included a need to believe in oneself in order to ‘say yes’ and that some outcomes were not initially envisaged (see table l. in appendix l). it would appear that ‘say yes’ ( . %) is a career sustainability strategy as well as a career approach but comparatively less so than accepting work that may lead to other opportunities ( . %) (see table . ). commentary (see table l. in appendix l) indicated conditions in choosing the ‘say yes’ strategy existed. participants were often selective of their opportunities dependent on where the opportunity would lead to (new networks or worthwhile experience) or whether ‘saying yes’ would cause overload. aaron advocated the ‘say yes’ approach as a means of career discovery and rationalised that emerging musicians ‘will learn so much from an environment that perhaps is not what you want to do’. while it is understandable that vocation preparation educators would feel the responsibility to pass on this advice, there is trepidation in doing so considering an already overloaded tertiary music curriculum and their possible accountability for student burnout. a common theme throughout all the musicians’ interviews was the tolerance required for accepting work that was either considered the ‘bread and butter’ of the portfolio work (e.g. teaching) to mitigate the ‘feast or famine’ phenomenon or perhaps work that would lead to other opportunities. for example, troy, aged from the baby boomer generation, described his tenacity with teaching ( years) and performing: ‘there was a period when i was going through certain bands night after night that i just ground my teeth and did it for the money’. however, accepting all available work suggests an element of martyrdom to which weller ( ) does not see generation y and those following subscribing. her study of recently graduated american musicians revealed those following their mentors’ advice to take all work offered were quite disenchanted and began to strategise ways to continue their personal creative pursuits while maintaining work-life balance. concerning mostly popular music participants aged between and years, she wrote: those who prioritized stability first through full-time work, either in music or another field, focused on fewer, but higher quality performance opportunities, sacrificing artistic time to achieve their financial goals. financial stability also afforded these individuals time and peace of mind, enhancing original composition and projects. for the artists who prioritized art-making, creativity and selectivity took precedence. comfortable with less financial stability, they determined a personal balance of work-for-hire or teaching to balance performing occasionally for little or no pay and increasing time for creative work. (weller, , p. ) in contrast, this study demonstrated those aged between and years strongly preferred to sustain their music career by accepting work that may lead to other opportunities and, although less so, saying ‘yes’ to all offered employment (see table . ). this difference could perhaps be because the majority of my survey participants were classically trained and worked within contract employment, as opposed to weller’s ( ) study of predominantly popular musicians seeking independent work. in support of this hypothesis that music genre influences career strategy, of the jazz-trained musicians answering q. on accepting all work, only . % adopted the work that may lead to other opportunities strategy and . % the saying ‘yes’ to all opportunities strategy (table . ). these results are significantly below the overall survey average of . % for accepting work that may lead to other opportunities and marginally higher than the . % say ‘yes’ categories. all other age group results listed in table . were comparably less than those aged to years, except those categories with only two people. those comparatively early in their career were clearly conscious that they cannot afford to say ‘no’ in the current employment environment. table . survey participant sustainable career strategies by age range age range answered n= accepting all work that may lead to other opportunities n= (% of age range) say ‘yes’ to all opportunities n= (% of age range) – ( . %) ( . %) – ( . %) ( . %) – ( . %) ( . %) - ( . %) ( . %) – ( %) ( . %) – ( %) ( %) – ( %) ( %) no age given n/a n/a notwithstanding the influence of external environmental forces, music genre and demographics on career decision-making, it would be interesting to see how a ‘quality not quantity’ mindset affected career progression compared to those with an inverse approach. regardless, many musicians faced the dilemma of when to ‘say no’ to employment, and how to recognise potential opportunity in what would otherwise be viewed as ‘lesser’ employment. discussions of employment viability and career theory within undergraduate programmes would facilitate conscious decision-making, goal- setting and potentially satisfactory career outcomes. . . setting goals.	 although survey participants mostly preferred the seemingly arbitrary ‘say yes’ approach to their career, a substantial number appeared to possess clear, defined goals that motivated them to continue their career. conversely, some musicians acknowledged an element of fate factored in their career paths. this is reflected in the results from q. in table . as: set attainable goals ( . %), set large dream goals ( . %), been realistic about my capabilities and possible employment ( . %), remained focused on art/music rather than finance ( . %), avoided planning, rather decided to see where life takes me ( . %) and other ( . %). one participant observed, ‘guidance and awareness in this area was non-existent in my music education’ (sp , established musician), but did not indicate whether it was negative or not. the commentary on this question shed further insight on these results. . . . setting attainable v. dream goals.	 dream goals were considered long-term goals that were amenable to change, potentially surpassed and, for one, possessed but she was unclear as to its process of achievement. for some, attainable goals were considered small and the result of reverse engineering the dream or larger vision. often goals, realistic or otherwise, were not chosen with the consideration of financial outcome—although this was appreciated—or fame, but chosen to foster personal artistic satisfaction and improvement, not ‘could’ or ‘should’ expectations. ‘success’, in whatever form, was a by-product of the career path. the ‘orchestral dream’ was described as elusive (see table l. in appendix l). . . . considering reality and financial influence.	 for one, unawareness of career realities meant career planning was difficult. it was also apparent that participants’ negative or challenging financial experiences before and during tertiary education influenced a more realistic or financially aware approach to career. this usually involved a reduced-risk employment portfolio (i.e. less performance and composition) and created conditions on the ‘say yes’ strategy. conversely, others recognised it was their choice of music genre that drove a more realistic outlook of their career path, which in turn led to the decision to leave the profession or turn to more secure aspects of the music profession such as teaching. one suggested that her dream goals were realistically adjusted upon the confirmation of ‘the available resources and time’ (sp , established musician). some participants seemed to view the adoption of realism as preventing higher achievement or confined to one’s qualifications. however, it was also viewed as a means to be capable to fund one’s artistic interests. one also indicated that at times the focus on finance was mainly to achieve non-music life goals (see table l. in appendix l). . . . avoiding planning. just over one quarter ( . %) of the surveyed musicians avoided planning, rather decided to see where life takes me, which may suggest that a career in music was viewed as beyond one’s control and approached fatalistically. one confirmed her health directed this approach: ‘since my injury i’ve avoided planning, rather decided to see where life takes me’ (sp , established musician). however, the commentary largely resonated with krumboltz’s ( ) happenstance learning theory and confirmed a need to remain open to opportunity, from which personal and professional outcomes occurred. one participant used an interesting choice of words: ‘wander forward’ (sp , established musician), indicating an element of chance combined with direction as represented by the chaos career theory (bright & pryor, ). another suggested that as planning was not consciously considered early in the career, avoiding it was not ‘so much a decision as a consequence’ (sp , established musician). by no means were these musicians any less ‘successful’ than the others, although this category included two out of the seven that had left the profession (see table l. in appendix l). . . . a multidimensional approach to career. many participants indicated they adopted a mix of the offered approaches. one errantly thought these were ‘either or’ choices but did usefully propose that choosing one approach ‘limits creativity’ (sp , established musician). despite being contradictory, one suggested these can occur ‘alternately or simultaneously, deliberately or not!’ (sp , established musician) (see table l. in appendix l). . . . factors inhibiting planning and sustainability. higher priorities such as family commitments were only mentioned by women as a strong influence on their career choices. one suggested this prohibited her from consistently adopting a ‘say yes’ strategy, one stated she placed her family before her creative needs, suggesting her artistic freedom was irrelevant, and another had prioritised her family and abandoned her career dream (see table l. in appendix l). . . examining career versatility.	 you have to live spherically—in many directions. never lose your childish enthusiasm—and things will come your way. federico fellini ( − ), italian film director and screenwriter few in-depth studies consider the challenges associated with choosing to adopt multiple identities, genres and forms of music expression, and the ramifications of these aspects on vocational preparation. for q. , to date, i have sustained my music career by (please check all that apply), the third most common response was being versatile within the profession ( . %) (see table . ). when considering styles of music in q. , the most common genre they were paid to engage in was western classical (see table . ). this is no surprise considering the majority of undergraduate training of the survey participants was classical. six musicians did not answer and five suggested they had only worked within education and not performance or composition. three others suggested they only worked in music education, but elsewhere in the survey they indicated active performance and composition employment. table . styles of music professionally engaged in by survey participants q to date, i have been paid to engage with these broad styles of music (check all that apply): response % no. of responses western classical (including all styles) . music theatre . contemporary art music . jazz (including latin, blues, rnb, originals in the style of) . film, tv and video game music . popular rock . folk/ethnic/world music . independent music (i.e. indie) . techno . other . i have only worked within music education . other (please specify) answered question skipped question the relevant surveyed musicians were most likely to engage with three or four styles of music, predominantly western classical music (see table . ). once again, owing to the training of the surveyed musicians, this is unsurprising. however, those who had experienced employment within five styles of music largely engaged with music theatre. those employed within six styles of music reported predominantly classical and music theatre engagement, those in seven styles identified jazz, and those in eight styles equally included western classical, jazz, and contemporary art music. therefore, these musicians demonstrate a tendency to be employed in areas outside of their original training. table . survey participants’ versatility of engagement and predominant style no. of styles engaged with no. of musicians predominant style (no. of musicians of this category engaging with the predominant style) % of musicians of this category engaging with the predominant style western classical ( ) western classical ( ) . western classical ( ) . western classical ( ) . music theatre ( ) . western classical and music theatre ( ) jazz ( ) western classical, jazz, contemporary art music ( ) all styles ( ) total comparing undergraduate training to the styles of music musicians engaged with, . % of those classically trained engaged with four styles of music. for those with undergraduate jazz training, . % engaged with eight styles of music. these were the highest percentages within the categories possessing the highest populations (see table . ). the style amounts are highlighted in bold and underlined. these results suggest that those who are jazz trained are likely to engage with twice as many musical styles. it would appear this has no correlation to potential income (see section . . ). table . survey participants’ undergraduate training and no. of styles engaged with undergraduate training no. of musicians no. of styles musicians engaged with* army training x ; x . arts administration x . classical ( n/a) x ; x , x ; x , x ; x ; x ; x ; x . classical/jazz no answer. informal x ; x ; x . instrument making x . jazz x ; x ; x ; x ; x ; x ; x ; x . opera x ; x ; x . popular x ; x . *the style amounts are highlighted in bold and underlined. the survey did not thoroughly explore the number of instruments one could incorporate within their employment, yet this was explored within the interviews. for derrick, ‘uber-versatility’ had positive ramifications for diverse employability. however, he struggled with compromising his high standard of work and the realities of achievable performance outcomes for both drums and vibraphone. for example, derrick suggested the broad assumption that percussive skill is transferable throughout the entire instrument family was inaccurate and misconstrued: ‘but they [drum kit and vibraphone] are nothing like each other’. likewise, james, who identified as a versatile woodwind doubler jazz musician, had worked for years in the field of education as an instrumental and classroom music teacher serving many years as a full-time director of music in a private school. most recently, he chose a permanent part-time school position to allow one day a week for sound design employment, and part-time tertiary music lecturing of the same topic. throughout his career, he has performed as a band musician (predominantly jazz rock, and pop) and has been employed frequently in professional music theatre productions. although not complaining about his busy work life, he did describe the pressure he experienced when all areas of his employment life were active. james reported that there were compromises: so that’s just something you have got to get used to and embrace. and i guess it never rains but it pours so that’s all going to happen at about the same time and you just got [sic] to step up to the plate and do your best. although surveyed musicians valued being versatile within the profession ( . %) higher than specialisation ( . %), they did comment that both were useful sustainable career strategies (see table l. in appendix l). in spite of promoting the portfolio career to undergraduate musicians as something to ‘embrace’, a functional portfolio career, where every skill is at a level of excellence, takes significant time to initiate, build and maintain. furthermore, such a timeline for professional multi-skill development is longer than a three- or four-year degree; thus foundational learning of one’s initial craft from which to build other skills is crucial. in promoting the benefits and necessity to live such a portfolio life, the effort and time investment required needs to be made explicit to avoid disillusion. students should be encouraged to plan and sequence the adoption of new skills within their career, rather than attempting to succeed at all of them simultaneously. recently, there has been growing research into the physiological, aural and mental health of musicians (ackermann, driscoll & kenny, ; chesky, dawson & manchester, ; dobson, ; hallam, cross & thaut, ; d. kenny, driscoll & 																																																								 a woodwind doubler is one who performs many woodwind instruments, often found in musical theatre genres. ackermann, ; o’brien, driscoll & ackermann, ). rather than portfolio musicians, participants were mostly drawn from orchestral institutions or conference participants for easier accessibility of data collection. regardless, these studies imply that inconsistent workloads are not sustainable for personal health let alone employment quality and satisfaction. this knowledge compounds the conundrum of how much reality one needs to include in a vocation course and the health ramifications of instructing students to ‘say yes’ and embrace the occasionally chaotic life of a portfolio careerist. if anything, james’s employability is indicative of the work of a successful musician, to which some students may aspire. james concedes his over-commitment and inherent fear of saying ‘no’ resulted in a poor performance with a professional symphony orchestra. he considered this incident a career ‘low’ and reflected some alcohol consumption prior to the performance may have helped ‘to take the edge off’. james’s example indicates the pressures that have historically led musicians to poor health from contributors such as stress-induced alcohol over-consumption and the prevalence of performance anxiety within certain genres of music (dobson, ; d. kenny et al., ). considering the lack of formal stress and illness leave available to most portfolio musicians, working at less than optimum health is not ideal but requires no choice. unpaid sick-leave is either financially impossible for some or, as evidenced by the survey results, drives others to choose full-time or non-music careers. fostering more health awareness in vocation courses may begin to enable a culture of graduating musicians who set workload boundaries and are sympathetic to those ‘saying no’. however, portfolio musicians’ common mindset that ‘you are only as good as your last gig’, as brutally experienced by james, adds to the drive to excel in all domains of their portfolio. the financial uncertainty of such a career adds to the ‘say yes’ career strategy and, in turn, encourages musicians to take on more than they should, particularly if they wishes to remain visible within their employability network. . . proactive v. subconscious networking. ‘let instrument speak not mouth’ the above is a phrase i had initially heard from one of my undergraduate lecturers during the s, a british timpanist who worked in the london philharmonic orchestra for several years. the meaning was clear: let one’s work speak for itself, all other methods of self-promotion were distasteful. i have encountered this sentiment many times throughout my career and it would appear to be still prevalent among established musicians in australia. surveyed musicians’ commentary on q. reflected their high priority on maintaining a high standard of work ( . %) and maintaining professionalism ( . %) over nurturing my networks ( . %), as well as healthy relationships with people (see table l. in appendix l). when asked what method they chose to seek out work, many interviewed musicians responded that they waited for the phone to ring, or expressed that their deliberate employment-seeking strategies made them uncomfortable. given that these are established musicians who have worked in the field for at least years, one can safely assume that networks have been well-established, enabling ongoing work. these musicians also built their careers in a time when, by their own admission, there was more work available and it was easier to develop a reputation based on one’s performance. james also placed value on his network and the ‘say yes’ mindset but realised that for his most recent addition to his portfolio career, video game design, he may have to reconsider his processes and be more strategic and less fatalistic: ‘it hasn’t definitely not been something that i’ve pursued per se, as in a deliberate way. but it’s possible that now i am thinking i could do some more of that’. for new graduates in the current music industry environment, the ‘say yes’ strategy is challenging if employment offers are not made. with opportunities for ‘on- the-job’ training diminishing (cottrell, ; coulson, ; mills, ), the art and value of ethical and collaborative networking needs to be included in vocation preparation courses. preferably, this would occur within first year so that professional behaviour may be established throughout the degree experience (bridgstock, ), facilitating the degree-to-industry transition process (lizzio, ). heidi realised very early in her career how much one’s network overrides the job application process when applying for peripatetic teaching employment in the private school environment. after struggling to find teaching work for several years, her two school positions were obtained via her colleagues’ recommendation rather than her cv: ‘i don’t think it was how i came across in any interviews’. superior interview technique may seem redundant to teach at undergraduate level, particularly as australian orchestral employment remains solely audition-based and contract work is by word-of-mouth recommendation. nevertheless, an increase or influx of graduates seeking teaching work in a diminishing performance environment may create greater competition where the deciding factor for employment is interview presentation. this suggests that vocation preparation courses should include content based on industry relevance inclusive of future trends. darryl, a portfolio musician who had been overseas for years, discovered his lack of membership of the australian musician network to be a barrier to gaining teaching employment. he found ‘cold-calling’ via email did not produce results, so he lost confidence and was unsure as to the next process: [y]ou can’t just walk into a school. because in this day and age they don’t want strangers walking around schools and i think if you enter a section they still wouldn’t let you see anyone. so, i didn’t know how else to approach them which makes it difficult. from my experience, alternative measures would include finding out the names of the school’s head of music and ringing them during the morning tea time when staff are not in class, politely introducing oneself, and following up the conversation with an email and attached cv. some networking strategies include joining associations of which instrumental teachers are members, such as the australian band and orchestra association and volunteering as a committee member. likewise, with performance work, attending concerts or gigs and connecting with the performers afterwards demonstrates interest and industry activity. however, what appears common sense for one is new knowledge for another, particularly for someone such as darryl who is used to long-term contracts and not educated in the skills of initiative. his emotional strain may have been avoided had such simple procedures been discussed during his undergraduate study. aaron was aware of several processes for self-promotion such as the elevator conversation, the website and the sales pitch, but preferred ‘a very relaxed way to it’. he considered his career evolved organically by responding to opportunity as a ‘yes person’, and identified with a more protean approach (hall, ) to employability: so if someone says something to me like ‘do you want to do this, here is an opportunity’, i am like ‘i am there, absolutely, yes, let’s do it’. right so how do i do it?’ i’ll figure that out and i’ll learn on the job very quickly. (aaron, portfolio musician) . . fake it ‘till you make it. saying ‘yes’ had been a determinant of aaron’s perceived career success while employing a ‘fake it ‘till you make it’ methodology, where one accepts the work and learns the skills on-the-job. as it was, . % of surveyed musicians identified with this strategy (see table . ). in some ways, fake it ‘till you make it can be described as a bi-product of ‘saying yes’ and a way to uphold the ‘let instrument speak not mouth’ agenda. surveyed musicians also offered commentary explaining their choice of career path strategies (see table l. in appendix l). fake it ‘till you make it was considered more appropriate to those earlier in their careers but detrimental to one who was more established: ‘fake it ‘till you make it probably worked when i was an immediate graduate. don’t think it would work now’ (sp , established musician) and ‘you may need to fake it initially, but to get future work, you have to “make it” quicker’ (sp , emerging musician). for margaret, following the completion of her doctoral scholarship she perceived there was no work available and had to consider brave proactive measures to remind her networks of her employable strengths. she wrote emails, contacted colleagues for coffee, remained informed of those in hiring positions to assist her employment status and work ‘trickle[d] through from there’. however, these methods did not sit well with her: ‘that is another thing i hate doing: it just feels really contrived’. those designing and implementing vocation preparation need to be mindful of the cultural considerations of their students, for failing to do so is to the detriment of students’ engagement with whole-of-course learning. students would be better introduced to these strategies as options, rather than industry norms. although simon considered social media such as facebook a sincere and useful method ensuring network visibility, like margaret, he felt discomfort with strategic employment seeking: ‘i have never been one to “play the game”, meaning go for beers with the guys and make sure you are popular. that’s that high school mentality that doesn’t come naturally to me, and in fact i loathe it’. it would appear ‘proactive’ as opposed to ‘accidental networking’ is a necessary but last resort tool in the australian musicians’ career management toolbox. those who do adopt this, do so bravely hoping that it does not diminish the perceived value of their skills or personal integrity. these musicians demonstrate that the power of the network and how one builds and ethically maintains it are explicit processes that need to be presented within students’ vocation preparation education. this is particularly pertinent considering the comparatively competitive environment graduates now enter. ‘let instrument speak, not mouth’ may be rephrased to become ‘be seen, be heard, be read’, encompassing all forms of online (passive/proactive) and in person (active/proactive) presence in the music industry network. disturbingly, this adage ‘let instrument speak, not mouth’ may pervade the current generation of undergraduates owing to their mentors’ past experience, causing a performance-focused approach to training that is resistant to any non-music support skill education. students in this study have demonstrated that the influence of their teachers’ opinions is strong in the master- apprentice conservatoire environment. to minimise the barriers to the successful teaching of employability skills, vocation preparation education needs to include faculty. . . unpaid employment: devaluing the vocation to create a valuable career. but it will be great exposure! who knows where this will lead! earn your stripes. in addition to musicians’ individual perception of success, a number of factors cloud the credibility of music as a professional vocation, including the lack of formal qualifications required for many areas of music employment (hannan, ), recreational musicians performing in professional venues (see, e.g. weekend warriors, ), non-trained musicians creating a strong online following, and the necessary but costly strategy of building professional networks early in one’s career via unpaid or low-paid work. early career musicians hope this modest beginning will lead to higher paid and quality employment. performing non-paid work in colleagues’ projects, and low or unpaid community work as an early career musician, has been viewed as a ‘rite of passage’ or ‘earning one’s stripes’ for my generation (x) of musicians. in fact, . % of the survey participants reported accepting unpaid work as one strategy to aid their career path (see table . ). umney’s ( ) study of jazz musicians in london and paris acknowledged the practice of established musicians willingly offering their services to independents for little financial remuneration, valuing the ‘potential to build contacts, which serves both a creative and an economic purpose … and the attraction of deepening relationships with artistic kindred spirits’ (p. ). from my industry observation, this ongoing development of social capital is a necessary investment in one’s career to ensure sustainability and it is relevant irrespective of genre, locality and generation. such processes need to be acknowledged at the undergraduate level to allow students the opportunity to supplement their education with performing experiences to assist the development of their professional networks and realistic career expectations. the same can apply for peripatetic teaching. following a series of unpaid work that did not produce further paid performance employment, troy reported: ‘straight out of the con there was very little [paid work]. i remember there being literally just a handful of gigs in that first year and realising that hey, it probably wasn’t going to be’. following this, he obtained a teaching job in a private school, and performance work simultaneously increased. owing to the peripatetic nature of instrumental teaching, troy’s interaction with other music teachers allowed him to remain connected to his industry network, as is often the case (coulson, ; mills, ; teague & smith, ). when asked about his job-seeking processes, troy also confessed to waiting for the phone to ring, acknowledging this as a passive approach to his career: ‘i’ve never ever gone looking for it and maybe that’s why it took a little bit longer for it to come good’. however, troy considered he would receive the phone call only if worthy of the work: i remember when [de-identified colleague] was in the early days doing all the stage work here and pit work and he sort of used to share the jobs around.… we were doing a gig one day and he mentioned this show was coming up and he said ‘i suppose it’s your turn’ and i said ‘i don’t want the gig because it’s my turn. only hire me if you want me’. presumably troy’s visible presence in the industry, albeit unpaid, was enough to launch his performing career over years ago. however, whether this is a best-practice strategy in an environment of increased numbers of musicians, limited venues, fluctuating economy and distorted value perception of music (page, ) remains questionable. during her career, nerida has accumulated many stories of disrespect to musicians regarding fees for services, back-of-house (dis)organisational management, and incorrect assumptions on advertising opportunity: you know the whole, ‘it will be great for you’, ‘it’s exposure’, ‘it will be really good for your career’. that just doesn’t cut it, especially if you are approaching an established band who already has a profile and a career. so whenever anyone says to me, ‘it will be really great exposure’, i go ‘i am so exposed to the point where possibly i am over-exposed’. yet, nerida understood that navigating one’s career as an emerging musician is challenging, considering the need for exposure and subsequent career development. she proffered the solution, ‘you have to ask questions all the time, ask questions and be informed’. the difficulty for students to know the correct questions to ask, and of whom, provides further argument to include such explicit conversations within an undergraduate degree. derrick disclosed his undergraduate students were often taken advantage of without realising it, as all they wanted to do was perform, irrespective of remuneration. he recognised that the work was similar to what he first experienced: ‘they are all out there doing gigs and hustling up stuff and playing in bars’. when asked if it was well-paid, he replied, ‘no, not at all. i mean i look at them and i don’t see any difference to what i was years ago, just the same sort of vague, just playing music, and not thinking too much ahead’. current student musicians may continue to follow troy’s model and encounter similar success and progress to higher paid performance work. yet, derrick’s example suggests this increasing competition for passion-based employment may drive student musicians to perpetuate the practice of accepting lower paid work in lieu of no work at all after graduation. following this, some may continue this practice while incurring income from music-related employment such as teaching or acquiring non-music employment, often classed as a ‘day job’. this hobbyist approach to music adds to the influences threatening the music industry that musicians cannot afford to uphold if they wish to be valued professionally. rather, students should be informed of the options and benefits for accepting unpaid work, but also know what their time and efforts are financially worth. accepting unpaid work was also a point of contention for many survey participants (see table l. in appendix l). one recommended avoiding it as a dominant strategy: ‘don’t take too many unpaid gigs!’ (sp , established musician). another did not feel it had ‘helped to sustain my career’ (sp , established musician), and one felt ashamed in doing so: ‘i dislike my own “accepting unpaid work” admission’ (sp , established musician). likewise, some justified that their established status did not require them to adopt certain career-forming strategies: ‘early on i would have been more amenable to accepting an unpaid job for “experience” and said yes to most opportunities. now at this stage in my career i would avoid those situations’ (sp , established musician). one suggested there was a culture of resistance to this strategy in his city justified by the high cost of living; however, local charities and community music suffered the consequence. he also noted the negative impact where not accepting unpaid work fostered ‘an elite attitude at an early stage of undergrad training without a corresponding level of ability or reliability’ (sp , established musician). in some ways, not accepting unpaid work could be detrimental to career development and sustainability. another participant acknowledged that unpaid performance work often led to other types of music employment: ‘often playing for a local community orchestra has helped me make more contacts with other clarinettists in the industry and led to teaching opportunities even if the initial work with the orchestra was unpaid’ (sp , established musician). rather than continue to accept lower-paid work in fear of otherwise de-skilling, graduate musicians need to be equipped with the confidence to discover where appreciative audiences reside and create new opportunities for themselves and their colleagues. in order to seek out reputable venues and be remunerated at least within the live performance award guidelines (fair work ombudsman, ), not only do they need to be informed of such, but require the skills of price negotiation and communication of self-worth to industry stakeholders. a challenge remains for those seeking traditional venues as music australia acknowledges that ‘continued pressures on live music venues’ (page, ) exist in australia. therefore, students will need to think creatively and conceive new performance and presentation spaces. . . summary. in considering the portfolio musician career, one question arises: does living spherically come at a cost to the ‘childish enthusiasm’ required to sustain a portfolio career? emergent themes from the portfolio musicians’ reflection on training and employment clarified often-used clichés within the music industry, and contribute to the implications of designing a vocational preparation strand to better prepare musicians for challenging portfolio careers. . exploring the value of the portfolio musician ‘get a real job!’ the interviewed musicians considered, irrespective of financial outcome, their career choices held value but were yet to be understood by their mentors, colleagues and broader social environment. although bennett ( c) defined ‘success as a musician is the achievement of sustainable practice’ (p. ), achieving highly competitive full-time linear employment still held consideration among some of the classical music participants. my jazz interview participants did not admit any concept of ‘success’ or lack thereof. bennett’s ( c, p. ; c) study of classical musicians acknowledged such a hierarchy of career aspiration and achievement, that is, soloist, chamber musician, orchestral performance with teaching represented as a ‘fallback’ career. earlier studies in the field of jazz indicated less regard for the commercially driven (stebbins, ) and o’reilly et al. ( ) noted the respected ‘relationship between music creator and performer is one of the most complex in the music industry’ (p. ). perhaps this hierarchy has evolved from musicians’ feared possible selves (markus & nurius, ) and negative self-concept conceived before and developed during their undergraduate study. there is no research specifically relating to this hypothesis to date. conversely, the uk-based investigating musical performance study involving jazz, popular, scottish traditional and western classical musicians and undergraduates determined that an ideal musician requires versatility in addition to absolute expertise, personality factors, commitment to excellence and performance skills (creech & papageorgi, ). this bodes well in promoting the portfolio career to undergraduate musicians. yet my research has revealed a long road to recalibrating career value within and beyond the music industry. in australia, this will need to be introduced at an early age and include music educators of all levels in the dialogue, in addition to parents and mentors. . . the value of a portfolio career: interviewed musicians’ experiences. heidi’s (portfolio musician) story represented the generic attitudes towards non- linear career musicians: i have a friend who doesn’t play with the orchestra and has a lot of friends who do and they will do gigs together. she is a fabulous player and so people always ask ‘are you with the orchestra?’ and she will say ‘no i am not’ and people go ‘aawww’ [sympathetically]. tina additionally noticed the preference for perceived status positions in the younger generation, and the lack of value for other forms of employment: ‘what i often see is people feeling just because they don’t achieve a full-time job that somehow they don’t have value and i think that’s a real shame to see in our young musicians because they are the future’. it would appear musicians’ lack of endorsement for non-linear careers do themselves and others no favours in generating a positive perception of a portfolio career. during his undergraduate degree, james was active in the music industry as a peripatetic teacher and gigging musician, and began to question the functionality of his music education. james’s perceptions of career success influenced his portfolio lifestyle choice and he suggested his university teacher’s advice inspired him to complete education qualifications and seek full-time school employment: he said ‘matt, you don’t want to be and playing in a pub band because you’ve got no choice’ and i really thought about that and i was playing in pubs and i thought ‘yep, you’re right. i don’t want to be doing this just trying to survive’. he did manage to obtain a sabbatical and pursue life as a cruise-ship musician for a short term. however, it did nothing to convince him to leave his full-time education employment at the time, particularly after witnessing negative experiences and poor professional behaviour: seeing other full-time [freelance performing] musicians and some of the struggles they had, the sacrifices they were prepared to make in order to follow their dream that they then chose to forgo owning their own home, things like that, living life a little bit tougher from my perspective …(james) life experiences aside, he also acknowledged ‘because there are no salary positions, you are always working—surviving off the skin of your pants, scratching for gigs, going off on a cruise ship [and] being exposed to lots of temptation [alcohol and drugs]’. overall, many interviewed musicians suggested they were content with life as a portfolio career musician and justified their pathway with the benefits of learning, experiences, travel and personal achievements. ange commented she was never one who had planned her career according to financial gain or critical success, instead maintaining the mindset that ‘this is the path i am on, let’s see where it goes … and it’s just taken me amazing places’. aaron also valued his career choices irrespective of external opinion and rather considered it a career ‘other people would be jealous of, and then you get to turn around and say that’s what i do for a living’. derrick defended the value of his opportunities, particularly regarding the world travel and musical experiences generated by his employment: ‘you just can’t buy that. if i added up all the flights and free travel i have had in the last years it would come to a lot of money and i haven’t paid for a cent of it’. . . objective v. subjective income. c. cooper and wills’ ( ) uk-based study of male popular professional musicians explored predominant causes of career stress. one participant explained his anxiety was instigated by the lack of societal value of musicians: ‘the public judge a musician only by the money he earns. if he’s rich, he’s a great man. if he’s poor, he’s a time-wasting parasite who should get a “real” job’. twenty-seven years on and the musicians from my study convey that this sentiment has not changed. however, the non-musician may find it challenging to perceive a musician’s success as it is founded on subjective perception, ‘how a person identifies themselves (how they see themselves)’ and ‘their vision for the future’, and objective fact, ‘the time spent on different activities’ and ‘the proportion of income generated from these activities (recognising that these may well be different)’ (perkins, , p. ). nagel ( ) described this subjective success as ‘psychic income’, which ‘often appears to support psychic needs even if it paradoxically sabotages economic security’ (p. ). james indicated this struggle with being an artistically and financially successful portfolio musician in a society where ‘“having” defines “being”’ (o’reilly et al., , p. ): you want to be able to live in this society and you want to be able to go to a bank and get a mortgage and you actually need a salary to do that easily. it’s very difficult to do it as a contractor working for yourself.… i’ve just gone in for another mortgage and they only looked at my [teaching] salary—they didn’t even look at things that i had, group certificates for shows because they are just temporary. in this respect, james was fortunate he had his permanent teaching employment in his portfolio of work. however, the problem is further exacerbated for those that do not possess full-time work in their portfolio. derrick and his musician wife, nerida, sought advice from financial planners and described the lack of understanding for their vocation: ‘they would just look at you and shake their heads and look down at you and say “why don’t you just go and get a job?”’. another accountant viewed their earnings and suggested, ‘you know you can get the dole?’ rather than commending their proactive approach to financial planning, derrick described their lack of respect for their employment choice as ‘condescending and horrible’. survey participants were asked to rate the statement, i consider a portfolio musician’s career (i.e. a musician that sources their financial income from a variety of areas in the music profession) to be a respectable profession, using a likert scale of one, strongly disagree, through to five, strongly agree (see table . ). with a weighted average of . , . % answered positively with only . % disagreeing; . % were not committed to an opinion. table . survey q : the portfolio musician’s career—likert results response strongly disagree disagree neutral agree strongly agree total weighted average % . % . % . % . % . % . n the results indicate a high level of professional self-respect. however, musicians further communicated a range of values by musicians and non-musicians impacting their careers, and revealed the conflict they experienced as musicians. regardless, there was advocacy for a portfolio career, that it is ‘vital’, ‘critical in fact’, and ‘necessary in today’s industry’ (see table l. in appendix l). one musician chose strongly disagree: not because this is not the reality, but because there is a huge level of snobbery within the profession. in the classical world, certainly in australia, there is still the lingering perception that the best musicians are those employed in orchestras. (sp , established musician) this hierarchy, represented in bennett’s ( ) doctoral research, appears to prevail. another musician alluded to the various areas of the arts industry as somewhat classist: ‘with such limited employment opportunities in what some might call more “purist” settings, i believe [the portfolio career] has become necessary in order to sustain a music career’ (sp , established musician). further conflict within the profession was evidenced by the comment ‘musicians now are self-serving egotists’. (sp , established musician) survey participants were further prompted to rate the statement, i consider a portfolio musician’s career (i.e. a musician that sources their financial income from a variety of areas in the music profession) to be a respectable profession by non- musicians, using the same likert scale (see table . ). table . survey q : non-musicians’ view of the portfolio musician’s career—likert results response strongly disagree disagree neutral agree strongly agree total weighted average % . % . % . % . % . % . n at . , the weighted average was substantially lower than the previous result of . . just under half ( . %) of the respondents answered positively, whereas . % disagreed with the statement. thirty-two per cent were not committed to a positive/negative opinion but some did offer an explanation of their quantitative response. generally, it was felt that the australian non-music public largely misunderstood the musician, were ignorant of the work, skills and lifestyle required to sustain a music career and did not realise that a respectable income was possible. because of this, non-musicians romanticised the concept of being a musician. consequently, the musicians’ experience of non-musician respect for the profession varied from none to overwhelming admiration. musicians perceived those more educated in the arts as possessing greater understanding. for example, they found that european cultures possessed greater acceptance of the portfolio career musician than in australia, where the concept is yet to gain traction. heidi also confirmed the societal value of music industry participants was location-specific: when i am in [european country] and you are a musician it’s like ‘that’s awesome’. or you are a teacher, ‘that is awesome’. but in australia it’s like ‘oh that’s very hard’.… which i find hilarious because … when i speak to people studying law—they are the most depressed people…. they are saying [to me], ‘when am i going to find a job?!’ heidi not only corroborated student employability concerns within other non- music sectors (tomlinson, ), but the reluctance of society to recognise the world economy increasingly functions on the activities of ‘portable (“portfolio”) career[s]’ (templar & cawsey, , p. ) and the ‘gig economy’ (marin-guzman, ). once again, the issue of professional hierarchy and disrespect in the working music community arose in the survey commentary. orchestral musicians were seen as possessing a superiority complex, whereas others experienced disrespect of the portfolio career lifestyle by fellow musicians. it was understood that this form of employability might take some time to be accepted in an australian society struggling to broadly accept the arts unlike their european counterparts. table l. in appendix l aligns the survey participants’ commentary with their likert rating, categorised within the emergent themes of public perception of the profession, public romanticism of the career, respect for the profession (including positive and negative commentary), hierarchy and the industry community and australian cultural and artistic climate: . . summary. in disheartening students with such case studies and industry culture in first year, there is the threat of student attrition or unwittingly steering some to choose safer, less artistic paths, discouraging potential unrealised career ambitions. this research also indicates a generic misconception of the portfolio musician’s life by non-musicians. therefore, aspiring musicians choosing to work in the higher-risk areas of the music industry such as independent practice and/or project management require negotiation skills in the language of the non-musician in order to communicate their value. these skills are particularly pertinent when seeking funding from non-government institutions and potential stakeholders in support of independent arts projects. if anything, all musicians (training, new, emergent and established) would benefit from greater public education and awareness of western art portfolio music careers. musicians’ commentary indicated the challenges in designing a vocational preparation strand for a conservatoire. that is, a broad structure involving career awareness, degree engagement, career tools and industry transition may be applicable to any music higher education environment. however, it is necessary to adapt the curriculum to suit the student culture and the influencing demographic attitude to music vocation. furthermore, discussing the value of a music career would require a staged approach throughout a degree to align with the student music career perceptions from initial decision-making to embark on a music career (pre-tertiary and tertiary entry level) through to the later degree years when viewing their possibilities through a more realistic and financial lens. this is particularly meaningful as students compare themselves to their non-music colleagues and consider ‘life on the outside’ with trepidation—irrespective of their vocation preparation. in order to sustain their careers, student musicians will need to supplement their resilience toolbox with this knowledge when considering vocation choices influenced by financial and critical expectations. as bennett ( b) advised, ‘self-identity is crucial to finding intrinsic success and to building sustainable careers’ (p. ). . how much does an australian portfolio career musician earn? . . highest and lowest experienced earnings (interviewed musicians). interviewed musicians were asked to estimate their highest and lowest before tax yearly income and comment on their earnings trajectory. it was revealed that six of the highest income earners qualified below the australian average of $ , but remained above the tax-free threshold. the highest figure reported was $ , while overseas undertaking full-time orchestral work and a portfolio of sessional performing and teaching employment. trajectories were described as ‘upward’, ‘plateaued’, ‘peaks and troughs’, with interruptions primarily involving migration to another country, having children or major career changes. those who supplemented their income with teaching experienced more financial stability and the larger salaries were attributed to music theatre and orchestral employment activity. applicable knowledge regarding tax allowances (simpson & munro, ) for musicians with fluctuating and sporadic earning trajectories as represented in table . would be particularly useful to graduates struggling to navigate their emerging career. in addition, such knowledge would provide an understanding or reassurance of predictive income to aid their career planning for, as previously shown, career decisions influenced by financial reality. table . interview participants’ income: lowest to highest experienced earnings and related trajectory pseudonym lowest earned ($) highest earned ($) financial trajectory bruce , , reactive to career change heidi , , ‘going up a little’ derrick , – , , become more secure darryl tax threshold , return to australia created a downward trajectory tina moving to australia , – , move to australia created a downward trajectory nerida , , peaks and troughs aaron < , , steadily maintained with some fluctuation lula , , steadily maintained/plateau troy , , – , upward margaret , , upward jane ‘paying tax from nothing’ , upward james , , – , upward simon can’t remember , upward robert , – , , – , upward chris n/a n/a . . highest and lowest experienced earnings (surveyed musicians). surveyed musicians were also asked to state the highest and lowest before-tax financial income they had experienced. some declined to answer in monetary figures, stating ‘i earn a very comfortable salary by working very hard’ (sp , established musician). others struggled to recall the information: ‘in all honesty, i am unsure’ (sp , emerging musician). of the that responded, their highest income experienced was between $ , (emerging jazz vocalist and educator) and $ , (established freelance performer/conductor and educator, signed with an agent). some musicians declared non-music or music-related income supplementing their work (for example, allied health, non-music academia and music retail employment) with others stating only their performance and/or music teaching income. owing to the vagaries of the question, and the reliance on the recollection by the musicians, these numbers are naturally not accurate. however, they do allow for an insight into income possibilities. of note, the second-highest experienced income was $ , , followed by $ , . of the survey question respondents, the lowest experienced before-tax income ranged between negative $ , (a loss) (established jazz musician) and $ , (established orchestral musician and university lecturer). fewer musicians responded to this question suggesting tax records would need to be consulted, it was too long ago to recall, or the number was only nominal and not enough from which to make a living. some participants seemed confused by whether to state the amount earned during undergraduate study or when they began employment as a ‘professional’, as what constitutes ‘professional’ was considered subjective, and the question open to interpretation. therefore, there were many question mark glyphs inserted after answers and the word ‘approximately’ describing the amount appeared several times. in addition, although participants were asked to specify the year highest/lowest income was earned, many did not. therefore, inflation cannot be factored into the salary averages (e.g. $ , earned in is of differing value in ). nevertheless, considering the number of participants indicating their salary was increasing, stabilising or fluctuating over time, the averages are a broad indication of earning possibilities. from this, the average highest experienced income was $ , . , the lowest: $ , . , with female musicians averaging lower ($ , . and $ , . ) and male musicians averaging higher ($ , . and $ , . ). those experiencing their highest incomes lower than the australian average wage were largely emerging musicians, jazz musicians and those who only declared their creative income (performance, conducting and composition, not teaching). those who experienced beyond the national average income undertook a portfolio of work that, similar to the interviewed musicians, largely included musical theatre, orchestral work, and full-time teaching (schools and tertiary). their core/undergraduate music training and corresponding range of experienced income is represented in table . . table . survey participants’ core/undergraduate music training v. income range training/undergraduate education environment highest experienced salary range ($) lowest experienced salary range ($) n= army , – , , – , arts administration , , classical , – , , – , crossover (classical/jazz) , (emerging musician) , informal , – , , – , instrument making , (established musician) , jazz , – , loss– , opera , – , , – , popular , – , , – , those with classical training appeared to have the most potential for higher income, though this may be unfounded given the larger percentage of the total survey cohort. those with informal (i.e. not degree-based) training appeared to have less income, but three of these four participants did not declare their ‘day job’ income. regardless of the vagaries in the responses, these musicians indicate a strong potential to create financial security from a career in music. however, a large percentage ( . %) teach, and the remainder work in arts administration, non-music employment or full-time defence force, music theatre and orchestral employment. only seven make a living completely from their creative practice of performance and composition, of which four reside overseas, two in sydney and one in brisbane. when considering respondents’ stage of career, the data indicate a considerable increase from emerging to established musicians’ highest and lowest average experienced incomes (see table . ). table . survey participants’ career stage v. highest and lowest experienced incomes (averaged) employment n= % highest average $ lowest average $ beginning/starting out . , , emerging . , , established . , . , . established but working less than previously . , . , . exited . , . , . other . , . , . regarding the trajectory of earnings, half of the survey participants suggested their income had increased, factoring inflation into consideration (see table . ). table . survey participants’ income trajectory v. career satisfaction income $ trajectory n= % career satisfaction fluctuated career satisfaction increased career satisfaction decreased career satisfaction stabilised career satisfaction n/a increased . or . % or . % or . % or . % fluctuated . or . % or . % or . % or . % or . % stabilised . or . % or . % or . % or . % decreased . or . % or . % or . % or . % n/a total satisfaction n= total satisfaction % . % . % . % . % total trajectory a further . % suggested their income had fluctuated, with only . % suggested it stabilised and . % reporting it had declined. there was no opportunity to comment within this multiple-choice question. however, when comparing income trajectory versus career satisfaction, a correlation can be perceived between the two in some categories. for example, . % of the participants reported their income trajectory and career satisfaction increased throughout their career. likewise, . % of the participants reported their income and career satisfaction fluctuated throughout their career. interestingly, . % of the participants with stabilised incomes suggested their employment satisfaction increased throughout their career. equal percentages ( . %) reported increased and decreased career satisfaction for those whose income had declined over time. of note, those who did experience decreased career satisfaction in this category included those who had transitioned into other non- music related professions and orchestral musicians. of the three participants who reported increased income versus decreased career satisfaction, all were full-time employed in defence force, orchestral and academic fields. those reporting fluctuating income and decreased career satisfaction had either exited or were seriously considering exiting the music profession, were working in part-time/full-time non-music or music- related (retail) employment, or were orchestral musicians. this indicates that increasing financial remuneration may be related to ongoing career satisfaction, but it is not necessarily found within full-time employment. this knowledge is pertinent when discussing career planning with student musicians and for how they choose to engage with their degree. . . does money matter? there was some apathy when discussing finance with the interviewed musicians. robert’s full-time orchestral position potentially added to his complacency: ‘i haven’t really been looking for [my income] to be consistent, i have just kind of almost just accepted what’s been handed to me without having to look too hard for it’. aaron was financially aware and content: ‘it has stayed within a bracket that is pretty average. there is nothing that has gone extreme[ly high], or that’s gone extreme poverty’. some suggested earnings were not acknowledged until the time to complete the tax return and many had a fatalistic approach to their income. jane described her trajectory as ‘lucky’. heidi said, ‘i don’t know what this year is going to be like but it usually kind of evens out. it is really funny the way that works’. two of the three female interviewees who had children noted their income dropped during early child rearing. the survey results support this, considering the below-average comparable income data for females: ‘return to part-time casual teaching post baby’ (sp , established musician), ‘$ this was while i was having children’ (sp , established musician) and ‘$ , (became a new mother)’ (sp , established musician). tina rationalised:	 it doesn’t matter what industry you’re in you are always going to take a hit because it just does tend to be that the women end up being the one staying at home and choosing to adapt their lifestyle in order to have a family even in our modern day. only three of the interview participants mentioned shared financial strategies with their partners to accommodate their career. for example, greg had full-time non- music employment following his undergraduate tertiary music studies. when he considered a return to a music career, his wife offered to be the main income provider if he quit his telecommunications job to become the child-minder and develop his craft from home. a doctoral scholarship and personal savings further enabled this and led to freelance composition and sessional tertiary teaching. only one of the surveyed musicians indicated a similar scenario: i ended up teaching five days a week at five different schools and driving km/week to do so; and so completely drained that my personal practise almost completely ceased. when my wife and i had children, we looked at each other’s earning capacity verses child care expense and made the decision that i would become the primary carer/homebody and my wife would be the primary earner. from this point on i became immeasurably more happy and my artistic growth accelerated enormously. (sp , established musician, but working less than before) while perhaps ‘marrying up’ is not an ethical aspect to include in vocation course design, greg’s example highlights the variety of funding options available to musicians, including savings and scholarships. many others commented on subsidising their artistic work with grants and awards and students should be made aware of these opportunities. this dialogue further indicates the determination and adaptability required to ‘make it work’ for one’s passion irrespective of low employment earnings and family commitments. therefore, the data reveal a priority of music-making over financial consideration and the support required to enable creative sustainability. . . navigating salary peaks and troughs: ‘feast or famine’. during class, undergraduate students expressed their motivation for a career in music was not influenced by financial concern. this is understandable considering the minimal financial commitments for most compared to those who have left home and/or have family responsibilities. indeed, most musicians interviewed expressed reasons beyond financial motivation to follow a music career and were satisfied with their employment choices. however, in spite of the lack of concern for the amount earned, it was a lack of financial consistency that caused anxiety. the data indicated that financial stability fluctuated for . % of survey respondents. nerida, married to derrick, aspired to the ‘regular money’ she had experienced when working in retail and yet considered herself lucky ‘unlike some musicians’: we have never been destitute but we’ve been very close to having nothing in the bank and just waiting on that next cheque or that next payment from that next gig to come in so we can get things back on track again. within the industry, this type of earning is commonly referred to as ‘feast or famine’ and mostly relates to freelance/contract performance employment where income is non-salaried owing to the varied employment sources. the temptation to ‘get a job’ would be understandable for some musicians, but, for derrick, attaining the ‘real job’ was a last resort and not a repeat option as ‘he hated it’ (nerida) when forced to find a solution to paying the mortgage. for some musicians, tolerating a non-music occupation is virtually impossible, but for others there is no choice: ‘we have done stuff that’s not music related because we just have to’ (nerida). this concurs with several studies discussing artists adopting employment outside of their domain (see bennett, ; cunningham et al., ). derrick suggested it was the driving motivator to continue with music rather than a catalyst to leave the profession: just the reality of getting up at . am and hopping into a car or public transport and going off to a job or something like that and you just go ‘it’s not for me’. and it never was for me. i wasn’t good at working eight hours a day when i was younger … and working for my dad [printer]—i lasted a week. i just couldn’t do it… it wasn’t hard or anything it was just doing stuff, but just knowing you only had four weeks holiday a year, i just couldn’t do it. i am just a hedonistic bastard [laughs]. derrick had not experienced or aspired to earnings beyond minimum wage non- music employment, but realistically had potential to obtain higher quality work and pay given his transferable capabilities such as project management, communication and team skills (bassett, ). . skill analysis and transferability surveyed musicians were asked to select a series of listed skills applicable to their music-related career (see table . ). table . non-music skills and knowledge needed to assist music careers (multiple response) answer choices % n= interpersonal skills—i.e. your ability to get along with others while getting the job done . time management . intrapersonal skills—i.e. having awareness of how your actions affect the world/people around you . education knowledge . networking . finance—e.g. tax and superannuation . persuasive writing (communication) skills—e.g. cv/web copy/email newsletters/press releases etc. . health management (ears, body, mind) . self-promotion—e.g. using web/social media and/or print media . negotiation . finance—e.g. savings and investment . event planning management . persuasive speaking (communication) skills—e.g. presenting to prospective sponsors/investors for financial or in-kind support or phone conversations with presenters/press/radio interviews etc. . marketing—e.g. audience development . grant writing . contract law—reading and/or writing contracts . ip/copyright . other . i have not needed any of these skills . total respondents: commentary included surprise at, and defence of, the quantity of non-music skills possessed and actively used (see table l. in appendix l). some lamented they have needed all of these skills, yet were trained in very few; they desired a greater non- music skill set to support their career. musicians chose to comment further on the value and necessity of ‘being easy to work with’, budgeting, languages other than english, technology knowledge, writing skills and health management. networking was reported as necessary but described by some as not so much a learned skill, but something that has naturally evolved through the course of life as a musician. another, more senior musician, abhorred the concept: ‘i hate the idea and never do any intentionally’ (sp , established musician). yet another wished their networking skills were stronger. outlining the skill transferability of musicians, the professionalism and value of arts practitioners for undergraduates may instil further employability confidence irrespective of music employment degree outcomes. in addition, musicians such as derrick may seek non-music vocations that are potentially more enjoyable, while not compromising their primary vocational passion. that nerida and derrick were paying a mortgage suggests they have spent time considering future financial goals they were unwilling to sacrifice for the sake of their music career. however, developing long-term and contingency employment planning, financial awareness and savings strategies may better prepare those musicians who are either ambivalent towards their finance or choose ‘higher-risk’ portfolio career activities as outlined in section . . . . . career sustainability overall, the musicians’ responses revealed many factors influencing their perceptions of career sustainability. these included locus of control, the music industry and economic environment, artistic values, peer and mentor exemplars, family commitments and the perceived barriers to self-instigated employment. aside from the terms protean and portfolio careers, these musicians revealed defined subcategories of contract versus self-instigated careerists. discussion of this with undergraduate students can assist their formulation of professional self-concept (kadushin, ; markus & nurius, ) and perception of employment capability, and determine appropriate career possibilities. tasks and authentic experiences during undergraduate training that develop the capabilities required for self-instigated work may improve employability confidence, shift student musicians’ locus of control from external to internal, and inspire further career considerations including teaching. . . the ongoing threat that the phone will stop ringing: perceptions of career sustainability by contract v. self-instigated musicians. the majority of the portfolio musicians interviewed were very confident to continue their career until retirement age. similarly, . % of survey respondents (n= ) confirmed they could not see themselves retiring from music, whereas . % suggested they would like to and . % were unsure. unlike the field of sports (b. kenny, ) or dance (menger, ; moyle, ), many of the interviewed musicians did not consider a finite time-frame to their career. however, there was an awareness of potential physical injury, the competitive nature of the freelance music industry and an indirect consideration of ageist attitudes. in addition, there were distinct differences in self-employment self-efficacy between those who conducted primarily contract work and those who instigated their own employment projects. as a result, the interviewed musicians’ approaches to retirement were significantly polarised. those who considered music-making inherent to their life could not conceive of a world without it and felt ending their career was a personal decision uninfluenced by others, thus exhibiting an internal locus of control (judge & bono, ). this group were not planning to retire and felt very comfortable instigating and producing their own work. for example, jane felt confident she would continue her music career indefinitely. in addition to her contract music theatre employment, she experienced independently setting up chamber concerts, a music theatre diploma course as well as small musicals: ‘i think when you are passionate about something you find a way to make it happen’. this could be classed as an ‘it’s what you make of it’ mindset (see section . . ), otherwise termed by bridgstock ( b) as ‘passionstance’. this confidence stemmed from her upbringing where music was intrinsic to her culture in addition to being surrounded by siblings and grandparents who also work in the music profession in self-initiated employment. ‘granddad is about to turn this year so it is a good inspiration [to continue with music]’ (jane). others desired financial independence later in life. in placing comparatively more importance on the potential impact the music industry had on their ability to sustain their career, they exhibited an external locus of control (judge & bono, ). this group identified themselves more as contract musicians within the term portfolio musician. troy’s response illustrated the mindset of this category and indicated he would not invest the effort in reigniting his career should the opportunity arise after a period of latent employment: i know the day will come when the gigs will dry up or the phone will stop ringing. and after a time, i will realise that it’s probably not going to ring again. and if it does ring again, it’s been so long since i played it that at that point i would probably just say no and i will probably tell [my instrument] that we are no longer together. in communicating limited control over his career, troy believed circumstance or ‘fate’ decided when to retire as a musician and the stigma of ‘it’s who you know … and also who knows you’ (bridgstock, a, p. ) remained a valid cliché representing a networked, and at times fickle, music industry. scholars would argue that there are many avenues to sustain a career in music performance (bennett, a; creech, ; hallam & gaunt, ; hannan, ); however, troy was not interested in instigating his own performance projects as he has other work (his non-music franchise). as a worst-case scenario, he acknowledged he would return to music teaching. . . adopting ‘skills of initiative’. interestingly, jane proposed she was more comfortable as a contractor but would feel confident to initiate her own work in case of ‘low times’. many interviewed musicians also recognised the barriers of hard work and time involved in developing independent performing opportunities. robert felt his lack of experience was also prohibitive yet acknowledged the skills required were ‘simple’, whereas some musicians had developed these skills of initiative without realising it. heidi stated, ‘i am a contractor, definitely. i don’t run my own string quartet and i am not very good at instigating work’. however, during the interview it was revealed she developed her own recitals. upon my suggesting this was self-initiated work, she expressed surprise at this realisation and replied, ‘yes, that’s right. that is. that’s true!’ simon recognised that the absence of contract performing work ‘would probably force me to [instigate my own projects]’ but indicated a lack of confidence in doing so: ‘i’ve never been that brave’. darryl also described the process as ‘a bit daunting’. surprisingly, lula expressed self-doubt, in spite of demonstrating herself as a very capable and self-reliant musician who had released several albums commercially and worked in three bands who toured nationally and internationally: i feel i don’t know how to do anything other than music, but i guess i had to get better at the business side of things. and when i went through [the conservatorium] that wasn’t taught—how to send invoices, how to write a bio, how to email people about jobs, how to write grants, all of that any sort of accounting skills i guess. i still feel that i am no good at that stuff, but i make myself do it now whereas before i avoided it all.… i think i do that generally in my life, because i want to be really good at what i do and so i don’t like doing things i am not very good at. anything that’s not music. it could be argued that many other musicians have lula’s ‘eat your peas’ approach to developing and utilising non-music skills. this initial avoidance could also be adopted by undergraduate students, and remain a distinct barrier to learning vocational preparation. throsby and zednik ( b) identified a lack of confidence by artists with business/career support skills, but the reasoning behind this has not been explored in depth. the challenge lies in promoting the value of developing skills of initiative and career management. perhaps lula’s self-efficacy would be more developed had she begun to foster these skills during her undergraduate degree. either way, it is evident that the musicians are engaging with a diverse array of independent employment throughout their career, requiring equally diverse skill sets. some interviewed musicians consider that if one is to sustain life as a musician in the current economic climate, student musicians need to embrace these skills and capitalise on core strengths and the resources available. tina confirmed: but it’s just incredibly important! i mean you just can’t be an artist anymore because you have to have support. gone are the days of rich dowagers giving you thousands of dollars just so you can create a string quartet. occasionally they are around, goldmines when you find them, but we need a lot more than just one person to say ‘right let’s make a quartet’. nerida concurred, justifying with industry reality: ‘unless you have a manager and most people don’t, then all of those skills are going to be really, really important’. she also acknowledged that students might deem a course irrelevant within their degree if unable to engage with content unrelated to one’s music ability, and/or one’s current or near-future career activity, stating: ‘they are going to have to develop at a level commensurate with how your musicianship is developing and how your career is developing’. therefore, the vocational preparation educator needs to consider what skills are applicable to the majority of students’ diverse approaches to their own music- making and employability interests. . . self-created employment perceptions. surveyed musicians were asked to respond to the likert question, i feel confident i could create my own music employment opportunities if required, from strongly disagree ( ) through to strongly agree ( ). with an overall weighted average of . , . % agreed or strongly agreed to this statement. just fewer than % disagreed or strongly disagreed, and . % were ambivalent (see table . ). table . survey q : confidence regarding employment self-creation response strongly disagree disagree neutral agree strongly agree total weighted average n % . % . % . % . % . % . throughout the commentary, musicians expressed confidence in creating self- employment, but expressed doubt in its financial sustainability, suggesting it was more viable to create their own teaching employment. however, some did mention healthy networks, community ties and contacts that would aid their success. echoing the interviewed musicians’ concerns, there appeared to be a perception of a lack of supporting business skills, a consideration of a prohibitive industry environment, and an industry exit strategy should work ‘dry up’ (see table l. in appendix l). early career musicians seem to engage with self-created work to kick-start their networks and employment. that self-instigated work is considered unviable for macro-environmental reasons needs further investigation, particularly regarding music genre and location. regardless, it is obvious confidence does play a part in enacting skills of initiative, and this confidence needs to be developed early within undergraduate training. . . contract work perceptions. the musicians were less enthusiastic about contract work ( . ) versus instigating their own creative projects/employment ( . ) (see table . ). table . survey q : preference for contract work v. creative project/work instigation response strongly disagree disagree neutral agree strongly agree total weighted average n % . % . % . % . % . % . within the qualitative commentary, musicians explained the higher neutral result with their preference for both types of work, suggesting that while contract work provided the financial stability, the creative work satisfied their need for autonomy and artistic freedom. musicians further affirmed the lack of financial reward, stress and time involved in creating their own employment, yet the current work climate had influenced their decision to prefer contract employment (see table l. in appendix l). . . perceptions of full-time work. despite its perceived stability, more than half of the surveyed musicians did not prefer, or were ambivalent towards, full-time work compared to all other possibilities of employment, resulting in a weighted average of . (see table . ). table . survey q : perceptions of full-time (institutionalised) employment response strongly disagree disagree neutral agree strongly agree total weighted average n % . % . % . % . % . % . qualitative commentary revealed musicians had not always considered full-time employment as valuable, but justified their preference citing growing family commitments, ageing, the associated benefits (holiday pay, sick pay, superannuation) of job and financial security (see table l. in appendix l). conversely, others perceived full-time employment did not supply the flexibility and variety valuable to personal career satisfaction and was conducive to family commitments. those commenting as neutral saw significance in all forms of employment. they were also interested in full- time employment provided it was a particular field (orchestral, opera, university) and allowed them the flexibility of other artistic pursuits. for one, there was a preference for full-time performing work other than teaching. for another, a non-music full-time position was preferable if one needed to make that choice. . . fallback careers or teaching-artists? he who can, does. he who cannot, teaches/ george bernard shaw ( / ) investigations into the lives of musicians have identified the inclusion of non- performance work, primarily teaching, and non-music work within their employment portfolio (bartleet et al., ; bennett, ; coulson, ; mills, ; throsby & zednik, b; weller, ). perspectives of teaching employment ranged from ‘fallback’, where teaching is viewed as a supplementary career choice when performance employment is non-viable, unfeasible or intermittent, through to ‘performer-teachers’, that is, ‘performers for whom instrumental (including vocal) teaching is integral to their professional identity’ (mills, , p. ). as to how and when these integrated performer-teacher identities are initially formulated and if this attitude is particular to a type of musician, is yet to be explored in depth. the first-year qcgu students consistently exhibited a strong unprompted desire to include teaching within their portfolio of career aspirations, described in their week mlaam lsa. for some, this was a means for guaranteed financial support, and for others this was something they planned to do later in life. the latter concurs with manturzewska’s ( ) proposition that the desire to teach towards the end of one’s career was a natural progression of the performing musician. a large majority of students expressed their wish to pass on the positive education they had experienced from their inspirational and supportive teachers, identifying their value for teaching and the shared experience of music. it was very rare for a student to claim that teaching was not an option. this is indicative of a potential change in the ‘fallback’ paradigm. however, shifts in attitudes towards teaching were not successfully studied throughout these students’ degree programme as part of this study. bennett’s ( c) charge for musicians to accept that being a music teacher should be an integral part of the musician identity, prompted the question to this study’s participants: ‘do you consider teaching to be part of the profile of the term musician?’ it was designed to discover whether the cliché ‘those who can’t: teach’ is something learned from, or perpetuated by, mentors and employability environments, and how those experiencing education employment viewed their portfolio identity. the question was perceived by some as confusing. perhaps redesigning it to ‘do you consider teaching to be part of the profile of being a musician?’ may have clarified the intent. for the survey, the question was rephrased using bennett’s ( c) definition: one definition of a musician is ‘a person who practises in the profession of music within one or more specialist fields’. do you believe this to included teaching music? of the respondents, . % answered ‘yes’ and . % ‘no’. there was no opportunity for qualitative commentary for this question. however, it can be noted that . % of those choosing ‘no’, compared to . % of those stating ‘yes’, did not include teaching in their employment portfolio. this topic was discussed at length in the interviews. although the majority of interviewed musicians communicated a positive outlook on teaching as an accepted part of the musician identity, some debated teachers’ performance standards and reflected on prior/current experience with educators. the argument for teaching-artistry versus fallback-teaching appears yet to be resolved. lula considered that if one has had to do the performance training required to become a teacher ‘they shouldn’t be thought of or think of themselves as not a musician’. however, troy spent years teaching in a boys’ private school and witnessed some very poor teaching, usually by those he considered were poor music performers and did not engage with their instrument. aaron agreed the terminology of musician and teacher should be independent, defending the different abilities required for each: there are some teachers who are very good at explaining music and can use their brain and their mouth and use the power of english like i would use the power of the violin, to describe what to do, and be very effective communicators, then they don’t even need to play the music. so those people don’t necessarily have to be great musician to be a great music teacher. but, there are people out there who are great communicators and not necessarily great musicians. you would be shocked to hear them play. you would be like ‘what??!! you talk the talk but don’t walk the walk’. tina had a more holistic perspective, describing herself as a ‘teaching-artist’, as ‘both things [teaching and performing] have always occurred very naturally for me’ and viewed it as a cyclical process where one practice informs the other. conversely, darryl had lived and worked in germany for over two decades as a full-time music theatre musician. upon returning to australia, he noticed a cultural attitude where one can only be categorised as either a teacher or a performer. choosing to teach can have an impact on one’s performing career ‘and then you’re not playing anymore, and then you are in the cupboard, in the drawer, as a teacher’ (darryl). of the survey respondents, . % were actively engaged in some form of teaching. these participants were further asked to determine their ratio of teaching versus other work (where the teaching percentage is placed first) (see table . ). table . ratio of teaching v. other work by survey participants teaching: other work response % response n= : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . total respondents as table . reveals, . % of those respondents have teaching included between and % of their employment portfolio. of the . % ( ) stating : , only two were full-time orchestral musicians. presenting teaching as an accepted and positive component of a musician’s identity to undergraduates may lessen the previously identified ‘mid-degree slump’. furthermore, relating evidence that musicians can potentially gain income in a variety of ways while still achieving a satisfactory music career affirms the value of their transferable skills, which in turn enables career and employability confidence. an institutional and pre-tertiary culture supporting this view would be more successful rather than relying solely on a vocational preparation strand to do so, particularly as there are some occupations that do not engage with teaching at an early career level (e.g. music production). . . non-music employment. for the statement, my yearly income includes non-music employment, . % stated ‘yes’ ( total respondents). this included a large variety of non-music employment in academia, administration and management, business, engineering, health services, law, property development and real estate, education, rental/investment income, it, sales, marketing, public service, language translation, librarian roles, editorial and copywriter, retail/hospitality, ushering, and factory labour. this means almost one in four musicians is confident to work outside of the music profession and has either re-skilled or transferred current skills to do so. . attrition and perseverance as identified in chapter , research has extensively acknowledged motivations to initially pursue or leave a career in music, but research concerning what motivates a musician to persevere in the profession despite serious career challenges is minimal. the majority of the interviewed musicians communicated they were happy with their career, possessed diverse career skills, were healthy, and were not lacking in employment. those earning less did not indicate a desire to leave the profession, and they enjoyed their diverse opportunities and looked forward to the unknown. the irregular working hours were not mentioned; nevertheless, commentary on the hard work, commitment and type of employment involved was common, particularly as most worked longer hours than those in linear performance careers. troy had full-time non- music employment in addition to his music theatre work. realistically, he did not need to be active musically but would not cease or limit his involvement: ‘i wish i wasn’t working so hard on my outside music career but you have to keep doing it because ...’. simon preferred a life solely performing and would exclude teaching to minimise his workload if allowed the opportunity: ‘i have done [teaching] all my life, all my career life, and i’d like to play and not have to work quite so many hours to earn a living’. as a multi-instrumentalist, james expressed his desire to balance his portfolio with more musical theatre work to avoid deskilling: ‘it’s really really hard just to keep that stamina and gig readiness’. troy concurred, stating although conscientious with his practice, it was ‘easier when gigs are coming in. it’s really hard to keep motivated when there is nothing’. these concerns could be rectified if these musicians strategised creative self-initiated employment to supplement their skill-maintenance. however, as previously expressed, the workload required to do so was prohibitive for some. many interviewed musicians suggested they had never considered leaving the profession; however, they had been concerned when employment was declining or certain elements of their portfolio created an imbalance in their lifestyle. tina argued the temptation to leave the profession was more prevalent for portfolio careerists and she felt like doing so ‘every day’ ‘because it is hard … particularly as an independent musician you have to choose it and it has to be a conscious choice every day’. she disbelieved those who claimed not to have doubts about such a vocation ‘because you have got to doubt it. it’s not necessarily that i doubt my ability, it’s my doubt of ‘can i really do this?’ can i actually fulfil everything i want in my life through this one art form?’ nerida admitted that she did not consider quitting, but like tina reflected on the sustainability of her profession and its broader contribution to society. surveyed musicians were asked to answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to the statement, ‘during my career i have left or considered leaving my music/music-related profession’. those who responded ‘yes’ ( . % of respondents) were invited to select answer choices that best influenced their consideration to exit their music career (see table . ) and comment on their decision. answer options were derived from musician interviews, bennett’s ( ) research results and the more recent report to entertainment assist by van den eynde et al. ( ). table . survey q factors influencing musicians to leave/consider leaving their profession (multiple response) answer choices response % response n= low financial rewards . lack of public value or understanding of arts/entertainment/music education . employment dissatisfaction − people/co-worker-related . burnout . employment dissatisfaction − task-related . family commitments . psychological distress . irregular working hours . career anxiety . challenge of maintaining high performance expectations . lack of career mobility . work overload . insufficient regular employment due to lack of diversity in skills . work underload . reduced challenges . performance anxiety . other . injury . total respondents there is a saying in the freelance music industry when deciding to accept employment: ‘a good gig will have one, two or all of the following: good music, good people and good pay. if it has none of these factors, don’t accept it, it won’t make you happy’ (source unknown). it would appear the five most common choices reflect this statement to some degree. low pay and unsatisfactory co-workers are the antithesis of ‘good pay’ and ‘good people’. lack of public value or understanding of arts/entertainment/music education suggests ‘good’ or ‘like-minded people’ are not present, and certainly employment dissatisfaction − task-related indicates the musical activity was not satisfactory. at . %, low financial rewards ranked the most popular reason for potential or actual attrition. like those interviewed, many surveyed musicians commented how challenging the ‘feast or famine’ lifestyle can be, for example: ‘while you have the work, the pay is great, but once it stops, that’s it’ (sp ), and ‘the nature of freelance work places a lot of pressure on the individual to have the fortitude to suffer the lean times, and frugally enjoy the good times’ (sp ). lack of public value or understanding of arts/entertainment/music education ( . %) was explained by one survey participant as coming from the music industry itself, rather than externally via non-music entities and related more directly to employment dissatisfaction − people/co-worker-related: a lack of respect and understanding of freelance independent musicians and small companies (their business undertakings, the negotiations they need to make, and a belief that freelance musicians are not entitled to create own careers) seems to be permeating from some large organisations, some universities and self-destructive competition. this is in contrast to many other art form sectors. (sp , established musician) another concurred and was unhappy with the networked-based nature of the industry and employment success. unwilling to participate, he retrained to work in a non-related industry: ‘the [music] industry is highly toxic. prospects are governed by personal relationships and not by merit. it was, to be honest, too much effort, and fundamentally dishonest to undertake the networking required to progress’ (sp , exited musician). in short, these musicians did not consider the industry to possess ‘good people’. general public perception included the aforementioned treatment of portfolio musicians by financial institutions: ‘i could not get a mortgage when i was a freelance composer. the moment i secured a job as a school teacher, and even before the teaching term began, the bank lent me the money’ (sp , established musician, but working less than before). lack of public engagement with the arts was also a driving factor: occasionally it was frustrating to prepare so hard for a concert or performance of some kind, only to have an abysmally small audience. this regularly resulted in a feeling of ‘well why did i even bother?’ particularly if it was a low [-paid] or unpaid gig. (sp , established musician) one could ask what was done to initially promote the concert and whether underdeveloped promotion skills contributed to this outcome. regardless, this was certainly a perceived and valid catalyst for leaving the profession. others felt their music education careers were undervalued: ‘i was always a high achiever at school and university and it seemed that being an instrumental music educator or classroom music educator wasn’t very valued. by others, and even by myself—i found myself questioning my career choice’ (sp , established musician). another suggested music education in australia was an ‘elite affair, and i have often felt that i should use my skills in work that has greater social and political meaning’ (sp , established musician). this consideration that one’s skills and work ethic would be better suited elsewhere was not uncommon: ‘at times in the past i’ve felt like my skills are under appreciated and that my years of training was time wasted. i’ve felt i could have achieved much more with my efforts in other fields’ (sp , established musician), and a ‘general feeling that other careers would be more personally rewarding/challenging/meaningful’ (sp , emerging musician). some musicians expressed simple curiosity: ‘i’m interested in many areas completely outside music’ (sp , established musician). given the nature of the portfolio career where two to three domains of employment are engaged with, it was no surprise that one third of those who had considered exiting the career selected burnout as an influence. the survey has indicated musicians juggle many types of employment for remuneration that is not representative of the many hours invested. those experiencing higher salaries are often working one or two full-time jobs plus a strong portfolio of additional work. overall, they need to navigate their daily life within a non-supportive work environment and therefore subject themselves to significant workplace stress requiring high resilience to persevere. surveyed musicians confirmed that a number of external influences on the music industry, such as economic, social and technological factors, had a negative impact on their employability during their careers (see table . ). the most popular was reduced arts funding, reported by . % of musicians. internal industry factors such as ageism, my age ( . %), increased musician population ( . %) and employment specialisation ( . %) were reported to also have a negative influence on employability. gender was reported by . % (n = ) participants; of whom were female. table . survey q : negative influences on music employment q in the past, i have noticed my opportunity for music employment has been negatively affected by (check all that apply): response % no. of responses reduced arts funding . a change in audience attitude to the arts . global financial crisis (or similar events) . change in government policy (e.g. fringe benefits tax) . my age . an increase in the population of musicians . technology . employment specialisation . the musician network . none of the above . file sharing/digital downloads . my gender . natural disasters (e.g. brisbane floods) . other . my appearance . please feel free to comment on your answer answered question skipped question conversely, surveyed musicians confirmed a number of internal or independent influences, such as professionalism ( . %), the musician network ( . %) and their versatility of music skill set ( . %), had a positive impact on their employability during their careers (see table . ). funding and support opportunities also had a positive impact on musicians’ careers, including government arts funding ( . %), sponsorship ( . %), patron/s’ support ( . %), product endorsement ( . %) and crowd funding ( . %). the latter is not a surprisingly small response considering that it is a comparatively new initiative. given the ongoing reduced government arts funding, it is possible to expect this percentage to rise. gender was reported by . % (n = ) participants to have positively influenced their career; of whom were male. table . survey q : positive influences on employment sustainability q my music employment has positively benefited from (please check all that apply): response % no. of responses my level of professionalism . the musician network . versatility of music skill set . government arts funding . sponsorship . patron/s’ support . crowdfunding . my appearance . product endorsement . my gender . centrelink . none of these . other (please specify) answered question skipped question . . measuring resilience. recognising ‘resilience’ is a key factor to career sustainability (hallam & gaunt, ), all survey participants were asked to rate the statement, in general, i consider myself a resilient person, on a likert scale from strongly disagree ( ) through to strongly agree ( ). the weighted average for all participants was . (see table . ). table . survey q : perception of personal resilience response strongly disagree disagree neutral agree strongly agree total weighted average % . % . % . % . % . % . n for those who selected burnout, their weighted average for resilience was marginally lower ( . %) at . (see table . ), indicating an overall lack of predisposition to this type of psychological distress. table . survey participants’ burnout v. resilience response strongly disagree disagree neutral agree strongly agree total weighted average % . % . % . % . % . % . n meanwhile the industry phrase ‘you’re only as good as your last gig’ perpetuates the challenge of maintaining high performance expectations ( . %). furthermore, as table . and the musicians’ commentary suggest, psychological stress and career anxiety drive many to consider ‘day jobs’ and/or exit the career completely. this prompts the question ‘in spite of considering career exit, what influences these musicians to continue?’ to discuss this further, the concept of passion versus burnout shall be closely examined. . . passion v. burnout. robert felt burnout caused him to quit the profession, explaining: i’ve stopped it a few times, i stopped when i finished school, i stopped [for months when studying another course] and i’ll probably be stopping, i will probably be changing from my full-time job within, well it was going to be quite soon, but possibly within a couple of years but it depends how the other work pans out. i won’t stop completely but i will definitely be stopping full time. taught by his parents from an early age, robert gained a reputation similar to a child prodigy. throughout his interview, he indicated his strong goal-setting approach to his music and, unlike his colleagues, admitted his source of enjoyment for music purely stemmed from achieving an error-free performance. he explained further his relationship with music: it’s never actually been a passion to do it myself. so, for me it was through school just something i always did because i could get good grades out of it. we’ll see when i leave for a while if i actually miss it in any way. scholars have identified that passion is one driver of music career sustainability (bennett, c; throsby & zednik, b). bennett ( b) further argued that it ‘is perhaps the most crucial attribute of all. without a passion for music, a career is unlikely to succeed and is almost certain to be unhappy’ (p. ). vocation consultant keith abraham ( ) suggested there is work one can ‘love to do’, ‘like to do’, ‘have to do’ and ‘hate to do’ (p. ). he recognised that the first category retains the strongest emotional attribute, namely ‘passion’, a term he suggests can be interchangeable with ‘energy’, ‘by pursuing your passion, you re-energise yourself’ (abraham, , p. ). this naturally aligns with motivation, which can also maintain a psychological relationship with the term ‘energy’. robert’s continued ‘have to do’ ambivalence towards his music career suggests that he was an at-risk candidate for music career attrition. to explore the degree of vocational passion musicians experience, survey participants were asked to rate the comment, in general, i consider i am passionate about music, from strongly disagree ( ) to strongly agree ( ) (see table . ). table . survey q : passion for music the weighted average of . indicated these musicians are indeed passionate about music. the term passion-based careers may be appropriate in this context. of those who disagreed with the question statement, one had exited a classical music profession completely and the other was a portfolio career musician predominantly working within orchestral/music theatre performance and private teaching. those that chose unsure, largely worked in full-time employment (academia, arts administration, orchestral), or possessed a non-music related ‘day job’, within their portfolio careers. one emerging musician found orchestral work and the objective outcomes it provided to be ‘unhealthy’ and threatened his passion for music. he subsequently adjusted his career strategy: i also found once i started undertaking professional work in orchestras i was extremely unsatisfied with the work.… i have now been able to find my passion within music and the music industry, which is what i am currently pursuing (sp , emerging musician). another completely left the profession to safeguard her passion for music: ‘was upset to see how much those doing music a profession had grown to hate their previous passion. didn’t want to end up like that, so left—which means it will remain a passion for me’ (sp , exited musician). in robert’s case, his relationship with music was not passion-based; he viewed his career dispassionately and was content to continue his ‘have to’ role until it became his ‘hate to’ employment. yet, his accomplishments—full-time orchestral employment, response strongly disagree disagree unsure agree strongly agree total weighted average % . % . % . % . % . % . n a sound reputation and high demand sessional performer—no doubt left him able to continue with music should he want or need to. . . career anxiety. conversely, other interviewed musicians and . % of surveyed musicians felt career anxiety in the form of a questioned or re-evaluated career future, and psychological distress ( . %) caused them to consider to exit the profession. this was particularly significant upon the realisation that further hard work was required to attain career goals. this plight of the independent or portfolio career musician is further summarised as: one of the limitations of working as an independent artist is that a sense of career advancement can sometimes be elusive. additionally, the australian cultural context is extremely poor in terms of policy and real resources for mid- career artists who are not working with the major performing arts companies— there are limited freelance opportunities and a large talent pool that is augmented every year with more music graduates. (sp , established musician) when asked to rate the statement, in general, i consider myself a confident person, the surveyed musicians responded lower than their passion and resilient weighted average scores: . . however, over % had responded positively (see table . ). table . survey q : degree of confidence likewise, they considered their capability for bravery (in general, i consider myself a brave person) less than their passion, resilience and confidence weighted average scores: . . however, over % had responded positively (see table . ). response strongly disagree disagree unsure agree strongly agree total weighted average % . % . % . % . % . % . n table . survey q : degree of bravery of those who had reported they had either exited or considered exiting their music-related careers, both confidence and bravery weighted averages were marginally less than the total weighted averages of the participants (see tables . and . ). table . exited musicians’ reported confidence table . exited musicians’ reported bravery of those who had reported they had not either exited or considered exiting their music-related careers, both confidence and bravery weighted averages were more than the total weighted averages of the participants (see tables . and . ). positive responses for confidence were substantially higher than those musicians who had exited or considered exiting the profession. table . non-exited musicians’ reported confidence response strongly disagree disagree unsure agree strongly agree total weighted average % % . % . % . % . % . n response strongly disagree disagree unsure agree strongly agree total weighted average % . % . % . % . % . % . n response strongly disagree disagree unsure agree strongly agree total weighted average % % % % . % . % . n response strongly disagree disagree unsure agree strongly agree total weighted average % % . % . % % . % . n table . non-exited musicians’ reported bravery from this, it can be proposed that those possessing greater confidence and bravery are more likely to continue in the music profession. it also reveals an opportunity to further explore confidence and its relationship with career support development in training musicians, that is, those who possess strong career support skills versus those who do not. . . catalysts to continue. derrick’s knowledge that non-music employment was not for him (his feared possible self) in addition to timely employment prevented him from actioning thoughts of leaving the profession: ‘i don’t know maybe i just got a phone call and a gig came in or something’. margaret found she entertained thoughts of taking up a day job, when ‘i haven’t really known where to go next, and it’s been particularly in those down times when work is really sparse’. like derrick ‘usually an opportunity will come along or someone will send me a new score or something will happen’. it was almost as if ‘fate’ stepped in. in reality, the social capital that drives the success of arts individuals (bridgstock, b) had been well developed by both margaret and derrick to ensure ongoing employment. despite a competitive and hierarchical employment environment, . % of surveyed musicians did suggest that they had positively benefited from the musician network (see table . ). following burnout, some surveyed musicians shared they had experienced life outside of the music sphere but decided to return again as ‘i found office life and kpi’s not to be something i valued as much as music and making a difference in young people’s lives’ (sp , established musician). others suggested the negative career perspective passes ‘when my schedule lightens’ (sp , established musician). a ‘quit and start again’ strategy was identified by many musicians. one explained, ‘i briefly stopped playing, separated my perception of teaching and performance work, and response strongly disagree disagree unsure agree strongly agree total weighted average % % . % . % . % . % . n stopped investing so much of my personality in music and related aspects of performance’ (sp , emerging musician). although some had considered leaving the profession owing to family commitments ( . %) (see table . ), others continued, perceiving elements conducive for child rearing: ‘now that i have a young family i find that music teaching gives the flexibility i like’ (sp , established musician). related to performance, an orchestral musician stated: ‘work hours [are] always restricted to hour week so [it is] not always so bad for family life’ (sp , established musician). . . ageism. simon perceived ageist attitudes within his industry network and very recently experienced the motivation to quit because he was ‘sick of the struggle and all the things i talked about before: political garbage, being made to feel like a has-been’. one could suggest this is a mere excuse for declining skill or capability, low professionalism inhibiting contract work or macro-environmental forces impacting industry trends. however, simon continued to work in a variety of contract performance employment, nationally and internationally, suggesting this was not the case. when asked to respond to, in the past, i have noticed my opportunity for music employment has been negatively affected by (check all that apply), . % (n = ) of survey participants chose age (see table . ). those aged between and responded above the overall average at . % (see table . ). table . age as a career sustainability prohibitor age range survey totals n= choosing ageism % within age range choosing age – . – . – – . – . – . – . – . – . – . – – – – no age given n/a total participants described the dilemma of being young and beginning a career: ‘one employer said i looked great on my cv, but in reality i lacked experience. this was when i first started’ (sp , emerging musician). another suggested his experience or ability made no difference to ageist attitudes: once i was shortlisted (final ) and invited to trial for the [instrument] position in an overseas orchestra—the chief conductor very noticeably lost interest with me during a conversation after he found out how old i was (only —too young). (sp , established musician) from age , the perception of ageism increases. survey participants suggested it was not just how others perceived them, as simon suggested, but also as one became older, time availability for performance decreases. it remains unclear as to whether declining skill is a contributing factor. in addition, one’s close employability network simultaneously ages, retires or, at worst, dies: ‘ageism is a definite factor, the music industry is a hard industry to get old in! my network is either retiring or going through much the same things as me’ (sp , established musician). aside from financial and ageist reasons, simon had chosen to continue his profession as he was ‘not … brave enough to go and venture out into something else’. one surveyed musician aged concurred stating: ‘it’s all i know’ (sp ). like simon, other interviewed musicians suggested their motivation to persevere was fuelled by a lack of confidence that another career was achievable, echoing lula’s ‘because i am not good at anything else’ statement. this was not necessarily feared possible selves, rather the fear of the unknown. heidi was unable to conceive another occupation: ‘it kind of feels like, i’m not comparing myself to a nun, but it kind of feels like something that i’m stuck ... it’s like your calling’. . . the ‘calling’ of a music career. using the same likert format, surveyed musicians were asked to respond to the statement, i believe music is my calling (see table . ). those answering positively ( . %) indicated the drive to commit to a music career was intrinsic. lipman’s ( ) somewhat passionate discussion regarding music vocation defined a difference between ‘living off music’ versus ‘living for music’ (p. ). although his argument lacks researched findings and possessed a questionable hypothesis, it is similar to keith abraham’s ( ) ‘love to’ and ‘have to’ relationship with employment, whereby lipman’s ‘living for’ concept embodies idealism and ‘living off’, realism. table . survey q : vocational ‘pull’—response to ‘i believe music is my “calling”’ of those four who strongly disagreed, three were portfolio musicians and one had exited the profession for a career in it. of those who disagreed, nine had either exited the profession or also worked within non-performance related employment such as allied health, beauty therapy, it, research, instrument repairs and sales, and arts administration. those unsure also represented a similar profile to disagreed, but more than half included teaching and performing as employment. those who agreed and strongly agreed possessed higher levels of performance and composition (creative practice) within their portfolio. while the correlation of increased creative practice indicates an increased calling, more research involving a larger data set is required to validate this observation. in summary, heidi’s commentary represented many of the musicians’ sentiment that in responding to the ‘call’ of the music career, one is choosing a ‘living for music’ vocation rather than ‘living off music’ employment. the latter suggests retirement or a finite time span, while the former implies an infinite relationship with music. indeed, the majority of the interviewed and surveyed musicians indicated retirement was not a consideration and could think of no justified reason to leave the profession beyond injury and lack of contract work (see section . . ). however, many did aspire to financial security during retirement. . . exploring perfectionism. although it has been identified that resilience (bennett, ; creech, ) and persistence (throsby & zednik, b) are key factors in career sustainability, robert’s perfectionist approach to his music represents a good example of many other musicians i have witnessed who leave the profession for reasons beyond those mentioned or underdeveloped career management skills (bridgstock, , a, b). after response strongly disagree disagree unsure agree strongly agree total weighted average % . % . % . % . % . % . n asking the student musicians ‘what do you love about music?’ (see section . . . ), i was keen to ask the interviewed and surveyed musicians the same to discover if their responses could be correlated and furthermore, predict a career preference. interview responses were very similar to the students’ in that they appreciated the sound, emotion, beauty, story-telling and pleasure that music provides. for some, it was the challenge and self-satisfaction of perfection in performing music. others replied it was a vehicle for engagement, sharing and escapism, or considered its evolutionary and unpredictable nature. greg found the question very hard to answer as he felt it was an innate part of his identity. it was encouraging that these musicians’ passion had not diminished, in spite of working tremendously hard and, for some, for little remuneration. it also appeared their portfolio careers continue to feed and underpin their motivations for following a music career. for example, aaron loved that music was unpredictable and lived his personal and musical life with that ethos permeating the styles of music he performed. he enjoyed the travelling required, and regarded his career as ‘a jigsaw puzzle of work’. likewise, margaret’s core interest in new music reflected her response: ‘there is always something new and something different’. darryl had spent two decades in a genre that is not considered as complex as orchestral music (music theatre), but saw the beauty in a simple tune: ‘[it] can be played really boring but it can also be beautiful. and to find that difference and where it is and how to reproduce that and capture people’s attention–that’s the beauty of music’. james loved ‘everything’ about music and still wanted to expand the workload of his already complex portfolio career. conversely, robert admitted burnout and wanted to transform his music into a hobby. he confessed he did not consider the audience when he performed; rather, he was inspired when ‘the actual performance goes well’ and motivated by well-prepared perfection. this approach to his music was at complete odds with tina’s, whose work in ‘teaching-artistry’ and community engagement was fuelled by her fundamental philosophy ‘that every community deserves some kind of quality arts experience’. it is no surprise that her core inspiration for music was ‘engagement, that beautiful buzz word, sharing, connecting, it makes you feel good’. it would be interesting to see whether robert’s mindset shifted when working in an area of music that required direct engagement with passionate people. as it was, he was studying to become a [de- identified occupation]. when asked what he loved about it, robert replied: it’s the people to be honest. i mean i love working on myself but it’s also the people. because you’re in an atmosphere which you don’t get so much, say, in an orchestral situation … [whereas in this new employment] you’re in an atmosphere where people are so motivated, so enthusiastic, everybody’s there because they want to change something and they are really really motivated. as mentioned in chapter , contemplating one’s intrinsic motivation is a method for developing the worthwhile practice of reflexivity for any music student. in addition, the musicians’ responses revealed potentially predictive information of how one’s intrinsic motivation can indicate one’s likely career path. for first-year students, this is highly beneficial to assist their formative and exploratory career stage. in eradicating elements of such uncertainty can enhance self-confidence, self-awareness and, in turn, degree-engagement. unfortunately, this correlation was undetectable within the survey, as seen in table . . table . survey q : ‘what i love about music’ q what do you love about music? (please check all that apply): response % no. of responses its transformative power (on myself, on the audience etc.) . creativity . its capacity for collaboration and non-verbal communication with others . the emotion it creates . the way it makes you feel . its beauty . its capacity for enabling self-expression . the satisfaction it provides in learning and achieving . the sound . the challenge it provides in learning and achieving . its capacity for story-telling . its capacity for entertainment . the rhythm . the thrill/adrenalin rush it enables . its capacity for escapism . that it is continually evolving . its ability to help and heal . its unpredictability . it is just who i am, it’s innate, it is in my blood . its accessibility . its capacity for perfection . the competitive opportunities it provides . other . feel free to comment on your answer answered question skipped question the transformative power of was the most prevalent choice ( %) for what survey participants loved about music, and the capacity for perfection ( %) for which robert aspired was the third least popular. nevertheless, this was almost a third of respondents and their sentiment possibly contributed to the high potential attrition rate ( %), in short, burnout from trying to be perfect in all roles. as it was, . % (n = ) of those who had or considered exiting their music careers, chose capacity for perfection. however, the competitive opportunities music provides, arguably an outlet for perfectionism, was only appreciated by . % of total surveyed musicians. . . summary. while further research is needed to present a more informed perspective within vocational preparation curriculum, the topic of attrition runs the risk of distracting students from their career goals particularly during first year. second- and third-year students are beginning to comprehend career realities and would more likely tolerate this discourse. however, i would argue that during these ‘fight or flight or freeze’ years, conversations relating to career exit are better placed within a one-to-one environment. furthermore, such attrition facts may be of interest to faculty, providing them with additional knowledge to mentor students within and beyond their degree should the opportunity arise. within a larger cohort such as mlaam, the learning objective should remain focused on career sustainability. . the ‘gig’ economy: has the industry changed for the western art musician? concurring with the literature, interviewed and surveyed musicians suggested professional behaviour and mindfulness is as important as, if not more important than, quality of work in order to remain employed (see table . ). those interviewed noted industry change affecting the availability and security of work in addition to audiences’ relationship with music, which have had an impact on many dimensions of the industry network. influences include less available contract work and linear careers, economic recalibration, technological advancements and social media, employment territorialism, the rise of festivals, and the emergence and demise of performance venues. . . a shrinking and territorial industry. margaret had noticed the industry ‘really shrinking. i’ve noticed opportunities diminishing, of course orchestras diminishing [laughs] in their number and their size’. tina lamented that there had only been two cello positions advertised in the state orchestra for the previous years. likewise, heidi, who worked in the orchestra as a casual musician, noticed positions that were simply not being filled. in addition, during her studies there had been two full-time professional orchestras to aspire to, now reduced to one. simon did not feel overly confident for the orchestra’s future considering its heavy reliance on government funding (queensland symphony orchestra, ) and described the medium as a ‘dinosaur’, predicting ‘whether we have the qso in years’ time, i very much doubt it. there will be some sub-version of it somewhere’. heidi argued the ‘art for art’s sake’ orchestral business model did not fit with the current economic mindset: ‘there is so much more talk about how things need to be profitable which doesn’t really work in [the orchestral genre] that’s not why it is there’. chris commented on opera: ‘they are cutting down everywhere. so it is just the way of the world with opera, whether it is going to turn around or whether it is a dying art form.… they are all trying to reinvent it’. in short, even if one is to obtain the rare full-time orchestral or opera career, these positions are not guaranteed. interviewed musicians valued the portfolio career and the benefits of employment risk distribution. to illustrate, aaron explained his [chamber group] previously enjoyed several national and international engagements in spite of its high operational overheads. however, without possessing government funding or sponsorship, the – gfc did have a significant impact forcing him to reconsider its delivery. he reinvented a less-expensive version of the concept and was able to turn to other areas within his portfolio of work to continue employment. troy also experienced the effects of self-imposed ageism, the gfc and revised fringe benefit tax laws: ‘over the last umpteen years the corporate work’s dried up’. he turned to musical theatre as a financially beneficial form of employment, preferring it to music more appropriate to the younger musician: ‘it’s where the money is … unless you want to do rock bands, and i’m a bit old for that now and it’s not regular enough money to call that a career’. yet robert noticed that music theatre had not increased their pay rates for some time: ‘it used to be that shows were paid extremely well compared to orchestra. now it’s pretty much levelling out. so perhaps show rates should increase again’. unfortunately, there is no reason for professional music theatre companies to increase pay when they are already remunerating above the live performance award (fair work ombudsman, ). to avoid misunderstanding and underpayment, students should be made aware of the relevant industrial awards and the fee structures common in small-to-medium and large arts enterprises. lula confirmed the impact of technology for the independent portfolio musician: ‘and that’s affected whether you make an album, or do you just make it digitally available? you know, album sales are slower’. she also noticed the shift in the trend of hiring musicians for entertainment: ‘you used to have a fair few gigs around december and then you would have a break but that has slowed down’. lula’s view of digital downloads, online access and streaming services such as spotify is somewhat fatalistic: but i also think there is not that much we can do, it’s happened now and hopefully with the people who still want to buy albums and hold them and buy artwork you know for the albums themselves keep doing that. nevertheless, a quick internet search indicates that the hardcopy cd is still viable as a promotional/merchandise tool (disc makers, ) and vinyl sales are growing (bartmanski & woodward, ). in addition, while income from digital downloads is more profitable for high-profile mainstream musicians, the cd or vinyl is still a valid strategy for self-promotion and income for the independent musician, particularly when touring (dredge, ). nerida affirmed: people always buy cds at our gigs but yes the internet has definitely changed how people sell their music, and how people expose their music. because it used to be only through gigs—gigs and radio, and if you were lucky you got your clip shown on rage (which we did which was fantastic). (nerida) jane has witnessed first-hand the impact of technology on ‘recording and session work and composing as well as everyone having a home studio now’. however, she noticed its impact more on the amount of performance work available and the effect on the industry network dynamics. one survey participant ventured the impact of technology was detrimental to the trial-and-error process of the musician: ‘technology, loss of anonymity/ability to fail (even publicly) without shame (everything is possibly captured by social media)’ (sp , established musician, but working less than previously). jane also found the music profession more political and territorial than previously experienced and believed it was challenging to navigate as a new entrant ‘and how to go about that in a diplomatic way’. for a new or emerging musician, the adjustment to any new employment environment is known to take time and sensitivity when developing networks (myles- beeching, a). when asked if music industry territories are more defined than previously, jane replied: very much. people really want to grab on to what they have. i feel … i feel strange having an opinion about it because i am such a gypsy and i move around a lot and i sort of want to be sensitive enough to these territories that exist already but also i think it’s healthy for everyone to sort of you know get with the times a bit and just … lose the borders. jane noted that in australia the contract work available has declined, causing musicians to be more protective of their industry network referrals. unfortunately, this change in supply and demand cannot allow musicians to ‘get with the times’, as jane suggested. if anything, musicians are reacting to the trends to defend their contract work and sustain their career. simon also recognised that gate-keepers governed the finite amount of contract employment available and had experienced its negative effects: ‘especially in the last couple of years, there are fewer and fewer people having more and more say on who works where and what. and that frustrates the hell out of me’. surveyed musicians were asked their opinion about the music industry using the above themes (see table . ). table . survey q : beliefs about the music industry q i believe the music industry is currently ...: response % no. of responses shrinking—i.e. one or all of: less employment opportunities overall, less venues/festivals, too many musicians, lowered/unchanged pay rate . becoming territorial higher competition for employment opportunities, impenetrable employment networks, key people monopolising local employment . growing—i.e. one or all of: more employment opportunities overall, more venues/festivals developing, increasing pay rate . other . stabilised—there are enough employment opportunities and venues/festivals for enough musicians . please feel free to comment on your answer answered question skipped question overall the surveyed musicians confirmed the music industry was shrinking ( . %) owing to technological and economical drivers, and in turn, becoming increasingly territorial ( . %). throughout the qualitative commentary, there was strong concern for declining pay, greater musician-to-available-employment ratio, larger arts institutions claiming work otherwise given to contract musicians, lesser quality musicians entering the industry and profession, and an artistic scene dumbed down by a social media ‘“like” culture in which critical mass influences public opinion; in which popularity begets popularity and is somehow confused with artistic quality’ (sp , established musician). survey participants described territorialism as an innate musician instinct irrespective of industry trends and claimed this in turn affected the ongoing quality of the profession: essentially, musicians, once a ‘patch’ has been established are quite territorial. unfortunately, this can lead to stagnation of standards as a ‘comfort zone’ comes into play, whereby employment is given to those who are seen as friends. i also wish to comment that some very mediocre musicians are also quite fiscally adroit, and, as a result quite manipulative when in a position of control. (sp , established musician). those suggesting the industry was growing adopted an ‘it’s what you make of it’ (sp , established musician) mindset, charging musicians to drive the industry from within by adopting a stronger independent, entrepreneurial, flexible and professional approach. emerging musicians conveyed they were unsure of the industry trajectory being so early within their career and perceived a welcoming industry devoid of territorialism: tricky to comment on the industry as a whole as i’m mostly involved in the jazz scene, which seems to be growing—maybe this is because i’m young [aged ] and lots of my friends/colleagues are entering the industry. no one seems to have a problem getting gigs—brisbane has a small scene, but it is good with more performance opportunities popping up all the time! (sp , established musician) another established musician working within the same genre concurred location was a defining factor when considering the industry trajectory: ‘unlike most other capital cities, brisbane’s music scene is not full of cut-throats and under-cutters and nasty competition. i consider myself very lucky to have begun, developed and sustained a very satisfying career in this city’ (sp , established musician). pre-tertiary music teaching was also perceived to have grown, thereby continuing to support music industry talent growth. however, shifts in generational perspectives of music education did not bode well for the future of western art music: lack of tenacity with students learning instruments: they seem to give up as soon as it seems hard, their parents don’t make them follow through, or they prefer to spend the time playing video games or being on their phones—students preferring popular instruments rather than traditional band instruments— students teaching themselves popular instruments rather than desiring lessons on band instruments through teachers at school. (sp , established musician) for classical musicians, there was a strong perception that the industry was comparably more conducive to successful employment abroad: ‘if considering overseas markets, growing substantially, if musicians are willing to travel’ (sp , established musician). regarding opera: ‘in australia i think it’s very slow. internationally i have a sense it’s different, possibly more vibrant with more happening’ (sp , emerging musician). it would appear the cultural attitude towards classical music was perceived as healthier in europe: here, in [holland], there is more funding available from the government (at least for now), audiences are generally younger, also audiences in general are more tolerant of contemporary classical music. i feel that since being here i’ve been able to sway my performance:teaching ratio far more towards performing that i perhaps would’ve been able to if i had stayed in australia. (sp , established musician) another described the us as possessing an employment-rich but financially stagnated industry, somewhat echoing australian trends: ‘in america there is as much work as years ago, but that work is less well-paid. there are more musicians but a smaller pool of money. dominant institutions hold the purse-strings’ (sp , established musician). one related a disturbing australian story of industry cannibalisation locking out emerging musicians, demonstrating a further lack of industry wellbeing: i was very surprised to recently hear a ‘scratch’ orchestra perform for a semi- professional ballet company. there were at least musicians in that orchestra who have full-time positions in one of [capital city]’s professional orchestras. they were getting paid $ a call for this work. i wonder why they would take this work when it is the perfect work for students to cut their teeth on. i spoke to a few and asked why they were doing it—they said they thought it was fun to play a low-pressure gig. (sp , established musician) such unethical professional practice is of concern, particularly as a growing number of musicians are competing for diminishing employment opportunities. as one musician stated: ‘consequently there are certain performance opportunities which many younger musicians may not experience until much later than we did or if ever— such as orchestral or the musical scene’ (sp , established musician). as the opportunities current established musicians had to learn on the job are now in limited supply, it is the responsibility of tertiary music institutions to better prepare student musicians, not just for the present realities but the probable future realities of the profession. furthermore, they need to instil a code of professional ethics in student musicians that promotes ethical behaviour within a shrinking and territorial industry. when discussing with the students the advantages and disadvantages of linear versus non-linear careers, it would be easy to promote the creative and financial virtues of a portfolio career and disregard traditional musical employment. however, vocational preparation educators need to be mindful of their fellow educators and mentors who have spent the majority of their career in linear or plentiful employment. the survey confirmed that the students graduating prior to the early s shared this experience. one survey participant now working in the field of jazz and popular music reminisced: ‘there were more playing opportunities and venues i feel. you could be in one band and work six nights a week; now it’s the opposite (be in six bands to work once or twice a week)’ (sp , established musician). another who had graduated in the early s commented on the industry change for classical musicians: when i left the conservatorium of music there seemed to be more practical employment opportunities e.g. two main orchestras, lots of freelance orchestral/pit work and chamber music ensembles. now it’s more of a closed shop, with keyboards replacing strings and traditional freelance work being given to full-time orchestral musicians. there also seems to be a push for experienced instrumental teachers to get education degrees to be able to teach classroom music. also the social media aspect for networking and the need for constant self-promotion is overwhelming. (sp , established musician) therefore, the students’ aspirations may not be so quick to reform, considering the prior years invested in their career dreams, and they may resent the messenger of truth and disengage from all course content. for such students, framing sustainable skills as a strategy to add value to one’s primary employment would be better received. . . exploring potential industry growth and positive change.	 as the industry environment becomes more challenging and competitive for new industry entrants, trial-and-error learning opportunities will continue to decline or not be tolerated. graduates will need to adopt ‘skills of initiative’ to create their employment and learning opportunities, in addition to the skills required for full-time or contract work, supplemented by the interpersonal skills required to navigate work territories. the current state of venues, festivals, social media, technology, and future industry trends were recognised as factors influencing vocation preparation curriculum design to allow students to foster industry growth and positive change. . . . venues. for graduates in western art music creating their own performance opportunities, venues need to be in abundance and accessible. following lula’s return to brisbane after over a decade of absence, she perceived an increase, or at least a healthy turnover, of performance venues. nerida, who ran a small [world music] band, disagreed, reflecting on the increased competition, less venues and performing opportunities. derrick concurred, offering a longitudinal perspective on the performing industry competition for jazz musicians and the dynamics of his industry networks: in sydney in the ‘ s no one thought about not having a gig. if you didn’t have a gig on the weekend someone would ring up on the thursday or friday and you would be working. and then it did change in the ‘ s—it really just died and i think it just got tougher. and i think it is still tough … you got much more people playing but i don’t think there are more venues . . . festivals. the increase of australian music festivals (delic, ; gosnell, ; reddy, ; triana, ) hosting diversity within the larger classifications such as jazz and classical mitigates the venue concern to a certain extent. nerida discussed her success with this medium: ‘now there is a multitude of festivals that a band like us could apply for: folk and world and jazz, even normal music festivals would have us because we are a bit exotic and whatever’. however, margaret warns that while festivals are providing musicians with performance opportunities, it is to the competitive detriment of independent production and provides an ambiguous understanding of the current health of cultural activity and audience’s art appreciation. she summarised: because they kind of give audiences an easy smorgasbord of things to choose from … ‘here is the [capital city] festival, here are all the things you can do, choose one’. and i think that they have such a massive marketing juggernaut behind them that it makes it easy for people to say, ‘ooh this is big and shiny and bright and sparkly and it looks exciting and interesting and we should go because it seems like the thing to do’. whereas you know just your little independent performance doesn’t have that massive marketing juggernaut behind it, it’s not part of a big smorgasbord, so you have to work harder to try and find your audience and the audience has to work harder to get there because they see that it’s not part of something big, so ‘hmm is it worth going to? i don’t know?’ these trends in contract and self-instigated employment provide further implications for vocational preparation design, such as the inclusion of marketing and promotion, festival application, audience development and retention, and potentially social media. of the latter, derrick is sceptical: ‘the world just goes in the facebook pattern of everyone patting each other on the back saying how fantastic they are. i think that’s about the only thing that facebook does’. . . . social media. one can speculate whether musicians are utilising their social networking tools efficiently or, as nerida revealed, struggling with the administration time required to service so many available social media platforms: ‘if we were really a constantly gigging band then you can justify having all of those things up and all of those places for people to reach you but every site mirrors the other’. instead, nerida strategised to limit her online presence, opting for quality rather than quantity: ‘so we have got twitter, we have facebook, got a web page and soundcloud. that’s it and that’s all you need’. nerida’s reasoning justified why one would not overwhelm undergraduates with in-depth social media education. james conceded a more literal approach to social media was required in his field of sound design and regretted not utilising it more to contribute to his employment community: ‘so it’s not trying to suck up to other composers, it’s being part of the community with the people who are potentially going to make the next game and get to know you’. greg admitted he had some success with this strategy in increasing his network among like-minded music technologists and believed online engagement offered something face-to-face interaction was incapable of achieving: ‘it’s people who become familiar with who you are in a way that the internet allows us very uniquely’. margaret recognised that the use of social media is valuable to promoting her events. however, as a digital immigrant (prensky, ), she appreciated it required more in-depth knowledge application that she did not possess: i print flyers and i make a facebook event and i tell people about things and it’s really hard work to get people to come to gigs. and i think that’s not just me– it’s a general thing but some people do it better than others and i am not sure what their secret is. it would be easy to assume that younger generations of musicians do possess these skills and it would therefore be an unnecessary addition within a vocational preparation course. however, with more of the younger generation leaving certain social media platforms (andrus, ) and older age groups adopting social media (lenhart, purcell, smith & zickuhr, ), ensuring future musicians have the skills required to access potential online audiences is important. . . . technological impact on the master-apprentice model. it was interesting that several of the participants were active teachers, but only tina considered the technological changes to education such as voice over internet protocol (voip) delivery, skype lessons, and pre-recorded youtube links. the contentious issue of sound quality aside, these delivery modes provide a valid, globally accessible option to prospective students. rather than viewing this as a threat to her portfolio career, tina welcomed the deconstruction of the master-apprentice teaching model, citing it as ‘a very outmoded outdated way of delivering information’. tina proposed that student musicians require ‘mentoring’ from a variety of means. regardless, it is interesting to note that these musicians did not consider their industry from a global perspective, and that teaching was not verbally considered part of their music profession, affirming the distinction between what throsby and zednik ( ) classified as ‘creative work’ (performance) and ‘arts-related work’ (teaching) (p. ). surveyed musicians were asked, ‘what non-music skills and knowledge do you consider graduating music students need to sustain a music career in the st century?’ (see section . . ). any form of educational and pedagogical knowledge was deliberately omitted from the answer choices to further understand how musicians prioritised and categorised this skill. only one participant commented: i note that you do not include teaching skills on the list above, and i suggest that these are essential in order for young musicians to decide whether they like teaching or not, and if not, to plan a strategy to deal with that early on in their careers. (sp , established musician) it could be speculated that musicians either considered pedagogy a music skill, and therefore not applicable to the question, or a non-music skill. as this participant demonstrated, it was valued more as arts-related employment or a secondary or ‘fallback’ role to the music profession. as technology continues to allow students choice of information, and therefore critical discernment, the relevance of the master- apprentice model may decline to be replaced by a teaching-artistry model whereby a variety of coaching and informational sources/styles is welcome to produce an independent and reflective musician. . . . the future of live music. david bowie recognised the impact of the digital music revolution, predicting: you’d better be prepared for doing a lot of touring because that’s really the only unique situation that’s going to be left. it’s terribly exciting. but on the other hand it doesn’t matter if you think it’s exciting or not; it’s what’s going to happen. (as cited in pareles, ) aside from technology-driven change and the redefinition of industry networks, musicians noticed the early stages of a return to live music production. nerida identified the trend where musicians and audiences alike were weary of presenting via online platforms and described the mindset as ‘let’s just do something real and solid and not put it out there in the ether, let’s just get back to doing real stuff’. tschmuck, pearce and campbell ( ) explored this phenomenon called the ‘experience economy’ and invited higher education institutions to prepare for market need. robert also recognised audiences were increasing: ‘in recent times it’s just been so many sold out concerts’ and mentioned one night in the city when there was heavy competition between ‘five massive events at the same time and every single one was sold out’. csiro’s principal scientist in strategy and foresight, stefan hajkowicz, and his research team predicted a trend of ‘rising demand for experiences over products and the rising importance of social relationships’ (hajkowicz, cook & littleboy, , p. ). they argued that while social media provided a cheaper platform between the masses and the individual ‘there is still a preference for face-to-face interaction’ (hajkowicz et al., , p. ). the arts may be well placed within this growing trend of need for authentic experiences, which bodes well for current graduates. however, in what form remains to be seen. aaron advocated, ‘the core essence is the fact that people will always want to hear music, that hasn’t changed’. nerida agreed: ‘look, there is always going to be gigs, always, because people love live music’. music australia’s ceo chris bowen’s ( ) report confirmed that live music is not dead, but the ongoing problem of ageing and declining audiences as observed for major performing arts organisations, required a revised arts policy. he stated, ‘the independent artists, micro, small and medium companies draw in and develop new talent, drive innovation, and open up new possibilities for connecting and engaging with audiences’ (bowen, ) and thus required support. however, greg argued that the changes in technology over the last years had affected audiences’ relationship with music. the national advocate, music australia, identified many recent challenges of the music industry, including a need to convince audiences to ‘valu[e] and respect music in our ‘get it for free’ age’ (page, ). greg reflected on this impact: what that means is that careers have changed too and because the careers are changing and … nobody knows exactly where the money is. it wouldn’t be true to say there is no money left in music, it’s just that people in their existing trajectories aren’t yet familiar with where the new possibilities are.… so in aid of all that i think students need to be encouraged to broaden their scope. in spite of a future of potential employment opportunities, greg’ statement suggests our upcoming musicians will need to be introduced to a broad array of career options, affirming that specialisation is not a viable option (bennett, ). this is particularly for those students wishing to work within lower populated areas such as small metropolitan, regional or rural settings (coulson, ). tina also thought the requirements for the independent musician’s modern-day toolkit needed to include self- instigative management: ‘you just have to be very determined and very good at project management and very good at people’. however, realising these were not innate skills, she rationalised, ‘probably not all classical musicians are good at that though’. . the twenty-first century musician. . . the ‘business’ musician. menger ( ) described arts careers as entrepreneurial, considering the similar independent business processes, risk-taking and commitment required. this study concurs with coulson’s ( ) view that musicians are ‘accidental entrepreneurs’, ‘since most of them did not set out to start a business’ (p. ). when asked to rate, in general, i consider myself an entrepreneurial person, less than half ( . %) responded positively (see table . ), despite demonstrating enterprising careers, self-created work and adoption of non-music skills. table . survey participants’ self-perception of entrepreneurialism coulson ( ) argued the nature of employment (e.g. full-time, contract and self-instigated) was contingent on career choice. i propose that this can influence a musician’s knowledge and acceptance of business norms required for a sustainable career and, as demonstrated by the musicians’ employment activity reported in my study, this begins prior to undergraduate training. in revisiting the non-music skills and knowledge needed throughout musicians’ careers, more than half of the respondents selected the diverse array of hard and soft skills presented in table . . grant writing, contract law, ip/copyright were comparatively less used; however, at +% of this is still substantial. response strongly disagree disagree unsure agree strongly agree total weighted average % . % % % . % . % . n table . survey participants’ non-music skills and knowledge the non-music skills and knowledge i have needed to assist my music career includes (please check all that apply): response % no. of responses interpersonal skills—i.e. your ability to get along with others while getting the job done . time management . intrapersonal skills—i.e. having awareness of how your actions affect the world/people around you . education knowledge . networking . finance—e.g. tax and superannuation . persuasive writing (communication) skills—e.g. cv/web copy/email newsletters/press releases etc. . health management (ears, body, mind) . self-promotion—e.g. using web/social media and/or print media . negotiation . finance—e.g. savings and investment . event planning management . persuasive speaking (communication) skills—e.g. presenting to prospective sponsors/investors for financial or in-kind support or phone conversations with presenters/press/radio interviews etc. . marketing—e.g. audience development . grant writing . contract law—reading and/or writing contracts . ip/copyright . other . i have not needed any of these skills . feel free to give details answered question skipped question the interviewed musicians proactive in initiating their own work appeared more knowledgeable about the industry environment and were able to discuss their non-music skills in detail. for example, nerida described her strengths in producing promotional materials, margaret had applied for over grants, aaron was highly conscious of intellectual property, copyright and image protection management, and tina continually upgraded her business skills by online education. however, these business processes were not always embraced positively. tina cited the administration of her work as a ‘career low’, ‘spending way too much time sitting and developing projects rather than what i am actually really interested in doing which is rather the artistic process, the actual “doing of the thing”’. survey participants were asked their opinion of the supporting business skills required to sustain their career (see table . ). the majority found these necessary ( . %), but time consuming ( %) and, for some, challenging ( . %) to manage. table . survey participants’ opinions of business skills i find the business skills required to support/sustain a music career ... (please check all that apply): response % no. of responses necessary . time consuming . challenging . interesting . boring . easy to adopt . abhorrent i.e. inspiring disgust and loathing . other . feel free to comment on your answer answered question skipped question unfortunately, time-saving business strategies such as emailing were not always the most productive. lula suggested her shyness led her to communicate via email rather than the phone: ‘i find calling is hard, emailing is safer’. she mentioned she had varied success with record labels via this method. after suggesting that people will find it harder to say no to requests if it is a face-to-face conversation, she appeared surprised and stated: ‘that’s really good to consider—i haven’t considered that’. lula’s example suggests that musicians’ traits such as introversion, neuroticism and anxiety (kemp, ; lehmann et al., ) can prevent musicians from embracing the more extrovert business processes to the detriment of their employability. to this end, an exploration of the musician psyche and foundational career motivation would enable the understanding, and subsequent development, of undergraduate career confidence. aaron was more confident with adopting the business skills required, but, like tina, found it hard to find the balance between administration and artistic activity: ‘less creativity, less practise, less music making, so that’s not good for me, i need to have that in balance’. he found it sometimes prevented him from taking on more self- instigated work, rather preferring contractual employment. arts administration was considered as time-poor and described by some as ‘unpaid’ (aaron). overall, these participants represented themselves as ‘accidental entrepreneurs’, and generally expressed a need, rather than desire, to upgrade their skills for more effective outcomes. surveyed musicians were asked how they had gained these non-music skills and knowledge. table . indicates that trial and error ( %), otherwise considered as on- the-job training, and relying on colleagues/friends for advice ( . %) was the most popular, with just over half using online search engines ( . %) for information. it was interesting that some had gained this information via their further study and undergraduate education; however, the commentary of others demonstrated sincere regret their undergraduate training had not provided the opportunity for career management skills. table . survey q : acquisition of non-music skills and knowledge i have gained this information via ... (please check all that apply): response % no. of responses trial and error . colleagues/friends . online search . further study . my undergraduate training . publications . industry support initiated events/conferences (e.g. arts queensland, qmusic, music council australia etc.) . other . feel free to comment on your answer answered question skipped question interviewed musicians engaging in contract work were not disinterested in the business processes of the industry but struggled to answer the question, ‘what non- music skills have you had to learn since your degree/diploma to support your career?’ some gave unrelated answers, preferring to discuss musical concepts they wished they had learnt. troy, who ran a non-music franchise, went so far as to indicate his music career and non-music business required separate management skills: ‘the business side of what i do was a huge learning curve but for music—there is not anything particularly that i can think of that comes to mind for music’. one could argue that organisation, finance and networking are fundamental to any career activity, music or not. however, it would appear these musicians managed successful and active careers, but were not familiar with the language associated with their business activities. contrary to the surveyed musicians, the art of negotiation and grant writing were considered the most popular learned or required strengths to support their portfolio careers. in the interests of creating a musician capable of interacting in the broader community and communicating their strengths, the usefulness of business language needs to be made explicit within a vocational preparation course. this is particularly pertinent in raising awareness of the value of the portfolio musician, which this study has revealed is romanticised and misunderstood. one surveyed musician who had experienced mlaam suggested it had given her enough information to interpret the business language and realise what further knowledge she required and how to obtain it: my undergraduate training provided a great intro to a lot of these topics. i had enough information to know what knowledge i was missing—i could understand information on the web searches easily as i knew the general vocab, etc. to interpret the rest. my colleagues/friends are generally my port of call for everything—after i’ve found the information online i'll likely corroborate my findings with theirs (or their experiences). (sp , established musician) surveyed musicians were asked what further knowledge they required to support their career. table . reveals continuous learning of education/pedagogy ( . %) was commented as fundamental to a successful education career and mitigated burnout: ‘you have to keep learning, or you become stale’ (sp , established musician). it was interesting that health management was a comparatively lower priority ( . %) irrespective of the growing understanding of an industry requiring reform in this area (van den eynde et al., ) and the ongoing new discoveries concerning musicians’ health (ackermann et al., ; d. kenny et al., ; o’brien et al., ). curiously, only . % musicians required further knowledge of event planning compared to those currently using this skill ( . %), possibly suggesting project management was considered a static skill. it appeared that other hard skills such as ip/copyright, marketing, grant writing and financial concerns continually evolve owing to changing environmental forces and were valued comparatively higher as professional development requirements than soft skills such as inter/intrapersonal skills and time management. working with people and organising one’s life seemed to be assumed skills by these musicians. a current-versus-future skill analysis is revealed in table . . table . survey q v. q : current (n= ) and further skills/knowledge required (n= ) current skills in use v. further skills/knowledge required for career sustainability. % in use n= in use % need more n= need more % change n= change i have not needed any of these skills/ i feel i do not need more knowledge about the above . . . other . . . ip/copyright . . - . marketing—e.g. audience development . . - . grant writing . . - . contract law—reading and/or writing contracts . . - . self-promotion—e.g. using web/social media and/or print media . . - . finance—e.g. tax and superannuation . . - . finance—e.g. savings and investment . . - . persuasive speaking (communication) skills— e.g. presenting to prospective sponsors/investors for financial or in-kind support or phone conversations with presenters/press/radio interviews etc. . . - event planning management . . - . negotiation skills . . - . health management (ears, body, mind) . . - . persuasive writing (communication) skills— e.g. cv/web copy/email newsletters/press releases etc. . . - . networking . . - . education/pedagogy . . - . time management . . - . intrapersonal skills—i.e. having awareness of how your actions affect the world/people around you . . - interpersonal skills—i.e. your ability to get along with others while getting the job done . . - . musicians were then asked how they planned to seek this information. table . reveals the industry network ( . %) remained a strong source of information, as does online ( %). these could be perceived as the quickest strategies to attain such information. trial and error was valued ( %), but not to the extent as previously experienced ( %), perhaps owing to the time taken in doing so or declining opportunities. seventeen per cent suggested they did not plan for further training; but close to a quarter of the musicians were considering further study in support of skill attainment. table . survey q : musicians’ strategy for future non-music skill attainment i plan to seek out this information via ...: response % no. of responses colleagues/friends . online search . trial and error . publications . industry support initiated events (e.g. arts queensland, qmusic, music council australia etc.) . further study . i do not plan to seek further information about the above . other . feel free to comment on your answer answered question skipped question this data describing musicians’ current and future skill acquisition describe not only what musicians are confident with, but what they recognise future industry trends will require of them and those musicians entering the profession. the higher need for self-promotion and marketing indicates communication with a broad audience is vital for sustainability, and affirms the perception of the misunderstood or lesser-valued musician by the general public. these skills also indicate an increasingly competitive environment owing to the shrinking and territorial industry, where new entrants will need to create innovative market niches within or beyond conventional forms of music delivery. those seeking linear or contract careers will find trial-and-error learning to become virtually redundant and feel increased pressure to be employability-ready. in short, the gap between training and emerging musicians will shrink owing to increased competition; therefore, the pressure on tertiary institutions to train musicians alongside non-music skills will rise. undergraduate students need to be reminded that increased career support training at tertiary level will reduce the need for the trial-and-error experience and create more time for the much valued and necessary development of core musical craft, which in turn fosters paid employability. . . perceptions of emerging musicians. the interviewed musicians’ consideration of current or recent undergraduate students described a notable change in attitude towards music and music education, largely influenced by technology, the master-apprentice conservatoire one-to-one model, and a privileged upbringing. of the latter, tina implied that in contrast to her free european training, the cost of learning music excludes potential future musicians, particularly those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds and regional areas: i am seeing in a regional area talent just not able to be nurtured and not able to come through into the system, just because there just isn’t an opportunity for them to get trained or buy an instrument or you know experience it, which i think is a shame. heidi disclosed that she came from a lower socioeconomic background and marvelled at the lack of worldview current undergraduates possess, ‘so they live at home, they don’t have any idea what’s going on … or what’s involved for other people’. heidi described her undergraduate experience living on centrelink, when her inability to go on an international tour with the state youth orchestra was met by her peers with ‘just ask your parents for the money!’ heidi realised the cost of living had increased since her undergraduate training and questioned how students cope. where resilience and resourcefulness appeared the core of sustainability for these musicians, heidi felt the current generation of recent graduates was ‘blinkered’ to their opportunities and too selective, therefore requiring greater self-awareness ‘to be a bit more flexible to possibility’ and ‘open to particular types of music’. tina confirmed this attitude occurred prior to tertiary study and discussed her incredulity at her students’ willingness to say ‘no’ to certain paid work, not understanding the potential network and industry opportunities it could bring: what i find amazing is how many of my students even aged who haven’t gone through training yet in a [conservatoire] will say to me ‘do you think i should bother playing at this wedding?’ and i look at them and [say] ‘you are about to earn $ sitting playing some of the easiest chamber music that you will ever play in your life and you are going to be playing to a guaranteed audience of say people who might actually say ‘hey that was great can you come and play at our wedding?’ tina’s astonishment was no surprise considering the strong ‘say yes’ culture among her own peers. as heidi implied, this student’s response was more likely from a lack of awareness and a privileged upbringing rather than informed industry knowledge. tina also noted that many musicians progress throughout their degree without understanding their primary motivations to do music: out of the young [de-identified instrumentalists at the australian youth orchestra national music camp], when you ask them what do you want to do they all look at you as if to say ‘well isn’t it obvious i want to be a [de-identified instrumental] player?’ but then when you start to actually ask them what does that mean, very few of them had actually thought that through and yet some of them are - - , they are already in the profession working, freelancing, independently creating work for themselves. tina’s commentary demonstrates that career, motivation and identity awareness are not realisations that develop via professional experience or maturity alone. furthermore, such conversations need to be part of reflective skill development within undergraduate training and inherent to the culture of the conservatoire. however, tina noted an inhibiting flaw in the conservatoire master-apprentice model: ‘i am always alarmed at how many young musicians i come across, in the classical music industry anyway, who really feel that just because their teacher said something that means that they are going to become that’. vocational preparation courses instructing undergraduates to independently consider their careers would be challenging to acquit successfully without faculty ‘buy-in’. tina suggested that students’ choices regarding their education began too early and perhaps students are too young to think for themselves: ‘for example i had a conversation with and year olds and parents about why they should continue with music when they have only done it a few years’ and advocated the need for compulsory education. although simon felt the master-apprentice model was still relevant, the respect for the educator role had declined: ‘i miss those days where the student d[id]n’t criticise the teacher’. aaron reflected that the master-apprentice model and the content taught did not relate to his current career, but there were no alternate forms of education: ‘back then there was just the highway or no way. you had to go that way. that was what was on offer and you just went “oh well, got to go that way i guess”’. aaron identified that a music degree was now virtually obsolete if wanting a career in performance or composition, considering the variety of independent learning technologies available. considering the current y, z and millennial generations are more discerning compared to those previous (mcwilliam, ), vocational preparation courses not only need educators who will champion the cause but also need to integrate students’ perceived ‘heroes’ to create further sustainable impact on learning outcomes. in utilising industry resources students can choose their mentors, who in turn offer industry education in addition to the master-apprentice experience. this strategy value- adds tertiary music education competing with the online education environment, strengthening the argument in favour of ‘why enrol in a music degree?’ aaron and lula questioned whether accessible online information had a negative impact on the depth of tertiary music students’ education. lula commented that her major study and ensemble students’ approach to learning contrasted with her experienced method of saving to purchase music and ‘we listened to them until they were worn through’: they own a lot of content and they own a lot of material but just in general i feel like just a few really take the time to soak that up and spend time listening and studying it.… [they] have their collection and their friend’s collections all on their computers but they wouldn’t be able to tell you what they sounded like. justifications for this attitude may include students’ struggle with a crowded curriculum, personal financial demands driving part-time employment and realisations of a competitive music industry compelling increased practice at the cost of other learning activities. however, tina found students were content with less preparation. she felt this was in contrast to what she had previously experienced in european and asian countries: ‘i find them quite lazy … in all the time i’ve been teaching here in australia it’s very rare to find a student who will actually be prepared and will have done more than requested’. vocational preparation lectures will need to anticipate where a compulsory course with challenging content lies in the hierarchy of degree engagement. lectures designed for maximum impact will include tasks aligning with australian students’ core motivations for achieving a career in music, inspiring them to further engage in all areas of their degree. robert noticed this lazy approach to learning led to substandard behaviour in the professional workplace: ‘they come in without actually having prepared their parts properly or even having perhaps listened to the music’ and described graduate students as highly skilled but ‘extremely cocky’. although advanced as performers, robert considered their employability skills to be at novice level: ‘it’s not great because they come in as an absolute beginner without giving their respects to what they’re in’. resonating with sinek’s ( ) controversial online discussion of millennials within the workplace, tina added that students possessed ‘a strong sense of entitlement … which i don’t remember necessarily being around in my time, back in my day’. lula also suggested the ownership and accessibility of content has created a ‘now’ culture and made the undergraduates ‘entitled in that way’. she believed this had ramifications on their resilience levels and understanding of delayed gratification: and they get quite very disappointed when they don’t get what they’ve gone for. so that’s a hard reality for these guys because everything is a little bit more available to them but they haven’t necessarily had to work really hard for it. nerida felt undergraduate talent had not changed, but the distraction of social media created a lackadaisical approach to class engagement (during which she demands all tertiary students put their phones away) and professional communication: ‘trying to get things organised and the lack of communication and the days and days and days of waiting to hear from someone when you are trying to ask about a gig. that’s not professional’. nerida rationalised she had not grown up with the technology but was unsympathetic: ‘this is your job and your job isn’t just to play music, your job is about everything else that is connected with being a musician and you can’t be a musician if you don’t do all the other stuff [professionally]’. . . adopting professional behaviour. in advising students of correct professional behaviour, a ‘back in my day’ approach to vocational delivery poses the threat of disengaging the student more interested in current contexts. indeed, while the stories these musicians tell may be considered interesting by some, the more self-aware student would deem it common sense and dismiss the entire course as unnecessary. while it would appear explicit knowledge of professional behaviour is valid to include within vocational preparation, it may be too late to trial these skills in authentic workplaces. rather, real-world experiences within the degree, where professional behaviour is assessed, would ensure feedback in a safe education environment designed to have minimal negative impact on future careers. these experiences would further aid students’ consideration of career pathways and networks. whether these activities can be placed within a vocational preparation course or considered within degree programme reform is dependent on the time required to successfully acquit such activities, institutional funds available, willing industry networks, industry versus university timetabling, and the availability of mentors. however, care must be taken when planning such activities, as illustrated by heidi’s undergraduate degree experience of the st martin-in-the-fields’ collaboration with the conservatoire’s symphony orchestra. although cited as a degree highlight, she found her professional desk partner to be ‘the most miserable guy’—apparently his wife in england was ill and he was missing his daughter. heidi acknowledged that this alone gave her insight into how hard life as a touring orchestral musician can be: i was like ‘oh dammit i wish my desk partner was more fun’ but it was probably quite a good learning experience just to sort of see that. at one point … everyone gave us a standing ovation and i [said], ‘oh this is really fun’ and then he said ‘oh maybe their bottoms got tired sitting down …’ in addition, this process required no feedback from her desk partner beyond musical commentary exchanged within the rehearsal and performance process. structured activities including referral letters and assessment reports from a variety of industry sources (conductors, colleagues, reviews) would ensure a more rigorous process and encourage further self-awareness of professional behaviour and procedures. implementing such initiatives can incur legal hurdles as outlined by the fair work act regarding internships, work experience and unpaid employment (fair work ombudsman, ). for students to experience authentic professional environments external to their educational institution, they are effectively performing ‘work normally done by paid employees’ (fair work ombudsman, ) and are not operating within an observation-only role and cannot choose their own hours. unless the activity is part of their course, students by law are required to be paid. this presents nominal complications such as the workplace requirement for expensive personal instrument, public liability, and accident and injury insurance. major concerns include the prospective replacement of more able and available established professional musicians, adding to the stress of an already competitive environment and potentially damaging future industry-institution networks. the solution is to create entrepreneurial course- embedded and student-driven authentic employment experiences. . disparity . . marching to a different drum. many of the interviewed portfolio musicians stated they felt very ‘different’ to their peers during their undergraduate study regarding work ethic (stronger) and degree approach (more engaged). margaret had felt the need to initiate her own projects early in her degree to avoid being funnelled into a career she had no sincere interest in: ‘i can see the benefit in a lot of the things that we were taught but we weren’t ever taught to really look beyond [orchestral performance]’. jane’s approach to music changed from a solo concert pianist aspiration to something less isolated and more collaborative. as this mindset was unlike her classical pianist peers’, ‘i didn’t really bond with any of them, there were a couple in the early days in the first couple of years but then it was more sort of jazz musicians that i ended up making long-term friends from’. lula called herself a ‘miss goody two-shoes’ who did as instructed and was ‘just here for the music. i wasn’t here to go to [the pub]’. heidi’s peers also went to the pub, at times to reflect on career uncertainty. for heidi, her own career concern rather motivated her practice routine, which her colleagues found surprising: ‘i would be at the con at night and it would be “what are you doing here?”’. tina, who had studied at the royal northern college of music in manchester, commented that her undergraduate colleagues were very dedicated practisers, ‘but at the same time they would be very shut off from the other experiences that that institution was creating’. in spite of these opportunities, teachers unwittingly thwarted her own attempts to become the musician she wanted to be. rather, ‘they wanted me to please whatever agenda it was for them’: i can remember having this friction that this degree isn’t quite fulfilling all of the expectations i had and so therefore i was the one who would go to concerts or go to the jazz up late or start to create those networks for myself because there wasn’t those opportunities provided within the course. (tina) likewise, troy’s study did not integrate his commercial and music theatre interest. he reflected, ‘i actually did the classical course, and it was a bit of a square peg round hole sort of thing for me, so i did it and got through’. instead, he added performing activities to his degree that he found more enjoyable. this tolerance of a conservatoire model designed for linear careers implies that these musicians were not ones to follow the culture of their peers or be completely persuaded by their mentors. rather, they were more driven by their intrinsic motivation and relationship with music, indicating key requirements of career sustainability. beyond curriculum revision, explicitly introducing the optional pathways of degree engagement and career choice within a vocation course would allow more undergraduates the opportunity to plan their degree accordingly and defend their reasoning with researched evidence. consequently, this would create a student culture of independent career consideration. in turn, this may act as a catalyst driving curriculum review of the master-apprentice model. . . gender. of interest, most of the male interview participants noted that their career direction and degree approach was initially undefined. although troy declared himself to be competitive and ‘i can honestly say i would be the hardest practising one there’ he initially did not know what career path to choose upon school completion: ‘i was really a bit of a waffler’. his parents were the ones to suggest conservatoire enrolment after his exploration into council employment opportunities. likewise, robert’s parents, who were instrumental teachers, directed him to begin a bachelor of music degree after he took a gap year delivering pizzas and working in bars. however, even a full scholarship could not persuade him to remain enrolled upon beginning casual orchestral work. greg did not possess a clear understanding of his career path, and after realising the effort required for an orchestral [de-identified instrument] career, changed his major to composition. even so, he took four years to complete a three-year degree ‘because i was quite unfocused back in the early part’ and failed a few subjects. james had initially begun a commerce degree and although regarded himself more mature than his music degree peers, felt he somewhat wasted his degree time. however, he argued that his life and professional experiences during that time were equally valuable. chris also described himself as ‘wasteful’, wasting the opportunity to self-promote: ‘so i was a bit backward in coming forward, people would probably say i was too self-deprecating i would never push myself to go forward’. an opportunity therefore exists to begin vocational preparation in the pre- tertiary education domain, particularly for boys whose maturity and decision-making skills appear to be not as developed. for greg, once he had made the decision to become a composer, his commitment significantly increased, regardless of his lack of ability: ‘i wasn’t as good a composer as most of my peers, even though i felt that was what i wanted to do, so i made a very strong commitment to it and that’s sort of carried me through i think’. likewise, for troy, ‘the academics were not my forte, but [the] practical side was, which was the course anyway and that was what i was hell bent on’. conversely, tina argued that being female had allowed her to be coerced into agreeing to do things just because it’s an easier road to do that than to say, ‘i’m not sure if i am interested in that yet’ or ‘why do i need to go practise for six hours just because there is a scale exam?’ for a further hindsight perspective, surveyed musicians were encouraged to think back to their time as an undergraduate musician and describe themselves using one word for their approach to their degree/training on day one. responses were grouped into categories (see table . ) indicating basic emotions, action emotions signifying goal preparation (positive and negative) and possible selves (positive and negative). over a quarter ( . %) of the respondents replied with categories possessing negative connotations (naïve, negative, negative—goal and negative future self), whereas . % identified within the positive categories of positive, positive— goal and positive future self. a small percentage ( . %) felt the question did not apply to them as they did not achieve undergraduate study or could not conceive one word to describe themselves. age did not appear to be a determinant of response. table . survey participants’ hindsight perspectives of initial music degree engagement code respondent descriptors m:f n= % naive clueless, green, no idea, innocent, naïve, starry-eyed, unaware : . negative confused, desperate, displaced, insecure, intimidated, overwhelmed : . negative future self anxious, apprehensive, nervous, petrified, scared, trepidatious, cautious, fearful, hesitant, nervous, resigned, stressed, terrified, worried : . negative—goal chaotic, puzzled, unfocused : . non answer can’t reply, n/a : . positive active, autodidact, creative, curious, eager, enthusiastic, excited, home, hungry, inspired, interested, keen, open, open-minded, passionate, positive, professional, proud, ready, unique : . positive—goal ambitious, committed, conscientious, dedicated, determined, driven, entrepreneurial, focused, hardworking, obsessed, ready, studious : . positive future self adaptable, courageous, hopeful, intrepid, malleable, optimistic, tenacious : . non response total respondents the ratio of male-to-female responses for most categories is representative of the gender of the total survey recipients. however, of the respondents placed within the naïve category, ( %) were male. likewise, four of the five male respondents fell within the negative—goal category. these results are significant when considering the student response to career planning by interviewed males. whether pre-tertiary vocational awareness would have created improved degree engagement and career outcomes for either gender is yet to be determined. the question is whether it would have further dissuaded those facing career indecision. as the threat of increased university fees remains, exposing the truth about western art music careers may be unwelcome not only to those considering it, but also to tertiary providers needing quality enrolments. regardless, authentic real-world experiences within the degree time actioned beyond the conservatoire environment would help students not yet active in the industry to gain a realistic understanding of the complexities involved in the life of a musician. this working knowledge would create understanding of degree relevance to assist degree engagement, particularly for some males. . professional perspectives on undergraduate vocational preparation courses. the support for conservatoires delivering a strand such as mlaam was unanimous, commonly described as ‘essential’, ‘it’s long long long overdue’ (margaret), ‘and it should be for the staff and for others!’ (tina). many defended their response, stating that there was much more to a music career than purely performance, and industry knowledge would have saved time spent ‘learning the hard way’, even though ‘that in itself has built resilience’ (margaret). margaret’s comment incites the question, ‘by introducing vocational preparation, are educators denying students the rite of passage that trains survival skills for a tough industry?’ yet simon’s comment, ‘if you can give people as many heads up before they actually get out the [conservatoire] door they are not maybe going to make so many mistakes’ concurred with hannan’s ( ) sentiment: ‘being thrown in the deep end is one way to learn, but it is more enjoyable and less stressful to be well-prepared’ (‘preface’). lula also realised the value of learning career realities in a safe environment among peers as opposed to the lonely trial-and-error method the older generations encountered. her response suggested the age group of undergraduates necessitated such courses: when you are young it’s hard to be realistic about your life. you know most people are thinking about the good parts of the jobs that they want to be doing and you are not as aware or willing to be aware of the harder times. robert was very mindful of the lack of full-time jobs available but believed mlaam to assist all types of musician and teach transferable skills: ‘some will [obtain full-time employment] and that will actually help them as well, but the ones that don’t specifically make it as players—that will give them many many skills to go elsewhere. so i think it’s great’. where james suggested that vocation preparation was the responsibility of the university ‘rather than just pumping out naïve graduates’, darryl did speculate the benefit of such courses implemented ‘superficial[ly] for the sake of having it’ and wondered at the grading of professional skills: ‘how do you assess that?’ when flagging the danger of introducing too much reality, all musicians suggested that they would have continued with their passion regardless. furthermore, troy pointed out his competitive nature and suggested a course like mlaam would have had a reinforcing effect: ‘i know i just would have been driven to do it harder’. darryl’s ambition was to be an orchestral musician, ‘which i think might have been not realistic and also not realistically projected by my teacher at the time’. however, he was uncertain whether he would have changed his career choice if advised of the reality: ‘it probably would have made me practise more and work harder … or … i don’t know it is difficult to say but maybe i would have stopped and did something else, say the education side of it instead of performance’. for derrick, he inferred it would have tested his resilience but looking back, ‘i still wouldn’t have changed what i have done because even though through earning whatever $ , , $ , in a year i still could not walk away from [music]. my gut was telling me to hang in there—it will turn’. he said the courses ‘would have been good’. many musicians i have encountered wondered why it had not been part of their own undergraduate training. yet heidi recognised the value of hindsight: ‘i wish there had been something like that. though, it is easy to say that once you have finished your study and you don’t have to do it’. when asked to consider their -year-old selves taking a compulsory mlaam subject in first year, the responses resided on a continuum from apathy ‘why do i need this?’ (heidi) and ‘just want to play my instrument’ (simon), to the more appreciative ‘i would have kissed their feet!’ (lula) and the advocates, ‘so i would have been dragging people out of the bar playing snooker and pool and drinking pints at o’clock on a friday, “come on lecture’s on, let’s go”’ (tina). some musicians realised their own naivety would have prevented their reception of mlaam in first year, ‘maybe [if] it was a third- or fourth-year final [course]—getting-you-out-the-door-preparation-[for]-the- realities. i think in first and possibly second year i would have not “got it”’ (simon). margaret agreed that towards the end of her degree she would have been ‘more realistic about it and probably a bit more open to it’. robert gave some insight to the course design, degree and industry transition, and the authenticity vocational preparation courses require and suggested he would have received it: probably really well if it was presented in a way that showed the actual industry and showed all the different parts of it. it’s probably perfect for actually realising where you’re going with your degree in the first place and where you’re going to end up because it is such an isolated thing being in uni sometimes where you are just practising and reading—so actually transitioning into the real world. nerida suggested that such courses could allow students to at least understand where to obtain the knowledge required ‘whether you actually learn it all as you are learning it is irrelevant, as long as that information is there for you to access’. she also argued that such vocational information has more impact if used as applied knowledge: ‘you can’t just learn all this stuff instantly; a lot of this stuff is going to come with experience and time’. some mentioned they would have embraced music industry skills from first year, owing to their already developing business interest and real-world experience. for matt, it was ‘partly why i went into commerce first up—thinking about all of that’. jane said she was ‘already performing a lot and having a performing family. i think it wouldn’t have felt too far removed from my knowledge … of being a performer’. margaret reflected on her colleagues’ potential approach as undergraduates: ‘i don’t think there would be many who would have really either taken it seriously or seen it as relevant’. however, margaret also acknowledged only one from the flute players within her year had continued as a performing musician. she speculated an alternate outcome for the others who chose alternate careers: you wonder if that would have been different if they hadn’t had that concept of the orchestra being the ‘be all and end all’, and ‘that’s the only way and if you don’t do that you must be a failure’, you know that kind of mentality. i wonder if it would have been different if they’d have known otherwise. in addition to surveyed results where career support skills were viewed to be necessary ( . %) but time consuming ( . %) and challenging ( . %) (see table . ), participants further described these support skills as a ‘necessary evil’ (sp , emerging musician) possessing a ‘fundamental conflict between creating my art and then selling it’ (sp , established musician, but working less than before). an older musician (aged ) reminisced: ‘i preferred the world in which it was not so’ (sp , established musician). one emerging musician indicated this sentiment has not changed: ‘i'm consistently annoyed at the requirements of industry that i find quite distinct from the practice of music that i much more enjoy’ (sp , emerging musician). only . % agreed business skills were interesting, . % boring, . % easy to adopt and . % abhorrent. with all this in mind, one could expect mlaam to be nothing but challenging for the students and the teacher. when asked to reflect how their undergraduate colleagues would have reacted to a course exploring the realities of the music industry and learning related non-music skills, the response from industry musicians was conflicted, though many offered course design insight and experiential knowledge. ‘positive’ engagement was suggested by . % of respondents (see table l. in appendix l), whereas others identified further challenges: ‘it would be difficult to make such a course interesting but it could be very valuable’ (sp , established musician). the data revealed an understanding of the need for applied industry knowledge: ‘quite well, particularly if there were external connections/real life implimentations [sic] to the course’ (sp , established musician). . % refused to consider their - year-old self, with some preferring to offer hindsight perspective: ‘it would have been welcomed. we had nothing like that available to us doing [sic] undergrad degrees’ (sp , established musician). such comments were coded as a ‘non answer’. just over % had experienced such a course and had a negative experience. no one suggested a wholly positive experience with such a course. one participant explained it was the lecturer (at another institution) who influenced their opinion of career management: ‘i experienced a terrible course with a deceitful lecturer, so made me more sceptical about such industry learning. i would have been more likely to learn those things but it was abhorrent after experiencing such a lecturer’ (sp , established musician). another suggested the content was too depressing: ‘with despair. i actually saw this happen in classes where teachers gave real-world examples’ (sp , established musician). the latter supports the notion that real-world examples must be chosen with care to avoid a demotivating effect on students. others noted the functionality of ‘the dream’, suggesting reality-resistance served a purpose: i would most likely have been disheartened. i think it was important for me to be oblivious to the difficulties of actually getting work, to keep fantasising about a [sic] great careers in music, and getting on with the skills development, networking and experience building that is so important to do in your undergrad. (sp , emerging musician) some ( . %) were classified as possessing ‘mixed’ perspectives. they considered such reality to be equally functional and dysfunctional: ‘perhaps more would still be in the industry or would have dropped out sooner’ (sp , established musician). the complex nature of the student cohort was acknowledged: ‘depends on the student. there will always be a core of (string players in particular) who have a defined career path of joining an orchestra. these people would have little to gain from learning non- music related skills’ (sp , exited musician). nevertheless, the full-time orchestral musicians responding to the survey would perhaps disagree with this statement, considering their additional portfolio of activity supplementing their income (teaching, lecturing, administration, health services, management). table . indicates the non-music skills they reported as useful. table . survey q : orchestral musicians’ non-music skill set skills and knowledge n of % of time management . interpersonal skills—i.e. your ability to get along with others while getting the job done . intrapersonal skills—i.e. having awareness of how your actions affect the world/people around you . education knowledge . health management (ears, body, mind) . negotiation . networking . persuasive speaking (communication) skills—e.g. presenting to prospective sponsors/investors for financial or in-kind support or phone conversations with presenters/press/radio interviews etc. . persuasive writing (communication) skills—e.g. cv/web copy/email newsletters/press releases etc. . marketing—e.g. audience development . self-promotion—e.g. using web/social media and/or print media . finance—e.g. savings and investment . finance—e.g. tax and superannuation . grant writing . contract law—reading and/or writing contracts . ip/copyright . i have not needed any of these skills . however, on numbers alone, string musicians are more likely to gain orchestral work (be it full-time or otherwise) compared to their colleagues (musicalchairs, ). yet, as interview participant robert pointed out, orchestral work required knowledge of the business language: there [are] so many committees that you have to be kind of schooled in how they operate and instead of being suddenly thrust upon you are dealing with a management side of things and an orchestral side of things and you have to work out how to speak to the management part. for me personally i don’t feel like i had any skills at all to support myself in that situation to deal with the ceo or an orchestral manager. so i imagine someone coming out of uni who has those skills gets a job early on is kind of learning all that on the job whereas perhaps it could be useful beforehand … even to be aware of the rights of the musicians rather than just thinking that you go into a job and you do whatever they say. i had no awareness of musician’s rights at all, you are relying on the knowledge of the older musicians when you get in there rather than knowing for yourself. regardless, survey participants recognised a prioritisation of major study by undergraduate students: ‘some would relish it. many would disregard it in favour of practicing [sic] their instrument’ (sp , established musician). retrospective appreciation was discussed by only . %: ‘it would probably have been one of those things that students would not have appreciated much at the time but would have realised later how valuable it was’ (sp , established musician). one musician explained: ‘i think we would all rather be practising/rehearsing to be honest. we didn’t put much value in anything that wasn’t practical study. only now can i see the value’ (sp , established musician). the conundrum is whether to avoid vocational preparation courses in an undergraduate bachelor of music programme altogether. some survey participants recognised its validity later in the degree, but suggested that the complexity of the cohort defines the decision, and there is really no ‘right’ time for everyone: in first and second year—a very very bad reaction. for me i was too young and wouldn’t have cared. third year—’im [sic] too busy for this’ fourth year—‘oh fuck it’s too late’. to be honest—all i really needed was an accountant to come take a short course and explain how to do tax properly for a musician. however i have friends who would love to have a more detailed course—especially the more creatives (jazzers). (sp , established musician) some survey participants had experienced the mlaam course in its first year of delivery and although i was not expecting a positive response, they conveyed useful insight into their colleagues’ degree approach: having been in the first cohort of mlaam, i know there were mixed views. a lot saw the course for the benefits it provided however those with a view of an ‘old style’ con didn’t adapt well to the course. (sp , emerging musician) another past mlaam student acknowledged his student colleagues’ sense of ‘entitlement’, its effect on their reception of career and business skill education, and commented on his colleagues’ subsequent industry activity: well my year was the first to encounter the introduction of business skills. many many many did not respond well to it. however, i think that is more that they were conditioned to think the[ir] music career of choice (orchestral musician or otherwise) gets everything handed to them on a silver platter. i know that many of them who responded negatively are no longer in the music industry or went to a secure [a] job such as teaching, instead of their original aspirations. (sp , emerging musician) one musician who experienced mlaam from commented she was happy with what her degree offered but found career planning to be lacking: i learnt so much at the con relating to basics of music business and management, but after leaving the con i’ve realised how hard it is to plan for things long term. maybe it’s just my personality, but i can’t really see specifics of where i want to be the in the next / years. (sp , established musician) the same participant acknowledged that ‘being realistic is very important— acknowledging the facts is a really important first step’ (sp , established musician). perhaps this graduate would have benefited further from a later edition of the mlaam courses, because during they included increased focus on detailed career planning and opportunity research, particularly in the first year. however, the ‘messiness’ of such a career in the current environment might make for difficult planning, regardless. one survey participant highlighted the difference as, ‘i have always been led to understand that the practice of music is a ‘profession’ and not an industry—the business and recording component of music is the “industry”’ (sp , established musician). this commentary raises these questions: is the delivery of mlaam ahead of its time? does the profession and industry need to further shrink and become increasingly territorial for such a course to be accepted as imminently relevant? or is the resistance to such a course an indicator of potential career failure? . the prac-ademic the interviewed musicians suggested that in order to teach vocational preparation courses such as mlaam, one would need to be an active well-connected musician working in many areas of the music industry, with experience in contract and self-initiated work in addition to management expertise. furthermore, one would need to possess knowledge of the tertiary education environment, the community within which it resides and the broader arts landscape. aaron advocated that being a qualified academic was not enough: [you need someone] who has perhaps done some degrees or whatever—great. but some seriously good chunk of [professional] time–that’s what backs it up. you can’t have just a pure academic person who has been in academia lecturing about real-world situations. so, you have got to have someone who has done both. robert also recommended those with authentic skills, as he had experienced tertiary courses that were less useful, utilising lecturers disseminating theoretical knowledge, ‘when i did the industrial design [bachelor’s degree] there were a number of lecturers who didn’t actually have any, well they did have design skills, but they had no real career experience in design’. he subsequently quit the degree. derrick’s response suggested that lecturing required advanced presentation skills: ‘maybe confidence is part of that too. do an acting course, sometimes you have to tell yourself you’re just an actor’. one who was able to relate to the students and guide their careers was also considered valuable, ‘and a good knowledge of opportunities or paths that students could take and be able to identify’ (margaret). particularly pertinent was to be a currently active musician in the ‘ever-changing industry’ (troy). tina recognised the challenges that could be encountered in teaching such a course in a conservative environment such that conservatoires uphold and recommended those who do required: adaptability, flexibility, inspiration. they need to have huge listening skills, because let’s face it they need to be able to completely alter someone’s perspective, which is hard when maybe % of the rest of the time they are going to be told something else [by their major study teacher]. as a result, vocational preparation courses require teachers who possess ‘an incredible sense of grit and pure determination’ (tina) for it to be a success. surveyed musicians concurred with interviewed responses and predominantly valued those with varied current and past industry experience, local knowledge and community understanding and an inspiring method of delivery. qualifications in the form of doctoral and business accreditation were deemed less relevant (see table . ). table . mlaam lecturer skills in order to successfully teach music industry/business and career management, a tertiary music lecturer would need to possess the following attributes (please check all applicable): response % no. of responses have experienced multiple forms of music industry work (contract, self-initiated etc.) . knowledge of the local music industry and the community of people driving it . an inspiring teacher . be currently active in the music industry . knowledge of multiple career paths and opportunities . have knowledge of a variety of music styles . an understanding of the arts infrastructure of australia (funding, policy etc.) . a strong network of industry professionals from which to share knowledge and opportunity . music degree qualifications . knowledge of the tertiary education environment, and curriculum and assessment design . be previously active in the music industry . grit and determination . business degree qualifications . a phd . other . please feel free to comment on your answer answered question skipped question similar to the surveyed musicians, interviewed musicians did not indicate a comparative high value for curriculum and assessment design or any other academic skills, possibly more out of unfamiliarity with university processes than deliberate omission. from experience, these are absolutely vital for effective course and lecture design, and understanding how to assess appropriately within the tertiary education environment. the preferred skills outlined by the musicians are invaluable in bringing personal experience to the course that is real, relevant, relatable and, most importantly, inspiring. such capabilities culminate in the term ‘prac-ademic’, where the teacher is university trained and employed, knowledgeable of the academic culture while simultaneously experiencing current ‘in the field’ employment. this enables real-world delivery, the capitalisation of professional networks and knowledge of relatable opportunities for the students. the prac-ademic adds to the human resource capital that is becoming increasingly pertinent in the current online environment, redefining the perceived value of higher education. it could be argued that someone possessing all of these required skills would be a rarity and that these positions would more likely attract those who have strong industry experience but limited tertiary teaching skills. in fact, following a uk ce conference on the study of current practice and attitudes towards enterprise curriculum in higher education, c. carey and naudin ( ) concluded: it was identified, however, that it is relatively hard to find a sufficient number of people who are competent, have a good range of relevant skills and specialist knowledge, to act as mentors and lecturers. the impact of this, was that there were considerable issues around increasing pressure for professional career advice or relevant business information, as placed on a small number of existing guest lecturers. (p. ) furthermore, two recent graduates attending the conference offered their opinion describing the need for ‘“translators”, for individuals with an understanding of both worlds i.e. business and arts’ (c. carey & naudin, , p. ). therefore, training and support in course and assessment design and delivery would need to be offered in addition to recognition of and support for ongoing industry experience and business qualifications. . required twenty-first century musician skills when asked ‘what non-music skills and advice do current undergraduates need in the twenty-first century in order to sustain a music career?’ many of the musician participants’ responses reflected their own industry experience. troy was very reluctant to offer an opinion and stated, ‘it’s a hard one because the music industry is so weird and diverse and some people make money out of it in weird and diverse ways’. however, later in the interview, he was able to offer his own philosophy: ‘work hard and do your best and doors open and don’t say no to anyone unless you have to, unless it’s illegal’. although i anticipated answers concerning the post-digital boom, only darryl and james mentioned ‘online presence’ in spite of the topic discussed favourably by several participants in response to other questions. darryl doubted how effective it would be to include online promotion in a course, owing to the perceived rapid turnover of social media technologies: ‘there is that myspace thing that’s obsolete and it’s not that old and other things are becoming obsolete. i think marketing on facebook is overrated especially for musicians’. yet for the emerging musician, it is an inexpensive option for self-promotion compared to off-line physical promotion. the ‘old school values’ (james) of professionalism ranked highly among the musicians. these included punctuality, courtesy, dealing with double-booking and being mindful of the close-knit network. my observation of the music industry suggests that in the event of unprofessionalism or poor work standards, work colleagues will not discuss the problem; rather, they simply avoid employing or recommending the offending musician again. jane affirmed these professional skills were not always common sense to everyone or explicitly articulated within the industry, and recommended a clear understanding of the workplace environment: ‘there is always an unspoken way to go about things and i think it’s good knowledge to have’. this knowledge would prove valuable to those struggling to grasp professional workplace cultures or seeking to gain strong positive first impressions in such a competitive environment. nerida offered her strategy: ‘if you do make mistakes learn to suck it up, accept it, apologise and immediately move on’. passion, persistence, resilience and adaptability were recommended ‘soft’ skills. margaret had a ‘karmic’ approach to the industry and promoted a community of practice: don’t just be a taker be a giver as well and try and …. if someone gives you an opportunity then down the track, it doesn’t have to be straight away, but find some way of giving back or paying it forward to the next generation or the next person. practice, hard work and preparation were also considered necessary skills. omitted were ‘hard skills’ such as copyright, intellectual property management, marketing, audience development and the more ‘business’ side of music. however, greg recommended various finance-related skills and was surprised to ‘still get emailed by other composers who are really quite well established in terms of their skill, but they don’t know what to charge somebody when they are asked to’. throughout the interviews, several mentioned the need for advanced negotiation skills (particularly when discussing finance), festival pitching and grant writing. of the latter, some regretted not learning grant writing but were keen to do so and recognised its importance: ‘for art music especially … funding is pretty important’ (james). aaron had successful grant application experience but declared himself ‘lazy’ considering there was ‘a lot of work involved’. he declared, ‘but i just haven’t had any decent amount of spare time to warrant … to be in a position to think that’s the approach [needed]’ and said his workload kept him occupied enough. lula relished the thought of such skills taught to undergraduate as her own discovery was quite time consuming. she also valued long- and short-term goal setting in a career that she did not consider ‘normal’, ‘you [need to] have something to continue to work towards, so that you don’t also lose your skills but you don’t fall into a bit of a rut personally… you’re going to be the driver of your work and your musical life’. time management was also valued by nerida ‘because you just get this notion that [a musician’s life] is just going to be practise and performance but no, there is everything else that goes with it’. interviewed musician commentary is summarised in table l. in appendix l. the surveyed musicians agreed on the value of soft skills: professionalism ( . %), work ethic ( . %), resilience ( . %), communication ( . %), industry insight ( . %) and passion ( . %). hard skills such as self-promotion and marketing ( . %) and finance ( . %) were significantly valued but entrepreneurship ( . %) production management ( . %), contract/ip/copyright law ( . %) and fundraising ( . %) were comparatively less so (see table . ). it was interesting that finance ranked marginally higher than passion. table . non-music skills required for current undergraduates what non-music skills/knowledge do you consider graduating music students need to sustain a music career in the st century? check all that apply: response % no. of responses professionalism . work ethic . resilience . communication . self-promotion and marketing . industry insight (cultural norms, unspoken rules etc.) . finance . passion . negotiation . entrepreneurship . production management (recording, events, technology) . contract/ip/copyright law . fundraising . other . please feel free to comment on your answer answered question skipped question surveyed musicians reflected they wished their degree focused more on career planning ( . %), and a variety of employability concepts (see table . ). only . % of participants felt they required more major study training and . % (mostly older musicians) were happy with what their degree offered. stemming from their personal experience with linear careers, the core message of prioritising performance skills is echoed in this senior musician’s response to what non-music skills twenty-first century musicians need today. after choosing professionalism, communication, negotiation, resilience, work ethic and passion, he avoided the business skills categories: everything else i think you will have to learn on the job. there is not enough time in a undergraduate course to do much more than learn how to work, feed you passion and get as good at it as you can. all these other bits will be there to absorb as necessary. spreading oneself too thin is a danger when really what you need to do most is practice. (sp , established artist but working less than before) one musician revealed that during his qcgu undergraduate study in the late s: ‘i had an instrumental teacher [since passed away] who told me (forced me) to not go to any classes other than principal study’ (sp , established musician). overall, the commentaries revealed a strong regret that their degree had not included a business course. there was some disappointment that the one-to-one teachers did not have, for example, ‘the willingness and appropriate level of education to prepare his students for career pathways that would suit each individual, rather than reflect back his “success” as a teacher’ (sp , established musician), and that they were ‘[not] really connected to the industry’ (sp , established musician). some recognised their skill at teaching and performing, but made no correlation to industry: ‘while my mentors and performance training was exceptional, there was no speak of applying my training to the real world outside of orchestras and tertiary teaching jobs (of which there are so few)’ (sp , established musician). table . survey q : degree reflection q in my undergraduate degree/diploma, i wish there was more focus on (please check all that apply): response % no. of responses career planning . the music industry network . how to promote myself . how to obtain employment . grant writing . musicians’ health . versatility . pedagogy . how to read/understand and write contracts . how to deal with problems such as non-payment for services rendered . copyright . i am happy with what my degree offered . how to gain a recording deal with a label . my major study . other . i did not do an undergraduate degree/diploma . please feel free to comment on your answer answered question skipped question the ‘hard’ skills such as finance, promotion, grant writing and intellectual property protection are adaptable and assessable within a tertiary vocational preparation course. the ‘soft’ skills are easily implemented within the course delivery via hypothetical peer discussions to capitalise on students’ varying knowledge and experience of the music industry. however, assessing such skills that are subjective and at times ambiguous is problematic. my experience suggests it is very difficult to convince students to attend lectures that are not assessment-based, rather a ‘beyond- assessment’ culture of learning needs to be advocated. likewise, the musicians’ opinions of the graduate skills required for current western art musicians vary greatly according to their own experiences and personal perceptions of their industry domain. this suggests that a diverse cohort of musicians require consultation in the design of such courses, a valid argument exists for segregated classes (jazz/classical, contract/instigated etc.) and relying on the one lecturer to facilitate the course may not be optimal for learning and teaching outcomes. . chapter summary the results discussed in this chapter are summarised as follows. surveyed musicians’ ages ranged from to , with an average age of . years. the male-to-female ratio was . : . %. the majority of the musicians reported they were living with their partner in australian capital cities, commonly located in brisbane. a high proportion of musicians had had music degree education and was largely classically trained. approximately one-third of those surveyed had additionally experienced non-music education. three-quarters of the total musicians had experienced between and + years of music employment, representing a high level of experience. only . % had exited the profession. initial paid music employment most likely began before or during tertiary education. there appeared a distinct progression towards higher quality performance and teaching employment throughout primary, secondary to undergraduate studies and post-graduation. during this time, referral networks grew and became heavily relied upon. as musicians’ career developed, full-time and part-time employment was more likely adopted; however, self-created employment increased. musicians identified with an average of . career identities, but they worked within an average of . career domains. performance, teaching and composition were the most common concurring with bennett’s ( ) study of classical musicians. initial aspiration to current career reality demonstrated a substantial increase in teaching, as well as other less common roles (e.g. arts administration and writing/research). furthermore, . % of surveyed musicians felt they had achieved their initial career aspiration. given the diversity of their careers, musicians struggled to succinctly articulate their employment titles, but many described them as they were related to the employability risk within their portfolio of work. their core skill, financial risk and career image were able to be ascertained from the description. the word ‘portfolio’ was yet to be adopted, and ‘full-time’ did not necessarily mean work from one employer or sole employment domain. the predominant career strategy was to maintain a high level of professionalism and quality of work. musicians recognised an initial approach to establish one’s career was to ‘say yes’ to all opportunities and develop versatility. related to this, some musicians had also adopted a ‘fake it ‘till you make it approach’, demonstrating a confidence with their own abilities to adapt to new employment demands. accepting unpaid work was recognised as an early career strategy to increase employability networks, but musicians were uncomfortable with this process. additionally, musicians preferred a subconscious rather than proactive approach to networking and felt the latter was insincere. musicians’ approach to career planning can be summarised as dreaming big but realistically setting smaller achievable goals. a small number of musicians indicated their realistic approach to their career had potentially stifled otherwise successful outcomes. others indicated that their planning was influenced by financial and family commitments. career planning was considered valuable overall. while the musicians valued and respected their own careers, they felt that society did not. rather, they felt the general public did not understand their employment possibilities and possessed romanticised misconceptions about their lifestyle and earnings. however, within the music industry and profession, it would appear a hierarchy and snobbery exists between the full-time employed performing musician and the portfolio careerist. contrary to the stereotype, the surveyed musicians’ highest average experienced income ($ , . ) was substantially above the australian minimum wage. however, females’ highest average experienced income was less than the total average. there was a significant difference in experienced income between all emerging (lower) and established musicians, and between classical (higher) and jazz musicians. financial gain was generally not considered a career motivator, though it did impact the reality of music-making possibilities, namely performance and composition. consistent income was preferred, and some musicians chose to work in diverse areas of employment outside of the music industry. half the surveyed musicians had experienced an increasing income throughout their career. there was a correlation between those experiencing increasing income and increasing career satisfaction, but it was not related to full-time employment. teaching was regarded by . % of surveyed musicians as fundamental to career sustainability and, for over half of those, took up – % of their career portfolios. teaching music was an accepted employability component of the term ‘musician’ for % of respondents. although musicians did not consider themselves entrepreneurial, the non-music skills portfolio musicians had adopted and used to sustain their career were vast and consisted of hard and soft business skills. many had learnt these via a trial-and-error process but lamented they had not received such education during their undergraduate education. musicians were interested in further education of protection of ip/copyright, marketing, self-promotion (including social media), grant writing and financial skills. rather than be formally trained, they would prefer to gain this knowledge via their network and online learning. however, the trial-and-error process was still valued to some extent. adopting such skills of initiative to instigate their own creative employment was regarded as possible by the majority of the musicians; however, they felt that owing to a non-supportive environment, there was no opportunity for financial gain and therefore it was not worth the time and effort. in addition, such non-music skills, although valued as necessary, were also considered time consuming and challenging. there was a preference for creative work beyond contract and full-time employment, despite the fact that many were employed in contract and full-time roles. just over % of surveyed musicians had exited or thought about exiting the profession, citing low financial rewards as the most popular reason. societal perceptions, fellow musicians, perfectionism and burnout were also influences. furthermore, environmental influences such as economic, social and technological forces were perceived to have a negative impact on music employability; musicians’ professionalism, employment network, versatility and access to a variety of funds assisted career sustainability. burnout was unsurprising considering the many roles and high expectations of quality experienced by these musicians. ageism was reported as affecting emerging musicians because of their limited employment networks, and mid- to-late career musicians because of exiting and less proactive development of social capital. one’s employment was more likely positively influenced if male, and negatively influenced if female. career ‘calling’ and an understanding of non-music careers were also influential in discouraging attrition or in musicians returning to the profession. surveyed musicians considered themselves passionate about music, and resilient. however, they were marginally less confident and brave, particularly those who had considered leaving the profession. the music industry was largely considered to be shrinking and becoming territorial ( . %), whereas . % considered it stabilised or growing. these attitudes were considered dependent on various areas of the music industry; however, this was not made clear. overseas opportunities were generally considered as more prevalent, but the remuneration was in question. young and emerging musicians did not perceive they were entering a prohibitive environment, possibly because they had not experienced the realities of those longer established. there was some concern by established musicians about the number of new entrants in the industry. this will become increasingly relevant considering that a large proportion of survey participants did not wish to retire ( . %). in the meantime, unethical practices of full-time musicians add to the ‘cannibalisation’ of certain areas of the music industry. future trends included increased live performance touring and the rise of skype teaching as technology improves and the one-to-one teaching model becomes redefined. the musicians perceived undergraduates to be entitled, lazy, over privileged and unaware of the professionalism required in the workplace. interview participants also commented that technical drivers such as social media and file-sharing had added to this unproductive attitude. they considered their own degree experience had been one of independent thinking in spite of a one-size-fits-all music education, and had fostered a strong work ethic. the males considered it took some time to understand their vocational path; this was somewhat reflected in the survey results. overall, the musicians considered the concept of mlaam a positive inclusion to the degree but recognised students could prioritise practice, and were concerned that too much realism could create a ‘dream killing’ effect that would demotivated students. some suggested those aspiring for linear careers, such as classical string musicians, were more likely to disengage compared to those requiring a more independent and creative approach to their career such as jazz musicians. it would appear there was no ‘right’ time to deliver the course: first and second year was considered too early by some, and third and fourth year too late by others. some considered such education was the responsibility of the one-to-one teacher. experiential learning tasks were considered valuable to vocational preparation. as to course content, musicians agreed a variety of soft and hard skills were required to sustain one’s career, but specific skills suited particular subcategories of the profession. overall, they predominantly valued professionalism, work ethic, resilience, communication, self-promotion and marketing, and industry insight. an mlaam lecturer was considered to need current and past music experience in a variety of fields and therefore had to be highly experienced and skilled. in addition to possessing an understanding of the education environment, musicians suggested the mlaam lecturer required a strong professional network from which the students could benefit, in addition to being able to deliver the course in an inspiring, rather than disheartening, manner. chapter : employability within the curriculum this chapter outlines my experience with the course design and teaching of the mlaam courses from to , and my attempts to embed vocational preparation concepts within extracurricular activities. in doing so, i draw on action research, autoethnography, interview and survey results, as well as formal and informal student course experience surveys. mlaam will be described in substantial depth considering its longer timeline of development, and differentiation from other industry subjects delivered within australian bachelor of music curricula. . championing vocational preparation recognising the need to improve my teaching skills for such a large, challenging cohort and topic, in i participated in the griffith university-wide initiative of pro-teaching as a peer mentor and mentee. in i opted for a similar programme titled peer assisted course enhancement scheme (paces) as mentee. this training provided insights and enhanced my understanding of the environment within which i was trying to succeed. the paces programme succinctly identifies three main types of barriers ‘which can often cause courses to underperform’: . ‘internal barriers’ involve intrinsic concerns that are usually defined by personal perspectives of reality, . ‘external barriers within your control’ can be defined as educational and cultural workplace practices, and . ‘external barriers outside of your control’ which can include anything from lack of student’s [sic] prior learning to the organisational psychological factors such as class size, room allocation and teaching equipment. (carbone & rae, , p. ) . . internal barriers. . . . large-class teaching. internal barriers for this music-tutor-turned-lecturer included my reservations regarding my ability to teach a large and diverse class. in my first year of teaching mlaam, i canvassed various lecturers of music literature subjects for their opinion of teaching + students. no one in the conservatoire consistently taught such a large class within the institution beyond one or two lectures in a course. my experience in teaching large vocational preparation courses has led me to believe that the conservatoire model, of which individual performance tuition is the cornerstone, is completely at odds with the large class medium. to clarify this further, the one-to-one teaching environment is now briefly discussed. . . . a one-to-one educational culture. the one-to-one mode of teaching involves a relationship built on ‘trust and respect’ (hallam & gaunt, , p. ) usually over the course of a three- to four-year degree, described as ‘a cross between parenting and friendship’ (p. ). the broadly designed curriculum ensures choice of repertoire can be a collaborative process between student and teacher based on students’ developmental stage, educational needs and artistic taste. theoretical/declarative knowledge is immediately applied and, if not understood, then workshopped in a variety of ways using metaphor, imagery and analogy (lehmann et al., ) until learning becomes more concrete. as a result, feedback from students is immediate, specific and usually respected by the teacher. thus, this teaching and learning environment is intimate, dynamic and at first glance non-transferable to large-class teaching. as further affirmed by this study, traditionally the teacher has been ‘looked at as a role model and source of identification for the student’ (jørgensen, , p. ) and independent learning is not just encouraged, but expected. the current expectation in australian universities is that students should devote hours to a -credit-point course including all course-related activities. a full-time enrolment would normally include credit points (cp) per year of performance tuition courses, resulting in a total commitment of hours, as part of cp of courses in each of two semesters each year. by university standards, this would indicate that only hours of practice per week in addition to one’s lesson (or hours per semester, hours per year) is required. however, it is generally understood that, to succeed professionally, more than this is needed. not surprisingly, a study involving a comparable uk tertiary music institution discovered that ‘students found their principal study lessons to be overwhelmingly the most important factor in their improvement and development at college’ (presland, , p. ). the students of this study confirmed this sentiment (see chapter ). there are limitations to how responsive one’s teaching can be within minutes considering a student-teacher ratio of > : for mlaam and the wide range of students’ disciplines, career experiences, identities, and learning motivations. an intimate student-teacher relationship mimicking the one-to-one environment is virtually impossible, and even associating all the students’ names with their faces presents a major challenge. assessment feedback is slow by comparison, with limited understanding of the students’ individual learning needs and idiosyncrasies. . . external barriers outside one’s control. in contrast to the highly valued one-to-one experience, students place lesser importance on their classwork. presland’s ( ) study affirmed this, stating ‘disappointingly, the direct benefits to playing of aural, harmony and history were hard for many to see’ (p. ). another study affirmed, ‘undergraduates viewed academic subjects, including music history, negatively, valuing only “practical subjects”’ (arostegui, as cited in colwell, , p. ). one can therefore assume that, in spite of its practical application, mlaam in its current form is not immune to this attitude. this hierarchical approach to one’s undergraduate study, fuelled by the current master- apprentice form of teaching, potentially impedes the creation of the real-world culture of learning necessary for vocational preparation success in the twenty-first century. . . . compulsory education. mlaam is a compulsory course in years one, three and four, for all bachelor of music students. arts entrepreneur educator gary beckman ( ) warned that teaching creative entrepreneurship with an ‘eat your peas’ approach is distasteful to the current generation of student artists (p. ). from experience, i would agree. however given the romanticised student career attitudes and the potential retrospective appreciation of courses like mlaam, it is unfortunately an inescapable approach. . . . student degree engagement. it has been my experience that those who underperform in first-year mlaam are more likely to be male (see table . ). table . mlaam fail rates by gender year and course m:f ratio male % of fail grades mlaam : . mlaam : . mlaam : . mlaam : . one survey participant identified one reason behind the lack of male engagement with such courses: ‘i think they would not have appreciated [mlaam] (particularly the boys) as they were a confident/cocky bunch that believed they were going to get a job in an orchestra’ (sp , established musician). it is worth discovering how this employability assumption was developed. further to this, those with more defined career paths (e.g. string performers) or career paths that take longer to develop (e.g. opera students and pianists) are more likely to disengage from the course at all levels unless directed to experiential learning tasks. . . . faculty educating within a changing professional landscape. in , there were many lecturers at qcgu who had experienced careers in an era when employment as a performing musician was comparatively plentiful with limited need for career planning or self-promotion. given the full-time status of the ‘old-guard’ faculty, it can be assumed there was no need for personal adaptation to a changing music industry. similar conflicting messages from faculty to the students no doubt compounds the resistance to such a course. in recent years, when senior staff have retired (griffith university, ), replacement staff are likely to have worked within diverse areas of the music industry and largely initiated their own work. . . . millennials. as mentioned by the musicians and faculty, students’ perspectives of an entitled education were very evident, largely in their disengagement from course readings and other forms of assessment help, such as handouts. further to this, the earlier years appeared blinkered to the reality that employment was not going to be readily available, or, even if it were, they might not be the most appropriate or skilled for the work. this was reflected somewhat in the course evaluations and initial lecture reflections, with a strong theme of ‘how does this apply to me?’ however, a positive shift in response to the courses is noticeable from sec scores, particularly from . . . . learning environment—class size. this overall negative outlook on core non-practical subjects is exacerbated by the fact that, for example, mlaam is delivered in a location normally used as a performance space, the only venue in the conservatorium that can effectively house the number of people enrolled in the subject. regrettably, the -tiered seating is steep, and offers no foldout desks for writing or power outlets for computer recharging. while there currently remains no alternative location for mlaam , a notable improvement in the course delivery and sec results of mlaam and occurred when the class was delivered ‘on the flat’ in smaller classes and rooms. the reduced physical distance between student and lecturer created more opportunity for eye-contact and personalised conversation. manipulation of the physical environment was made possible, group activities were less cumbersome, desks were available, and overall student participation and interaction increased. lectures were noticeably more effective when all students had eye contact with each other and were seated at one table, promoting a relaxed atmosphere and contributing to a professional approach to the problem-solving activities of the courses. the smallest classes earned the highest sec ratings, supporting the argument for smaller classes. the qcgu mlaam classes, in particular mlaam , are quite large by comparison to other institutions discussed in this study (see section . . ), which deliver music business and career courses. . . . learning environment—class time allocation. first-year mlaam classes are the same duration as major study lessons, but as a subject of only five credit points, the work expectation is significantly less. in the eyes of a music student, the priority of this topic in the greater scheme of their degree has plummeted before even reading the course profile. recognising the limited class time, i introduced non-compulsory assessment tutorials from to develop more clarity with the assessment tasks. course evaluations notably improved from that year on. some students have since further requested that weekly class tutorials be included in addition to the lectures for all mlaam courses. for example: ‘i think tutorials each week could be useful’ (first-year student, sec, ). . . . learning environment—lecture medium. where major study lessons possess unusually focused and intense learning environments, large-class lecturers are warned that ‘what is learned after minutes is likely to be learned at the expense of material learned in the first minutes’ (griffith institute of higher education, , p. ). it is no coincidence that ted talks are minutes long (gallo, ). indeed, one student gleefully informed me that if the first three minutes of a lecture does not engage her attention, facebook is a much better place to be. as mcwilliam ( ) asserted, the onus is on the lecturer to discover an attention-grabbing, engaged method of teaching and learning that aligns with students’ current education expectations: ‘they are on about lifestyle, image and being entertained’ (p. ). . . . learning environment−learning motivations. three types of attitudes towards industry preparation have been identified (tolmie & nulty, ). dependent on the students’ current engagement with, and understanding of, the music industry/profession, these attitudes are: . ‘i don’t need this’: students have an ‘art for art’s sake’ mindset in which the coursework would never be applicable; therefore, they think, ‘i just want to pass the subject and focus on my major study’. . ‘i need this in the future’: students understand they need mlaam but are struggling with their identity as a current active musician. . ‘i need this now’: currently active as a musician, or plan to be very soon, students perceive mlaam information as immediately applicable. the third category potentially becomes more prevalent by third year as this study has recognised % to % of mlaam students are engaged in some form of early career professional activity. . . external barriers within one’s control: lack of appropriate course texts. teaching mlaam was made all the more challenging owing to the lack of an exemplar model and texts relating to a diverse cohort of classical, jazz, composition and music technology students. for example, brabec and brabec’s ( ) music money and success: the insider’s guide to making money in the music business was recommended to me by an american colleague who lectured in music industry subjects. however, the australian qcgu student cohort was less focused on the financial outcomes a music career could provide, and this text was not only inapplicable, but also abhorrent, particularly considering the opposing ‘art for art’s sake’ influence from some of the students’ lecturers (see chapter ). this presents the argument for ‘professional preparation’ versus ‘industry preparation’. in support of the ‘profession’, a large part of mlaam course content is based on career theory as applicable to the portfolio career musician. following an online search, australian courses in existence prior to mlaam had been titled ‘music industry studies’ or similar, offered as an elective or delivered as a core course in the final years of a degree. as music vocational preparation research had only begun to gather momentum, it was not until late when a related book useful to mlaam was published: preparing for success: a practical guide for young musicians (hallam & gaunt, ). this text provided insight into career planning but was less focused on career management or basic business skills. simpson and munro’s ( ) the music business, now in its fourth edition, cutler’s ( ) the savvy musician, and myles-beeching’s ( a) beyond talent were available, but they are not ideally suited to the first-year context. their target audience includes emerging and established musicians possessing an industry focus rather than training/new student musicians wishing to develop their professional identity. conversely, bennett’s ( a) life in the real world included excellent reflective exercises and tasks for those emerging in the profession. considering the diversity of the class cohort, no single text could support the educational needs of all students; therefore, a diversity of readings from several texts are sourced. however, my experience with these courses is that primary content sourced independently via the students’ exploratory assessment activities has greater impact on student learning (see section . . . ). . . summary. in summary, those embarking on vocational preparation education will find it challenging, particular if delivering such a course to first-year students. these contextualised teaching and learning barriers suggest that although large-class teaching is widely accepted throughout the university, it is less common within conservatoires. therefore, creative methods of engaging students within the parameters of their vocational aspirations, employment activity and gender will need to be considered. vocational preparation lecturers are limited by the culture of low priority for non-major study courses, compounded by the nineteenth-century teaching traditions and attitudes towards the profession. programme and conservatoire directors need to be mindful of these limitations, as well as the fact that the sheer volume of skills and knowledge required for authentic industry preparation is impossible to achieve within an undergraduate degree. music psychology educationalist andrea creech ( ) recognised the potential challenge for employability focus in a tertiary music environment, writing ‘higher education music institutions face a tall order, taking responsibility for equipping music students for the music profession and also for supporting those whose transition pathways lead to alternatives to a performance career’ (p. ). as a result, a long-term vision is required when employing industry- experienced lecturers new to academia, as a period of adjustment to the tertiary education is inevitable. given these barriers to successful teaching and learning of mlaam, it needs to be recognised that learning outcomes and student career success may not be realised until long past graduation. . course design the following is a description of the mlaam course design, which was influenced by educational and career theory, faculty beliefs, student focus groups, course experience feedback, musicians’ career needs, music industry course design, arts industry leaders’ opinions and action research. a brief discussion of its evolution will explain the current iteration of the mlaam strand. note that student feedback is quoted in this chapter with sources presented in parentheses, using abbreviations for their year level (e.g. ys = first-year student), followed by the format (e.g. sec), course code (if applicable) and year. qcm is first year mlaam, qcm is third year mlaam, and qcm is fourth year mlaam. there is currently no offering of mlaam to those enrolled in second year. as mentioned in chapter , the mlaam strand is continually evolving. as the mlaam courses initially needed to subsume a previous course within the programme structure, the subject ‘improvisation and movement’ was embedded within the mlaam course as a four-week section retitled ‘sound making: instrument and body’. its ethos was to create performers aware of their sonic surrounds and physical stage presence. unfortunately, it had previously been an underperforming course and remained as such. furthermore, within the mlaam delivery, the music technology students (included in mlaam ) and composition students struggled to find its relevance to their focus on production over performance. the sound-making element of the course was removed from onwards. other notable changes included a shift to second semester for both mlaam and in . mlaam was extracted from second year and transferred to third year, reducing the total number of courses to three. this created an opportunity for pedagogy courses to become compulsory where applicable, allowing further elective subjects for others. second year, as the conservatoire student lifecycle has exemplified (see chapter ), was not ideal for discussing career support when many students were mitigating their mid-degree slump, increasingly focused on their performance skills, coming to terms with the negative reality of their career, or continuing their process of career denial. for , mlaam was removed from the bachelor of music technology curriculum and no mlaam courses are currently required in that program. following my research and an understanding that ‘people learn best through experience’ (herrington & herrington, , p. ), the mlaam strand has evolved to include realistic and experiential tasks to enable students’ current and future careers. the relevance of such tasks is important to align with students’ current and future possible selves (markus & nurius, ) and respect students’ career motives for tertiary music education. rather than killing the dream, in turn deactivating their internal and external motivational drivers and work ethic, one teaching strategy is to inspire students to expand their ideas about possible futures and introduce authentic employability network investigation (tolmie, ), and tasks actively seeking industry information and career opportunities. the overarching outcome is to foster intrinsic career confidence, understood to be the foundation of employability and career success (knight & yorke, ; macleod & chamberlain, ). my research suggests that to design and implement employability curriculum, one needs to adopt an ethos i have named the real, relevant, respectful and inspiring (rrri) model: (see figure . ). given the students’ professional activity and/or nascent entrepreneurship, it would appear that career and industry subjects such as mlaam are placed in the middle of the continuum of practical versus theoretical courses. if the assessment is designed with an underlying focus on self-discovery and relevance, while being mindful of the creative values of the student musician, the stigma of a ‘compulsory’ course is somewhat diminished and the ‘peas’ are understood as ‘good for you’. 	 	 figure . the rrri model mlaam , and lecture activities, assessment, and learning outcomes will be discussed in what follows, with lecturer reflection and course feedback contributing to the action research of this study. . mlaam mlaam has evolved to consider five key elements of a music career: identity; pathways and options; degree and career progression; mind, body, aural and financial health; and employability networks/social capital. in response to the identified teaching and learning barriers, course content is delivered via a ‘flipped lecture’ process (berrett, ). therefore, students engage in peer discussions determining personalised understanding of the music industry, and problem solving via hypothetical case scenarios, online polling and contributing their already-formed knowledge base to the class. videos of current, successful, local western art musicians feature online and in class time to aid discussion. all in-class learning activities are supported by course readings from related texts. technology includes the use of blackboard (an online course management tool), social media and online class surveys outside of class time. at the time of writing, mlaam course aims in the course profile were communicated directly to students in the second person with a clear message of degree engagement, career exploration and entry-level industry knowledge acquisition. for example: this course helps you to develop and use reflective-practice skills as a tool, allowing you to positively link your growing understanding of your current and possible future selves with music industry knowledge. it aims to ensure that you understand how to take full advantage of your degree, your environment and the queensland conservatorium griffith university resources, by teaching you how to set strong career foundations for successful participation in the music industry. (tolmie, , p. ) to align with these aims, i specified four learning outcomes in parentheses, based on the first three levels of bloom’s taxonomy for learning (i.e. knowledge, understanding and application; see anderson et al., : after successfully completing this course you should be able to: . identify the fundamental elements required for your music training and a sustainable career in the music industry (knowledge) . outline your music career-related attributes, planning and management (knowledge) . discuss the possible opportunities available for your personal degree and career planning, inspired by the real stories of other music professionals (understand) . apply the results of your networking effectively within the professional music industry and relate the outcomes pragmatically to your career planning (application). (tolmie, , p. ) the outcomes of this study have determined the following lecture topics and sequence directly relating to formative and summative assessment (see table . ). at the time of writing, the first teaching period contained weeks, owing to the introduction of the trimester model and the public holidays interfering with the usual -week timetable. table . lecture and assessment sequence for mlaam week activity learning outcomes lsa & assessment due introduction and overview , lsa: career reflection a career in music—what does it take? , , musicians’ health: mind , , choosing your career , , quiz % networking , , , fundraising principles , , , quiz % easter holiday -year plan % introduction to arts marketing and business tools , , , lsa: invoice design effective team work , , , business tools , , , quiz % musicians’ health: ears , , musicians’ health: body , , networking % quiz % note: lsa = learning support activity. the sequencing of these lectures is systematically structured to allow students to ) develop clarity surrounding their intrinsic career goals, ) understand the functionality of the network within which they will develop professionally, and ) acquire standard entry level career management knowledge. the students have the opportunity to realise the value and relevance of stage during stages and . the lecture activities and assessment of mlaam has been discussed at length in appendix m. . . lecture activities. in the introduction and overview of the course, the first formative assessment item is discussed. as mentioned in section . , this optional lsa is a reflection exercise considering career motivation and the influences surrounding its sustainability. in exploring the ‘possible selves’ concept (markus & nurius, ), it allows the students to consider professional identity and self-concept with the secondary purpose of trouble-shooting basic assessment upload practices early in the semester. it is also useful because it provides the lecturer with an enhanced understanding of the students’ sense of career purpose and literacy, enabling bespoke teaching methods to aid degree transition. because this is non-compulsory, the level of engagement with this task has ranged from % to % of the class. week concerns the philosophy of being a musician, the timeline and the behavioural traits of those sustaining their career, which is intended to enable students to understand future realities and enable realistic planning. degree engagement is discussed and linked to the short- and long-term goal development outlined in the five- year plan. this leads directly to week , when a guest performing arts psychologist invites students to explore and identify ‘the inner psych of musician behaviour, how to deal with career disappointment, and the psychology of motivation’ (tolmie, , p. ). this aids further understanding that a musicians’ career is challenging and that success requires significant resilience and commitment, thereby further assisting the goal planning process. during week , collaborative discussion in class and online is centred on specific career possibilities and opportunities using michael hannan’s updated online version of his publication, the australian guide to careers in music. subjective and objective career outcomes (e.g. portfolio v. full-time linear employment) are central to the topic. in doing so, initial career aspirations are challenged, often with students reconceiving a career that includes more variety and flexibility. week explores the concept of network-based careers and the development of mutually beneficial connections from which to source career support and sustainability, that is, social capital growth. this topic is vital considering the prevalence of collegial referral early in musicians’ careers and its positive impact on the musician network (see chapter ). the value of these networks is further discussed in the week topic of fundraising. although grant and scholarship processes are not immediately applicable for most first-year students, planning for these and understanding how degree and music community engagement affects success outcomes are relevant for this cohort. as crowdfunding success is based on the health of social networks and can occur at any time throughout one’s career, its best practice is discussed in class using conservatoire student examples (e.g. twoset violin, ) and the qcso eurosax tour (tolmie, ). an overview of arts marketing is introduced in week . core values relating to artistic integrity and the cultural cringe artists experience in adopting self-promotion are discussed to give students an opportunity to understand the performance versus career management approach to employability. the concept of branding segues into invoice and business card formulation, and social media presence. introduced the e- portfolio tool ‘pebblepad’ ( ) to enable students to develop a professional online presence connecting with many forms of social media, including youtube, soundcloud, and linkedin. the week’s lsa, invoice formulation, relates to the beginning/starting out musician. this task also monitors what students perceive to be industry standard fees. expanding upon the concept of network and passion-based careers, week challenges the concepts of effective teamwork, utilising hypotheticals and video footage of professional music ensembles (e.g. eighth blackbird). disc theory ( test, ) is considered specifically to introduce the various possibilities of communication required for diverse personality types and students are invited to take the disc personality test prior to the lecture and discuss their results. during week , basic business tools are further discussed, considering industry pay rates, recounting invoice feedback, and introducing basic sole-trader processes (e.g. abn application), billing/saving strategies specific to musicians, debt collection and tax. it has so far been surprising that so many students have dismissed the invoice lsa as unnecessary and a ‘waste of time’ (online class feedback survey, ). yet of the % that engaged with the task in , many made basic errors. these were largely spelling mistakes from using american invoice templates and maintaining such titles as ‘shipping address’ when the service rendered was teaching. billing costs were less than industry standard and general protocols such as professional greetings, terms and conditions, and form of payment were missing on many. all of these errors were made in spite of their clarification in the week lecture. it could be presumed that the relevant lecture was ineffective in communicating the invoice process. however, . % of surveyed musicians claimed to gain their non-music skills/knowledge via a trial-and-error method, and a further . % were planning to continue this method of non-music skills/knowledge acquisition. this would indicate students and professionals value the trial-and-error process as a preferred practice. to ensure further content relevance, it is communicated to the students that % to % of third years are active in performance and/or teaching employment in contract and sole trader capacity and use these skills. although this lecture is high in content, some discussion is utilised to convey unpublished industry cultural norms regarding debt collection via case analysis and hypothetical discussion. weeks and include guest specialist lectures in aural and physical health. as damage from overuse and sound exposure has possibly taken place, one could suggest that this knowledge is imperative and better placed earlier in the semester. however, i incorporate the same lecturers in orientation week and introduce them yet again towards the end of this course. this is to capitalise on students’ clearer conceptions of sustainable careers towards the end of the semester owing to this course and their successful transition into their higher music education environment. repeating relevant topics such as health during this time ensures greater impact of such crucial knowledge with the by-product of higher lecture attendance towards the end of the semester. . . assessment. at the time of writing, summative assessment included self-marking quizzes based on theoretical knowledge ( % of total course result), allowing students to transition themselves slowly from ‘the factual recall skills which may have contributed to a student’s success in [high] school’ (burland & pitts, , p. ). this ethos aligns with kift’s ( ) understanding that ‘the first year curriculum should assist students to make a successful transition to assessment in higher education’ (p. ). a self and career analysis linked to a five-year opportunity research plan ( % of total course result) incorporates positive psychology and goal-setting theory while aligning with the rmp model (creech, ). finally, an interview-based professional report ( % of total course result) supports the predominant rationale of network-based career success. these assessment items are discussed at length below. . . . online quizzes. the mlaam online theoretical quizzes are based on the course content and required readings of lecture clusters concerning musicians’ health, career theory and basic business knowledge. with four quizzes in total, each consisting of questions, this assessment is situated throughout the semester to ensure ongoing quantitative feedback and encourage lecture attendance. each open-book quiz is to be completed within four and a half days. the core purpose for this medium is to encourage students to engage with the readings and lecture content from which to scaffold their learning for the other assignments. . . . opportunity research plan ( a pages). following the most popular ‘say yes’ strategy ( . %) regarding career development (see section . . ), survey participants also valued setting attainable goals ( . %) and possessing large ‘dream’ goals ( . %). when asked what they retrospectively desired for their undergraduate studies, survey participants ranked ‘career planning’ as the most preferred ( . %). mindful that the majority of students possess a romanticised understanding of their careers, this task allows students to investigate the reality of career progression in support of their dream goal. as one successful surveyed musician affirmed, ‘always set a vision for everything and br[eak] this down into small steps—always’ (sp , established musician). students are required to evaluate themselves in relation to their proposed long- term career utilising a revised strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (swot) analysis model (see table . ). rather than strictly follow the swot concept, students are encouraged to consider their personal strengths and propose the skills required in order to track towards their desired career. this positive language is adopted to mitigate the identified barrier of ‘dream killing’ and encourage deeper engagement with the task. therefore, ‘strengths and weaknesses’ become ‘strengths and developments’ relating to their major study skill development and career aspiration. for ‘opportunities’, students consider what their current environmental situation can offer (e.g. grant funding, scholarships, summer schools, work experience, visiting scholars, self-initiated work etc.) to support their major study education. using the same positive language, identified ‘challenges’, rather than ‘threats’ (e.g. lack of desired employment, limited audition opportunity, minimal funds etc.) require prevention or mitigation strategies in the five-year plan. this adoption of positive psychology (seligman & csikszentmihalyi, ) combined with drach-zahavy and erez’s ( ) framing strategy where a challenge rather than a threat is more likely to be more conducive for complex tasks, aims to produce productive, rather than destructive, learning outcomes. conversely, the swot remains unchanged in the career analysis, encouraging students to consider the career in its realistic static form and allowing objective ‘what is’, rather than subjective ‘what i think it is’, research of the career from related reputable publications and life stories. following throsby and zednik’s ( b) acknowledgement that passion and persistence are the key drivers of arts career success, my research and others suggest that resilience and discipline are additional qualities contributing to the longevity of a musician’s career. identifying possible opportunities and future challenges aids students’ ability to recover from the inevitable career disappointments and persevere with the work ethic required. table . self and career analysis template long-term career aspiration (as of semester , first degree year): self-analysis career analysis internal internal strengths strengths developments weaknesses external external opportunities opportunities challenges threats students are then encouraged to write a five-year strategic plan, beginning with three years considered in six-month time-frames, followed by yearly goal setting. this assessment had been trialled with shorter goal durations, but the word count far outweighed the requirement for a five-credit-point course and some students did struggle with such independent and detailed planning. most recently, years four and five are considered within the same parameters of goal setting, but portrayed in paragraph form, describing possible options and career paths. goal setting is not solely focused on university life, and includes the vacation period when independent learning and work experience/employment can occur. the primary agenda is for students to research their opportunities and train themselves in career planning, rather than construct a fixed plan. during class, students are made aware that these plans will most likely change as this process creates increased opportunity awareness. therefore, more opportunities will present themselves during their degree and career, which can affect the plan. students are required to design their goals around five fundamental domains, demonstrating an independent understanding of their transition through, in and out (lizzio, ) of their degree into industry. these domains are: core skill development; degree engagement and lifelong learning; network building and personal health; independent enterprise; and finance. this process aligns with the rmp model, which details the components of a successful music career as knowing what, how, where, when, whom and why (creech, , p. ). the first domain, core skill development, aligns with the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of the rmp model. considering ‘major study’ is the primary student focus of degree engagement (colwell, ; presland, ; tolmie, ), goals are related to fundamentals such as technical development, repertoire preparation and memory work (i.e. the basic toolkit required as a professional musician). the second domain, degree engagement and lifelong learning, aligns with the ‘what’ and ‘when’ of the rmp model. students consider their degree design, such as elective course choices that strategically support career goals or mitigate recognised personal developments/challenges and current industry threats. challenging goals such as gpa outcomes are also encouraged, provided the learning goals are made explicit (latham & brown, ) and are relevant to their career. successful musicians exhibit a preference for lifelong learning (smilde, ) and this study has further demonstrated that australian portfolio musicians value this in their current employment. students are encouraged to consider their ongoing education, be it formal or informal, beyond their three- or four-year undergraduate education. the third domain, network building and personal health, aligns with the ‘where’, ‘when’ and ‘whom’ of the rmp model. students are encouraged to research, identify and connect with mentors, key industry associations and stakeholders strategically throughout their degree to facilitate industry transition. this enables students to consider a broader social capital beyond their close colleagues and explore alternate employment territories of their profession. it includes work/life balance and anti- burnout strategies that aid personal health and non-music activities, which are perceived as vital in the development of the sustainable well-rounded musician possessing a sense of community awareness (hallam & gaunt, ). it could be argued that in remaining connected beyond one’s immediate music network, more informed public support of the music profession could arise. independent enterprise, the fourth domain, is reflected in the musician survey, in which . % musicians were initially employed contractually and . % created their own work. the latter figure is anticipated to rise, considering the perceived shrinking and territorial music industry. that is, more musicians will be required to create their own employment as the traditional forms of contract, let alone full-time, work diminish. in addition, to avoid a ‘music student’ mindset, students are encouraged to develop personalised projects and enterprise, be it performance or education-based, enabling immediate professional application of degree knowledge and ownership of career path. independent work may generate income for themselves and their fellow student musicians, but more importantly develop an employment history assisting future grant/festival/label applications or non-music project management employment. finance, the fifth domain is a concern because, in-class polling indicated students’ low prioritisation for financial earnings, in spite of their common aspiration to travel post-degree and purchase expensive instruments and equipment. to avoid scholarship, bursary and grant dependency, saving strategies are included within planning. this is particularly pertinent for what is largely known among professional portfolio career musicians as ‘feast or famine’ employment patterns (see section . ). half of the musicians surveyed suggested they had either left or considered leaving their music career, citing ‘low financial rewards’ as their primary reason. in the event that students are faced with unemployment at the end of their degree, a financial safety net has been prepared. in planning within these five domains, a conscious developmental plan of capability, connectedness, purpose, resourcefulness and academic culture is constructed (lizzio, ). at the very least, this task primes the students, irrespective of their proactivity with the plan after the assessment. a -word writing reflection component invites students to consider their goal planning and opportunity research task. students are to identify what they felt they have learnt and if their career goals have adjusted since writing their initial lsa. . . . networking report ( words) and reflection ( words). bridgstock’s ( a) statement ‘it’s who you know … and also who knows you’ (p. ) aligned with cutler’s ( ) call for musicians to proactively develop, nurture and expand their social capital in support of their profession. six years on and the present survey revealed the value of collegial referral ( . %) in spite of the macro- environmental disruptors creating a perceived shrinking and territorial industry. for this assignment, students are required to interview three professional musicians within the industry whose career they aspire to, using five questions regarding career path, challenges and achievements, training, career sustainability and current industry advice for emerging musicians. students are coached on how to write the initial email/phone script of the introduction and urged to expand their networks beyond their immediate university circle. the questions are presented below, including their core purpose in parentheses: . describe your music career path to date (career opportunities) . what have been the highlights and lowlights of your career? (resilience preparation and career reality) . what do you consider the most important aspects of your tertiary study? (degree engagement) . how do you currently financially and artistically sustain your career? (sustainable career strategy) . what advice can you give an undergraduate musician in the twenty-first century? (mentorship) students are encouraged to begin this assignment early to synthesise course learning throughout the semester. should the interviewees have more time the students are welcome to include their questioning in support of their career planning assignment. the intent is to instigate networks relevant to career, and potentially create connections for future collaborations and mentorships, thus connecting with a musician community valuable during and at the end of their studies. central to this is the participation in ‘active and collaborative learning’ with members of the industry (kift, , p. ), as they begin to actively develop their inter/intra personal skills, which are so highly valued by the surveyed musicians. from the interview transcripts, students are required to write a critical written report ( words) broadly discussing the key areas of career path, progression, success, resilience, sustainability and finance, supported by reputable resources and interview quotes. students then provide a short reflection ( words) of the process and describe any impacts on their five-year plan, and what strategies may be adopted in response. interview transcripts need to be added as appendices to demonstrate evidence of the personalised interviews. two interviews need to be face-to-face, or via phone or skype, with only one permitted via email. . . reflection and student feedback. . . . lecturing. one student clearly explained ‘the content she covered was very broad sometimes and i [sic] found it difficult to find relevance to me so i would just stop going to lectures’ ( ys, qcm set, ). my broad approach followed student feedback from the inaugural course, indicating a content bias towards performance music genres that excluded students interested in other vocations within the music profession. the student’s critique is an alternate example of the ‘this doesn’t apply to me’ complaint in that it is either too broad, or too specific. finding the balance in educating a diverse cohort experiencing differing stages of their career (new, emerging, established) is challenging. for example, in spite of the primary value placed on marketing knowledge ( . % of surveyed musicians), students struggled with these specific concepts in their first year as they justifiably felt it was not applicable. the guest lecturer at the time did not take into consideration the stage of career of the students and offered no immediate application strategies of the knowledge relevant to the students’ professional activity. early mlaam ( and ) student reflections also revealed that in inviting several guest lecturers, students perceived their genre was non-adaptable; for example, a new music composer discussing his life was not applicable to the opera student. they also described the content as repetitive of the core message that all artists should work hard, plan ahead, remain resilient and open minded to new opportunities. unfortunately, irrespective of content briefing, each guest lecturer delivered this message as though it was new knowledge, previously not discussed within the class. to avoid this, i stopped inviting so many guest artists and switched the last lecture to a question and answer (q&a) session in which students were able to ask direct questions to a panel of six professionals about life as a musician in addition to hearing personal stories and discussion among the artists themselves. unfortunately, with no budget for this aspect of the course, guests appeared either as a favour to me or added extra time within already overloaded tertiary workloads, or they possessed an alternate agenda. in the case of james morrison, he was happy to promote his world’s largest orchestra as part of the queensland music festival in return for a guest appearance. i have found ‘pulling favours’ to be non-sustainable in the long term, as inevitably the network of the lecturer/convenor will be quickly exhausted. in some instances the promise of paid parking from my own finances was required. if anything, this practice endorses the perennial phrase heard by artists, ‘do you really expect to be paid?’ students responded well to guest lecturers delivering the musicians’ health component: ‘the guest lecturers were interesting’ ( ys, qcm set, ), ‘i particularly found the lecturers on physio and audiology interesting and helpful’ ( ys, qcm set, ). the students appreciated the specialists had researched and worked with performing artists and the information was immediately relevant and applicable. i noticed greater success when the presenter possessed a further understanding of the university education environment, particularly in lecture delivery and subsequent assessment design of the quiz tasks. in support of this, when asked in the survey what attributes a vocational preparation lecturer would require, of the musicians ( . %) working within a tertiary setting chose ‘knowledge of the tertiary education environment, and curriculum and assessment design’. i came to appreciate that students require diverse learning strategies, and that a personalised learning experience is imperative to create a lifelong impression, particularly if it is based on self-discovery. in response to the ‘it does not apply to me’ mindset, i developed and increased diversity and quantity of case studies delivered within class; revised and personalised their assessment; developed inclusive ‘teaching language’; and researched and communicated understanding of current student industry activity (via focus groups and cv analysis of older students). this began to enable an all-inclusive education environment and the course evaluations improved. this ‘it does not apply to me’ complaint became rare as the course evolved, but in trying to highlight the relevance of the content to the music technology students, my attempts were criticised as ‘hurtful’ ( ys, qcm sec, ). this taught me that lecturers are not able to please every student musician of this subject and will need to develop a thick skin to such opinions. they will also need to understand that irrespective of their broad music industry knowledge, there are bound to be gaps of information, rendering the lecturer unable to cater for all students. in response to the survey question, ‘a tertiary lecturer would need to possess the following skills and attributes’, one participant suggested, ‘i’d say that mostly you’d want to get people who are in each field to come in and give a couple of classes each. no one person is going to be able to have all these traits and be able to advise on everything’ (sp , established musician). yet, with an average overall set result of . ( being excellent) for overall teaching quality of qcm from – , students affirmed, ‘diana tolmie did a really good job of covering a lot of things there were actually relevant to everyone, and did a good job of making it applicable to the different students—mutech, bmus, etc.’ ( ys, qcm sec ) and ‘i liked that the course not only catered for classical musicians, it also looked after and included mutek [sic] students’ ( ys, qcm sec, ). the jury was still out. one music technology student more recently recognised the dilemma in trying to teach such a broad cohort, given the fast-changing nature of technology and social media tools, and the varying states of students’ industry and technology engagement: as a music tech student, i feel as if a lot of the content wasn’t all that relevant to me such as some of the info on performance and practice—this isn’t really something that can be changed that much though, seeing as the course has to tailor to the majority of people studying an instrument or vocals. a lot of the material from the readings to do with social networking and the internet seems a bit outdated, but you get an idea of how you can take certain online networking concepts and apply them to new tools and websites. i would have liked to have learnt about certain other fields i was more interested in such as the recording industry and contracts, and more content on copyright laws and fair use in music. ( ys, sec qcm, ) my observation and informal discussions with the bachelor of music technology programme convenor revealed these particular students have not had the rigorous one-to-one training that the classical and, to a lesser extent, jazz student musicians have experienced (g. carey & lebler, ; lebler & carey, ). as a result, these students have had a more do-it-yourself (diy) approach to their learning, are older, and possess diverse employment experience in their industry or community. their adoption of technology and business skills is more advanced than their student peers. meanwhile their employment ‘scene’, while still creative, has comparably more objective outcomes/ambitions than their classical and jazz colleagues and is more likened to popular music careers (zwaan et al., ). although these students were attentive in class and valued lecture attendance, they acknowledged that their relationship with the music industry is a different approach and perhaps comparatively farther along the career path. however, during assessment tutorials, students suggested that learning about the lives and career processes of their colleagues aided their understanding of future ‘clients’. although the course did not apply to them, some held a larger and relevant perspective of it. these concerns aside, when compared with another literature course in their programme curriculum, one music technology student saw more relevance of mlaam: ‘this course is so much more useful to mutech students than [another de-identified course]. continue to have it’ ( ys, qcm set, ). . . . quizzes. if the high pass rate of the quizzes is any indication, students perceived this as an easily achievable task. however, in providing an ease of transition from secondary school assessment practices, i am not convinced that the online quiz method is the most effective to affirm theoretical content. although the readings were available online and in physical form, there appeared to be a resistance to engaging with them. biggs and tang’s ( ) advice to ‘operate on high trust’ (p. ) with assessment is possibly too optimistic in the current tertiary environment of millennials who choose the path of least resistance. in , one student finally clarified the rumour that cheating occurred: everyone i know is cheating all the quiz tests. one person does the test and screen shots the correct answers to their friends and they get it all correct. i find this unfair to the people like me who actually do the readings. (online anonymous survey, week , qcm, ) invigilated exams would ensure originality of work. however, aside from its time-consuming process, scholars agree the medium tends to promote surface learning and is not ideal for long-term retention (biggs & tang, ; boud & falchihov, ). for future iterations, a solution is to mimic online language course assessment, such as teach international ( ), which uses a randomised series of questions generated from a larger pool of questions. yet, if many of the students were cheating, then clearly this concept has not worked as well as anticipated and should perhaps be scrapped altogether, irrespective of the underlying motivation to increase lecture attendance. lecture attendance was usually % from the beginning of the semester, waning to about % to % towards the end. this was comparably higher than those of my music and non-music colleagues at the university with similar-sized classes. of note, for the quiz activities, the questions were sourced from a larger pool, randomised and appeared one at a time with no backtracking. the results were substantially more realistic than in the previous years. . . . five-year career plan. while the self and career analysis was viewed as a relatively simple personal task, the five-year plan produced some contention among students. for example, i usually don’t plan a lot—it’s just not the way i live and it’s not the way my personal experience tells me i should live … because of that, even completing the assignment was a big challenge. ( ys, mlaam, personal communication, ) answering the question, ‘how could this course be improved?’, in the and sec surveys, one of ( . %) and five of the students ( . %) commented the detail of planning was challenging after three years: ‘personally, i didn’t really have ideas for years and as i don’t know where i’ll be at that point’ ( ys, qcm sec, ). this student indicated that while tackling the perceived reality of the degree was possible, a hypothetical construction of the life beyond was not. it also indicated that some students misunderstood the core purpose of the task: researching future possibilities. class and tutorial discussions indicated some students struggled to conceive a long-term vision as they had yet to transition from ‘music as hobby’ to ‘music as employment’. yet . % ( ) and . % ( ) of sec respondents commented positively on its purpose: ‘it was helpful to make us genuinely look at our year career plan which helps us stimulate our study during the course of our time at the con’ ( ys, qcm sec, ), ‘what i [sic] found particularly helpful was the year plan, in that it helped me to think about the future and possibilities’ ( ys, qcm sec, ). for others whose careers had a higher probability of employment than their peers, such as music teaching, a five-year plan was easier to structure. however, many were astonished at the opportunities available for student musicians: ‘as someone who still isn’t entirely sure what career they want to pursue, this course provided me with great insight and opened my eyes to many more options’ ( ys, qcm sec, ). others appreciated the unfolding reality that the five-year plan offered: ‘it’s just a really good course to begin your time at the con [sic] with, as it brings your mind back down to earth and helps you to find a reasonable, realistic direction’ ( ys, qcm, ). another student noted: it was helpful in giving me a reality check and providing helpful tips in realistic goal setting which will make my life as a musician much easier and fulfilling. although it’s important to want to achieve great things and have big dreams, you need to also stay grounded and make smart decisions ( ys, sec, ). common themes within student reflections included greater understanding of self via the analysis, increased focus/purpose in major study, financial awareness and developing creative (legal) methods for increasing income, a realistic understanding of pathways and the need for plan b to mitigate disappointment, a move away from ‘here and now’ thinking, the value of the ‘voyage rather than the destination’, more informed choice of career options, and an action plan to maintain less reliance on the conservatorium and therefore create extracurricular learning. one past student kindly wrote to me describing her career planning outcomes: i remember one of the assessments was outlining a five-year plan through detailed research and organisation. to my surprise, after five years, i have achieved my plan as written. it is not exact, but definitely similar to the structure and goals i had set out to do. i am incredibly happy to see my successful outcome today. i believe the assessment has helped me to see my future with clarity and develop short and long term goals to reach each point. it definitely helped drive my passion throughout these years of struggle and doubt, and being able to see the possible options to get to where i want to be. it is incredibly useful, and now i'm setting out my next five-year plan. ( honours graduate [de-identified], personal communication, ) further longitudinal study of students is required to gauge the impact and success of such a task. . . . networking report. overwhelmingly, the networking reflections suggested students’ connection with professional musicians was inspiring in spite of the harsh realities communicated. they expressed surprised at how much teaching, enterprise and finance knowledge was required to be part of sustainable arts practice. for many of the student interview participants, financial instability was indicated as a primary factor in career dissatisfaction or career lows, but others citing bad experiences suggested the career highs negated these and contributed to their resilience training. advice also included: use one’s degree time wisely, work hard, maintain professional relationships to avoid marginalising future connections, be proactive and stay open to opportunity. overall, the students resolved to strengthen their resilience rather than change their career path, and adopt ‘plans b and c’ preparation in the event their romanticised dreams were not realised. students often resolved to include some form of teacher training within their future skill set and/or increase their versatility. two reflection examples are as follows: conducting the interviews has been a great window into the professional lives of three established musicians, representing a range of career options within the music industry. there has been an emphasis on not only being proficient musically, but also taking a more entrepreneurial approach by taking control and forging a career path yourself. in order to do this, respondents advised to have good interpersonal, networking and business skills and to search for what makes one passionate. i feel that my initial career idea from my lsa to become a ‘well rounded performer proficient in a range of musical styles and methods of delivery, and to be a well-respected performer’ has changed to include teaching as well. (student name withheld, lsa , xx) i had included teaching later on in my five year plan as a means of gaining income, however i believe that after talking to person two and person three, my motivation for becoming a string teacher has changed, especially in relation to a statement made by person two that ‘for you to facilitate the enjoyment of somebody else is actually a better buzz for me’ (person three, personal communication, may ). i am interested in pursuing a portfolio career, and i feel that i am now better equipped for the realities of becoming a full time musician and that ‘above all, you need to love—and be passionately committed to music’ (hallam & gaunt, , p ). ( ys, year withheld to preserve identity) interviewing three different musicians, all with different career paths has delivered an in-depth insight to the music industry and the career itself. the experience has been a real eye-opener in terms of financial sustainability, as i really had little idea that my ideal career trajectory would be near impossible to sustain with just classical performance. i originally wished to partake in solo, chamber and orchestral performance and really wasn’t keen on the idea of jazz performance or doubling. however with that being said, i now have a greater comprehension of what a classical saxophonist must do in order to have a successful and fruitful career. i’ve been made aware that certain sacrifices must be made in order to do what you’re most passionate about and to live comfortably doing so. the interview process has also opened my eyes to the art doubling, something i thought i would never say. this has unlocked a whole new world of knowledge and opportunity career wise. i still wish to complete postgraduate study abroad however i would now like to take a year off in order to further enhance my skills as a saxophonist and to also learn the skill sets of doubling and jazz. ( ys, year withheld to preserve identity) the only sec complaint regarding the networking assessment occurred in from a bachelor of music technology student, which offered insight into the music technology community: i feel that the final assessment (with the interviews) was aimed primarily towards performing musicians, and as a music technology student i found it a little unfair towards us. this was mainly because most of the students in the course, as they would be looking for performing and teaching musicians, would be able to interview their past teachers or relatively easily find a professional musician in their local area who they could talk to personally or would quickly respond to emails. professionals from the aspired fields of music technology students (such as sound engineers video game composers, djs etc.) however are much more sparsely spread and closed off than performing musicians. making it very difficult to find someone who would be available for an interview, and almost impossible to find two or more people in your local area who will be available for an in person interview. to be honest i can't think of a way that this could be improved fairly, but it's as much feedback as i can give. ( ys, qcm, sec, ) however, one could suggest this student has not sufficiently persevered to connect with their employability network. he has indicated he kept his search within the ‘local area’, whereas other students accepted my challenge to step out of their immediate networks. for example, students successfully obtained interviews with members of the sydney, melbourne, tasmanian, london and vienna symphony orchestras, jazz trumpeter james morrison, violinist itzak perlman, and members of popular rock groups such as inxs. of concern by some students was what to do when their email was not responded to. should they stalk them on facebook? send another reminder email? some students complained the interviewees would only offer a half hour of their time and subsequently felt disrespected at being under-prioritised. these processes of professionalism and industry expectations were considered topics of conversation in class, online, informal meetings, and assessment tutorial sessions. although students did not resist the transcription of these interviews, many did complain about the time it took to do so. the lifelong worth of these transcriptions were impressed upon the students, promoted as documents to aid future career decision- making when re-reading with older eyes. professional musicians interviewed by students volunteered their opinion on the personal benefits of engagement with this assessment activity. for example: you often don’t have the time to think about what it is to be a musician and why you keep on doing it. the students have interviewed me for a few years now and i have also noticed the changes in my answers, as my career has progressed. what i am doing now is very different to what i was doing then and i notice that my perspective and industry values have shifted as well. it has also been great to connect with the students, as it is nice to see what is coming through the ranks. (de-identified musician, personal communication, june ) . . overall implications of mlaam . from a teaching and learning perspective, guided self-discovery effectively tackles many course challenges such as the inability of the lecturer to teach all music career paths within class; the impact of industry flux; the diversity of student degree motivation; the varying stages of career students experience within first year (training, emerging, established etc.); and the personalised levels of career confidence the students are experiencing. in spite of concentrated professional discussion throughout the semester, monitoring the interpersonal behaviours of a largely youthful class for the final assessment is virtually impossible. unfortunately, this task poses the risk of substandard networking etiquette, potentially reducing future employment opportunities. a minority of professional musicians sent emails commenting on the lack of gratitude for their time, in addition to shock at over-familiar communication and poor spelling. these de- identified emails have served as examples of unprofessional behaviour in the following year’s course delivery. conversely, there is the risk of less-than-desirable mentor advice. yet, in the four years of setting the networking task, only one student (out of ) received a negative interview but was pragmatic enough to recognise it as such. not one student mentioned the task as either demoralising or demotivating. nevertheless, there is the risk of ‘killing the dream’, dulling the attainment of music excellence, and at worst increasing the threat of student attrition. however, students do appreciate the reality: i found that the honesty concerning the industry in discussions was particularly good. i feel that i am more secure in my hopes, doubts, queries and dreams about my future career. ( ys, personal communication, ) if the sentiment that students are worth the truth is made explicit, students do appreciate the care taken with preparing them for the realities of the music profession. another concern is that the assessment and content is too much for a five credit- point course. one student complained: i believe there is way too much work required considering it is a credit point class. i don’t have time to do the numerous pieces of assessment required when my credit point classes are more important. my other credit point class has one essay and one other piece of assessment. which i find a satisfactory amount. (online informal survey, qcm, ) in reading this, i wonder whether this is a music student or a student musician. my research has revealed the magnitude of information and skills needed to sustain a career in music, be it artistically or financially, and it is hard to disassociate from the responsibility that these courses in sheer name adopt. it is therefore challenging to rationalise mlaam in five credit points, when it is more likely that such courses need to be placed on an equal footing as the students’ major study. i reason that the immediate applicability of the task and tools learnt is appreciated: ‘this was very realistic and inspirational, being able to focus on myself with the assessment was really engaging and it didn’t feel like an assignment’ ( ys, sec, ). overall, if i had to summarise the purpose of this course in one word, it would be to recalibrate student musicians’ perceptions of their possible present and future selves. . mlaam whereas mlaam largely considered university transition, degree engagement, identity recalibration and career pathways, mlaam aligns with traditional forms of music industry studies course electives as demonstrated by the music industry lecturers of this study and my personal research of the music industry electives delivered throughout australia (tolmie, ). the design of this course is further affirmed by the research findings of this study that musicians: . have a preference for self-created employment over contract and permanent employment . largely perceive the industry as increasingly shrinking and territorial, indicating that market niches need to be increasingly sought . recognise an opportunity exists to educate the non-musician and linear career musicians about the value of the portfolio career within the current changing economy . possess a strong passion to continue with their career despite identified adversities, and will seek independent action to do so. this -week course, delivered in the second semester of the student’s third year of study, includes the skills required for self-promotion, funds application, and project management. rather than deliver the content as a traditional lecture, i prefer to inspire the student musicians with group discussion of current trends and events, plus hypothetical problem-solving utilising their current experiences and future aspirations. this is to build on their previous career planning and experienced realities, further develop their independent career confidence, enable them to communicate in the language of the non-musician, and expose students who are perhaps experiencing their mid-degree slump to a variety of further options and identities. the course profile outlines the intentions of mlaam as follows: this course aims to help you to develop practical skills that are applicable to your immediate employment and requirements in the music industry. in particular, this course will help you to effectively represent yourself as well as set up further fundamental processes for successful self-promotion, networking and funding opportunities. this course also gives the opportunity to delve into the art of entrepreneurial thinking that needs to be founded on planning, legal/political/technical and environment awareness and stakeholder needs. this allows you to reflect on possibilities within the music industry that while still artistic, may be considered non-conventional or non-linear in career path. finally, this course allows you to explore the processes of independent artistic activity, as such that will impact your role and subsequent payment as a freelance musician. (tolmie, a, p. ) aligning with the course aims, i specified five learning outcomes that utilise the upper levels of the complexities of learning, that is, application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation (anderson et al., ). the lower-level processes such as knowledge and understanding are assumed as developed via students’ existing learning based on prior mlaam knowledge and their industry experience. for those who do not engage in industry activity, these processes are further revised within the lectures and provided in the course content reading. the learning outcomes are aligned with the assessment tasks, rather than following the sequential process of bloom’s taxonomy (anderson et al., ): . demonstrate a working knowledge of self-promotion, and persuasive writing tools (application) . apply self-promotion and persuasive writing skills to various mediums publicised to the broader community, government and commercial stakeholders (application) . create strategies to positively support your career ambitions (analysis and synthesis) . demonstrate a working knowledge of budgeting (apply) . use your knowledge of planning, marketing and financial management tools to inform your career-related activities (apply). (tolmie, a, p. ) the learning outcomes inspired by this study have determined the lecture topics and sequence of the course, which directly relate to the summative assessment (see table . ). the sequencing of the lectures and assessment progresses from a focus on self— personal promotional and fundraising needs for future career pathway activities—to an understanding of the broader music and non-music environment within which the musician operates. the musicians’ interview and survey responses revealed a plethora of skills adopted throughout their careers and a need for professional and peer respect. therefore, the most common hard skills are addressed within this course in the form of summative assessment, with formative tasks and soft skills workshopped within class. however, further soft skills such as interpersonal and intrapersonal skills are practiced within the second summative group task. table . mlaam lecture and assessment sequence week activity learning outcomes assessment due introduction & overview, writing your biography , cv + eoi , the art of the ‘interweb’ .website planning, mapping and design .the art of writing web/social media copy . a closer look at social media–strategic uses , , grant writing : a review of funding strategies. . grants . sponsorships . endorsement . fundraising . acquittal , , grant writing : the ian potter cultural trust fund application, determining your proposal and budget , , grant writing : writing the grant and reference letters, and refining your biography and cv , , grant application % project planning : an overview of effective group management, forms of entrepreneurship, the macro-environment , , , project planning : legal structures, management positions, ip and copyright, publication processes , , , project planning : marketing and press release , , , project planning : operational timeline , , , , project planning : budget and financial analysis , , , , project planning : revision , , , , group project plan % . . lecture activities. during the introduction and overview, discussions gauge student musician’s industry activity, and perception of an ‘art for art’s sake’ versus commercial approach to their music making. further to this, the concept of the accidental entrepreneur is introduced. exemplars of musicians’ approaches and application of the course knowledge demonstrate possible artistic and financial sustainability processes. the goal of these discussions is to mitigate attitudes of ‘selling out’, revulsion against terms such as ‘marketing’ and ‘self-promotion’ in addition to exploring why, as this study has determined, musicians feel the supporting business processes are necessary, but time consuming and challenging. rather than force the content and teach this subject as ‘something we have to do’, the purpose of creativity, personal and professional development is communicated. biographical writing calibrates the students’ self- concept and allows an alternate method to the sdoc from mlaam . consideration of musical and non-musical strengths further facilitates the transformation from a student mindset towards an emerging professional identity. lecture introduces the concept of the one-page cv often used for grant and employment applications. further to this, the expression of interest (eoi) letter is also considered, utilising exemplars for diverse employment applications such as teaching, festival, opera and casual orchestral application. these are workshopped and discussed within class. students are invited to submit eoi letters as a formative task. lecture engages with online media. website planning, mapping and design discussions include the current promotional trends, such as more visual and less written content, in addition to expected costs should one outsource these processes. search engine optimisation is also highlighted. the creative and persuasive aspect of social media copywriting reveals how to generate effective public response evidenced by social media analyticals. lecture introduces an overview of possible fundraising strategies, the commonalities of all approaches, and their current and future trends. funding acquittal is further considered to reinforce accountability. students’ career aspirations and immediate plans are workshopped to align with funding possibilities and processes of action. lecture introduces the ian potter cultural trust fund, the chosen $ grant for the assessment. an overview of the application process and the cost of interstate or international study and living expenses is considered. within these discussions, i included personal and others’ experiences of international travel as a method to inspire the students and foster confidence to enact these opportunities. lecture further workshops the grant assignment. the grant questions can be summarised as ‘what have you done?’, ‘what are you proposing to do?’ and ‘what are you proposing to do with the subsequent new knowledge and who will it impact?’ the grant aids a general reflection and clarification of current industry proactivity, and understanding of future possibilities and pathways. in many ways, this is similar to the purpose of the mlaam career plan. further to this, persuasive or creative writing skills are developed via how to write one’s own recommendation letters and strategically identify key mentors to assist in endorsing the grant application process, and a networked industry is acknowledged as discussed and enacted within mlaam . the cv, biography and website are further revised for the assessment. the following series of lectures are sequenced to align with the sections of the project plan. although the students are allowed to choose their own project, the content is applicable to all types. lecture introduces the project plan assessment, group assessment strategies, forms of entrepreneurship (cultural, social and business,)and the impact of the macro-environment in determining business viability, musicians’ lives and creative ideas. lecture considers applicable legal structures and the management positions the students would hold, identifying the transferability of their current skills within these roles. intellectual property rights, copyright and subsequent passive forms of income are discussed in addition to the publication processes of print and recorded music. lecture discusses varying marketing strategies and builds upon the knowledge of mlaam with respect to core values of both the musician and the audience. audience development and promotional processes build upon the personal promotional strategies investigated within the first three lectures of this course. the press release serves a dual purpose of further understanding the ‘hook’ required for print media (myles-beeching, a) and determining the sustainable competitive advantage of the project plan idea. lecture workshops the project plan timeline and the operational management required for a successful project acquittal. this segues to lecture , during which the expenditure and income tools of the previous grant process are further refined in understanding the operational costs of the project. lecture serves as a revision lecture of the previous content and application. . . assessment. the assessment has been designed to align the student musicians’ current and near future employment activity to the current skills and future requirements of sustainable portfolio career musicians. the choice of assessment was a process of compromise in that not all skills will be applicable to all careers. however, considering that this and other research has determined the primary occupations are performance, teaching, composition and production, the skills are largely applicable to all. concurring with the earlier findings from the interviewed industry lecturers’ courses, students who continue to persevere with linear career employment have been the most disengaged with this course. to mitigate this cultural issue, the grant assessment has evolved to align with their overseas educational aspirations, utilising embedded, prerequisite self- promotional tools. as the project plan is a group assignment, personal commitment to the course is peer-influenced. the tools learned from the first assignment, such as promotion, finance and planning, are further developed during this second assignment and capitalise on the synergies of shared knowledge and experience. . . . grants and self-promotional tools. although the interviewed and surveyed musicians indicated a decline in general arts funding, just over half ( . %) suggested their career had positively benefited from such funding, wished the skill of grant writing had been taught in their undergraduate degree ( . %), acknowledged the need for further grant writing skill development ( . %) and valued it as something that graduates required ( . %). likewise, they recognised self-promotional skills positively assisted their own career ( . %), required further understanding ( . %), and should be valued as necessary graduate skills ( . %). the assessment and criteria, with action words in bold and their cognitive level in parenthesis, is as follows: task description: complete the ian potter fund http://www.ianpotter.org.au/ for yourself. the grant process will be workshopped in class. in addition to responding to the grant requirements regarding information, itinerary and budget, you will need to supply: ) a one-page cv ) a word biography and ) a screen-shot of your website front page. word count: as specified within the ian potter template located on the learning@griffith site. criteria & marking: will be on how well you can: ) comprehend the grant application process (comprehension). e.g. does the budget balance? have you communicated your point of differentiation from other grant applicants? ) demonstrate your ability to communicate according to the normal conventions with respect to language use, grammar and referencing (application). remember spelling and grammar errors are regarded as the handbrake of employment and grant funding—please do proofread thoroughly. ) apply persuasive writing skills to all aspects of the assignment task (application). e.g. does your biography have a sense of story line? does your cv capitalise on the strengths the audience it is intended for needs? does your website possess a call-to-action? have you given appropriate evidence of your activity as a musician that supports your grant request? ) integrate course content and knowledge to all aspects of the assignment task. i.e. have you demonstrated that you not only understand the knowledge given in class but also are applying it? and can apply it in a variety of mediums? (synthesis) ) justify your requirements for this grant. i.e. what is the likelihood of this grant being successful if submitted upon graduation? (evaluate) (tolmie, a, p. ) the use of the second level of cognitive complexity is to accommodate those students who are either new or resistant to such processes. as revealed from the musicians’ interview dialogue, provided that the students have a basic understanding they will have the foundations to develop their non-music skills at a rate ‘commensurate with how [their] musicianship is developing and how [their] career is developing’ (nerida, portfolio musician). the use of the sixth and highest level of cognitive complexity is incorporated in recognition of the real-world application of the grant. this level has been renamed ‘to create’ which involves ‘putting elements together to form a coherent or functional whole’ and usually personalised (anderson et al., , p. ). therefore, rather than assessing the student beyond the required learning outcomes, it can be argued that in this instance, the process of synthesis of the parts of the assignment produces a unique outcome of which the student can then ‘judge the value of material for a particular purpose’ (drew, , p. ). . . . project plan. the group project plan is outlined below. action verbs are in bold, and cognitive levels of learning are in parentheses within the assessment criteria. task description: form a group of minimum –maximum people and collectively submit a word artistic project plan based on event or touring or recording or business management. specific requirements of your chosen plan will be communicated in class and via learning@griffith; however, all will include an income and expenditure budget and a one-page press release. this assignment is designed to help you identify and realistically discover or create a market niche for yourself or your idea, and plan its implementation with confidence. in addition, this assignment will be useful to you as a freelance/full-time musician to understand the processes in place that enable payment (or in some cases, not) of your services. a plan such as this is usually required by individuals and funding bodies, including government and financial institutions, when canvassed for financial or in-kind support. the project plan will be further explained in class and workshopped with guiding templates; however, must follow the structure as outlined on learning@griffith. in addition: each individual student needs to write a -word reflection describing what he or she learned during the process of this assignment. topics need to include the consideration of the macro-environment, viability of the project, financial considerations and the group project process. criteria & marking: will be on how well you can: ) describe your chosen assignment medium in a creative, professional, logical and well-presented manner (knowledge) ) demonstrate an ability to communicate according to the normal conventions with respect to language use, grammar and referencing (application) ) defend your chosen assignment medium as viable and realistic within music and non-music environs (comprehend) ) construct a convincing and effective press release (application) ) apply course knowledge e.g. marketing, environmental, logistical, financial and promotional tools etc. (application). (tolmie, a, p. ) one could suggest that a musician will rarely write a business plan in their lifetime. however, assessment outcomes include synergy of peer learning, shared lived industry experiences, an understanding of the interpersonal skills required to acquit such a task, an investigation into a wider community within which their current industry activities exist, and the planning/cost knowledge of an artistic event. the final element is most desirable considering that many great ideas do not come to fruition owing to lack of finance, physical resources and/or lack of market. the overall purpose and outcome of this exercise is to develop students’ confidence in their ability to implement such a task and further appreciate their employment environment. richer and deeper learning would be gained if the students acquit their business proposal as part of their assessment. unfortunately, the short duration of the semester, -credit-point weighting, size of the class, and lack of funding/resources deem this impossible. . . reflection and student feedback. mlaam in its current form has been consistent with minor revisions since . during that year, the course enjoyed very high secs but the group was small. the last two iterations, and , are more reliable indicators of course success, considering class populations and consistency of delivery. . . . lecturing. in , i began writing course improvement plans immediately following the finalisation of the course and assessment results. answering the question ‘what worked well?’: setting the scene that musicians are allergic to business and self-promotion related aspects of a music career, and that it will never really change worked well, particularly as i used my research and quotes—it allowed the students to think more objectively about the course and that it was a necessary but practical aspect of life as a musician. this year having me do all of the lectures worked better for the sake of consistency and relevance (e.g. apra visitor in previous years discussed more the commercial side of copyright law etc. and did not really relate to jazz and classical). also i was able to include personal experience with grants, and the opportunities it has afforded, plus the life of studying overseas in an inspiring way, allowing students to think beyond the grant requirements and actually perceive what a proposal will look like and acquitted (considering logistics etc.). the grant assignments performed much better than previous years. i liked the fact that the grant was a -degree look at the student’s activity of their degree, how engaged they are in their community and what they would like to do with their life—it led on quite nicely from the first-year assignments and this was really valid to them and a way to continue to conceive their career in a positive fashion yet as a responsible community minded musician. also in considering the ‘power words’ in the funding bodies’ statements (for both the grant assignment and the mission statements of the project plan) was good for the students to see how words are crafted in a persuasive fashion. i was happier with the progression of the lectures this year and i believe the powerpoint slides were more constructive for in-class discussion and activities. it was good to have the content specifically relating to each section—in particular i was impressed with the students’ response to the transferable skills. i had ‘sold’ this as a way of pointing out they are not just ‘useless musicians’ but with an amazing skill set that is adaptable in many situations—the idea with this to build further confidence in fall back plans should they arise. one thing i did notice was that confidence increased in the students [sic]. also, those that were not initially ‘business’ minded quickly develop the correct ‘business thinking skills’—that was really cool to see. also, those that were not overly confident of their playing increased their sense of capability within the industry. there was one violin student, a high academic achiever, who confessed that although she enjoyed the lectures and realised the value of the course, she always left feeling depressed that she had chosen not to engage in the industry in any form, teaching or performance. she explained her teacher had told her not to. yet upon reaching the end of her degree, she realised she was behind her professional development compared to her colleagues and was very fearful of graduation. although i had impressed upon the students the need to professionally integrate themselves as soon as possible from first year, it would appear the opinion of her major study teacher had overridden this advice. initially, i did not feel qualified to deliver the grant-writing component of the course and farmed it out to other members of staff with varying degrees of success. when it was noticed that i successfully applied for a grant to pay for the grant lecturer, i was further instructed to cover the grant-writing process in class for . the consistency of the lecturing was appreciated by the students, ‘farming it out’ to others was not as functional or appreciated, and course evaluations rose from to . some students appreciated ‘working with others in groups for in-class tasks and discussions’ (sec, qcm, ), the high interactive nature of the lectures, and the ‘engagement with potential real world scenarios’ (sec, qcm, ). . . . grants and self-promotional tools. for the most part, students embraced this task. i had adjusted the grant to include interstate and overseas travel for further study or mentorship and included those wishing to further their career in music therapy or educational skills, rationalising that all grants generally ask the same questions: who are you, what are you proposing, and how/whom will this impact? the majority of classical and composition students chose further international study or conference attendance in the uk, the us and canada, and the jazz musicians likewise chose mentorships and festival attendance in paris, new york and los angeles. although it had been rigorously workshopped in the first lecture, the biographies were terrible. my course reflection notes stated: ‘i get the feeling the students thought they knew what they were doing and therefore would not look at the supporting coursework/readings and negated any helpful commentary or advice i had to offer’. the cvs were functional, yet it was surprising what elements were missing for some, such as contact details. the website front pages were the best they had been since the initial iteration of this assessment component. sec commentary generally recognised the useful nature of this assignment, although the criticism from one jazz student was that he would have preferred to apply for something other than further study or international travel. this is a completely valid statement; however, asking students to choose their own grant application means a lack of consistency in assessment word count and further problems with comparable marking. an alternative measure is to construct a hypothetical grant, but it could dilute the experiential nature of the assessment. as it was, i demonstrated successful exemplars of students’ grant assessment. that is, these students had gone on to submit their grant applications and succeeded in the award of funds. i had once previously paid australia council for the arts grant assessors to mark the art start grant assignments but found their feedback to be unnecessarily brutal, and in some cases inappropriate to new or emerging musicians, and unlike the feedback usually given over the phone when inquiring about non-successful grants. following this and the lack of funds to support this process, the practice was dropped. for the last three years, the grant assignment was viewed by students as a positive inclusion to their education. while the following commentary demonstrates a student’s transformational experience, it also positively corroborates the words ‘forced to’ from the focus-group study: both assignments, particularly the first one, showed me that it would actually possible to do the things i was hypothetically planning. being forced to create a good website, cv and bio, and getting feedback on those was really really great. i also take myself way more seriously as a skilled musician than i did at the beginning of the semester, and am going to be implementing the website for real in order to begin setting up my online presence. ( qcm, sec, , emphasis added) conversely, this student also had a valid point to make: this course was a waste of time and money. the information this course provides can be found online for free and griffith services could also be used for free to achieve the same learning result (e.g. writing a resume and cover letter).… i am extremely disappointed that such a course is forced upon students. ( qcm, sec, , emphasis added) during the griffith employability symposiums in and , there had been much discussion about employability subjects that are ‘delivered by subject lecturers (mandatory)’ and employability assistance ‘delivered by careers and employability unit personnel (optional)’ (cranmer, , p. ). those presenters delivering employability courses noticed that while these free employability services exist, students did not use them. additionally, they claimed that informal course evaluations prior to the return of their cv assessment results ranked high, citing the validity of such skills learning, but they plummeted when results were received. unfortunately, if these skills are not ‘forced upon’ the students, the question remains, when are they going to learn them? the trial-and-error process is not as appropriate as it once was, and it will not continue to be in future. likewise, the survey participants of this study regretted that employability skills had not been addressed during their undergraduate education. . . . project plan. i had tried this assessment as an individual assignment in with disastrous results (tolmie & nulty, ). i tried it again in as simply an individual marketing plan for second-year students, with an equal outcome. as griffith university aims ‘to prepare its graduates to be leaders in their fields by being: effective communicators and team members’ (as written on all course profiles), in , i implemented it as a third-year group assignment in a smaller class, which had no problems with it whatsoever and enjoyed the process. the response of the last two years has been mixed. the purpose of the project plan was to combine all of the identified required skills, ‘soft’ and ‘hard’, within one larger task acquitted via shared workload. over the last two years, the students have chosen to acquit projects they deem most relevant to them. some elected to construct a tour with their current performing groups, composers initiated a composers’ cooperative of print music and performance, others represented recording and distribution of student projects, educational music camps, performances in public spaces in collaboration with the brisbane city council, festivals, and one group proposed an online school of rap. their reflections and course feedback revealed recognition of the value of the project plan; however, many were averse to working within groups during . for example: ‘having a group assignment as the last assignment has been truly awful for me and i’ve had a really hard time trying to get in contact with people’ (sec, qcm, ). in , the complaint was on the size of the task and the weighting of the assessment. however, within the student reflections, some communicated transformational experiences. for example: i’ve learnt several things about myself and my potential as a market innovator. it’s not always the words you write but the ideas you speak that can inspire the minds of others to do great things. as my group began brainstorming ideas for potential business models i sat amongst them harbouring personal concerns about whether i had the academic skill to achieve a high mark like that of my student counterparts.… however, my unease was put to rest when i piped up with an idea about a potential rap tuition business. the group latched on to the concept with surprising vigour and before i knew it i had four of the world’s sharpest minds working ardently to bring my idea to life. as we came across various obstacles i found myself ever more confident in offering solutions or ideas on how to optimise our project’s potential. (de-identified student reflection, ) in one sense, the abhorrence to group work is surprising, considering the collaborative nature of their music making. however, to date, the majority of the musicians would not have had the experience of self-created work in a real-world group, let alone hypothetically. despite priming the students with strategies for avoiding the various pitfalls of group work, such as lack of organisation and focusing only on one’s contribution, these problems still occurred. biggs and tang ( ) recognised the value of group assessment in large classes in that it saves time in marking; however, they recommend problems such as ‘plagiarism and its equivalent, freeloading’ be mitigated by ‘writing a reflective report on how well each thinks they have achieved the i[ntended] l[earning] o[utcomes]’ (p. ). this was included, but for future iterations the reflection should include: commentary on the others’ work in the project plan and perhaps answer the questions, ‘how does this project give you insight into your competitors’ choices?’ ‘how does this relate/apply to your current and future life as a musician?’, ‘what did you learn?’ (tolmie, , course improvement plan) students also recognised the problematic nature of the assessment, such as rewarding the free-loaders with higher marks. as ken (industry leader participant) had pointed out, there will always be such, but as l. johnston and miles ( ) observed, ‘the extent to which students should be rewarded for the process of the project versus the outcome of the project is, however, a contentious issue’ (p. ). for this reason, i am reluctant to use peer and group assessment in the context of this assignment, as the group experience is already perceived as a burden. furthermore, i am not convinced adding the stress of these assessment methods would be welcome. it is possible that this course in its current iteration will only achieve a certain success within the largely classical student culture consisting of aspirations for linear and contractual employment. . . overall implications of mlaam . although i was heartened that no student commented that i was not equipped to teach all the complex aspects that this course covered, i am still concerned about teaching content that is not my specialist area. i also recognise that not all students are going to directly utilise all the skills and content or, conversely, they may need more than what has been covered in the course. the argument still remains that a segregated classroom (jazz, classical, composition) would perhaps be easier to teach, yet i am reluctant to introduce genre-ism. further to this, considering the current trends and advocacy of cross and collaborative arts, i fear this would further impede future employment possibilities. in any case, the point is moot as there is no supporting budget. overall, i feel confident that should the occasion arise, students from this course will at least feel confident to ‘ask the right questions’ (nerida, interviewed portfolio musician) and perceive a way forward to sustain their artistic career should traditional pathways not reveal themselves. . mlaam whereas mlaam largely considered enterprise and developing the skills required for career confidence, mlaam places higher value on creative entrepreneurship, and verbal communication. in addition to the scholarly discourse (beckman, , ; beckman & cherwitz, ; beckman & essig, ; bridgstock, a; bridgstock & carr, ; coulson, ; gustafson, ; huhtanen, ; klickstein, a; myles-beeching, b), entrepreneurship was deemed an important graduate skill by . % of surveyed musicians. the course design attempts to align with the following ‘griffith graduate attributes’: . knowledgeable and skilled in their disciplines . effective communicators and team members . innovative and creative with critical judgement . socially responsible and engaged in their communities.	(griffith university, ) the students enrolled in this subject have consistently demonstrated diverse capabilities and education expectations. they have completed their three-year bachelor of music and chosen to commit to a fourth year to further refine their performance skills. they have either chosen not to undertake the honours course with its focus on research, or were not able to able to enrol because of their academic results. in addition, these students were either very engaged in the previous mlaam classes, or not at all. there appears to be no middle ground. with that in mind, the course is designed to focus on creativity and possible futures, and involve as much industry collaboration as possible. public speaking and group tasks form the core of the assessment process. the course aims are described as follows: this course aims for you to identify your broad applicable capabilities and independence as an arts worker, thus allowing you to approach the transition from your degree to the next stage of your career with confidence. in particular, this course will expand your existing non-music skill set required to sustain a fulfilling (artistic and/or financial) career in music. as a capstone course, this will allow you to consolidate and apply what you have learnt in the past mlaam courses, plus your broader degree education, industry observations and knowledge. (tolmie, b, p. ) this aligns with the learning outcomes: after successfully completing this course you should be able to: . recognise innovation and creativity within the context of music industry enterprise and entrepreneurial activity (knowledge) . demonstrate professional networking capabilities within the global music industry environment (application) . apply analytical, strategic thinking and problem-solving skills to real- world/authentic music industry case scenarios (application) . consolidate higher applied communication skills (written, oral, interpersonal and professional presentation) within a professional enterprise environment (application) . develop personalised innovative and creative arts entrepreneurial proposals benefiting future arts employment creation and sustainability (synthesis) (tolmie, b, p. ) . . lecture activities. as the class cohort is generally significantly smaller than the other mlaam courses, ranging from five to students, lectures are held in a boardroom, are discussion based, and include guest lecturers. six lecture periods are designated per assessment. the first two consist of an introduction to the course, revision of entrepreneurship and guests discussing their creative entrepreneurship and innovative musical activities, inviting student questions and discussion. the following lecture is allocated as ‘fieldwork’ to facilitate the research of the students’ case analyses, after which students present their researched findings to the class during weeks , and . weeks and further consider the concept of music as solving social problems. students are given examples of previous years’ student work, in addition to discussing current and potential applications of disruptive technologies, industry deregulation, casualisation and mega-trends (hajkowicz, ). presenting a creative pitch, utilising persuasive speaking and presentation, and discussing the information that potential investors and interested stakeholders require builds on the project planning in mlaam . usually some revision of the previous year’s course content is required. the remaining weeks are reserved for the in-class group work and pitch presentations. . . assessment. the assessment for mlaam has evolved since , primarily in response to discussions with the students at the end of each course implementation. bound by the restrictions of time and budget, i wanted the students to experience the opportunity to step out of their conservatorium comfort zone to meet enthusiastic arts workers and gain insight to the ‘back end’ of the industry to which they are aspiring; therefore, i chose assessment that incorporates ‘learning by doing’. i also recognised there is much information that cannot be gained via course readings or online, as arts entrepreneurs or those acting entrepreneurially tend to constantly push the boundaries of traditional methods or seek new pathways. i was not much throwing the students into the deep end with these networking or presentation tasks, as they were equipped with their knowledge from mlaam and . however, i always anticipate some students will find this daunting. . . . case-study presentation and analysis. the first assessment for mlaam is a straightforward presentation and report of a case analysis requiring interaction with industry administration professionals. the cognitive education levels are indicated as with the previous courses: weight: % marked out of: task description: the purpose of this assessment is four-fold. it allows you to: ) create new, or affirm current, contacts within your developing professional network ) develop your understanding of the activities of independent arts workers and job-creators ) conceive and develop your professional communication skills ) be introduced to employment opportunities otherwise not considered. students are invited to choose a currently active music enterprise that has been operating for longer than years and present an analysis in the form of a - minute presentation and a -word report. within this analysis, the assessment needs to consider at least the following: ) an outline of the enterprise lifecycle ) an identification and analysis of the business structure, key personnel, funding strategies and operations ) significant events within the lifecycle that represent successful artistic outcomes and catalysts for future events ) suggested recommendations for the enterprise's future activities. a guiding template for this will be available on learning@griffith. guest presenters will be following the assessment format and students are required to take notes via the guiding template. case-study choice criteria: ) must be a currently active music or cross-disciplinary enterprise ) must be approachable and available for interview, observation and artefact collection presentations will be conducted during weeks , , and and form a compulsory formative component of your assessment. all students must attend all presentations and will be assessed (this forms % of the total course result i.e. allowing % remaining for this assignment) on their engagement during question time (of both students and guest presenters) and their online engagement providing feedback to the case presenters. feedback will be a combination of presentation and oral communication critique, in addition to suggestions/discussions on how to improve the case-study analysis and further recommendations. smart phones, tablets and computers will be required for class. the -word document relating to the presentation will be due end of week and must not be a direct transcription of your presentation. important: students cannot ‘double-up’ on case-study topics i.e. in order to support relevant peer learning no case study can be repeated by another student. criteria and marking will be on how well you can: ) demonstrate your ability to communicate in a written and oral context according to the normal conventions with respect to appropriate language use, grammar and referencing. (application) ) demonstrate an appropriate and relevant choice of case-study topic aligning with the course aims and outcomes. (application) ) effectively and clearly present your oral task with appropriate visual aid and handouts. (application) ) professionally analyse and critique your chosen case-study topic, and others, in written and oral form. (analysis) ) create innovative, creative and realistic industry recommendations for your case-study topic. (synthesis) (tolmie, b, p. ) . . . creative pitch presentation and report. recognising the challenge of teaching such a diverse cohort of students demonstrating extremes of class engagement, the second assessment for mlaam is delivered in the pedagogical style of gamification (dicheva, dichev, agre & angelova, ; iosup & epema, ). in this instance, students conceive a creative entrepreneurial concept and ‘pitch’ it to an industry panel in a very similar process to the shark tank ( ) reality television show. the course profile description is as follows: the purpose of this assignment is to exercise your creative thinking (and hopefully have some fun too!). the past assignment allowed you to explore the non-conventional activities of the music/arts industry and now it is your opportunity to apply this knowledge and represent your entrepreneurial development. you will need to formulate a group of minimum to maximum students and develop an arts enterprise idea based on creative entrepreneurial considerations discussed in class. as a group you will present this ‘creative pitch’ to the class in a -minute presentation accompanied by a – -word report. following each there will be a – minute question and discussion session (online and in person). the – -word report will be due end week ( october , pm) and must not be a direct transcription of your presentation. however, it will include the same elements as your presentation, but not be limited to: ) your creative/innovative idea—a description and explanation of its formulation, environmental situation, purpose and artistic activities ) a proposal for its competitive sustainability and claim for innovation—the creative need ) a description of the proposed key personnel and their contributing strengths ) an overview of set-up costs involved and proposed funding sources presentations will be conducted during weeks , and and forms a compulsory formative component of your assessment. all students must attend all presentations and will be assessed (this forms % of the total course result i.e. allowing % remaining for this assignment) on their engagement during question time (of both students and guest presenters) and their online engagement providing feedback to the pitch presenters. feedback will be a combination of presentation and oral communication critique, in addition to suggestions/discussions on how to improve the creative idea and further recommendations. smart phones, tablets and computers will be required for class. important: to avoid ‘double-ups’ of ideas—proposed pitch presentation topics must be emailed to diana tolmie criteria and marking will be on how well you can: ) demonstrate your ability to communicate in a written and oral context according to the normal conventions with respect to appropriate language use, grammar and referencing. (application) ) effectively and clearly present your oral task with appropriate visual aid and handouts. (application) ) defend your arts concept convincingly in written and oral form, based on industry knowledge and awareness. (analysis) ) identify realistic set-up costs and funding sources. (analysis) ) develop an innovative and entrepreneurial artistic enterprise idea. (synthesis) (tolmie, b, p. ) . . reflection and student feedback. as this course engages in peer learning (i.e. the assessment doubles as presented content to the class), the reflection combines the lecturing and assessment presentation. . . . lecturing and assessment presentation. ever mindful of the students’ reasons for remaining an extra year, i sought to utilise the more entrepreneurial performance staff to present their work as case-study presentations to the students. faculty have presented on their own retail businesses, touring new music ensembles, and given insights into the related timeline, structures, pitfalls, highlights and future plans. i have employed external guests, either via my own personal funds, my teaching award funds or favours. one year, i invited and paid student graduates who had some public success with their duo. my reflections noted: they did not read the brief, turned up late and made the rookie error of telling the students how to ‘be’—‘you’ve gotta be entrepreneurial, you’ve gotta set yourself apart from the others, there’s no point aspiring for an orchestral career’—as opposed to inviting the students to communicate what knowledge they had accumulated over the past years. beyond seeing these musicians as a role model, there was very little useful learning from this experience. ( qcm course improvement plan, ) the students did not comment to me or within the secs about this incident; however, i could see some students disengaging from the lecture. conversely, the class was very animated and receptive to a guest production manager who was able to discuss the trends of project management: funding, audiences and future initiatives. the case analysis presentation was a very efficient method to discern between effective and non-effective public speaking and to educate the class regarding the current industry environment and future directions. students’ questioning was usually engaged when face to face but not online. in , the students were given a set of criteria of which they had to rate and comment on both presentations. this formative peer assessment of others contributed to % of their own mark. i had used paper-based surveys in , which were illegible and non-functional. i introduced survey monkey surveys in to ensure all had participated and then pass on the ratings and commentary to the presenting student with the opportunity to amend their written report prior to submission. this practice was similarly adopted for the creative pitch presentation. interestingly, although it was worth % of their overall mark, students did not engage with the online feedback for the second assessment as much as the first. my reflections noted: i think the online feedback worked for the first assignment but i am not convinced it was good for the second. i think for the second assignment it needed to remain panel feedback only, with the % used for self-group reflection. i consider that the students will turn up for the panel as they will be very curious as to what they have to say. ( qcm course improvement plan, ) the use of an industry panel for the pitch presentations was introduced in . my reflections included: the industry panel was a hit and that was where the learning magic truly happened. students felt the pressure to perform well, and realised they were about to receive excellent feedback that could not be gained via a textbook or online. the panel was ceo of qpac and brisbane powerhouse, and two management representatives from opera queensland. the formative feedback was a good idea as some of the suggestions were put into place within the final report. report style writing overall improved by the end of the course. ( qcm course improvement plan ) i was mindful that i instigated this process at great risk not just to my own credibility with the panel members, but to the course and institutional reputation. the students were mindful of this as well, with one suggesting to me after the first day of presentations, ‘oh my god, i felt so nervous for the first group! i felt sick!!!!’ i felt the same way. i did not know what to expect of their feedback but i was initially very heartened by the panel members’ willingness to volunteer their time. their only communicated concern when hearing about the shark tank gamification strategy was, ‘we won’t have to give them any money will we?’ the panel members were very tolerant of some of the students’ grand aspirations, and were able to highlight any errors while providing creative solutions based on their personal experience and proactive understanding of the arts industry. . . . case-study presentation. students chose to explore a variety of institutions from the more conventional— qso, opera queensland, musica viva, and local chamber ensembles—to the more diverse such as underground opera, a semi-professional opera company that performs in an abandoned water reservoir; deep blue, a multi-media choreographed orchestra; a professional cabaret act that also runs an educational outreach programme for schools; performing arts academies; music festivals; and community music programmes. students were able to choose what most interests them, or that they saw as most functional in broadening their employment social capital or industry insight. my reflections revealed the students’ recommendations for their chosen institutions still required a more creative and outward-looking approach: ‘many students are still thinking inwardly about their music venture and not considering the wider environment/economy. creative recommendations for the first assignment were not very out-of-the-box and needed to be more daring, and the core of the first assignment’ ( qcm course improvement plan, ). in general, the students were quick to realise that so many of their chosen institutions are either publicly funded, reliant on in-kind support, or, if start-up groups, the musicians do not get paid. while this news may not be considered positive, it does give them more insight into discerning the viability of their creative pitch. . . . creative pitch. the students represented some very creative pitches for this task. highlights included a fundraising dinner in the melbourne aquarium utilising hydrophones and specifically composed new music; an opera-on-the-go performance event situated throughout brisbane’s entertainment precinct of south bank utilising mobile application technology similar to the pokémon craze, combined with trivia night game rules; a sound installation event situated in the sunshine coast hinterlands mountains, tapping into the environmental care and rock climbing market; and a completely acoustic orchestral concert celebrating earth hour, where the musicians perform all works by memory. while all presentations were not necessarily financially viable, they were for the most part well-researched and well-defended. students ‘pitched’ for funds, collaborative support, in-kind venue donation, and partnership. overall, the students’ level of professionalism and willingness to take this task seriously increased in upon the introduction of the industry panel. . . overall implications of mlaam . the secs dramatically improved from to ; however, substantially fewer students participated in the survey. my reflections documented an attitudinal shift throughout this course: what i like seeing is the development and growth in attitude towards a course like this towards the end of their degree—the relevance and revelations seem to occur irrespective of their ‘capabilities’ [lack of mlaam engagement or academic ability] first indicated. i think the group assignment has great impact on those that need to be inspired to improve. i only had one high performing student achieve a lesser-than-expected mark as a result of his group and his overseas leave when the assignment was due. ( qcm course improvement plan, ) given the highly engaged nature of the course, it is very hard for a student to be otherwise. this is ‘forced upon’ the students, but perhaps less arduously. interestingly, there were significantly less complaints regarding the group assignment. of note, this course does not use course texts, but industry sites, lecture presentations, handouts and the formative feedback from the panels, which overrides the problem of lack of specified texts. there is great potential within the course for the students to enact their creative strategies or do something similarly authentic, particularly as there are such willing industry mentors available. however, when i proposed this to the students during our review of the semester it was not welcome: last class debrief of the course, as well as consideration of future ideas: the idea of having a budget and presenting a project in real life (irl) was shot down in consideration of performance exams. as was designing a project that was acquitted by the entire class. however, they liked the idea of going to a different venue for the pitch presentations (such as the boardroom of the brisbane powerhouse or qpac). ( qcm course improvement plan, ) . chapter summary this chapter has explored vocation preparation education within one conservatoire environment. this included mlaam , which consists of degree transition and engagement, career planning and the development of employability networks via online and self-exploratory assessment. mlaam consists of enterprise management in the form of self-promotion, fundraising and project planning and capitalises on peer networks and industry exploration. mlaam investigates entrepreneurship utilising the advice of highly informed industry professionals via networked and industry panel interaction, plus peer learning. the opinions and attitudes of all participants in this study have either informed or affirmed the design of these activities. barriers to the success of these mlaam courses have been recognised as: . alienating large-class teaching requirements . pervasive priority of the master-apprentice conservatoire education . compulsory requirement of mlaam . predominantly first-year male disengagement from career planning . ongoing linear career aspirations and expectations . slow-to-change faculty attitude towards vocational preparation . entitled millennial students’ opinions of education and employability . physical education environments . changing nature of education delivery influenced by accessible technology . students’ current industry engagement or lack thereof . lack of appropriate course texts these barriers have been overcome to a certain extent by adopting an rrri approach to vocational education. however, enforced or extracurricular approaches to employability education have demonstrated that students will always perceive a conflict between ‘university life’ and its demands, and the ‘real world’. team-based education is more likely to be successful when including an experiential, rather than theoretical, element, but there are limits as to what this can entail. it is more likely to be successful if centred around high-profile goals within a long time-frame, which does not interfere with major study education and performance recitals. chapter : conclusion this study was informed by an extensive literature review concerning the development and employment activities of the student and professional musician, the current western art music industry, recommended vocation preparation design and supporting texts, career theory and models, and higher education in australia. the review revealed further research opportunities to inform the design of a vocational preparation strand for fostering industry-prepared musicians. subsequently, from to , i conducted a mixed-method study scaffolded by a grounded theory approach. it involved the thematic analysis and triangulation of data collected via: . autoethnography regarding my life as a portfolio career musician . participatory action research on the design, development and delivery of the mlaam vocational preparation strand over five years, verified by course reflection, assessment analysis, and course and teacher experience surveys (secs and sets) . face-to-face interviews with qcgu faculty members, three arts leaders, three higher music education and three music industry lecturers . focus groups with first-, second-, third- and fourth-year qcgu student musicians (n= ) and paper surveys with open-ended and likert questions . a quantitative survey using closed, open, likert and multiple-choice questions resulting in responses from portfolio musicians, the majority of whom reside in australia (excluding the northern territory). . research summary following the introduction, literature review and methodology chapters, chapter reported the findings of the investigations of students’ aspirations, degree engagement, employment activities, and the extrinsic and intrinsic motivational contributors to their professional musician identity formulation. from this, a conservatoire student lifecycle was ascertained. this was further affirmed in chapter , which discussed the results of interviews with qcgu faculty, australian arts leaders, australian higher music education leaders, and australian music industry lecturers. participants revealed a mostly negative view of a diverse and dynamic current and future arts employment environment and the supporting tertiary music education system, which was slow to adapt because of the different educational agendas of staff and students. of note, faculty noticed less ‘i-want-to-be-a-star’ to more ‘i-want-to-have-a- job’ student dialogue. chapter reported the findings from the musicians’ interviews and surveys conducted to gain a more focused understanding of the demographics, career, identity, sustainable career strategies and subsequent input to vocation preparation design. these results influenced the practitioner action research study described in chapter , which discussed the design and delivery of the mlaam vocational preparation strand. from this research, conclusions concerning the student-to-professional transition, musicians’ employability experiences, the acceptance of vocation preparation and its best-practice design within a conservatoire environment can be made. . . student-to-professional transition. the investigation into tertiary student musicians’ career aspirations, identity and attitudes towards their degree and professional preparation revealed a process of identity transformation from music student to student musician, and some experienced a mid- degree slump. this process involved a recalibration of their romanticised career aspirations—categorised as realist, dreamer, artist and unsure—plus self-concept, self-efficacy and professional identity. this transitional period was exacerbated by the perceived conflict between the demands of university life and the employment realities experienced. male students were more likely to be slower to adapt to their developing awareness of career and employability. enterprising and entrepreneurial activity among undergraduates revealed entry- level employment activity that was very similar to the musicians’ first experiences during their undergraduate training. furthermore, the data revealed that by third year, % to % of the student musicians were active in some kind of music-related employment. this related to the professional musicians’ data where . % experienced their first music-related employment prior to graduation. these results contradict throsby and zednik’s ( b) finding that % of musicians experienced their first employment prior or during basic training. my study further differentiated between contract and self-initiated employment, which were more likely to be adopted by classical and jazz student musicians, respectively. such employment seems to be ongoing and available despite musicians perceiving a shrinking and territorial industry; however, the quantity of students’ work experience was not determined. the students’ employment portfolio also developed throughout their degree in terms of breadth and quality. some accepted unpaid performance work to lead to paid performance employment, a practice that established musicians felt reluctant to continue. students initiating entrepreneurial activity were more likely to do so out of dissatisfaction with elements of their undergraduate training and sought to learn from these experiences, and—similarly to the professional musicians—to maintain or increase their employment capital, or satisfy their artistic needs. there seemed to be no distinct student preference for compulsory vocation preparation in the course evaluations and the student focus groups, but the majority were happy with the mlaam courses. however, concurring with findings by g. carey ( ) and juuti and littleton ( ), they still questioned the relevance of their degree in their later years. this related to their performance assessment and the request for degree flexibility that reflected an evolving music industry. some of the faculty questioned whether what students’ desires conflicted with students’ needs because of their initial lack of career knowledge. yet, students’ advice to their younger colleagues to seek help, remain connected, work hard, avoid comparative thinking, maintain professionalism, consider time management, stay open and remain independent echoed many of the musicians’ understandings of career sustainability. whether this knowledge was gained by mlaam education was not ascertained. this study revealed that while deep learning was gained by experiential performance-based employability education, students were more likely to professionally approach this form of education if paid. . . musicians’ employability experiences. drawing inspiration from the investigations of australian artists and musicians by bennett ( ), bridgstock ( b), throsby and zednik ( b), van den eynde et al. ( ) and parker ( ), this study’s research into australian portfolio musicians revealed and analysed focused and detailed data of career identity, pathways, financial earnings, industry attitudes and expectations of vocational support. the most common domains of employment concurred with bennett’s ( ) study of classical musicians who engaged with performance, teaching and employment. for this study, they were likely to engage in . domains, . % taught and . % felt they had achieved their initial career aspiration. very few of the musicians in my study achieved a career solely from performance, and % were happy to include teaching within the definition of the term ‘musician’. a progression of earnings from new through to established musician appeared to be evident, based on averaged highest and lowest experienced income. furthermore, the majority reported their yearly earnings as either increasing or, to a lesser extent, fluctuating, and most likely remaining above the australian minimum wage. this strongly contrasts with throsby and zednik’s ( b) and van den eynde et al.’s ( ) results, owing to a different research questioning approach. perhaps the statement that the industry is ‘in severe distress’ (van den eynde et al., , p. ) is rather an extreme description for the art-music profession, but the musicians in this study did reveal there remains an opportunity to educate their professional and non-music colleagues in the value of the portfolio music career, and create a community of respect devoid of the hierarchical perceptions of career success, as identified in bennett’s ( ) study of classical musicians. the maintenance of professionalism and quality of work, initiated by a ‘say yes’ and, to a certain extent, ‘fake it till you make it’ culture, driven by strong passion for music, has determined a combination of happenstance (krumboltz, ), or passionstance (bridgstock, a), and chaos (bloch, ; bright & pryor, ) career approaches. however, my research found that these methods are inherently non-sustainable for the portfolio careerist, correlating with parker’s ( ) findings that they contribute to burnout and, for over % of the musicians in my study—subsequent thoughts of exiting the profession. concurring with bennett’s ( ) findings, ‘low financial rewards’ was the most common reason for anticipated attrition; hence many opted for full-time institutionalised employment later in their career despite preferring contract and especially self-created employment. although confident they were able to conduct their own creative projects, many musicians doubted the current economic and artistic environment was receptive to such practices, citing lack of time, resources and a pessimistic expectation on the return on their investment. therefore, the majority of musicians acknowledged the potential value of learning career planning as an undergraduate, particularly as they rationalised a heavily networked yet shrinking and territorial industry, compounded by an influx of new entrants and static income, vastly affecting available full-time and contract employment. those with find-a-niche or create-a-niche skills—termed in this study as ‘skills of initiative’—expressed more career confidence and, in addition to emerging musicians, perceived the music industry as stabilised or growing. generic supporting non-music skills were considered necessary, time consuming and challenging by the majority of musicians. a minority considered these to be abhorrent ( . %). overall, the musicians felt their professionalism, strong and visible network, versatility and access to various forms of funding had a positive impact on their careers. while the musicians agreed the experiential learning of hard and soft skills during undergraduate training would have greatly assisted the development of their careers and saved time by otherwise trial-and-error learning, some questioned how their younger selves would appreciate formal undergraduate vocational preparation education. in general, they did not consider themselves entrepreneurial despite acting so, concurring with scholars understanding of a ‘nascent’ (weatherston, ), ‘enforced’ (bennett & bridgstock, ) and ‘accidental’ (coulson, ) approach to their entrepreneurial careers. in summary, the musicians valued professionalism, work ethic, resilience, communication, self-promotion and marketing, and industry insight as the foundation of a sustainable music career. . . vocation preparation and best-practice design. by investigating the lack of formalised industry preparation in australian tertiary music institutions’ undergraduate curricula, this study revealed the assumption by many that the responsibility to introduce the employment realities of the profession to students resided with the one-to-one performance or composition teacher, yet the students perceived their teachers did not initiate many discussions regarding employability or work referral. irrespective of the fact that the majority of these educators understood the current and future trends of the industry, many suggested they did not have the time beyond their current performance education activities, preferred informal conversations, or adopted an ‘art for art’s sake’ pedagogical practice that prohibited students’ embracing a proactive approach to employability. likewise, the students and musicians confirmed that conversations with their one-to-one teachers regarding career realities were either non-existent or discouraging. further to this, it would seem that conversations regarding career realities are uncommon prior to conservatoire auditions or, at best, of low impact. the primary reason for a lack of formalised vocation preparation implementation was the competitive curriculum space and lack of funds. where music industry electives or core courses existed, an individual lecturer was expected to deliver all course topics, unless funds for guest lecturers were externally sourced. the participants indicated that a vocation preparation educator would need to possess a vast array of skills and knowledge, be an active musician and be able to deliver the course in an inspiring manner. they also questioned whether this was humanly possible. while the faculty and musicians approved of the concept of vocational preparation, they observed a culture of students possessing unrealistic vocational aspirations and apathy towards their education fuelled by social media, as well as variations in students’ perceived relevance of such courses over time and an assumption that diverse career paths required bespoke industry education despite wishing to avoid genre-ism. those teaching industry preparation courses further understood that student musicians with linear or other unrealistic career aspirations were more likely to disengage. yet, teachers aimed to negotiate a dense curriculum to support everything they perceived the independent musician required via experiential assessment, including concepts of self-promotion, grant-writing and business planning. this research has revealed that there is a lack of supportive australian-based art-music industry publications, and those that do exist can quickly become obsolete owing to an industry in a state of flux and fast-changing technologies that are influencing music production and consumption. rather, deeper learning can be better achieved by setting guided self- discovery and experiential assessment in which the students search and gain primary and relevant knowledge via online and print publications, from industry professionals, mentors and colleagues, and by contributing their professional lived experiences. . research conclusions: mlaam design in my attempts to answer the primary research question—taking into account current and future realities for music professionals in australia, which elements incorporated into a tertiary music industry preparation strand are likely to be most effective in preparing students for successful careers?—participatory action research has identified barriers to the potential success of delivering a vocational preparation strand within an australian conservatoire environment. involving internal and external educational influences, these results expanded upon beckman’s ( ) findings of faculty resistance, student attitudes and a misunderstanding of the term ‘entrepreneurship’, further affirming myles-beeching’s ( b) claim that the design of vocation preparation is dependent on the culture of the institution. a learning and teaching ethos of an rrri course design and delivery has subsequently contributed to the design recommendation in table . based on an adaptation of lizzio’s ( ) student lifecycle, faculty and student observations of students’ degree engagement, students’ industry engagement, and the recommendations of industry professionals. compromises to authentic and appropriate assessment design are largely governed by time limitations, lack of resources, size of the class, and the priority given to core performance education by students. embedded employability programmes are possible; however, such resource-intensive practices are reliant on strong leadership, long-term planning, and a high proportion of student musicians versus music student within the ensemble population. table . an aligned mlaam vocational preparation strand with the conservatoire student lifecycle year level degree stage degree approach career considerations industry activity mlaam overall course aims mlaam learning objectives mlaam assessment transition in music student high/clear aspirations in general. %: teaching, performance or non-music employment. core skill development and a restrictive curriculum inhibits further work. qcm: degree transition and engagement, career planning, and the development of employability networks. identify the fundamental elements required for your music training and a sustainable career in the music industry. outline your music career- related attributes, planning and management. discuss the possible opportunities available for your personal degree and career planning inspired by the real stories of other music professionals. apply the results of your networking effectively within the professional music industry and relate the outcomes pragmatically to your career planning. assessment design: theoretical and experiential learning utilising self-discovery and professional/mentor advice. assessment: % quiz portfolio % sdoc/swot and opportunity research plan % networking report and reflection embedded non-music skills: professionalism communication – verbal and written industry insight passion basic business skills technology – pebblepad transition through music student => student musician (mid-degree slump) considering more study, a mix of realistic and high aspirations, a greater focus on performance skill. %: developing a portfolio of teaching and/or performance and/or non- music employment (transition from unpaid to paid work). mlaam is not offered during this year mlaam is not offered during this year transition through/out student musician (mid-degree slump) considering more study, a mix of realistic and high aspirations. recalibration of – %: increasing portfolio of teaching/ composition/ performance qcm: enterprise management and written communication education in the demonstrate a working knowledge of self-promotion, and persuasive writing tools. apply self-promotion and persuasive writing skills to various mediums publicised to the assessment design: peer-learning and industry exploration. assessment: % grant application (including biography, cv and front-page website) professional relationship with music, consolidation of skills. and non- music employment (some choosing less unpaid music employment). quality of professional experience improving. increased self- created activity. form of self- promotion, fundraising and project planning. broader community, government and commercial stakeholders. create strategies to positively support your career ambitions. demonstrate a working knowledge of budgeting. use your knowledge of planning, marketing and financial management tools to inform your career-related activities. % creative project plan – group assignment plus personal reflection embedded non-music skills: professionalism and team work work ethic communication – verbal and written self-promotion and marketing industry insight finance passion negotiation production management contract/ip/copyright law fundraising recognition of skill transferability technology—website transition out student musician => music professional consideration of personal happiness and further professional development. a realistic understanding of future pathways. %: increasing and diverse portfolio of teaching/ performance/ composition/ non-music employment (mostly paid). many students involved in high-quality professional employment and self- created activity. qcm: creative entrepreneurship and verbal communication. recognise innovation and creativity within the context of music industry enterprise and entrepreneurial activity. demonstrate professional networking capabilities within the global music industry environment. apply analytical, strategic thinking and problem-solving skills to real-world/authentic music industry case scenarios. consolidate higher applied communication skills (written, oral, interpersonal and professional presentation) within a professional enterprise environment develop personalised innovative and creative arts entrepreneurial proposals benefiting future arts employment creation and sustainability. assessment design: industry network and panel interaction, plus peer learning. assessment: % case analysis (including % peer review) % creative pitch (including % peer review – changed to personal reflection for ) embedded non-music skills: professionalism and team work work ethic resilience communication – verbal and written self-promotion and marketing industry insight finance passion negotiation entrepreneurship production management contract/ip/copyright law fundraising recognition of skill transferability . research limitations beyond the biases outlined in chapter , one limitation to this study is that the student participants resided within one conservatoire environment; however, their reported aspirations and degree experiences were similar to other studies reviewed that were located in european, us and australian tertiary environments (g. carey, ; daniel & johnstone, ; hallam, ; juuti & littleton, ; m. long, ; j. miller & baker, ; parkes & jones, ; pitts, ). it must also be recognised that this is but one teacher’s perception of course design and evolution. however, as the vocational preparation strand begins in first year, there was no comparative data set from which to draw upon. in addition, as the lecturers have evidenced, very little about the strand was understood, rendering my status as an ‘expert’ for this study. owing to the evolution of courses, the mlaam course provided comprehensive data for the plan–act–evaluate–reflect–recycle method of practitioner research, but the mlaam and mlaam courses comparatively less so. further time and research would benefit the ongoing development of these courses. survey participants were sourced from my professional networks, which could be seen as a study limitation; however, as argued in chapter , it could conversely be a benefit. moreover, as the respondents were high-quality portfolio musicians operating largely in the performance, teaching and composition of diverse genres, i was assured of predominantly western art musicians with high professional capability. this was one less factor to query when examining the data, particularly in reference to their non- music employment activities and when considering financial earnings. . research contributions despite the strong dialogue on embedded vocational education in support of musicians’ undergraduate training, it has not been widely enacted. this research is the first of its kind to explore the design and implementation of a vocational preparation strand over five years within a conservatoire environment. it can be applied in other areas of the tertiary environment, arts or otherwise. in addition, this study contributes to the focused research on musicians’ careers by bennett ( ), weller ( ), the play and imp uk research projects and others. the dra? model further relates to huhtanen’s ( ) study and the related intrinsic motivations of parkes and jones’ ( ) value-expectancy application of students’ career aspirations. my research into tertiary lecturers’ attitudes and opinions offers a perspective outside the evolving area of master-apprenticeship research, and contributes to the studies and discourse on curriculum reform. lastly, where the state of the music industry is largely measured by popular music sales and radio broadcasts, this study has provided insight into the current health of the industry from the western art musician’s perspective, contributing to the discourse on industry change. . recommendations irrespective of whether the australian music industry is shrinking or growing, it is clear that the number of musicians is growing and will continue to do so for some time, increasing competition for traditional employment opportunities. therefore, niche employment areas including the elements of touring and technology need to be created for musicians to retain their core practice of performance, composition and teaching to support themselves. this practice will be challenging to initiate and maintain, given the perceived lack of societal value and industry respect for independent western art musicians. training musicians will need to formally learn career support skills because of the declining opportunity for trial-and-error industry experiences. however, for the various reasons discussed in section . , musicians’ relationship with their entrepreneurial identity is tenuous, indicating that at all levels of education, courses such as mlaam are likely to be problematic, regardless of their delivery and alignment with students’ employment before and during tertiary music education. this is particularly pertinent in the current education environment where the likelihood of disengagement is high. considering the current state of the music industry, there is a strong argument for compulsory vocational preparation that teaches professionalism and industry respect within an experiential non-genreist environment that does not cannibalise current practices. experiential learning activities need to be focused on job creation rather than taking the place of existing musicians, as is the case with most wil and internship programmes. an alternative, albeit time-consuming and costly, process, is for faculty to adopt an authentic and embedded employability approach. this should be introduced during second year, when students’ sense of performance and compositional focus is most prevalent. if a cultural change can be made within the training stage of the musicians’ careers, then perhaps the industry will begin to develop a healthy community of practice that could communicate the positive aspects of the music profession to the broader public, encouraging greater participation. those considering implementing a vocational preparation strand similar to the mlaam courses would benefit from a whole-of-programme approach, whereby course concepts are embedded throughout all courses and all faculty include the dialogue of employability within all student-teacher interactions. in addition, mlaam would benefit from smaller classes and tutorials for more engaged and informed learning, capitalising on the nascent strengths of performance and composition staff. a healthy budget for experiential learning and engaging industry interaction, mentorship and guest lecturers would assist the professional identity development of musicians. a student musician’s professional identity formation is influenced by many factors, and the educational environment plays a significant role (hallam, ). in abiding with the rrri model, i have experimented by referring to student musicians as simply ‘musicians’, with positive results. i recommend a shift from the master- apprentice hierarchical pedagogy to a more collegial, shared educational experience. this would facilitate student musicians’ professional self-concept, and self-efficacy, offering them diverse role models from which to formulate realistic career perceptions. an opportunity also exists to consider vocation preparation in the pre-tertiary environment. i have begun conducting mlaam talks within this domain with positive outcomes. the introduction of compulsory music employability sessions prior to conservatoire auditions may regulate the message of career reality and allow for the student-to-musician identity shift to begin prior to degree commencement. informing career counsellors within schools, and family members during tertiary open days will allay misconceptions about the portfolio profession and may assist students’ negotiation of their professional identity, thus potentially minimising the mid-degree slump. i agree that one-to-one lecturers could instigate a more proactive approach to employability, but would argue that as with aspects of musicians’ health, they are sometimes ill-equipped and not aware of the psychological foundations of career counselling. it is unrealistic to expect undergraduate students’ one-to-one performance and composition teachers to be the sole resource of employability skills development. therefore, staff training in the form of seminars and professional development opportunities need to be introduced as part of change management when transforming an institution of nineteenth-century ‘art for art’s sake’ values towards a twenty-first- century ‘smart for art’s sake’ hybrid of artistic and professional enterprise education. . future research studies such as this one are not only useful to determine the design of the course within a particular educational environment, but also to gauge the employment context about which to realistically inform the students. ongoing research is advisable because, as this study has revealed, the experiences of one person, while useful, are not necessarily sufficient for a diverse student cohort. however, without a longitudinal study of graduating students, the true impacts of such courses cannot be confirmed. as the happenstance learning theory (krumboltz, ) and chaos career theory (bright & pryor, ) exemplify, the sustainability or success of careers can be affected by related or unrelated incidences, so identifying the specific impacts of vocational training may be problematic. therefore, research considering student and faculty experiences prior, during and post curriculum reform concerning formal and informal employability would more likely accurately gauge the effective impact of such strand implementation. there is also an opportunity to research the implications of vocation preparation in postgraduate study with perhaps a more real-world agenda given the age-group and assumed professional experience of those enrolled. research into the correlation between engaged learning and student buy-in, that is, student consultation with course and programme design, is appropriate considering the increasing user-pays tertiary environment, and a landscape of student learning driven by technological change. this is particularly useful when delivering a course such as mlaam that may be construed as contentious. likewise, this study has implicated a gender-based study in approaches to employability education, regarding which there is currently very little research. considering the growing employability agenda of tertiary institutions, the lecturer’s role will continue to change. this study has discussed the relevance of the prac-ademic, and the need for further investigation into the benefits the occupation could bring to the tertiary environment and the considerations required in support of it. this may have ramifications for tertiary employment policy. as many baby-boomer academics are reaching retirement age, this is a topic worth considering. . final word it must be remembered that although these courses have aimed to foster industry-prepared graduates, in many ways graduates will never be fully prepared for an employment environment that is constantly adjusting to macro-environmental influences. however, they are more likely to create strategies to adapt and thus lead sustainable and satisfying careers if their abilities to do so are inculcated through processes such as those described in this study. appendices appendix a: mlaam course evolution and class population course code semester credit points year programme embedded course enrolment no. room qcm bmus sm ihrh (mlaam)/ tutorial spaces (sm) qcm bmus bmustech sm ihrh/ tutorial spaces qcm bmus bmustech n/a ihrh qcm bmus bmustech n/a ihrh qcm bmus bmustech n/a ihrh qcm bmus n/a ihrh qcm bmus bmustech n/a ihrh qcm bmus n/a boardroom qcm bmus n/a boardroom qcm bmus bmustech n/a ihrh qcm bmus n/a repeat lectures – . and . qcm bmus n/a boardroom qcm bmus bmustech n/a ihrh qcm bmus n/a repeat lectures – . and . qcm bmus n/a boardroom qcm bmus n/a ihrh notes. sm = sound making; bmus = bachelor of music; bmustech = bachelor of music technology. appendix b: consent forms b. tertiary music educators. re: postgraduate research project information and expression of consent. gu ref no: qcm/ / /hrec dear tertiary music industry educator, i am undertaking research for a doctor of philosophy at queensland conservatorium griffith university. titled ‘designing a tertiary music institution course to prepare for contemporary career realities’ the topic will be investigating ‘taking into account st century realities for music professionals in queensland, which elements incorporated into a tertiary music industry preparation strand are likely to be most effective in preparing students for successful careers?’ in particular i am seeking to gain the attitudes and opinions of tertiary music students involved in the my life as a musician course as well as those not enrolled or included. in addition industry musicians, tertiary music industry educators, queensland conservatorium staff, key arts administrators and advocates attitudes and opinions will be sought. the focus on this research is on the implications for tertiary music students seeking music employment within their degree and upon graduation. the research will involve investigating the australian portfolio career musician—specifically the requirements and skills one needs in order to survive, thrive and sustain a career in music. the data collected through this research will provide material for discussion on what skills and information is required to become an employable musician; as well as best- practice delivery for music vocational education. further outcomes will include a handbook publication in support of the my life as a musician strand as well as an online tool and career support open to all tertiary music students and musicians with an entrepreneurial interest. to conduct this research i ask for your consent to participate in one -minute open- ended question face-to-face interview. please feel free to peruse the following information then complete, sign and return the form to me or to my pigeon hole at your convenience on level qcgu south bank. your participation with this research. feel free to discuss any related component of this research further with me at d.tolmie@griffith.edu.au. a summary of the results of this research will be emailed to you prior to the submission of the thesis. thanking you in anticipation diana tolmie privacy statement the conduct of this research involves the collection, access and/or use of your identified personal information. the information collected is confidential and will not be disclosed to third parties without your consent, except to meet government, legal and other regulatory authority requirements. a de-identified copy of this data may be used for other research purposes. however, your anonymity will at all times be safe guarded. for further information consult the university’s privacy plan at http://www.griffith.edu.au/about-griffith/plans-publications/griffith-university-privacy- plan or ( ) . project title my life as a musician: designing a tertiary music education course to prepare for contemporary career realities research team diana tolmie (master of philosophy student undertaking this research) contact: d.tolmie@griffith.edu.au huib schippers: co-principal supervisor contact: h.schippers@griffith.edu.au don lebler: co-principal supervisor contact: d.lebler@griffith.edu.au participants the participant pool will include queensland conservatorium griffith university undergraduate bachelor of music students. in addition lecturers of music industry preparation subjects at various australian tertiary music institutions will also be asked to participate. major study queensland conservatorium lecturers, music industry career musicians, and key arts advocates and leaders will be invited to participate. data and collection the location of : interviews, and focus groups will be held onsite for tertiary staff and students. the quantitative surveys will be made available online via personally emailed web-link. the location of : interviews, and focus groups will be held onsite for tertiary staff and students. case study (ensemble) observation will be at their place of activity. the quantitative surveys (closed and likert questions) will be made available online via personally emailed weblink. practitioner research involving music industry professionals and key arts advocates and leaders will be conducted within their own work environments for : video interviews. all data from field notes, interview transcriptions and surveys will be coded and triangulated for common and emergent themes. online surveys will take no longer than − minutes to complete, : interviews approximately − minutes, and focus groups hour. all data gathering will take place over a period of − years dependent on course up-grade. consent to conduct this research i propose to ask your consent to interview you before first semester commences or after it finishes. i may wish to seek your opinion of the my life as a musician course content, compare it to your relevant courses, discuss your observations as an industry educator and opinions of the music industry past, present and future. statement of consent by signing below, i confirm that i have read and understood the information above and • i give permission for diana tolmie to interview me in for her proposed research project; • i have had all questions answered to my satisfaction; • i understand that by participating in this research there are no employment risks involved to myself; • i understand my participation in this research is voluntary; • i agree to be identified in all resultant research publications yes no (please circle); • i understand my additional questions may be answerable by the research team; • i understand i am free to withdraw from this research project at any time, without comment or penalty; • i understand that my interview will be audio-taped; • i understand that only the research team will have access to this tape; • i consent to extracts and transcriptions from my recording being used in conference presentations and publications or for instructional purposes; • i understand that i will be shown for approval the extracts from my recording that may be used for conference presentations, publications or for instruction purposes; • i understand that, after transcription, all audio-visual material will be destroyed upon the finalisation of the research degree; • i understand i can contact the manager, research ethics, at griffith university human research ethics committee on ( ) or email researchethics@griffith.edu.au if i have any concerns about the ethical conduct of the project; and • i agree to participate in this project. name: contact details: signature: date: b. musicians. re: postgraduate research project information and expression of consent. gu ref no: qcm/ / /hrec dear musician, i am undertaking research for a doctor of philosophy at queensland conservatorium griffith university. titled ‘designing a tertiary music institution course to prepare for contemporary career realities’ the topic will be investigating ‘taking into account st century realities for music professionals in queensland, which elements incorporated into a tertiary music industry preparation strand are likely to be most effective in preparing students for successful careers?’ in particular i am seeking to gain the attitudes and opinions of tertiary music students involved in the my life as a musician course as well as those not enrolled or included. in addition industry musicians, tertiary music industry educators, queensland conservatorium staff, key arts administrators and advocates attitudes and opinions will be sought. the focus on this research is on the implications for tertiary music students seeking music employment within their degree and upon graduation. the research will involve investigating the australian portfolio career musician—specifically the requirements and skills one needs in order to survive, thrive and sustain a career in music. the data collected through this research will provide material for discussion on what skills and information is required to become an employable musician; as well as best- practice delivery for music vocational education. further outcomes will include a handbook publication in support of the my life as a musician strand as well as an online tool and career support open to all tertiary music students and musicians with an entrepreneurial interest. to conduct this research i ask for your consent to participate in one -minute face-to- face open-ended question interview. please feel free to peruse the following information then complete, sign and return the form to me in person, my pigeon hole at your convenience on level qcgu south bank or post to queensland conservatorium griffith university: grey street, south bank, po box , south brisbane, qld, . your participation with this research is entirely voluntary. feel free to discuss any related component of this research further with me at d.tolmie@griffith.edu.au. a summary of the results of this research will be emailed to you prior to the submission of the thesis. thanking you in anticipation diana tolmie privacy statement the conduct of this research involves the collection, access and / or use of your de- identified personal information. as outlined elsewhere in this information sheet, your de-identified personal information may appear in the publications/reports arising from this research. this is occurring with your consent. any additional personal information collected is confidential and will not be disclosed to third parties without your consent, except to meet government, legal or other regulatory authority requirements. a de- identified copy of this data may be used for other research purposes. however, your anonymity will at all times be safeguarded, except where you have consented otherwise. for further information consult the university’s privacy plan at http://www.griffith.edu.au/about-griffith/plans-publications/griffith-university-privacy- plan or telephone the manager, research ethics ( ) or email researchethics@griffith.edu.au project title my life as a musician: designing a tertiary music education course to prepare for contemporary career realities research team diana tolmie—student researcher contact: d.tolmie@griffith.edu.au huib schippers: co-chief investigator contact: h.schippers@griffith.edu.au don lebler: co-chief investigator contact: d.lebler@griffith.edu.au participants the participant pool will include queensland conservatorium griffith university; university of queensland; queensland university of technology; and queensland conservatorium undergraduate bachelor of music students including those enrolled in / / qcm my life as a musician strand where applicable. in addition lecturers of music industry preparation subjects at various australian tertiary music institutions will also be asked to participate. major study queensland conservatorium lecturers, music industry career musicians, key arts advocates and leaders, and high profile music ensembles will be invited to participate. data and collection the location of : interviews, and focus groups will be held onsite for tertiary staff and students. the quantitative likert surveys will be made available online via personally emailed web-link. the location of : interviews, and focus groups will be held onsite for tertiary staff and students. case study (ensembles) observation will be at their place of employment. the quantitative surveys (closed and likert questions) will be made available online via personally emailed weblink. practitioner research involving music industry professionals and key arts advocates and leaders will be conducted within their own work environments for : video interviews. all data from field notes, interview transcriptions and surveys will be coded and triangulated for common and emergent themes. online surveys will take no longer than minutes to complete, : interviews approximately − minutes, and focus groups hour. all data gathering will take place over a period of to years dependent on course up-grade. consent to conduct this research i propose to ask your consent to interview you. upon analysis, i wish to understand your requirements and skills needed in order to survive, thrive and sustain a career in music. topics such as income, career aspirations, personal attributes and career advice will be sought. statement of consent by signing below, i confirm that i have read and understood the information above and • i give permission for diana tolmie to interview me for her proposed research project; • i understand i will be identified within the research and subsequent conference presentations and publications unless otherwise requested; • i have had all questions answered to my satisfaction; • i understand my participation in this research is voluntary; • i agree to be identified in all resultant research publications yes no (please circle); • i understand my additional questions may be answerable by the research team; • i understand i am free to withdraw from this research project at any time, without comment or penalty; • i understand that my interview will be audio-taped; • i understand that only the research team will have access to this tape; • i consent to extracts and transcriptions from my recording being used in conference presentations and publications or for instructional purposes; • i understand that, after transcription, all audio-visual material will be destroyed upon the finalisation of the research degree; • i understand that i will be shown for approval the extracts from my recording that may be used for conference presentations, publications or for instruction purposes. • i understand i can contact the manager, research ethics, at griffith university human research ethics committee on ( ) or email researchethics@griffith.edu.au if i have any concerns about the ethical conduct of the project; and • i agree to participate in this project. name: contact details: signature: b. arts industry leaders. re: postgraduate research project information and expression of consent gu ref no: qcm/ / /hrec dear arts industry leader and advocate, i am undertaking research for a doctor of philosophy at queensland conservatorium griffith university. titled ‘designing a tertiary music institution course to prepare for contemporary career realities’ the topic will be investigating ‘taking into account st century realities for music professionals in queensland, which elements incorporated into a tertiary music industry preparation strand are likely to be most effective in preparing students for successful careers?’ in particular i am seeking to gain the attitudes and opinions of tertiary music students involved in the my life as a musician course as well as those not enrolled or included. in addition industry musicians, tertiary music industry educators, queensland conservatorium staff, key arts administrators and advocates attitudes and opinions will be sought. the focus on this research is on the implications for tertiary music students seeking music employment within their degree and upon graduation. the research will involve investigating the australian portfolio career musician—specifically the requirements and skills one needs in order to survive, thrive and sustain a career in music. the data collected through this research will provide material for discussion on what skills and information is required to become an employable musician; as well as best- practice delivery for tertiary music vocational education. further outcomes will include a handbook publication in support of the my life as a musician strand as well as an online tool and career support open to all tertiary music students and musicians with an entrepreneurial interest. to conduct this research i ask for your consent to participate in one -minute open- ended interview. please feel free to peruse the following information then complete, sign and return the form to me in person, my pigeon hole at your convenience on level qcgu south bank or post to queensland conservatorium griffith university: grey street, south bank, po box , south brisbane, qld, . your participation with this research is entirely voluntary. feel free to discuss any related component of this research further with me at d.tolmie@griffith.edu.au. a summary of the results of this research will be emailed to you prior to the submission of the thesis for to seek your approval of your representation in the research document. thanking you in anticipation diana tolmie privacy statement the conduct of this research involves the collection, access and / or use of your identified personal information. as outlined elsewhere in this information sheet, your identified personal information may appear in the publications/reports arising from this research. this is occurring with your consent. any additional personal information collected is confidential and will not be disclosed to third parties without your consent, except to meet government, legal or other regulatory authority requirements. a de- identified copy of this data may be used for other research purposes. however, your anonymity will at all times be safeguarded, except where you have consented otherwise. for further information consult the university’s privacy plan at http://www.griffith.edu.au/about-griffith/plans-publications/griffith-university-privacy- plan or telephone the manager, research ethics ( ) or researchethics@griffith.edu.au project title my life as a musician: designing a tertiary music education course to prepare for contemporary career realities research team diana tolmie—student researcher contact: d.tolmie@griffith.edu.au huib schippers: co-chief investigator contact: h.schippers@griffith.edu.au don lebler: co-chief investigator contact: d.lebler@griffith.edu.au participants the participant pool will include queensland conservatorium griffith university undergraduate bachelor of music students including those enrolled in / / qcm my life as a musician strand where applicable. in addition lecturers of music industry preparation subjects at various australian tertiary music institutions will also be asked to participate. major study queensland conservatorium lecturers, music industry career musicians, key arts advocates and leaders, and high profile music ensembles will be invited to participate. data and collection the location of : interviews, and focus groups will be held onsite for tertiary staff and students. the quantitative likert surveys will be made available online via personally emailed web-link. the location of : interviews, and focus groups will be held onsite for tertiary staff and students. case study (ensembles) observation will be at their place of employment. the quantitative surveys (closed and likert questions) will be made available online via personally emailed weblink. practitioner research involving music industry professionals and key arts advocates and leaders will be conducted within their own work environments for : video interviews. all data from field notes, interview transcriptions and surveys will be coded and triangulated for common and emergent themes. online surveys will take no longer than − minutes to complete, : interviews approximately − minutes, and focus groups hour. all data gathering will take place over a period of to years dependent on course up-grade. consent to conduct this research i propose to ask your consent to interview you during january and february . i wish to seek your opinion of the music industry in australia, where it is placed in a global context as well as your perspective of past, present and future direction, in addition to your understanding of what a music vocational education preparation strand should entail. statement of consent by signing below, i confirm that i have read and understood the information above and • i give permission for diana tolmie to interview me in for her proposed research project; • i have had all questions answered to my satisfaction; • i understand my participation in this research is voluntary; • i understand my additional questions may be answerable by the research team; • i understand i am free to withdraw from this research project at any time, without comment or penalty; • i agree to be identified in all resultant research publications yes no (please circle); • i understand that my interview will be audio-taped; • i understand that only the research team will have access to this tape; • i understand that, after transcription, all audio-visual material will be destroyed upon the finalisation of the research degree; • i consent to an extract from my recording being used in conference presentations or for instructional purposes; • i understand that i will be shown the extracts from my recording that may be used for conference presentations or for instruction purposes. • i understand i can contact the manager, research ethics, at griffith university human research ethics committee on or researchethics@griffith.edu.au if i have any concerns about the ethical conduct of the project; and • i agree to participate in this project. name: contact details: signature: date: b. faculty. re: postgraduate research project information and expression of consent. gu ref no: qcm/ / /hrec dear queensland conservatorium griffith university music lecturer i am undertaking research for a master of philosophy at queensland conservatorium griffith university. titled ‘designing a tertiary music institution course to prepare for contemporary career realities’ the topic will be investigating ‘taking into account st century realities for music professionals in queensland, which elements incorporated into a tertiary music industry preparation strand are likely to be most effective in preparing students for successful careers?’ in particular i am seeking to gain the attitudes and opinions of tertiary music staff involved in the bachelor of music course as well as those not enrolled or included. in addition industry musicians; tertiary music industry educators; queensland conservatorium students; key arts administrators and advocates attitudes and opinions will be sought. the focus on this research is on the implications for tertiary music students seeking music employment within their degree and upon graduation. the research will involve investigating the australian portfolio career musician—specifically the requirements and skills one needs in order to survive, thrive and sustain a career in music. the data collected through this research will provide material for discussion on what skills and information is required to become an employable musician; as well as best- practice delivery for music vocational education. further outcomes will include a handbook publication in support of the my life as a musician strand as well as an online tool and career support open to all tertiary music students and musicians with an entrepreneurial interest. to conduct this research i ask for your consent to participate in ( -minute face-to-face open-ended questions) interviews. please feel free to peruse the following information then complete, sign and return the form to me in person, my pigeon hole at your convenience on level qcgu south bank or post to queensland conservatorium griffith university: grey street, south bank, po box , south brisbane, qld, . your participation with this research is entirely voluntary. feel free to discuss any related component of this research further with me at d.tolmie@griffith.edu.au. a summary of the results of this research will be emailed to you prior to the submission of the thesis. thanking you in anticipation diana tolmie privacy statement the conduct of this research involves the collection, access and / or use of your de- identified personal information. as outlined elsewhere in this information sheet, your de-identified personal information may appear in the publications/reports arising from this research. this is occurring with your consent. any additional personal information collected is confidential and will not be disclosed to third parties without your consent, except to meet government, legal or other regulatory authority requirements. a de- identified copy of this data may be used for other research purposes. however, your anonymity will at all times be safeguarded, except where you have consented otherwise. for further information consult the university’s privacy plan at http://www.griffith.edu.au/about-griffith/plans-publications/griffith-university-privacy- plan or telephone the manager, research ethics ( ) or email researchethics@griffith.edu.au project title my life as a musician: designing a tertiary music education course to prepare for contemporary career realities research team diana tolmie—student researcher contact: d.tolmie@griffith.edu.au huib schippers: co-chief investigator contact: h.schippers@griffith.edu.au don lebler: co-chief investigator contact: d.lebler@griffith.edu.au participants the participant pool will include queensland conservatorium griffith university undergraduate bachelor of music students including those enrolled in / / qcm my life as a musician strand where applicable. in addition lecturers of music industry preparation subjects at various australian tertiary music institutions will also be asked to participate. major study queensland conservatorium lecturers, music industry career musicians, key arts advocates and leaders, and high profile music ensembles will be invited to participate. data and collection the location of : interviews, and focus groups will be held onsite for tertiary staff and students. the quantitative likert surveys will be made available online via personally emailed web-link. the location of : interviews, and focus groups will be held onsite for tertiary staff and students. case study (ensembles) observation will be at their place of employment. the quantitative surveys (closed and likert questions) will be made available online via personally emailed weblink. practitioner research involving music industry professionals and key arts advocates and leaders will be conducted within their own work environments for : video interviews. all data from field notes, interview transcriptions and surveys will be coded and triangulated for common and emergent themes. online surveys will take no longer than minutes to complete, : interviews approximately − minutes, and focus groups hour. all data gathering will take place over a period of to years dependent on course up-grade. consent to conduct this research i propose to ask your consent to interview you between january and february . i wish to seek your opinion of the my life as a musician course content, your observed relevance, your perceptions of the industry your students will be entering, your understanding of the music industry and its’ relationship with yourself as a major study lecturer and the bachelor of music course. your responses will be anonymous and you will not be identified in any way during this research. statement of consent by signing below, i confirm that i have read and understood the information above and • i give permission for diana tolmie to interview me in for her proposed research project; • i have had all questions answered to my satisfaction; • i understand that by participating in this research there are no employment risks involved to myself; • i understand my participation in this research is voluntary; • i agree to be identified in all resultant research publications yes no (please circle); • i understand my additional questions may be answerable by the research team; • i understand i am free to withdraw from this research project at any time, without comment or penalty; • i understand that my interview will be audio-taped; • i understand that only the research team will have access to this tape; • i consent to extracts and transcriptions from my recording being used in conference presentations and publications or for instructional purposes; • i understand that, after transcription, all audio-visual material will be destroyed upon the finalisation of the research degree; • i understand that i will be shown for approval the extracts from my recording that may be used for conference presentations, publications or for instruction purposes; • i understand i can contact the manager, research ethics, at griffith university human research ethics committee on ( ) or email researchethics@griffith.edu.au if i have any concerns about the ethical conduct of the project; and • i agree to participate in this project. name: contact details: signature: date: b. assessment audit: students. re: postgraduate research project information and expression of consent. gu ref no: qcm/ / /hrec dear queensland conservatorium griffith university my life as a musician student, i am undertaking research for a doctor of philosophy at queensland conservatorium griffith university. titled ‘designing a tertiary music institution course to create industry-ready graduates’ the topic will be investigating which elements, based on contemporary working realities for musicians, can be incorporated into a tertiary music industry preparation strand and how. in particular i am seeking to gain the opinion of tertiary music students involved in the my life as a musician course as well as those who are not enrolled or included in their tertiary course curriculum. in addition freelance musicians, and key arts administrators and policy workers opinions will be sought. the focus on this research is on the implications for tertiary music students seeking music employment within their degree and upon graduation. the research will involve investigating the australian portfolio career musician—specifically the requirements and skills one needs in order to survive, thrive and sustain a career in music. the data collected through this research will provide material for discussion on what interview procedures should be delivered during tertiary recruitment auditions; what it takes to become an employable musician; as well as how to best deliver a course such as my life as a musician and the varying potential replicas in other australian and international universities. further outcomes will include a handbook publication in support of the my life as a musician strand as well as an online tool and career support open to all tertiary music students with entrepreneurial interest. to conduct this research i ask for your consent to allowing my access and observation of your course assessment. i will be seeking information that is of relevance to understanding student career aspirations and planning as well as gauging the entrepreneurial and industry activity within the undergraduate music degree. i will also be endeavouring to understand these themes from the use of broad statistics of student work (class results, broad/recurrent themes etc.). this may also require reproducing relevant direct de-identified quotes and samples from student assessment. please feel free to peruse the following information then complete, sign and return the form to me in person, my pigeon hole at your convenience on level qcgu south bank or post to queensland conservatorium griffith university: grey street, south bank, po box , south brisbane, qld, . your participation with this research is entirely voluntary and without risk to yourself or your tertiary results. feel free to discuss any related component of this research further with me at d.tolmie@griffith.edu.au. a summary of the results of this research will be communicated to you during the course of your degree. thanking you in anticipation diana tolmie privacy statement the conduct of this research involves the collection, access and / or use of your de- identified personal information. as outlined elsewhere in this information sheet, your de-identified personal information may appear in the publications/reports arising from this research. this is occurring with your consent. any additional personal information collected is confidential and will not be disclosed to third parties without your consent, except to meet government, legal or other regulatory authority requirements. a de- identified copy of this data may be used for other research purposes. however, your anonymity will at all times be safeguarded, except where you have consented otherwise. for further information consult the university’s privacy plan at http://www.griffith.edu.au/about-griffith/plans-publications/griffith-university-privacy- plan or telephone the manager, research ethics ( ) or email researchethics@griffith.edu.au project title my life as a musician: designing a tertiary music education course to prepare for contemporary career realities research team diana tolmie—student researcher contact: d.tolmie@griffith.edu.au huib schippers: co-chief investigator contact: h.schippers@griffith.edu.au don lebler: co-chief investigator contact: d.lebler@griffith.edu.auparticipants the participant pool will include queensland conservatorium griffith university bachelor of music/music technology students including those enrolled in / / qcm my life as a musician strand where applicable. in addition lecturers of music industry preparation subjects at various australian tertiary music institutions will also be asked to participate. major study queensland conservatorium lecturers, music industry career musicians, key arts advocates and leaders, and high profile music ensembles will be invited to participate. data and collection the location of one-to-one interviews, and focus groups will be held onsite for tertiary staff and students. the quantitative likert surveys will be made available online via personally emailed web-link. case study (ensembles) observation will be at their place of employment. the quantitative surveys (closed and likert questions) will be made available online via personally emailed weblink. practitioner research involving music industry professionals and key arts advocates and leaders will be conducted within their own work environments for : video interviews. all data from field notes, interview transcriptions and surveys will be coded and triangulated for common and emergent themes. online surveys will take no longer than minutes to complete, : interviews approximately − minutes, and focus groups minutes. all data gathering will take place over a period of to years dependent on course up-grade/extension. all data and subsequent documentation will be verified by participants. consent as previously mentioned, to conduct this research i propose to ask your consent to access to your course learning activities and assessment. statement of consent by signing below, i confirm that i have read and understood the information above and • provided my identity will not be released, i give permission for diana tolmie to audit my assessment for her proposed research project; • i have had all questions answered to my satisfaction; • i understand that by participating in this research there are no risks involved to myself nor my academic results; • i understand that there is a clear distinction between the existing teacher-student relationship and the research activity; • i understand my participation in this research is voluntary; • i understand my additional questions may be answerable by the research team; • i understand i am free to withdraw from this research project at any time, without comment or penalty; • i understand that only the research team will have access to my course results and assessment; • i consent to de-identified extracts and transcriptions from my assessment being used in conference presentations and publications or for instructional purposes; • i understand that i will be shown for approval the de-identified extracts from my assessment that may be used for conference presentations, publications or for instruction purposes; • i understand i can contact the manager, research ethics, at griffith university human research ethics committee on ( ) or email researchethics@griffith.edu.au if i have any concerns about the ethical conduct of the project; and • i agree to participate in this project. name: contact details: current year in bachelor of music/music technology programme: major study: signature: date: b. student focus groups. re: postgraduate research project information and expression of consent. gu ref no: qcm/ / /hrec dear qcgu bachelor of music undergraduate student, i am undertaking research for a doctor of philosophy at queensland conservatorium griffith university. titled ‘designing a tertiary music institution course to create industry-ready graduates’ the topic will be investigating which elements, based on contemporary working realities for musicians, can be incorporated into a tertiary music industry preparation strand and how. in particular i am seeking to gain the opinion of tertiary music students involved in the my life as a musician course as well as those who are not enrolled or included in their tertiary course curriculum. in addition freelance musicians, and key arts administrators and policy workers opinions will be sought. the focus on this research is on the implications for tertiary music students seeking music employment within their degree and upon graduation. the research will involve investigating the australian portfolio career musician—specifically the requirements and skills one needs in order to survive, thrive and sustain a career in music. the data collected through this research will provide material for discussion on what interview procedures should be delivered during tertiary recruitment auditions; what it takes to become an employable musician; as well as how to best deliver a course such as my life as a musician and the varying potential replicas in other australian and international universities. further outcomes will include a handbook publication in support of the my life as a musician strand as well as an online tool and career support open to all tertiary music students with entrepreneurial interest. to conduct this research i ask for your consent to participate in a -minute focus group. a focus group is a form of qualitative research in which a specifically selected group of people are asked about their perceptions, opinions, beliefs, and attitudes towards a chosen topic—in this case music vocational preparation. questions are asked in an interactive group setting where participants are free to talk with other group members. it is conditional upon participation to please respect the privacy of other participants and do not disclose the contents of the focus group meeting nor the comments of others. please feel free to peruse the following information then complete, sign and return the form to me in person, my pigeon hole at your convenience on level qcgu south bank or post to queensland conservatorium griffith university: grey street, south bank, po box , south brisbane, qld, . your participation with this research is entirely voluntary and without risk to yourself or your tertiary results. feel free to discuss any related component of this research further with me at d.tolmie@griffith.edu.au. a summary of the results of this research will be emailed to you prior to the submission of the thesis. thanking you in anticipation diana tolmie privacy statement the conduct of this research involves the collection, access and / or use of your de- identified personal information. as outlined elsewhere in this information sheet, your de-identified personal information may appear in the publications/reports arising from this research. this is occurring with your consent. any additional personal information collected is confidential and will not be disclosed to third parties without your consent, except to meet government, legal or other regulatory authority requirements. a de- identified copy of this data may be used for other research purposes. however, your anonymity will at all times be safeguarded, except where you have consented otherwise. for further information consult the university’s privacy plan at http://www.griffith.edu.au/about-griffith/plans-publications/griffith-university-privacy- plan or telephone the manager, research ethics ( ) or email researchethics@griffith.edu.au project title my life as a musician: designing a tertiary music education course to prepare for contemporary career realities research team diana tolmie—student researcher contact: d.tolmie@griffith.edu.au huib schippers: co-chief investigator contact: h.schippers@griffith.edu.au don lebler: co-chief investigator contact: d.lebler@griffith.edu.au participants the participant pool will include queensland conservatorium griffith university undergraduate bachelor of music students including those enrolled in / / qcm my life as a musician strand where applicable. in addition lecturers of music industry preparation subjects at various australian tertiary music institutions will also be asked to participate. major study queensland conservatorium lecturers, music industry career musicians, key arts advocates and leaders, and high profile music ensembles will be invited to participate. data and collection the location of one-to-one interviews, and focus groups will be held onsite for tertiary staff and students. the quantitative likert surveys will be made available online via personally emailed web-link. case study (ensembles) observation will be at their place of employment. the quantitative surveys (closed and likert questions) will be made available online via personally emailed weblink. practitioner research involving music industry professionals and key arts advocates and leaders will be conducted within their own work environments for : video interviews. all data from field notes, interview transcriptions and surveys will be coded and triangulated for common and emergent themes. online surveys will take no longer than − minutes to complete, : interviews approximately − minutes, and focus groups minutes. all data gathering will take place over a period of to years. consent to conduct this research i propose to ask your consent to a focus group session before first semester commences and/or after completion. i wish to seek your opinion of your understanding of the music industry and its relationship with yourself and the bachelor of music course. in addition i seek your opinion of what skills you feel you will require to assist your desired employment, your future aspirations and your relationship with music. there will be a paper-based survey to verify your responses within the focus group. your responses will be anonymous and you will not be identified in any way during this research. an example of the open-ended questions asked: what are your music employment ambitions? aside from your chief practical study training, what skills and training do you feel you should possess for successful music employment? what is your opinion of the music industry in australia and internationally? what do you perceive as your current involvement in the music industry statement of consent by signing below, i confirm that i have read and understood the information above and • provided my identity will not be released, i give permission for diana tolmie to interview me for her proposed research project; • i have had all questions answered to my satisfaction; • i understand that by participating in this research there are no risks involved to myself nor my academic results; • i understand that there is a clear distinction between the existing teacher-student relationship and the research activity; • i understand my participation in this research is voluntary; • i understand my additional questions may be answerable by the research team; • i understand i am free to withdraw from this research project at any time, without comment or penalty; • i understand that i must respect the privacy of the participating members of the focus group and not disclose the responses of others; • i understand that my interview will be audio-visually-taped; • i understand that only the research team will have access to this tape; • i consent to extracts and transcriptions from my recording being used in conference presentations and publications or for instructional purposes; • i understand that, after transcription, all audio-visual material will be destroyed upon the finalisation of the research degree; • i understand that i will be shown for approval the extracts from my recording that may be used for conference presentations, publications or for instruction purposes; • i understand i can contact the manager, research ethics, at griffith university human research ethics committee on ( ) or email researchethics@griffith.edu.au if i have any concerns about the ethical conduct of the project; and • i agree to participate in this project. name: contact details: current year in bachelor of music programme: university: major study: signature: date: appendix c: face-to-face interview questions c. musicians. . please state for the record your name and age? . describe what you are currently employed as? . would you describe yourself as a contract musician or a job creator/instigator? . please briefly describe your career path from training to now? . what have been your career highs and lows? . are you happy with what you are currently doing? . what has been the most and least $ you have earned? . when you were first training to become a musician a) how old were you and b) what did you want to do long term with your career? . what (if) has changed? . what were you like as a training musician (in your diploma, degree?) e.g. determined, focused, immature, naïve etc. . what non-music skills have you had to learn to support your career that you did not learn in your degree/diploma? . are there more skills you would like to learn? . how do you currently financially and artistically sustain your career? . what methods do you use to find work? . what non-music skills do current tertiary music students need upon graduation? what advice would you give tertiary music students aspiring to working in the music industry? . what do you think about a conservatoire delivering a vocational preparation strand such as mlaam? . how would you have reacted to a course introducing the realities and business basics required in the music industry when you were a student? . what skills and qualifications should a tertiary music industry vocational preparation lecturer possess? . do you consider ‘teaching’ to be part of the profile of the term ‘musician’? . what do you love about music? . have you ever felt like quitting music? (when was that—at what age?) . broadly speaking—on a scale of one to —how confident are you that you can continue being a musician until you choose to retire? . hypothetical: if contract work such as orchestral, music theatre, session work etc. dried up—how confident would you be to instigate your own projects? would you want to? . is there a final life goal—something you have always been striving towards? . what is your impression of the music industry? . do you have any other thoughts you would like to mention? c. faculty. questioning aims to discover what career paths major study teachers are encouraging students, what obstacles they envision their students to encounter in the music industry and what attitudes they have towards industry preparation in addition to unexpected themes that emerged from the industry musicians and student responses. this will be further compared to the active musician and music student responses. about the staff member . what is your name and position at the qcm? . how old are you? . describe your career path to date? . describe the changes in the music industry have you experienced during this time? . how long have you been teaching tertiary education? about tertiary education . describe the changes in tertiary music education have you seen during your time as a tertiary music educator? about their students . describe your students’ communicated career ambitions? . in what way (if at all) has this changed over the course of your employment? . describe your impressions of their career ambitions? . how do you feel you contribute to their career reality? . describe what you consider your successful students to be. (this will determine the fame, $ or personal success focus) . describe your impressions of the future of music? and how that will affect your students? about mlaam . what skills do you think students need to have upon graduation? . what do you consider should be included in a tertiary music vocational education programme? . in your opinion, what stage can these elements be introduced into to a degree? . describe what do you know about mlaam? . what do your students communicate to you about mlaam? any other comments? . (looking at the courses) what is your opinion of this version? . what skills and qualifications should a tertiary music industry preparation lecturer possess? c. industry arts advocates and education leaders. . please state your name and your current role in the arts industry . what has been your career path to date? (to gather length and breadth of industry knowledge) . (if not offended to be asked and if it has not come up in the conversation prior) how old are you? . what significant changes in the music industry have you noticed during this time? . what ramifications does this have on the future of the music industry and those musicians currently employed? (please include your impressions of obstacles/threats, opportunities, strengths and weakness) . what do you feel that current tertiary music students should be learning to survive and sustain this environment? . what qualities do you observe that successful musicians possess? . (define ‘success’) . (upon looking at the mlaam course outlines) what is your opinion of a course such as mlaam? (do not ask heads of institutions this until later in the interview) . in your opinion—should mlaam be something all music institutions should adopt? why? . what changes, additions, and/or subtractions would you recommend (course content, assessment and course activities)? . what advice would you give current graduating music students? for tertiary leaders: . what, to your knowledge has been the past history and content of music industry education and career information at your institution? . how have the students responded to these music industry course introductions? . what are the demographics of your student enrolments and what careers do they envisage themselves as possessing? . what careers does your institution currently train them for? . what careers does your faculty encourage? . what careers do the graduates most likely possess? . what positive or negative outcomes can you foresee a course such as mlaam being implemented in your institution? c. music industry tertiary educators. about your course: . please state your name and music industry course title/s and institution/s where you teach? . how long have you been teaching this course? . could you please: • describe your course and its aims • delivery of the course—compulsory within the undergraduate degree, elective, availability to post graduate students, online/on campus • the enrolment—male/female ratio; jazz/classical/mutech/composition etc. • the assessment—and why you chose it • what supporting texts do you use? • what element of (if at all) and when is entrepreneurship discussed or encouraged? • can you describe (if applicable) the reflective element you use in your course? • do you have a tutorial process in conjunction with this course? • what extra learning activities do you incorporate that do not appear on the course outline? • what is your criticism of your own course? • what is the students’ positive feedback and criticism of your course • are there any assessment restrictions or conditions the university imposes on your course? about you: . how old are you? . please briefly outline your professional history and training to date . how would you broadly categorise your career—teacher, performer; jazz/composition/classical etc. . how has your income over your employable life transpired (upward trajectory, erratic, or downward) . within your own employment—what is the approximate ratio of teaching to performance and how, if at all, has that changed over the years? about the music industry: . in your experience as an active industry musician, what significant changes or trends have you noticed to date? . what implications do these have for the future of the music industry? . what skills do current tertiary music students need to possess in order to sustain a career in the music industry? . what skills and experience should a music industry studies lecturer possess? . should a music industry studies lecturer remain active in their industry profession? appendix d: focus group questions . how has the year been? . has your music degree been what you expected? . how do you feel about graduating next year/year after? (where applicable to nd, rd or th years) . what industry activity are you/have you been engaged in so far? . was it what you expected? how did it go? . what non-music skills have you needed for this activity? . what are you doing next year? . what non-music skills do you feel you will need to use? . knowing what you know now, what would you say to next year’s first years starting out? . what skills will you need by the time you graduate to sustain a career in music? . what challenges do you think are in store for you? . how will you overcome these? appendix e: student focus group paper survey participant name: participant age: gender: major study instrument: years of major study training prior to conservatorium entry: i currently identify myself as (please circle a number): . full-time employment e.g. orchestral, teaching, opera . contract worker & portfolio careerist . new-employment creator & portfolio careerist . non-music ‘day job’ and casual professional musician . non-music ‘casual job’ and no music industry activity . non-music ‘casual job’ and some music industry activity . no employment at all—just focusing on my degree in years’ time i can see myself as (please circle a number): . full-time employment e.g. orchestral, teaching, opera . contract worker & portfolio careerist . new-employment creator & portfolio careerist . non-music ‘day job’ and casual professional musician . exited musician: musically trained and professionally experienced finish these sentences (and add more if you like): . what i love about music is … . the people that inspire me to be a good musician are … . skills required to be a successful musician are … . by i would like to be …. sd d n a sa i am happy with my major study development so far i believe my undergraduate degree is preparing me for a career in music i am currently achieving what i expected to months ago i feel confident i can successfully instigate my own creative projects if required i believe i have developed strong networks this year and can rely on these for future music employment the majority of my music industry activity has been offered via my conservatorium lecturers the majority of my music industry activity has been offered via my conservatorium peers my career ambition has changed since beginning semester i envision teaching to be part of my career for the next years i feel i have a solid understanding of the music industry i have a positive attitude towards the music industry i have strong inter/intra personal skills i believe non-music (business) skills are important to the sustainability of a career in music i will need to learn more about the business side of the music industry for future activities appendix f: musician email invitation and survey questions please see embedded pdf. gu ref no: qcm/ / /hrec dear musician, i am undertaking research for a doctor of philosophy at queensland conservatorium griffith university. titled “designing a tertiary music institution course to prepare for contemporary career realities” the topic will be investigating “taking into account st century realities for music professionals in australia, which elements incorporated into a tertiary music industry preparation strand are likely to be most effective in preparing students for successful careers?” in particular i am seeking to gain information about active musicians, and those that have left the profession, in queensland. in addition tertiary music industry educators, queensland conservatorium staff, tertiary music students, key arts administrators and advocates attitudes and opinions will be sought. the focus on this research is on the implications for tertiary music students seeking music employment within their degree and upon graduation. the research will involve investigating the australian portfolio career musician – specifically the requirements and skills one needs in order to survive, thrive and sustain a career in music. you will be asked to complete an online survey that should take no longer than minutes of your time. you have been chosen as you are a member of my musician network and i have either worked with you in the past or know of someone who has worked with who identifies your participation (past or present) in the australian music industry. the risk to you from participating in this research is no greater than that arising from daily living. as your participation is completely voluntary, you are more than welcome to withdraw from your participation in this study at any time without any further recourse or impact on the relationships within the music industry. survey monkey is the online survey tool of choice of many researchers, used for its privacy guarantee, encryption software and reputation for security. for more information on surveymonkey’s security policy please visit https://www.surveymonkey.net/mp/policy/security/ all respondent answers will be collected, stored and accessed only by the survey designer (diana tolmie). the data collected through this research will provide material for discussion on what skills and information is required to become an employable musician; as well as best-practice delivery for music vocational preparation education. further outcomes will include a handbook publication in support of the queensland conservatorium's my life as a musician vocation preparation strand as well as an online tool and career support open to all tertiary music students and musicians with an arts entrepreneurial interest. the conduct of this research involves the collection, access and / or use of your de-identified personal information. your de-identified personal information may appear in the publications/reports arising from this research. by participating in this survey you are allowing this to occur. any additional personal information collected is confidential and will not be disclosed to third parties without your consent, except to meet government, legal or other regulatory authority requirements. a de-identified copy of this data may be used for other research purposes. however, your anonymity will at all times be safeguarded, except where you have consented otherwise. for further information consult the university’s privacy plan at http://www.griffith.edu.au/about- griffith/plans-publications/griffith-university-privacy-plan or telephone the manager, research ethics ( ) or email researchethics@griffith.edu.au thank-you so very much! survey information and disclaimer the australian portfolio musician i really appreciate your help with this. best wishes research team diana tolmie – student researcher contact: d.tolmie@griffith.edu.au don lebler: co-chief investigator contact: d.lebler@griffith.edu.au huib schippers: co-chief investigator con . i have read the above research statement and agree to participate in this survey. i acknowledge the risks involved and that my identity will remain anonymous. true false the australian portfolio musician . please describe your current career identity (include music and non-music employment where applicable) . please select your gender identity male female other . what city, state and country do you currently live in? (e.g. brisbane, qld, australia) . how old are you? . which of the following best describes your current relationship status? single partnered divorced/separated widowed . please select whether you live alone with partner with parents in a shared house with another family other living arrangements . have you ever studied at a tertiary music institution? yes no the australian portfolio musician . did you study at the queensland conservatorium? yes no . did you graduate from the queensland conservatorium? yes no the australian portfolio musician . what is your highest music qualification? certificate diploma bachelor graduate diploma masters dma phd the australian portfolio musician . have you completed non-music tertiary education? yes no the australian portfolio musician . please state the diploma/degree title the australian portfolio musician . one definition of a musician is ‘a person who practises in the profession of music within one or more specialist fields’. do you believe this to include teaching music? yes no . how long have you experienced music-related employment? less than year - years - years - years - years - years - years - years - years - years - years - years - years - years + years . how old were you when you first began financially earning from music-related employment? . was this first experience during: pre-primary school primary school secondary school after secondary school (no degree experience followed) undergraduate tertiary education after undergraduate education other the australian portfolio musician . how many years after graduating from your undergraduate degree was your experience of financially earning from music employment? the australian portfolio musician . please describe your first music employment experience (i.e. that you were paid or received goods/services for your own services) . approximately how much ($ or trade of services/products) were you paid for this employment? . for the same music service, approximately how much would you currently expect to be paid? please feel free to comment on your answer . i currently consider myself to be a: beginning/starting out musician (e.g. very early in my music career - my foot is on the first rung) emerging musician (e.g. starting to get my name known, getting work and my work is gaining momentum) established musician (e.g. people know who i am and what skills i possess, work is relatively consistent and/or i know most people i work with) established but working less than before (e.g. i have been in the industry for a while and am happy to pick and choose my work) someone who was a musician but has left the profession other . during my career i have left or considered leaving my music/music-related profession yes no the australian portfolio musician feel free to comment on your selections and/or state why you returned to the music profession (where applicable) . what influenced you to exit or consider exiting a career in music? (please check all that apply) insufficient regular employment due to lack of diversity in skills lack of career mobility irregular working hours injury low financial rewards employment dissatisfaction - people/co-worker-related employment dissatisfaction - task-related psychological distress burnout reduced challenges challenge of maintaining high performance expectations performance anxiety lack of public value or understanding of arts/entertainment/music education work overload work underload career anxiety family commitments other . please state in $ your approximate highest before-tax income earned within one financial year and the related year . please state in $ your approximate lowest before-tax income earned within one financial year and the related year please feel free to provide details . how did you gain your music employment when you were first beginning/starting out? (please check all that apply) audition referral - non-music friends and colleagues referral - family referral - music/similar experienced friends and colleagues referral - teacher referral - older experienced musicians sought employment - networking/approached others/advertisement/social media created my own other please feel free to comment on your choice . how do you presently gain your music employment? (please check all that apply) audition referral - non-music friends and colleagues referral - family referral/reputation - music/similar experienced friends and colleagues referral - former teachers and mentors referral - older experienced musicians seek employment - advertisement/networking/approach others/social media create my own i do not engage with music as a profession anymore other please feel free to provide details . initially, the work in my music career was predominantly: contract or sessional work i.e. short-term employment by others (with no holiday or sick pay) self-created i.e. i was my own employer, sought my own work and i perhaps employed others permanent part-time i.e. part-time employed by an institution/business (with employment benefits such as holiday pay) full-time i.e. i was fulltime employed by an institution/business (with employment benefits such as holiday pay) other please feel free to provide details . the music employment i engage with now, is predominantly contractual or sessional self-created permanent part-time full-time i have left the music profession completely (i.e. no engagement whatsoever) i am fulltime employed in a non-music profession, however engage with a music career outside of these hours as a contractual or sessional musician i am fulltime employed in a non-music profession, however engage with a music career outside of these hours via self-instigated work i am fulltime employed in a non-music profession, however engage with a music career outside of these hours via self-instigated work in a permanent part-time position other please feel free to provide details . my initial motivation to pursue a career in music was to work in one or more of the following fields - please check all that apply: composition performance production instrument making and repairing broadcasting music business retailing and wholesaling teaching writing and research arts administration music therapy libraries, archives and information services digital & online other please feel free to comment on your answer . i now work within (please check those that apply): composition performance production instrument making and repairing broadcasting music business retailing and wholesaling teaching/education writing and research arts administration music therapy libraries, archives and information services digital & online other strongly disagree disagree unsure agree strongly agree . my current career represents my initial/early music career aspirations . please briefly summarize your career path to date (the basics will be fine): please feel free to comment on your answer . during my career i have (please check all that apply) set attainable goals set large "dream" goals always said "yes" to opportunities presented to me avoided planning, rather decided to see where life takes me been realistic about my capabilities and possible employment remained focussed on art/music rather than finance other please feel free to comment on your answer . in my current employment i value the opportunities for (please check all that apply): promotion increasing income employment rank/title job security predictability job satisfaction autonomy self-awareness and adaptability learning flexibility diversity unpredictability variety personal achievement recognition increasing networks other strongly disagree disagree unsure agree strongly agree . i believe music is my "calling" . looking back, my yearly income during my career has generally increased over time (beyond inflation) generally decreased over time (factoring the influence of inflation) fluctuated from year to year stabilised/remained a constant (factoring the influence of inflation) . looking back, my career satisfaction has generally increased over time generally decreased over time fluctuated from year to year stabilised/remained a constant . part of my total yearly income includes teaching yes no the australian portfolio musician . my ratio of teaching vs other work is: (e.g. : i.e. % teaching vs % other work. note: your teaching ratio is first :) ) : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : the australian portfolio musician . my yearly income includes non-music employment yes no the australian portfolio musician . please describe your non-music employment the australian portfolio musician strongly disagree disagree neutral agree strongly agree feel free to comment on your opinion . i feel confident i could create my own music employment opportunities if required strongly disagree disagree neutral agree strongly agree feel free to comment on your opinion . i would prefer contract work than instigating my own creative projects/work strongly disagreed disagree neutral agree strongly agree please feel free to comment on your opinion . i would prefer fulltime work to all other possibilities of employment (e.g. part-time, contract/sessional etc) feel free to comment on your answer . i find the business skills required to support/sustain a music career ... (please check all that apply) necessary abhorrent i.e inspiring disgust and loathing time consuming challenging easy to adopt boring interesting other strongly disagree disagree neutral agree strongly agree . in general, i consider myself a confident person strongly disagree disagree unsure agree strongly agree . in general, i consider myself a brave person strongly disagree disagree unsure agree strongly agree . in general, i consider myself a disciplined person strongly disagree disagree unsure agree strongly agree . in general, i consider myself a resilient person strongly disagree disagree unsure agree strongly agree . in general, i consider myself an entrepreneurial person strongly disagree disagree unsure agree strongly agree . in general, i consider i am passionate about music other (please specify) . to date, i have been paid to engage with these broad styles of music: (check all that apply): western classical (including all styles) jazz (including latin, blues, rnb, originals in the style of) music theatre popular rock independant music (i.e. indie) contemporary art music folk/ethnic/world music techno film, tv and video game music other i have only worked within music education feel free to give details . the non-music skills and knowledge i have needed to assist my music career includes (please check all that apply): finance - e.g. savings and investment finance - e.g. tax and superannuation contract law - reading and/or writing contracts ip/copyright self promotion - e.g. using web/social media and/or print media marketing - e.g. audience development event planning management networking persuasive writing (communication) skills - e.g. cv/web copy/email newsletters/press releases etc persuasive speaking (communication) skills - e.g. presenting to prospective sponsors/investors for financial or inkind support or phone conversations with presenters/press/radio interviews etc negotiation intrapersonal skills - i.e. having awareness of how your actions affect the world/people around you interpersonal skills - i.e. your ability to get along with others while getting the job done grant writing time management health management (ears, body, mind) education knowledge i have not needed any of these skills other feel free to comment on your answer . i have gained this information via ... (please check all that apply) my undergraduate training publications online search further study industry support initiated events/conferences (e.g. arts queensland, qmusic, music council australia etc) colleagues/friends trial and error other please feel free to comment on your answer . i currently feel i require more knowledge about (check all that apply): finance - e.g. savings and investment finance - e.g. tax and superannuation contract law - reading and/or writing contracts ip/copyright self promotion - e.g. using web/social media and/or print media marketing - e.g. audience development event planning management networking persuasive writing (communication) skills - e.g. cv/web copy/email newsletters/press releases etc persuasive speaking (communication) skills - e.g. presenting to prospective sponsors/investors for financial or inkind support or phone conversations with presenters/press/radio interviews etc negotiation skills intrapersonal skills - i.e. having awareness of how your actions affect the world/people around you interpersonal skills - i.e. your ability to get along with others while getting the job done health management (ears, body, mind) education/pedagogy grant writing time management i feel i do not need more knowledge about the above other feel free to comment on your answer . i plan to seek out this information via ... online search publications further study industry support initiated events (e.g. arts queensland, qmusic, music council australia etc) colleagues/friends trial and error i do not plan to seek further information about the above other please feel free to comment on your answer . in the past, i have noticed my opportunity for music employment has been negatively affected by (check all that apply): natural disasters e.g. brisbane floods global financial crisis (or similar events) change in government policy (e.g. fringe benefits tax) file sharing/digital downloads technology reduced arts funding my age my gender my appearance employment specialisation an increase in the population of musicians the musician network a change in audience attitude to the arts none of the above other other (please specify) . my music employment has positively benefited from (please check all that apply): government arts funding crowdfunding sponsorship product endorsement versatility of music skillset the musician network centrelink patron/s' support my appearance my gender my level of professionalism none of these please feel free to comment on your answer . i believe the music industry is currently ... shrinking i.e. one or all of: less employment opportunities overall, less venues/festivals, too many musicians, lowered/unchanged pay rate growing i.e. one or all of: more employment opportunities overall, more venues/festivals developing, increasing pay rate stabilised - there is enough employment opportunities and venues/festivals for enough musicians becoming territorial - higher competition for employment opportunities, impenetrable employment networks, key people monopolising local employment other please feel free to comment on your answer . to date i have sustained my music career by (please check all that apply) maintaining a high standard of work saying "yes" to all opportunities maintaining professionalism being versatile within the profession specialisation accepting work that may lead to other opportunities nurturing my networks - remaining mutual and connected adopting new skills and knowledge accepting unpaid work supporting it with an alternate income adopting a "fake it 'till you make it" attitude none of these choices other strongly disagree disagree neutral agree strongly agree n/a please feel free to comment on your opinion . i believe my undergraduate degree sufficiently prepared me for a career in music: please feel free to comment on your answer . in my undergraduate degree/diploma, i wish there was more focus on (please check all that apply): i did not do an undergraduate degree/diploma my major study versatility career planning the music industry network how to obtain employment how to promote myself how to read/understand and write contracts how to deal with problems such as non-payment for services rendered grant writing copyright how to gain a recording deal with a label musicians' health pedagogy i am happy with what my degree offered other please fee free to comment on your answer . what non-music skills/knowledge do you consider graduating music students need to sustain a music career in the st century? check all that apply professionalism finance contract/ip/copyright law self-promotion and marketing communication negotiation fundraising production management (recording, events, technology) industry insight (cultural norms, unspoken rules etc) entrepreneurship resilience work ethic passion other please feel free to comment on your answer . in order to successfully teach music industry/business and career management, a tertiary music lecturer would need to possess the following attributes (please check all applicable) be currently active in the music industry be previously active in the music industry have experienced multiple forms of music industry work (contract, self-initiated etc) have knowledge of a variety of music styles music degree qualifications business degree qualifications knowledge of the local music industry and the community of people driving it knowledge of multiple career paths and opportunities an understanding of the arts infrastructure of australia (funding, policy etc) knowledge of the tertiary education environment, and curriculum and assessment design a strong network of industry professionals from which to share knowledge and opportunity a phd an inspiring teacher grit and determination other the australian portfolio musician . thinking back to your time as an undergraduate music student on day one of your undergraduate degree/training ("training" = those who did not study) - please use one word to describe yourself (e.g. focussed, determined, worried, curious etc) . thinking back to your time as an undergraduate music student or musician-in-training, how do you feel your fellow students/colleagues would have responded to a course discussing the realities of the music industry (and learning related non-music business skills)? . please describe the difference (if at all) of the music industry now, to when you first started out strongly disagree disagree neutral agree strongly agree please feel free to comment on your opinion . i consider a portfolio musician's career (i.e. a musician that sources their financial income from a variety of areas in the music profession) to be a respectable profession strongly disagree disagree neutral agree strongly agree please feel free to comment on your opinion . i consider a portfolio musician's career (i.e. a musician that sources their financial income from a variety of areas in the music profession) to be a respected profession by non-musicians feel free to comment on your answer . what do you love about music? (please check all that apply) the sound the rhythm the emotion it creates the way it makes you feel creativity its capacity for enabling self-expression its capacity for collaboration and non-verbal communication with others its capacity for story-telling the challenge it provides in learning and achieving the satisfaction it provides in learning and achieving its capacity for perfection the thrill/adrenalin rush it enables the competitive opportunities it provides its transformative power (on myself, on the audience etc) its ability to help and heal its capacity for escapism its capacity for entertainment its beauty its unpredictability that it is continually evolving its accessibility it is just who i am, its innate, it is in my blood other please feel free to comment on your answer . who most inspires you to be the musician you are? family member/s friends teachers/mentors fellow industry colleagues famous/well-known musicians - alive famous/well-known musicians - dead dedicated and passionate people the audience my students myself no one inspires me other . what do you wish to do long-term with your career? . can you see yourself retiring from music? yes no unsure from me and the future students of the queensland conservatorium, thank you so very much for taking this survey. i will keep you informed of the results via newsletter updates and website promotion. please feel free to keep in touch. in the meantime, happy holidays and all the best for a wonderful ! (please hit "done" to submit and exit) diana tolmie :) the australian portfolio musician appendix g: coded responses for first-year advice table g. coded responses for first-year advice participant year advice to first-year students seek help—remain connected holly don’t be afraid to ask questions. maree i could have talked to people in the same class as i were going through the same thing [so seek help?] so that’s what we did, we just went into practice rooms and just practiced here and it's so much easier. noel don’t be afraid to talk to people. because if you just sort of shut yourself away, you know, it doesn’t really lead to a good and long life, basically. work hard jane i think also—not to expect a day off. tim i would say work harder … [this is reflective of the music industry] just that music is hard work and long hours. lenny work your ass off…i would not be... doing what i am doing, if i didn’t work my ass off in the first year…find like-minded people. kylie don’t procrastinate … and just work hard but make it sustainable. like [if] you don't have any time for yourself you are going to burn out and seriously be in a pretty dark place. jonothon i probably would have worked harder in the first year, if i was doing it again. peter yeah i mean you could potentially say different things to different first years, like some first years might just need a kick in the butt ‘go practice’ kind of thing. avoid comparative thinking taylor pick your battles …try and compare yourself to your peers all the time isn’t going to get you any better. it will just burn you. harry don’t spend your time worrying about the other person or don’t worry about you not being good enough or comparing yourself to this other person. tom when we get here and you see an older student and you think ... ‘oh that’s where i have to be, i don’t know any of that, i am screwed’, sort of thing ... put a lot of pressure on yourself. peter if it was, me in first year i would probably just say to be patient and not try and work everything out too fast [laughs] you know and not feel like i have to be a complete product by the end of each semester. lauren yes you will have to kind of compare yourself to other people but don’t ... you need to look at your own priorities, you can’t get so caught up in what this person is doing …you have to be satisfied with your own progress. ian i like to tell younger students that they are rebuilding their technique and they may sound bad at first but that is not a problem. maintain professionalism shane catch on to the etiquette—common knowledge …as a professional musician, you have to be held up to a certain standard so you can be considered by potential employers as someone who will do the job and as you eloquently put it, ‘be a decent human being’ as well as being able to play your instrument. ronald [be a] reasonable human being [all laugh]. time management lily i think breaking it into even just small bits of time … like small amounts—it almost consistently gets you over the line or far over the line but if you don't do anything at all you just lose like all confidence in yourself. stay open liam wipe your brain totally clear and be prepared to [learn] whatever you thought you know—[you don’t]. harry i would probably say to them, not just in a degree but in life, learn as much as you can and take on as much and experience as much things because often a lot of young people these days are living in the now and not thinking for the future but you will be surprised at what experiences or skills you can gain. tom if you are set on becoming an orchestral player or something, be open to do other things. don’t just say no to something because it’s not [the] direct line you see as needing to be taken to get to where you are [wanting to go]. lauren lots of people seem to have this really ... especially in first year, like ‘oh i am not gonna teach or play the viola’. i do both of those things and you know how much work i’ve got from them? but it’s just ... get over your ego basically and you know ... look at things that are going to get you better, more work or that... remain independent bert find out what you want to do and do your own stuff. and take every opportunity and do well. jonothon do more stuff. chamber music, especially chamber music. leigh start doing stuff now, like don’t think it’s all going to just happen or just come to you … especially if you are not relying on a teacher to tell you what’s wrong with it, you are actually starting to critique yourselves, yeah i think i am more for having that and actually being your own teacher as well so... astrid you need to know how to practice. other astrid invest in [your] instrument, because i think with strings especially there is a lot of disparity i guess but if you’ve got your $ , instrument you are kind of automatically at a different level, just because the instrument responds differently. appendix h: focus group five-year goals table h. first-year focus group five-year career goals by i would like to be: # doing lots of different things in music, not only in the con, but in the outside music community. i want to have a good practice/study routine. i want to be starting/organising my own projects in and outside of the con. # have a large portfolio of music that i’m happy with the sound of. i don’t mind if i end up doing something else as a job, just as long as i still write music! # travelling overseas and playing chamber music. # a travelling instrumental music teacher. # employed as a studio teacher and undergoing an early childhood and primary education degree at qut. # a concert pianist in the field entering competitions. # full-time high school music teacher and casual/occasional composition contracts/commissions. # a more polished musician in all facets (intellectually). preferably studying further abroad or as in an orchestral academy. # happy and enjoying what i’m doing. # a professional musician doubling in musicals hopefully, perhaps teaching. # orchestral job. # [no answer]. # ready to audition for orchestra positions. # in a performing and/or teaching position. table h. second-year focus group five-year career goals by i would like to be: # i would like to have done mmus and phd. like to be working as a teacher (private teaching or in a school), performing regularly. working in schools as a teacher (highly unlikely due to my appearance) or possibly own a music school. also have my band well and truly up and running (technical death metal). # doing my masters in the usa. # performing professionally with my quartet. # full time teaching, performing, own projects. # overseas, making enough money to support myself by working in a studio as either an assistance or head engineer. # playing in qso. # performing with the [de-identified] trio; [de-identified] academy of music; working in a private school during the day—private tuition (instrumental). # teaching, gaining employment through my music and possibly helping people with music therapy. # performing contract gigs and touring with a group. possibly a few more students. # working a big/large role in a private school and gigging. *living comfortably. table h. third-year focus group five-year career goals by i would like to be: # in the united kingdom :) [studying]. # chief conductor of a major professional orchestra. or on broadway. hopefully not on centrelink anymore. # employed. whether that’s just casually preparing for something else. i want to have opportunities by then to do various amounts of things in music. # either studying abroad, freelance, have a job in the orchestra, or any combination. # earning an income primarily from music. hopefully with the necessary skills to win a job. continuing casual work. more portfolio work. # travelling around the world and performing in a show combining percussion and visual effects. # touring singer/songwriter; film composer; theatre performer; postgraduate in uk/us. # not sure. # performing on a ‘bigger’ scale; running a business (agency or teaching academy or entrepreneurial idea). collaborating with like-minded musicians. # not answered. table h. fourth-year focus group five-year career goals by i would like to be: # doing something i don’t hate—ideally music. # competent. # make a financially viable and fulfilling music career. # working together with other performing musicians—creating performance opportunities together. chamber, solo, teaching. diverse as a pianist. # employed full-time in a job somewhat related to music, and teaching and performing in addition to this, particularly in theatre. # doing things that make me happy. # studying or performing overseas. working towards dalcroze certification [for teaching]. # teaching full-time while still performing in chamber ensembles, and have babies. # freelancing professionally. teaching, contract work, chamber music, and orchestral auditions. # i’m not really sure but i know that i would like to be doing something where i can work with others and gain some kind of satisfaction (something that i feel is meaningful). i think in the next years i would like to have done/be doing more study and doing some work in performance and teaching. i am thinking about pursuing music therapy. appendix i: paper survey results of students’ required career skills table i. paper survey results of required career skills by year st-year students nd-year students rd-year students th-year students time management, determination, passion (you need to actually love what you do), to have contacts. committed. people/interpersonal skills, knowledge of the industry, knowledge of music, skills with your instrument. very good technique! good communication, organisation. organisation, self- motivation. in composition, the ability to find opportunities, commissions etc. as far as work goes, marketing is almost as important as the quality of music (i think …). time management, professionalism, integrity. everything, you’re not just a musician. you have to be a good human. resilience, interpersonal skills, flexibility, confidence. tolerance, social skills, passion. people skills, business skills. persistence and dedication to your instrument and field of study. also good communication and professionalism, and being known as a reliable person. interpersonal skills, reliability. versatility and resilience. network, business, nice personality, virtuosity and musicianship. business, interpersonal, instrumental. dedication, concentration, bodily awareness, constant desire to learn more, sincerity, love for music—lot’s more! reliability and passion. people skills, aural awareness, digital awareness, comfortable taking risks, fast learner. business skills. being competent at my instrument. good networking skills. solid musicianship in all areas; good personal skills; self- confidence and drive. good communication skills, budgeting skills, actual real life skills hahar [sic]. organisation, business mind, empathy, intelligence, networking, personable. great technique. ability to engage an audience. musical skills, people skills, communication skills, entrepreneurial skills. knowledge from a broad variety of areas of music and even non-music ones. networking, reliability, being constantly at the top of your game. business skills and talent and aspiration. technical skills, perseverance, flexibility, critical thinking, forward thinking, understanding of pedagogy, ability to communicate emotion, punctuality. analytical thinking. motivation, dedication and talent. communication, teamwork, interpersonal skills. dedication, perseverance, networking, social skills. passion, proficiency, creativity. organisation, dedication, discipline. communication and ‘people’ skills; high level of ability/ musicianship; easy going but professional attitude. resilience and perseverance, direction and goals and positivity. hardworking, diligent, business minded. punctuality, commitment, professionalism, people skills. didn’t (possibly couldn’t) say. resilience, passion, dedication, co- operation/ collaboration skills, patience, perseverance, enjoyment of music, being able to adapt to situations. differs. musical, business, networking, organisational, promotional etc. … good musicianship and technical skills etc., good attitude and personality, open mindedness and humbleness. technical proficiency, networking skills, business skills, organisation and a motivation to be getting better all the time. table i. paper survey results of required career skills by major study and gender major study comment comment comment comment comment classical bass trombone (m) time management, professionalism, integrity. classical cello (f) networking, reliability, being constantly at the top of your game. classical clarinet (f) versatility and resilience. (f) reliability and passion. (f) business skills. being competent at my instrument. good networking skills. (m) solid musicianship in all areas; good personal skills; self- confidence and drive. (m) resilience and perseverance, direction and goals and positivity. classical flute (f) dedication, perseverance, networking, social skills. classical guitar (m) people/interper sonal skills, knowledge of the industry, knowledge of music, skills with your instrument. (m) musical skills, people skills, communication skills, entrepreneurial skills. classical harp (f) good musicianship and technical skills etc., good attitude and personality, open mindedness and humbleness. classical horn (f) resilience, interpersonal skills, flexibility, confidence. classical oboe (m) business, interpersonal, instrumental. classical percussion (m) differs. (m) time management, determination, passion (you need to actually love what you do), to have contacts. committed. (f) network, business, nice personality, virtuosity and musicianship. (m) great technique. ability to engage an audience. classical piano (f) good communication skills, budgeting skills, actual real life skills hahar [sic]. (f) passion, proficiency, creativity. (m) dedication, concentration, bodily awareness, constant desire to learn more, sincerity, love for music—lot’s more! classical saxophone (f) tolerance, social skills, passion. (f) hardworking, diligent, business minded. (f) people skills, business skills. (f) persistence and dedication to your instrument and field of study. also good communication and (m) communication, teamwork, interpersonal skills. professionalis m, and being known as a reliable person. classical trumpet (m) technical proficiency, networking skills, business skills, organisation and a motivation to be getting better all the time. classical viola (m) analytical thinking. classical violin (f) organisation, business mind, empathy, intelligence, networking, personable. (f) technical skills, perseverance, flexibility, critical thinking, forward thinking, understanding of pedagogy, ability to communicate emotion, punctuality. (f) resilience, passion, dedication, co- operation/collaboration skills, patience, perseverance, enjoyment of music, being able to adapt to situations. classical voice (f) very good technique! good communication, organisation. composition (m) in composition, the ability to find opportunities, commissions etc. as far as work goes, marketing is almost as important as the quality of music (i think …). (m) knowledge from a broad variety of areas of music and even non-music ones. (m) everything, you’re not just a musician. you have to be a good human. (m) didn’t (possibly couldn't) say jazz saxophone (f) motivation, dedication and talent. (m) organisation, self- motivation. jazz trumpet (m) organisation, dedication, discipline. (m) punctuality, commitment, professionalism, people skills. jazz voice (f) musical, business, networking, organisational, promotional etc. … music technology (m) people skills, aural awareness, digital awareness, comfortable taking risks, fast learner. (f) business skills and talent and aspiration. jazz drums (m) communication and ‘people’ skills; high level of ability/musicianship; easy going but professional attitude. appendix j: faculty-recommended graduate skills for music employment table j. faculty recommended graduate skills for music employment bruce • playing skills • teaching experience—education subject material, conductor training, leadership of ensemble training • have you got an abn, insurance, gst [knowledge], business skills mark • good communication skills • present themselves well • good literacy • adept at their instrument • well rounded in general knowledge, all theory, history • primary skill is to be socially aware and highly literate, and able to apply those skills broadly, not just focusing on music john • how to cook • how to multi task—it’s the ability to not get stressed by doing things at once. miles • good communication skills • understanding of the workings of any situation they are in • the practical [music] skills of the highest level • punctuality • being aware of the structure that they are working in and how what they are doing impacts around them and to make it work • and i suppose the basics in the managing taxes and business stuff, all of that and to get ahead of it. i learnt slowly. it’s important to get a process or a habit for that—otherwise it’s a drag janelle • how to play their instrument • develop knowledge about the music they are playing • people • be proactive and help themselves • be quick in learning things • if they are asked to do something they have to say ‘yes’ because they might not be asked a second time if they say no boris • musical skills • musicianship skills • interpersonal and intrapersonal skills to be able to manage themselves in an environment where, which is relatively unstructured compared to other industries • personal resilience to be able see it all the way through • a broad awareness of the sector in which they are entering • stay open sharon • book keeping • be flexible and play the hand as it’s dealt appendix k: music industry lecturer course assessment table k. music industry lecturer course assessment assessment description zac % full press kit: full biography, short biography, press photo, press release, compile two databases: media contacts and venue contacts within their field. to be submitted via email as pdfs, so that they get into the habit of working the technology. % grant application. i have a friend who works at the australia council and he sends me a hard copy of their online grant applications [and] the students have to complete the grant application and do due diligence or they can write a word business plan for a teaching business or they can come and propose to me any other type of business that they would be interested in doing. recently a music tech student wanted to set up a studio so his business plan was based around that, manufacture and insulation of equipment etc., and looked at his future and did a swot analysis of his business and a few other things, so that was an acceptable negotiated assessment. % plan and budget for a tour, and deliver a proper tour budget, so cash flow issues, logistics and income streams. it’s quite complicated and we spend a couple of weeks going through budgeting. nigel institute business studies % portfolio: create an annotated portfolio of documents—self-promotion, invoice, press release. all relevant material both provide and sourced, with analytical and reflective annotations % develop a marketing strategy for a prescribed event % business plan nigel institute business studies % exam: short/long answer written exam. understanding and explaining concepts and elements with publishing and copyright % grant submission: complete an application form to apply for funding for a specific purpose. simulated grant submission % attendance nigel academy – description of assessment across the three courses (business , and specialist projects unit) copyright and publishing test, case study on an aspect of the industry, business plan, a presentation of the business plan, case study of a selected business element within the industry, project—submit a project and planning, goals, reflection report and press release, case-study report paper where they select an aspect of the industry and hypothesise on future directions and trends in the industry—over the three courses. lilian: music in community the students had very practical and community work and they actually worked with music with the aged. i think they did community choirs, and they developed an original bit of marketing work during their project. so that they had a real or fictitious event and they had to develop a marketing plan. so we incorporate business skills. [individual] marketing portfolio of words plus supplementary information and a practical report that was a reflective journal based on field work, they had to have three to four practical visits with their field work and that was words plus an attendance diary and an appendix that detailed what the event was. class attendance was compulsory or suffer a fail result. appendix l: coded survey commentary table l. q coded commentary on ‘say yes’ say yes although i have ticked the always said yes box, it is meant as more of a state of mind—one can’t say yes to everything, nor should one! however, i have always believed in taking genuine opportunities when offered to me. always believed in myself and taken every opportunity which came my way in whatever genre presented. early in my career i would have ticked ‘always said “yes” …’ have accepted opportunities wherever possible, but not always been able to say yes, sometimes because of other major performances. in other words, i was forced to say no to good opportunities in order to take others. honestly had no idea whether i would ‘make it’ or not. always hoped and really did well as a freelancer. so unsure whether i really set goals for myself. rather i just kept working and saying yes to everything. however from about the age i had serious anxieties about my choice of career. i am naturally and basically a performing musician which i love being and will happily do whenever i have the opportunity i no longer say ‘yes’ to everything as i have in the past as certain things do not align with my artistic vision, regardless of pay. i've always remained open and always taken opportunities to diversify my skill set. i am glad i did as i have a rather unique and desirable skill set according to many industry members and potential companies looking to hire me. largely said yes to opportunities, but have tried to be someone that makes and keeps commitments no matter what. table l. q coded commentary on saying ‘yes’ to all opportunities saying ‘yes’ to all opportunities also—saying ‘yes’ to most opportunities. as such i’ll generally say yes to anything happily at least once knowing that it’s at least another network bridge, but one i don't have to cross again if it’s not worth it. early on i would have been more amenable to accepting an unpaid job for ‘experience’ and said yes to most opportunities. now at this stage in my career i would avoid those situations. say yes to everything you can until you are about to start double booking. table l. q coded commentary on dreams and attainable goal planning dreams v. attainable goal planning along the way i have set both large and small goals. i've always pursued the path that i want to take rather than the one i ‘should’ take. i studied music because i loved it and wanted to improve as a musician and instrumentalist not because it might lead to financial security. along the way i have both specialised but also attempted to somewhat diversify (conducting, doubling, improvising). this is partly to become more employable, but also because in genuinely interested in these areas of music. my idea is to be expert in one thing, but good at many other things as well. always set a vision for everything and broke this down into small steps—always. i am a happy (sometimes frustrated) blend of being a dreamy creative, and being highly motivated to set goals of creative achievement, but without a huge emphasis on the financial outcome of those goals. i have been lucky that my dream work also looked after me financially. it is no longer my dream work, but my job. but i still wouldn't do anything else. i have travelled the road less taken and am glad i did. i probably did not learn to plan my musical career until i studied something completely different where direct career pathways are planned and made—it made me more aware of doing something like that in music. i think most people would love to be employed full time in music however after taking many contracts in schools i know that full time teaching isn't for me. i’ve also never really had a desire to play full time in an symphony orchestra so never pursued this goal. my current goal is to become established in the field of audiology and then aim to get more work as a performing musician also. regarding the planning: i always have a plan with the full acknowledgement that it will change. my plans lead me to things i didn't expect. the ‘orchestral dream’ proved elusive but along the way i played loads of chamber music and worked with a lot of musicians and learnt a lot. there is a place for every musician who is willing to work hard and who is reliable. though i have worked beyond some of my dreams, i am aware that i have imposed limits upon myself which has stopped me achieving as much success as i believe i am capable of. i cannot complain though, so far. and there is much more to do. table l. q coded commentary on realistic and financially influenced approaches to career sustainability realism applied for work that was attainable and realistic for me and my qualifications in the brisbane area. as much as i would have loved to perform professionally full-time, realistically, given the niche nature of the genre i predominantly perform in, sustaining myself financially would have been difficult. i also found that i lost the love of performing music when it was my sole occupation. i was tempted to tick ‘been realistic...’, but actually i think i have always undervalued my capabilities and have not gone for 'dream' goals which might actually have been attainable. art/music focus ‘remained focused on art/music rather than finance’—although i had established a small teaching business, my energies there were always secondary to studies and composition, and most of my income funnelled back into my own projects. finance began not being aware of the reality of the music industry and i didn't have clear goals leaving uni. had more of a dream to build a career on original music but for many reasons i turned to a more secure option of teaching with gigging on the side i have always maintained a focus on finance and what my career would allow, have received very few grants or awards, and in the early years (whilst studying) undertook work outside music to supplement my living costs. i have always tried to create a balance between art and finance. i have always had to pay my own way as a musician since i was ... the thought of financial patrons and the idea of allowing others to support my own personal acquisitions and living costs has never been considered. as i do see the benefit the community can receive from my art and music creation, i am happy to apply for public funds to see myself paid for my music and creative production/s. i only decline opportunities when they are financially inviable, otherwise i always try to say ‘yes’ to opportunities. i'd like to say that i stayed focused on art/music instead of finance, however living a frugal existence for many years has influenced my music career deviation. although, i can never quite give it up completely. table l. q coded commentary on avoided planning avoided planning being famous has never been a desired outcome of what i do. being an accomplished and respected performer, has. with a life's work that sits outside of all popular music genres, i have simply been happy and satisfied to do my work to the very best of my ability. i am one of only a handful of women in australia doing this, and the only professional artist with my particular musical training and skills on certain instruments. i have, over years occasionally set some big goals (the o.s. trips) and have achieved everything i set out to do, with the exception now of writing and recording what would be a third, and probably final, album. money, while always necessary, has never been the reason for doing this. if it was, i wouldn't be doing it. being open to opportunities throughout my career, has led me to some amazing people and places, all of which has benefited my life personally and professionally. i more identify with avoiding planning. occasionally when i am changing directions i will consider doing something consciously to help change directions. but more often than not, i wander forward, and try to be open to opportunities. planning and goal setting seemed to be absent from my thinking in the first decade or more, so avoid planning wasn't so much a decision as a consequence.. table l. q coded commentary on a mix of career approaches mix a healthy reasonable mix of approaches. at one stage or another, all of these were true. the goals were usually set on the smaller scale (personal performance development, music-related activities), while on the larger scale i’ve been more interested in pursuing opportunities that presented themselves. i need to define ‘career’ to tick any other boxes! since my injury i’ve ‘avoided planning, rather decided to see where life takes me’. before that, i ‘set large “dream” goals’, and ‘always said “yes” to opportunities’. just because you set goals doesn’t mean you achieve them! i think it’s important to set goals but also be flexible. i have said yes to opportunities—but not always! set attainable goals regarding further study, tried to set large dream goals but have been too unclear about their execution, been realistic about capabilities and possible employment which in turn has led to less regular performance work. said ‘yes’ to many opportunities presented, but not all. periods on remaining focused on finance rather than the arts/music in order to achieve other life goals. short-term and long-term goals. the long-term ones change slightly but generally the direction has remained the same. i’ve always been careful to say no to things that i felt were not helpful to advancing my career or didn’t reflect the level i was at the time. fortunately i’ve been financially ok so i didn’t need to do that. i’ve been able to focus on art to some extent not having to worry as much as most about money, but i’m not ticking the box because finance is definitely something i think about a lot. planning ahead and making sure there are enough concerts in the diary for the coming season, estimating how much of that will be taken out in manager’s commission and tax, and then seeing if there’s enough left to pay rent and food and then generally live! some of the above are contradictory in some ways—though i’ve experienced all at some point, alternately or simultaneously, deliberately or not! this is a strange set of either or options. i have employed all of the above strategies at different times, because there is not a single strategy for success as a musician—rather, the whole point is being able to understand not just which musical skills but also which attitude will yield the greatest results given the circumstances. that might mean that i start a project with very large dream goals, but that once other parameters are confirmed such as resources/funding, that my goals shift towards a sense of what is attainable with the available resources and time. to be able to move between the approaches you list is the main criteria, because if you get stuck in one way of thinking about goals or opportunities or planning or being realistic it limits creativity. i set out on a performance career in music in the knowledge that at some stage my capabilities would have to evolve in order to survive. hence, i set out at an early stage in my career to be versatile in all forms and genres to be more employable, learning skills that would assist me in participating in any instrumental ensemble, and inevitably passing on my knowledge through teaching. table l. q coded commentary on family commitments family commitments i think i could probably tick all of the above, but with exceptions to each. for example, i try to say yes to opportunities but sometimes it’s just not possible with my family commitments. i have a balance of projects/employment, some of which i do purely for income, others purely for artistic satisfaction regardless of the $$ associated with it. and so on... my career is very much at the mercy of my family commitments. while i have full support to pursue any opportunity presented to me, i place my family at the top of the list of priorities. if it doesn’t suit our lifestyle choices, i don’t do it. the big factor that has limited my career has been my dedication to family. i had the opportunity to apply for university positions at different times in the usa but i wanted to be a mother and i didn't want my kids to be in full time daycare so i didn’t pursue those opportunities. i worked as an adjunct professor which is poorly paid and lower status. i also chose to come back to australia so i would be present and available for my aging parents. i accepted the fact that this would probably be the end of my opportunities to teach at the university level. table l. q coded commentary on career sustainability: versatility v. specialisation versatility v. specialisation i include teaching with all other aspects of music in many answers. diversification is as important as ‘specialisation’. gosh, i don't know what has sustained my career, and this might be reflected in the seeming contradictions in my answers. i do believe that i have benefited from being versatile (speaking, writing, producing, playing), but also from being specialised (contemporary music).... i’ve become more and more specialised in what i do. i think this has helped me reach a higher level of quality than i would've been able to if i had focused more on diversification. this in turn has helped me to focus on a career as a performer (mainly chamber music, saxophone and piano duo and saxophone quartet). skills, versatility and hard work. specialisation as well as diversification—i am a woodwind specialist, but also do multi instrumental; i am primarily involved with multi instrumental music but also do classroom and non-music relief teaching when required. table l. q coded commentary on career sustainability: high standard of work and professionalism maintaining a high standard of work if you work hard and maintain your relationships you make your own opportunities. always work to better yourself in everything you are doing. i feel that maintaining a high standard of work has been important for me over the years. also, having a professional approach has been important, as have been being positive and taking opportunities. maintaining professionalism in my field a lot has to do with professionalism and how you get along with everyone. i see it even now in the casual musicians we employ at qso. yes, a casual might play great but if they’re a pain in the butt to deal with they’re not going to get the work. table l. q coded commentary on fake it ‘till you make it fake it ‘till you make it not sure about the ‘fake it till you make it’ i think to some extent this is true but the key is you can’t be faking it for too long. i haven’t had a lot of jazz training however playing in shows often requires a stage band, style of playing which i’ve had to adapt to. similarly i playing in an iranian music group for a period of time and had to fit in there. yes you may need to fake it initially, but to get future work you have to ‘make it’ quicker. ‘fake it till you make it’ probably worked when i was an immediate graduate. don’t think it would work now. table l. q coded commentary on accepting unpaid work accepting unpaid work particularly in sydney unpaid work is very frowned upon (sometimes justifiably so when its clearly exploitative and factoring in the high cost of living—but sometimes also to the other extreme (e.g. charities) and tends to foster an elite attitude at an early stage of undergrad training without a corresponding level of ability or reliability). community music suffers greatly as a result. i’ve received many extensive/long term and well-paid opportunities directly out of doing unpaid work. also, sometimes when it’s a musical project (rather than commercial) it can be a chance to bring something great to life that wouldn’t be possible otherwise and encourages a community of mutual favours. early on i would have been more amenable to accepting an unpaid job for ‘experience’ and said yes to most opportunities. now at this stage in my career i would avoid those situations. and don’t take too many unpaid gigs! i dislike my own ‘accepting unpaid work’ admission. i have accepted unpaid work however i don't feel it has helped to sustain my music career. i have stopped accepting unpaid work—but i think that is integral in the beginning ‘fake it till you make it’—by accepting work that i'm maybe not the best option for, but working hard leading up to the opportunity—using it as an excuse to learn something new (new music, new techniques, etc.) often playing for a local community orchestra has helped me make more contacts with other clarinettists in the industry and led to teaching opportunities even if the initial work with the orchestra was unpaid. table l. q coded commentary on musicians’ consideration of the portfolio career profession survey participant no. comment to q negative consideration musicians now are self-serving egotists. i agree though i wouldn't want either of my children pursuing a music career. again, i think that making your passion/art into your main business is a bad idea from my experience. this quote really from t ferriss really resonated with me, ‘converting passions into work is the fastest way to kill those passions’ source: http://mashable.com/ / / /tim-ferriss/# zgbqmlbnoqj not because this is not the reality, but because there is a huge level of snobbery within the profession. in the classical world, certainly in australia, there is still the lingering perception that the best musicians are those employed in orchestras. positive consideration it's a current necessity for many people it is exciting, rewarding and varied, and open to possibilities yes people find it interesting and cool. i believe this is necessary in today's industry critical in fact. pretty much the only way to go if you can make it work financially. vital if this is the career and it’s successful, then the person is very respectable. music is very important in all societies. neurological studies are constantly finding new reasons to support this. a fundamental part of our psyche with deep connections to many areas of the primitive brain. educationally and therapeutically we are only at the tip of the iceberg. even if it’s not fashionable in concert halls it is destined to be a huge growth area in mental health and education. realistic option objective consideration you definitely have to be a special kind of person for this to be successful! gotta hand it to the ones who can make it work! provided excellence in music skill is obviously present. chacun a son gout [to each his own] i don't think our government agrees. we suffer for approval for home loans, are mistrusted by the tax office and may retire with very little, but it is a very respectable living in my opinion. being a musician is a very respectable profession, although it certainly has many risks and challenges. in a way, this is what i am. with such limited employment opportunities in what some might call more ‘purist’ settings, i believe it has become necessary in order to sustain a music career. i think it depends on what people value (money/satisfaction/stability), and whatever achieves that is subjective and valid. table l. q musicians’ perspective of non-music consideration of the portfolio career profession: likert results and commentary # likert results public perception of the profession strongly disagree i think that the profession of musician in general is widely misunderstood. strongly disagree most non-musicians do not appreciate music as a profession, even though, they listen to music incessantly. it is a stigma that needs to change in society. disagree a lot of people see musicians as someone who doesn’t earn enough (it’s true to be honest—i know fantastic musicians who earn much less). they don’t understand what it takes to produce the live music/composition that you do. for each hour of concert you have to place at least hours of work—this is not respected (your whole life goes into it). they also don’t understand why you don’t have time for people (my non-music friends don’t believe me when i say i am working so hard— minutes of music can take such a long time to invest). it’s respected but not enough. disagree general public don’t understand that you can earn a living from being a muso. disagree i think a lot of non-musicians are unaware of the work that goes into being a musician (practice, learning songs, contracts, etc.). it’s a self-employed business where one person does the jobs of many. disagree most people still think that music is something people do for enjoyment and in their spare time, unless they are a year old pop star! disagree non musicians often don't realise that if you really love music then you can't do anything else neutral i think in europe yes, but i’m not sure in australia. at least of my experiences in brisbane, i don’t think people really understand the profession. too much humidity perhaps. neutral i think most people have very little understanding of what we do. neutral most people wouldn’t have a clue what a portfolio musician is, but once explained to them i believe many would be jealous. neutral not sure this notion is understood widely outside of our field neutral people seem incredulous that it's possible to sustain a career as a musician. neutral people still think of musicians as performers and they still tend to think about the starving artist myth neutral some people may respect a musical career choice, but many people have little or no idea about the skills that are required or the lifestyle that is involved. agree i would like to see that non-musicians could see a broader picture of the working musician and realise the complexities involved. in this were the case, perhaps the pay would be commensurate. public romanticism of the career disagree ‘you make money playing music?’—most frequent response by non- musicians when describing my career. neutral most non-musician friends still hold a fairly romantic view of music careers, but would respect the realities they entail. disagree people have no idea about being a musician! ‘oh how wonderful to do what you love’ (!!!) respect for the profession disagree i respect it, but i don’t think people outside of the music industry do. neutral some would wonder at the level of stress generated and question income— but if they saw the portfolio muso was happy and supporting themselves and relishing the diversity, i’m sure they would respect it neutral as long as they aren’t destitute there's no reason why people would look down on them agree it varies from person to person. some see it as prestigious, especially if they understand and appreciate some of the jobs you have/you’ve had. however, some still ask me—after paying $ for a ticket—what i do for money. agree most non-musicians i talk to seem overwhelmed and in awe at the amount of work, dedication and sacrifice that musicians put towards their craft, especially in order to develop a portfolio career. agree music is a profession—not a vocation and therefore must be respected agree respected by those in the community who respect and understand the importance of the arts in society. less so by those who are not interested or educated in an appreciation of the arts. agree some non-musicians agree some people struggle to respect musicians all together! strongly agree as it is in germany (i.e.) strongly agree considering the groundwork of study/practice/networking associated with such a career. strongly agree i don't think it is but i feel it should be. strongly agree i think even more so to non-musicians—they’re overwhelmed by how much they do, know, their skills, and experience. hierarchy and the industry community … disagree particularly by orchestral players—there is still an incorrect assumption that the best musicians work full-time in the orchestras. my personal view is that the reverse is more accurate. neutral it is becoming more accepted to be a ‘legit’ thing. neutral i recently had my commitment to teaching questioned in an application as my resume reflected my broad range of activities. neutral who cares? i don't think all your income needs to come solely from the music profession. those who would judge you are likely consumed by the ‘all or nothing’ (hail mary) mindset agree i do. but i get the impression in orchestral music there is a definite ‘looking down their noses’ approach to people who aren’t full time with an orchestra. agree i find people outside the arts industry respect you more than within the arts... strongly agree if they succeed then other musicians would understand their worth. australian cultural/artistic climate neutral this one may take some time—but if the general landscape of our cultural society doesn't value arts and music, then this one will take even longer. agree given the cultural climate of australia—some people do not appreciate the effort it takes to be a musician. non answers neutral no idea and hard to tell for me. neutral non-musicians is a big category. neutral what is ‘portfolio’? table l. commentary on the use of non-music skills and knowledge surprise and justification wow! hi di—a big ticked list but it does describe the life of an indie musician :) i feel the boxes ticked are more or less representative as parallel skills that i have developed to support my music career. i have found that a broad range of non-music skills are needed to manage my music career—these are absolutely essential and sometimes things that you wouldn't expect needing knowledge of. i have needed all these skills on some level, even if very basic, at some point in my career. as an acoustic musician, i do wish i had greater knowledge of technology (i.e. recording options, audio equipment). i have needed many skills yet been formally trained in very few. this would be true of most musicians. i have probably used all of these skills at some point, but those highlighted are those i consider necessary foremost, and likely those i will require in future. to run my own music business and be in control of artistic outcomes i needed all the above skills. in the beginning i wish i had known this because i was reliant on others for too long. within any given year, one could need all of the above. wow! i have needed them all and engage with them all on a constant daily basis. these are all relevant!! i am a sole trader and need to know this information to promote my music and communicate with people in the industry. you need all these skills, some more than others. but certainly you need them (unless you’re rich enough to pay for someone to do it for you... lucky you!) skill commentary being easy to work with is, i believe, an important part of being successful in my musical area. finance (tax & superannuation)—necessary but not necessary in assisting my music career. finance: other. budgeting/budget management skill. knowledge of languages other than english. knowledge of technology (computers, etc. ...). my involvement in sport and sports coaching has had a significant impact on my develop and thinking in music performance and music education. through this i continue to develop a deeper understanding of planning and skill acquisition, communication skills and team dynamic. research methods. writing programme notes. time management is one i haven’t really thought of before. i know i’m pretty good at managing my time and believe that it is a necessary skill especially if a person is to be employed in a range of professional activities regardless of if they are music or non-music related. i’ve always thought however that it is something people either have, or don’t have. writing has been one of the most important, perhaps because i’ve had to wear many hats along the way. i’ve had to write program notes, marketing collateral (concert program blurbs, cd liner notes and sleaves), media releases, contribute to grant applications, letters of support, articles, website content. health has been a major area of concern—have suffered two major health crises that i assess were not helped by the stress of my music working life, and that stress was caused partially by lack of financial support for groups/projects. need for more skills could have used others in the list but do not possess them. most of these skills i have gained through experience, some i still don’t have, even though i understand i would be a more successful artist if i did. but, as i said before, it is unrealistic to expect one person to have all the above skills as well as a flawless technical ability. networking (for and against) i always wished i had stronger skills in networking, always quite uncomfortable in those situations where i have to ‘mingle’ my networking is strongest in the professional relationships that i have developed over the span of my career. i have left networking unchecked, despite the fact that i clearly have been ‘networking’ in some sense. but i feel like my interactions with other professionals have occurred naturally and are not a result of any active effort to network. i don’t feel that i’ve employed any conscious networking ‘skills’—not in the way i have employed writing, speaking, or event management skills, etc. being self-employed i have to have enough money to pay my people, i have to save, and what to do if people ask to use my music in films, networking is important—i actually like people, i like to work with the same people a lot—i am quite loyal. give people samples of work. i know many feel networking an essential in this profession. i hate the idea and never do any intentionally whereas obviously socially at concerts etc. a certain amount will take place. table l. q coded qualitative responses survey # financial concern apart from private teaching, curating and playing in my own gigs is not sustainable alone. but my income would drop significantly! employment opportunities—yes. stable income and employment—no. i already generate a small portion of work for myself but could not generate enough self- employment to survive completely financially. i could, but i would accept that it like a small business it would take financial investment and many years before there is income, so i'd need money to start or financial backing. i generally create my own opportunities but funding them is challenging and i can only charge commercial rates for selected projects. i have done so in the past many times, but the income is not steady nor is it sufficient. i know how to create these opportunities but i don’t feel that this would make a decent yearly wage though. if necessary i would; however the amount of income generated compared to effort always seems low. opportunities are there but not necessarily the appropriate income for the amount of work—at the moment i tend to keep my creative work separate to corporate work/non- music employment. possibly, but it would be risky and i feel there are more certain ways of success. self-generated employment opportunities are not always paid employment opportunities. not confident i could generate sufficient paid employment. those who create and fund their own projects, taking all the financial risk themselves, usually make a loss and end up worse than before. confident i do currently. and i’ve done this in the past. i already do and have. i could host chamber music concerts in my town. i created my performance and compositions etc. i have already done so. i have already successfully done this. i have done so since . i plan to form a chamber music group at some point and believe i have the skills to make that work. i would not have a career in music had i not done this. my opinion is based on being multi-skilled, open to new media and having strong referrals. yes, but don't worry about this so much. though i’ve never had to chase work, ive met and worked with enough people who have had to make employment opportunities, so can call on people and the things i've seen over the years. yes because i have developed strong ties in the community. have made enough contacts to confidently build more performance opportunities. i feel little choice. i do write theatre in my down time. i have been fortunate to be able to employ people in these shows. i don’t know if my luck will last out in future though. publicity and music business. teaching v. performance as a performer, this is questionable, as a teacher, there would likely be minimal problems. currently established but always accepting new students. generating more private students over school students. i don’t know how to answer this. as a teacher i feel i could advertise and have some home tutoring happen but would need to apply for jobs advertised on seek et al. as a performer i have no hope. more confident to do that in education in brisbane. piano teaching and accompanying. likelihood of changing careers or seeking more contract work although i strongly agree, i would think long and hard before creating music employment opportunities rather than non music employment opportunities. if i didn’t have my current job i wouldn’t be continue in music. would do auditions for orchestral casual work. this may not be work that i particularly enjoy. lack of skills/confidence i believe the sheer amount of administration required would prove to be overwhelming. i feel i have the motivation and ideas, but perhaps would lack the grant writing skills, business sense and time! i have largely focused on a intensive orchestral training, and i fear i lack certain skills for working in a freelance/solo career environment. i lack business/entrepreneur skills. i’m out of the ‘loop’ now. hard to know until forced to by lack of work. i am a freelance performer and wait to be asked/found. non-conducive environment creating employment appears to have become much more difficult in sydney in recent years. i can’t create music teaching jobs in schools that don’t already exist. perhaps in the past, but it is increasingly difficult. this is dependent on the artistic landscape of the city/surroundings/demand for what i do. this would depend on demand, unsure of successfulness! very hard in australia. not much culture here to support full-time performing unless you are with the defence bands (raaf, navy, army). table l. q coded qualitative responses on contract v. creative projects/work survey # financial concern at earlier points in my career i have invested a great deal of time into my own creative projects. whilst rewarding this often bring little financial reward. i currently have a young family and sydney mortgage so any work that is minimum effort maximum financial reward is appealing at this time in my life. definitely depends on the projects available and current financial situation. i would prefer own creative projects if same stability and income equally reliable. it takes a great deal of time/money/risk to set up own project. other commitments make that difficult. previously ‘disagree’. currently ‘agree’, to maintain a financial even keel. this is to the detriment of my artistic satisfaction. realistically, you need a steady income to afford a car or get a house loan. see above: contract work remains the most financially secure. enjoy both am happy doing both. i do both and both have their place. i enjoy both. i generally look for opportunities which allow me to balance creative projects with pay the bills work. i like balancing both but contract work is easier. i like both. i think maintaining your own creative output is important—it’s easy to lose your voice as a performer getting locked into too much contract work/having no say in repertoire etc. having said that, most of my contract work is very rewarding! i would like both. i’m more and more drawn to creating my own projects; contract work keeps finding me and it’s work that i’m happy/excited to be doing. i try to create my own opportunities alongside this. i prefer to have a mix of both. musical freedom is more apparent in situations that i have created. prefer a balance. some of the time. i like a balance between working for somebody else and being more in control of the artistic outcomes myself. yes and no—it’s nice to simply be contracted to play and nothing else however the thrill out of creating something you love is also enticing. ‘work’ being defined as receiving pay for a service... i am happy to instigate and pursue my own projects for no financial return. a blend of both. although i generally agree, and enjoy doing contract work, i have plans to one day instigate some significant creative projects of my own. perceived barriers to creating own work contract work is generally a less stress environment than creating own work. often feel it would be more satisfying to create my own but it seems too difficult to get started. this has depended upon the work climate. wish i had the admin and promotional skills (and the associated time!) to be more active with my own projects. preference for contract work i prefer to apply for a teaching job than trying to generate at home teaching opportunities. i prefer to be asked to do a concert and paid for my services. my sort of music fits very well with the system already in place, but i can see that other people want to break the mould. preference for creative work nothing better than a creative project. quality of work depends on what that contract work is. table l. q coded responses on full-time v. other forms of employment survey # financial and job security, family commitments, ageing financial stability is important when you have a family to provide for. for job security, yes. though i fear i might become bitter and bored... getting older maybe... i like free time to reflect and grow as a musician but full time employment would provide more security as i get older. i valued job and financial security. one of the problems with my work is it’s all contract. i’d love sick pay and holiday leave. partly to fulfil the australian dream of owning my own home. there’s not enough money alone in performing. gigging provides no stability, hence finding the perfect balance between teaching music and gigging. security—super—holiday pay—paid leave. this was not always the case, but now, with further family commitments, full time work is preferred. at this time [aged ]. i would like it for the financial reward as long as the job suited me. i would prefer contract/sessional work and as varied as possible, however, in the music realm this is not possible due to uncertain/insufficient monetary returns. preference for flexibility and variety a balance between − % in orchestra and a stelle [job] in musikschule system to be quite attractive. a full time workload of contracts/sessional work would be most desirable for the variety. diversity and variety is what i like and full-time doesn’t necessarily guarantee or encourage that. i chose to go back to . . too stressful working full time and being full time wife and mother. i enjoy contract and session freelancing for its flexibility on content and schedule. i enjoy the flexibility and variety of what i do. i like the flexibility and changing nature of my work. i think if i stayed with one employer my art would stagnate and then go backwards. i would like to have a stable position so that my freelance work is made significantly easier, but not a full time position that would eat up all my time for other creative endeavours. only would prefer that if the work remains varied and satisfying. prefer the variety of choosing what i do. sessional work allows me more freedom to take on other forms of performing/composing. variety as a musician can lead to greater reflection on and growth as a musician and teacher. very much enjoy the flexibility of my current employment. while full-time employment is great, at times, the flexibility to move 'beyond this', would be great. it depends … a university posting is probably the only kind of full-time work i would be suitable for. i would prefer that to long contracts. [yes] but not in music! depends on the setting and flexibility to do my own projects. full time work is definitely preferred as it allows for more focus and less stress. however i would seek full time employment that is diverse and varied. that said, part time and contract work is necessary for experience! i will not work full time while i have young children. if this full time work would be at an opera company. if workload were reasonable as a lecturer, i would say ‘strongly agree’. in performance. in performance not teaching. more security. as long as you can still be creative. unless it’s an orchestral position, no. i like the many facets of freelance career, however small. unless the full-time work allowed me to continue pursuing my own performance opportunities as well. for example, a full-time tertiary teaching position at a college. the dream would be to get a full-time position as a performer e.g. with a symphony orchestra, but of course the reality is that these jobs are few and far between. content with all employment forms both work situations have their pluses and minuses. i would love to have an orchestra or opera or ballet company but happily will conduct whatever presents itself. table l. musicians’ coded reflective perspective of undergraduate vocational preparation education code example key words/phrases n= % of positive very positive, positive, relieved, interested, curious, with appreciation, comfortably, profitable, open-minded, helpful, popular, desirable, grateful, thankful. . mixed perspective lukewarm attention, some would like it and some would not, later in the degree would have more relevance, positive but rather learning their instrument, ‘rich kids’ would not think it applicable, it depends on the students goal, creative goals may feel challenged. . retrospective appreciation ‘in the long term, thankful’ (# ); ‘might not have appreciated it completely at the time, but it would have been useful knowledge’ (# ); ‘negatively at the time, but positively looking back’ (# ); ‘many would have not paid attention, although many would have found it beneficial afterward’ (# ); ‘at the time they would have whinged, but upon entering the industry have seen how much of a blessing it was’ (# ). . negative shocking, discouraged, denial, no need, not important, sceptical, boring, ignorant, non- plussed, scared, not ready, non-accepting, reality resistant, dream killing, beyond perception, ‘i’ll learn about this later’, ‘how does this apply to me?’, ambivalence, distracting, disbelief, disinterest, not ready, confronting, overwhelmed, irrelevant, resentful, cynical, sarcastic. . experienced—negative ‘with despair. i actually saw this happen in classes where teachers gave real-world examples’ (# ); ‘i experienced a terrible course with a deceitful lecturer, so made me more sceptical about such industry learning [not qcgu]’ (# ); ‘well my year was the first to encounter the introduction of business skills. many many many did not respond well to it’ (# ); ‘[prior to mlaam] we wanted more engaged teachers, who cared about our creative interests and who might have shared their hard- won career insights –but they did neither’ (# ); ‘we did a one year (or one semester) business skills course [not qcgu] and it was met with disdain by many students’ (# ). . non answer not sure, ‘it was sadly lacking and conspicuously missing from the degree’ (# ). . non attempt total table l. twenty-first century musician skills required (coded—interviewed musicians) participant skills recommended quote nerida listening/awareness listening and reacting is really important so that you don’t make it about you. nerida practice as a musician you practise -> you get good -> you get gigs -> you play with lots of other people. nerida professionalism if you do make mistakes learn to suck it up, accept it, apologise and immediately move on. nerida project management this wonderful thing called show, this business we call show! troy hard work work hard and do your best and doors open and don’t say no to anyone unless you have to, unless it’s illegal. but i just find doors open if you work hard, one door leads to another door and it keeps going but some people just don’t want to try that door and they will turn around and it may be the biggest opportunity through that door often beyond what you can see. margaret ‘other skills’ <not commented on> margaret community of practice don’t just be a taker be a giver as well and try and… if someone gives you an opportunity then down the track, it doesn’t have to be straight away, but find some way of giving back or paying it forward to the next generation or the next person. margaret professionalism look no one wants to give a job to a jerk so be the nice person. lula business skills like the business stuff, like getting a bio in place before you leave. lula degree engagement i’d say use your time here, try to use it to its full capacity because you think you don’t have much time, you do all these classes and everything, but actually you do, compared to having to do a job that you’re not really that thrilled about but you have to do a lot of hours to make money. lula goal planning try and get some short term and long term goals so that you have some sort of a plan when you leave. derrick persistence there were some great players when i was there that don’t play music anymore that gave up and they were much better than me but i just wanted it pretty badly and i didn’t want to do anything else. derrick professionalism be polite to everyone, don’t be nasty to anyone because it just comes back, especially in a small town. jane industry knowledge if you don’t know what it is you are about to step into or that you want to be part of then it’s hard to know how to apply those skills that you have. jane professionalism there is always an unspoken way to go about things and i think it’s good knowledge to have. tina not asked james professionalism james self-promotion: networking, online presence i think your ability to create your own opportunities that’s very much how you can bring attention to yourself. simon enthusiasm and i think contribute when you know it’s appropriate, yeah, because that’s a dangerous area contributing in a symphony orchestra if you are not a full time member especially. simon interpersonal skills simon open to criticism i have a colleague who can be quite blunt but i have to say i am a better horn player not that i agree with the tactic used, but i am a better horn player because possibly because of his bluntness. simon professionalism darryl self-promotion students should learn how to promote themselves and sell themselves. chris n/a n/a aaron adaptability so accepting variation. aaron passion you have got to love it %, as in it has got to be right off the charts, you’ve got to want to love doing music, and breathe it, eat it, play it, soak it up, talk about it, jam it, for fun, for no money, for lots of money, in places that you don’t like, in places that you love. aaron resilience and accepting every point in time. robert preparation prepare better. greg business skills – tax, grant applications, fee quoting i still get emailed by other composers who are really quite well established in terms of their skill, but they don’t know what to charge somebody when they are asked to. greg industry/audience knowledge i think students need to be encouraged to broaden their scope. heidi communication and self-awareness references test. 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( ). career trajectories of dutch pop musicians: a longitudinal study. journal of vocational behaviour, , – . https://doi.org/ . /j.jvb. . . 	s tolmie thesis revised august 	s tolmie thesis revised august . 	s tolmie thesis revised august . 	phd survey australian portfolio musician.pdf 	the australian portfolio musician 	survey information and disclaimer 	gu ref no: qcm/ / /hrec dear musician, i am undertaking research for a doctor of philosophy at queensland conservatorium griffith university. titled “designing a tertiary music institution course to prepare for contemporary career realities” the topic will be investigating “taking into account st century realities for music professionals in australia, which elements incorporated into a tertiary music industry preparation strand are likely to be most effective in preparing students for successful careers?” in particular i am seeking to gain information about active musicians, and those that have left the profession, in queensland. in addition tertiary music industry educators, queensland conservatorium staff, tertiary music students, key arts administrators and advocates attitudes and opinions will be sought. the focus on this research is on the implications for tertiary music students seeking music employment within their degree and upon graduation. the research will involve investigating the australian portfolio career musician – specifically the requirements and skills one needs in order to survive, thrive and sustain a career in music. you will be asked to complete an online survey that should take no longer than minutes of your time. you have been chosen as you are a member of my musician network and i have either worked with you in the past or know of someone who has worked with who identifies your participation (past or present) in the australian music industry. the risk to you from participating in this research is no greater than that arising from daily living. as your participation is completely voluntary, you are more than welcome to withdraw from your participation in this study at any time without any further recourse or impact on the relationships within the music industry. survey monkey is the online survey tool of choice of many researchers, used for its privacy guarantee, encryption software and reputation for security. for more information on surveymonkey’s security policy please visit https://www.surveymonkey.net/mp/policy/security/ all respondent answers will be collected, stored and accessed only by the survey designer (diana tolmie). 
 the data collected through this research will provide material for discussion on what skills and information is required to become an employable musician; as well as best-practice delivery for music vocational preparation education. further outcomes will include a handbook publication in support of the queensland conservatorium's my life as a musician vocation preparation strand as well as an online tool and career support open to all tertiary music students and musicians with an arts entrepreneurial interest. the conduct of this research involves the collection, access and / or use of your de-identified personal information. your de-identified personal information may appear in the publications/reports arising from this research. by participating in this survey you are allowing this to occur. any additional personal information collected is confidential and will not be disclosed to third parties without your consent, except to meet government, legal or other regulatory authority requirements. a de-identified copy of this data may be used for other research purposes. however, your anonymity will at all times be safeguarded, except where you have consented otherwise. for further information consult the university’s privacy plan at http://www.griffith.edu.au/about-griffith/plans-publications/griffith-university-privacy-plan or telephone the manager, research ethics ( ) or email researchethics@griffith.edu.au thank-you so very much! i really appreciate your help with this. best wishes research team diana tolmie – student researcher contact: d.tolmie@griffith.edu.au don lebler: co-chief investigator contact: d.lebler@griffith.edu.au huib schippers: co-chief investigator con 	 . i have read the above research statement and agree to participate in this survey. i acknowledge the risks involved and that my identity will remain anonymous. 	the australian portfolio musician 	 . please describe your current career identity (include music and non-music employment where applicable) 	 . please select your gender identity 	 . what city, state and country do you currently live in? (e.g. brisbane, qld, australia) 	 . how old are you? 	 . which of the following best describes your current relationship status? 	 . please select whether you live 	 . have you ever studied at a tertiary music institution? 	the australian portfolio musician 	 . did you study at the queensland conservatorium? 	 . did you graduate from the queensland conservatorium? 	the australian portfolio musician 	 . what is your highest music qualification? 	the australian portfolio musician 	 . have you completed non-music tertiary education? 	the australian portfolio musician 	 . please state the diploma/degree title 	the australian portfolio musician 	 . one definition of a musician is ‘a person who practises in the profession of music within one or more specialist fields’. do you believe this to include teaching music? 	 . how long have you experienced music-related employment? 	 . how old were you when you first began financially earning from music-related employment? 	 . was this first experience during: 	the australian portfolio musician 	 . how many years after graduating from your undergraduate degree was your experience of financially earning from music employment? 	the australian portfolio musician 	 . please describe your first music employment experience (i.e. that you were paid or received goods/services for your own services) 	 . approximately how much ($ or trade of services/products) were you paid for this employment? 	 . for the same music service, approximately how much would you currently expect to be paid? 	 . i currently consider myself to be a: 	 . during my career i have left or considered leaving my music/music-related profession 	the australian portfolio musician 	 . what influenced you to exit or consider exiting a career in music? (please check all that apply) 	 . please state in $ your approximate highest before-tax income earned within one financial year and the related year 	 . please state in $ your approximate lowest before-tax income earned within one financial year and the related year 	 . how did you gain your music employment when you were first beginning/starting out? (please check all that apply) 	 . how do you presently gain your music employment? (please check all that apply) 	 . initially, the work in my music career was predominantly: 	 . the music employment i engage with now, is predominantly 	 . my initial motivation to pursue a career in music was to work in one or more of the following fields - please check all that apply: 	 . i now work within (please check those that apply): 	 . my current career represents my initial/early music career aspirations 	 . please briefly summarize your career path to date (the basics will be fine): 	 . during my career i have (please check all that apply) 	 . in my current employment i value the opportunities for (please check all that apply): 	 . i believe music is my "calling" 	 . looking back, my yearly income during my career has 	 . looking back, my career satisfaction has 	 . part of my total yearly income includes teaching 	the australian portfolio musician 	 . my ratio of teaching vs other work is: (e.g. : i.e. % teaching vs % other work. note: your teaching ratio is first :) ) 	the australian portfolio musician 	 . my yearly income includes non-music employment 	the australian portfolio musician 	 . please describe your non-music employment 	the australian portfolio musician 	 . i feel confident i could create my own music employment opportunities if required 	 . i would prefer contract work than instigating my own creative projects/work 	 . i would prefer fulltime work to all other possibilities of employment (e.g. part-time, contract/sessional etc) 	 . i find the business skills required to support/sustain a music career ... (please check all that apply) 	 . in general, i consider myself a confident person 	 . in general, i consider myself a brave person 	 . in general, i consider myself a disciplined person 	 . in general, i consider myself a resilient person 	 . in general, i consider myself an entrepreneurial person 	 . in general, i consider i am passionate about music 	 . to date, i have been paid to engage with these broad styles of music: (check all that apply): 	 . the non-music skills and knowledge i have needed to assist my music career includes (please check all that apply): 	 . i have gained this information via ... (please check all that apply) 	 . i currently feel i require more knowledge about (check all that apply): 	 . i plan to seek out this information via ... 	 . in the past, i have noticed my opportunity for music employment has been negatively affected by (check all that apply): 	 . my music employment has positively benefited from (please check all that apply): 	 . i believe the music industry is currently ... 	 . to date i have sustained my music career by (please check all that apply) 	 . i believe my undergraduate degree sufficiently prepared me for a career in music: 	 . in my undergraduate degree/diploma, i wish there was more focus on (please check all that apply): 	 . what non-music skills/knowledge do you consider graduating music students need to sustain a music career in the st century? check all that apply 	 . in order to successfully teach music industry/business and career management, a tertiary music lecturer would need to possess the following attributes (please check all applicable) 	the australian portfolio musician 	 . thinking back to your time as an undergraduate music student on day one of your undergraduate degree/training ("training" = those who did not study) -  please use one word to describe yourself (e.g. focussed, determined, worried, curious etc) 	 . thinking back to your time as an undergraduate music student or musician-in-training, how do you feel your fellow students/colleagues would have responded to a course discussing the realities of the music industry (and learning related non-music business skills)? 	 . please describe the difference (if at all) of the music industry now, to when you first started out 	 . i consider a portfolio musician's career (i.e. a musician that sources their financial income from a variety of areas in the music profession) to be a respectable profession 	 . i consider a portfolio musician's career (i.e. a musician that sources their financial income from a variety of areas in the music profession) to be a respected profession by non-musicians 	 . what do you love about music? (please check all that apply) 	 . who most inspires you to be the musician you are? 	 . what do you wish to do long-term with your career? 	 . can you see yourself retiring from music? 	the australian portfolio musician 	from me and the future students of the queensland conservatorium, thank you so very much for taking this survey. i will keep you informed of the results via newsletter updates and website promotion. please feel free to keep in touch. in the meantime, happy holidays and all the best for a wonderful ! (please hit "done" to submit and exit) diana tolmie :) 	 : 	 : 	 : 	 : 	 : 	 : 	 : 	 : 	 : 	 _other: 	 []: off 	 _other: 	 : 	 : 	 []: off 	 []: off 	 _other: 	 _other: 	 _other: 	 _other: 	 []: off 	 _other: 	 []: off 	 _other: 	 : 	 []: off 	 []: off 	 _other: 	 _other: 	 _other: 	 _other: 	 _other: 	 []: off 	 : 	 _other: 	 []: off 	 _other: 	 []: off 	 []: off 	 _other: 	 _other: 	 []: off 	 _other: 	 []: off 	 _other: 	 []: off 	 _other: 	 []: off 	 _other: 	 _other: 	 []: off 	 _other: 	 _other: 	 []: off 	 _other: 	 []: off 	 _other: 	 []: off 	 _other: 	 : 	 : 	 _other: 	 _other: 	 : 	 []: off 	 _other: 	 _other: 	 : jom, vol. , no. , doi: . /s - - - Ó the minerals, metals & materials society meet a memberjothemagazine lynne robinson guitar collecting strikes a chord for alex king there is a lot more to alex king’s guitar collection than meets the ear. king, director of the critical materials institute at the ames laboratory and bergdahl professor of materials science at iowa state university, has played guitar for “serious” instrument in college. when he happened upon a second-hand plexiglass bodied guitar in , he picked up a fascination with the stuff that guitars are made of, as well as the sound they make— and the relationship between the two. king now owns about guitars, nearly all of them made from non- traditional materials. in addition to the plexiglass instrument that started it all, there is a bakelite electric guitar from the s and an injection-molded polystyrene acoustic guitar made by the same luthier who supplied jazz guitar legend django reinhardt with some of his earlier instruments. metal, carbon feature in other pieces of king’s collection. “basically, you can make a guitar out of just about anything, but the choices do have some impact,” said king. “guitar makers have often used new materials soon after they have become available, alex king surrounded by his guitars. (photo courtesy of ames laboratory.) this travis bean tb s in king’s collection, with an aluminum neck, was made in and is one of only about , that have ever existed. “the necks were machined from -t aluminum, extended the full length of the strings, and also housed the pick-ups,” said king. “they never, ever, warped, but were somewhat over-designed, very heavy, and ill-balanced for playing on a strap. bean claimed that he made a loss on every one that he sold, but despite its problems, this guitar still sounds great. this is partly because the pickups are set into the instrument’s aluminum core, protecting them from stray fi elds so they are virtually immune from ‘mains hum.’ this occurs when pickups are sensitive to the electric fi elds of lights and other electrical equipment.” meet a member king’s ampeg dan armstrong guitar with a plexiglass body is one of about , ever made. “this guitar has some other innovative features, such as an interchangeable pick-up, but the see-through body material was chosen for only one reason—it was cool,” said king. “the guitar has a few problems, including being a little heavy, and generating static electricity when it rubs against the player’s clothing. this causes some disturbing crackling noises from time to time.” each month, jom profiles a tms member with a particular hobby, interest or experience to share. to suggest a candidate for this feature, contact lynne robinson at lrobinson@tms.org. this photo shows the headstock of king’s rickenbacher b electro, dating back to the s. king noted that it is one of the earliest electric guitars to go into production, and the body and neck are made entirely from bakelite, considered a high-tech material at the time. “despite the fairly early stage of development, this guitar has a truly classic electric guitar tone, and it probably helped to set the standard for all electric guitars to follow,” said king. “it is a ‘lap steel’ guitar, intended to be played resting on your lap, using a steel bar to press the strings. and it weighs a ton!” king’s national style o, from around , is the type of guitar referred to by paul simon in his song, “graceland” (“the mississippi delta was shining like a national guitar…”). sometimes referred to as a “national steel guitar,” the body is actually made from nickel-plated brass. king explained that the guitar’s nickname refers to how it is played—by pressing a steel bar against the strings, instead of fretting with the fi ngers. so there is always a bit of a sense of experimentation with these instruments. not all of the experiments worked out. but, one that did work well was the use of masonite by danelectro, which made silvertone-branded electric guitars for sears. masonite has zero acoustic qualities, and was chosen simply to make the guitar as cheap as possible, but somehow these things came out sounding great. lots of famous people have played them.” unconventional materials selections have also been used to address common structural or performance issues in guitars, sometimes with mixed results. “metal necks appeared on a few guitars as a way to avoid neck warpage,” said king. “it’s a pretty good solution, except that the neck can get very heavy and the guitar is often unbalanced if you play it standing up, using a strap.” while king describes himself as a “basement musician,” he occasionally takes his knowledge of materials and music on the road to student groups and audiences at the science center of iowa. “there are a lot of people who like guitars,” he said. “talking about my collection lets me introduce a few of them to a little bit of materials science and how science, engineering, and the arts all interact.” king is still on the hunt to add a few elusive guitars to his stable of instruments. “i’m looking for a rickenbacher ‘frying guitar—made out of cast aluminum, and very rare indeed,” he said. “but, it’s always fun to discover an instrument that you haven’t seen before.” he notes that he’s made a few friends who share his interests along the way. “there’s an odd sort of fraternity among guitar collectors,” he said. all of king’s guitars come off display to get played from time to time, with king saying that his favorites “are the ones that are easy to play.” his musical tastes range from rock to jazz to english folk and beyond, and he tries to see guitarists perform live as much as possible. “i basically admire anyone who plays better than me, which is a whole lot of people,” he said. “but, i still enjoy listening to guitarists, and playing guitars, too.” especially that very cool plexiglass one. 	meet a member 	guitar collecting strikes a chord for alex king are replicas of nicolÁs del valle's pear-shaped guitar from acoustically matching the original? are replicas of nicolÁs del valle's pear-shaped guitar from acoustically matching the original? robert mores professor at the hamburg applied university of applied sciences. abstract: replicas of musical instruments typically intend to preserve cultural heritage or to allow people to have a share in instruments with desirable historical or performance properties, such as rare instruments. three physical copies of a pear-shaped guitar from nicolás del valle have been built in , and these are briefly investigated in terms of some main acoustical properties. this short letter briefly reviews the issue of geometric versus tonal copies in the context of plate and instrument tuning, and the achievements in tonal copies, in particular in the market of violins. the three guitar copies are then evaluated. while metrics accuracy in the reproduction process seems to play a role, accuracy in the determination of wood properties and their impact to sound seems to play a less important role. however, these properties can cause noticeable acoustical differences. key words: guitar, replica, acoustics resumen: las réplicas de instrumentos musicales buscan preservar el patrimonio cultural y permitir que las personas conozcan y puedan escuchar instrumentos de alta calidad con historia, como por ejemplo instrumentos únicos. tres copias físicas de una guitarra con forma de pera de nicolás del valle se construyeron en , las cuales se investigan brevemente en términos de algunas propiedades acústicas básicas. este breve ensayo sobrevuela el tema de las copias geométricas versus tonales en el contexto de la afinación de placa e instrumento en conjunto con el alcance de copias tonales, particularmente para el mercado de los violines. se continua con una evaluación de las tres copias de guitarras. si bien la precisión de las métricas en el proceso de reproducción parece jugar un papel; la precisión en la determinación de las propiedades de la madera y su impacto en el sonido parece tener menor importancia. sin embargo, estas propiedades pueden causar diferencias acústicas notables. palabras clave: guitarra, replicar, acústica mÚsica oral del sur, nº , año , issn centro de documentación musical de andalucía robert mores mores, robert, "are replicas of nicolás del valle's pear-shaped guitar from acoustically matching the original?". música oral del sur, n. , pp. - , , issn - fecha de recepción: - - fecha de aceptación: - - introduction replicas of musical instruments are often motivated to allow a larger multitude of musicians to participate in using high-level musical instruments while they learn and perform with instruments having desired features. while the number or the availability of original instruments is often limited, an appropriate replica allows affordable participation. the level of perfection of copying originals reaches from approximate imitations of models in mass markets to perfect replicas of specific instruments for individual customers. in terms of mass market, even a poor copy of a dreadnought guitar will sound more or less like a dreadnought guitar, and will clearly differ from a mediaeval lute and its copy or from a modern jazz guitar and its cheap factory made copy. at the top end of the market, a knowledgeably and hand made master piece might get very close to an original model and might at the same time reveal minor deviations as well as interesting and desirable sound features on its own, as a result of a months-long piece of work. while judging the perfection of matching an original, inspection of metrics and visual features is objective and seems to be the easy part. exploring the match of sound and playability features is typically subjective and much more difficult. in the context of the temporal exhibition ‘play. cienca y música’ in the science park in granada, the granadian guitar makers aarón garcía ruiz and oscar muñoz manufactured three replicas of a pear-shaped guitar from nicolás del valle, built in . while the motivation of the project was educational in the science park - showing the process of manufacturing a guitar in a display workshop - the two guitar makers followed their tradition of craftsmanship. this means that they built the guitars along the technical drawing previously taken from the original and at the same time incorporate their knowledge and experience. for example, crafting the top would be ruled by a given measure for the plate strength, but still the luthiers would deviate slightly from this measure here and there to achieve a uniform stiffness across the top. the two guitar makers worked together on each of the three models, effectively aggregating their knowledge and experience. the question raises whether the beautifully manufactured guitars are appropriate copies in terms of sound. this is interesting here because there are three copies in place, representing the aggregated experience of two guitar makers. how the resulting sound relates to the sound of the original instrument will be evaluated by some objective acoustical measures. the guitar makers' objective target mÚsica oral del sur, nº , año , issn centro de documentación musical de andalucía are replicas of nicolÁs del valle's pear-shaped guitar from acoustically matching the original? the guitar maker aarón garcía ruiz believes that the original guitar from del valle is not any longer in its original condition and that the sound, as a consequence, is not any longer the same as intended by the creator. he reports: “the guitar nicolás del valle subject of copy has not arrived to the present intact. in more than one occasion it has been restored and, what is more important, it has been "scraped" (eliminated the varnish with a cabinetmaker blade), and the shellac film has been changed after some of the restorations. this implies a reduction in the thicknesses of the boards that make up the instrument, which undoubtedly were somewhat thicker when it was manufactured. but this original thickness is not already measurable, so we had to stick to a hypothetical proposal.” there are good examples of restoration, where removing the shellac does not necessarily mean a thinning of the top. but the above statement is grounded on many years of experience in restoring musical instruments. therefore, aarón garcía ruiz intends to trace back to the original, saying: “the intention of the project has been to recreate the work, the systems of elaboration of the pieces and the use of materials and techniques that were used in granada years ago in the construction of guitars. ... we wanted to get instruments that look like nicolás del valle's guitar when it was built, not as it is today. we know that it is always a future to carry out this type of approach to the knowledge of ancient instruments, but in any case, it is a proposal as valid and objective as others. the pieces have been worked with hand tools, using the same types of saws, chisels and planes that nicolás del valle could use; french polishing has been applied, filling the pore with pumice, in a completely traditional way. the instruments have been tested with nylon strings and alternatively also with gut strings, which were used in the middle of the th century in all the instruments of the guitar family.” and furthermore, in terms of trading between sound and the geometric accuracy of a copy, he states: “the copies have been made without subjecting us to the slavery of the caliber; in each moment we have worked with the desire to make a theoretical model rather than an exact copy. the boards with which the guitars have been built have been thinned to the thicknesses that we have considered, the two makers, which were adequate according to our extensive experience with materials and guitar construction techniques, thinking about the tuning and type of guitars, and the strings that i should have. knowing the tradition of the granadian school, and its way of working pushing the materials to the limit to achieve a good acoustic response, we have used more intuition and testing while manually bending the plates with the hands and thumbs (technique described by antonio de torres as his only secret), always taking into account the materials used that have been relatively heterogeneous in their origin. but we have been very conscientious in this aspect, taking into account each plate and its characteristics to assign the thicknesses, alignment of veins mÚsica oral del sur, nº , año , issn centro de documentación musical de andalucía robert mores and work of roughing. the only variant that we have not analyzed has been the age of the plates, which reaches differences of more than forty years. this we have noticed extensively when working since very dry wood, crystallized over the years, has completely different characteristics than the recently cut, which is softer and easier to work and bend.” and in terms of wood selection, he reports: “in two of the guitars (the b and the c) we have used for the top and spruce picea abies for the box cypress cupressus sempervirens with more than fifty years of drying in both cases (bought from the heirs of antonio ariza), while that in the other (copy a) has been used wood with approximately five years of drying. ... in this case the cypress was cut by me in the albaicin neighbourhood of granada. for the rest of the woods (spanish cedar cedrela odorata, walnut juglans regia, indian rosewood dalberghia latifolia) some material from diverse origins has been used, considering that it has less acoustic importance than the top and the body of the instrument.” finally, about the results, he states: “for us, the construction process of the three instruments has been so important, how it has been developed, and the final visible result, with which we are fully satisfied; to the point where we propose that these copies may be more similar to valle's guitar in its initial state than it is today, after being restored and modified.” review a recent project aimed at restoring a historical guitar, made by the casella brothers, catania, around (andreou, et al., ). the restorers scanned the geometry and explored the applied materials not only for restoration but also for manufacturing a physical copy of the instrument. after restoration and manufacturing they investigated the acoustical identity between the two instruments using the impulse response method. the response of a structure to a very short impulse reveals enough temporal and spectral features to predict similarities not only of structure borne sound but also of radiated and perceived sound. as a result, the two guitars “have almost similar admittance curves at the range of to hz”, as shown by a frequency plot. unfortunately, the important range below hz is not shown or documented in the mentioned publication. this range covers the fundamental air mode and some longitudinal modes across the guitar. still, the result is impressive, as the copy gains from the diligence of careful restoration rather than from the experience of guitar makers. it is also impressive since the test was conducted after the work has been finished, and the restorers did not seem to take intermediate acoustical measures, nor means or action to finally achieve acoustical identity. are “accurate” metrics and material propositions enough to manufacture an acoustical twin? one puzzling observation is that two plates of same measures and thickness coming from the same tree do sound different when knocked at appropriate spots on the plate. this mÚsica oral del sur, nº , año , issn centro de documentación musical de andalucía are replicas of nicolÁs del valle's pear-shaped guitar from acoustically matching the original? is even true when the plates come from the same wedge, i.e. they grew side-by-side in the same location within the same log of wood, have the same pattern of annual rings, and have had the same drying process. this is a commonly agreed upon observation, and the mentioned guitar makers and the author observed this again for the pieces prepared for further copies of the del avalle guitar, in the workshop. this observation explains why the guitar makers, even in this project, incorporated their experience when they smoothen the plate stiffness while taking the given target plate strength of the original del valle guitar only as an indicator for the general target stiffness of the plate. smoothen the plate stiffness seems to be important, as wooden plates of “exact” homogenous thickness reveal inhomogeneous stiffness. this observation is more delicate in violin making as there are, compared to guitar making, far more issues of mutual acoustical coupling of the various components in the instrument. in other words, violin making implies a long list of tuning tasks involving issues of mutual coupling. and the effects of mutual coupling are sensitive to slight variations of modal frequencies. so violin acoustics is a good field to learn from and to derive some benchmarking for making acoustical twins. a lot of these tuning issues have been researched in the ties and ties of last century, and important papers are collected in (hutchins, ). to briefly outline a few basics, modal coupling begins within each plate. fig. shows some fundamental modes of a free rectangular plate. modes ( , ) and ( , ) will couple due to shear effects that come with bending, effectively resulting in the ( , ) - ( , ) and the ( , ) + ( , ) mode, or x- and o- mode, or # and # modes, as different researchers and luthiers would call it. this coupling in plates will become more and more prominent as the respective frequencies of the individual modes approach each other. for the shown sitka spruce plate, the frequencies shifted from hz ( , ) and hz ( , ) to hz (x) and hz (o), due to coupling. for extensive studies see caldersmith ( ) among others. + + - + + - + - + - + - + + - - + + - ( , ) ( , ) ( , ) + ( , ) ( , ) - ( , )( , )( , ) h h mÚsica oral del sur, nº , año , issn centro de documentación musical de andalucía robert mores figure . fundamental modes in rectangular plates, assuming different sound velocities along length and width. fundamental modes coupling to establish x- and o-modes, and respective chladni figures in a rectangular spruce plate. to broaden the spectral response of an instrument, the target is a slight mis-tuning between the initial frequencies, anticipating the shift due to coupling. in violin making, the tuning and coupling is considered for the top and back each on their own, and then additionally between the plates. this is similar in guitar making, as most guitars reveal a somewhat higher knocking tone, when knocking to the back as compared to when knocking at the top. in the assembled violin, the breathing and bending modes of the corpus will again couple, effectively resulting in the so-called b + and b - mode. these two modes are again related to the plate modes, as the breathing comes from the fundamental plate mode. the list of tuning tasks continues with the b + or b - coupling with air modes, and with the finger board coupling with air modes, and many more. a brief look at some analyses reveals some physics behind the tuning in violin making. fig. represents one of the many results in the work of bissinger ( ). the x-mode (# ) and o-mode (# ) of the free top plate predict the b + and b - modes of the assembled violin. in other words, while working on the free plate, the luthier can predict the outcome of the assembled violin. more interesting, different luthiers experience two things while working in their workshop: (i) there are common physical boundary conditions, as the prediction from plate to violin obviously follows some conditions ruled by plate stiffness, and (ii) the different luthiers seem to aim at similar sound targets. such aiming at a sound target can be referenced to the long term auditory memory of the luthier, or to reference instruments in the workshop, or to measurements and recordings. an example of sophisticated workmanship is reported by schleske. measurements are taken from original instruments, and again during the working process, and also for final documentation, for both structural acoustics and radiated sound (schleske, ). the “tonal copies”, how he calls it, reveal the same modes at the same intensity for the deterministic frequency range up to hz, as demonstrated for a domenicus montagnana violin from (schleske, ). in terms of measures, the montagnana copy does not really deviate from the original, however, schleske would have varied for instance plate strength here and there to approach the acoustical target. mÚsica oral del sur, nº , año , issn centro de documentación musical de andalucía are replicas of nicolÁs del valle's pear-shaped guitar from acoustically matching the original? figure . violin tuning issues summarized for violins. x-mode (# ) and o-mode (# ) of the free top plate predict the b + and b - modes of the assembled violin. the regression with just one parameter, fcrit, is possible. the critical frequency fcrit also represents plate stiffness. the figure is taken from the publication (bissinger, , fig. ). this brief review reveals the different concepts of making a “tonal copy”. bhatnagar ( ) believes he can achieve the perfect acoustical copy by the perfection of computer tomography (ct) combined with computer aided machine cutting (cmc). both technologies, when combined, translate metrics of an original to a copy, achieving impressive geometric accuracy. and there are others believing in this method (stoel and bormann, ; skollnick, ), and there are more projects of this kind out there, some of them documenting valuable old violins, for instance the violin project done on three old violins (zygmuntowicz, ). however, with the same ct technology, scientists revealed considerable density differences between violins, even for violins made by the same maker in the same epoch (borman and stoel, ). these differences of density directly leads to the question of differences of physical properties in wood in general. even two pieces of sitka spruce of same density may still vary in terms of elasticity in longitudinal or radial direction, el or er. elasticity is relevant to sound velocity. cr=√er/ρ⋅ ( −ν rl⋅νlr)cl=√el /ρ⋅ ( −νlr⋅ν rl) mÚsica oral del sur, nº , año , issn centro de documentación musical de andalucía robert mores for the longitudinal and radial velocity, cl and cr, of sound in a plate, given the density ρ and the poisson coefficients νrl and νrl. for example, the sound velocity measured for two pieces of spruce in the workshop of licari in granada varied strongly in the radial direction, see table . cl in m/s cr in m/s f in hz f in hz spruce val de fiemme ~ german spruce ~ table . examples of measured velocity for two individual samples of spruce in a guitar workshop in granada, and frequencies for ( , ) and ( , ) modes, when assuming h = . mm thickness in plates of size . x . m. while the frequency for longitudinal bending is almost the same for both wood samples, it differs strongly for bending in radial direction. such differences are not surprising, as the wood handbook reports differences for different types of spruce (ross, , chapter ), as listed in table . et / el er / el spruce, sitka . . spruce, engelmann . . table . ratio of elasticity for different directions in two samples of spruce, according to the wood handbook (ross, ). the difference of % in elasticity ( . / . = . ) translates to a difference of % in velocity. this means that plates of otherwise same dimensions would also differ significantly in terms of frequency, while taking (fletcher and rossing, ) fmn= , ⋅h⋅[cl⋅( m+ ll ) +cr( n+ lr ) ] as a reference to calculate the frequency of (m,n) modes in plates of dimensions lr and ll and strength h. for example, the two plates in licari’s workshop, when assuming h = . mm, lr = . m and ll = . m, reveal differences of only hz for f , but differences of hz for f , or %, see table . this will certainly mean a difference in terms of coupling, and it will very likely mean a difference in terms of perceived sound. the same difference, provoked by differences in velocity, can also be provoke d by changing plate strength h. with the same model, the difference of hz for f can be achieved when increasing the strength of the plate coming from val de fiemme by a little more than . mm, from . mm to . mm. this is a considerable addition. of course, the bracing will again change the stiffness and therefore the frequency of fundamental plate modes. however, any initial difference will be carried forward along further assemblage. mÚsica oral del sur, nº , año , issn centro de documentación musical de andalucía are replicas of nicolÁs del valle's pear-shaped guitar from acoustically matching the original? following these arguments, some people might trust in the fidelity of metrics, but there should be an awareness of wood properties at the same time. a guitar maker would probably be very careful claiming that an instrument is a specific replica when the strength of the top plate deviates from the original by more then . mm, but little measurement is done in the wood selection process. given these arguments, the working process of schleske seems to be the most rational approach to achieve both, visual and acoustical twins, at the same time. guitar tuning some of the tuning issues in a guitar are outlined in the accompanying paper in this issue (mores, ). to summarize: (i) coupling within a plate, either top or back, is similar to violins, achieving coupling between ( , ) and ( , ) modes to yield x- and o-modes. guitar makes in granada reported not to listen to a particular tone, or its height, but to the “quality of tone”. this is similar to violin making, as violin makers search for a strongly “ringing” knocking tone. (ii) the back plate has a somewhat higher knocking tone. (iii) the fundamental air mode and the main top mode couple with each other, and again the frequencies shift apart. the air mode around hz in modern guitars shifts down to about hz, due to the box flexibility that comes with a somewhat soft top, and the main top mode shifts up to about hz due to the air compression effect in the cavity (firth, ; meyer, ; elejabarrieta, ). while guitar makers seek to support the lowest open bass string they have to anticipate the result of coupling that results from assembly. replicas of del valle’s guitar the original guitar is shown in fig. and the picture to the left in fig. . the three replicas were manufactured by two guitar makers. more precisely, the two guitar makers were alternately on duty in a display workshop in the play exhibition in the granada science park. during their duty time, they did not work for themselves, everyone on his own replica, but they worked together, and both worked on each production step of each replica, fig. , picture to the right. for the assessment of the vibrational characteristics of the guitars, impulse response measurements were done on the replicas, but also on the original guitar from del valle. impulses are introduced by a light-weigh hammer ( grams) on the bone inlay at the bridge, on the bass side between e and a string, and on the treble side between b and e string. the response to these impulses is sensed by light-weight accelerometers ( gram) at the bridge, in close proximity to the impulse insertion spots. the response in relation to the input force delivers the mobility. mobility expresses the willingness of a structure to move when exposed to force. mobility is displayed versus frequency, and therefore reveals mode density and intensity. fig. captures the response for the original and its three replicas. mÚsica oral del sur, nº , año , issn centro de documentación musical de andalucía robert mores from the mobility plot, one can read the main structurally determined modes, most of them in the frequency range below hz for this guitar. in general, reading across all four plots, reveals the structural similarity. on one hand there is a signature in the graphs that is more or less the same for all four guitars, and this comes from the “identical” geometry in terms of plate size, cavity, bracing, etc. o the other hand this signature seems to be scaled up for the replicas. this comes from stiffness of plates, whether caused by thicker plates of stiffer material. figure . top, side, and back view of the pear-shaped guitar, made by nicolás del valle in . mÚsica oral del sur, nº , año , issn centro de documentación musical de andalucía are replicas of nicolÁs del valle's pear-shaped guitar from acoustically matching the original? figure . (left) label of the original, pear-shaped guitar, made by nicolás del valle in , and (right) two replicas under construction in the display workshop in the science park in granada. mÚsica oral del sur, nº , año , issn centro de documentación musical de andalucía robert mores . . nicolás del valle, m o b ili ty y i n m /n s . . replica a, m o b ili ty y i n m /n s . . replica b, m o b ili ty y i n m /n s a ( , ) ( , ) ( , ) . . replica c, m o b ili ty y i n m /n s frequency in hz figure . mobility of the original pear-shaped guitar from nicolás del valle, and of its three replica. mobility measured at the bass side (red) and the treble side (black) of the bridge. fundamental air mode a , main top mode ( , ), first cross mode ( , ), and the ( , ) mode indicated for replica b. more specifically, for the range of structurally determined modes, the main modes are indicated in the plot of replica b: fundamental air mode a , main top mode ( , ), first cross mÚsica oral del sur, nº , año , issn centro de documentación musical de andalucía are replicas of nicolÁs del valle's pear-shaped guitar from acoustically matching the original? mode ( , ), and one higher order radial mode ( , ). for the cross mode, the modal line crosses the bridge at its center and the bridge is rotating like a seesaw, with the plane of motion perpendicular to the strings. therefore, with the cross mode, the treble and the bass side are in anti-phase, while with the ( , ) and the ( , ) modes the treble and the bass side are in phase. table summarizes the frequencies of the main structural modes. fa in hz f in hz f in hz f in hz nicolás del valle replica a replica b replica c table . frequencies of fundamental modes in the four guitars, as extracted from mobility measurements, see fig. . a is shifted down for replica a, and seems to merge with the longitudinal mode of the neck, which is clearly separated in b and c, for instance at hz in b. on the other hand, a is shifted up for replicas b and c, by hz compared to the original. the cross mode is shifted up by , , and hz for replicas a, b, and c. and the shift at ( , ) is even stronger, , , and hz. in the plots, one can read the similarity of the structure between original and replica, however, all modes are strongly shifted to higher frequencies in all replica. for instance, another peak at hz in the original is then found at , , and hz, shifted by to hz. this shift brings along a change in the spectral distribution of the response. coming back to the question of geometric accuracy of a copy and its acoustical consequence, the differences cannot easily be explained by deviations from original geometry. as outlined in the section above, a . mm increase in plate strength translates to an increase of the ( , ) mode frequency by some hz for the free plate. taking such measure as a rough indication also for the assembled guitar, the difference of hz between original and replica c for the fundamental ( , ) top mode would argue for larger geometric difference than anticipating for replica reproduction. and the manual manufacturing process is far more accurate than necessary. for example, the measures of top plate strength taken in the workshop was . ± . mm across the replica. so the standard deviation is one order of magnitude smaller than the estimated difference necessary to explain frequency differences by metrics. bracings were likewise accurate, for instance the top middle brace has a height of . ± . mm. the guitar makers report that the wood for replica b and c may come from a different pile than for replica a. in the workshop, stiffness was measured in a very simple approach to explore the differences. the bridge of replica a dipped by . mm under a load of kg while it only dipped by . mm in replica b. this clearly softer top explains the rather low fa and f in replica a. an additional measurement on the original guitar would support the mÚsica oral del sur, nº , año , issn centro de documentación musical de andalucía robert mores argument, however, such measurement was too delicate to be executed on the original instrument. in general it seems that replica a is closer to the original than are replica b or c. and replica b and c are rather acoustical twins to each other than to a or the original, due to stiffer material, probably a stiffer top plate. to summarize, a good part of the achieved similarity comes from the macro-dimensions of the instrument. the scaling comes from the stiffness. and whether the a splits into two modes in combination with the neck, replica b and c, or into one mode, replica a, is a question of tuning. another observation in the mobility plots is the perfection in symmetry while comparing the two responses on the treble and on the bass side this can be read from whether the red and the black traces in each graph of fig. match with each other. if symmetry was a target for the guitar maker, this symmetry is achieved in the instrument more or less perfectly, most prefect for replica b. conclusion a good part of the given structural similarity comes from the geometric macro-parameters, such as size. the scaling of the signature modes comes from the plate stiffness. that means, the given signature modes scale up or down along the frequency axis depending on stiffness. while reasoning the frequency shifts, there are three sources of uncertainty and determination. in the model, a . mm stronger plate will vibrate with its ( , ) mode at a hz frequency. the same shift may come from wood selection, as german spruce and spruce from val de fiemme might differ by % for the elasticity, translating to a difference of % for the velocity, and hz, or %, for the frequency of the ( , ) mode. third, the guitar maker targets at homogenous stiffness while sensing local stiffness between the fingers during the manufacturing process. for the replica, the target was a sound that del valle might have indented originally, anticipating the assumed thickness reduction that came along with intermediate restoration. so the plate thickness and stiffness results from a replica production based on both, the assumptions about the condition of the original del valle guitar, and the experience of two guitar makers in restoring and manufacturing guitars. the frequency deviations in the replicas are about % and more, see table , and these can be explained by the somewhat thicker plates, fully in line with the anticipations of the guitar makers. at the same time, the guitar makers report that the wood for replicas b and c was more than years older than the wood for replica a, and also somewhat stiffer from the beginning. this also explains the shift to higher frequencies for these replicas as compared to replica a. mÚsica oral del sur, nº , año , issn centro de documentación musical de andalucía are replicas of nicolÁs del valle's pear-shaped guitar from acoustically matching the original? in summary, acoustical twins can be build when accurately following the geometries and when using plates with the same material parameters. deviating material parameters can be compensated for by geometric measures. but even then there will be final deviations, as wood remains inhomogeneous and the guitar makers are challenged by adjusting more than just a few mutually interdependent parameters during their working process. acknowledgements gratitude to dr. aarón garcía ruiz and oscar muñoz for sharing insights of manufacturing, organizing the original instrument for measurements, and for discussions. thanks to cristina gonzález sevilla, science park granada, and to josé zapata and jako abel, running the guitarfablab in the science park. references andreou, s., sklavos, p., kokkinos, a. a., & katerelos, d. t. ( ). restoration of a casella brothres’ acoustical guitar and construction of an identical copy. international journal of conservation science, ( ). bhatnagar, r. ( ). towards making a modern stradivarius. the bombay technologist, , - . bissinger, g. ( ). parametric plate-bridge dynamic filter model of violin radiativity. the journal of the acoustical society of america, ( ), - . borman, t., & stoel, b. ( ). ct and modal analysis of the 'vieuxtemps' guarneri del gesu. strad, ( ), - . caldersmith, g. w. ( ). vibrations of orthotropic rectangular plates. acta acustica united with acustica, ( ), - . elejabarrieta, m. j., ezcurra, a., & santamarıa, c. ( ). coupled modes of the resonance box of the guitar. jasa, ( ), - . firth, i. m. ( ). physics of the guitar at the helmholtz and first top‐plate resonances. jasa, ( ), - . fletcher, n. h., & rossing, t. d. ( ). the physics of musical instruments. springer new york, nd ed. . hutchins, c. m., & benade, v. ( ). research papers in violin acoustics, - : with an introductory essay, years of violin research (vol. ). published by the acoustical society of america through the american institute of physics. mÚsica oral del sur, nº , año , issn centro de documentación musical de andalucía robert mores meyer, j. ( ). die akustik der gitarre in einzeldarstellungen, verlag erwin bochinsky, frankfurt. mores, r. ( ). studying torres guitars - part ii: acoustics on the path to the modern guitar. música oral del sur: revista internacional, número . ross, r. j. ( ). wood handbook: wood as an engineering material. usda forest service, forest products laboratory, general technical report fpl-gtr- , : p. v., . schleske, m. ( ). eigenmodes of vibration in the working process of a violin. catgut acoust. soc. j, ( ), - . schleske, m. ( ). empirical tools in contemporary violin making: part i. analysis of design, materials, varnish, and normal modes. catgut acoust. soc. j, ( ), - . skolnick, a. a. ( ). ct scans probe secrets of italian masters' violins. jama, ( ), - . stoel, b. c., & borman, t. m. ( ). a comparison of wood density between classical cremonese and modern violins. plos one, ( ), e . zygmuntowicz, s. ( ). the strad d project: scientists, musicians, and violinmakers study three classic violins. the journal of the acoustical society of america, ( ), - . mÚsica oral del sur, nº , año , issn centro de documentación musical de andalucía the statistical analysis of experimental data, , pages, john mandel, , , courier dover publications, download http://bit.ly/ jfaezz http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/searchresults?sts=t&tn=the+statistical+analysis+of+experimental+data&x= &y= the increasing importance in laboratory situations of minutely precise measurements presents the chemist and physicist with numerous problems in data analysis. national bureau of standards statistics consultant john mandel here draws a clear and fascinating blueprint for a systematic science of statistical analysis -- geared to the particular needs of the physical scientist, with approach and examples aimed specifically at the statistical problems he is likely to confront.the first third of "the statistical analysis of experimental data" comprises a thorough grounding in the fundamental mathematical definitions, concepts, and facts underlying modern statistical theory -- math knowledge beyond basic algebra, calculus, and analytic geometry is not required. remaining chapters deal with statistics as an interpretative tool that can enable the laboratory researcher to determine his most effective methodology. you'll find lucid, concise coverage of over topics, including elements of measurement; nature of statistical analysis; design/analysis of experiments; statistics as diagnostic tool; precision and accuracy; testing statistical models; between-within classifications; two-way classifications; sampling (principles, objectives, methods); fitting of non- linear models; measurement of processes; components of variance; nested designs; the sensitivity ratio, and much more.also included are many examples, each worked in step-by-step fashion; nearly helpful figures and tables; and concluding chapter summaries followed by references for further study.mandel argues that, when backed by an understanding of its theoretic framework, statistics offers researchers "not only a powerful tool for the interpretation of experiments but also a task of real intellectual gratification." 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/the-statistical-analysis-of-experimental-data.pdf microsoft word - andrea vocaturo s - exegesis vol. revised.docx exploring a modified fifths tuning as a vehicle for composition for jazz guitar vol. andrea vocaturo (b.mus, griffith; ma, queens college ny) queensland conservatorium arts, education, and law griffith university submitted in fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of doctor of musical arts august ii iii i hereby certify that this work is original and has not previously been submitted in whole or part by me or any other person for any qualification or award in any university. i further certify that to the best of my knowledge and belief, these research papers contain no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made in the papers themselves. andrea vocaturo, august iv table of contents list of figures v! acknowledgements x! abstract xi! chapter one: introduction ! historical background ! rationale: why alternate tuning? ! chapter two: methodology ! chapter three: creative influences ! influential artists ! the influence of nature ! chapter four: analysis ! arpeggio etude no. ! the messenger from oz ! chapter five: compositions influenced by nature ! laniakea ! storms ! chapter six: mft and song-writing ! two worlds united ! the watcher ! chapter seven: conclusion ! references ! appendix a: triads, seventh chords, unique voicings, and poly-chords ! appendix b: scales ! appendix c: arpeggios ! v list of figures figure : comparison between the pitches of open strings in mft and standard guitar tuning ! figure : illustration of the methodological structure of my research ! figure : structural design and harmonic content of arpeggio etude no. ! figure : major and minor triad shapes located in mft’s lowest three strings ! figure : harmonic structure with tonal extensions and melodic material created from a basic minor triadic shape found in arpeggio etude no. opening statement ! figure : parallel movements, harmonic planing, and melodic variations in bars - of arpeggio etude no. ! figure : major chord built on mft’s structural triadic shape in a higher position of the fretboard and challenging melodic figure in conjunction with the underlying harmony in bars and ! figure : unique wide tessituras allowing greater exposure of the melody against the underlying harmony in bars - ! figure : two harp-like descending runs featuring open strings and slur in bars and of arpeggio etude no. ! figure : use of dissonant harmonies as a modulation technique in bars - of arpeggio etude no. ! figure : harmonic reduction showing four variations of an altered g in bars - of arpeggio etude no. ! figure : metric variations and motivic fourths with sequential altered dominant sounds in bars - of arpeggio etude no. ! figure : melodic and textural property of the final bars of arpeggio etude no. ! figure : transcription of the main motif of the tall fiddler (the music sound a major second higher due to the use of a capo) ! figure : main motif in the a section of the messenger from oz ! figure : exposition of the g dorian mode in bars - of the messenger from oz ! figure : melodic passages are used to conclude the first musical phrase of the a section and as transition points to the chorus in bars - of the messenger from oz ! figure : borrowed harmonic material from bar of messiaen’s o sacrum convivium ! figure : messiaen’s harmonic structure matches a common major chord shape in standard tuning ! figure : descending chord structures and functional diatonic progression leading back to g minor in bars - of the messenger from oz ! vi figure : dazzling single-note run interlude from the tall fiddler ! figure : comparison between the melodic sequence in bars - of the messenger from oz and the opening bars of the presto movement in bach’s violin sonata in g minor ! figure : preferable melodic paths for a g minor arpeggio sequence in standard tuning ! figure : alternative horizontal paths dictated by mft’s tuning characteristics ! figure : motif built in thirds highlighting mft’s re-entering quality and delivering a legato effect ! figure : short vamp to set up the brisker tempo in the last section of the messenger from oz ! figure : slight melodic and rhythmic variation of the material borrowed from the a section in bars - as recapitulation of the messenger from oz ! figure : final measures of the messenger from oz ! figure : structural outline of laniakea showing sections that figuratively convey moments of stillness vs moments of dynamism ! figure : natural harmonics creating a pulsating and shimmering effect in the opening bars of laniakea ! figure : alternation of harmonics and chords delivering a gravitational effect during the a section of laniakea ! figure : melodic and chordal figures over a dark-sounding b flat drone in bars - of laniakea ! figure : harmonic reduction showing enigmatic chord structures in laniakea ! figure : contemplative passages depicting shimmering stars and oscillating heavenly bodies in bars - of laniakea ! figure : descending chords mirroring spiral-like movements of galaxies bars - of laniakea ! figure : score reduction illustrating dissonant harmonies in bars - and bars - of laniakea ! figure : recurring cascading melodies derived from the major pentatonic scales in the key of c, e∫, f, and b∫ and their application to four strings simultaneously in the f section of laniakea ! figure : idiosyncratic sonorities from laniakea, bars - ! figure : simplified version of complex and enigmatic sonorities with intense arpeggios found in the f section of laniakea ! figure : pensive finale in bars - of laniakea ! figure : an outline of the different modalities used in storms ! figure : opening right-hand plucking figure found in windowpane ( ), bars - ! vii figure : introduction of storms featuring repeated notes with different timbre, open strings and odd rhythmic groupings ! figure : structural right-hand pattern outlining four groups of five notes and delivering idiosyncratic textures in bars - of storms ! figure : diverse harmonic material composed from the pitches of d major showing melodic variations, rhythmic displacements, and unique voicing structures in sections a of storms. references to the opening motivic cell of repeated unisons appear in bars and ! figure : chord-melody style featuring diatonic progressions, melodic figures and tonal clusters within chord shapes, and mft’s low range in the b section of storms (bars - ) ! figure : sequential and parallel melodic lines that allow modulation in the conclusive bars of the b section of storms ! figure : approximation of a traditional diatonic chord progression in bars - of storms ! figure : contrasting intervallic designs featuring open strings and common melodic cells in bars - of storms ! figure : opening bars of the e section featuring movements in the bass voice and occasional ambiguous sonorities in bars - of storms ! figure : modal shift, textural use of open strings, melodic use of inner voices, and undulating patterns in bars - of storms ! figure : use of parallel slash chords in section f of storms ! figure : idiosyncratic voicings in bars - of storms ! figure : use of artificial harmonics in combination with characteristic quintal voicings in bars - of storms ! figure : recapitulation of the beginning material in a new modality, open strings drone effect, and low bass note in bars - of storms ! figure : sequence of diminished chords from storms, bars - ! figure : wide variety of tessituras and challenging voicings found in storms, bars - ! figure : texture of repeated notes and open strings and a lush voicing in the final bars of storms ! figure : chord shapes used in the verse of two worlds united. black dots indicate fretted notes; roman numerals show the fret numbers; and the open strings are marked by hollow circles above the respective strings ! figure : harmonic reduction of the verse of two worlds united. use of extensions, tonal clusters, common open strings, and the extended low register of mft are evident in these configurations. the inclusion of single notes describes occasional adjustments viii in the chords shape to create further harmonic variety ! figure : strumming pattern employed in two worlds united ! figure : the chord shapes in the chorus of two worlds united show a similar or identical design to the material used in the verse ! figure : harmonic reduction of the chorus of two worlds united displaying harmonic ambiguity and colorful voicings ! figure : an idiosyncratic b∫ lydian chord displaying the use of the bottom two strings of mft as a powerful harmonic device. a rhythmic arpeggio pattern is employed to establish the groove in the opening measures of two worlds united ! figure : the pre-chorus features an ascending bass lines over a repeating melodic figure in bars - of two worlds united ! figure : main material used in the bridge of two worlds united, bars and ! figure : an extract of the melody in the first verse of two world united, bars - ! figure : melodic contour in the chorus of two worlds united, bars - ! figure : melodic simplicity in the verse of the watcher, bars - ! figure : melodic material in the chorus of the watcher, bars - ! figure : in the introduction of the watcher, mft creates slight differences in the musical language and generates lower tonalities with a darker ambience ! figure : differences in range, intervallic layout, and melodic contour when translating similar material from standard tuning to mft during the verse of the watcher ! figure : comparisons between the material in the opening bars of chorus. the two tuning layouts deliver contrasting textures with unique contours, range, and harmonic qualities ! figure : features of the original interlude joining the chorus with the second verse in bars - of the watcher ! figure : elaboration of the same interlude and new musical language created by mft in bars - of the watcher ! figure : instrumental bridge in the original key of g minor in bars - of the watcher ! figure : textural and structural changes imposed by mft in bar - of the watcher ! figure : major triads ! figure : minor triads ! figure : diminished triads ! figure : augmented triads ! figure : seventh chords (starting layout - - - ) ! ix figure : seventh chords (starting layout - - - ) ! figure : seventh chords (starting layout - - - ) ! figure : special chord configurations. dominant, major, and minor chords with extensions. the bottom line includes four moveable diminished shapes. the last shape is not practical in lower positions of the neck as it requires two-frets stretches among all fingers ! figure : colourful and idiosyncratic voicings featuring open strings for added resonance. open strings are employed as bass notes, upper extensions, and inner voices ! figure : notation and tablature describing the voicings in figure x (previous page) ! figure : poly-chords in standard tuning displaying the use of the same minor triad in the top of structure (bars - ). open strings are necessary to build some combinations of two major triads played simultaneously (bars - ) ! figure : moveable poly-chords shapes on mft showing combinations of both major and minor triads ! figure : poly-chords including augmented and diminished triads as underlying harmonic structures ! figure : d major scale on mft executed with a conventional approach ! figure : d major scale on mft played with four notes per string allowing to exploit the vertical dimension of the guitar ! figure : suggested fingerings for a d major scale in position ! figure : one octave major scale showing the repetitive fingering sequence ! figure : one octave fingering preparing the first finger for the next horizontal position ! figure : c major scale, four octaves ! figure : two examples of modifications to the fundamental scalar pattern ! figure : scalar patterns for improvisation purposes ! figure : scalar patterns for improvisation purposes (continued) ! figure : three possible fingering variation for an e∫ triad ! figure : triad arpeggios involving positions shifts performed by the index finger ! figure : arpeggios on mft’s layout ! x acknowledgements i would like to express my sincere gratitude to the supervisors with whom i have had the pleasure to work during my candidature. dr louise denson has accompanied me from start to finish and her wisdom, enthusiasm, and warm-hearted nature were fundamental to the completion of this project. prof. paul draper offered his knowledge and insightful approaches, refining the scope of this project during my second and third year of candidature. thanks also to dr gerardo dirié for his imagination and his precision displayed during the final stages of this doctorate, and to dr stephen newcomb for his contribution during my first year of candidature and assistance with the initial proposal for this doctoral study. i would like to thank the musicians who have made an invaluable contribution to this project with their wonderful artistry and passion: elly hoyt, robert schultz, shane hannan, and tyrone noonan. mark smith for his great competence while recording and mixing the music. andrew scrivens for lending me precious musical equipment and allowing me the use of a beautiful recording space where most of the music took shape. finally, dr michael knopf for his encouragement, advice, and feedback throughout my candidature. i would like also to particularly thank my family and close friends who have supported me during this challenging but rewarding journey. this work is dedicated to my parents as a symbol of gratitude for their unfailing support throughout the many musical endeavours i have undertaken. xi abstract throughout the history of the guitar, alternate tuning configurations have been extensively used as a creative vehicle in both performance and composition across a variety of musical genres, styles, and settings. this research examines the influence of a modified fifths tuning (mft) on the compositional practice of a jazz guitarist and composer. through musical analysis, this study aims to highlight how the idiosyncratic sonorities of the proposed tuning have been exploited to create original works with distinctive sound and resonance, thus contributing to the expansion of the tonal and harmonic palette of the guitar. the technical advantages and disadvantages of mft and comparisons with standard guitar tuning are also addressed during the examination of individual compositions. by revealing the implications of a specific alternate tuning on the author’s creative processes and overall approach to composition and performance, this doctoral project intends to provide insights on the possible musical transformation this path can produce on any musician who is willing to take this approach to discover new sonic possibilities for the guitar and new models for composition. the appendices that accompany this dissertation have been compiled to provide other guitarists with a set of basic musical vocabulary, in the form of chord shapes, scales, and arpeggios, to enable them to navigate through the inner workings of mft and other fifths-based configurations. chapter one: introduction this exegesis documents the use of an alternate guitar tuning as a creative stimulus for my compositional practice. functioning as a brand-new canvas at my disposal, the proposed modified fifths tuning (mft) has allowed me to create unique sonorities, textures, and harmonic landscapes for the guitar. this study imposed the challenging task of relearning an extensive musical vocabulary on a different tuning layout in order to enable the production of original works. as a consequence, this process has been the catalyst for a profound transformation in regards to the conceptualization of musical ideas and the scope of my artistic aspirations. the effectiveness and practicality of using mft as a compositional device could not be predicted or verified a priori; therefore, the investigation of the process, discovery of the implications, and the resulting creative outputs represent authentic research in and through music. mft has marked the beginning of a new creative phase in my artistic development and will certainly continue to inspire my search for idiosyncratic sonorities and musical forms. beyond the immediate associations and implications of such a compositional method, preliminary discussions will also focus on the aesthetics and artists that have influenced this investigation and on the extra-musical ideas that contributed to shape my compositions. by means of its artistic premises, field of study, description of modus operandi, analysis of creative works, and conclusions, this exegesis aims to give a comprehensive and honest account of three and a half years of music-making. the cd that accompanies this doctoral research is entitled vikāra, which is a sanskrit word meaning change, change of mind, and change of form. the recorded works contain the embedded knowledge my investigation has produced and symbolize the personal transformation this course of study has encouraged. the material is multi-genre in nature and includes three distinct musical settings: solos, duets, and songs. while recording the two songs examined in chapter , i decided to allow freedom of interpretation to both singers in order to enhance my compositions with their unique taste and style. the slight discrepancies between the scores and the recorded music have not been accounted for during the analyses presented in this exegesis. the initial chapter of this dissertation will give an overview of alternate tunings and their application across a variety of musical genres. next, it will offer a description of mft’s fundamental tuning characteristics. finally, it will illustrate the author’s motivations for choosing an experimental compositional path and put forward the research questions this doctoral project aims to postulate and answer. chapter two will provide a detailed description of the methodology employed during the course of this doctoral study. through the exposition of the modus operandi followed in my practice- based research, it will offer insights on how the different stages and modes of investigation have contributed to the creation of knowledge embedded in the creative works presented with this study. chapter three will concentrate on the literature review relevant to this project. influential guitarists and composers that have directly influenced this research will be examined to better comprehend the musical aesthetics at the core of my artistic practice. it will also elaborate on the specific extra-musical elements that are at the foundation of this doctoral project and that are manifest in the music. particularly, attention will be given to the influence of nature on my artistic practice. chapters four, five, and six will examine the music that accompanies this exegesis. each analysis will highlight specific sources of inspiration, artistic decisions, and extra-musical factors that have shaped the conception and development of my portfolio. the pieces under scrutiny will offer insights on the implications of using mft as a creative device in the following areas: compositional processes, harmonic progressions, chordal design, resonance, range, tonalities, textural qualities, and effects. score extracts will demonstrate how the idiosyncratic sonorities of the chosen alternate tuning layout have been employed as the building blocks of original works and used to convey the metaphorical and philosophical assumptions the music intends to convey. this will be particularly relevant in those pieces that were conceived as a depiction of natural phenomena. in loco considerations on the technical advantages and disadvantages, fingerings, performance implications, and comparisons with standard guitar tuning will also be presented. the final chapter will postulate some important conclusions on the knowledge i have accumulated in relation to mft’s functionality and unique features. in addition to offering a more exhaustive understanding of the advantages and disadvantages of alternate tunings in composition and performance, final discussions intend to evaluate the influence of mft on the creative processes intrinsic to my music-making. the existing literature on alternate tunings does not provide extensive musical analysis and reflections on the transformative nature of this creative paradigm: it is mostly limited to providing transcriptions of composed material or introductory guides for chord shapes and other basic musical material. this research intends to offer a more in depth description of this interesting artistic investigation and give a different perspective and guidance to other musicians that are interested in pursuing these experimental artistic paths. the appendices that accompany this exegesis were compiled to provide other guitarists with an introductory set of musical data to use for composition and performance. fundamentals such as scales, triads, arpeggios, and chord shapes are presented to offer a basic understanding of mft’s logical infrastructure that i initially derived from this research. moreover, special chord configurations and idiosyncratic sonorities such as poly-chords are presented to appreciate the complex sonorities that can be derived from mft. this additional content gives further insight into the inner functionality of this tuning and demonstrates how it necessitates a different approach to guitar playing. historical background tuning adaptations have been an integral part of the history of the guitar within a variety of musical idioms and genres. although tuning modifications of the guitar and guitar-like instruments have contributed to define the traits of many and diverse ethnic musical traditions, the scope of this overview is to identify some of the genres and composers that have informed my compositional practice during this project and to establish my work as the continuation of a common artistic trajectory within guitar practices. simultaneously, it validates my intended course of action by making reference to remarkable applications of such creative methods. the italian word scordatura is used to describe the act of changing the pitch of one or more strings on a stringed instrument. according to partridge ( ) this: “. . . offered novel colours, timbres and sonorities, alternative harmonic possibilities and, in some cases, extension of an instrument's range. it could also assist in imitating other instruments, and facilitate the execution of whole compositions or make possible various passages involving wide intervals, intricate string crossing or unconventional double stopping” (para. ). as far as the guitar is concerned, the word scordatura, or more commonly referred to as ‘alternate tuning’, implies that there is a canonical status assigned to the current guitar tuning which consists of e , a , d , g , b , e (low to high strings). early guitar and classical music tuning experimentations and adaptations were common practices in the initial stages of the guitar’s development until the instrument reached its modern design and canonical tuning around the end of the th century. tyler states that “the early guitar employed scordatura during the same period as the lute, and its variant tunings were even more complicated than the lute's due to the re-entrant stringings and octave dispositions, which the guitar normally employed” a term used to describe the tuning of string instruments in which successive strings are tuned not to successively higher pitches but to a pattern of rising and falling intervals (wade, ). ( , online). the five courses of the baroque guitar, while maintaining the same pitches of the modern guitar, displayed several combinations of octaves or unisons; in addition, different re-entering layouts existed simultaneously in italy, france, and spain (rowe and jensen, ). the musical nuances of tuning variations were showcased in early guitar compositions by foscarini, corbetta, kremberg, campion, carre, derosier, and de visee (rowe and jensen, ; tyler, ). tunings variations continued to appear in different eras as the following few examples from the classical guitar repertoire attest: j.s. bach: drop d tuning on the bwv and bwv ; fernando sor: low e string raised to f in troisième fantaisie, op. ; augustin mangore’ barrios: low e and a strings dropped by a whole tone in un sueño en la foresta and choro de saudade; carlo domeniconi: open c sharp minor tuning in koyunbaba (rare example of a scordatura involving all the six strings); toru takemitsu: th and nd strings dropped by a semitone in equinox. blues beyond the sphere of classical traditions, these practices also accompanied the emergence of other genres where the guitar plays a leading musical role. for example, tuning variations were common among delta blues musicians as the case of robert johnson exemplifies. besides his recognition as one of the most influential guitarists and bluesmen of all time, johnson was a key figure in the establishment of alternate guitar tunings as a vehicle to provide rich and innovative accompaniment to the voice. through the use of open e, d, and g tunings as displayed in songs such as crossroads blues, walkin’ blues and ramblin’ on my mind, he was able to deliver a forceful rhythmic accompaniment in conjunction with harmonic depth and melodic embellishments (aledort, ). in addition, breeze states that, within blues traditions, “some players used open tunings to improve the response of the guitar and compensate for tempered fretting […] slight adjustments of pitch were made because they sound better, and conveyed more feeling” ( , p. ). this consideration hints at the emotional nuances intrinsic to tuning variations besides their immediate technical and musical implications. folk and acoustic the rise of folk music during the s and ‘ s both in england and north america contributed to the development of alternate tunings among singer-songwriters and acoustic guitarists. following the traditions of celtic music, musicians such as davey graham, martin carthy, john renbourn, and bert jansch explored new pathways for alternate and open tunings and were crucial in the popularization of this practice. according to simmons “[they] used alternate tunings to present more challenging guitar arrangements and push the limits of commonly accepted steel string guitar technique for the right hand as well” ( ). particularly, davey graham popularized the use of dadgad, which has become one of the most used alternate guitar tunings, having been successfully employed by historical and contemporary artists such as jimmy page, nick drake, pierre bensusan, and andy mckee. in the united states, the pioneering work of john fahey in the realm of alternate tunings pushed the boundaries of finger style guitar playing and influenced many other musicians who came after him. simmons states that “reaching back for the strong right hand techniques used by pioneering delta blues players and coupling them with alternate tunings, he created a style previously unheard” ( ). among the many tunings he used, fahey composed some of his most iconic pieces, such as sunflower river blues and funeral song for mississippi john hurt, using an open c tuning, which consists of cgccge (orkin, ). william ackerman has used alternate tunings exclusively throughout his extensive career (ackerman, ). one of the most illustrious cases of this artistic experimentation is joni mitchell’s extensive use of unique tuning configurations throughout her career. rodgers describes the innovative sonorities intrinsic to mitchell’s idiosyncratic use of tunings in the following statement: “her guitar doesn't really sound like a guitar: the treble strings become a cool-jazz horn section; the bass snaps out syncopations like a snare drum; the notes ring out in clusters that simply don't come out of a normal six-string” ( ). among these innovators, michael hedges certainly ranks as the most prolific alternate tuning practitioner with a catalogue of more than unique configurations showcased in original compositions (stropes, ). nowadays, many solo acoustic guitarists, for example john gomm and andy mckee, utilize distinctive tunings as a vehicle for composition and performance thanks to the innovations of hedges (raitt, ). his entire discography represents a milestone for experimentation with alternate guitar tunings. this practice allowed him to create effective sound landscapes, new tonal possibilities, extended ranges and unique percussive and rhythmic effects (raitt, ). rock many other examples of the use of alternate tuning layouts are found in rock music. flowers states that “led zeppelin, the doobie brothers, neil young, and many other artists have used double dropped d tuning (dadgbd) in their respective genres” ( ). keith richards of rollins stones has written many iconic guitar riffs (honky tonk women, gimme shelter, and happy) using an open g tuning (drozdowski, ). jimmy page has investigated the possibilities of the dadgad configuration in compositions such as kashmir, white summer, and black mountain side (aledorf, ). in addition, alternative rock band sonic youth has pioneered some unorthodox tuning configurations that defy any logic or system to create their unique sound (lawrence, ). all-fifths tuning variations and mft it is important to mention the rare examples of practitioners who have previously employed guitar tunings that were derived from a consecutive-fifths approach. robert fripp’s new standard tuning (nst) is a variation of the perfect fifths tuning involving an irregular minor third interval between the st and nd strings (from highest pitch). fripp developed a program called guitar craft to teach this unique tuning to other guitarists. he also founded an ensemble called the league of crafty guitarists, which focused on composing, recording and performing music written with the nst (tamm, ). most importantly, jazz guitarist carl kress was known for the use of a modified all-fifths configuration throughout his career. like other guitarists of his time, he adapted and expanded the tuning of the tenor banjo to the guitar (sallis, ). as lieberson stated, this tuning “extended a diminished fifth below the range … permitting full, lush chords and bass lines” (cited in sallis, , p. ). mft is a slight variation of kress’ layout and its re-entering quality (see figure ) derived from an involuntary mistake i made when restringing my guitar. kress, in fact, switched the dropped a note in the first string to the second string’s slot in order to maintain the sequence of ascending pitches. other sources claim that kress’ tuning was a combination of consecutive fifths in the low three strings (b∫-f-c) and an open g major triad on the top three (g-b-d) in the manner of the banjo’s layout (gruhn, ). in kress’s original composition peg leg shuffle ( ), the extended low range of the guitar is featured in a passage that seems to imitate a bass solo. other pieces such as sutton mutton ( ), helena ( ), and afterthoughts ( ) displayed masterful arrangements for solo guitar with a complex interplay of bass lines, sequences of sophisticated chords, melodic flair, and double- stops. these general considerations and specific examples gave evidence of the presence of tuning experimentation that encompasses a variety of musical genres throughout the history of the guitar. further discussions on the compositional processes inherent to this practice will occur throughout this exegesis thanks to the insights i have gained through this research. without doubt, this study is a continuation of a well-established creative method that thrives on the discovery of new musical language and technical possibilities for the instrument by altering its underlying tuning organization. the following section will give an introductory explanation of the most salient features of mft, strictly from a tuning perspective. the table below describes how the pitches of the open strings are distributed in this layout. the comparison with standard guitar tuning helps to comprehend the radical divergence between these two configurations. strings modified fifths tuning standard guitar tuning first a e second d b third g g fourth c d fifth f a sixth b∫ e figure : comparison between the pitches of open strings in mft and standard guitar tuning mft’s underlying features are: •! the extension of the low range of the instrument by a diminished fifth; •! a series of consecutive fifths starting from the th string and terminating on the nd string; •! a single open string shared with standard tuning (g ); •! an interruption of the ascending distribution of notes found in the first string, commonly referred to as re-entrant tuning; •! the reduction of the high range of the instrument by potentially (depending on the fingerboard/instrument), a perfect th; •! an unusual major second interval occurs between the rd and st string. the re-entrant quality of mft is a common feature in other string instruments such as ukuleles, lutes, tenor guitars, banjos, and many more. in the proposed layout, the st string should have originally continued the sequence of fifths intervals and reached an a pitch. after several failed attempts with a variety of string gauges and set-ups on two different instruments, i decided to opt for the more practical re-entrant solution. the following passage offers an interesting insight on how the issue of breaking strings was addressed during the development of the theorbo’s tuning in the baroque era and allows a reflection on the these practices in western music: “…starting with a bass lute, they restrung it at a much higher pitch, to gain a brighter, stronger sound. when its top strings broke under the strain, they simply replaced them with thicker strings tuned to the same note names but an octave lower. this resulted in one of the main characteristics of the theorbo, its peculiar tuning, which is called 're-entrant' “ (sayce, ). it is also important to notice that the lowest string in mft does not produce a fully resonant and clear tone at times, particularly when notes are fretted in higher positions of the fretboard. this is due to the overall length of the guitar neck, which is not designed to handle such low pitches. nonetheless, i decided to start the chosen mft layout from the note b∫ as it seemed a substantial departure from standard guitar tuning in terms of range, overall resonance, and underlying implied tonalities. alternatively, the option of tuning the guitar to higher pitches would have created excessive tension in the treble strings, thus causing the strings to break easily. ideally, an instrument should be specifically built to accommodate the mft’s extended bass range and to improve the overall sonic balance to compensate the different tensions of individual strings. throughout the course of this exegesis, the musical implications that arise from mft’s unique layout will be examined and discussed within the context of my original compositions and artistic practice. the following section discusses the personal motivation that inspired me to undertake this specific course of action. rationale: why alternate tuning? “when you change the tuning your universe is wiped away” (hedges, n.d.). this quote perfectly describes the impact this creative path produces on any guitarist’s approach to performance and composition. tuning modifications activate an exciting process of rediscovering the instrument and, as a result, deeply affect one’s musical language and style. firstly, my intention to test a new layout blossomed from a feeling of on-going stagnation of my creativity and an overall dissatisfaction with the guitar’s sonic possibilities within the parameters of my knowledge and technical abilities. i had reached a point where my modes of musical expression felt limited and predictable. after i had the opportunity to set up one of the instruments at my disposal in the mft configuration, i immediately became fascinated with its overall resonance and intrigued by its potentials. this urged me to make its investigation the focus of my doctorate and one of the main creative stimuli behind my artistic research. in addition, mft inspired me to undertake a brand-new study on the guitar from a completely different perspective and to venture into a journey of personal and musical discovery. secondly, this inquiry arose from my desire to move away from pre-existing creative patterns and to push my endeavours towards new musical forms and settings. the use of a new tuning encouraged me to find ideas through aural and intuitive paradigms rather than starting from theoretical and analytical frameworks. as a result, i partly abandoned the jazz-oriented compositional method i had been employing and shifted towards a more adventurous approach to writing music. rather than solely through harmonic and melodic design, my compositions started to unfold from more abstract concepts such as texture, ambience, unusual sonorities, and shapes. in addition, stepping away from the over-analytical method i relied on previously allowed the identifications of influential non-musical factors such as imagery, natural phenomena, and intentions. these components will be examined in chapter in the discussion on the creative influences on this project; in addition, their connections with the music will be revealed during the analysis of my portfolio. finally, mft strengthened the aspect of my practice that deals with the discovery of new ways of creating colourful and idiosyncratic harmonies on the guitar. even within the context of traditional structures and progressions, i always strove to find unique depictions of the underlying harmony of a musical piece. the use of mft appeared to be the perfect vehicle to find different sonorities on the guitar due to its intervallic discrepancy with standard tuning. this layout pushed me towards discovering a whole new palette of chords and harmonic structures that have infused my compositions with distinctive flavours and unique resonance. the fact that these sonorities can be difficult to describe with conventional harmonic nomenclature (chord symbols) is both evidence of the experimental nature of this project and of the shift from the analytical paradigm previously employed in my compositional approach. the above rationale for implementing mft as the main creative stimulus for this practice-based research has set the foundations for this artistic quest and allows the proposal of the emerging questions relating to this investigation. research question what impact does the exploration of sonic and structural opportunities afforded by mft have on my compositional and performance practice? sub-questions how has mft impacted my artistic practice and contributed to the communication of non- musical factors behind my music? what are the advantages and disadvantages of applying mft to composition and performance? to what extent does this research contribute to unlocking some of the underlying creative processes inherent to alternate tuning practices? chapter two: methodology as with most practiced-based research, the creative act, i.e. composition in the case of this specific study, was the main tool of investigation to verify the premises and answer the questions put forward at the beginning of this dissertation. borgdorff emphasizes the significance of the creative process in art-based research: “artistic research centers on the practice of making and playing. practicing the arts (creating, designing, performing) is intrinsic to the research process. and artworks are partly the material outcomes of the research” ( , p. ). the graphic below illustrates the main components of the methodology i employed to shape the portfolio that accompanies this research. figure : illustration of the methodological structure of my research the continuous interaction among these activities was crucial in the discovery of original ideas and internalization of the specific sonorities of mft. this organic procedure established itself as an effective stimulus for creativity as my research unfolded over time and underpinned the development of the entire portfolio of composition. as maxwell states: “. . . design in qualitative research is an ongoing process that involves ‘tacking’ back and forth between the different components of the design, assessing the implications of goals, theories, research questions, methods, and validity threats for one another. it does not begin from a predetermined starting point or proceed through a fixed sequence of steps, but involves interconnection and interaction among the different design components” ( , p. ). the devices and processes that aided the compositional act are discussed in the following section of this chapter. transcription the transcription of selected ideas was a fundamental phase in the compositional process that enabled the transferring of music from video sources to actual scores. as with all the other phases of the proposed creative design, transcription allowed me to comprehend the inner workings of mft on a deeper level and to internalize the execution of specific musical passages. aural recognition is particularly important when dealing with the challenges of a new tuning system that produces novel and unfamiliar sonorities. transcribing has become an engrained learning method within my artistic practice thanks to the vast and diverse collection of music i have written down or memorized by ear over the years. in the larger picture of “improvisation as real-time composition” (rose and macdonald, , p. ), the transcription of improvised performances is a powerful way to crystallize the material that emerges from this creative activity and turn it into actual musical pieces. this process blossoms from trusting the ‘instrumental impulse’ mentioned earlier and allowing the body and physical gestures to generate material for composition. as rose and macdonald state “the body knows what to […] this is a very important aspect to improvisation … allowing the body to lead” ( , p. ). notation software the final stage of my compositional method involved notating the music into the guitar pro software. thanks to its functionality and specific features to accommodate music written with and for the guitar, i was able to alter the built-in tuning function to suit the exact pitches of mft’s open strings. by simply writing down my original compositions in the tablature, the software instantly generated the corresponding notation, thus sparing the long procedure of translating all the material i was discovering on mft into notated scores. the visual dimension of tablature was very useful to read and memorize the music composed with mft. in fact, notation functions well with standard tuning but it does not provide a clear representation of how the music unfolded on mft’s fretboard in virtue of the misplacements of notes caused by the alternate tuning layout. relying on the visual dimension of the instrument both for composition and for generating musical scores demonstrates how alternate tuning practices require a different approach to music-making altogether. in addition, not being able to imagine the notated music from what i played and composed on the guitar removed the analytical connection between sound and written music even further. i know the sound of what i have written with mft but i do not necessarily know all the nuances of the music from a score perspective. this represent a novelty in terms of the relationship i have developed with my instrument and the compositional act. finally, guitar pro allowed me to build compositions by entering individual ideas or sections into the program. this system was essential in shaping the overall structure of extended compositions; having a clear picture of the material i was using; and verifying the connectivity among the sections. entering the music into the software and having access to a somewhat definitive version of a piece also allowed me to make changes on structural design, length, tempos, and discard or improve existing material. analytical listening on the micro-level, critical observation of the recorded music allowed me to single out individual fragments of an improvisation that showed interesting and coherent features from a sonic perspective. once the selection of one idea was made, in-depth aural and technical analysis enabled the recognition of which parameters needed improvement or modification. for example, i would encounter material with rhythmic inaccuracy; harmonic structures that did not continue a chord progression in a consequential and graceful manner; a passage that required different dynamics or articulation; or a melodic motif that did not accord with the underlying tonality. the meticulous procedure of correcting mistakes caused by spontaneous performance and refining ideas involved my embedded knowledge and aesthetics more dynamically as it conjured up personal preferences in relation to fundamental musical elements such as rhythm, melody, and harmony. on a macro-level, analytical listening allowed me to get a sense of how a composition’s design and trajectory were taking shape at later stages of the creative process. shifting the attention to the structural coherence and balance of a piece enabled modifications in overall length, different arrangements of structural parts or sections, and the elimination of redundant passages. as these descriptions certainly attest, the act of creativity “is best described as a drawn-out process” rather than progressing “instantaneously” (lee katz, p. ). video recording documenting my practice and improvisation sessions by video recording was essential in the collection of musical data. due to the novelty of melodic patterns and harmonic structures on mft’s configuration, seeing what i was playing aided the recognition of how and in which position on the fretboard specific physical gestures were generating the music. the observation of both hands was also crucial to break down the musical ideas that unfolded during improvisation. through visual learning, i was able to deepen my understanding of the new tuning’s arrangement and slowly strengthen my aural connection with its sonic properties. in addition, the expanding database of video recordings constituted a continuous source of ideas and concepts that i could mix and match to create original works. for example, watching a particular video would highlight germinal ideas that i would then isolate, practice, and refine into musical motifs or models for composition. rose and mcdonald affirm that “recording musical ideas by different means contributes to the creative process of composition” and “learning becomes synonymous with the activity of improvisation, creating real-time composition” ( , p. ). this statement perfectly describes the dynamic process i employed and stresses the importance of gaining knowledge and accumulating useful musical data through the recording of improvisation and practice sessions. at times, one single improvised performance became the only source from which the totality of an extended composition has been fleshed out, as the analysis of the piece storms will reveal in chapter . decision-making the decision-making process that allowed the creation of original works was driven both by deliberate choices and intuitive strategies. when musical ideas blossomed from specific sonorities, chord shapes, or fingerings that were intrinsic to mft’s tuning characteristics, the process of developing the new-found vocabulary into thematic elements or entire sections of a composition happened quite intuitively. moreover, the sonic novelty of mft contributed to the absence of analytical evaluation that would have occurred at the discovery of a new idea in standard tuning, because i was not able to discern the theoretical specifications of the idea itself with accuracy. on the other hand, deliberate choices occurred at specific moments of the creative process. when a specific musical device or gesture had exhausted their potentials, or exceeded my sense of time within the larger picture of an entire composition, i had to take action to either modify some of their characteristics or steer the original ideas in a completely different direction. these deliberate decisions were driven by both my embedded knowledge of musical and compositional structures and personal aesthetics which enable me to evaluate the circumstances, single out specific problems, and finally make changes. this procedure encompassed the melodic, rhythmic, harmonic and structural dimensions of individual compositions and allowed me to manipulate their overall design or trajectory. improvisation besides the musician’s technical abilities and command over his or her instrument of choice, improvisation requires knowledge of ‘idiomatic’ musical language (bailey, , p. xi). starting this research on a brand-new tuning layout eliminated the array of musical vocabulary i had accumulated over years of experience of playing and composing in standard tuning. as a consequence, mft shifted the act of improvising radically towards physical gestures and ‘non- idiomatic’ (p. xi) or free improvisation techniques. this was a significant shift to the way i have developed my improvisational vocabulary prior to this point, which involved a dependence on scales, modes, bebop vocabulary, chord structures, chromaticism, and intervallic techniques. in pointing out the difference between vocal and instrumental music, bailey describes the ‘instrumental impulse’ as “one of the underlying processes in free improvisation” and “an agile movement of the hands”; he also states that “quick motion is not merely a means to a musical end but almost an end in itself which always connects with the fingers, the wrists, and the whole of the body” (p. ). throughout my research, i extensively employed this ‘instrumental impulse’ to adapt my embedded guitar technique to a new tuning layout and learn how to play it in a fluid way. thanks to activities that resembled free improvisation, i stumbled on a great deal of musical data by testing out, in the spur of the moment, multiple fingering possibilities in different positions of the fretboard and by exploiting both the horizontal and vertical dimensions of the instrument. both muscle memory and spontaneous physical movements became fundamental paths to produce musical vocabulary. simultaneously, this process allowed me to formulate strategies to use mft as a powerful compositional tool by selecting sonorities that sounded fascinating and fresh to my ears. as rose and macdonald perfectly sum up: ‘improvisation is employed as a specific device to aid the development of written compositions within the bigger picture of improvisation’ ( , p. ). practice the first step towards familiarizing myself with mft’s arrangement was the memorization of basic data such as triads, seventh chords, and arpeggios. this musical material contributed to reveal mft’s inner logic and was fundamental in crafting musical ideas employed in several original works, as the analysis section will address extensively. for sullivan, “practice-led research implements methodologies which move from the unknown to the known”, rather than more traditional research methodologies which move from the “known to the unknown” (cited in smith and dean, , p. ). he also emphasizes processes of “data creation” rather than “data collection”. rather than continuing to map and code musical data through analytical processes grounded in music theory, i preferred to rely on improvisation to discover ideas and create the many idiosyncratic sonorities that infuse the music in my portfolio. this course of action also enabled me to develop a strong aural connection with the new tuning, which at first sounded quite alien to my ears. some interesting considerations need to be addressed on the meaning and role of improvisation within this particular research project. reflective practice reflective practice encompassed and informed my compositional process as its cyclical structure repeated itself over time. according to dowling, “reflexivity can be broadly described as qualitative researchers' engagement of continuous examination and explanation of how they have influenced a research project” ( ). besides musical choices that were exclusively driven by personal preferences or technical problems, the importance of reflecting on the content and trajectory of individual pieces was particularly relevant for those works that drew from extra-musical domains for inspiration. in my attempt to depict natural phenomena through sound, metaphors were used “to connect information within and between domains” (lee katz, , p. ). as the analysis of laniakea and storms will illustrate in chapter , attending to and reflecting upon the non-musical sources that inspired these pieces was a direct way to strengthen the connection between separate domains and infuse the music with evocative imagery. according to gruger and davis, metaphor is “a synthetizing agent” and “a conduit for connecting and mapping concepts onto another in which an aspect of the initial domain is preserved when considered in the context of the larger domain” (as cited in lee kats, p. ). as this chapter illustrates, the methodology i developed for this artistic research gravitated on the interaction of several devices and processes to aid the production of original compositions. each element contributed to the different stages of my creative practice and allowed the following activities to unfold: discovery of vocabulary; selection and refinement of musical ideas; deliberate choices vs intuitive strategies; design of extended compositions; solving the problems related to notating music composed with an alternate tuning configuration; and incorporation of extra-musical elements in the original works. the next chapter focuses on the description of the creative influences that informed my artistic practice during this doctoral endeavour. chapter three: creative influences as mentioned in chapter , this investigation blossomed from a stagnation of my creativity. it symbolizes a new beginning in my musical journey driven by a desire to discover new modes of expression. artistic endeavours are fuelled by a complex web of interactions between personal, external, and universal spheres. this chapter discusses a range of creative influences on the author (other than the study of mft itself) that have helped inform and shape the project. particular attention will be given to key influential artists and the role of nature in inspiring my works. posing the questions, “are composers even aware of the factors that influence their work?” and “if composers do employ non-musical models as they compose, what is the role of this material in their work?”, lee kats recognizes that there has been “little investigation on the factors that inspire composers or about how the initial ideas are synthesized as compositions develop” ( , p. ). to fully comprehend the aesthetics behind a creative work, it is important to trace the precise coordinates of the environment artists are operating from. firstly, this includes musical styles and aesthetics intrinsic to their practices. composers learn pre-existing models of expression by study, imitation, and appropriation. the assimilation of the practices and techniques used in previous traditions provides them with the tools and concepts to forge their own idiosyncratic style. these ‘schemas’ or ‘mental structures’ (kozbelt, ) are “used to perceive or act effectively by anticipating the organization of what the person apprehends or does, so the person needn’t function as much from scratch” (perkins, p. , as cited in kozbelt, p. ). this statement clearly asserts the existence of established operational models within the artist’s imagination, that are running at a subconscious level during the creative act. secondly, non-musical elements also constitute fundamental factors that contribute to shaping the composer’s work. as coessens, crispin, and douglas assert “artists do not live exclusively in a secluded ‘artistic’ world. they partake of the world of ideas and embed it idiosyncratically in their practice” ( , p. ). in discussing the concept of research space and the multi- disciplinary facets of portuguese composer emmanuel nunes’ practice, these authors also point out the presence and importance of “a richness of thought that merges in and with his personal experience”. nunes himself used the expression “the interiorisation of the close environment” in establishing the fundamental element that guarantees “musical unity within composition” (cited in coessen, crispin, douglas, p. - ). it is clear that composers are not only dealing with a “complex process of ill-defined problem-solving and decision-making” (kozbelt, , p. ) to produce new musical pieces, but they are also involved in a delicate act of synthesizing many external components with their own personal sphere, which is a collection of life experiences, emotions, interpersonal relationships, and philosophical views on the environment surrounding them. this calls for both a “permeability with the world and a crucial point where exterior influence crosses the membrane of the artistic self” (coessens, crispin, and douglas, , p. - ). artists live in a unique environment where musical, non-musical, and personal domains are continually exchanging information with each other. in the case of american minimalist john adams, this connectivity is manifested by the merging of art with his spiritual and emotional side, as the following insightful statement expresses: composing became associated in my mind with my development as a human being with the deepest aspects of psychological and spiritual growth […] creative work is the mirror of my spiritual evolution. but i have never been tied to one essential way of expressing myself, and my work can be not only earnest but also ironic and raucous and vulgar. (cited in mccutchan, p. ) by virtue of these preliminary considerations, the remaining part of this chapter firstly focuses on delineating the major artists that have influenced my musical environment and the trajectory of this doctoral project. some are practitioners who use alternate guitar tunings and others are composers from the classical and jazz traditions. other important musical influences will be examined in the musical analysis chapters. secondly, it addresses the topic of the impact of natural phenomena on my artistic practice to understand non-musical factors that are at work during my creative activities. influential artists kurt rosenwinkel one of the key figures that inspired the direction of this doctoral study is jazz guitarist kurt rosenwinkel. in his album entitled the next step ( ), he showcased a unique tuning (low to high string: b∫-g-d∫-a∫-b∫-e∫) in compositions such as zhivago, use of light and a shifting design. according to rosenwinkel, this approach of ‘voluntary self-sabotage’ was led by the desire to step away from known patterns and discover new harmonic and melodic possibilities by ear (cited in dover, ). the most fascinating aspect of his work is that he developed a fluent and innovative improvisational style on this alternate tuning. in a video found on his forum, rosenwinkel talks about writing in a different tuning and says that he didn’t know what the chords were exactly. he used a chromatic tuner to find out each note and then worked out the underlying harmony of the sounds he discovered. he then talks about relearning all the modes and scales on this new configuration in order to improvise over the pieces he had written. he states, “no longer did i have this intellectual relationship with it, it was just pure sound and discovery” ( ). rosenwinkel’s groundbreaking work was a direct and logical consequence of his use of an alternate tuning in his composition and improvisation practices. his style and musical language went through a major transformation that allowed him to become one of the most influential jazz musicians of his generation. joni mitchell mitchell’s unique use of alternate guitar tunings is a defining element of both her compositional and performing style, as her extensive discography testifies. throughout her career, she has employed approximately fifty different tunings and has developed her own system to remember each particular configuration (russel, ). when i discovered her music, i was immediately captured by the unusual sonorities her guitar playing was creating and by her knack for sophisticated harmonies and unusual chord progressions. sonenberg states that “mitchell's unique system of alternate guitar tunings has defined both her style on the instrument and her approaches to harmony and texture over the course of her career” ( , p. ). in describing her harmonic approach to song-writing, she states that “it's closer to debussy and to classical composition, and it has its own harmonic movement which doesn't belong to any camp” (cited in rodgers, ). mitchell’s ability to manipulate the guitar’s tonal possibilities by using the full resonance of alternate tuning configurations has certainly influenced my approach to songwriting as the analyses of two of my original songs will illustrate in chapter . wayne shorter among the many jazz musicians that have triggered my imagination and shaped my own style, wayne shorter certainly ranks among the most influential composers thanks to his ability to use harmony and chord progressions in unique and unpredictable ways. his style displays an effortless blend of different harmonic techniques as structural elements, from diatonic keys and modalities to seemingly unrelated chordal sequences. according to julien, in shorter’s original works each ‘harmonic region’, or ‘plateau’, “influences the structure of the composition” and “may be established either through a conventional, functional progression or through another means of prominence (such as duration or architectural position as a starting or ending sonority)” ( , p. ). she also states that “a plateau is not a key area with attendant and expected functional chord and pitch associations (although such associations may provide one means of establishing a plateau) and it is not obligated to take its place in the composition as a key area related in a functionally meaningful way to other key areas of a piece” ( , p. ). similar techniques have been widely employed across the original portfolio and form one of the most distinctive harmonic devices i have employed. particularly, this approach is encountered in the compositions that display harmonic landscapes within a specific duration in time and with unique tonal quality and ambience (see analyses of arpeggio etude no. in chapter and both pieces examined in chapter ). maurice ravel the piano music of ravel has had a strong impact in expanding the use of harmonic strategies and colouristic sounds as powerful and expressive compositional tools in my practice. in addition, his approach served as an inspiration in my attempt to convey imagery of non-musical elements through my pieces. in reference to ravel’s work miroirs, bruhn states that “a piece of music may be understood as a mirror of sorts, particularly in the case of objects and events so elusive that they may otherwise be perceived only in the subconscious, never emerging to the surface of our attention” ( , p. xxvii). ravel’s characteristic use of the piano to depict sounds of water in compositions such as jeaux d’eau and une barque sur l’ocèan represents one of most fascinating musical expression i have ever encountered. the way ravel masterfully depicts water effects through sounds has deeply influenced my artistic practice. specific references and techniques will be addressed in more details during the analyses of arpeggio etude no. in chapter and storms in chapter . the influence of nature the intersection between music and the cosmos is an ancient concept that dates back to the postulation of ‘the theme of the musical universe’ and ‘the music of the spheres’ found in pythagoras’ and plato’s works (james, ). rappenglueck states that “pythagoras and plato established the basic ideas of the occidental theory of ‘cosmic music’: the relations between intervals of music and numbers, the character of the scales and their influence in nature and society, the harmony of the planetary spheres, etc” ( ). beyond the connection between music and celestial bodies, nature itself has had a powerful impact on many historical figures in music such as beethoven, wagner, mahler, messiaen, debussy, ravel, and vivaldi and many more. it is important to mention liszt’s expression ‘programme music’, coined in , to “describe instrumental music suggesting a pictorial scene or narrative description” (taylor and hurley, ). one of the most fascinating aspects related to the process of ‘wiping away my universe’ through the investigation of a new tuning layout is the unlocking of previously unknown and unconscious connections that occur between my creative practice and the natural world. my original works laniakea and storms are examples of how i have attempted to convey non- musical imagery that was inspired by the natural world. since my teenage years, i have been fascinated and puzzled by the magnificence of the cosmos. the impenetrable harmony that exists within its immeasurable vastness and the beauty of all its celestial formations always left me overwhelmed with a mixed sense of awe and mystery. particularly, laniakea was inspired by images of galaxies and stars, which i have translated into musical ideas and structural models for composition. in her analysis of several composers’ creative practices, lee kats ( ) concludes that some of them draw “inspirations from content domains characterized by strong visual elements which are identified as providing a structural roadmap for their composition” (cited in collins, p. xxii). on the other hand, storms was inspired by the interconnection between the heavy downpours i experienced during an early summer night in the city of brisbane and the musical material i was discovering on mft at that time. the sub-tropical climate that characterizes south east queensland exposed me to weather conditions i had never experienced while growing up in italy. the magnitude and fury of the deluges that occur during the storms season are an astonishing display and reminder of nature’s power and unpredictability. simultaneously, torrential rainfalls produce complex and mesmerizing walls of sounds and rhythms that have certainly stimulated my creativity. detailed descriptions on the sources of inspiration, compositional processes and parallels between music and natural phenomena occurring in both laniakea and storms will be found in chapter . these preliminary considerations have described some of the most important elements involved in the creative act, such as learned techniques, musical aesthetics, personal and emotional domains, and extra-musical factors. in the following passage, harvey perfectly summarizes the topics discussed in this chapter: ‘the moment at which a composer’s experience is projected on his unconscious mind is an archetypal encounter of external and internal, of ‘life’ and ‘art’: this encounter is experienced in its most concentrated form within the process of composition itself, where the composers’ ‘innate’ inspiration collides with his ‘learned’ technique’. ( , p. ). both influential artists and non-musical elements that have contributed to shape the original portfolio of compositions that accompanies this dissertation will be discussed in detail in the following three chapters dedicated to the musical analysis. chapter four: analysis this chapter begins the musical analysis of my original portfolio by examining two pieces that developed from the interaction of mft’s idiosyncratic sonorities with compositional techniques and models borrowed from specific musical sources. this analysis will give a deeper understanding of the creative processes inherent in using an alternate tuning layout in conjunction with personal aesthetics and embedded knowledge. it also aims at verifying the functionality of mft within the context of solo guitar performance and expanding on the technical implications inherent to this particular musical setting. arpeggio etude no. this piece was conceived as a specific investigation on some of the harmonic possibilities of mft. particularly, i was interested in developing sophisticated chord structures around two fundamental triadic shapes involving the bottom three strings of the guitar (detailed explanation will follow at pg. ). while i was envisioning and developing the idiosyncratic harmonies that characterize arpeggio etude no. , i realized that these colourful chords would be complemented by a sweeping arpeggio pattern in the right hand, similarly to villa-lobo’s etude no. . concurrently, i wished to evoke the harmonic sophistication and beauty found in ravel’s piano music. the following and preliminary discussion will identify the specific aesthetics and underlying musical references employed in arpeggio etude no. . villa-lobos’ etude no. from his twelve studies for guitar is constructed around a repetitive right-hand plucking pattern, or moto perpetuo, in conjunction with changing chord structures executed by the left hand. despite its nominal purpose as a study to develop efficiency and speed in the right-hand technique, etude no. exploits the guitar’s resonance effectively and showcases a developmentally balanced design with sophisticated chords and tonal variety. despite the lack of a distinct theme in conjunction with the unfolding of these sequential harmonies, each arpeggio also functions in a melodic sense and delivers full and beautiful textures. moreover, villa-lobos shows great economy in the use of a ‘planing technique’ (becker, ) between bars - of the piece, where an identical diminished shape is moved down chromatically from ninth to first position. in combination with the constant pitches of the open low and high e strings ringing throughout, “this idiomatic passage destabilizes the traditional tonal context by responding to the previous e minor tonality with an uninterrupted stream of chromaticism” (becker, ). for these reasons, etude no. has become an iconic piece for the guitar and has been influential in the development of my musical taste and my harmonic approach to the instrument. the other fundamental source of inspiration for this composition is the distinctive ambience and harmonic finesse and complexity found in ravel’s une barque sur l’océan, from his five- movement suite for solo piano ‘miroirs’. this piece is a great example of ravel’s idiosyncratic use of the piano to convey non-musical imagery and produce mesmerizing beauty, harmonic sophistication, and melodic lyricism. cooney states that, with ‘miroirs’, ravel entered a new harmonic phase marked by “a more venturous and even jazzy language” which “is especially manifest in the way the chords are voiced and extended” ( ). in addition, une barque sur l’océan displays an exceptional use of compositional techniques to convey non-musical imagery of water, turbulent waves, and the unpredictability of the ocean (bruhn, ). in my work, i tried to replicate through imagery the ambience and symbolism of ravel’s masterpiece by using similar tonalities, sweeping arpeggios, harmonic sophistication, melodic design, tempo changes and parallel movements of chord structures. these stylistic elements will be largely discussed in the analysis of the individual sections of this composition. in this piece, i strived to create idiosyncratic harmonies by expanding two triadic shapes with colour tones and extensions. the choice of a repetitive plucking pattern in the right hand compelled me to achieve variety by following these techniques: a) using contrasting chord qualities; b) varying the duration of each harmonic landscape; c) creating single-line runs to break the incessant flow of the chordal arpeggios; and d) employing fermatas, rallentandos, and accellerandos. without having a pre-planned path for the structure of this piece, i let the natural flow of the music dictate how the sequence and length of individual sections should have unfolded. this approach was guided by my embodied musical knowledge and personal aesthetics. arpeggio etude no. is a moving and challenging solo guitar composition of approximately four-and a half minute duration. it features a floating and simple melody of two notes supported by a repetitive pattern of fast-moving and wide-ranging right-hand arpeggios that outline lush and idiosyncratic harmonies. gradual increases of tempos mark the beginning of each section, while long fermatas, which occur after harp-like single-note runs, temporarily interrupt their fluctuating and incessant flow; accelerandos and rallentandos are also common in the second half of the piece. figuratively, these devices portray the variable speed, height, and frequency of waves. the a section mainly dwells on minor tonalities and is characterized by a nostalgic mood. each harmonic centre is treated modally by virtue of its distinct emotional and tonal qualities. melodic variations contribute to emphasize specific pitches of the underlying implied modality, thus delivering different shades of the same harmonic palette. the c section introduces new material with a stronger emphasis on major tonalities, while maintaining a similar melodic design; it also moves to a higher register of the guitar where textural variety, unexpected modulations, and wide tessituras are employed to create a lighter and joyful atmosphere. suddenly, a sequence of descending and dissonant variants of a g dominant chord alters the piece’s mood and stirs it towards a slow and meditative section characterized by idiomatic voicings in a c dorian modality. finally, the composition returns to the opening tonality of f# minor where, after a gradual accelerando, the original melody is quickly restated before culminating into a high-pitched chord inversion that closes this work with a feeling of nostalgia and unsettledness caused by a gradual decrescendo and rallentando. the graphic illustration below delineates the harmonic scheme of arpeggio etude no. divided by its constituent parts. coloured cells are used to distinguish chords by their quality or to mark similar structural ideas, such as the fermatas at the end of the first three sections; the numbers in parenthesis indicate how many measures each configuration is played for and no number denotes a single measure. in each section, individual cells should be read left to right and then down to the next row to grasp the consequential progression of chords in the piece. d section e section f section bars bars bars amaj ( ) g# alt ( ) c dorian ( ) f#mi ( ) e∫ alt ( ) a∫mi ( ) f#mi ( ) a∫mi ( ) c# alt ( ) melody pick-up g# alt ( ) figure : structural design and harmonic content of arpeggio etude no. this scheme clearly identifies the substantial frequency of minor tonalities (marked in blue) throughout the piece, with particular emphasis on f#. twelve individual portions are minor chords, four are altered dominant, and three are major. in the first section, only minor keys are used, while in the second there is a short occurrence of the first major centre. next, the process is reversed with major tonalities becoming more predominant. the fourth section is the longest and more varied harmonically; despite the start in a major again, it follows up with a fairly equal presence of minor and altered dominant sonorities. the last two section are exclusively in minor keys except for a brief appearance of a c# altered that leads back to the opening f# in the coda. a section b section c section bars bars bars f#mi ( ) emi ( ) f#mi ( ) emi ( ) amaj ( ) gmaj ( ) c#mi ( ) cadenza dmaj ( ) c#mi ( ) dmi ( ) cadenza fermata cadenza fermata fermata at the initial stages of the investigation of the harmonic material available on mft, i focused on finding the basic configurations of triads and seventh chords in order to build my understanding of its functionality. one of the immediate realizations was the relative simplicity of triadic shapes and how full and resonant they sounded in the lower register of the instrument, particularly on the bottom three strings b∫, f, and c. the fifths-based layout allows the playing of a t-p - rd structure quite easily as the two chord diagrams in figure show. figure : major and minor triad shapes located in mft’s lowest three strings the pitches associated with these specific configurations can be replicated in standard tuning and are commonly found among the chord forms most guitarists are familiar with. the advantage of mft is that these structures span only three adjacent strings rather than four in the case of standard tuning. moreover, their execution only requires the use of two digits thus allowing the employment of the remaining two fingers in the left hand to add tonal extensions and melodic parts in the unused three strings. this requires an unorthodox flattening of the second digit in the minor configuration, as the fingerings numbers show in the score extract below. figure : harmonic structure with tonal extensions and melodic material created from a basic minor triadic shape found in arpeggio etude no. opening statement with arpeggio etude no. , i aimed to showcase these intrinsic peculiarities of mft in conjunction with the musical aesthetics mentioned earlier. while developing the opening chord of this piece shown above, i realized that the use of a capo on the second fret would create a structure remarkably similar to the sonority that opens une barque sur l’océan. bruhn states that “all notes in both hands derive from the f#mi th chord (f#-a-c#-e-g#), a chord formation ravel is known to have used throughout his work in early years of the twentieth century” ( , ). in addition, i moved the same opening structure down a tone from f#mi th to emi th, thus following the french composer’s idea of parallel movements and villa-lobos’ concept of ‘planing’ verbatim; but rather than continuing in this fashion one step further to the key of d minor as in ravel’s work, the progression terminates with a c#mi th. in virtue of their extensions, these three harmonic centres deliver slightly different pitch content that contribute to tonal variety and unpredictability. additionally, this effect is reinforced by occasional tonal shift and modal interchange, such as the introduction of the major th in the f# minor chord in bars - and the two d major configurations in bars through of the b section. as bruhn asserts, colouring the minor th chord with an “added sixth” is “a feature ravel also employs elsewhere” ( , p. ). ravel’s composition also represents a masterful example of lyricism and melodic effectiveness. in une barque sur l’ocèan, the opening statement is remarkable for its simplicity, floating and indefinite rhythm, and colourful in its harmonic implications. according to cooney, ravel is “an economist in that there exists a strong continuity and coherence in his thematic material” and “a favorite trait of ravel is a falling motive, usually by a fourth or third” ( ). similarly, i shaped a simple two-note motif that gracefully floats on top of the fast-sweeping and lush chords i devised. in order to have the melody stand out from the underlying dense harmonic layers, i employed it as an accented anacrusis at the start of the piece; its unfolding continues in this fashion by preceding the first beat of every measure. rhythmically, this generates two extra semiquavers, hence the unusual time signature of / as shown in figure , and contributes to deliver a swaying effect in the music. moreover, i also choose small intervallic leaps as an additional reference to ravel and for their mere practical execution. in fact, variations in the melodic material were possible within the restrictions imposed by the difficulty of sustaining highly complex chord shapes. their performance requires the occasional use of slides, slurs, and overall strength and flexibility in the left hand. throughout this composition, the melodic fragments also alternate between ascending and descending contours, thus resulting in a call- and-response effect with a degree of unpredictability. the figure below shows some of the harmonic and melodic characteristics discussed so far. the accompanying musical figures are still notated a tone down as traditional practice for pieces written with a capo; for the sake of this analysis, i will refer to the actual sound of the music rather than the written notation. figure : parallel movements, harmonic ‘planing’, and melodic variations in bars - of arpeggio etude no. these techniques aim to mirror the opening section of une barque sur l’océan’s opening section, where “a swaying motion over large waves forms the backdrop of a plaintive melody” (bruhn, p. ). the melody in this passage is created by a slurred leap of a perfect th (bar ) and a major rd (bar ) executed by the first and fourth finger, which occurs at the very end of this measure, and outlines the ninth of the chord. at the end of the bar , its variation is achieved by approaching the ninth by a semitone from the minor third located on the second string, thus highlighting the re-entering quality of mft. these melodic changes require continuous and challenging movements of the index finger, which is otherwise grounded on the third string to complete the supporting chord shape. as figure illustrates, the use of the open second string creates another element of resonance and colour to the underlying harmony by adding either the minor seventh or doubling the tonic. in the c section of arpeggio etude no. , similar techniques and devices are used to develop contrasting harmonic material, which shifts to major tonalities, and tessituras in the higher register of the instrument. this is also a reference to une barque sur l’océan where momentary shifts to the relative major keys of the two opening minor chords are found in the later measures of the first section (bars onwards). in the score extract below, the major triad layout is shown with an added major seventh in the four opening notes. the left-hand little finger doubles the third of the chord (b note), which functions as the melody, and is approached by another slur outlining a major third at the of measure . the execution of this particular melodic variation is one of the most difficult passages of this composition. its four-fret leap has to be performed by the middle and little fingers, while the index maintains its position in the lowest part of the fretboard to fully sustain the bottom two notes of the underlying harmonic structure and avoid breaking the musical flow with a short pause. in the meantime, the middle finger has to quickly come off the fourth string to execute the first note of the slurred melodic figure and then return to its starting point. this feature is technically very demanding due to the tempo of this passage, the wide distance between the two notes, and the accuracy and speed of the motions required. figure : major chord built on mft’s structural triadic shape in a higher position of the fretboard and challenging melodic figure in conjunction with the underlying harmony in bars and as the figure above show, the contour of the harmonic structures in this portion of arpeggio etude no. is also wider than the chords in section a and b by a major third or a fourth. in fact, the placement of chord shapes in higher positions of the fretboard delivers some unique configurations that display leaps of octaves and major ninths between the open g string and the chord’s higher tones. in addition, the larger gap existing between the melody and the inner harmonic voices makes this motif stand out more convincingly. this effect vaguely resembles the clear separation existing between the left-hand and right-hand’s parts in ravel’s piece. metaphorically, the wider layout of the chords and faster tempo represent, respectively, the larger size and the speed of waves, while the melody vacillates on top in even more precarious ways. these are other references to une barque sur l’océan where “the sudden changes of the waves’ height and speed evoke the relentless capriciousness of the elements” (bruhn, p. ). in the portion illustrated below, the melodic embellishment is performed by the third and fourth finger, thus showing another example of the technical challenges discussed earlier. figure : unique wide tessituras allowing greater exposure of the melody against the underlying harmony in bars - another characteristic of arpeggio etude no is the use of melodic passages that convey harp- like sonorities. the nature of the guitar does not always allow sustaining notes in scalar passages in order to create a legato effect. therefore, as discussed in chapter , scordaturas were largely employed for this specific purpose in early baroque guitar music (tyler, ). the use of unfretted notes in the context of linear playing can deliver this particular sound but it is limited to the pitches of the open strings and their concordance with the key of a specific musical passage. in mft, the interval of a tone between the third and first strings is conducive to creating this musical device. as the following two scores in figure show, the cascading harp-like effect is achieved by combining slurs, open strings, and descending arpeggios and is applied to two contrasting tonalities. these single-note passages are used to conclude the first three sections of the piece and lead to individual fermatas that display a second inversion minor chord, thus allowing the music to have a moment of rest and suspense before the return of dense textures of sustained chords and fast arpeggios. figure : two harp-like descending runs featuring open strings and slur in bars and of arpeggio etude no. despite the overall modal character of this composition, altered dominant chords are used as an occasional device to modulate to new harmonic centres. particularly, the same harmonic structure is repeated three times over contrasting bass notes, each functioning as the v of the new arrival point (see figure below and bars - of full score in vol. ). the presence of dissonant extensions in these configurations introduces a new and tense harmonic flavour, thus momentarily breaking away from the more introspective sonorities discussed previously. this generates a feeling of unrest and musical impetus that functions as another figurative depiction of the turbulence of the sea. figure : use of dissonant harmonies as a modulation technique in bars - of arpeggio etude no. similarly, this modulation device occurs with a sequence of four variations of a g altered chord that leads to a shift to the c dorian modality. in creating these individual voicings, i used the pitches of the a∫ melodic minor scale in order to deliver an altered sound, which is a very common method used in jazz improvisation and harmony. i envisioned a particular voicing of c minor in first position of the guitar as the arrival point of this harmonic modulation and i created a descending succession of chords over a pedal of the guitar’s fifth string, which sounds a g pitch thanks to the capo. the re-entrant quality of mft allowed these structures to display tonal clusters and to condense the width of their layouts, thus contributing to build even more tension in conjunction with the substantial decrease in tempo. each configuration contains the major third and the minor seventh of the chord and combinations of altered fifths and ninth as the score reduction in figure shows (no transposition needed). figure : harmonic reduction showing four variations of an altered g in bars - of arpeggio etude no. this particular passage also shows meter changes to / and melodic continuity thanks to the recurring perfect-fourth leap up and down outlined by the arpeggiation of these structures (figure , notated a tone down from actual sound). this melodic feature also continues in a large portion of the following e section. figure : metric variations and motivic fourths with sequential altered dominant sounds in bars - of arpeggio etude no. this transition point arrives at a contrasting section of the piece that is characterized by lush and evocative harmonies derived from the c dorian mode. thanks to the use of a capo, the bottom two strings of the guitar sound the notes c and g, which are consistently played throughout this segment to deliver a feeling of rest and a darker ambience with their full resonance. the tonic- fifth pedal allows the chord structures to move around different areas of the fretboard while maintaining harmonic and sonic presence; this also allows variation in the layout and textural qualities of each configuration. by virtue of its slower tempo and more introspective ambience, this section allows the music to express a more relaxed mood that moves towards the conclusion of the piece. the melodic material still preserves its simplicity and revolves around a falling interval of a perfect forth as a reference to the idea employed over the altered dominant chords in the preceding d section. towards the end of this contemplative part, the motif displays a descending leap of a major sixth (bars - ), which echoes the previous and only occurrence of such a wide melodic interval in bars and . the music reaches a gradual rallentando and arrives at the fourth occurrence of the altered sound described earlier by a chromatic movement of the bass from c to c# in bars - . this sudden and unexpected change anticipates the return to the starting tonality of f# minor, which will conclude the piece. the final section of arpeggio etude no. is a recapitulation of the starting idea with variations. it solely centres on the key of f# minor, which shows modifications in its melodic and harmonic content and textural qualities. gradual changes in tempo and dynamics changes also raise a sense of uncertainty in conjunction with the extended and languid perpetration of the minor tonality. through a progressive climb, the melody reaches the highest pitch in the entire composition with f#. descending minor seventh leaps also occur for the first time. finally, the melody fades away with a plaintive falling minor th leap between the flat seventh and the ninth, which is stated four times. these melodic drops are also characteristic of mft’s layout and its re-entering nature in conjunction with ascending arpeggiation between the second and first string. the last f# minor chord in second inversion displays the widest harmonic layout so far thanks to intervals of fifths and sixths among the chord’s voices. the idiosyncratic properties of mft allow me to create a unique harmonic landscape that reinforce the underlying feeling of vulnerability created by the melody. the piece reaches its melodic, harmonic, tempo, and textural climaxes right at its very conclusive measures and then it suddenly fades away. figure : melodic and textural property of the final bars of arpeggio etude no. these musical ideas are a final and deliberate allusion to ravel’s composition. bruhn describes that “a tremolo from ππ to ƒƒ in the course of a single bar” (bars - of une barque sur l’océan) are used as a “depiction of drama”. moreover, the “notes d# and b#” express a “distress sigh” that allude to “a passionate, perhaps desperate cry” ( , p. ). these musical devices are “the most two powerful images evoked in this piece: that of the dangerously exposed barge in the vastness of the ocean, and that of the lamenting human voice” (p. ). similarly, the last melodic statement and harmonic layout in arpeggio etude no. are a depiction of fragility and desolation. as demonstrated in this analysis, the compositional strategy blended both the idiosyncratic properties of mft’s and two distinct sources of inspiration in villa-lobos’ and ravel’s works, with particular emphasis on the impressionistic aesthetics found in une barque sur l’océan. the two triadic shapes discussed at the beginning of this examination were fundamental in defining the musical content for larger portions of this piece as well as creating unique textural variations. the simplicity of the melodic material in conjunction with the development of uniform harmonic landscapes create a sense of continuity and logic through the contrasting sections of this piece. arpeggio etude no. is a very challenging piece to perform due to the recurring presence of unusual and impractical chord shapes that require wide stretches, unorthodox flattening of the fingers, and exceptional strength, flexibility, and agility in the fretting hand. as a consequence, the process of practicing this piece in preparation for its final recording revolved on building the required endurance and strength in the left hand. it took me several months of consistent practice to learn to calibrate the right amount of pressure each shape needed so that i could avoid excessive fatigue during the course of the performance of arpeggio etude no. . in addition, the moto perpetuo created by the right-hand arpeggio requires great endurance and sensitivity to accompany the variety of dynamics and tempos that are employed throughout the piece. not being a classically-trained guitarist and having preferred the use of a plectrum in my playing style, this also encouraged a profound improvement in my right-hand technique and expanded my abilities as a guitarist considerably. in addition, the different atmospheres and emotions that each section aims to depict demand a deep level of musicality and interpretive skills. this composition has definitely pushed both my technical abilities and creative aspirations to a level i had never imagined before. within my practice, arpeggio etude no. represents a clear example of how the investigation of mft’s has inspired me to tackle compositional formats, musical aesthetics, and guitar techniques i have shied away from in the past. the messenger from oz this piece is influenced by and dedicated to australian guitar virtuoso tommy emmanuel. my choice of title seeks to describe emmanuel’s mission to share his incredible artistry with the world and to give people memorable experiences filled with joy and positive emotions. attending one of emmanuel’s concert was one of the most extraordinary and inspirational experiences of my life. particularly, this composition draws inspiration from emmanuel’s the tall fiddler from the iconic album endless road. as he states, this short, energetic, and virtuosic composition was inspired by the great violinist byron berline (emmanuel, ). strongly rooted in bluegrass aesthetics, the tall fiddler blends idiosyncratic guitar techniques with sonorities that emulate some of the violin’s stylistic trademarks within this genre. it displays the use of material derived from the mixolydian mode and the pentatonic and blues scales, as detailed score extracts will illustrate later in this analysis. in order to convey a stylistic sound, emmanuel employs an alternate tuning where the bottom two strings are both dropped by a tone, thus delivering a gmaj th chord (d-g-d-g-d-e from low to high). in addition, he uses a capo on the second fret so that the key of the composition is raised to a, which is a common tonality in this particular style of music (emmanuel, ). although the tall fiddler displays relatively simple riffs, which are built on strummed doubled and triple-stop figures, accented and syncopated chordal passages, and slurred single-note runs, it requires phenomenal technical abilities to match emmanuel’s astonishing speed and intensity of performance. emmanuel’s compositional structure features a tempo increase towards the second half of the piece “as they do in bluegrass a lot” (emmanuel, ) and reaches a tempo marking of approximately ∞= . while crafting this composition, i relied on the musical ideas and compositional design found in emmaunel’s piece the tall fiddler. by selecting its specific motifs and structural components, i was able to elaborate them into original ideas that formed the building blocks of my work. particularly, my choices gravitated around these specific musical elements: a) imitation of violin sonorities; b) use of strumming figures built on double and triple-stops; c) consequentiality of ideas; d) order of individual sections; e) pace of the composition and tempo increase; and f) technical challenges. furthermore, i used two additional references to the classical violin repertoire, which abounds with technical studies and beautiful pieces that i have previously employed in my practice. specifically, i quoted a fragment of the opening descending arpeggio from the ‘presto’ movement in bach’s violin sonata in g minor in bar and a paganini- inspired motif blending scale tones with chromaticism in bars and of my work. the messenger from oz is a fast and lively solo composition in a compound duple meter of approximately three minutes duration. its structure comprises of an a-b-a’-b-c-b’-d layout. the main idea in the a section is based on energetic and incessant strumming patterns in the right-hand combined with double and triple-stops figures and single-note runs in the left hand. arpeggiated chordal sequences with harmonic sophistication and variety characterize the chorus or b section of this piece, while its contrasting interlude is built on melodic inventions with intervallic sequences, arpeggios, conjunct motion and chromaticism. the last third of the messenger from oz displays variations of the initial musical material and is performed at a faster and spirited pace. thanks to mft’s unique properties and its rhythmic inflections in a / meter, this composition acquires an overall sound that is reminiscent of irish and medieval dance music. harmonically, it is based in the key of g minor and features the recurring alternation of material in both the aeolian and dorian modes, which contributes to unexpected and subtle changes in tonal colours. occasional functional chord progressions that are typical of diatonic harmony break the otherwise distinct modal flavour of this work. while creating the opening riff of this composition, i intended to emulate some of the tonal characteristics of the violin by crafting a motif that gravitated around the exact pitches of its tuning. at the same time, i kept in mind the features of the main idea behind the tall fiddler. emmanuel grounds his motif on a harmonic structure built on the tonic, which outlines the notes g-d-g, by pressing down the guitar’s top two strings on the third fret with the index finger while the third string is sounded open. around this fixed position on the fretboard, he gradually introduces other notes derived from the g major pentatonic scale by using both hammer-ons and pull-offs techniques; the consistent down-up strumming pattern in the right hand delivers the bouncy and energetic feel to this opening theme as figure shows. figure : transcription of the main motif of the tall fiddler (the music sound a major second higher due to the use of a capo) likewise, i decided to use the open third string in mft (g) as a pedal tone and construct the central motif of the a section around the guitar’s fifth position instead, where the fretting of the top two strings on the mft configuration delivers the notes g and d respectively. precisely, this allowed me to obtain the same starting structure used by emmanuel, centred on g rather than a. in addition, i employed similar techniques of hammer-ons and pull-offs to add melodic material and rhythmic drive to this main riff as the example below illustrates. figure : main motif in the a section of the messenger from oz since the high g in the first beat of the measure is used as a melodic appoggiatura, the leading tone in this triple-stop figure is the note a. this choice completes the violin-like sonority i intend to create as it results in delivering the sound of three of the violin’s open strings, namely g, d, and a. mft perfectly suited the intention behind this musical idea and allowed me to perform this specific texture with ease. due to the use of a re-entered tuning, the melodic material that stands out from these strummed figures is always the note played on the second string. the following note c functions as a second melodic appoggiatura (see bar in figure ) and reinforces the open and modal harmonic background in the beginning of this piece. by bar , the gradual introduction of the notes b∫, f, and e concludes the exposition of the g dorian mode in this nine-bar section (figure ). figure : exposition of the g dorian mode in bars - of the messenger from oz as measure four in figure above shows, emmanuel interrupts the consistent strumming of the opening section by creating a melodic conclusive statement with a distinctive bluesy sound. he achieves this flavour by quickly implying the iv chord and then returning to the tonic with a single-note sequence that outlines both the flat seventh and flat third. the syncopated and accented notes e and c and the arrival at a a chord on beat four in the last measure give this passage a powerful and punchy rhythmic character. in addition, he performs a semitone ‘bend and release’ from the minor third that momentarily reaches the major third of the chord; this is a common stylistic device used in blues-flavoured material to create a sense of harmonic and melodic tension and ambiguity. similarly, i chose to employ a melodic passage to contrast and conclude the dynamic texture of the first section of the messenger from oz. as the figure below illustrates, the music features the use of open strings, slurs, slides, and arpeggiated sequences that mirror some of the techniques used by emmanuel. the second part of bar is quite challenging to perform due to the combination of single notes, double-stops, and pull-offs at very fast tempo. the double-stop figure would be problematic to execute with the same speed and fluency in standard tuning due to the presence of large intervals, such as minor sixths and sevenths, that cannot be played on the consecutive strings with ease. in bar , another interesting use of mft’s re-entering tuning is highlighted by the sequential arpeggios on the bottom three strings. in fact, the open first string adds variety to the melodic contour of the line with its resonance and lower pitch. harmonically, the outlined f major triad functions as a quick transition to ∫vii chord, which functions as a substitute for the v chord (modal dominant chord), before returning to the key of g minor. in the second ending of the a section, a similar melodic arpeggio is used to climb up the fretboard to arrive at the starting position of the first chord shape employed in the chorus. the elaboration of a corresponding idea on the f major tonality reaches the th fret of the guitar and resolves to an e∫ major th chord (see bar in figure later). as these considerations show, the f major chord is used as pivot point that can either move up or down in a step-wise motion to the next harmonic centre. this implies two distinct cadences: ∫vii to i (principal tonic) or ∫vii to vi (secondary tonic). figure : melodic passages are used to conclude the first musical phrase of the a section and as transition points to the chorus in bars - of the messenger from oz the second main musical idea in emmanuel’s composition is a heavily syncopated part that alternates accented triads in two different positions of the guitar with ghost notes on multiple strings. this allows him to increase the rhythmic intensity of the piece and deliver a percussive and powerful musical effect. i tried to follow his compositional approach by creating a passage that intensified the overall sonority and texture of my piece. rather than relying on rhythmic intensity exclusively, i designed a part with dense voicings, harmonic variety, dense arpeggios, and occasional syncopations. these features contrast with the modal and static quality of the opening section and give the piece a distinctive forward motion and a more dynamic character. the b section or chorus of the messenger from oz centres on a sequence of arpeggiated chords that outlines a descending bass line of e∫, b∫, g, and f. also, it introduces the ambivalence of modalities found in the alternation of e∫’s and e’s (∫ th or \ th), occurring both as bass notes and chord tones, that are borrowed from the dorian and aeolian mode. the opening two chords e∫ and b∫ are built on an enigmatic harmony i heard in messiaen’s haunting and dissonant vocal piece o sacrum convivium. specifically, this chord is a four-note structure consisting of a major sixth followed by two consecutive fifths, as shown in beat three of the last measure in the following example by the notes d, b, f#, and c# (the tenor in the second line sounds an octave lower). figure : borrowed harmonic material from bar of messiaen’s o sacrum convivium the score above clearly shows how this specific configuration is the result of a chromatic movement in the bass and voice-leading in the remaining parts. interestingly, the intervallic design of this idiosyncratic voicing creates a shape on mft that exactly corresponds to the one of a major chord with its root on the fifth string in standard guitar tuning (figure ). figure : messiaen’s harmonic structure matches a common major chord shape in standard tuning this case demonstrates one of mft’s advantages in relation to borrowing simple chord shapes from standard tuning to deliver fresh musical language without difficulty of execution. firstly, i transposed messiaen’s structure to two different chords, e∫ and b∫, to match the overall tonality of this passage and expanded it by adding one note on the first string, which outlines the fifth of the underlying harmonic centre. thanks to mft re-entering disparity, this creates a close triad on the top of the voicing that is complemented by the syncopated accents on the last semiquaver of the arpeggio’s shape and that contrasts the wide intervallic layout of the preceding arpeggio. i completed the harmonic progression of this two-bar phrase by adding an e∫add chord in first inversion, which reinforces the aeolian mode of the two preceding chords (bar in figure ). contrastingly, the final f major chord, thanks to a melodic embellishment that delineates the major th e, creates a brief and subtle tonal shift in the second part of bar shown in figure . figure : descending chord structures and functional diatonic progression leading back to g minor in bars - of the messenger from oz the two conclusive bars of the figure show how the return to the a section is achieved by the arpeggiation of two chords built on the e and f# bass notes, which temporarily hint at the g melodic minor scale. the final strummed cluster of notes over the ringing low f# creates quite a daunting and unsettled that functions as an unresolved vsus chord due to the lack of the note c and the presence of the g on the top. the ascending movement in the bass line also contrasts with the cascading series of chords in the previous part of the ‘b’ section. the material discussed above presents a few challenges for both hands. the right hand performs a downward alternate-picking motion across the string to deliver the chords’ arpeggios at quite a brisk tempo; also, it needs to execute the accented three-note figures in the higher register before quickly moving upward to play the bass note of the next chord (bars - above). this requires quite a wide and precise motion of the hand in such a small fraction of time. similarly, the arpeggios in bars and necessitate string-skipping picking techniques of variable degrees. the left-hand encounters chord shapes that involve the flattening of either the nd or rd finger to press three strings simultaneously and needs to perform rapid shifts along the fretboard spanning up to ten frets, as in the case of the move from the open f chord to the e∫ chord located in tenth position. finally, the melodic embellishment at the end of bar demands a very precise and quick slurring technique at the brisk tempo of this piece. the third element in emmanuel’s piece i used as an inspiration is a single-note interlude he employs to create contrast with the song’s two main sections. as he describes it in an instructional video on the tall fiddler available on his youtube channel, this passage is a ‘hammer-ons, pull-offs sliding lick that i invented’. this melodic idea displays pitches of the a minor pentatonic scale with the additional use of the note c# (\ rd), thus delivering another example of the major/minor third ambiguity discussed earlier. the increased tempo in this portion of the composition makes this lick quite virtuosic and flamboyant and very difficult to perform with emmanuel’s precision and rhythmic force (score below sounds a tone higher due to the use of a capo). figure : dazzling single-note run interlude from the tall fiddler likewise, i devised a melodic interlude to provide contrast to the previous material in my work. in fact, the c section of the messenger from oz constitutes a departure from the previous guitar textures of incessant strumming and arpeggiation and features a lyrical passage that focuses on the application of melodic lines to mft. it was conceived as a solo interlude intended to capture some of the aspects of the violin’s melodic versatility. the predominance of fifth intervals between adjacent strings in mft calls for a completely new approach to the execution of scales, arpeggios, and specific motifs on the guitar’s fretboard. specifically, the impracticality of performing smaller intervals such as minor and major seconds on two consecutive strings imposes the finding of alternative paths rather than relying on traditional position or vertical playing, which most guitarists are comfortable and familiar with. in addition, the re-entrant quality of mft does not allow the use of the first string in a strictly melodic sense, particularly when the direction of the melodic line is continually ascending. the following extracts allow a better understanding of these linear concepts and their application to this tuning layout. figure : comparison between the melodic sequence in bars - of the messenger from oz and the opening bars of the presto movement in bach’s violin sonata in g minor as figure above shows, the g minor arpeggio is executed on mft by following a two note per string method. in standard tuning, similar melodic lines are usually performed around chord shapes and mostly by following a one note per string approach. figure illustrates two possible variations of this exact passage in standard tuning. figure : preferable melodic paths for a g minor arpeggio sequence in standard tuning the different path imposed by mft is due to the impractical execution of intervals of thirds on two or more consecutive strings. in fact, these leaps require stretches of three or four frets for major and minor thirds respectively. subsequently, the fretting hand would be forced to continually move towards the nut of the instrument rather than towards the bridge every time it changes strings and would eventually run into a dead-end point. this completely contradicts the way playing music on the guitar unfolds when a melodic line has an ascending contour and a range that extends beyond a single vertical position on the instrument (see first line in figure ). the alternative two note per string approach falls nicely under the fingers and the incorporation of slurs allows a very smooth and fast execution. these configurations may present some challenges for players with smaller hands due to the wide stretches of five frets occurring on the g string (see bar in figure ). the following paragraph discusses the topic of chromaticism and scalar passages found in the central portion of the c section. the central portion of the c section of the messenger from oz contains scalar passages which use chromaticism. the music in bars and of figure would be quite impractical to execute in a fixed position due to the presence of chromatic passing notes in its underlying motif: the fifths-based layout of mft imposes horizontal shifts along the guitar’s fretboard. the approach taken to perform this particular series of notes is radically different from the way i would execute single-note runs in standard tuning. nonetheless, the melodic design of this idea allows continuity of fingerings that can be repeated while ascending on the same string. between bar and , we encounter a series of seventeen notes that are played on the same string due to the conjunct motion of this melodic passage, which reaches the highest pitch available in this particular tuning layout (d in bar ). i also chose to perform this sequence in this particular position of the fretboard as i was trying to achieve the best possible tone the instrument has to offer. as mentioned in chapter , the lowest two strings tend to have an unclear and muffled timbre when notes are fretted in higher positions, due to the limited scale length on a traditional guitar that is not built to sustain the considerably lower pitches. this melodic passage could have been started on the on the th fret of the th string and would have required smaller horizontal adjustments; however, the overall tonal clarity of the line would have been inferior and hence the decision to execute it in lower positions of the fourth and third strings where the instrument’s timbre is more consistently resonant and defined. it is important to point out another characteristic in the execution of the material in bar , which outlines a scalar sequence in g dorian. the shifts between the th and th frets marked in the score in figure were chosen to avoid playing a four-note pattern on a single string and the lateral movements of one semitone are quite easy to perform. this is a demonstration of how mft has imposed a different approach to playing scalar passages on the instrument and has fostered the development of a new way of thinking as far as the unfolding of melodic ideas on the guitar is concerned. further discussion and musical examples are presented in appendix b. figure : alternative horizontal paths dictated by mft’s tuning characteristics the last three bars of the ‘d’ section demonstrate another use of mft’s re-entering properties to create unique musical nuances that require slight adjustments from conventional guitar thinking. particularly, the extract below shows how a motif built on descending and ascending thirds was arranged on two nonadjacent strings in order to achieve a smooth legato effect. figure : motif built in thirds highlighting mft’s re-entering quality and delivering a legato effect the sliding position shifts in measures and of figure are performed by the index finger, while the notes on the top string are executed by the third finger. this particular fingering configuration allows the notes in this passage to ring into one another creating a fluid melodic line that culminates with the return to the chorus, which is achieved with a variation of the arpeggio used in the a section (bar ). also, the presence of both e∫’s and e\’s is another occurrence of the modal ambivalence which is a recurring trait in this composition. the final section of the messenger from oz returns to the opening textures of incessant right- hand strumming in conjunction with double and triple-stop figures. in order to set up the faster tempo in the last portion of the piece, i devised a short vamp with a driving rhythm and a two- note sliding idea over a g pedal, as figure illustrates. figure : short vamp to set up the brisker tempo in the last section of the messenger from oz finally, the section continues as a recapitulation of the material introduced in the a section, which is restated with slight variations in melodic and rhythmic content, as shown in the following score. figure : slight melodic and rhythmic variation of the material borrowed from the a section in bars - as recapitulation of the messenger from oz in bar , the material constitutes the last development in texture and rhythm of the primary motif of this composition. in fact, the shift of this structural shape to the tenth fret delivers a three-note chord that is comprised of an octave topped by a moving melodic line. the triplet on beat four of the same measure is also a reference to the same rhythmic variation found in the a section (see bar in figure earlier). after the exposition of the material from bar and twice, the piece’s conclusive bars display the ascending arpeggio previously used as a transition to the chorus. in this case, the same motif continues a step forward from the f major triad and arrives at g minor located at the th fret of the guitar. while the top strings are still ringing, a lower g note is sounded and a fermata occurs, thus creating a moment of suspense before a concluding g minor chord is played with assertiveness. this final musical gesture is reinforced by mft’s strength in the low register and by the resonance of its idiosyncratic wide harmonic structure delivered by the four consecutive bottom strings as figure below demonstrates. figure : final measures of the messenger from oz this analysis has shown how tommy emmanuel’s compositional strategies and virtuosity have inspired me to craft a solo piece that similarly combines guitar techniques with violin-like sonorities and textures achieved by: the use of hammer-ons and pull-offs, double and triple stops figures, melodic inventions, and tonalities that imitate the open strings of the violin. the messenger from oz is an example where compositional borrowing in specific ways led to the discovery of useful and sonic originality of the tuning in my practice. in addition, i followed emmanuel’s example in writing a piece as a tribute to one of my musical heroes, just as he did for byron berline. the messenger from oz celebrates emmanuel’s immense contribution to the world of the guitar, his sense of humour, and genuine love for music and his fans. naturally, my composition developed with a blend of other musical sources such as classical music, modal interchanges, sophisticated chords, and a tiny fragment borrowed from messiaen’s immense harmonic universe. at the same time, i tried to use minimal material to mirror emmanuel’s concise writing style, and the detailed descriptions have illustrated how the individual sections of my piece followed his compositional design. from a technical point of view, the tall fiddler, despite being a simple and catchy piece, requires a substantial amount of guitar practice to match the combination of raw energy, virtuosity, and command on the instrument that emmanuel delivers in every performance of this piece. there are several videos available online where he breaks down all the main ideas employed in this composition. while addressing the consistent down-up strumming motion in the right-hand, he stresses the importance of being “super super relaxed otherwise you’re never gonna make it” with reference to the mesmerizing speed he achieves in the second half of the composition (emmanuel, ). similarly, the messenger from oz presents great challenges for the right-hand and i strictly followed his advice while practicing it. moreover, the extensive broken-chord arpeggios in the b section represent a further technical workout for the width of motion and speed required by the right hand. in conjunction with the novelties of mft, the intent to emulate emmanuel’s compositional style and strive for his speed, intensity, and musical flair has had a remarkable impact on my performing abilities. chapter five: compositions influenced by nature this chapter focuses on the analysis of two original compositions that were inspired by nature. the detailed examination of their compositional process, musical aesthetics, and characteristics allows a deeper understanding of how mft has contributed to the musical realization of non- musical imagery and metaphors that were borrowed from external domains. moreover, it will show how the depiction of natural phenomena has been a fundamental driver in the development of both compositions’ structural design and unique sonorities. laniakea in this piece, the investigation of mft allowed me create sonorities that seemed to correlate with aspects of imagery i intended to convey. this was achieved by: a) focusing on the sound qualities of unique textures such as natural harmonics and the resonance of open strings; b) repetition and development of underlying motifs: c) devising dramatic contrasts of range; d) modifying the pace and momentum of the composition; e) use of dissonance; f) juxtaposition between introspective sonorities and unsettling passages. these elements were decided upon persistent explorations, reflection, and deliberative choices. as mentioned in chapter , my fascination with celestial bodies started in my early teens and has continued to grow over the years thanks to new discoveries, technologies, and space explorations that have contributed to expand our knowledge of the cosmos. the inspiration to write this composition came after watching a brief documentary about the theoretical formulation of the laniakea super-cluster, which is home to our galaxy and approximately one- hundred thousand other galaxies . the name laniakea means ‘immeasurable heaven’ in hawaiian and ‘is meant to honor polynesian navigators who used their knowledge of the heavens to make long voyages across the immensity of the pacific ocean’ (choi, ). computer-generated illustrations and video simulations available online show “massive clusters made up of hundreds of galaxies, all interconnected in a web of filaments in which galaxies are strung like pearls” (choi, ) against the dark backdrop of empty space. their viewing immediately captured my imagination and made me contemplate the possibility of creating a piece that evoked these images. laniakea was conceived as a musical collage that depicts the movements, vibrations, colours, and shapes of the heavenly bodies inhabiting this magnificent and mysterious super-cluster. while the initial sketch of laniakea was developing, i started to reflect on the relationship between this work and the images of the supercluster that inspired its conception. interestingly, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/laniakea_supercluster the word ‘influence’ is an astronomical term coined in the th century meaning ‘streaming ethereal power from the stars when in certain positions, acting upon character or destiny of men’ (harper, ). at the time, i was aware of the historical significance of music in the realm of philosophy and science thanks to curricular studies conducted while in high school and the reading of the music of the spheres (james, ) a few years ago. i decided to start deepening my investigation on the relationship between music and the cosmos. there is a vast body of literature dedicated to this area of study and i particularly became intrigued by the vibrational frequencies of planets in the solar system and their associated musical pitches and colours (couto, ). by consulting charts compiled by this author, i learned that the frequency of the sun ( . hz) is a note between a b and c . the open th string in mft is a pitch with a frequency of approximately . hz in standard a= tuning. since laniakea features harmonic landscapes and specific musical ideas based on the note c (opening chord, harmonics, and finale), i was surprised to discover that there was a close connection of frequencies between this piece and the gravitational center of our solar system. in order to strengthen the connection between the music and the phenomena it intends to depict, i decided to detune the guitar to perfectly match the actual sun’s frequency before the recording of this composition. laniakea is the first through-composed piece i wrote with mft and therefore represents an interesting example of how the new tuning influenced my compositional approach. i started sketching out ideas for this piece only in the first few weeks after setting up one of my guitars in mft and, at that time, i had a very limited amount of musical language at my disposal on the new configuration and a poor notion of its underlying logic. this compelled me to maximize the use of ideas and flesh out large portions of this piece with simple concepts and material. creatively, i relied on a combination of improvisation, intuition, embedded guitar knowledge, and a fair amount of trial and error strategies to come up with the musical material that shaped this composition. video recording allowed me to revisit improvised sessions and visually discern what i was playing, thus facilitating the process of transcribing what i believed was interesting and in line with the intention of the composition. in between cycles of spontaneous flow of ideas, analytical listening also enabled me to keep refining individual motifs and to plan out their systematic development. the selection process was quite intuitive and musical ideas were chosen on the basis of their intrinsic sound, emotional strength, and on how well they conveyed the imagery they intended to portray. as a consequence, some parts of laniakea cannot be described with conventional parameters of music theory as this analysis has shown. chord progressions and harmonic structures were specifically chosen thanks to their fresh sonorities and their inner sense of consequentiality and balance. mft pushed me to think ‘outside the box’ and to rely on a more intuitive and aurally based approach for the discovery of adventurous and idiosyncratic musical language. laniakea is a through-composed and multi-structured piece for solo jazz guitar of approximately nine-minute duration and symbolizes an imaginary voyage of observation across the wonders of laniakea’s supercluster. it features a recurring juxtaposition between static and dynamic sections, which are figuratively intended as moments of contemplation and stillness versus phases of impetus and transformation. the musical material displays variety in texture, complexity, and mood and is infused with colorful and exploratory harmonies that are inspired by contemporary jazz aesthetics. after a short introduction showcasing two suspended and enigmatic chords with volume-swelling effects, laniakea centers around a pivotal idea of natural harmonics that features a rhythmic ostinato in a / meter. its pulsating quality, incessant repetition, and ambiguous harmonic character generate an atmosphere of suspense and hesitation. throughout this piece, the underlying rhythmic contour of this motif is applied to contrasting modalities, chord progressions, and harmonies, thus delivering a dynamic and consistent pace. the continuous flow of musical ideas is occasionally broken by changes in dynamics and textures, unexpected meter alterations, rhythmic displacements, and odd time signatures. after a climactic section that alternates cascading melodic figures with dense and dissonant sonorities, the coda returns to a more relaxed mood and terminates this relentless musical journey with a slow and contemplative finale that, once again, evokes the opening feeling of awe and mystery. figure : structural outline of laniakea showing sections that figuratively convey moments of stillness vs moments of dynamism laniakea’s opening and central motif, which is showcased in the introduction and remaining sections extensively, is based on a rhythmic ostinato that outlines a series of natural harmonics executed at the twelfth fret of the guitar. i came across the embryo of this idea while improvising a few days before i became aware of the existence of laniakea. through several cycles of improvisation and by analytical listening to the recorded videos of these sessions, i continued to refine its shape and content until it perfectly captured the essence of what i had in mind. the delicate texture of natural harmonics in conjunction with the sonic ambiguity created by the pitches of mft’s top four strings (c, g, d, a) sets up an atmosphere of mystery that infuses several portions of this composition. in addition, the vibrating quality and shimmering resonance of the natural harmonics aim to mirror the scintillating dim light emitted by distant stars, as the figure illustrates. throughout the a section, the underlying feeling of unpredictability is also reinforced by recurring meter changes. four individual measures in / transform the pattern of harmonics into quick arpeggios of enigmatic chords, while the alternation of time signatures momentarily breaks the incessant flow of the starting motif (see bars , , and of the full score in vol. ). the presence of open strings slightly changes the previous texture created by the harmonics without modifying its pitch content, thus offering variety without losing continuity. the fourth and last chord in the series implies an f dominant sound (with th and th extensions) that leads to a b∫ minor tonality in the following measure. in general, the vibrating quality and shimmering resonance of the natural harmonics aims to mirror the scintillating dim light emitted by distant stars (figure ). figure : natural harmonics creating a pulsating and shimmering effect in the opening bars of laniakea thanks to the neutrality and openness of its hypnotic sound, this theme is used as a structural element throughout the composition and is used to signal a point of departure towards the exploration of new material or a point of return within specific sections. its recurring appearance and development through subtle melodic and rhythmic alterations represent the binding force that holds this piece together, approximating the role of gravity in keeping the formidable masses of celestial bodies in a perfect state of balanced motion. an example of this characteristic is showed in the continuation of the a section, where four new tonal centers are introduced in chronological order, with quick intermission of the natural harmonics motif in between, as figure shows. this creates a push-pull effect that figuratively resembles the gravitational attraction existing in space. figure : alternation of harmonics and chords delivering a gravitational effect during the a section of laniakea harmonically, the chords in the extract above display an open sonority by disguising the minor third within the inner voices of their configuration. extensions such as the th and th are also present, thus contributing to deliver the jazzy flavor i mentioned earlier. visually, the horizontal contour of these arpeggiated chords, with the exception of the bass note, replicates the shape of a wave and therefore is an additional reference to the vibrations associated with movements of light through space. from a performance perspective, the wide distance existing between the harmonics pattern at the twelfth fret and the chordal structures in first position are quite challenging to execute with precision in conjunction with the delivery of variety in dynamics and consistency of musical flow. moreover, the soft and delicate textures of natural harmonics require great accuracy in applying the right amount of pressure by the fingers of the left hand in order to sound each string with clarity and evenness. after a short and transitory passage built on the alternation of the natural harmonics device and a dissonant f chord with added ∫ and # in a / meter, the c section opens with a series of melodic and accented chordal figures over the th open string and showcases an alternation between / and / time signatures. the low range, metric changes, and rhythmically displaced figures in this portion change the impetus of the composition quite drastically by delivering a forward push with an irregular drive. metaphorically, this represents a sudden movement towards unknown and darker regions of space, where the lack of points of reference contributes to create a sense of being disoriented. the wide intervallic spaces between the melodic and chordal material against the low-pitched b flat also evokes the great distances existing in every direction in the most remote areas of the universe, thus strengthening the image of slipping into darkness and emptiness. figure : melodic and chordal figures over a dark-sounding b flat drone in bars - of laniakea the second salient feature of this section is a contrasting passage with a consistent / meter that displays a more relaxed and introspective character (bars - ). a sequence of harmonic movements briefly touches four new tonalities before returning to the initial idea explained above. while discovering these specific chords, i decided to use a contrary motion effect between the melody and the bass notes, while the overall logic of the harmonic flow is maintained by common inner tones among these otherwise seemingly unrelated structures. rather than following rules rooted in functional harmony, i focused on finding an intriguing chord progression that delivered the mood and contrasting flavour i intended to create. thus, this is an example of how mft has influenced my approach to compositional strategies by stressing the importance on the intrinsic sound of an idea. during the second exposition of this harmonic progression, the final resolution arrives at the new tonal centre of a major (bars - ). from now on, the musical material temporarily gravitates around the tonality of a major with the exception of the note g appearing in bar and the lowest pitch of the harmonics motif (also g). once again, the natural harmonics motif, which is played at the th fret of the guitar in this occasion, marks the beginning of the d section. the position change generates harmonics that are a perfect fifth higher, thus spelling out the notes g, d, a, e. the higher pitches with a finer and more delicate resonance intend to depict more distant stars emitting a fainter light (bars - ). in a similar manner to the a section, this motif is interrupted by measures in / that display broken chords in conjunction with open strings. harmonically, they are quite difficult to define with conventional chord symbols and showcase some of the peculiar sonorities of mft. the process of creating these chords was driven by selecting notes of the a major scale that produced idiosyncratic resonance in combination with the first and second open strings. in addition, they are located in the vicinity of th fret in order to facilitate the execution of natural harmonics occurring in close succession. the following vertically aligned/homophonic representation of the original lines (bars - of full score in vol. ) provides for easier scrutiny of the ambiguous harmonies. figure : harmonic reduction showing enigmatic chord structures in laniakea the first chord does contain an a major triad in its inner voices, but the b note on the bass and d on the top create quite an interesting and suspended sound. a possible interpretation could be that of naming this structure as aadd /b. likewise, the chord in measure three, could be interpreted as aadd /g. in measure four, those particular pitches deliver the sound of an e dominant chord in first inversion (with an added th). this functional interpretation is also in virtue of its resolution to an a major in the following measure of the piece. in bars - , this section continues with two configurations that are borrowed from the a section (bar ) and finally arrives at a slight variation of the f dominant used in bars and . in this instance, the chord also displays the minor seventh as an added melodic tone, thus delivering quite an abrupt change of mood that prepares for the harmonic content of the next portion of laniakea. these considerations also showed how repetitions of musical ideas, borrowed harmonies, and structural design were employed to give unity and logic to this composition. the e section marks the beginning of a new exploratory phase in the piece, both musically and metaphorically. it displays two distinct contemplative passages and then develops into a descending series of chords that culminates in two examples of dark, dense, and dissonant harmonic structures. firstly, the motif of harmonics returns to the th fret and is developed by adding a fretted note within its outline and by altering its rhythmic contour. this delivers a different tonality by temporarily substituting the note a of the opening idea with a b flat, thus implying a shift towards a slightly darker mode. the lack of the third and the presence of the ninth in the underlying implied tonality, built again on the note c, continues to deliver the characteristic feeling of uncertainty and openness of this piece. this subtle alteration in texture provides another figurative depiction of shimmering objects in space. next, the section unfolds into a highly pitched arpeggiated sonic landscape that implies an e∫ dorian modality. this harmonic configuration also has a glimmering, delicate, and ethereal quality and, to my ears, it depicts the essence of stars quite well. in addition, the independent and simultaneous movement of the melody against the inner lower voices creates a dance-like effect that mirrors the fluctuation of these celestial bodies in space. figure illustrates the passage under examination. figure : contemplative passages depicting shimmering stars and oscillating heavenly bodies in bars - of laniakea in contrast, the remaining portion of the e section is characterized by a faster and more energetic pace and displays chord structures moving down in parallel motion and following a homogeneous melodic design. both during their first exposition and on the repeat, these progressions arrive at two mysterious and discordant harmonies that possess a distinctively dark and dissonant character. sudden changes of meters also contribute to build up the tension in this particular portion. the music in these passages intends to evoke the spiraling movements and shapes that are characteristic of innumerable galaxies and gas formations across the cosmos (figure ), and the mysterious qualities and power of black holes, dark energy, and dark matter (figure ). figure : descending chords mirroring spiral-like movements of galaxies bars - of laniakea figure : score reduction illustrating dissonant harmonies in bars - and bars - of laniakea in the simplified extract above, the actual arpeggiation of these structures has been included to illustrate their overall contour and the unsettling effect created by the delayed bass note. their execution is particularly challenging due to the wide stretches of five frets required by the left hand. the first chord is a b∫ seventh with a raised fifth and ninth, which is a commonly used voicing in contemporary jazz harmony, implying the use of the altered scale or ‘super locrian’ mode. the second harmony is a very idiosyncratic sonority that i was able to create thanks to the tuning peculiarities of mft. it defies conventional diatonic interpretations and therefore is more accurately described as a pitch-class configuration starting from the note b flat [ - - - ] or [b∫, b, d, e∫]. this unique set of pitches is a great example of how mft has pushed me into the discovery and utilization of sounds that were previously not part of my musical language. similarly, the next portion of laniakea continues to expand the sense of urgency and the use of complex material displayed in the last few musical examples. in fact, the second-last section symbolizes the climax of this composition and features some of its most adventurous and elaborate musical devices. its overall design is based on the alternation of a cascading melodic pattern of seven notes and turbulent arpeggiations that outline dense and sophisticated chord shapes across the guitar’s six strings. metaphorically, these devices portray a spiraling downfall into unknown and dark regions in the farthest corners of the universe. both melodically and harmonically, this portion demonstrates some of the musical strengths and singularities of the mft tuning very convincingly. the specific melodic motif is achieved by pressing the top four strings on the same fret with one finger. the same shape is then moved down the fretboard by following the intervallic design of the pentatonic scale. this generates four independent melodies in the key of c, e∫, f, and b∫ major (respectively on the first, fourth, second, and third strings) that unfold in a parallel manner. the interesting and intricate musical language that blossoms from this rather simple idea is another peculiar effect created by mft’s unique layout. later in this section, the same pattern is lowered down chromatically, thus delivering melodic variety and a sense of instability and disorientation (figure ). figure : recurring cascading melodies derived from the major pentatonic scales in the key of c, e∫, f, and b∫ and their application to four strings simultaneously in the f section of laniakea the following score is a simplified illustration of the dense harmonies that serve as resolution points of these descending melodic figures. figure : idiosyncratic sonorities from laniakea, bars - these five configurations share similar characteristics in the use of: open strings, the extended low register of mft, tonal clusters, and an enigmatic harmonic sophistication. also, the last four chords display a sequence of descending chromatic fifths in the lowest two voices that finally resolves to a c suspended sound, which is the harmonic center of laniakea’s finale. these harmonies display an idiosyncratic sonority and density that is impossible to replicate in standard tuning. in addition to creating more resonance in each voicing, the open strings outline extensions, alterations, and tone clusters against the remaining harmonic material, thus making the definition of each sound quite problematic. for example, the first shape is very similar to a c lydian dominant chord but the major third is missing; alternatively, it could be interpreted as a g minor chord with a major seventh over a c bass note. similarly, the second voicing show has an e flat minor triad at the bottom of the configuration, while the other voices spell out the major th, major th, and the raised th. in addition, the energetically active right-hand arpeggios used in the piece combine to scatter and displace these sounds, thus delivering an even more ambiguous and enigmatic harmonic effect as figure illustrates. figure : simplified version of complex and enigmatic sonorities with intense arpeggios found in the f section of laniakea overall, this portion of laniakea showcases the most technically challenging material in the whole composition. particularly, the combination of odd rhythms and continuous horizontal shifts in the melodic sequence are difficult to play smoothly. the chord shapes are also quite demanding on the left-hand due to their unusual arrangements on the fretboard, which are completely unrelated to any familiar structure in standard tuning. in addition, the incessant plucking figures in the right hand are quite arduous to perform with the required intensity and musicality. after such an intense and climactic section, the finale of laniakea features a drastic rallentando that sets up a contemplative and slow movement. the coda returns to the harmonic material utilized in the very beginning of the piece, without using the technique of natural harmonics. the sound of the open c, g, and d strings provides a static and reflective harmonic background while a poignant and simple melodic statement is performed on the guitar’s first string. the fuller tone of mft’s first string (a and second highest pitch in the layout) allows this melody to have a distinctive timbre and to stand out against the delicate drone-like accompaniment. thanks to these characteristics, the implied minor modality of the melody, and the occasional slurs, slides, and melodic embellishment, this finale is somehow reminiscent of the introspective and spiritual quality of the beginning of an indian raga. in between the exposition of its two melodic statements, an improvised development of the material is included in the recording but is not notated in the score. figure : pensive finale in bars - of laniakea the coda comes to a conclusion with a dramatic crescendo that alternates the two voicings that opened the composition. after a fermata on the chord appearing in the last beat of bar in figure , one last variation of the natural harmonics motif is quickly and softly restated and played at the th and th frets before fading away quite abruptly. the musical material in the finale marks the end of the contemplative journey across the unfathomable mysteries and wonders within the laniakea supercluster. the composition is supposed to leave the listener with a feeling of both awe and unsettledness caused by the impossibility of comprehending the immeasurable depths and complexities of the universe we happen to be part of. as this analysis demonstrates, the adventurous and idiosyncratic sonorities that infuse laniakea resulted from mft, and well served my intention to depict some of the natural phenomena and celestial bodies inhabiting the cosmos. my limited knowledge of mft’s functioning at that time pushed me towards the discovery of unique sonic landscapes by attempting to translate figurative and visual elements into musical vocabulary. imagery and concepts borrowed from the extra-musical domain of astronomy aided the creation of individual ideas and informed the structural development i employed in this composition. i believe that the use of an alternate tuning allowed me to effectively capture the symbolic connection between sound and the images of laniakea, as illustrated by in depth musical analysis. storms through this second extended solo guitar composition, i continued to address some of the challenges of writing a multi-sectional and intricate piece using an infrequently used tuning configuration. the investigation of mft’s stimulated me to venture into this fascinating and intimate musical setting in order to highlight some of the tuning’s unique sonorities and textural possibilities. as the title suggests, this work was inspired by the natural phenomena of torrential rains, which are commonly experienced in the city of brisbane at different times of the year. it is an attempt to evoke the incessant sounds caused by the heavy beating of rainfall and to depict the successions of alternating phases of downpours and calm. detailed description of the conception of storms and its parallel to these activities will be discussed throughout this analysis. this composition blossomed from the analysis and transcription of the material that unfolded during a recorded improvisation. the identification of the characteristics of principal musical motifs displayed in the video recording allowed me to develop entire sections of this piece by elaborating and modifying existing fingering patterns and chord shapes in accordance with the specific modalities i chose. deliberate decisions occurred at specific moments when i realized that the use of a particular motif had exhausted its effectiveness. this compelled me to steer the composition towards new directions by altering its harmonic rhythm, textural density, range, resonance, and tempo. simultaneously, i tried to incorporate elements borrowed from non- musical domains to shape the structure and character of this composition beside the effect of the mft tuning on my instrument, other important musical influences behind storms are american guitarist ben monder’s extended solo works for jazz guitar, and the minimalist piece for solo piano phrygian gates ( ) by american composer john adams. monder’s visionary guitar style and compositional approach is a synthesis of many musical traditions such as modern jazz, baroque counterpoint, contemporary classical music, and progressive rock. his approach has been a consistent source of inspiration in my personal attempt to write multi-faceted and extended solo guitar pieces. ben monder’s compositions windowpane ( ), mistral ( ), still motion ( ) and double sun ( ) display the ability to elaborate rather simple, fundamental musical motifs and concepts into intricate and enigmatic works. talking about his solo compositions, monder affirms that “still motion and mistral are fingerpicking patterns i discovered that became the basis for a tune […] i feel i need to limit myself to as few parameters as possible, to give myself some kind of direction, and things proceed from there” (cited in adler, ). his approach in using minimal ideas to shape long compositions has certainly inspired the conception and overall design of storms. secondly, john adams’s iconic piece phrygian gates is an extraordinary and deeply moving solo piano composition where the simple opening melodic motif keeps evolving and taking unexpected turns regarding its melodic developments, rhythmic displacements, density, and dynamics. according to evans, this work “implements a much broader scheme of textural variety, pitch cell development, and dynamic contrast” ( , p. ). moreover, the piece displays a remarkable use of modalities to create mesmerizing musical landscapes that are always in flux. direct imitation of some of the aesthetics and techniques used by these two composers will be illustrated throughout this analysis. storms is an eclectic and elaborate solo guitar work of approximately eight and half minute duration. the different phases of this piece feature a variety of guitar textures and techniques, explorations of modalities, complexity of harmonic structures, and the use of mft’s full tonal range and idiosyncratic voicings. storms is based on a right-hand plucking pattern with a distinctive rhythmic and melodic contour. the repetition of this idiomatic texture and its application to several harmonic layouts allow the development of large portions of this piece while preserving a cohesive character among them. rather than utilizing keys in a diatonic way that follows traditional harmonic cadences and hierarchies exclusively, storms displays the use of modalities as a vehicle to create unique sonic ambience and emotional quality. its compositional design intends to mirror both the characteristics and emotional states intrinsic to the alternation of the violent downpours and the moments of rest that occur during a series of torrential rains. despite their occasional destructive nature, i found the sound of these phenomena to be quite relaxing and peaceful, which are qualities this composition intends to evoke as well. on one hand, several portions of storms are centered on the turbulent and fast arpeggios of idiosyncratic chord shapes that produce dense musical landscapes with subtle melodic and rhythmic variations; these devices intend to mirror both the force and subtlety of the walls of sound created by the heavy beating of the rain. the slow harmonic pace in these parts contributes to evoke the sense of immutability that characterizes extended and powerful deluges. on the other hand, two interludes aim to evoke the moments after a violent storm, which are marked by many shades of colours and a sense of calm. the first one displays an introspective mood, a slow tempo, melodic embellishments, and harmonic progressions that are reminiscent of the traits of a jazz ballad played in a solo guitar chord-melody style. the second interlude gravitates on the juxtaposition of descending parallel chords and an ascending series of rich harmonic structures. tonal extensions, contrary motion among the bass and the melody voices, and various voicing layouts are also predominant. this section culminates in an idiosyncratic minor th chord that is arpeggiated with cascading effects of fretted notes and artificial harmonics. the last section restates the opening motif with harmonies borrowed from the c aeolian mode and displays the full use of mft’s low register. after a raising series of diminished chords, dazzling arpeggiated figures of high-pitched chords are encountered; this passage features a bright and auspicious character that signals the conclusion of the last storm. two major chords follow next and a repeated descending melodic figure with open strings arrives at an a∫ major chord, which quite unexpectedly concludes the piece with a sense of serenity and joy. figure : an outline of the different modalities used in storms storms was initially conceptualized during an early summer night characterized by heavy torrential rains as the title suggests. in the preceding week, i had been experimenting with a set of new chord shapes i discovered through mft in conjunction with a plucking pattern that created an interesting textural effect (details later in figures and .). inspired by a combination of musical ideas and meteorology, i proceeded to capture some of the concepts i was working on with my laptop. the video recording ended up documenting a very inspired and unique performance. i felt i had somehow managed to seize the ethereal connection between the music and the surrounding atmospheric events. moreover, the improvisation unfolded with an organic sense of structure and displayed a clear exposition of the material i had previously come across. captured by the honesty and clarity of this performance, i decided to use this video recording as the main source to organize the overall design of storms, as well as using specific musical concepts verbatim to develop large parts of this piece. subsequently and through attentive listening, transcribing, and approximation, i was able to decipher some of the features of the ideas that flourished so naturally while improvising. particularly, the identification of the exact rhythmic patterns in the plucking hand turned out to be quite a challenging task, due to its uneven grouping of notes and the subtle variations caused by the explorative improvisational approach i adopted. this is reflected in the score by unusual time signatures and a rhythmic cell of five notes in the right-hand arpeggio pattern. as mentioned in the introduction, this work is heavily influenced by ben monder’s compositional practice for solo jazz guitar. the following extract is taken from the opening fingerpicking figure of windowpane, which serves as the foundation of large portions of this piece. figure : opening right-hand plucking figure found in windowpane ( ), bars - the combination of the right-hand pattern with the underlying harmony possesses an idiosyncratic quality that immediately sets the ambience of this work and constitutes the binding element throughout windowpane. similarly, i committed to employ a plucked arpeggio technique as a structural device in storms. the unique texture in its opening bars is created by a d power chord shape in combination with the open top two strings. the main right-hand pattern of p-a-p-m-i delivers many repetitions of the notes d and a. these unison pitches are sounded both as open strings and fretted notes, thus providing subtle changes of timbre and achieving an attractive textural effect that identifies the character of this piece. unisons constitute a motivic element that will be employed in other parts of this composition, such as bars , , , and . the notes in one measure are organized as a sequence of four notes followed by four groups of five notes, as figure below shows. the offbeat contour and consistent repetition of d’s and a’s delivers a whirlpool of sounds that evokes the rhythmic and forceful beating of rain. simultaneously, the lack of a clear demarcation of the underlying pulse conveys a feeling of disorientation and chaos. throughout the introduction, the pitch content remains minimal and the appearance of the bass notes f# and c# completes the exposition the d major tonality. a stable pulse is finally established with the beginning of the a section: the right-hand arpeggio a- p-m-i-p outlines a repeated pattern consisting of four groups of five semiquavers. however, the displacement of the bass note on the second semiquaver of each bar continues to give a sense of rhythmic instability. in addition, the middle finger, which plucks the second string, alternates the open string’s pitch with fretted notes; as a consequence, the re-entrant tuning shifts the melodic voice of each chord to the third semiquaver (bar and in figure ), thus creating an additional rhythmic effect that is used extensively throughout storms. figure : introduction of storms featuring repeated notes with different timbre, open strings and odd rhythmic groupings figure : structural right-hand pattern outlining four groups of five notes and delivering idiosyncratic textures in bars - of storms upon reflection, i realized that the characteristics of this pivotal idea are influenced by the opening measures of phrygian gates, which consists of a melodic motif based on the pulsing of a same note, octaves, and major second intervals. starting from such a simple concept, adams brilliantly creates a musical journey predominantly based on the notes of the lydian mode and showcases masterful use of motivic development, rhythmic displacement, and variety in density and dynamics. the underlying modalities in phrygian gates are carefully and slowly dosed to add different shades of tonal colours and increase the density, depth and scope of the composition. these modes, evans states “are used as sources of pitch content throughout the piece” ( , p. ). in imitation of adams’ techniques, the gradual exposition of the material contained in sections a, c, and d of storms unfolds thanks to subtle variations of the intervallic relationships among the pitches of d major combined with bass voice motion and diverse layout in each voicing. occasional exceptions in pitch content are represented by the note f (bar and ), a# (bar ), and g# (bars - ). figuratively, the choice of a static pitch collection intends to imitate the underlying quality of the sound of a storm. there is, in fact, an almost unchangeable drone in the background of this natural phenomenon that encompasses all the other simultaneous and erratic sounds and rhythms created by the heavy beating of the water. this effect is achieved in the music by the sustained bass notes ringing through the whirling layers of sounds and by occasional rhythmic displacements of the highest voice in each harmonic structure (discussed earlier), which allow the melodic material to stand out. these musical nuances are a direct consequence of mft’s re-entering properties and are realized through the application of various chord shapes to its tuning layout. figure shows a passage taken from the a section of storms that well illustrates these musical devices and metaphorical implications. figure : diverse harmonic material composed from the pitches of d major showing melodic variations, rhythmic displacements, and unique voicing structures in sections a of storms. references to the opening motivic cell of repeated unisons appear in bar and the b section of this composition constitutes the first interlude that momentarily breaks the former incessant flow of fast arpeggios and dense layers of sounds. the abrupt interruption of the previous textures and the transition to a slower and introspective phase imitate the sudden cessation of violent downpours and the restoration of tranquility and light. this intermezzo features a slow meditative moment with a compositional approach that is reminiscent of solo guitar playing in the context of a jazz ballad. the key of b∫ in this section signals a departure from the former pitch content and immediately sets up a warmer and calmer atmosphere. it also allows the use of the two lowest strings in mft, thus delivering the full versatility of its harmonic presence and resonance. the use of diatonic cadences, secondary dominants, and passing diminished chords in bars through restates a sense of order and direction that contrasts with the previous immutability of the d major modality. the chosen chord progressions and melodic embellishments are characteristic of traditional jazz idioms and are well-suited to mft’s layout. the overall sonorities are slightly different due to mft’s configuration but they arguably deliver a convincing representation of this particular style. once again, the re-entering first string allows variations on chord structures that otherwise would have been redundantly based on strict consecutive fifths. particularly, tonal clusters are achieved on beat three and four of bar and beat one and four of bar . figure shows the chord-melody approach and features the full and resonant low register of the tuning, particularly in bars , , , and with the notes b , c , d , and e∫ . the illustrated chords are easy to play and the novelty in the fingerings does not present challenges for the more experienced player. the melodic connecting fragments are extrapolated from or played around the chord shapes and can be comfortably executed. figure : chord-melody style featuring diatonic progressions, melodic figures and tonal clusters within chord shapes, and mft’s low range in the b section of storms (bars - ) the concluding measures of the b section display a melodic arpeggio sequence of two harmonic structures outlining the tonic major chord and the four minor th chord. after its exposition in the key of b∫, the same sequential line is played in the key of d major, which is reached through a minor ii-v cadence, and the modulation prepares for the pitch content of the next section. this modal interchange technique features an interesting use of open strings to achieve a scalar contour with a sustained effect. it is important to notice the string skipping between the rd and st string imposed by mft to maintain the stepwise motion in this line, as shown in bars - in figure . figuratively, the locrian mode on the e minor chord, the presence of the ∫ and ∫ on the a dominant chord, and the use of minor plagal cadences in these final bars deliver a darker ambience and a feeling of unsettledness that prepares for the transition to the following series of storms. figure : sequential and parallel melodic lines that allow modulation in the conclusive bars of the b section of storms programmatically, sections c, d, and e of storms constitute the depiction of the longest uninterrupted phase of downpours. variety of density, range, voicings layout, and resonance through the intermittent use of open strings showed in the music aims to portray the ever- changing sounds created by rainfalls, which arbitrarily become heavier or lighter. the harmonic trajectory of this central portion sets outs from the static palette of d major and gradually arrives at the richer sonorities in the second interlude via a series of contrasting textures and modulations in previously unexplored tonalities. the c section marks the beginning of the development of the material exposed in the a section (bars - ), which still gravitates around the d major chord and its relative mode. variety in the underlying right-hand arpeggio is provided by recurring meter changes that outline either four or three groups of five notes, which stands as another metaphor for unpredictability (see figure ). from bar onwards, the b aeolian mode is established as the new pivotal harmonic centre for the remainder of sections c and d. chord structures based on the previously unused bass notes g and a assume a more important role as well (bars - ). the transition to the b tonality is reinforced by a chord sequence that abstractly implies a sub-dominant to dominant movement resolving to the minor tonic despite the slight harmonic ambiguity and incompleteness of the pitches displayed. both the dominant and the tonic chords are in fact missing the third in the layout (figure ). figure : approximation of a traditional diatonic chord progression in bars - of storms many other harmonic structures with unusual and enigmatic intervallic designs are abundant throughout sections c and d. the unique properties of mft deliver voicings that are quite difficult to interpret and are ambivalent in their nature. the compositional approach i employed purposely aimed at finding ambiguous and fresh sonorities while restraining myself to the limited pitch content of one key. this process involved the testing of many possible chord shapes and finger combinations in different sets of strings in conjunction with a fixed bass note and with the occasional use of open strings (see bars and in figure ). in addition, common chordal fragments and individual pitch cells were maintained to give a sense of motivic development from one harmony to the next and are easily identifiable by the fret numbers displayed in the tablature. further examples in figure demonstrate the variety of configurations this creative method produced and the subsequent idiosyncratic musical language delivered by mft. figure : contrasting intervallic designs featuring open strings and common melodic cells in bars - of storms the e section of storms begins the departure from the primary modality used so far thanks to a more interesting and engaging harmonic path. the introduction of new pitches and the perceivably increased harmonic pace suggest that change is unfolding and will result in the cessation of the storm. through logical voice leading and occasional chromaticism, the material descends towards darker modalities by a gradual flattening of specific voices within the chord shapes. firstly, there is also more activity in the bass line, which assumes a more independent role and creates contrapuntal effects against the melodic contour of each harmonic configuration in bars - and later in bars - . secondly, the same device is shifted to the inner voices of the chords in bars , , and . with the exception of one diatonic cadence targeting an a minor chord in bar , the series of new modalities is achieved without modulation and simply follows the natural progression of the cycle of fifths. this particular technique makes reference to compositional strategies employed in phrygian gates. as evans affirms “the circle of fifths is used to determine the progression of pitch centers even though its typical association with major and minor scales and key relationships is mostly ignored” ( , p. ). moreover, the transition from the lydian mode to the phrygian mode in adams’ piece just happens unexpectedly as the composer describes: ‘gates’, a term borrowed from electronics, are the moments when the modes abruptly and without warning shift. there is “mode” in this music, but there is no “modulation” (adams, ). this extended harmonic sequence starts at the ninth position of the guitar and slowly descends towards the first position, which marks the arrival point of this section with a rich and resonant e∫ major th chord (bar ). occasionally, some of the harmonic structures are difficult to define, such the material in bar (figure ). the g# in the bass is simply used as a chromatic approach towards the note a in the following measure. the remaining pitches deliver an ambiguous and dissonant sonority thanks to the presence of a ∫ interval (g# and a) and a major second (a and b) in the upper voices. figure : opening bars of the e section featuring movements in the bass voice and occasional ambiguous sonorities in bars - of storms figure shows an instance of the sudden switch of modalities, in this case from f lydian to b∫ lydian (with temporary suspension created by the c on the bass in bar below). also, the motion within the inner voices of the chords appears and is marked with accents in the score. the resonance of the open top two strings is employed as a returning textural effect, which metaphorically re-establishes the forceful sound of the falling masses of water. the sustained tones d and a are shared among the individual modalities that are quickly passed through, thus creating a subtle and fluid transition. the re-entering first string in conjunction with the remaining voices of the underlying harmonic configurations creates wavelike patterns that intends evoke the subtle flux and peripheral sounds inherent to the storm. figure : modal shift, textural use of open strings, melodic use of inner voices, and undulating patterns in bars - of storms next, the material found in the f section allows a closer look at some of the characteristic voicings used in this piece and enables the discussion of the harmony in relation to mft. comparisons with standard tuning and technical consideration are also addressed in the following paragraphs. through an unexpected meter change and the use of block chords strongly marking each beat of the bar, the pace of the previous incessant texture of arpeggios is abruptly interrupted. the descending parallel voicings show a fixed intervallic design that consists of three consecutive fifths, displayed with identical fret numbers in the tablature, on string two, three, and four. while this configuration remains the same during its descent on the fretboard, the fourth note in the re-entering string is played either one or two frets away. besides being identical to two chords shapes common in standard tuning and therefore easy to play, they deliver quite an interesting sonority thanks to the tuning properties of mft. the lower pitch of the first string creates a series of triadic structures supported by a bass note on the fourth string, thus resulting in the series of slash chords shown in figure , bar (f/b∫, emi/a, dmi/g, and so on). the mixture of b’s, b∫’s, e’s, and e∫’s in these shapes delivers a sense of harmonic ambiguity that is resolved by the rich e∫ chord in bar . this particular passage shows how two simple shapes borrowed from standard tuning were able to create novel musical language. figure : use of parallel slash chords in section f of storms contrastingly, the second harmonic idea features contrary motion between the melody and the bass and a gradual expansion of the intervallic distance among the inner voices of each chord. this delivers a dramatic effect that culminates in the full display of the harmonic power and complexity mft is capable of. figure : idiosyncratic voicings in bars - of storms in bar , the first two chords are common voicings in standard tuning and their execution in all-fifths tuning is quite accessible. the third and fourth shapes are easier to play in this tuning because all the notes are still located in four adjacent strings. in standard tuning, the shape of these chords would span across the sixth, fourth, third, and first string and would present some challenges in altering the spacing of the plucking hand’s fingers. from this point on, none of the voicings could be replicated in standard tuning as they would require impractical stretches and exceed the conventional range of the instrument. moreover, the harmonic progression and descending bass line would be interrupted and the dramatic climax of this passage lost. the fifth chord in this excerpt, e∫maj (# ), displays a distinctive quintal structure in the three upper voices and possess a balanced and beautiful resonance. interestingly, its layout on the fingerboard is identical to a d/a shape in standard tuning and therefore falls very easily under the fingers. subsequently, we encounter a bmaj (# ) chord, which functions as a chromatic approach to the following b∫maj in bar . the latter has an extremely wide layout that spans four octaves and a major second, thus delivering a quite unique sonority for the guitar. the last chord of bar show a lush and dissonant d dominant chord with both raised th and th (the perfect fifth is also present at the bottom end of the voicing). this powerful structure has a distinctive pianistic sonority that stretches over five frets, spans over the six strings, and requires the flattening of the little finger to press two strings simultaneously. for these reasons, it presents some difficulties in execution and can only be performed by advanced players. similarly, the final chord is strictly characteristic of a fifths-based layout and confirms the unique harmonic possibilities and strengths of the chosen tuning. the beautifully rich g minor th sonority of consecutive fifths ends this progression with harmonic balance and elegance and is enhanced by the idiosyncratic guitar texture of artificial harmonics. this technique requires to position the right-hand index finger exactly twelve fret higher than each fretted note that form the shape of the chord. slight pressure is applied by the index finger while the thumb simultaneously plucks the string. this produces a pitch that is one octave higher than the fretted note. after striking an artificial harmonic, a regular note is played by the right-hand ring or little finger. the combination of fretted notes and artificial harmonics produces subtle and shimmery overtones that deliver a harp-like effect and infuse the music with another element of resonance and sophistication. the harmonics are marked with diamond-shaped headnotes, as figure illustrates. figure : use of artificial harmonics in combination with characteristic quintal voicings in bars - of storms the g section of storms marks the beginning of the last phase of torrential rains this composition intends to portray. the recapitulation of the material found in section a is presented with the darker colours of the c aeolian mode and the main arpeggio pattern is re- established. the abundant use of the open third and fourth strings, which sound the pitches c and g, well suit the effective display of the new tonal centre by creating a drone built on tonic and fifth. the preliminary ideas around this new tonality were transcribed from the original improvised session mentioned at the beginning of this analysis, where i explored some intervallic structures and chord shapes in combination with open strings. the use of mft’s full low register is displayed with the pitches b and c in bars - , d∫ in bars and , which is another example of a quick modal shift, and d in bars - . these deep and haunting notes are supposed to evoke the sound of distant thunder in the background of the deluge. figure : recapitulation of the beginning material in a new modality, open strings drone effect, and low bass note in bars - of storms another singular example of idiosyncratic chord structures at the end of this section is the sequence of diminished chords illustrated in figure . the minor tenth interval existing between the bass and the tenor voices (marked in red) make these chords impossible to play in standard tuning. the bass notes of this particular shape can only be played with the thumb of the fretting hand, thus making its execution extremely difficult. figure : sequence of diminished chords from storms, bars - the last section of this composition displays the shimmery tone that is characteristic of this tuning for chords in higher position of the fretboard. in conjunction with the right-hand plucking, these unusual shapes produce wide and fluctuating intervallic leaps and interesting harmonic structures. from bar , the changing melodic line in the second-highest voice of the chord is achieved thanks to the irregularity of the tuning in the first string. in standard tuning, this would have resulted in a variation of the highest note instead and would have provided a different tessitura effect. the structures in the last two bars shown in figure are extremely difficult to execute due to the wide stretches of five and six frets between the barred first finger and the combination of ring and small fingers. although not practical, these chords produce a nice contrast to the wider harmonic shapes of the previous bars. figure : wide variety of tessituras and challenging voicings found in storms, bars - lastly, a descending motif of diatonic sevenths is played in conjunction with the open second and third strings, which deliver a final variation of the very opening motif in a different modality. this sequence arrives at a rich and resonant a∫ lydian chord, which concludes the piece with a gradual subsiding of the chordal arpeggio (figure ). figure : texture of repeated notes and open strings and a lush voicing in the final bars of storms the analysis of storms has given insights into the process of creating an extended composition for solo guitar that combines borrowed musical techniques, the inspiration from natural phenomena, and the investigation of idiosyncratic sonorities of a new tuning configuration. through a single improvised performance, a spontaneous blending of all these elements was made possible and the recorded video material constituted the primary source from which the structuring ideas were identified and exploited. the influence of nature was pivotal in providing both guidelines for the overall compositional design of storms as well as offering details that were used to shape specific textures, different degrees of harmonic dynamism, rhythmic and melodic nuances, and the metaphorical allusions found in this piece. the unpremeditated merging of guitar techniques with the sonic manifestations of heavy rains at that particular point in time and place constituted the primary stimulus for this piece. i recognize these elements to be what aaron copland calls the “germinal ideas” that “seem to be begging for their own life, asking their creator, the composer, to find the ideal envelop for them, to evolve a shape and colour and content that will most fully exploit their creative potential” (cited in harvey, , p. ). it is important to emphasize the impact mft had in determining the guitar textures, effects, and the majority of the musical language displayed in this composition. as the many examples showed, the re-entering and all-fifths characteristics of this tuning were crucial in the following aspects: •! shaping the opening idea with repeated unisons and its subsequent uses that occur throughout the piece; •! creating rhythmic and melodic displacements, tonal clusters, and idiosyncratic intervallic layouts within the chord shapes employed; •! determining the overall pitch content of large portions thanks to the use of open strings, which well suited the tonalities of d major, b∫ major, and c aeolian; •! offering a wider bass register to generate harmonic depth, new tonal possibilities, and figurative effects; •! delivering piano-like chord structures with great resonance, sophistication, dissonance, and range. large portions of storms blossomed from developing initial ideas and concepts through an intuitive exploration of mft’s tuning infrastructure. musical choices were influenced by the idiosyncratic sonorities offered by this tuning in combination with personal aesthetic preferences and embodied knowledge. during its investigation for this particular composition, mft presented material that was difficult to label and that did not always make sense from a traditional theoretical point of view. for these reasons, it fostered a compositional method that gravitated around sound, exploration, and approximation rather than relying on precise techniques and prescriptive analytical thinking exclusively. for these reasons, i feel that storms was a successful verification of how alternate tuning configurations allow the bypassing of engrained modi operandi and foster the establishment of new creative paths. chapter six: mft and song-writing this chapter focuses on the analysis of two pieces to gain some insights and allow considerations of the influence of mft in my song-writing practice. the compositions, duets for guitar and voice, show how the new tuning aided my creative process both from compositional and arranging perspectives. two worlds united is the first piece i completed after my decision to employ mft as the primary creative driver in this research project. my initial objective was to create a piece to showcase the unique resonance, the idiosyncratic tonalities, and basic chords intrinsic to mft in the relatively simple context of an original song with lyrics. however, the rudimentary grasp i had on the tuning’s inner workings at that time imposed a very intuitive approach to song-writing. on the contrary, the watcher is a fairly recent adaptation and expansion of a song that was initially drafted on a guitar in standard tuning. my decision to remodel pre-existing material constitutes an experiment to verify my ability to use the knowledge i have acquired in the last three years to craft a through-composed guitar arrangement that showcases mft’s distinctive musical characteristics. by examining two compositions with identical settings, but ranging chronologically across the span of this doctoral study, i intend to reveal how the practice of and assimilated knowledge of mft has impacted the depth of my musical expression using this particular alternate tuning. in both cases, the new tuning configuration helped me create unique sonic backgrounds to accompany the intimate setting of a duet. this analysis will also discuss how the lyrics served both as a driver in the creative process and as a contributing musical device through the use of phonetics and imagery. two worlds united in this composition, i was able to craft the harmonic progressions displayed in the verse and chorus by testing out the sounds of seventh chords in different positions of the fingerboard and in conjunction with the resonance of open strings. the overall rhythmic feel of the piece was developed by experimenting with different strumming patterns. the melodic material was composed through repetitive cycles of improvisation where particular attention was given to: a) inflection of words; b) syllabic imitation; c) syncopation; d) interplay between the guitar part and the melody this composition is a dynamic pop/rock song with sophisticated chords, unusual harmonic progressions, and syncopated melodies. it is approximately four and a half minutes long and displays an aabcb structure. this composition showcases mft’s fresh resonance through the extensive use of open strings in its idiosyncratic chordal configurations. it takes advantage of the new tuning’s extended range to deliver unusual tonalities and powerful sonorities that expand the guitar’s tonal scope and versatility. the lyrics focus on the lives of two troubled teenagers, a girl and a boy, and their interaction with both their outer and inner world. the narrative throughout this piece is very concise and much is left to the imagination of the listener. each of the two verses reveals, with short statements, small but crucial details about their experiences and age-related emotional and social struggles. the second half of the song brings the two together and centers on their meeting, falling in love, and the subsequent realization of their being destined for each other. two worlds united is the first work i composed using mft and it blossomed from the initial investigation of its unique layout. due to the complete novelty of this tuning, i started with the discovery of chord shapes to use in combination with a variety of strumming patterns, similar to what any beginner player would do. this basic approach allowed me to start getting accustomed to mft’s inner workings and take full advantage of its unique resonance. as this process continued, i began to comprehend the underlying anatomy of this tuning system and familiarize myself with some of its voicing configurations by drafting several chord diagrams. the symmetrical nature of mft made the recognition and memorization of triads and seventh chords quite easily. the larger intervallic space existing between the notes in each harmonic layout delivered idiosyncratic and open sonorities, which sounded strikingly different from the tonal characteristics of a guitar in standard tuning and immediately caught my ear and imagination. in addition, the extended range of mft inspired me to investigate the full potential of the lower register through the placement of seventh chords on the bottom four strings of the guitar. afterwards, i explored the combination of both major and minor voicings with the two remaining strings open, in order to take advantage of the natural resonance of the instrument. as the musical examples in this section show, this approach became the driving line of thought to develop the chord progressions of two world united. the use of the top two open strings’ pitches d and a as chordal extensions of different harmonic centres allowed the creation of beautiful and rich voicings by working downwards from the upper structure of the chord rather than thinking from the bass note. at this particular stage of the creative process, my knack for sophisticated harmonic structures, rooted in modern jazz aesthetics, guided the construction of the sonic atmospheres of this composition. in addition, the peculiarity of the re-entering string in mft added some interesting tonal clusters within the higher voices of each chord. this provided further structural variety and balanced the contrasting and wider intervallic distances existing at the bottom end of these voicings. figure illustrates the opening four chords of the verse of two worlds united. this visual system also allowed me to easily archive and memorize the new shapes i was discovering. standard notation of the same chords is also included to appreciate the musical idiosyncrasies inherent in mft. figure : chord shapes used in the verse of two worlds united. black dots indicate fretted notes; roman numerals show the fret numbers; and the open strings are marked by hollow circles above the respective strings figure : harmonic reduction of the verse of two worlds united. use of extensions, tonal clusters, common open strings, and the extended low register of mft are evident in these configurations. the inclusion of single notes describes occasional adjustments in the chords shape to create further harmonic variety all the bass notes in the structures above belong to the key of b∫ major, which is the main gravitational tonality of this composition. however, there is a lack of diatonic cadences and the material is built from pitches of both the b∫ ionian and b∫ lydian modes. in addition, the appearance of the natural th (e) on the d minor chord and of the major rd (b) on the following g major chord, in the first two measures in figure , contributes to making this sequence unpredictable and ambiguous. this is the result of a compositional method that was based on improvisation and aural intuition rather than following premeditated harmonic paths. the investigation of mft is responsible for delivering musical material that show poly-modality, or the existence of two simultaneous modes where the pitch content is drawn from (see figures and for use of this device in the messenger from oz). the continuous resonance offered by the top two open strings allows a smooth transition from one harmony to the next and somehow functions as the binding force that holds this sequence together. in the second four bar phrase that completes the verse’s outline, a b∫ lydian chord is used as a substitution for the d minor, thus mildly reinforcing the b∫ as the main tonal centre. once the choice of the harmonic material was complete, i continued to improvise with different strumming patterns until the underlying groove of this song was defined. figure shows the main strumming figure employed in both the verse and chorus of this piece. rhythmic and tonal nuances are created by slight variations delivered by the right-hand motion during performance. figure : strumming pattern employed in two worlds united following a similar approach, i continued to search for idiosyncratic voicings to shape the chorus of two worlds united. in order to attain variety of texture and tonality, i explored different chordal possibilities by moving some of the shapes used in the verse around the fretboard until a specific sound appealed to me. this intuitive method allowed the development of characteristic voicings by maintaining a similar or identical intervallic designs in the bottom four strings of the guitar, as figure illustrates. figure : the chord shapes in the chorus of two worlds united show a similar or identical design to the material used in the verse variety in these configurations was achieved through the use of the open nd string to create additional resonance and by fretting the first string in different positions to deliver textural and harmonic subtleties. allowing the d pitch of the nd string to ring throughout these chords creates interesting extensions, specifically the th, the th, and # th. only the second voicing in figure does not employ the nd string’s resonance, although it still displays the same pitch as a fretted note outlining the major th of the c major chord. the harmonic progression in the chorus is built on the tonic and relative minor chords in the keys of a∫ and c major, which continues the poly-modality device explained earlier. its unpredictable design uses the opening f minor as a pivot point that firstly moves to c major through a minor plagal cadence, and then secondly to a minor through parallel motion of a major third. finally, the a∫ major is reached through smooth voice leading from the a minor: the two bottom notes move down by semitone, the top note ascends by a half step, and the middle three voices remain the same. figure offers a reduction of the chorus’s harmonic outline. figure : harmonic reduction of the chorus of two worlds united displaying harmonic ambiguity and colorful voicings the distinctive use of non-traditional harmonic movements shown above is clearly a consequence of the investigation of a different tuning layout. simultaneously, the impact of joni mitchell’s approach to songwriting was a driving force into the creation of this piece. as whitesell ( ) asserts “while many songwriters have been inventive within traditional tonal harmony, mitchell’s work is impressive for its extended exploration of alternatives to single key structures and the major/minor system” (jonimitchell.com). as the main two sections of two worlds united were being completed, i decided that this piece would be enhanced by an instrumental introduction and a bridge to achieve balance between words and music so that the story could unfold at the right pace. the novelty of mft’s lowest two strings, b∫ and f, inspired me to craft an idiosyncratic voicing with full resonance that would set the character of the composition right away. the placing of these two pitches on beat one and three of the bar respectively creates an assertive harmonic statement centered on the key of b∫. the major rd, th, and # are also used in the chordal arpeggio and define the b∫ lydian mode, which constitutes the primary modality of this piece. the held chord at the end of measure sounds the note a as well (open st string) and clearly delivers an f major th chord. rhythmically, the arpeggio’s ostinato pattern strongly establishes the underlying dynamic feel of the song, as figure shows. figure : an idiosyncratic b∫ lydian chord displaying the use of the bottom two strings of mft as a powerful harmonic device. a rhythmic arpeggio pattern is employed to establish the groove in the opening measures of two worlds united the development of this material allowed the creation of the transition point to the chorus. the same melodic and rhythmic contour is maintained in the higher voices while the bottom two lines show a parallel movement of spread thirds. the bass line in this progression proceeds in a step-wise motion from the lowest available pitch b∫ up to e. each note harmonizes two major chords, b∫ and c, both in root position and first inversion (figure ). the ascending quality of the bass motion strongly leads to the f minor chord, which opens the chorus (see first chord in figure earlier). figure : the pre-chorus features an ascending bass lines over a repeating melodic figure in bars - of two worlds united finally, the bridge is built around an instrumental interlude intended to convey a contemplative mood and to contrast with the dynamic strumming in the previous sections. again, the chordal arpeggios and melodic figures below are borrowed from the b∫ lydian modality and outline a d minor to b∫ major chord progression. after this intermission, four chords from the verse are strummed and held for an entire measure, thus slowing down the pace of the song even further. the material of the pre-chorus and chorus is repeated once more and the piece concludes suddenly by interrupting the dynamic strumming on the a∫ major chord. figure : main material used in the bridge of two worlds united, bars and this section focuses on the creative process which enabled the development of the melody and the lyrics of two worlds united. by following a well-established technique in my songwriting practice, i periodically recorded myself while singing improvised lines over the song’s main chord progressions. this method is clearly influenced by my background in jazz performance and mirrors the practice of improvising over a set of chord changes. the transcription of spontaneous ideas is used as a compositional tool that allows the slow process of developing a melody by choosing the best fragments from different takes. through a natural verbalization of musical ideas, i use random words and phrases to help myself identifying the right note choice and articulation i am looking for. at this stage, phonetics, rhythm, and pitch take part in the development of the melody simultaneously. in addition, attentive listening to recorded improvisations allows me to detect particular uses of words in terms of their intrinsic sound qualities. repetitive cycles of this modus operandi help me elaborate primary sentences into melodic and rhythmic cells that constitute the building blocks of both the lyrics and the melody of a song. in the case of two worlds united, the improvisations displayed the recurring use of adverbs ending with the syllable ‘ly’. therefore, i decided to employ variations of adverbs as a semantic device in the narrative of this song with eleven individual uses. this technique influenced both the weight of the wording and the overall musicality of specific sentences. despite its simplicity and the limited range of one octave (from g to g ), the melody in the verse gravitates around colorful extensions such the th, th, major th, and major th and displays syncopations, rhythmic variety, and inflections such as glissandi and appoggiature. subtle variations in rhythmic and melodic content occur during both verses to accommodate the musical phrasing dictated by the lyrics. figure illustrates the opening si bars of the first verse. figure : an extract of the melody in the first verse of two world united, bars - in the chorus, the melody becomes rhythmically sparser but still shows the use of syncopation. within each structural block of six bars, its length spans over five measures, thus leaving the last one silent. the note choice is kept simple and supports the underlying harmony by outlining both guide tones, such as rd and th in the first line below, and more interesting extensions such as th and # over the a∫ chord. in addition, the three-note ascending motif used at the start of the chorus reinforces the modal duality discussed previously by stating both e’s and e∫’s, as shown in figure . figure : melodic contour in the chorus of two worlds united, bars - as this analysis has shown, the influence of mft has been critical in creating both the overall sonority and the harmonic layout of two worlds united. by investigating chordal possibilities available in mft’s configuration, i was able to craft unique harmonic progressions that go beyond the key system approach. particularly, the use of two separate keys in the chorus of this piece resembles harmonic devices that are common in joni mitchell’s work. in the analysis of mitchell’s i don’t know where i stand, whitesell remarks “one of the most original paths of exploration in joni's oeuvre has to do with the fission or doubling of tonal centre” ( , jonimitchell.com). mitchell’s use of an alternate guitar tuning has most likely contributed to the two-key harmonic system displayed in her piece. the watcher this composition blossomed from the adaptation and reinterpretation of a previously-penned work in order to verify the functionality of mft as an arranging device. while i tried to adhere to the harmonic and compositional design of the original piece as much as possible, the different tuning configuration of mft resulted in modifications of the following: a) key of the piece to exploit the sound of the open lower strings; b) range; c) harmonic structures; d) melodic contour; e) dynamics and textures; and f) duration and content of the musical interludes. at specific moments of this composition, i had to make deliberate choices to overcome problems caused by the impossibility of replicating musical language composed in standard guitar tuning verbatim with mft. the watcher is an introspective song in / meter for voice and guitar of approximately four and a half minute duration. it is performed at a medium tempo with a relaxed feel in simple triple meter and is strongly rooted in the language of diatonic harmony. it has a melancholic character with figurative and profound lyrics that were inspired by the experiences at an intensive meditation retreat. its chant-like and minimal melodic statements gravitate on the key of f minor, which is expressed through the use of colorful and poignant harmonies. the interplay and echoing figures between the vocal part and the guitar accompaniment create a delicate and interlocking musical texture. instrumental interludes follow each melodic statement, thus generating a sense of a continuous dialogues between the two instruments. after completing a ten-day long spiritual retreat in close contact with nature and removed from the noise, distractions, and commitments of every day’s life, i felt compelled to write a piece that would reflect on and capture the essence of this unique experience. since i had no musical instruments with me at that time, i started writing down a few thoughts and recording some melodies on my phone. these ideas were quickly elaborated into the melody and words of the watcher and i began to imagine a guitar part that would complement the material i had come up with. thanks to this process of conceptualization away from my instrument, the musical accompaniment in a standard tuning guitar developed very quickly on my return home. after almost one year, i thought about rearranging this piece on mft to see if this layout could improve the overall musicality and mood of this composition. in addition, this task would be a great experiment to verify my ability to use mft as an arranging device to enhance the quality of a pre-composed piece. having two versions of the same piece allowed interesting comparisons between guitar parts written in two contrasting tuning layouts to identify their corresponding musical textures and performance implications. since the music of the watcher blossomed from melodic ideas and lyrics, this section starts with a quick examination of these elements first. the melody of this piece shows a rather simple design with a concise range of a minor th. the repetitive dotted-crochet inflection in the verse creates a polyrhythmic effect of two over three in conjunction with the accompaniment figure. as figure shows, this motif’s primary trait is a major-third upward leap, which outlines the ∫ rd and th of the underlying tonality of f minor. the economy of melodic content and rhythmic contour creates a chant-like quality that is reinforced by syllabic repetitions in the lyrics of the first two lines. the recurring use of adjectives ending with the syllable -ry also appears in the second verse. the melody over the d∫ chord, as shown in bar (figure ) shows slight variations in each of the individual statements during the three verses, thus representing an element of subtle variety within the structure of the song. figure : melodic simplicity in the verse of the watcher, bars - similarly, the melody in the chorus is built on very simple material. the use of space between the two main phrases allows musical dialogue between the voice and the guitar. the opening e∫ note, which is the highest pitch in the entire vocal part, is an assertive melodic statement that outlines the th of the underlying b∫ minor chord. the second phrase displays an even simpler rhythmic contour with long note durations, and confirms the final note f as the most frequent arrival point in the melodic material throughout the composition. figure : melodic material in the chorus of the watcher, bars - with respect to the lyrics, the watcher uses evocative metaphors and images to describe the personal experiences that inspired this song. unity in the content is achieved by the recurring use of words with a similar syllabic design, as mentioned earlier, and by the repetition of fragments of individual sentences between the first and second verse (see full lyrics in vol. ). several references to natural elements are conveyed by expressions or words such as tidal waves, sun’s warm beaming, breeze, and water steaming, alluding to my surroundings both during and after the retreat. while translating the music of the watcher into mft’s configuration, i aimed to preserve its harmonic design and overall character as much as possible. however, i recognized that certain musical language or would inevitably undergo some transformation. adjustments were dictated by specific sonorities that are idiosyncratic to standard guitar tuning and therefore impractical or impossible to perform on a tuning mainly based on a consecutive fifths layout. these incongruences were the opportunities for creating a slightly different musical language that highlights mft’s unique sonorities. firstly, the switch to mft imposed a preliminary reflection on choosing the right key for the watcher. this piece was originally written in the key of g minor to accommodate the melody i had recorded away from my instrument. as a consequence, the guitar part in standard tuning displayed the frequent use of the open d and g strings, which became important tonal characteristics of several chord shapes used throughout the whole composition (see full score in vol. ). however, it became evident that the key of f minor would suit mft quite well due to the presence of both the note f and c as open strings in the low register of the instrument. moreover, the switch to a darker minor key intensified the melancholic atmosphere of this composition. the two scores in figure offer a comparison between the flavor of the introduction’s material in the two tunings (standard tuning at the top and mft at the bottom), and highlight the change of tonality from g minor to f minor. figure : in the introduction of the watcher, mft creates slight differences in the musical language and generates lower tonalities with a darker ambience the opening harmonic structure was transposed to mft’s layout without difficulty and the exact sonority could be replicated. however, the two shapes span over different sets of strings and the use of mft’s re-entering string was necessary to deliver the third interval between the top two voices in this particular harmonic design. coincidentally, the first melodic fragment is played on identical frets but on different strings in the two layouts. from the second bar onwards, each sonority displays some variations in contour and note choice due to the impossibility of delivering identical musical language on a fifths-based configuration; horizontal shifts into higher positions and the use of completely different fingerings were needed as the tablature clearly illustrates in bars and (figure ). with mft, the overall character of the introduction acquires a darker and daunting ambience thanks to the presence of the open th string, which considerably reinforces the lower sonorities, as figure indicates. overall, i feel that mft provides a more powerful musical statement with an additional dramatic effect conveyed by its deeper tonal characteristics. the main accompanying figure in the verse is based on the first voicing shown in figure and therefore suits mft’s layout quite nicely. the harmonic progression is also maintained and slight differences in texture occur at the end of the first melodic statement, where mft allows a further downward step in the bass line, descending to a d∫ major chord in the key of f minor. in the initial arrangement in g minor, the corresponding e∫ major chord is voiced in second inversion (figure , bars - ) due to the limitations of standard tuning’s low range, which terminates at an e instead. the conversion of the original material to mft also creates different melodic extensions and wider harmonic structures in these conclusive measures of the verse. figure shows these two passages under scrutiny and highlights the contrasting contour and range between standard tuning and mft. figure : differences in range, intervallic layout, and melodic contour when translating similar material from standard tuning to mft during the verse of the watcher while preserving an almost identical harmonic design, the music in the chorus of the watcher assumes a contrasting character through mft’s layout. choices were dictated by the fact that the guitar accompaniment supports the vocal part by doubling the melody, thus imposing constraints in the width and design of each chord. significant differences involve range, voicing configuration, melodic contour, and the use of dissimilar open strings (standard tuning is on top and mft at the bottom in figure ). figure : comparisons between the material in the opening bars of chorus. the two tuning layouts deliver contrasting textures with unique contours, range, and harmonic qualities. the opening four bars in standard tuning make use of the open g string as a common tone throughout the harmonic progression, creating some tonal clusters and added resonance within the fairly compact layout of the voicings; the chordal arpeggios in the second line outline two g minor structures, the latter introducing colorful tones such as the ∫ th and the th. on the contrary, mft delivers a musical background with lower and wider sonorities. the chordal intervallic configurations are also slightly different due to the difficulty in replicating close voicings in a fifths-based tuning while maintaining a designated note at the top. in figure , bar in the standard tuning score shows an f minor triad in second inversion with an added th, which creates a semitone cluster within the chord layout. in mft, an identical structure, e∫ minor th over b∫, would have been quite impractical to perform: the semitone existing between the minor rd and the th would have required a seven-fret stretch to execute underneath the e∫ top voice. thus, i opted for a b∫ minor th chord, which still displays the note e∫ as an extension and therefore infuses this specific passage with a similar harmonic flavor. the second line in the mft’s score features a melodic contour with intervallic leaps that contrasts the homogeneous arpeggio configuration used in standard tuning. similarly, the instrumental interlude that concludes the chorus and prepares for the second verse went through some interesting developments thanks to mft. the music in standard tuning mirrors the material in bars - (figure , top score) and features subtle melodic variations in the middle part of the arpeggio of a g minor chord: the note d is raised to e∫, g is lowered to f, and b∫ moves to c. this passage ends on a b∫add /f, which leads to the g minor at the start of the second verse. figure : features of the original interlude joining the chorus with the second verse in bars - of the watcher the adaptation of this material to mft allowed for the creation of a quite different musical texture. the particular intervals generated by the re-entering string delivered a more sophisticated melodic motif in the high register of the music, thus infusing this passage with a stronger lyrical quality. the f minor voicing in bar (figure ) is the result of smooth voice- leading from the preceding c chord in bar : the note g moves to a∫ and jumps from the first to the second string; the note e, initially located on the third string, resolves to f now placed on the first string. this unusual moving around of chord tones among different strings to attain clear resolution produced the chordal configuration in bar , which inspired me to create the next structure by moving all the voices surrounding the note f in ascending parallel motion. this technique, in conjunction with subtle variations in the arpeggio figure and the sustaining of the voices from one chord to the next, creates a suggestive and delicate melodic motif that emphasizes the notes f, g, a∫, and b∫ (figure , bars - ). subsequently, i decided to extend this passage by doubling its length in order to fully develop this melodic idea. the final e∫ dominant in bar features a more assertive sonority: its powerful resonance, aided by the low register of the tuning, contrasts with the preceding lighter texture and the fermata creates a moment of suspense before the beginning of the second verse. figure : elaboration of the same interlude and new musical language created by mft in bars - of the watcher the final comparison between the two tuning configurations involves the instrumental bridge in this composition. the examination of this passage demonstrate how i was able to preserve a musical texture with similar harmonic and melodic nuances while transposing and adapting the original material to mft’s layout. as figure illustrates, the idea in the original version of the watcher revolves around an ascending bass line against an ostinato arpeggio pattern that outlines g and d minor triads. the open th string (d) is played throughout bars - of this sequence, while the open rd string (g) appears in the following two measures, thus creating a subtle texture with additional resonance. rhythmically, the three-note figure creates a two-over- three hemiola. at the end of bar , the note f# is briefly sounded over a e∫ diminished triad, which functions as a d ∫ chord resolving back to g minor. from bar onwards, a series of three suspended triads is played over a d pedal note before reaching a conclusive fermata on a d chord with ∫ th and # th. figure : instrumental bridge in the original key of g minor in bars - of the watcher overall, the notation in the mft’s score in figure shows musical textures and contours that agree with the original arrangement. however, a close examination of the tablature reveals the substantial differences of fingerings imposed by mft and their inherent performance alterations. variations in the music occur from bar onwards where the bass line’s ascending motion is interrupted by switching to a lower register; this was dictated by the impractical fingerings intrinsic to the chord shape with the e bass note that would have resulted if the melodic line were continued on the th string. the octave drop in the bass line breaks the flow of the original arrangement and, once again, infuses this passage with a darker mood. as a consequence, i decided to disregard the material shown in bar - above, which continues the ascending contour of the music, and opt for a fermata on a d∫, which prepares the following sequence of suspended arpeggios on the c pedal (figure ). figure : textural and structural changes imposed by mft in bar - of the watcher as these two analyses demonstrated, mft’s layout influenced my song-writing practice both from compositional and arranging perspectives. in the case of two worlds united, the alternate tuning aided the creation of a distinctive harmonic vocabulary by discerning seventh chords configurations and moving them around the fretboard. through the wide use of specific open strings and the benefits derived from the extended low range of mft, i was able to craft voicings with unique resonance, intervallic design, and sonic presence. in addition, the chord progressions i discovered showed a fresh approach to modulations and modalities, previously unexplored in my artistic practice. the examination of the watcher allowed a closer look at the process of using mft as an arranging tool capable of infusing pre-existing material with new- found sonorities and ambience. while maintaining the overall structure of its previous arrangement in standard tuning, the watcher went through a significant transformation that has resulted into a more refined guitar accompaniment. the switch to the key of f minor represents quite an unusual sonority for the guitar, particularly if we consider the use of three low open strings, b∫, f, and c, and the added resonance conveyed by their tonal characteristics within the chosen harmonic palette. exploiting mft’s wider range and intrinsic intervallic peculiarities has allowed the creation of a powerful and unique musical statement that surpasses the tonal scope and character of standard tuning. chapter seven: conclusion changing the underlying tuning arrangement of one’s instrument is a radical decision that undermines a multitude of embedded patterns, concepts, and musical conditioning. only string players can fully appreciate the adjustments this practice requires and the impact it has on the way a musician conceptualizes and plays music. what kind of music would a pianist create if the organization of the chromatic tones within the piano’s octave were drastically rearranged? what melodic inventions would a saxophonist come up with if the relationships among fingerings and pitches were manipulated? these hypothetical scenarios may sound bizarre but they accurately describe the path i have undertaken during this study. despite the initial challenges, the unusual resonance of the chosen tuning encouraged a novel interest in the guitar and inspired me to investigate the countless new sonic possibilities at my disposal. through this research, i have discovered a vast array of new language by letting spontaneous improvisation aid the act of musical discovery and composition. i needed to develop a different conceptual framework for my instrumental technique in order to function within mft’s arrangement. these considerations also reveal the importance of the intimate relationship between the creator and the tool that allows the creation to blossom: the musical instrument. the following passage, in bailey’s words, deepens the concept of ‘instrumental impulse’ proposed in chapter and gives an excellent description of the bond that exists between the player and the instrument: “it is the attitude of the player to this tactile element, to the physical experience of playing an instrument, to the ‘instrumental impulse’ which establishes much of the way he plays. one of the basic characteristics of his improvising, detectable in everything he plays, will be how he harnesses the instrumental impulse. or how he reacts against it. and this makes the stimulus and the recipient of this impulse, the instrument, the most important of his musical resources” ( , p. ). this chapter aims to draw some important conclusions on the knowledge i have assimilated about the inner workings of mft and the areas of my artistic practice that have been influenced by its investigation. this discussion addresses the following topics: implications of a re-entrant tuning; design of harmonic structures; range, tonalities, and open strings; spatial dimensions of the guitar; and compositional approach. re-entering tuning at first, the necessity to drop the guitar’s first string by one octave due to the excessive tension exerted by the intended a pitch, as the full-fifths configuration would have implied, appeared to me as a problem. breaking the ascending succession of consecutive fifths seemed to preclude the extended range in the high register i had envisioned. additionally, it seemed to be a hindrance to developing full-ranging harmonic structures and to exploiting the symmetry of a full-fifths layout for improvisational purposes. thirdly, getting used to a re-entering tuning seemed to be a challenging task from a performance perspective and a limiting factor in relation to the melodic range of the guitar, whose functionality was now reduced from six to five strings. as it turned out, the re-entrant quality of mft, by virtue of breaking the sequential logic of an all-fifths tuning, allowed for the creation of a much wider variety of musical language. similar to the discrepancy that exists in standard guitar tuning, the anomaly in mft’s arrangement constitutes a powerful musical device with countless ramifications. the pitch drop that occurs when moving from second to first string and the subsequent divergence in the traditional hierarchy within the instrument’s tuning organization is certainly a disadvantage at the start. this requires a different approach to playing altogether simply because guitarists expect to have a higher string at their disposal above the second string. in addition, when using a plucking technique in the right hand, guitarists usually imagine the ring finger as the recipient of the melodic voice in the music due to its placement on the highest string. these two important concepts about guitar playing are radically changed by mft’s tuning idiosyncrasies. musical analysis has showed how the re-entering string has been quite a valuable and productive device for compositional purposes. in fact, the embedded technique of envisioning the first string of the instrument as the recipient of the melody has created some unusual effects and textures in the music. as many score extracts have illustrated, the immediate consequence of developing musical ideas on the re-entering string has resulted in melodic movement and textural variety within the inner voices of the underlying harmony rather than variations in the melodic contour of a specific passage exclusively. the outcomes that naturally flowed from the combination between mft’s characteristics and personal performance techniques and finger mechanics have generated a vast array of new musical language that did not require deliberate compositional choices. without a re-entering first string, it would have not been natural to conceive and perform music with the specific characteristics that have been highlighted by the analysis of my compositions. for example, mft generated descending melodic leaps and slightly modified rhythmic contours in conjunction with right-hand plucking patterns. melodically, the execution of a common ‘p-i-m-a’ plucking pattern, in which the ‘a’ finger is placed on the first string, creates an unexpected effect caused by the final pitch descent. rhythmically, the reverse pattern of a-m-i-p sounds the highest pitch in a chordal configuration as the second note. this effect generates a slight rhythmic displacement of the material that is functioning as the melodic voice in the music. although not as evident from a listener’s perspective, these nuances are certainly significant when performing and were important factors that influenced my approach to writing for the guitar. in other instances, the unusual tuning relationship between the first and second strings gave the impression that two melodies were executed at the same time, simply because guitarists would instinctively play the notes in the first string as if they were the melody, despite their lower pitch in comparison to the notes on the second. these subtle variations were quite significant in the overall economy of specific musical passages and entire compositions, such as the analyses of storms, laniakea, and arpeggio etude no. have revealed. harmonic design another salient implication of mft’s characteristics is that it creates tonal clusters in chord structures that encompass the first string. as the analyses have shown, this feature has produced a multi-faceted harmonic vocabulary, which otherwise would have become redundant and predictably saturated with intervals of fifths. intervals of minor and major seconds within the chord design became available thanks to mft’s re-entrant quality and allowed the creation of sophisticated and complex voicings. moreover, the close distance between specific voices stands in contrast with the wider intervals in the remainder of the chord’s design, thus producing powerful harmonic and tonal effects. if the proposed tuning had been an all-fifths configuration, these variations in the layout of chords would have been quite problematic to perform. in fact, the leap of a perfect fifth among adjacent strings requires extremely wide stretches, spanning six or seven frets, to execute major and minor seconds. this would have been quite impractical for the left hand and the execution of voicings rich in tonal clusters would have been limited to a few possible combinations in conjunction with the open strings. in addition, the extended intervallic gap among five out of the six strings in mft produced powerful and resonant voicings that resemble the strength, range, and sophistication delivered by the piano. the first set of seventh chords presented in appendix a are also playable in standard tuning, where they spread over five strings of the guitar and up to five frets across the fingerboard. despite being technically more difficult to perform, these chords display quite a different sonority in standard tuning. this is caused by a wide divergence in timbre between the strings that are used to execute these configurations. on mft, the more compact layout of these chords, which only spans over four strings, produces more unity of timbre and has a much more balanced and round sonority, furthermore, the examination of several passages from the portfolio have highlighted chords that extend up to three octaves. such wide distance between the extremities of the chord’s makeup is not reproducible in standard tuning, with the exception of configurations that involve the use of the bottom two open strings e and a. in general terms, fretted chord shapes in standard tuning are usually contained within two octaves or less. on the contrary, mft allows the creation of voicings that span comfortably up to two octaves plus a fifth without neither the aid of open strings nor limitation to particular keys. mft’s harmonic versatility has proven to be one of most important musical advantages of this configuration and has enabled me to create some innovative sonorities for the guitar. range, tonalities, and open strings as figure has illustrated in chapter , mft extends the low end of the guitar by a diminished fifth by virtue of its starting with b∫ on the sixth string and, simultaneously, maintains the usual potential of the guitar’s standard layout by reaching d (located on the th fret on the instrument at my disposal). a comparison with standard guitar tuning shows the musical advantages created by mft’s extended low register in solo guitar settings. many compositions for the guitar across contrasting musical genres and styles display language that gravitates around the keys of e, a, and d. in fact, these tonalities allow the use of the guitar’s lowest three strings to provide harmonic support using the full resonance and presence of those open strings. moreover, a guitarist is free to move around the fingerboard without being restricted to one area exclusively. the advantages and effectiveness of this instrumental technique, which is intrinsic to standard tuning, are, on the other hand, a limitation on the range of tonalities that the guitar can exploit with strength and musical variety. to explore different keys, bass notes need to be fretted and, consequently, the musical language that can be expressed is limited to the vicinity of the locations of those particular on the fretboard. in mft, the six additional lower notes on the th string generate an abundance of opportunities for alternative bass notes, tonalities, and wider harmonic configurations. due to its extended range, mft allows the execution of functional bass notes even in higher positions of the fingerboard (ninth fret and above). this constitutes a wonderful musical advantage that has enabled the creation of a variety of unique musical language. additionally, the combination of mft’s lower range and fifths-layout is conducive to crafting powerful harmonic structures in any key. these features have gone beyond the limitations of standard tuning, where the delivery of complex and colourful sonorities is usually restricted to guitar-friendly tonalities as previously discussed. as a consequence, many passages in my original portfolio gravitate around unusual tonalities for the guitar, such as b∫ major and minor, a∫ major, e∫ major, d∫ major, c minor, and f# minor. the ability to conceive music is any key thanks to mft’s versatility and power is a great outcome of this research that has both influenced my artistic practice and made a significant contribution to the guitar’s tonal possibilities and repertoire. the use of mft’s open strings is another fruitful creative device. as figure shows at the beginning of this dissertation, only the pitch of the third string (g ) is shared between mft and standard guitar tuning. this resulted in countless applications of alternative tonal colours both in a melodic and harmonic sense. the low b∫, f, and c have been extensively used to create harmonic landscapes in their relative keys, both in major, minor, or dominant configurations, which are significantly distant tonalities from common guitar keys discussed earlier. this has shifted the focus of the music towards sonorities that are not as easily and powerfully conveyed in standard tuning. besides obvious musical implications, it is the emotional quality of these fresh tonalities that have infused the music with a unique ambience. on the other hand, the use of mft’s top three strings have also delivered additional melodic contour to the music and contributed to the creation of colourful chordal extensions and unique single-line passages. across the whole portfolio, the use of open strings has possibly been the most frequently utilized musical device. some of the most evocative motifs i created were based on the extensive use of open strings, such as the repetitive unisons in storms or the natural harmonics in laniakea. the distinctive resonance offered by the pitches of mft’s top open strings has also permeated my works with an idiosyncratic atmosphere that represents a considerable departure from the tonal nuances of standard guitar tuning. these considerations show the effectiveness of mft in expanding the palette of sonorities of the guitar, which was achieved through unusual resonance, extended bass notes, harmonic strength and variety, and multi-faceted chordal configurations. symmetry and space the following discussion concerns two fundamental aspects of the guitar as an instrument, its vertical and horizontal dimensions and their musical implications. within the countless possibilities of alternate tuning configurations, the appeal of using a layout based on consecutive fifths strongly resided in its potentials as a symmetrical design. the regularity of mft’s intervallic relationship between five consecutive strings is certainly an advantage in comparison to standard guitar tuning, whose intervallic anomaly between the second and third strings causes many difficulties with remembering a multitude of melodic patterns and harmonic shapes in different positions of the neck and when changing sets of strings. with regards to the re-entering first string, it is important to note that despite its irregularity of pitch - in virtue of an octave drop from a to a – the logical functionality of an all-fifths layout is retained. instead of a consecutive fifth, the leap between the second and first becomes a perfect fourth, which is the complement interval of the perfect fifth. if we start from any note, an ascending jump of a fifth or a descending leap of a fourth arrives at the same note but in two distinct octaves. as a consequence, all the triads and chords that include the re-entering string do not show alterations neither in shape nor in the quality of the underlying harmonic material. the pitch drop in the first string delivers only slightly different musical language with one of the chord tones lowered by an octave. the chord diagrams in appendix a show that the shapes of triads remain identical in any combination of three strings when moving vertically. when these configurations include the re-entering string, they simply change from open voiced triads to close-position triads. the same rule applies to four-note chord voicings, which can be moved in three independent sets of strings without the need to modify their layout. in standard tuning, these same chord shapes generate different arrangements on each group of four strings, thus generating three times the amount of musical vocabulary to memorize. this general discussion illustrates one of the advantages of mft and its practicality for organizing harmonic material in symmetrical and repetitive shapes. mft also puts a stronger emphasis on the importance of lateral movements as a fundamental technical skill for a guitarist. as mentioned in the analysis of the messenger from oz, the re- entering first string does not function well in conjunction with melodic playing. once the second string is reached, only further horizontal movements will result in an increase in pitch. therefore, mft can be viewed as a five-string guitar for strictly linear applications, while its re- entering string has a strong harmonic functionality rather than an all-round melodic versatility. in addition to the consequences arising from tuning characteristics, the interval of fifths among adjacent strings imposes a different approach to the execution of scalar patterns. traditionally, guitarists tend to favour a three-note-per-string method when playing scales, which perfectly suits the arrangement of standard tuning and allows the exploration of the vertical dimension of the instrument. on the contrary, mft requires playing four-notes-per-string in order to remain in the same vertical position; additional horizontal space needs to be covered on each individual string before the player can move on the next string to continue the natural succession of the notes in a musical scale. this results in continuous and challenging stretches in the left hand, which can be quite impractical and particularly demanding when executed in lower positions of the guitar where the frets are much wider. alternatively, scalar patterns can be completely reinterpreted by substituting the excessive stretches with horizontal shifts or slides performed by one finger, thus executing two notes in row. such movement is best achieved in conjunction with the semitones in the diatonic scales, thus reducing the space the assigned finger has to cover to its minimum. this technical variation enables the execution of scales in a fixed vertical position. the limitation of having a re-entering first string inspired me to think of a completely different approach to playing musical scales on mft. as appendix b illustrates, these uncommon melodic configurations were derived from the intrinsic intervallic consistency within diatonic scales and constitute quite a unique approach to devising scalar patterns on the guitar in a manner that is strongly rooted in horizontal movements. despite the initial challenges in mastering lateral movements, these alternative patterns could open up unexplored melodic possibilities for guitar players and foster a whole new conceptualization of the guitar’s fretboard in standard tuning as well. compositional process in the years preceding this doctoral project, my writing style matured from techniques i had assimilated during my studies in jazz harmony, improvisation, composition, and arranging. my creative approach also blossomed from the transcription of numerous pieces written by past and contemporary jazz musicians i admire, which informed my personal preferences for melodic design, harmonic progressions, form, and instrumentation. previously, my compositional method would rely on testing out different chordal formations and movements to generate an original chord progression. this approach was heavily influenced by both functional and non- functional harmonic devices, which constitute the fundamental conceptual scheme underlying new compositions. next, i would employ idiomatic improvisation techniques to aid the formulation of an original melody. following the well-established practices of jazz composers, my original works were mainly designed as vehicles for improvisation. this meant that the arrangement, instrumentation, performance traits, and stylistic choices of my original music were dependent on the characteristics of the ensemble that i was working with at any given time. under these parameters, compositions were only partly finalized at the end of the writing phase and were continually open to variations with each new performance. by shifting my focus and examining mft as a device for composition, i pushed my musical thinking and writing techniques towards different practices and aesthetics. firstly, mft, by virtue of reducing the immediate access to melodic and harmonic vocabulary on the guitar, opened up a new world of opportunities. rather than approaching the instrument with preconceived ideas and knowing what sounds would be generated by certain chord shapes and melodic patterns, i had to simply start relearning musical language through an aural paradigm that was heavily based on intuition and improvisation. this explorative and unrehearsed method shifted the focus towards more abstract concepts and put me in touch with a more primitive and emotional connection with sound. it also lowered my expectations on the creative process itself simply because the tuning’s unfamiliarity drastically restricted my musicality and my ability to generate refined musical ideas. the resulting elimination of judgement and analytical processes allowed me to get in touch with extra-musical elements, such as natural phenomena, imagery and the playfulness of practicing and composing music without a full theoretical understanding of the creative tool at my disposal. it is likely that i would have rejected many of the ideas that form the building blocks of the original portfolio i created with mft had they been discovered on a guitar in standard tuning. in a sense, i had to flesh out compositions from minimal material rather than from a wide resource of musical patterns and models. moreover, the initial disconnection with both the visual and aural relationship with the guitar fostered the search for different creative pathways, unencumbered by force of habit, bias or discrimination. this way of creating music was extremely enjoyable, liberating, and playful. these reflections on the creative act point to the most important aspect of this research: the unveiling of a completely new way of making music, which was based on intuitive and aural paradigms for me. this change in the creative path has allowed me to delve into musical settings, genres, and techniques i had not explored before. most importantly, my style shifted to the creation of through-composed works with an emphasis on solo guitar setting and duets. the selection of these intimate musical forms has allowed me to investigate the novel sonorities of mft more in depth. in addition, contrary to my practice as a jazz musician, i could not include extended improvisation sections in my pieces because i had simply not acquired the requisite level of command over this new configuration that would allow me to improvise over complex chord progressions with ease and full expression. technically, composing extended solo works has been a great opportunity to expand my abilities as a guitarist and performer. it pushed me towards developing my right-hand’s dexterity and endurance considerably, and increasing my interpretive skills, much more in the way that a classical guitarist would. by virtue of mft’s layout and intrinsic sonorities, the musical outputs generated through this doctoral research constitute a unique set of compositions for the guitar that are not reproducible in standard tuning or any other configuration. as the musical analysis has demonstrated, mft’s unique properties have been exploited to create original works that have expanded the tonal possibilities of the guitar, particularly within its harmonic versatility and power. as a result, this project has provided insights into the different possibilities for composing with alternate guitar tunings by analysing and reflecting on the musical idiosyncrasies and implications of mft. the novelty of the tuning arrangement i chose has pushed me towards the discovery of new pathways for guitar performance and new models for composition. although the tuning did not require a radical change in the embedded guitar technique i possessed, it certainly imposed both conceptual and technical adjustment in the way i play. the spontaneous investigation of mft’s unfamiliar layout resembled the act of free improvisation, where intuitive models and concepts arise in the moment thanks to a combination of physical gestures and embedded techniques. during this process, the selection of musical ideas was not driven by pre-meditated models but followed a more intuitive method that was strongly based on the aural and emotional dimension. as a consequence, this approach represents a valid alternative to developing compositional ideas and models through idiomatic and analytical strategies. what next? since this project has allowed me to expand my musical endeavours from a compositional point of view, i intend to employ mft in many other aspects of my artistic practice. first, my main challenge is to focus on developing a confident and all-rounded command on mft, both melodically and harmonically. the focus on composition in this research project has not allowed me to dedicate time towards achieving the same improvisational fluidity in mft as i possess with standard tuning. rather than replicating my present improvisational language in mft, i aim to investigate the melodic possibilities of this tuning variation as much as i have done for composition in order to shape a fresh and idiosyncratic improvisational style. thanks to its tuning characteristics, mft has an intrinsic tendency towards unusual melodic patterns and intervallic shapes that transcend the possibilities of standard tuning. sequences that are extremely challenging on standard tuning become quite natural and easy on mft. moreover, the harmonic language that can be developed on this tuning configuration could represent a great alternative for using the guitar as an accompanying instrument in many musical settings. particularly, i envision its powerful low range and extensive harmonic versatility as the perfect mixture to accompany singers in jazz and pop settings, which number among my engagements as a performing musician. secondly, the development of harmonic and melodic control on this tuning layout will also enable me to compose music for larger ensembles as well as reintroduce improvised sections in my original pieces. i am quite intrigued to see how mft will function within the context of a guitar trio or a jazz quartet and how other musicians will react to and interact with its sonic qualities. i am sure that mft could be the catalyst for crafting ensemble music with a unique sound. moreover, i intend to continue the investigation of mft for solo guitar composition and for my song-writing practice, as it is demonstrably suited to aid the creation of unique musical works. thirdly, i would like to orchestrate some of the material i wrote for this doctoral project for ensembles that do not include the guitar. this will be a great musical experiment that will challenge me to reinterpret the portfolio i created with mft and remove it from the idiosyncrasies of the guitar and the specific traits of alternate tuning practice. moreover, arranging this music for 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( ). baroque guitar for the modern performer: a practical compromise. published in guitar review, fall . retrieved from www.classicalguitar.ws/index russell, m. . tuning patterns. available at http://jonimitchell.com. sallis, j. (ed.). ( ). the guitar in jazz: an anthology. lincoln, ne: university of nebraska press. sayce, l. . a brief history of the theorbo. available at http://www.theorbo.com/index.html. sethares, w.a. ( ). alternate tuning guide. madison, wi: university of wisconsin. settle, d. ( ). a look at form and pitch content in toru takemitsu's ‘equinox’. tallahassee, fl: florida state university. simmons, r. ( ). alternate tunings for guitar. available at http://www.musicfolk.com/docs/features/feature_alttuning.htm smith, h. and dean, r.t. ( ). practice-led research, research-led practice in the creative arts. edinburgh: edinburgh university press. sonenberg, d. ( ). review of the book ‘the worlds and music of joni mitchell’ by benninghof, j. notes, ( ), june . stropes.com. . michael hedges: title/tunings. available at http://www.stropes.com/ stropes, j and hedges, m. . michael hedges: rhythm, sonority, silence. racine: stropes editions ltd. tamm, e. . robert fripp: from crimson king to crafty master. london: faber & faber. tyler ( ). scordatura [descordato, discordata] – . lute and guitar. grove music online. available at http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/ ?q=scordatura wade, g. ( ). re-entrant tuning. available at www.oxfordmusiconlone.com. whitesell, l. . harmonic palette in early joni mitchell. popular music, vol / (pp. - ). cambridge university press. appendix a: triads, seventh chords, unique voicings, and poly-chords this appendix provides an introduction to mft’s layout by illustrating the basic shapes of triads and seventh chords and their inversions. in each chord diagram, the root is highlighted in red while the other chord tones show their intervallic relationship to the tonic. this will help with understanding the theoretical implications of each shape and facilitate further modifications and transpositions. fret numbers are indicated by roman numerals on the left side of each diagram. when open strings are used, they are marked by a hollowed circle above the respective string. because of mft’s symmetry, the inversions of triads and seventh chords are only presented in one string set in their horizontal variants. for example, a shape that encompasses the bottom three strings can be transposed to any other three consecutive string combination and will generate an identical structure in a different key. when the re-entering string is employed, it produces an octave drop in the corresponding note of the triad or seventh chord without altering their harmonic quality. triads three voicing distributions are suggested for each sub-group of triads (major, minor, diminished, and augmented). the diagrams in figures , , , and will help with comprehending their geometric shapes and, if tested, appreciating the sonic characteristics that are produced by moving voices apart. a great variety of musical language can be derived from these simple configurations by constructing small melodic fragments around their layouts or adding consonant open strings. additional triadic possibilities are available and their discovery and applications are encouraged. seventh chords seventh chords are also presented in three sets of voicings in figures , , and . the first intervallic design ( - - - ) is the only possible arrangement on four consecutive strings in this tuning layout. the remaining two variations display some personal interpretations of how the voices can be moved to different string sets. in the major th shapes in first and third inversion, the root has been substituted with the th to avoid an unpleasant ∫ th interval in the chord’s sound (the root is still indicated in red in the diagram only as a reference). this produces sonorities that are identical to emi th chords in the case of the illustrated cma th. as a result, the exact intervallic sequentiality from chord to chord has been discarded in favour of consonance and functionality. the intervallic information contained in each note of the diagram is particularly useful for modifications in the chord structure, such as altering the fifth in dominant sonorities or substituting chord tones in major and minor configurations ( th replacing the th and so on). unique voicings some characteristic chord structures are presented to assist the construction of more advanced sonorities on mft. most of these voicings involve all the six strings of the guitar to showcase the full power and versatility of this layout. fingerings have been included in the advanced voicings to facilitate their execution as they require occasional unorthodox flattening of the left- hand’s digits. some of these shapes are very challenging and demand great flexibility and strength in the left hand and are therefore recommended for advanced players. among these unique shapes, i include four variants of a fully diminished th chord. in addition, special configurations were purposely designed in conjunction with open strings, both as bass notes and upper voices of the chord, to fully exploit the unique resonance of mft. poly-chords an in-depth discussion is dedicated to the creation of poly-chords on the mft’s layout. preliminary considerations address the theoretical classification of these voicings. some of the applications of these harmonic structures are firstly explored in standard tuning to understand the guitar’s limitation in delivering this complex musical language (figure ). secondly, the illustrated shapes are built on mft with two harmonically-unrelated triads to be played simultaneously, and producing unique dissonant sonorities (figures and ). figure : major triads figure : minor triads figure : diminished triads figure : augmented triads figure : seventh chords (starting layout - - - ) figure : seventh chords (starting layout - - - ) figure : seventh chords (starting layout - - - ) figure : special chord configurations. dominant, major, and minor chords with extensions. the bottom line includes four moveable diminished shapes. the last shape is not practical in lower positions of the neck as it requires two-frets stretches among all fingers figure : colourful and idiosyncratic voicings featuring open strings for added resonance. open strings are employed as bass notes, upper extensions, and inner voices figure : notation and tablature describing the voicings in figure x (previous page) poly-chords poly-chords are adventurous and complex sonorities that are created by sounding two chords simultaneously. the most interesting variants are produced by pairings that do not include repetition of notes in their layout. due to the limitations of the guitar in standard tuning, this discussion will only deal with playing triads at the same time. among their many configurations, four fundamental sub-groups can be identified with c as the consistent tonic of the bottom triad (not all possibilities are included): .! two unrelated triads producing six individual pitches: d∫maj/cmaj, c#min/cmin, c#dim/cdim and daug/caug; .! upper triad functioning as a harmonic extension of the bottom triad: bmi/cmaj for a lydian sound, g∫maj/cmaj or a∫maj/cmaj for an altered dominant sound, and bmaj/cmaj for a lydian # sound; .! two triads built on the same tonic but with different qualities: cmaj/cmin, cmin/cmaj, cdim/caug, and so on; .! pairings producing redundant sonorities: amin/cmaj, emin/cmaj, eaug/caug, and e∫dim/cdim (these combinations will not be discussed further). the limitation of having only four fingers available to press the strings on the guitar makes the execution of these sonorities quite problematic. because the top three strings of the guitar in standard tuning form an e minor triad (e-b-g high to low), all combinations that display this triad as the upper structure of the poly-chord are possible and easy to play. while keeping the top part unchanged as e minor, the bottom triad can assume eight shapes: three for major and minor (root position and two inversions); and, one for diminished and augmented (due to their symmetrical design). among these combinations, the occasional repetition of notes creates sonorities that cannot be entirely classified as poly-chords. this includes all the triad families that contain one or more notes of the e minor triad within their layout. nonetheless, particular configurations show the presence of both the major and minor thirds or the perfect fifth combined with either the diminished or augment fifth. as a result, interesting and ambiguous sounds that are difficult to label can be generated. when we start to move away from using three open strings in standard tuning, poly-chords shapes become impractical or impossible to play and their construction is limited to a few possibilities. particularly, barring the top three strings with the first finger can facilitate the production of these sonorities, but is limited to the sound of a minor triad on top, as figure illustrates (bars - ). the a minor triad has been chosen for its practical location on the fifth fret of the guitar’s fingerboard, thus allowing neighbouring variations of the bottom triad. the first three chords in the top line of figure display triads in second inversions. all the remaining bottom structures in bars and are in root position. in addition, combinations of two unrelated major triads that deliver six different pitches are particularly problematic and the only possible solutions are those including open strings (bars - in figure ) if a similar approach is applied to other triad families, it results in similar conclusions: none of these shapes are moveable and therefore are limited to specific shapes that involve the use of open strings. the configurations in bars - have been created around the open second, third, and fourth strings which sound a g triad. the second triad that forms the poly-chord has been split among the remaining available strings, the first, fifth, and sixth. as a result, i indicated the word ‘combined’ to describe those sonorities because poly-chords require one full structure to be above the other. this preliminary discussion illustrates the problems and limitations that guitarists encounter when trying to expand the palette of harmonic range intrinsic to the instrument. figure : poly-chords in standard tuning displaying the use of the same minor triad in the top of structure (bars - ). open strings are necessary to build some combinations of two major triads played simultaneously (bars - ) as i was investigating the possibilities of creating moveable poly-chords on mft, i realized that the simultaneous execution of two triads had many more applications than i expected. this is due to the simplicity of major and minor triads, which can be executed with only two fingers, as mentioned in the analysis of arpeggio etude no in chapter . in comparison with standard tuning, mft’s idiosyncratic layout allows the delivery of a broader poly-chordal vocabulary thanks to the presence of shapes that do not rely on the pitches of open strings. on this occasion, diagrams have been preferred to notation and tablature for the clarity of their visual representation. the indication of fingerings was also necessary as the execution of some of these structures is quite challenging and can span up to six frets of the fingerboard. unusual flattening of the left hand’s fingers to press two strings simultaneously on the same fret is also required. the configurations in figure are based on the note e∫ as the tonic of the bottom triad of the poly-chord structure, as it is positioned on the lowest string of the guitar at the fifth fret. major and minor triads and their interpolations were explored around this fixed position. all combinations give priority to idiosyncratic sounds that are created using unrelated triads. despite occasional repetition of the same note between the two distinct triads (such as a∫maj/e∫maj) their sound still displays a unique character that is beyond the guitar’s traditional harmonic language. additional redundant possibilities, as mentioned at the beginning of this section, have not been included. nonetheless, they are available in the vicinity of the indicated shapes (usually one semitone away), if a certain sonority is preferred and or useful. finally, figure illustrates a few additional poly-chords that involve diminished and augmented triads. their use is more limited as they require more than three fingers to be performed. it is encouraged to mix and match shapes from both figure and figure to explore their further applications. as this appendix has demonstrated, the many possibilities of moveable poly-chordal configurations on mft constitute a significant expansion and innovation in terms of the complexity of the harmonic language that the guitar can generate. figure : moveable poly-chords shapes on mft showing combinations of both major and minor triads figure : poly-chords including augmented and diminished triads as underlying harmonic structures appendix b: scales this appendix offers some personal interpretations on how to organize scales on mft’s layout. the included graphics will help other guitarists to familiarize themselves with the novelty of the patterns associated with fifths-based configurations in general. the majority of the chosen patterns are radically different to the vertical arrangements most guitarists are accustomed to as i believe that mft requires a completely new approach to playing melodic lines on the guitar. therefore, these configurations require both a new conceptual framework for the performer and the development of additional technical abilities. for these reasons, the underlying model of how the patterns have been devised can be applied to standard guitar tuning and stimulate brand-new strategies for creating unusual scalar configurations that break away from familiar and over-used sequences. the traditional approach to learning and playing scales on the guitar is based on the division of the fretboard in vertical positions. when considering a scale of seven notes, this line of thinking generates seven distinct configurations, which start on each degree of the scale itself. it is important to mention that additional in-between layouts crossing two separate positions are also possible, thus generating even more variations. most scalar arrangements are performed with a three note per string approach with occasional two note per string fragments that occur either on the second or third string of the guitar (due to the irregular major third interval among them). this system is a convenient way of organizing the placements of notes and patterns around the instrument. however, it results in countless possibilities that take a long time to be assimilated. since i was exploring a new tuning layout, i thought of devising a more efficient system based on the inner logic of musical scales to facilitate their memorization. moreover, i realized that executing scales in three notes per string manner could not be applied to mft. when performing an ascending scale, the fifths-based layout imposes lateral movements towards the nut of the guitar, when crossing the strings, in order to find the next note in the sequence. figure shows how the traditional method of executing a scale with three note per string approach arrives at a dead-end point. figure : d major scale on mft executed with a conventional approach in order to continue the natural progression of the d major scale in figure , the note f# can only be played on the fourth string, which is where the sequence is interrupted, and is located two frets above the indicated major nd. the pitch of the following open string (g ) is above the intended note f# by one semitone. clearly, a fifths-based configuration demands a different use of the horizontal and vertical dimensions of the guitar compared to standard tuning. if scales are to be performed in vertical position, mft imposes a four notes per string approach. with this system in mind, the next diagrams show a d major scale played in position figure : d major scale on mft played with four notes per string allowing to exploit the vertical dimension of the guitar figure shows the preferred fingerings i devised in order to avoid two-frets stretches between the middle and ring fingers, which are the most challenging to execute. when the same fingering is indicated on two consecutive notes played on one string, a horizontal movement is required by that digit. this method also gives two performance options: articulating both notes for more clarity and attack; or executing a slide into the second note for a more legato effect. figure : suggested fingerings for a d major scale in position the remaining six vertical configurations of the major and other scales are easy to find and similar fingerings, which involve slides rather than excessive stretches, should be followed in lower positions. in higher positions, the four notes per string method is more practical and slides may not be necessary for more advanced players. manipulations of scale degrees can be derived quite intuitively to produce all possible melodic variations. it is important to notice that the scalar pattern in figure ends on the second string because the re-entering first string does not allow the ascending continuation of the melodic sequence. this apparent limitation in mft’s layout, which transforms the guitar in a five-string instrument for melodic purposes, inspired me to devise a different strategy to execute scales. as figure shows, one octave can be covered in the space of two consecutive strings (bottom two strings). figure : one octave major scale showing the repetitive fingering sequence in figure , it is evident that the same fingering sequence is repeated on both strings. an interesting application of this technique involves scalar sequences that are larger than one octave. instead of developing the scale vertically, i thought of moving this fingering pattern horizontally along the fretboard. this can be achieved by playing the last note of the pattern, marked in red on the right, with the first finger rather than executing a slide with the little finger (as suggested earlier). this prepares the first finger for the next horizontal position, and the full octave sequence shows the following fingering distribution: - - - followed by - - - (figure ). figure : one octave fingering preparing the first finger for the next horizontal position this adjustment allows the repetition of the same pattern throughout all the available octaves within the chosen scale, until the range of the instrument has been exhausted. the horizontal shift required by the left hand may be challenging at first but it does allow the continuation of the ascending sequence of the scale quite naturally. by virtue of this technique, the octave can be divided in different intervallic formulas, each with adjusted fingerings, and their lateral transposition can be used to cover the whole range of the instrument (figure ). this strategy is particularly useful considering the limitations of the vertical dimensions discussed earlier. figure : c major scale, four octaves in other major keys, this specific pattern must undergo some slight variations. for example, this occurs when the tonic of a scale is located in higher positions of the th string. this will not allow the use of four ascending octaves as the top diagram in top diagram of figure shows (key of e major). similarly, if the scale starts from the th string, the interruption of the symmetrical pattern will also occur before its full layout has been exploited (bottom diagram in figure , key of a∫ major). figure : two examples of modifications to the fundamental scalar pattern rather than providing a universal method, these considerations and illustrations describe a simple concept that was conceived to work with the advantages and disadvantages of mft’s unique tuning characteristics. figures and illustrate fundamental scales and modes that were compiled with improvisation in mind. knowledge of this vocabulary is essential for any improvising musician and allows the navigation of a wide variety of chord types and harmonic progressions. the presence of numbered scale degrees in their geometric layouts allows easy modifications to create countless scalar possibilities that have not been included here as they clearly exceed the scope of this appendix. all the scales are built from the note c, which is conveniently located on the second fret of the lowest string and allows the full exploration of mft’s range. fingerings for one octave are indicated on top of each scale. figure : scalar patterns for improvisation purposes figure : scalar patterns for improvisation purposes (continued) appendix c: arpeggios this section illustrates the application of the method presented in appendix b for the execution of arpeggios. the wider intervallic nature of arpeggios, compared with the linearity of musical scales, further emphasizes the necessity for a different conceptualization of melodic pathways on the unique layout of mft even further. in order to demonstrate how mft imposed the proposed line of thinking, figure shows a few options for arpeggiating an e∫ major triad. the triad sequence is also started with two different fingers to illustrate some of the possible variations. this particular key has been chosen for the placement of the note e∫ on the fifth fret of the lowest string, which is a practical starting point in the middle of in the lower part of the fingerboard. figure : three possible fingering variation for an e∫ triad. the first configuration is quite comfortable to play but the use of open strings requires some adjustments when transposed to other keys. as the tablature clearly shows, the second shape presents problematic position changes when crossing strings. it is important to notice how mft’s layout forces the hand to move towards the nut of the guitar, which is not conducive to executing an ascending motif. the third example hints at the advantages of using a horizontal approach to the execution of melodic lines. in this case, the fingering is simplified (mostly being - combinations) and the range of the triad is also expanded. some of the wider stretches could be impractical in lower position but they will not be problematic for more advanced players. figure illustrates two additional variations that involves recurring position shifts executed by the first finger (the lines connecting the notes is used to emphasize these lateral movements). this method is extensively used by bass players, who have to compensate for the limited number of strings by wider horizontal movements along the fingerboard to perform arpeggios over the whole range of their instrument. with practice, this approach allows fluid execution of this particular musical vocabulary and simplifies the layout of melodic patterns quite significantly. figure : triad arpeggios involving positions shifts performed by the index finger both examples show how the fingerings are significantly simplified, as they rely on the use of two fingers exclusively. in the first example, the whole arpeggio follows this pattern: - - - shift. the second example was included to show how the distance of the lateral shifts can be reduced by choosing to perform them between the third and the fifth of the triad. in higher positions of the fretboard, it is advisable to substitute the fourth finger with the third for a more comfortable execution. all the remaining arpeggio configurations contained in this appendix follow the same principle: using a simple fingering pattern that is moved along the fingerboard to exploit the whole range of the instrument. this represents a valid approach to organizing melodic patterns on mft and simplifies their execution thanks to the repetition of clear geometric patterns and fingerings combinations. many more possibilities are intrinsic to this method and can be created by simply altering scale degrees as necessary. figure : arpeggios on mft’s layout exploring a modified fifths tuning as a vehicle for composition for jazz guitar vol. andrea vocaturo (b.mus, griffith; ma, queens college ny) queensland conservatorium arts, education, and law griffith university submitted in fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of doctor of musical arts table of contents scores arpeggio etude no. the messenger from oz laniakea storms two worlds united vocal score guitar score the watcher vocal score guitar score – mft guitar score – standard tuning lyrics children of war the watcher two worlds united whispered children of war keep your ears there is no sound but i’m screaming take a look outside there’s no moving around but i’m shaking is everyone safe, dead, or alive? ‘cause i’m bleeding every day we ask why we’re at war one life at a time they take them all maybe we’re too little to understand but we’re trying we have no mother, father, or even a land but we’re fighting when will this pain come to an end? we are praying from this rage and hell there’s no return condemn this nation to die and burn nobody punishes the plans of aggression nobody breaks the rules of oppression when will we cease this carnage of innocent? when will we choose love over hatred? reveal the truth that needs to be told channel the peace that wants to unfold envision the harmony you wish to behold envision the harmony you wish to behold we all wish to behold we all wish to behold the watcher solitary mending weaves mandatory breaching tidal waves close your eyes to stop the seeing let your heart bathe in sun’s warm beaming curtains falling, walls crushing down it’s easy, just use your breathing aleatory states of substance illusory theories of existence close your eyes to feel the breeze in let your mind become like water steaming curtains falling, walls crushing down it’s easy, just use your breathing time will pass and all will perish what we have is this moment to cherish don’t complain but do abstain no desire to be reborn again two worlds united she watches closely while the world's ignoring she cries quietly but no one's ever listening her beauty and outside is what everyone notices a close look inside her heart reveals a bunch of broken promises he saw her briefly and his world had trembled he ponders secretly but his will is feeble scorn and aggression forced his pride to crumble doubts and insecurity pierced his heart like needles suddenly, willingly, he walks to her takes her hand, looks into her frightened eyes ‘walk with me, confide in me’ two worlds collided they're holding sweetly as if no one's watching instantly, clearly, they knew it all the certainty that they belong to one another plainly and perfectly two worlds united whispered it lays its eyes on you it’s not the pain you knew it leaves you without a clue you don’t seem to pull through the gloom and searing darkness and all seems hopeless it wants to break us down it wants to drag itself out we’re pushed down to the ground it wants to drive us to emotion wastelands where life seems wasted the dreams and memories cast upon the shores the flakes of industries lost in the soul’s chores the saving code is whispered we opened and listened the spirit’s awakened and new life is witnessed "i see the fretboard in diagrams": an examination of the improvisatory style of herbert lawrence "sonny" greenwich all rights reserved © canadian university music society / société de musique des universités canadiennes, ce document est protégé par la loi sur le droit d’auteur. l’utilisation des services d’Érudit (y compris la reproduction) est assujettie à sa politique d’utilisation que vous pouvez consulter en ligne. https://apropos.erudit.org/fr/usagers/politique-dutilisation/ cet article est diffusé et préservé par Érudit. Érudit est un consortium interuniversitaire sans but lucratif composé de l’université de montréal, l’université laval et l’université du québec à montréal. il a pour mission la promotion et la valorisation de la recherche. https://www.erudit.org/fr/ document généré le avr. : canadian university music review revue de musique des universités canadiennes "i see the fretboard in diagrams": an examination of the improvisatory style of herbert lawrence "sonny" greenwich andrew scott volume , numéro , uri : https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/ ar doi : https://doi.org/ . / ar aller au sommaire du numéro Éditeur(s) canadian university music society / société de musique des universités canadiennes issn - (imprimé) - (numérique) découvrir la revue citer cet article scott, a. ( ). "i see the fretboard in diagrams": an examination of the improvisatory style of herbert lawrence "sonny" greenwich. canadian university music review / revue de musique des universités canadiennes, ( ), – . https://doi.org/ . / ar résumé de l'article l’auteur se penche sur le style d’improvisation du musicien de jazz herbert lawrence « sonny » greenwich. si de nombreuses sources extra-musicales nous renseignent sur les prestations du guitariste, les tableaux cubistes de paul klee s’avèrent particulièrement significatifs. À l’aide de transcriptions, d’analyses et d’entrevues, l’auteur démontre que les « diagrammes » des positions sur le manche — qui proviendraient de klee, selon greenwich — jouent trois rôles. d’abord, ils fournissent à greenwich une manière personnelle d’approcher son art. ensuite, ils offrent une stratégie convenue et perceptive pour traverser les différentes zones harmoniques. enfin, les diagrammes jouent le rôle d’une théorie musicale de substitution pour cet autodidacte, lui procurant une méthode unique d’organisation de la guitare. https://apropos.erudit.org/fr/usagers/politique-dutilisation/ https://www.erudit.org/fr/ https://www.erudit.org/fr/ https://www.erudit.org/fr/revues/cumr/ https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/ ar https://doi.org/ . / ar https://www.erudit.org/fr/revues/cumr/ -v -n -cumr / https://www.erudit.org/fr/revues/cumr/ "i see the fretboard in diagrams": an examination of the improvisatory style of herbert lawrence "sonny" greenwich andrew scott although listed in the new grove dictionary of jazz as among the "most important canadian jazz musicians," herbert lawrence "sonny" greenwich (b. ), who emerged on the toronto scene in the late s, is not as well known as such contemporaries as guitarist ed bickert, alto saxophonist morris "moe" koffman or trombonist/bandleader rob mcconnell (kernfeld , ). there is, however, an oral history about the guitarist that speaks to his importance. interview and documentary research indicates that such major jazz figures as elvin jones, jack dejohnette, john handy, lee morgan and wayne shorter all knew and admired greenwich, demonstrating confidence in his abilities by hiring him for recordings or live performances. for example, john handy employed greenwich for the "spirituals to swing" concert at carnegie hall, and both lee morgan and horace silver (independent of one another) approached blue note records about recording the guitarist. green- wich did ultimately record for blue note, as a side person on hank mobley's recording third season with lee morgan, james spaulding, cedar walton, walter booker and billy higgins (mobley ). further, greenwich signed a recording contract with orrin keepnews of riverside records, and was preparing to make his first album (with joe zawinul on piano) when his employment authorization expired and he was forced to return to canada in . immigration issues were a consistent problem for the guitarist. lacking a permanent work permit that would enable him to enter the united states for purposes of employment, greenwich was forced to turn down potentially career-altering job offers from lena home and miles davis, with whom greenwich performed at toronto's colonial tavern in december . this essay is an expanded version of a paper originally presented at the university of guelph jazz festival colloquium on september . the author wishes to thank dr. james deaville, charles henderson and marilyn scott for their editing, dr. howard spring and an anonymous reviewer for their insights into an earlier version of this article, and jim clayton and christy difelice for the music engraving. thanks also to sonny greenwich as artist and barry elmes as president of cornerstone records inc. for authorizing the use of the musical examples contained within this article, and to sonny greenwich for graciously consenting to be interviewed and quoted for this project. sonny greenwich, interview with andrew scott, july . hereafter greenwich, pers. interv. . joe zawinul, interview with andrew scott, october . / ( ) one of the most intriguing aspects of greenwich's history is the reputation he holds among fellow jazz guitarists. for example, phil upchurch, a guitarist and bassist who enjoyed longstanding musical relationships with george benson, donny hathaway, otis rush and the ramsey lewis trio, told me how excited two-time grammy award winning guitarist wes montgomery was after hearing greenwich "sit in" with his montgomery brothers band at new york's half note. according to upchurch, montgomery promised to take greenwich's name to saxophonist john coltrane who was hoping to add guitar to his band. similarly, greenwich recounted that pioneering jazz/rock fusion guitarist larry coryell was so intimidated by his skills that he didn't want to perform after hearing greenwich at the village vanguard with teddy saun- ders, jimmy garrison and jack de johnette (greenwich, pers. interv. ). i suggest that the aforementioned discourse surrounding greenwich is valuable for two principal reasons. first, it underscores how highly regarded greenwich was (and is) within the jazz community, and secondly such narratives reveal a story that, until now, has not been examined fully. this article explores greenwich's improvisation "sonics ii" (green- wich and bley ). unrehearsed and recorded "live off the floor" in a montreal studio, "sonics ii" offers a valuable portal into the improvisational style of greenwich. a second goal of this article is to explore greenwich's comments about his music and marry them to the transcription. the parallels he draws between his musical style and visual shapes are especially intriguing. greenwich was born in hamilton, ontario on january , but grew up in the kensington market neighborhood of toronto. his father, herb, was a railroad porter for canadian pacific and a pianist. his piano playing and large record collection were greenwich's earliest musical influences. "i grew up listening to the records that he had—earl hines, art tatum—and i still remember them very clearly" (o'reilly / ). greenwich's first professional music job was with the connie maynard band in toronto. a soulful pianist in the style of wynton kelly, maynard was one of greenwich's earliest supporters. "he's the one that got me started. i was sitting on my porch playing guitar and he drove by. he backed up and asked me if i wanted to play a dance" (greenwich, pers. interv. ). greenwich played rhythm and blues with maynard. as he told ted o'reilly, longtime program director and disc jockey for toronto's first jazz radio station cjrt, "we liked jazz, but we could only exist through rhythm and blues. so we played jazz sometimes in a community centre where they gave us this room and people would come in and listen. for a living we played rhythm and blues—i must have played in every bar in toronto, behind strippers... everything" (o'reilly / ). although greenwich was making a living playing rhythm and blues, he was frustrated. "i'd come into a jazz club later and when i played i'd be playing phil upchurch, interview with andrew scott, november . as steven f. pond ( , ) points out, classifying only certain writing as "academic" or "scholarly" is clumsy. accordingly, my comment that greenwich's story has not been examined "fully" refers largely to the lack of musical analysis on the guitarist and is not meant to detract from the "scholarly" work of mark miller, who wrote about greenwich in miller ( , - ). cumr/rmuc all these rhythm and blues licks. finally i decided to just give it all up and play jazz" (o'reilly / ). greenwich's transition from rhythm and blues to jazz was not easy. "at first it was like walking on a tightrope. i've always heard something different than everyone else. even when i was still playing traditional songs in the traditional form i'd put different chords to them, get a different sound going. i used to have so much trouble in those days" (barnes and gallagher , ). green- wich was neither the first nor the last jazz musician to encounter resistance for having a unique musical approach. in this next section i offer one historical example in the career of saxophonist lester young. when young replaced coleman hawkins in fletcher henderson's band in , henderson's band members and wife/manager leora encouraged young to model his sound and improvisatory style after the recently departed tenor saxo- phonist (schuller , ). young never did. he was fired from henderson's group and replaced by ben webster, who would later come to prominence with count basie's ensemble in . although mark gridley dedicates a page of his undergraduate text jazz styles to exploring such differences between hawkins and young as their "tone quality," "rate of vibrato," "swing feeling," "intricacy of solos" and "tunefulness of improvisations" (among other parameters), recordings of both men from the late s reveal differences mainly in their timbre and improvisational style (gridley , ). while hawkins had moved away from the staccato "slap tongue" saxophone technique by the mid- s, his playing continued to exhibit a heavier rhythmic feeling than young's. secondly, hawkins and young's improvisational styles can be contrasted as "vertical" and "horizon- tal" respectively. while young's improvisations would not implicitly follow the "changes" of a composition, as lawrence gushee points out, hawkins's improvi- sations (most notably his recording of "body and soul") find him arpeggiat- ing "vertically" through various triads and four-part chords that are either related to or implied by the harmony of the composition's harmony (gushee in porter , ). to be sure, jazz historiography embraces both styles and approaches. however, i am pointing out the differences between young and hawkins's improvisatory styles here to demonstrate that the sonic ideals of an ensemble or a musical scene can impact the careers of jazz musicians. the difficulties young encountered in terms of his acceptance into the music community resonate with greenwich's experience. at the time of young's entrée into the henderson orchestra, hawkins's wide vibrato, muscular tone and harmonically adept improvisatory style enjoyed a certain hegemony in jazz. and when greenwich appeared on the toronto jazz scene in , many local guitarists were emulating the american guitarist jim hall, whom green- wich sounds nothing like. "well the thing that has always happened to me is that i've always had my own style and sound. and so many, many times i've been put down for it. because i come in, and i'm playing this different thing over these guitarists whose source is jim hall. that's happened to me many, many times over the years" (o'reilly / ). greenwich suggests that his "different musical outlook" was influenced by a thorough study of such non-musical topics as continental philosophy and the / ( ) vedic upanishads. "so at the same time as i was doing all of this rhythm and blues and this jazz playing, i was doing all of this studying on top of that. that's sort of why i have a different outlook on things than you usually have with guitar, because i've never been totally involved with the guitar" (o'reilly / ). the work of swiss painter paul klee ( - ) is among the influences greenwich cites (greenwich, pers. interv. ). "the solo struc- tures of my playing were based on an interpretation of the work of cubist artist paul klee, where i saw the fretboard in diagrams," writes greenwich in the liner notes to his release "standard idioms" (greenwich ). i suggest that greenwich's fretboard diagrams act as a surrogate music theory for the self-taught guitarist and enable him to overcome potential problems that might stem from his lack of formal musical training. according to david har- greaves, physical strategies used to overcome obstacles on the instrument are the result of sophisticated metacognitive skills. unlike beginning jazz improvisers, who are perhaps fixated at the sensorimotor phase and are limited in their musical expression by physical or technical problems with their instrument, seasoned jazz musicians employ physical gestures in order to overcome potential problems and achieve desired musical results (hargreaves ). accordingly, greenwich's improvisational fluidity and competence can be seen as a result of his ability to encode various musical elements in the body and in bodily processes. for example, instead of thinking of keys, scales or arpeggios, greenwich uses visual shapes and hand positions—that he has termed "diagrams" and sees as resulting from the work of klee—to organize the guitar neck. these diagrams inform greenwich's im- provisations, suggesting a framework of pitches that he can delineate, surround or approach through any number of malleable trajectories. "with me it is what the chord looks like," he explains. picking up his guitar, greenwich continues, "... like this chord," playing a standard "a-minor add " voicing on the top four strings of the guitar (example ). "i know how to get through that chord," playing example (greenwich, pers. interv. ). th fret < m m n é example . guitar diagram for a-minor add a m in? jul h * s - o - f f |»f ffp j f re fret: string: example . "i know how to get through that chord" the musical phrase that greenwich plays "over" the "a-minor add " voicing demonstrates that individual pitches have less importance to green- cumr/rmuc wich then how the arc or shape of the musical line relates to his diagram. for example, from a tonal perspective the major third ("c#") placed on a strong beat (beat three) contradicts the minor character of the "a-minor chord." greenwich justifies his pitch choice, however, by relating every note of the phrase as either part of, leading to, or within close proximity to his chord diagram. the initial "d" (played with his third finger on the high e string th fret) leads to "b" (first finger on high "e" string th fret). the next dyad ("g" to "e") is the same harmonic interval (a descending minor third) and is analogous in shape to the first dyad: "g" (third finger "b" string th fret) leading to "e" (first finger "b" string th fret). while neither the "c#" nor "a" are found within greenwich's diagram, it is their close proximity to the diagram—the "c#" (second finger "g" string th fret) is one fret away from a diagram note, the "a" (third finger "d" string th fret) is two frets away—that greenwich cites to explain his note choice. in example , greenwich's diagram is "iconic" in that it visually suggests the shape, inflection and contour of various melodies without reference to pitch or note duration. this handy coupling of fretboard diagram to harmonic shape is not, however, always consistent. rather, greenwich's diagrams can be viewed as representing a "complex of habits and associations" that trigger mental and musical processes in the guitarist and "enable [him] to compose at high speed" (treitler , ). for example, greenwich uses the diagram presented in example to improvise on what he hears as an "f-major " sound (example ). example . what greenwich "hears" over an f major tonality as guitar diagram again, his diagram contradicts tonality. while the diagram contains three of the four notes of an "f-major " chord, the absence of a tonic coupled with the presence of such out-of-key notes as "b" natural and most startlingly "f#," suggests poly tonality. greenwich then improvises some melodies he perceives to be borne from this shape (examples - ). / ( ) example . melody from example diagram in each instance, greenwich's improvisations contain pitches outside of the "f-major" tonality—the "f#" and "c#" in example , "f#" in example and the multiple "b" naturals articulated in example . greenwich again justifies these pitch choices as connected to his diagram. in this instance, however, the diagram not only suggests a framework of pitches for greenwich to employ, but lead the guitarist to new harmonic trajectories. according to greenwich, example is the "larger cube" from within which various melodic lines (examples - ) can be created. as greenwich told ken waxman ( , ), diagrams enable him to play "not only the melody, but other melodies sug- gested by the chord." in this respect, greenwich's diagrams are highly flexible. "i'd see the diagram here on the keyboard [fretboard] and i'd see between here and here. so i'd play these diagrams, then i'd change them around and play them the other way," he explains playing melodies he sees as contained within the "larger cube" of the diagram (greenwich, pers. interv. ). the flexibility of greenwich's diagrams has similarities to the "formulaic" approach of guitarist charlie christian. howard spring, who has concluded that christian used guitar chords or shapes (often triadic or "dominant- " chord voicings) as springboards for his improvisations, notes that christian's formulas, like greenwich's diagrams, exhibit a considerable degree of variability in detail (spring , ). thus far, i have argued that greenwich uses diagrams in a threefold fashion. first, as a meaningful and highly personal way of discussing his craft, second as a formulaic and perceptual strategy for traversing various harmonic terrains, and third as a method of organizing the guitar neck. in this next section, i analyze my own transcription (appendix) of greenwich's improvisation "son- ics ii". before beginning, however, i will briefly discuss the relevant musi- cological literature that mentions formulas, patterns, shapes and/or diagrams. although there is no a priori method for jazz analysis, formulaic research is common. the term formula entered the musicological lexicon by way of linguis- tics. milman parry and albert lord, through close examination of the iliad and the odyssey, argued that because both works were transmitted orally, they are better understood as spontaneous oral creations than written work as discussed in treitler ( ). using the still-living tradition of yugoslavian epic poetry as a cumr/rmuc template, parry and lord concluded that oral poetry involves a composing, performing and reciting triumvirate. parry and lord were most intrigued by the connection between spontaneous composition and recitation. they asserted that oral poets (or singers) draw from a collection of formulas—defined as a "group of words which is regularly employed under the same metrical conditions to express a given essential idea"—that adhere to the overarching conventions of the poem, while simultaneously adding personalized style, ornamentation or detail (parry and lord, in treitler , - ). leo treitler, an early music specialist working with medieval plainchant, saw multiple points of intersection between epic poetry and the recitation of pre-pneumatic plainchant. specifically, he argued that formulas helped constitute the "mechanisms of oral transmission" (treitler , ). formulas helped the singer make music equally informed by memo- rization and improvisation. perhaps it is not surprising that the study of jazz improvisation, the seem- ingly mysterious ability to "pick notes out of thin air," was aided by formulaic research (berliner , ). scholars lawrence gushee ( ), howard spring ( ), jonathon finkelman ( ) and gregory e. smith ( ) have applied conclusions and concepts culled from formulaic research to jazz musicians lester young, charlie christian and bill evans respectively. in this next section, i use the conclusions of these scholars (and others) to examine greenwich's improvisatory style. "sonics ii" is a solo, unaccompanied guitar piece that lasts one minute and forty-four seconds. greenwich's bright guitar tone is immediately identifiable. his loose right-hand grip, forceful attack and small plectrum executing predominantly up-strokes, is evident throughout. the composition is the leadoff track on the album. greenwich's introductory phrase is a three-note motif that descends by whole-steps (bars - ). the phrase, which i hear as the main theme of the improvisation, can be described as a broken "suspended fourth triad" ( , , ). greenwich does not, however, view it as a triad related to a particular key, but rather as both a melodic formula (the sound of which is discussed below) and as part of a diagram he utilizes to traverse the guitar fretboard. additionally, green- wich uses the phrase, with some melodic variation, to organize his improvisation. by articulating or alluding to the theme twenty-two times (bars - , , - , - , - , - , - ), greenwich employs the formula as the initial "call"—to which a "response" occurs later—lending a conversational aspect to the improvisation. as samuel floyd argues, in such call-and-response passages "the instrument performs a kind of sonic mimicry that creates the illusion of speech or narrative conversation" (floyd , ). through discussion with greenwich, i learned not only that he performed many of these repeated melodic cells on the highest two strings of the guitar ("b" and "e"), but that he "sees" these cells as resulting from the diagram notated in example , moving by whole steps down the guitar fretboard. just as the first melodic cell (bar ) can be related to the first diagram (example ) by playing the diagram with his left hand first finger on the ninth fret (as greenwich does), bars -a can be related to the diagram located on the seventh, fifth and third frets respectively. the motif thus maintains its physical "look" on the fretboard regardless of pitch selection. similar to smith's conclu- sions that "one of the secrets [of bill evans's] rapid decision making in the choice / ( ) of pitches may lie in the nature of arpegggiation," the physical shape of guitar chords influences greenwich's pitch selection (smith , ). while the rela- tionship between diagram and pitch is not uni-directional—as compositional harmony suggests which diagrams greenwich employs just as the diagrams offer him melodic choices—guitar shapes and physical fingerings, rather than a strict adherence to any chord/scale system of improvisation informs greenwich's music. for example, the interval of a perfect fourth—heard in the theme between the first and third notes of the phrase ("ab" and "db" bar , "gb" and "cb" bar , "e" and "a" bar , "d" and "g" bar )—is particularly attractive to greenwich, who connects this sonic gesture to certain twentieth-century west- ern art music composers. while explaining his improvisatory approach to me, greenwich executed the following phrase over an "e" tonality. example . phrase over an "e" tonality "that sounds like a certain classical style ... like scriabin," greenwich states. "so i think that's why bill evans asked me what i'm doing" (greenwich, pers. interv. ). here, greenwich is referring to the time when he played opposite the late pianist in as a member of john handy's group. intrigued by greenwich's chords, evans approached the guitarist with questions. "what he wanted to discuss were my ideas on composition" (greenwich ). i mention to greenwich that evans shared his affinity for fourths, citing evans's use of quartal voicings on miles davis's recording so what (davis ). greenwich picks up on my terminology. "that's what i'm doing. basically, the chords i'm playing behind him [handy] are fourths. i figured out how they all fit together from major to minor" (greenwich, pers. interv. ). this point, which is central to greenwich's approach, can be developed in a twofold manner. as demonstrated earlier by the "a-major" line that greenwich impro- vised "over" an "a-minor add chord," greenwich rarely thinks in terms of major or minor tonalities. for example, the quartal or suspended-fourth triadic line that greenwich improvised in example lacks scale degree three and therefore does not clearly delineate a major or minor sound. as a result, harmonic ambiguity over an "e" tonality is achieved. there is, however, another explanation for greenwich's repeated use of fourths. the predominant interval of standard guitar tuning ("e," "a," "d," "g," "b," "e") is the perfect fourth. with the exception of the "g" to "b" interval that separates the instrument's fourth and fifth strings, the open guitar strings are built in fourths. therefore, while quartal voicings and lines are difficult to execute on piano as they require a larger hand span then close- voiced tertian chords, fourth voicings are relatively easy on the guitar as a quartal interval is achieved by laying a single finger across adjacent strings on the same fret (except between the "g" and "b" strings). accordingly for cumr/rmuc greenwich, who organizes the guitar by hand position, shapes and diagrams, the connection to fourths is as much visual as aural. although unusual, greenwich's reliance on physical shapes as a method of improvisation is not sui generis. as harris berger has argued, rock and heavy metal musicians often relate physically to the music they play (berger , ). for example, harmony is understood from the root-fifth interval shape (the so-called "power fifth") and improvising is learned through experimenta- tion with the box pattern/shape of the pentatonic scale (examples and ). baily and driver present arguments similar to those of berger (baily ; baily and driver ). indexing musical creativity to "finding new ways to move on the instrument," baily and driver argue "the spatio-motor mode should be regarded as a legitimate and commonly used mode of musical thought," pointing out that rock guitarists remember and execute music "not solely as aural patterns, but as sequences of movements, and that the music is therefore represented cognitively in terms of movement patterns which have visual, kinesthetic, tactile, as well as auditory repercussions" (baily and driver , , ). physical relationships are not, of course, limited to rock musi- cians. such jazz musicians as christian and evans, as i have articulated earlier, also rely on embodied fingering patterns or an instrument's physical layout to aid improvisation. an examination of bars - yields another clear example of greenwich's reliance on chordal shapes or diagrams. here, greenwich makes a i to iv move, arpeggiating up a close voiced "g-major " chord followed by a "c-major ." through conversation with greenwich, i learned that pitch selection was again dictated by the diagram of the chord (greenwich, pers. interv. ). because of the symmetrical nature of the guitar, greenwich uses the identical fingering and chord shape for both musical passages, simply re-constituting the diagram five frets higher. with the exception of the major sixth ("e" over the "g-major " chord and "a" over "c-major"), all notes fit perfectly into the "major- " chord voicing. the close proximity of scale degree six to scale degree five—the latter note is contained within the diagram—allows its presence in the musical line. tertian triads offer greenwich a threefold improvisational strategy. first, greenwich uses major triads to ascend register rapidly. bars and clearly illustrate this point as greenwich uses only six notes to traverse an octave. secondly, greenwich uses parallel triadic shapes to maneuver across the fretboard. bars , , and demonstrate greenwich using parallel chords or triads to ascend harmonically—often cycling through key centres separated / ( ) by the interval of a perfect fourth. bars - demonstrate another use of the triadic form. here, greenwich simply lays his finger across the guitar's "d," "g" and "b" strings. the result is an arpeggiated second inversion "major triad" that greenwich moves chromatically by simply maintaining the physical shape of the chord and shifting his left hand towards his body a single fret at a time ("d-major" in bar , "eb-major" in bar , "e-major" in bar , "f-major" in bar , "gb-major" in bar , "g," "ab, " "a" and "bb-major" triads and the first two notes of a "b-rnajor" triad over bars - ). once again, greenwich's sonic gesture does not adhere to any overarching tonality or key centre, but rather is informed by a single diagram. bars - also exhibit the most intense chromaticism of the performance, a hallmark of greenwich's style. and while an examination of his note choice reveals that greenwich uses ascending inverted major triads to manoeuvre through these bars, greenwich is once again not thinking of triadic harmony while improvising. rather, greenwich hears these chromatic episodes as building the necessary tension for an effective harmonic release heard here in bar as the "e" to "a" double-stop. greenwich often builds harmonic tension by "sidestepping" chromatically between chord changes. "i'd be playing across the neck and whatever chord came up i'd change it to what that chord was. so these chords could be going by and i'd be doing those figures and i'd change it to the chord that came up then. so i was on that note that came up. then i could go from there to something else" (greenwich, pers. interv. ). in addition to "seeing" how chord diagrams connect together visually, greenwich is clearly noting that he portends or hears ahead of where he is playing to the next harmonic change. he aims his lines at a pre-ordained target pitch (a note he sees as contained within a chord diagram) and proceeds along any number of trajectories (chromatic, scalar, appoggiatura). the key for greenwich is that he is "on that note when it comes up." in other words, how he arrives at the target note is not as important as the arrival itself. "in a song f go out of one pattern, and come back to another pattern," greenwich elaborates (pers. interv ). arguably, it is this sidestepping and resolution that not only imbues a sense of tension and release into his improvisations, but also gives his playing a propulsive sense of swing. greenwich's improvisation on lionel bart's "where is love" offers a good example of this sort of forward motion and resolution during the composition's "turnaround" back to the tonic key of "bb- major" (example ) (greenwich ). example . "where is love," guitar improvisation as played by sonny greenwich ( ) through a combination of note choice and phrasing, greenwich can be heard as playing ahead to the next harmonic change—in the second half of the first bar ("gb-major "), greenwich's note choice adheres better to the "f-dominant cumr/rmuc # " than the "gb-major ." while this phrase is not predominantly rhythmic, by delineating scales-tones , , and flat , before resolving into the natural fifth ("c") of "f-dominant " on the first beat of the next bar, greenwich "pulls" the listener toward the next harmonic change and imbues a sense of swing into the performance. i am aware that much of the sort of musical analysis presented here, with pitch names and formalistic discussions of structure and tonal organization, has fallen under considerable scrutiny when applied to jazz and other african-american, in this case african-canadian, music making practices. for example, central to the criticism leveled at such jazz scholars as gunther schuller and andré hodeir, both of whom were trained in methodologies utilized primarily in the study of western art music, is that harmony and melody, and theoretical discussions thereof have been elevated in their work to a privileged position (schuller ; hodeir ). as krin gabbard argues, although "a jazz musicologist influenced by hodeir may not overtly argue that ellington is the equal of brahms, his use of analytical methods designed for brahms makes the argument all the same" (gabbard , ). in other words, it is argued that the principles, tools and language used in discussions of western art music to explore melodic development, logical phra- seology and teleological narrative do not necessarily have a commensurate place in analysis of african-american music. these aforementioned aesthetics, not to mention the competency one must possess in order to maneuver freely within this discourse, are both socially and politically mediated, and historically indexed to a cultural group removed from african-american culture. the frequent result is that scholarly explorations of african-american music that focus primarily on har- mony and fail to address the social and participatory aspects so central to that culture's music making processes leave a great deal in need of unpacking. accordingly, my final section offers an alternate reading of greenwich's impro- visatory style. clearly, there are aspects of greenwich's performance that have escaped mention in my article thus far as they cannot be properly conveyed by musical notation nor explained fully through musical analysis. four examples include his inflected notes (often bent sharp and heard in bars , , , ), his "muffled" notes (bars , , , , ), his propulsive rhythmic drive that is not tied to the overarching rhythmic grid of the improvisation (bars , , ) and his distortions of timbre—greenwich's concluding power chord in bar and "double-stops" in bars and clearly challenge normative conceptions of jazz guitar tone. while conventional musical analysis offers few ways of discussing these four musical gestures—other than missing the point entirely and hearing these qualities as imperfect intonation, sloppy technique, bad time and an idiomatically inappropri- ate sound respectively—these qualities are both central to greenwich's style and contribute to the meaningfulness (for me) of his performances. all result from what i term greenwich's "loose" manner of playing the instrument. he achieves this loose aesthetic three ways: ( ) his use of a thin plectrum, ( ) his "light" right-hand plectrum grip and ( ) his frequent left-hand shifts across the guitar's the idea of this "loose" style of playing came out of a discussion with rob van der bliek ( february ). / ( ) fretboard. these three performance practices contribute to a rhythmic style too fluid to be articulated by four-square phrase markings, a sonic style that includes the ringing of "open" guitar strings and a melodic style that contains "bent" notes and "muffled" pitches, the later of which often occur when his fingers accidentally fall upon various pitches during his frequent left-hand shifts. further, each of these performance practices can be related to the blues. similar to omette coleman, albert ayler and john coltrane, all musicians who performed so-called "free jazz" at various times, greenwich began his career playing rhythm and blues. by his own account, these early musical experiences have remained important to him. "in retrospect i think that what i did was take the rhythm aspect from rhythm and blues and bring that into my jazz playing," greenwich recalled in a interview. through further discussion with greenwich, i interpret his comments to mean that he wanted to imbue his jazz playing with the sort of energy and drive he experienced performing with such toronto rhythm and blues bands as those led by connie maynard and donnie carrington (greenwich, pers. interv. ). accordingly, i hear greenwich's rhythmic drive, microtonally inflected notes and his "slid- ing on guitar strings" as indexed to both the blues tradition, and to a set of musical aesthetics reified by the musical community in which he came up as a player (oliver ). further, greenwich's distorted timbre and audibly in- flected notes that are both "out of tune" and "out of time," to cite charles keil's "participatory discrepancy" theory, can be indexed to a blues topology in which instrumental squawks and growls, bent pitches and a general vocalized instru- mental timbre are celebrated (keil , ). whether viewed as signifying on the blues tradition, a method for traversing complex harmonic terrains or a way of organizing the guitar fretboard, chordal diagrams offer greenwich a flexible musical strategy. like treitler's plain- chant singer, greenwich "does not make sketches, he does not consult a catalogue of formulas and deliberate about which ones he will string together" (treitler , ). instead, visual shapes—that for greenwich are reminis- cent of klee's paintings—form an aggregate of malleable improvisatory ideas. sonny greenwich, interview with andrew scott, december . hereafter greenwich, pers. interv. . cumr/rmuc appendix. sonny greenwich's improvised composition "sonics ii" (transcription) / ( ) appendix — cont'd cumr/rmuc reference list baily, john. . 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(orig. pub. as hommes et problèmes du jazz, paris: flam- marion, ; first engl. ed. new york: grove press, .) keil, charles. . "participatory discrepancies and the power of music." in music grooves: essays and dialogues, keil charles and steven feld, chap. . chicago: university of chicago press. kernfeld, barry. . "greenwich, sonny [greenwich, herbert lawrence]." grove music online, ed. l. macy. http:// -www.grovemusic.com. ezproxy.library.yorku.ca (accessed march ). miller, mark. . jazz in canada: fourteen lives. toronto: nightwood editions. http:// -www.grovemusic.com / ( ) mobley, hank. . third season, blue note cd . oliver, paul. "origins: blues." grove music online, ed. l. macy. http:// - www.grovemusic.com.exproxy.library.yorku.ca (accessed february ). o'reilly, ted. / . radio interviews with sonny greenwich, cjrt- fm, august and february . pond, steven f. . "jamming the reception: ken burns. jazz, and the problem of 'america's music'." notes: quarterly journal of the music library association , no. (september): - . porter, lewis, ed. . a lester young reader. washington: smithsonian institution press. schuller, gunther. . the swing era: the development of jazz - . new york: oxford university press. smith, gregory eugene. . "homer, gregory, and bill evans? the theory of formulaic composition in the context of jazz piano improvisations." phd diss., harvard university. spring, howard allen. . "the improvisational style of charlie christian." master's thesis, york university. treitler, leo. , "homer and gregory: the transmission of epic poetry and plainchant." musical quarterly , no. (july): - . waxman, ken. . "sonny greenwich keeps his secrets." saturday night (november): - . abstract in this article, the author examines the improvisatory style of jazz musician herbert lawrence "sonny" greenwich. while numerous extra-musical sources inform the guitarist's performances, the cubist paintings of paul klee are particularly meaningful. through transcription, analysis and interview, the author demonstrates that fretboard "diagrams"—which greenwich suggests originate from klee—act in a threefold manner. first, they afford greenwich a personal way of discussing his craft, second they offer a formulaic and percep- tual strategy for traversing various harmonic terrains and third these diagrams act as a surrogate music theory for the self-taught musician, affording him a unique method of organizing the guitar. résumé l'auteur se penche sur le style d'improvisation du musicien de jazz herbert lawrence « sonny » greenwich. si de nombreuses sources extra-musicales nous renseignent sur les prestations du guitariste, les tableaux cubistes de paul klee s'avèrent particulièrement significatifs. À l'aide de transcriptions, d'ana- lyses et d'entrevues, l'auteur démontre que les « diagrammes » des positions sur le manche — qui proviendraient de klee, selon greenwich — jouent trois rôles. d'abord, ils fournissent à greenwich une manière personnelle d'appro- cher son art. ensuite, ils offrent une stratégie convenue et perceptive pour http:// http://www.grovemusic.com.exproxy.library.yorku.ca cumr/rmuc traverser les différentes zones harmoniques. enfin, les diagrammes jouent le rôle d'une théorie musicale de substitution pour cet autodidacte, lui procurant une méthode unique d'organisation de la guitare. doi: . /j.brainres. . . b r a i n r e s e a r c h ( ) – available at www.sciencedirect.com www.elsevier.com/locate/brainres research report musical scale properties are automatically processed in the human auditory cortex elvira bratticoa,b,⁎, mari tervaniemia,b, risto näätänena,b, isabelle peretzc acognitive brain research unit, department of psychology, university of helsinki, finland bhelsinki brain research centre, finland cdepartment of psychology, university of montreal, canada a r t i c l e i n f o ⁎ corresponding author. cognitive brain resea helsinki, finland. fax: + . e-mail address: elvira.brattico@helsinki.fi - /$ – see front matter © elsevi doi: . /j.brainres. . . a b s t r a c t article history: accepted august available online september while listening to music, we immediately detect ‘wrong’ tones that do not match our expectations based on the prior context. this study aimed to determine whether such expectations can occur preattentively, as indexed by event-related potentials (erps), and whether these are modulated by attentional processes. to this end, we recorded erps in nonmusicians while they were presented with unfamiliar melodies, containing either a pitch deviating from the equal-tempered chromatic scale (out-of-tune) or a pitch deviating from the diatonic scale (out-of-key). erps were recorded in a passive experiment in which subjects were distracted from the sounds and in an active experiment in which they were judging how incongruous each melody was. in both the experiments, pitch incongruities elicited an early frontal negativity that was not modulated by attentional focus. this early negativity, closely corresponding to the mismatch negativity (mmn) of the erps, was mainly originated in the auditory cortex and occurred in response to both pitch violations but with larger amplitude for the more salient out-of-tune pitch than the less salient out-of-key pitch. attentional processes leading to the conscious access of musical scale information were indexed by the late parietal positivity (resembling the p of the erps) elicited in response to both incongruous pitches in the active experiment only. our results indicate that the relational properties of the musical scale are quickly and automatically extracted by the auditory cortex even before the intervention of focused attention. © elsevier b.v. all rights reserved. keywords: event-related potential mismatch negativity auditory perception temporal cortex music pitch . introduction music is replete with sound events that are cognitively meaningful, creating a vivid internal musical experience in the human mind. in order to deal with the wealth of information impinging on the auditory system, attentive neural mechanisms select and organize the musical input for further cognitive processing by allocating neural resources to the relevant sound events (cf. coull, ). rch unit, department of (e. brattico). er b.v. all rights reserved a central question in cognitive neuroscience concerns the level of attentional control required in input analysis. behavioral and electrophysiological evidence indicate that several aspects of the auditory environment are analyzed before the intervention of voluntary attention in an automatic and irrepressible way (velmans, ; näätänen et al., ; schröger et al., ). for instance, in the domain of language, dichotic-listening experiments have shown that the meaning of words can be accessed without attention (for a review, see psychology, p.o. box (siltavuorenpenger c), university of . mailto:elvira.brattico@helsinki.fi http://dx.doi.org/ . /j.brainres. . . b r a i n r e s e a r c h ( ) – velmans, ). what about music? encoding of both music and language is based on the perceptual analysis of the auditory scene (bregman, ). it also depends on culture- dependent knowledge that is implicitly acquired by exposure (e.g., krumhansl, ; tillmann et al., ; kuhl, ). likewise with language, the human brain may thus possess neural mechanisms that automatically extract culture-depen- dent musical information before the intervention of focused attention. the first step in pitch encoding consists of extracting universal, i.e., culture-independent information, from the music or speech signal. at this stage of analysis, pitch encoding does not require attention. the mismatch nega- tivity (mmn) component of the event-related potential (erp) (näätänen et al., ; näätänen and winkler, ) is one of the indices of a mechanism holding and manipulating pitch as well as other sound features in a short time span in order to track change in a repetitive sound environment. brain evidence based on the mmn component shows that neuronal populations of the auditory cortex react to a simple pitch change in a repetitive sound sequence even outside the focus of attention (e.g., schröger, ; brattico et al., , ; for a review, see tervaniemi and brattico, ). such pitch encoding process seems to occur in the neuronal circuits of the primary and secondary areas of the audi- tory cortex, in particular, in the superior temporal gyrus (tervaniemi et al., ; müller et al., ). the pitch contour of short tone patterns, i.e., changes in pitch direction regardless of pitch distance, are also automatically encoded by the neural circuits underlying mmn elicitation (tervaniemi et al., ; trainor et al., ). furthermore, pitch relations, that is, musical intervals, are automatically maintained as neural traces even irrespectively of the absolute pitch level of the interval components (paavilainen et al., ; trainor et al., ). these data suggest that, beyond the encoding of absolute pitch by means of the tonotopic maps in the auditory cortex, the central auditory system encodes in a fast and automatic way also the relative distances between pitches (for the role of the frontal cortex in this context, see korzyukov et al., ). music processing, particularly in its melodic dimension, takes advantage of these automatic auditory mechanisms. for instance, we can immediately recognize a melody despite its transposition to other pitch levels. the presence of monodic (unaccompa- nied) music in all known cultures as well as the infant's abilities in recognition and memorization of simple melodies (trehub et al., ; trainor and trehub, ) provides strong support for the elementary nature of the processes involved with melody perception. in each music culture, however, different sets of pitches are used. the western tonal system is based on tones fixed according to the equal-tempered tuning, with intervals not smaller than a semitone (also known as half step). in the equal-temperament tuning system, a semitone corresponds exactly to one twelfth of an octave (corresponding to about % frequency difference between two tones). the chromatic scale of western music includes all the tones of the equal tempered tuning system. from this pool of tones, a subset of tones, also termed key or diatonic scale, are usually played in a short piece of music. the tones of the diatonic scale are said to be in-key, whereas the remaining tones are out-of- key. so far, no study has clarified whether the more culture- dependent knowledge of musical scales can be accessed and used to process incoming pitches at a preattentive level. electrophysiological brain responses to musical scale viola- tions have only been obtained under active paradigms in which subjects were required to judge the congruousness of the sound ending a familiar or unfamiliar melody (besson et al., ; besson and faita, ; hantz et al., ). these studies have shown that the out-of-key pitches generate a late, long-lasting positive erp deflection, termed the p , peaking at – ms from sound onset, as compared to in- key pitches (besson et al., ; besson and faita, ; hantz et al., ). these paradigms can be regarded as remote from everyday listening situations, however (cf. schmithorst, ). pitches are also hierarchically structured according to the rules of tonality and harmony (krumhansl, ). for instance, certain tones have a more central musical function and are more often placed at the beginning and end of any piece of music (krumhansl, ). consequently, strong expectations are formed, even preattentively, for specific tones in specific positions within a musical piece. these expectations are indexed by the early right anterior nega- tivity (eran), an erp component peaking at about ms after sound onset to out-of-key chords placed at the end of -chord cadences, in an experimental condition where subjects were intent in reading a book (koelsch et al., ). in contrast, musical scales create expectations about what categories of events are likely to occur, but not when or in which order. so far no study has uncovered the existence of early erp effects of musical scale violations. we predicted that pitch deviations from the relational aspects of equal- tempered musical scales should also elicit early negativities outside the focus of attention. to this aim, we chose a paradigm mimicking a realistic listening condition with pitch deviations from the musical scales, inserted in various locations within unfamiliar unac- companied melodies and with different levels of attentional load. specifically, we measured subjects' brain responses in two experiments, one in which they were watching a movie and ignoring the melodies (passive experiment), and another in which they were rating the congruousness of the melodies (active experiment). the melodies included two different kinds of pitch deviances (see fig. ). the out-of-tune deviance consisted of a tone that was a half semitone interval from the preceding tone, introducing an incongruity from the chro- matic scale or tuning of the melody. the out-of-key deviance consisted of a tone that was a semitone interval from the preceding tone, placing this tone outside the key of the melody. the congruous pitches that served as control comparison were located at corresponding locations in the melodies and were instead at a whole tone or a larger interval from the preceding tone. the other pitches of the melodies all belonged to the respective diatonic scale, thus including several intervals, from the semitone to the octave. we reasoned that the presence of an attention-indepen- dent difference in the brain responses between the incon- gruous and congruous pitches would support the hypothesis that the brain is able to distinguish tones belonging to scales fig. – three examples of the melodies varied in the three kinds of embedded pitch conditions. the arrows indicate the location of the pitch condition in each melody. b r a i n r e s e a r c h ( ) – from those that do not. because the congruous pitches were larger in distance from the previous pitch than the out-of- key incongruities (a semitone) and the out-of-tune ones (a quartertone), larger change-related brain responses to pitch incongruities would support the prediction that pitch rela- tions are automatically encoded according to the musical scale. otherwise, that is, if the change-related brain responses are more sensitive to pitch distance than scale violation, the reverse should be observed (for a review, see näätänen et al., ): a larger response should be observed for the congruous pitches than for the incongruous ones. by trading the belongingness to the musical scale against pitch distance, we should be able to test the hypothesis that the human brain is sensitive to the stimulus-invariant knowl- edge of musical scales, and not just to the physical proper- ties of the stimuli. furthermore, by adopting the two types of deviations, we could test whether the brain would respond differently according to the hierarchy of musical properties violated: the out-of-tune pitch violated the belongingness to the chromatic scale, whereas the out-of-key pitch violated the belongingness to the diatonic scale, a subset of the chromatic scale itself. all subjects were musically untrained participants, allowing us to probe the neuroarchitecture of implicit musical knowledge. . results . . erp effects as fig. illustrates, in both the passive and active experi- ments, the congruous pitch elicited a fronto-centrally dis- tributed sharp negative deflection, the n , peaking on average at ms. its amplitude did not differ between the experi- ments [main effect of experiment: f( , )= . , p= . ]. the erps elicited by the congruous pitch instead differed at – ms between the experiments [main effects of experiment at – ms: f( , )= . ; p< . , at – ms: f( , )= . , p< . , at – ms: f( , )= . , p= . , and at – ms: f( , )= . , p< . ; interactions experiment×frontality at – ms: f( , ) = . , p < . , and at – ms: f( , ) = . , p< . ; and, finally, interactions experiment×frontality×la- terality at – ms: f( , )= . , p< . , at – ms experiment×frontality×laterality: f( , )= . , p< . , and at fig. – grand-average erps to the congruous pitch in the passive and active experiments. b r a i n r e s e a r c h ( ) – – ms: f( , )= . , p< . ]. this effect resulted from the larger long-lasting positive deflection in response to the congruous pitch when presented under the condition of focused attention, i.e., during the active experiment, than when presented during the passive experiment. as shown by figs. and , in both experiments at the latencies following the n , a frontally maximal negativity was more pronounced to the out-of-tune pitch, and to a lesser extent also to the out-of-key pitch, as compared with that elicited by the congruous one. this negativity persisted up to about ms in the passive experiment only. for both experiments at later latencies, other peaks were also visible and partially overlapped the erp responses to the pitch incongruities. those deflections corresponded to the n and p elicited by the next tone of the melodies, intervening at ms from the onset of the stimulus of interest. at – ms in both the passive and active experiments, the erps to the pitch categories differed from each other [main effect of pitch: f( , )= . , p< . ; without a significant effect of experiment: f= . , p= . , or significant interactions]. in particular, at frontal, fronto-central, and central electrodes, the negativity to the out-of-tune pitch was larger in amplitude than to the other stimuli and the negativity to the out-of-key pitch was larger in amplitude than that to the congruous pitch [interaction pitch×frontality: f( , )= . , p< . ; post hoc tests: p< . – . ]. no differences were found between the pitches at the parietal and parieto-occipital regions. at longer latencies, the erps to the three pitch conditions differed between the experiments, being more positive – or less negative – in the active than in the passive experiment [main effects of experiment at – ms: f( , )= . , p< . ; at – ms: f( , )= . , p< . ; at – ms: f( , )= . , p< . ; at – ms: f( , )= . , p< . ; and at – ms: f( , )= . , p< . ]. additionally, at – ms, an interaction experiment×pitch was observed [f( , )= . , p< . ]. consequently, the analyses were carried out sepa- rately for each experiment. at – ms, the erps to the pitch conditions under the passive experiment differed from each other [main effect of pitch: f( , )= , p< . , ε= . ]. in particular, the out-of-tune pitch elicited a larger negativity than the out-of-key and congruous pitches at the frontal, fronto-central, and central regions [interaction pitch×frontality: f( , )= . , p< . ; post hoc tests: p< . – . ], and the out-of-key pitch elicited a larger negativity than the congruous pitch at frontal and fronto-central regions (post hoc tests: p< . and . , respectively). at – ms in the passive experiment, the negativities to the three pitches differed from each other only at specific electrode locations [interactions pitch×frontality at – ms: f( , )= . , p< . ; and at – ms f( , )= fig. – grand-average erps to the congruous pitch, out-of-key pitch, and out-of-tune pitch in the passive experiment. the voltage maps are calculated at the early negative frontal peaks of the difference waves (out-of-key minus congruous: ms, and out-of-tune minus congruous: ms). b r a i n r e s e a r c h ( ) – . , p< . ]: the negativity to the out-of-tune pitch was even at this long latency larger in amplitude than that to the out-of-key and congruous pitches at frontal, fronto-central, and central regions (post hoc tests: p< . – . ), and the negativity to the out-of-key pitch was larger than that to the congruous pitch at frontal electrodes only (post hoc tests: p< . – . ). moreover, at – ms, the left- and right- hemisphere responses to the three pitches also differed from each other [interaction pitch×frontality×laterality: f( , )= . , p< . ]. separate analyses, including the left and right electrodes of each region of interest, revealed that the negativities were larger in amplitude at the right than at the left hemisphere at the frontal region [main effect of laterality: f( , )= . , p< . ]. at – ms in the passive experiment, the negativity to the out-of-tune pitch remained larger in amplitude than to the out-of-key and congruous pitch conditions at the frontal and fronto-central regions [interactions pitch×frontality at – ms: f( , )= . , p< . ; post hoc tests: p< . – . ; and at – ms: f( , )= . ; p< . ; post hoc tests: p< . – . ], whereas the negativity to the out-of-key pitch was larger in amplitude than to the congruous pitch at the frontal electrodes only (post hoc tests: p< . ). at – ms, the incongruous pitches also elicited a more positive potential than did the congruous pitch at the parieto-occipital electrodes [post hoc tests: p< . for both; at this region of interest, the positivity was larger in amplitude over the right than the left hemisphere, as shown by the interaction fig. – grand-average erps to the congruous pitch, out-of-key pitch, and out-of-tune pitch in the active experiment. the voltage maps are calculated at the late positive parieto-occipital peaks of the difference waves (out-of-key minus congruous: ms, and out-of-tune minus congruous: ms). b r a i n r e s e a r c h ( ) – pitch×frontality×laterality, f( , )= , p< . , and by the main effect of laterality in the anova carried out on the parieto-occipital amplitudes only, f( , )= . , p< . ]. turning now to the active experiment, at late latencies following the early negativity to the out-of-tune pitch (which, as reported above, did not differ between experiments), enhanced positive deflections over the parietal and occipital scalp regions (not visible in the passive condition) were elicited by the incongruous out-of-key and out-of-tune pitches as compared with the responses to the congruous pitch (see fig. ). these responses resemble the p reported in the literature (cf. besson and schön, ). detailed analyses showed that, at – ms, there were no differences in the neural responses between the three pitches. at the p latency range of – ms, the positivities associated to the out-of-tune and out-of-key pitches were larger than those observed for the congruous pitch [main effect of pitch: f( , )= . , p< . , ε= . ]. this was apparent at all electrodes except for the frontal region [interaction pitch×frontality: f( , )= . , p< . ]. at – ms, we also obtained no difference between the positivities to the out-of-tune and out- of-key pitches. however, the erp scalp distribution of these responses reveals an earlier differentiation. at – ms, there was a larger negativity at the right than at the left fig. – results of subjects' ratings on a -point scale obtained during the active experiment. the bars show the standard errors of the mean. b r a i n r e s e a r c h ( ) – hemisphere for the out-of-tune pitch only [interaction pitch× frontality×laterality: f( , )= . , p< . ]. at – ms, the positivities associated with the out-of- tune and out-of-key pitches were still larger than for the congruous pitch at the parietal and parieto-occipital regions (and also at the central regions for the out-of-tune pitch) [interactions pitch×frontality at – ms: f( , )= . , p< . , post hoc tests: p< . – . ; and at – ms: f( , )= . , p< . , post hoc tests: p< . – . ]. more- over, the out-of-tune pitch elicited a larger positivity than did the out-of-key pitch at the parietal and parieto-occipital regions (post hoc tests: p< . – . ). at the frontal regions, however, the out-of-tune pitch elicited a larger negativity than either the out-of-key deviance or the congruous pitch (post hoc tests: p< . – . ). . . source analysis as shown in fig. , the mce indicated that the evoked current activity to the out-of-tune pitch in the passive experiment maximal at ms was mainly localized bilaterally in the temporal lobe, but with a larger contribution of the right hemisphere. the local maxima were found in the superior temporal gyrus (talairach coordinates: x=− , y=− , z= ). in the righthemisphere,an additional lessstrong source occurred inthe inferior frontal gyrus (talairach coordinates: x= , y= , z= ). the mce calculated for the out-of-key pitch showed that the early negativity maximal at ms was mostly generated fig. – minimum norm current estimation (mce) images for the early negativities to the out-of-tune and out-of-key pitches in the passive experiment calculated from the grand-averaged referenced-free difference waveforms at the negative frontal peaks within the time window of – ms (out-of-key minus congruous: ms, and out-of-tune minus congruous: ms). the color code illustrates the strength of the estimated cortical sources in percent calculated for the latency of interest. in the right temporal lobe, and particularly in the middle temporal gyrus (talairach coordinates: x= , y=− , z=− ). this result supports our hypothesis that the early negativity to pitch incongruities originates mainly in the secondary audi- tory cortex (hall et al., ). . . subjects' ratings the ratings of melodic congruousness (fig. ) depended on the pitch condition [main effect of pitch: f( , )= . , p< . , ε= . ]. subjects rated the melodies containing the congruous pitch manipulation as the most congruous (post hoc test: p< . – . ), and the melodies containing the out-of-tune pitch as the most incongruous (post hoc test: p< . – . ). thus, melodies with the out-of-tune pitch were considered more incongruous than were melodies containing the out-of- key pitch (post hoc test: p< . ). . discussion the present study showed that musical scale information is processed automatically by the human brain. more specifi- cally, an early frontal negative neural response was elicited in nonmusicians to musical scale incongruities within a single- voice melody under both the passive and active experiments. moreover, both the out-of-tune and out-of-key incongruities elicited a negative response. this brain response was larger in amplitude to the out-of-tune than that to the out-of-key pitch, possibly reflecting the larger salience of the first incongruity as compared to the latter. as reviewed in the introduction section, pitch expectations can be violated at several levels of the pitch hierarchies in a musical context. in the present paradigm, both the out-of- tune and out-of-key incongruities elicited a negative response, but the brain response to the mistuning was larger in amplitude and more widespread in topography than was the response to the out-of-key pitch. this suggests that despite creating an interval with the preceding tone larger in size (a semitone) than that introduced by the out-of-tune pitch (a quartertone) the out-of-key deviances are less salient than the b r a i n r e s e a r c h ( ) – out-of-tune deviances. the difference in salience between the two pitch incongruities is further testified by the behavioral responses of the subjects, who rated the melodies with the out-of-tune pitch as more incongruous than the melodies containing the out-of-key pitch. previous results also demon- strated a larger mmn to the more salient high melodic line as compared to the low one (fujioka et al., ). furthermore, in our study, the out-of-key pitch deviated from the rule of tonality belongingness, whereas the out-of-tune incongruity deviated from the more general rule of belongingness to the chromatic scale. this latter rule regards all the pitches of western tonal music, from which the tonalities are formed. the larger negative response to the out-of-tune than to the out-of-key pitch deviation hence confirms and generalizes previous findings by showing the dependence of the auto- matic auditory cortex functions on the level of salience and the processing demands of the musical scale properties. an acoustical account of these early negativities is unlikely. it should be noticed that the out-of-tune pitch employed in the present study did not contain any roughness in itself (i.e., amplitude modulations within the sound) nor did it produce any sensory dissonance with other simultaneous sounds since it was played with no harmonic accompaniment. on the other hand, other processes, such as the integration of sounds in sensory memory and effects of interval familiarity, may induce a sensation of dissonance or unpleasantness even with melodic intervals (i.e., not played simultaneously; see, for instance, moore, ; schellenberg and trehub, ). this dissonance sensation may have been stronger when asso- ciated with the quarter tone interval introduced by the out-of- tune pitch than with the semitone interval generated by the out-of-key pitch. however, dissonance seems to produce mainly late positivities in the erps (regnault et al., ). in the current study, when presented within the melodic context, the out-of-tune pitches elicited an early negativity during the passive experiment, and the melodies containing those pitches were rated as the most incongruous in the judgment task of the active experiment. in all likelihood, these effects reflect the implicit knowledge of the basic rule of the equal-tempered scale, with the smallest allowed interval being the semitone. this principle was violated by the out- of-tune change that introduced a quartertone (i.e., half semitone) interval within the melody stimulus. noteworthily, such implicit knowledge seems to be available in musically untrained subjects. alternatively, the early negativity to the incongruous pitches might be an example of the ability of the central auditory system to extract and apply complex rules (terva- niemi et al., ; paavilainen et al., ; wolff and schröger, ; horvath and winkler, ). for instance, wolff and schröger ( ) showed that an infrequent tone repetition elicits an mmn when occurring in a series of tones varying in frequency. adapted to the present study, the system may apply the rule that adjacent tones are separated by at least one semitone or a whole tone; the deviant introduces instead a smaller frequency change, thus generating an mmn-like brain response. however, this interpretation of the data could only explain the brain reaction to the out-of-tune pitch. the neural response to the out-of-key pitch, instead, cannot be accounted for by a primitive intelligence of the central auditory system for simple rule extraction (cf. näätänen et al., ) since semitone intervals (e.g., between the seventh and eight tones of the diatonic scale) occurred in several of the melodies. in other words, the auditory system could not simply compute the presence of a deviant by extracting the rule that melodies contained only pitch distances equal to or larger than a whole tone; it rather needed to compare the incoming sounds with the long-term neural traces for musical pitch relations stored as neural assemblies in the cortex. memory representations for repeated or meaningful stimuli of the environment are supposed to be stored in the regions of the brain where their initial processing also takes place, i.e., in the sensory cortices (weinberger, ; destexhe and marder, ). a comparison process which occurs automatically in the brain compares the incoming sounds with the memory traces present in the auditory cortex, as indexed by the mmn component of the erps, occurring as early as – ms from the onset of the sound discrepant with the stored neural traces. in the traditional mmn paradigms, the neural trace is of a sensory nature; that is, it is formed during the experimental session by repeating specific sound parameters or simple invar- iances of the sound stimulation (such as the pitch direction in tone pairs; saarinen et al., ). when the repeated sounds or sound relations are familiar, the mmn is enhanced, indexing the automatic activation of long-term memory traces for those sounds or sound relations in the auditory cortex (näätänen et al., ; pulvermüller et al., ; schröger et al., ). in the present study, where the sound repetitions were minimized, the brain response to the pitch violation was solely the result of the comparison of the incoming pitch with the long-term traces for the musical scale properties rather than with the sensory memory traces for the invariant pitches presented during the experimental session. specifically, the incongruous pitches did not match the permanent neural traces for the pitch relations of the musical scale in the human brain activated by the preceding melody context. in other words, at this early stage, the comparison process did not use individual sounds but the scale structure as its reference point. as an end product, we could observe the present early negativity, closely corre- sponding to the mmn, in response to the out-of-tune and out-of-key pitches. the source analysis localized the present mmn to pitch incongruities mainly in the supratemporal lobe, correspond- ing to the secondary auditory cortex, with a predominant contribution from the right hemisphere (a weaker source was also observed in the frontal cortex). this finding is in line with previous brain imaging and neuropsychological evidence associating the secondary auditory cortex (in particular the right-hemispheric one) with the processing of the contour properties of unfamiliar melodies, as contrasted with the primary auditory cortex analyzing features of isolated sounds only (milner, ; samson and zatorre, ; johnsrude et al., ; patterson et al., ). our data thus suggest that the melodies were automatically modeled by the secondary auditory cortex as based on the pitch relations of the musical scale, much like linguistic stimuli are automatically categor- ized according to their phonological content (see below). on the basis of our findings, we propose that the efficient b r a i n r e s e a r c h ( ) – computation of the pitch relations of the diatonic musical scale is based on the long-term practice of the neural networks of the auditory cortex to the rules of western tonal music in listeners acculturated with it. the present results thus mirror earlier findings from the linguistic domain, where the brain is preattentively sensitive to abstract phonological information (phillips et al., ; näätänen, ; kujala et al., ). like phonemes within a word context, a given pitch is perceived as out-of-key or out- of-tune only within the melodic context of the adjacent tones. even if it seems to occur as early as at the preattentive level, the detection of such contextual informa- tion is not a simple feat but requires abstract relational knowledge and the use of long-term memory processes for the computation of the relevant comparisons (cf. näätänen et al., ). previously, preattentive processing of harmonic relations in the brain has been studied with chord cadences (koelsch et al., ). the results showed that an eran (koelsch et al., ) was elicited by the out-of-key neapolitan chord ending chord cadences even when subjects were intent in reading a book while ignoring the sounds. our results confirm and extend these findings to the domain of the musical scale relations in melodies. on the other hand, harmony processing, indexed by the eran, is not fully automatic since the eran amplitude decreases when sounds are outside attentional focus (loui et al., ). in the current study, instead, the early negativity to the pitch incongruities was not modulated by subjects' attention, thus suggesting that musical scale proces- sing is fully independent of attentional resources. moreover, the present negativity was generated mainly in the superior temporal lobe (with a predominant contribution of the right hemisphere and with a secondary possible source in the frontal cortex), as showed by the scalp distribution of the erps, maximal at frontal and fronto-central electrodes and rever- sing their potential at temporo-mastoidal sites, and by the electrical source analysis. in contrast, the electric eran peaks at frontal and fronto-temporal scalp regions (see, e.g., koelsch et al., ; koelsch and mulder, ) and its magnetic counterpart is generated mainly in the right and left inferior frontal cortices, as evidenced by dipole modeling (maess et al., ). in light of previous studies concerning the role of these brain regions (e.g., smith and jonides, ; grodzinski, ; näätänen et al., ; korzyukov et al., ), we propose that the different localization of eran and the present mmn may result from the different types of violations investigated: in the eran studies, the neapolitan chord, especially when placed at the end of cadences, violates the rules of harmony concerning the order of sound events within a structure (cf. snyder, ), whereas in our study the out-of-tune and the out-of-key pitches inserted in various locations within the melodies violate the rules of belongingness to the musical scale. in other words, the hierarchical rules of harmony that require the combination of several musical units into mean- ingful complex representations ordered in time tend to be associated with the frontal regions of the brain (maess et al., ), whereas the non-hierarchical relational properties of the musical scale seem to be mostly extracted in auditory cortex areas (cf. näätänen et al., ). consequently, on the basis of our source analysis, we propose that musical scale processing is more analogous to phoneme extraction in the domain of language, and thus with the mmn concept, than with syntax, in contrast with what has been argued for the eran brain response (koelsch et al., ; koelsch and siebel, ). another discrepancy in relation to the koelsch et al.'s ( ) study lies in the relatively small amplitude of the present early negative response to the out-of-key pitch, probably due to the different paradigms used. in order to investigate preattentive harmony processing, koelsch et al. ( ) opted for a relatively repetitive musical context in which chords, while transposed over different keys and played in various registers, were isochronously presented (with sounds occurring equi-distantly in time). in the present paradigm, the musical context varied in rhythm, the melodies were played over different keys, and the moment at which a pitch incongruity occurred varied. consequently, the occur- rence of an incongruity could not be easily predicted, which may have increased uncertainty regarding expectations (näätänen, ), and thus decreased the power of violation- elicited neural activations. in the active experiment, we additionally observed the attention-related p component, which was larger in amplitude to both the out-of-tune and the out-of-key pitches as compared with that elicited by the congruous pitches, not differing from each other in the – ms time window. this lack of amplitude difference in the initial p between the more salient out-of-tune pitch and the less salient key violation indicates that additional neural resources were recruited in order to attentively identify and integrate the out-of-key pitch in the melody context. thus, we suggest that melody processing is completed with the aid of focused attention, which presumably contributes to fully integrate musical scale information into the ongoing pitch analysis. the p findings in response to out-of-key and out-of-tune pitches within melodies support and generalize previous findings to an ongoing listening situation showing that pitch incongruities placed at the end of melodies elicit a parietally maximal p (besson et al., ; besson and faita, ; cf. also besson and schön, ). contrary to the majority of the previous experiments on music processing (e.g., paller et al., ; besson et al., ; besson and faita, ; janata, ; hantz et al., ; patel et al., ; koelsch et al., ; regnault et al., ; tervaniemi et al., ), in the present study, subjects could hardly predict the moment in time they should expect an incongruous event. this made the experi- mental situation more similar to a common music listening situation. nevertheless, the congruousness judgments given to the wholeness of the melody showed that a single pitch in a variable place inside the melody is sufficient to affect the subjects' ratings in a significant way. in conclusion, we propose that the human brain possesses mechanisms to extract relational aspects of the sounds of the musical scale without a need for focused attention, but later calling into play attentional resources for fully integrated, conscious access. consequently, melody processing seems to be driven by fast automatic processes occurring in the secondary auditory cortex. such processes are based on the knowledge available in the brains of the majority of listeners, i.e., in subjects without any musical b r a i n r e s e a r c h ( ) – education, who have implicitly learned musical properties through everyday passive exposure to music. . experimental procedures . . subjects nine healthy right-handed students (mean age ± , females) with no formal musical education were tested with electroencephalography (eeg). they gave formal written consent to participate in the study. the experimental procedures followed the guidelines reported in the declara- tion of helsinki. . . materials in both the active and passive experiments, subjects were presented with unfamiliar melodies of approximately s in duration (see fig. ). the melodies, composed for experimental purposes at the university of montreal, differed from one another in pitch and rhythmic content. they were played in different keys and were structured according to the rules of the western tonal system. half of the melodies were written in binary tempi and half in ternary tempi. the metronome was set within a range of to beats per minute, with the majority of the melodies played at beats per minute. in half of the melodies, a pitch manipulation occurred on the strong beat of the third bar and lasted about ms. since the melodies consisted of a different number of tones and different rhythms, the manipulation was introduced in varying locations within – s after melody onset. the pitch manipulations were of two kinds, thus each occurring in % of the melodies: an out-of-key pitch (by a semitone interval from the preceding pitch) introduced a deviation from the key of the melody, and an out-of-tune pitch (by a quartertone interval from the preceding in-key pitch) introduced a devia- tion from the chromatic scale or the tuning of the melody. those incongruous pitches were compared with the congru- ous in-key pitches occurring at corresponding locations in the melodies. in the current paradigm, the out-of-key and out-of tune pitches were also incongruous as compared to the other pitches of the diatonic melodies. the actual probability of occurrence of the pitch deviances was hence much less than %. it is worth pointing out that the out-of-tune pitch had a very similar frequency spectrum to the other pitches (when heard in isolation, it sounded perfectly consonant), but its distance from the preceding pitch was half a semitone (e.g., a pitch half way between c and c#), thus producing a small interval not commonly used in western tonal music. in order to warrant precise time locking of the erp, the onset of the critical pitch was marked by way of a careful inspection of the auditory and spectral signal. each melody was presented times: twice with different congruous pitches and twice with different incongruous pitches. the melodies were computer-generated and played on three different instruments, a nylon string guitar, a clarinet, or a jazz guitar (on a roland sc sound canvas). in total, in the study, melodies were presented. in summary, the contour, rhythm, pitch level, and timbre of each melody varied, thus minimizing their surface-level (or pitch-level) invariance. instead, the pitch invariance was related to the belongingness to the equal-tempered musical scale and to the specific key in which the melody was composed. . . procedure the eeg measurements were performed at the university of montreal in a single session lasting about h. the melodies were binaurally presented through sennheiser hd head- phones in a quiet room, at an intensity level of db spl, and with an interstimulus interval (isi) of s for both the experiments. in the passive experiment, subjects were presented with melodies and asked to watch a soundless dvd movie with subtitles while ignoring the sounds. after the movie, subjects were given a break of min during which they had refreshment and were allowed to move. in the active experiment, always administered after the passive experi- ment, the melodies were played with one of the previously used timbres ( trials) while subjects were performing a paper and pencil test. in this behavioral test, subjects judged the congruousness and incongruousness of each melody. they were requested to judge whether the melodies contained a ‘wrong’ pitch on a -point scale, in which meant very incongruous, neutral, and very congruous. importantly, subjects were not informed of the location in the melody in which the pitch manipulation would occur. subjects received practice trials without feedback before performing the task. the results obtained in the behavioral test were analyzed with a -way repeated-measure anova (pitch: congruous, out-of- key, out-of-tune). . . eeg recordings the eeg was recorded with an instep amplifier from tin electrodes (electrocap international, inc.®) arranged on the scalp according to the extended – international system appended by intermediate positions and by the left and right mastoids. all electrodes were referenced to the electrode placed on the nose. horizontal and vertical electrooculograms (eog) were bipolarly monitored with electrodes placed above and below the right eye and at the left and right eye canthi. the eeg and eog were amplified (bio-electric amplifier by sa instrumentation; hz sampling rate) with a bandpass of . to hz. . . data analysis continuous eeg records were divided into epochs starting ms before and ending ms after the onset of the manipulated pitch. eeg epochs contaminated by blinks or eye- movement artifacts were corrected by a dynamic regression procedure of the eog on the eeg in the frequency domain (woestenburg et al., ). epochs with a signal change exceeding ± μv at any eeg electrode were rejected from averaging. erp averaging was performed without regard to the subject's behavioral response. erps were offline filtered digitally (bandpass . – hz at db/octave), re-referenced to the algebraic mean of both mastoids in order to improve the b r a i n r e s e a r c h ( ) – signal to noise ratio, and quantified for each subject in each pitch condition and for each electrode (neuroscan ltd., el paso, tx., edit . ). in both passive and active experiments, in order to test any differences in the neural responses to the two pitch incon- gruities as compared with those to the congruous pitch, we quantified the amplitudes and latencies of the erps to the three stimulus categories from electrodes (f , fz, f , fc , fcz, fc , c , cz, c , p , pz, p , po , poz, po ) at sliding latency windows of ms, starting from ms. the latency of ms was chosen as starting point for the statistical testing because it approximately corresponds to the latency in which the erps to temporally and spectrally complex deviant and standard stimuli start to diverge, as described in the literature (näätänen et al., ; paavilainen et al., ; tervaniemi et al., ; brattico et al., ; van zuijen et al., ), and because the visual inspection of the grand-average difference waveforms (in which the erps to the incongruous pitches were subtracted from the erps to the congruous pitches) revealed the maximal effects shortly after this latency. the procedure of doing the statistics for subsequent latency windows was adopted since the negativity to pitch incongruities in the passive experiment and the positivity to pitch incongruities in the active experiment were long lasting. this procedure is also consistent with the literature: erp components associated to complex auditory or cognitive processes are most commonly analyzed over wide time windows (see, for instance, näätänen et al., ; hahne and friederici, ; tervaniemi et al., ; schön and besson, ; nicholson et al., ; nan et al., ). moreover, we wished to test whether the long-lasting erp deflections observed in our study varied in scalp distribu- tion and hence in functional significance at different latency ranges. as visible from the grand-average waveforms (figs. – ), while the late negativities for the passive experiment and the late positivities for the active experiment had long latencies, the first negativity for all pitch categories, corresponding to the n component of the erps, had a sharp peak. conse- quently, only for the n , we measured the mean amplitudes from the -ms window around the peaks identified from the grand-average waveforms. the mean amplitudes of the erp components of interest were then compared with repeated-measure anovas includ- ing, when appropriate, experiment (passive, active), pitch (congruous, out-of-key, out-of-tune), frontality (f-line, fc- line, c-line, p-line, po-line), and laterality (left, middle, right) as factors. in all statistical analyses, type i errors were controlled for by decreasing the degrees of freedom with the greenhouse–geisser epsilon (the original degrees of freedom for all analyses are reported throughout the paper). post hoc tests were conducted by fisher's least-significant difference (lsd) comparisons. . . source analysis to assess the possible source location of the early negativities obtained under the passive experiment to the pitch incon- gruities, we calculated l minimum-norm current estimation (mce) (hämäläinen and ilmoniemi, ; hämäläinen and ilmoniemi, ) by using the brain electrical source analysis software (besa . . ). mce calculates a distributed current image at each time sample on the basis of the potential distribution recorded as the smallest amplitude of the overall activity (hämäläinen and ilmoniemi, ). mce was preferred here because it has relatively good localization accuracy, and it requires minimal assumptions about the activity distribu- tion, as compared with the dipole method which, for instance, confines the neural activity to point-like sources (komssi et al., ). in our analysis, no a priori knowledge about the source location was introduced, apart from restricting the source to the cortical surface. since mce is very sensitive to the noise level in the signal, we performed it on the grand-average reference-free differ- ence waveforms where responses to the congruous pitch were subtracted from those to the incongruous pitch. the high-pass filter of . hz ( db/octave) and the low-pass filter of hz ( db/octave) were also applied to increase the signal to noise ratio of the grand-average waveforms (see, e.g., sinkkonen and tervaniemi, ). the mce images were then computed as regional sources evenly distributed on standard locations % and % below the smoothed standard brain surface of the besa software. for this computation, we used spatio-temporal weighting according to dale and sereno ( ), which assigns more weight to sources that are assumed to contribute more to the data recorded. the mce images were finally drawn from the difference waveforms at the latency of the negative peak recorded from the frontal electrodes within the – ms time window. acknowledgments we wish to thank b. bouchard for his help with the stimuli, and j.-f. giguere, m. robert, k. hyde, dr. m.t. hernandez, dr. p. brattico, dr. i. winkler, and dr. a. widmann for their help at different stages of the project. the work was supported by the canadian institutes of health research, the government of canada award, and the pythagoras graduate school for sound and music 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comparing musicians and nonmusicians. j. cogn. neurosci. , – . velmans, m., . is human information processing conscious? behav. brain sci. , – . weinberger, n.m., . specific long-term memory traces in primary auditory cortex. nat. rev., neurosci. , – . woestenburg, j.c., verbaten, m.n., slangen, j.l., . the removal of the eye-movement artifact from the eeg by regression analysis in the frequency domain. biol. psychol. , – . wolff, c., schröger, e., . activation of the auditory pre-attentive change detection system by tone repetitions with fast stimulation rate. cogn. brain res. , – . 	musical scale properties are automatically processed in the human auditory cortex 	introduction 	results 	erp effects 	source analysis 	subjects' ratings 	discussion 	experimental procedures 	subjects 	materials 	procedure 	eeg recordings 	data analysis 	source analysis 	acknowledgments 	references perception of old musical instruments hal id: hal- https://hal.sorbonne-universite.fr/hal- submitted on may hal is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- entific research documents, whether they are pub- lished or not. the documents may come from teaching and research institutions in france or abroad, or from public or private research centers. l’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire hal, est destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés. perception of old musical instruments stéphane vaiedelich, claudia fritz to cite this version: stéphane vaiedelich, claudia fritz. perception of old musical instruments. journal of cultural her- itage, elsevier, , (supplement), pp.s -s . � . /j.culher. . . �. �hal- � https://hal.sorbonne-universite.fr/hal- https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr perception of old musical instruments stéphane vaiedelich and claudia fritz cité de la musique - philharmonie, équipe conservation recherche - musée de la musique, f- paris, france sorbonne universités, upmc univ paris , cnrs, umr , institut jean le rond d’alembert, f- paris, france abstract defining what is an old instruments is complex. in a general way, we can distinguish two categories of old instruments. on one hand, there are the instruments which are not or barely in use nowadays. due to a period of abandonment, those instruments are representative of an epoch different from ours and can be relatively easily dated. on the other hand, there are the instruments which are still being played despite having been made a few centuries ago. time and use have usually given them a patina, so they are perceived as old in terms of visual aspect, but they have usually been modified as well and so they can be perceived as contemporary in terms of sound. do we understand an old instrument by hearing it? do we actually even need to hear it to understand it? this article is meant to provide some thoughts on these questions, to highlight the links between sight and hearing in our perception of a musical instrument and to illustrate how documentation and scientific knowledge can influence this perception . introduction for most thinkers – from a western society at least – the musical instrument seems to have to be defined, a priori, through its sound production function. in this way, it is defined as a device/an artificial machine/a human material product, allowing the supply of “sound objects”, considered to be musical by the culture within which the instrument is used [ ]. thus, whether the instrument is in a playing state or not and is submitted to scientific scrutiny as a whole or a fraction, the study and documentation of this musical instrument cannot leave out the analysis of its functionalities and their relationships with the material object itself. encountering a musical instrument never leaves one indifferent and usually arouses a feeling of curiosity close to admiration towards this alloy of matter, form and sound. though it always seems to be conceived and produced in order to be listened to, the stories that it can tell are numerous. an instrument can be a simple object in appearance or a clever assembly of tools and sound materials. it can be entirely conceived and designed as a new object or it can result from repurposing an artefact from its primary function (musical stone, washboard, musical glasses, . . . ). the perception of an old musical instrument is complex. its forms and plasticity as they appear to us nowadays are sometimes a very distant reflection of what they were originally. its sound, in this paper, perception refers not only to the processing of sensory information but also to the understanding of the instrument in societal, historical and cultural terms when it still exists, has suffered as well due to ageing. some instruments do not have a sound anymore because they cannot be played, or because the playing technique or the musical practice are lost. therefore, the perception of this material and sound object relies on different senses, among which the sight is probably the most important. the involved senses provide the audience member the informations, on which they shape an identity to the instrument that is presented to them. starting from a definition of the old musical instrument, we propose here, through chosen examples, to show how the input of sciences (both natural and human) allow the supply of factual elements which provide the instrument, beyond its sound, with a common sense based on “objective” documentation, that can be shared by a large audience. the old musical instrument . attempts towards a definition identified within a culture, a musical instrument is the product of an era to which it seems sometimes difficult to constrain it. it is indeed common that an instrument, like the guitar or the harpsichord for instance, that was thought to be forgotten was actually reused at a later time, in quite different musical ways, showing sometimes potentialities which were unexpected at the time of its original conception. the notion of old instrument is therefore difficult to define. is it about an instrument newly made from an old template? is it about an instrument that we can show, by an analysis of its material (dendrochronology if it happens to be in wood [ ]), that one part or the whole instrument dates from an old time relative to the observer and on which it would not be possible to play a contemporary repertoire? when a relatively long period of no use exists in the history of the instrument, the definition becomes easy. this period of abandonment, comparable to the period of burying of an archaeological object, is the guarantee of the testimony of another time. it places objectively the instrument in a time period, based on which the observer (scientist, musician, curator, general audience, . . . ) builds the mental image of a temporal distance. in this case, the evocative power of the instrument is not constrained to a “simple” auditory dimension, as the passage of time has stamped the whole object with various and complex significations and dimensions. listening, seeing, touching, playing such a musical instrument is an open door to the time as highlighted by robert barclay: “historic musical instruments have a very special place in modern society. they are touchstones to the past to an extent that other artefacts are. playing music upon them allows us briefly to bridge the gap between the here and now and the over and done with”[ ]. on the other hand, when such abandonment period does not exist, defining the epoch of an instrument and thus defining what an old instrument is becomes very complex, as we will see in the particular case of the violin. . particular case of the violin since its first appearance in the th century, the violin did not have to suffer a period of abandon and has been continuously played. it possesses, even now, a very privileged place in the european instrumentarium. numerous are the musicians who are specialist in contemporary repertoire but play on instruments with a famous signature from the th century. the famous third partita for solo violin (bmw ) composed by johan sebastian bach in was played on the violin made by nicolas lupot in , kept in the collection of musée de la musique in paris (figure ), during the opening ceremony of the new museum in . a few years later in , the same violin allowed to hear the piece for solo violin written by ianis xenakis in , in a tribute concert to this composer. from which period really is this instrument? is it even from a precise period? what is the real signification ot the manufacture year still visible on the authentic maker’s tag inside the instrument? what do we hear in each concert: a violin from or , date of the concerts? an instrument from or , dates of the creation of the pieces? or an instrument from which has the incredible capability of being used for both music written way before and way after its fabrication? figure : violin made by nicolas lupot (e. . . , collection of musée de la musique – paris [ ]). sometimes called “the french stradivari”, lupot was very active in paris at the beginning of the th century. his instruments are largely inspired by stradivarius models, which he was able to access thanks to his reputation as a repairer. the label inside the violin reads “nicolas lupot luthier rue de grammont à paris l’an ”. its neck was changed at least once and its set-up is typical of the first half of the th century, as indicated by its “émile français paris” iron-stamped bridge. copyright cité de la musique - philharmonie de paris defining an old violin is not easy. the transformations, that the instrument has necessarily undergone during successive maintenance to be kept in playing condition, make it change era. during the th century, parisian instrument makers were particularly active in the development of conservation techniques, some of which are still being in use. the study of technical treatises written by luthiers in the th and th centuries shows how the definition of an old violin can be ambiguous [ ]. for them, it is an instrument which body (mainly the exterior and visible elements of it) has kept traces of its origin. these traces are magnified by the patina, a mark of regular and continuous use, representing the time passing but mainly the continuity of the instrument’s existence, certainly old, but eternal as the instrument belongs to the past as well as to the present. thus, the transformation of the neck and some other functional elements, which are well known to play an important role in the tone quality, are swept away like details as soon as they do not modify this immediate and mainly visual perception. “le rebarrage des tables et le changement des poignées étant des réparations et non des modifications, ces instruments sont donc tels qu’ils ont été construits ” (changing the bracing of the plates and the neck being repairs but not modifications, these instruments are thus as they were made) wrote laurent grillet in his famous work les ancêtres du violon et du violoncelle [ ], talking about some famous violins of his time. beyond the fact that this argument can be seen as weak in the light of the so called theseus paradox (a thought experiment that raises the question of whether an object that has had all of its components replaced remains fundamentally the same object), it still shows an interesting change in paradigm as braces of the plates and neck would nowadays be considered as constituant parts of the instrument (rather than secondary accessories in grillet’s time). perception of old instruments induced by visual inspection before it even sounds, a musical instrument is seen, as a material object. whether the observer is expert or novice, the visual examination which is conducted leads to a quick categorisation in function of his/her degree of expertise. “this instrument is obviously old, juts by looking at it!” “this instrument seems to come from asia, its decorations are typical of chinese lacquers from the th century.” “the decorations of the papers show that it is a flemish harpsichord”. the documentary and material approaches to identify the origin of a musical instrument and thus certify its authenticity are mostly guided by sight (rather than by hearing) and often only question the initial hypotheses derived by an initial visual perception. when the instrument belongs to different epochs or different places because of different organological modifications (for instance, a flemish harpsichord from the th century which underwent a large renovation in france in the middle of the th century), there is often a conflict between the visual perception and the multiple origin of the instrument. when these modifications are subtle, discrete and frequent and the instrument has always been used in the instrumentarium, then it belongs simultaneously to many epochs. this is the case of the violin, which has been shown above to represent a real archetype on this matter and therefore has appeared relevant to us to pursue further our reflection and our experimental approach. . case of old violins kept in playing condition stradivari and guarneri ‘del gesu’ may well be the greatest violin makers ever, but it takes an expert opinion based on visual and historical (rather than tonal) evidence to say whether a particular example is genuine. playing and listening tests never enter the authentication process. however, the violins of these two masters as well as other italian makers of the th and th centuries are widely believed to possess playing and sound qualities that are both immediately discernible to experienced violinists and not found in new instruments . recent studies [ , ] have shown that, when blind-folded, players prefer in average new instru- ments and cannot tell better than chance level whether a violin is old or new. this highly suggests that the origin of the tonal superiority of the old italian violins is not grounded in particular playing and sound properties of the violins but in the knowledge that the violinists have of their origin and age. through top-down processes, this knowledge changes the perception at a neural level [ ]: simply knowing the history or pedigree of an instrument can activate expectations for its sound that cause neural circuits – even lower level sensory-perceptual ones – to behave differently than they would without that knowledge. violinists may really believe that the instrument sounds better, even if there is no acoustic difference in the physical world. however, though these studies, along with many informal studies since the beginning of the th century, have shown that new violins are in general more efficient as musical tools for soloists testimonies are numerous. for example, we can refer to simone. f. sacconi, famous maker of the th century, author of “il secreti di stradivari” [ ] in which he reported the testing of a stradivarius cello at carnegie hall, during which a famous player, deliberately sitting in the gallery, turned around instinctively from the first few notes, with the impression that the instrument was behind him. nowadays, the interest for these violins as well as their price have not decreased. this shows that these instruments are now part of our cultural heritage like old paintings for instance. . case of museum violins perception is the the complement of materiality and their relationship can be more or less direct. in the case of a musical instrument, this perception is at least double, auditory and visual. while the first one is probably the most important one during a concert, the second one prevails in a museum. sound, form and colour maintain complex relationships. if the material dimension of an instrument can be grasped even if in an incomplete conservation state, its tone, to be perceived, requires the instrument to be complete, and moreover, to be played by a musician. however, it can be present in the imagination of the audience, who will refer to their memory to “hear” the instrument that they see. thus, similarly to the face that a listener imagines when hearing a voice on the radio, the sound imagined by a spectator is linked to the aesthetic and visual aspect of the instrument that he looks at. has a dark sounding violin a dark colour? the question asked this way may appear simplistic. however, the answers collected to a series of questions asked to observers ( violin makers and musicians) about two violins, of trifling and recent make, one with a brown varnish, the other one with a golden yellow one, presented to the observers in the same conditions, allowing them to see the instruments from all perspectives but not to touch them, are disturbing. after having been asked to describe both violins, the participants were asked about how they imagined the sound of the two violins. while participants described spontaneously only the physical objects in terms of shape, colour, ..., without any consideration on their sound, only of them (bowed string players) could not answer the second question. among the who described how they imagined the sound, a clear difference could unsurprisingly be observed between the makers and the musicians. for the first ones, their imagination of the sound was based on “objective” parameters of the making and the wood. thus, out of talked about the “voûtes, mailles du bois, assez plat sous le chevalet, travail fin, pores serrés” (arches, medullary rays, quite flat under the bridge, fine work, tight pores). for the latter, their imagination of the sound was mainly ( out of ) induced from the colours (two players mentioned one the bridge, the other one the making, and two others could not answer the question). what is more interesting is the relative consensus on the sonority of each violin and how the difference in imagined sonority is clearly linked to the difference in colours. the brown violin was imagined as richer, warmer, rounder, more flexible, more powerful than the yellow violin which was, conversely, considered as less complex, harsher and more nasal, stiffer and tighter, less powerful. beyond this perceptual assessment, the symbolic history of colours brings to these results an additional historical and social dimension. the red colour in a western society takes on a particular importance . the analytical results obtained these past years [ , ] on a panel of more than hundred instruments of the violin family, mainly from the and th centuries, show the presence of red pigments (vermilion, cochineal, madder), particularly in the italian craftsmanship and more generally in the instruments made by makers whose reputation was already assured during their life. this is confirmed by the analysis of the descriptive notices (in french) from the database of the musée de la musique’s collection [ ] which shows that % of the th century violins from italian origin have a varnish described as red while this is the case for only % of same period “le rouge vient en dernier dans l’oeuvre alchimique” (red comes last in the alchemical work) writes the alchemist norton de bristol in the th century [ ]. there is no standardized way of describing the colour in the notices and so the varnish description can depend strongly on the perception of the person who wrote the notice(“jaune doré” (golden yellow), “brun orangé”(orange violins from french origin. however, there is an important change during the th century, as a red varnish appears in % of the notices of french origin violins from the th century and % from the th century. table shows that the colour of the varnish is much less described for violins from the th and the th centuries (more than % of the notices do not contain information on the colour), than for violins from the th and the th (less than %). however, there are a relatively large number of “experimental” violins in the th and th centuries, for which the colour is never described. having experimental status, as the savart violin has, is the only property perceived to have value; therefore, the color does not seem interesting enough for the curator to describe. thus, if we remove the experimental violins from the database, the number of non described notices is only twice as large for the th century than for the other centuries. full database database without the the experimental violins th th th th table : percentage of violins of musée de la musique’s collection not described in terms of colours for each century, when considering the full database and when removing the violins considered as experimental. the predominance of the red varnish in the th and th centuries as well as the fact that th century violins are much less described can be explained by the fact that all along the th and then th centuries, the old instrument has been invented and become archetype. develop- ment of conservation techniques, appearance of large national collections, presentation of copies of old instruments in universal exhibitions take part in its conquest by the opinion and results in a production mainly based on copies of the old masters work. therefore, an old varnish is more highly considered as a recent varnish, and only the varnishes from the th and th can have this status of “old varnish”. thus, their description - in particular their colour - appears, to the curators eyes, much more important than for more recent varnishes. this shows that the museal look is not neutral but as well that the varnish is constituent of the work in the case of the violin, unlike for paintings, whose varnish is often removed to be changed. in addition, the making school of reference is the italian school, cremonese and venitian in first place, in which the famous and influential masters - stradivarius, amati, guarnerius, gofriller - largely used a red varnish in their production. all these reasons thus explain the enthusiasm for red varnishes in the th and th centuries which is well illustrated by the following quote from the maker and musician auguste tolbecque: “c’est ainsi qu’un stradivarius un peu plus rouge qu’un autre vaut de suite dix mille francs de plus ” (this is how a stradivarius a little more red than another one costs directly francs more) [ ]. brown), “rouge brun” (red brown), ...). in addition, there are some chemical processes which, with time, can affect the original colour. for example, yellow resins have a natural tendency to become brown due to oxidisation. it is therefore not very easy to know the original colour of the violins based on their descriptive notices. however, red pigments are easily recognizable and would appear in some ways in the description, so we have therefore decided to group varnish colours in two categories: ‘red’ and ‘not red’. how science can change or enrich this perception . the input of scientific documentation our perception of the instrument is global. how we imagine its musical possibilities and its sound is linked to the visual examination of the object as illustrated with the example described in the previous section showing a direct relationship between how observers imagined the sound of a violin and the colour of this violin. but mechanical and acoustical analyses can provide objective informations which can modify our a priori and enrich our understanding of the instrument. two illustrative examples among many are given below. the singular stroh instruments are hard to classify. instantaneously categorised as “violin-like instrument” in a listening test, these instruments seem however “half- string, half-wind” instrument (figure ). a scientific documentation resulting from a pluridisciplinary collaboration (acousticians, curators, musicians) shows that what could be considered as just curious instruments actually appear to be the work of a talented maker, resulting from the process of the engineer augustus stroh to meet his original need, i.e. solving part of the difficulties of the sound recording techniques in their infancy [ ]. by shedding light on its genesis and history, and explaining their acoustical functioning, this scientific documentation give these instruments a new place in the instrumentarium and make them integral musical instruments. in this sense, this documentation can disrupt the values likely to be conveyed by the instruments and modify their perception by spectators. figure : a violin (e. . . , collection of musée de la musique – paris [ ]) and a cello (e. . . ) made by augustus stroh, after his patent n◦ “improvements in violins and other stringed instrument”, filed may and registered march . copyright cité de la musique - philharmonie de paris. another illustration can be found in the selmer jazz guitar. in , mario maccaferri filed a patent on a guitar with a double resonator. produced by selmer, a company renown for its saxophones, this guitar called “big mouth” will be adopted by the famous guitarist django reinhart to become, for some time, the emblem of the gypsy jazz guitar. evicted in , taking back his rights and patents, maccaferri imposed the company to build a new model, to avoid a conflict of counterfeiting. a new guitar was born as soon as . its adoption by django reinhart would be immediate. the visual comparison between the two instruments is unambiguous (figure ): one has a wide oval hole, a neck with frets and a system of simple internal bracing; the other one has a tiny circular hole, a neck with frets and a system of double and reinforced bracing. figure : a “big mouth” selmer-maccaferri guitar at the top and a “small mouth” selmer jazz guitar below, as presented during the django reinhart exhibition at musée de la musique in . copyright cité de la musique - philharmonie de paris - photo matthias abhervé. these obvious organological differences would normally foreshadow a sound contrast between the two instruments. however, acoustical analyses contradict this assumption. the global responses of both instruments appear similar: the spectral analysis presented in figure shows a similar distribution of the radiated energy as a function of frequency, mainly spread between and hz (band ). the measured differences between the two guitars are of the same order of magnitude as the differences between guitars of the same model. figure : spectral analysis performed on a chromatic scale played in a similar way on the two guitars presented in figure . the relative energy contained in six frequency bands – [ ], [ ], [ ], [ ], [ ] and [ ]– is expressed in percentage of the total energy. figure by sandie le conte. . the complex relationship between science and perception will this contradiction between science and perception (induced by visual inspection) eventually modify the global perception? the answer is complex because the global perception and under- standing of an instrument is linked to its cultural and symbolic status as well as its physical appearance. as demonstrated by many historical examples, scientific investigations in the field of mechanics seem to coexist with the magic around musical instruments rather than suppress it. for instance, in , based on the first ideas of the irish richard puckeridge, benjamin franklin presented the glass harmonica , whose sounds are produced by finger friction on tuned glass bowls. accused the famous composer gaetano donizetti used it in its opera lucia di lammermoor, created in napoli in . of being responsible for premature deliveries or the weakening of the strongest man in less than an hour, this instrument was forbidden by a police decree in some german cities in and disappeared rapidly from the instrumentarium before being rediscovered later in the th century. thirty years earlier, in , the physicist ernst florens friedrich chladni described very precisely, in his famous work die akustik [ ], the geometric figures which result experimentally from bowing glass or metal plates. then, in , joseph fourier laid out the mathematical foundations for the theory of decomposition in series of sinusoidal signals [ ]. as we can see, the scientific tools allowing an explicit formulation of the phenomena involved in the glass harmonica were already available at the time of its official ban, without having tarnished the magical dimension attributed to this musical invention. another example is the case of the violin. since the end of the th century, many blind listening and playing tests [ ] have shown a preference towards new instruments compared to the old italians as well as no systematic ability of players to recognise them. however, violinists (even some soloists who took part in the recent scientific studies [ , ]!) continue to claim such statements as “the one thing that you cannot put into a new violin is that it’s been played for years—these instruments change and develop” [ ]. therefore, although those studies could appear as “the final nail in the coffin for those who would believe that old musical instruments sound demonstrably better than new instruments,” they are “unlikely to change many musicians’ minds” [ ] and stradivarius legend and the magic behind his instruments will remain mostly unaffected by science. the example of the violin is actually not isolated and many instruments (at least in the western society) carry in their history the construction of myths, regardless of scientific studies. the electric guitar, a more recent addition to the instrumentarium, is another example. leo fender’s guitars have become emblematic instruments, similar to the stradivarius, and the reputation of these instruments will likely remain unaffected by recent scientific work [ , ]. many musical instruments can acquire a leading role in the cultural identify of a population just as the electric guitar is easily associated with the th century north american culture. human sciences, by shedding light on the cultural and symbolic dimensions of these instruments, enlarge their significance and enrich our perception of them. for example, various legends describe the origin within the mongolian culture of the vielle morin huur (represented in figure ), which was added to the unesco world heritage in . the generic mongolian term huur refers to all cordophones and morin huur literally means a huur with a horse head. this vielle is closely associated with pastoral life as it punctuates the daily activities during the sedentary periods and the seasonal migrations . it generally accompanies tales and legends but possesses as well the power of preserving herds from diseases and evil spirits. this vielle matters as much to herd keepers as their own horses. the assembly of its eight components is achieved in a particular ceremony and the instrument cannot be played before the horse head has been coated with butter or cream. the intimate relationship with the horse is not just material (through the horse head) but is symbolic too. it is said that some monotonous chants played by morin huur artists reproduce the sound of the gallop in the steppe. nowadays, the art and the technique of playing are changing. new musical approaches are leading to organological modifications. tomorrow, the morin huur may be silent forever or newly played across the world. either way, the horses’ gallops will have moved away. but the scientific investigations of the instrument and its history, formalising and conceptualising the knowledge that has accompanied its origin, will offer audiences the keys for understanding this instrument. beyond see the documentary film [ ] which presents a poetic and well documented description of the vital importance that the instrument can represent. the existence of the object itself, these studies will allow this instrument to be the vehicle and the survival tool of an oral culture in movement. figure : viele morin huur (e. . , collection of musée de la musique – paris [ ]). copyright cité de la musique - philharmonie de paris conclusion as illustrated in this paper, an old musical instrument cannot just be perceived as a simple music tool as it happens to be the vector of cultural, esthetical, technical, historical values, which are invisible to visual inspection. a multidisciplinary scientific study and documentation is therefore necessary for us to perceive these multiple identities [ ] and modify and enrich our contemporary eye. so is the case of the lute. as testified by iconography, it was a musical instrument which was really played and present in all social classes during the th century. nowadays, it is reserved to interpretations called “historical” and occupies only an anecdotal place in the current musical landscape. de facto, it is generally perceived as an obsolete instrument. this however does not take into account the role, litlle known, that it seems to have played in the history of the western modern thought. the lute was indeed also used as an experimental scientific tool by vincenzo gallilei, to demonstrate that the frequency of a vibrating string changes as the square root of its tension. (“discorso interno alla diversita delle frome del diapason” probably written in , rediscovered by claude palisca in the s and translated in [ ]). this result contradicted the commonly accepted theory due to pythagoras that the frequency should change linearly with the tension. as accepted theories of nature were tied to religious beliefs, contradicting such theory had implications far beyond the musical world [ ]. old musical instruments represent thus an exceptional material archive containing information about humankind’s technical knowledge, sensibilities, beliefs and dreams. a full understanding of an old musical instrument requires a pluridisciplinary study which addresses the technical, artistic, religious, cultural and historical dimensions of this archive. such study enriches our global percep- tion of what the instruments were or are. in fact, an old musical instrument may not always be what we think it is.the question of hearing it can then become completely irrelevant ... acknowledgements the authors would like to thank sandie le conte and timothy wofford for fruitful discussions as well as cnrs and cité de la musique - philharmonie for supporting this research. references [ ] sève b. l’instrument de musique, une étude philosophique, l’ordre philosophique, ed. du seuil, paris, , p. - [ ] k. kufar. “a review on dendrochronology”. j. cult. herit. (same special issue), , p. xx - xx. [ ] barclay r. the preservation and use of historic musical instruments : display case or concert hall? , earthscan, london, , p. . [ ] marconi e. and vaiedelich s. “concevoir la restauration du violon au xixe siècle”, actes du colloque le violon en france du xixe siècle à nos jours, dir. c. fritz & s. moraly, paris, - mars . in press. [ ] grillet l. les ancêtres du violon et du violoncelle, charles schmid, paris, . [ ] sacconi s.f. les “secrets” de stradivarius, ed. castelli and bour’his, cremona, , p. - . [ ] fritz c., curtin j., poitevineau j., morrel-samuels p. and tao f.-c. “players preferences among new and old violins”. proceedings of the national academy of sciences of the usa. ( ), , p. - . [ ] fritz c., curtin j., poitevineau j., borsarello h., wollman i., tao f.-c. et ghasarossian t. “soloist evaluations of six old italian and six new violins”. proceedings of the national academy of sciences ( ), , p. - . [ ] levitin d. “expert violinists cant tell old from new”. proceedings of the national academy of sciences ( ), , p. - . [ ] ball p. histoire vivante des couleurs, ans de peinture racontée par les couleurs, trad. jacques bonnet. ed. hazan, paris, , p. . [ ] echard j.-p., bertrand l., von bohlen a., le hô a.-s., paris c., bellot-gurlet l., soulier b., lattuati-derieux a., thao s. , robinet l., lavédrine b. and vaiedelich s. “the nature of the extraordinary finish of stradivari’s instruments”, angewandte chemie international edition, , p. - . [ ] échard j.-p. and bertrand l. “complementary spectroscopic analyses of varnishes of historical musical instruments”, spectroscopy europe , , p. - . [ ]http://collectionsdumusee.philharmoniedeparis.fr/ [ ] tolbecque a. lart du luthier, niort, - laffitte reprints marseille , page . [ ] gautier f., curtit m., fréour v., vaiedelich s. and juarez a.v. “acoustic characteristics of the stroh-violin”. proc. of int. symp. on musical acoustics, le mans, . [ ] chladni e.f.f. die akustik. breitkopf und härtel, leipzig, . [ ] fourier j. théorie analytique de la chaleur, . [ ] coggins a. “blind faith”. the strad , , p. - . [ ] belluck p. “a strad? violinists can’t tell”. the new york times, april , , p. d . [ ] navarret b. caractériser la guitare électrique : définitions, organologie et analyse de données verbales. phd dissertation, université paris , france. [ ] paté a., navarret b., dumoulin r., le carrou j.l., fabre b. and doutaut v. “about the electric guitar: a cross-disciplinary context for an acoustical study”. proc. of acoustics , nantes, france. [ ] l’histoire du chameau qui pleure, film documentaire réalisé par byambasuren davaa, . [ ] lacombe h. “l’instrument de musique : identité et potentiel”, methodos , . [ ] baskevitch f. “musique et sciences à florence à la fin du xvie siècle : la camerata et les galilei”, in art et sciences à la renaissance collectif, dir. e. barbin, ellipses paris, , p. - . [ ] lindsay r. b. “the story of acoustics.” the journal of the acoustical society of america , , p. - . archeomatica_n _ .indd archeomatica n° dicembre mate and dust level of the work of arts, which is favoured by the urban environment in which the cité de la musique was built. a large part of the collection of keyboard instru- ments and harps, some of which are maintained in working condition, is on public display. this calls for particular at- tention as monitoring the hygrometric conditions is of ut- most importance. t he musée de la musique houses a collection of close to instruments covering a time period stretching over about four centuries and coming from all con- tinents. it has a research and restoration laboratory that combines applied research dedicated to the study and con- servation of musical instruments while also providing serv- ices linked to the collection. the activity of the laboratory falls within the scope of the study of the material and cul- tural object represented by the musical instrument and the values its legacy is leaving. the research conducted there has a concrete application in the conception and implementation of the conservation choices regarding the musée’s collection: pre-emptive or curative conservation, presentation of works of art as part of different exhibitions, and obviously the maintenance of their working order. a material commodity as much as a sonorous object, the musical instrument is both a piece of art and an everyday object, a complex compound of several materials, which has a musical functionality. this immaterial dimension of past and present music conveyed by the actual objects is what makes them singular works of art and inspires research directly connected to the study or conservation of their functionality. the scientifi c team of the musée consists of people, some of whom work part time. three of them carry out the re- sponsibilities of curators. the laboratory’s team includes a doctor of chemistry, a doctor of physics, a scientifi c and technical expert, and three curator-restorers, one of whom is exclusively assigned to maintaining keyboard instruments in working order. the team possesses investigation and ana- lytical equipment that allows it to conduct in situ exams in terms of observation (microscope, ultraviolet) as well as elementary analysis (x-ray fl uorescence) or mechanical characterisation (modal analysis in real time). today, this team is part of networks made up of national and interna- tional partners with which it carries out numerous research projects. the collection generates daily tasks related to its legacy and intended to ensure the conservation to satisfactory stand- ards of the works of art exhibited in the museum as items in reserve: monitoring the climate, providing technical loan management and pro-active involvement in campaigns for the semi-annual temporary exhibitions. the monitoring of the exhibition condition conducted by the laboratory particularly focuses on controlling the cli- guest paper some aspects of the research in the laboratory of the musÉe de la musique, paris citÉ de la musique by stéphane vaiedelich art and technology meet at the musée de la musique à paris. the paper covers some aspects of the research carried out in the laboratory of the museum and focuses on the work of the science team for the study and conservation of musical instruments, both in terms of preventive and curative conservation of the collection museum. fig. - permanent collection, th century space, musée de la mu- sique. the j. couchet e. . . harpsichord from the permanent collection of the musée de la musique is not displayed in a glass case. this attrac- tive presentation is appreciated by the public, though it requires great care in climate and dust control. photo : a. borel, © cité de la musique the laboratory also provides for control of the collection’s sanitary state. if the presence of mushrooms and mould is not really a concern considering the general condition of conservation, the presence of wood-boring insects is a per- manent threat particularly in the exhibition areas. as soon as a suspicion of infestation is detected by the presence of insects in the traps throughout the museum, active anoxic debugging campaigns ensue. in order to use these treat- ments wisely, the laboratory has recently developed a tech- nique using ultrasonic methods of identifi cation of insects tecnologie per i beni culturali inside the wood, which is in the process of being patented. effi cient and suited for these objects of national value be- cause it is completely non-invasive, this new technique al- lows us to detect the actual presence of larvae from all wood-boring insect species inside the material. in addition to its pre-emptive conservation action, the labo- ratory is responsible for the interventions performed on the works of art. it thus conducts numerous restorations on the entire corpus each year. these interventions are founded on a deontology that is now widely accepted and relayed on the international level through the setting up of cimcim, a committee of icom (international council of museums) that includes the majority of the most prestigious museums of musical instruments worldwide. these restoration cam- paigns are often correlated to temporary exhibitions or the renewing of permanent ones. when creating a display is their goal, their main features are connected to the composite character represented by the musical instruments. indeed, it is not rare to see, within the same instrument, animal matters (glue, ivory, gelatine, viscera, horn, etc), vegetal matters (wood, liana, resin and natural rubber) or mineral matters such as stones or metals combined. this complex assembling often provides favour- able conditions for the rapid deterioration of some mate- rials. this is particularly true of some metals, as soon as they are in contact with wood. this is what happens to the weights added to the keys of keyboard instruments in order to tune them. confi ned in an environment with an acid ph, it decomposes rapidly while creating sulphates in the proc- ess. occupying a greater volume than the metal from which they come from, they cause irreversible cracks in the parts that require a conservation intervention. beyond these tasks related to the conservation of this cul- tural heritage, the laboratory also conducts several research projects seeking a better understanding of the musical in- struments in a systemic approach that associates matters, structures, and historical contexts. studying varnishes and coating the question of the coating of musical instruments is a vast issue because almost all instruments’ bodies are covered with protective coatings. considering the stakes and myths attached to them, the quartet instruments and especially the violin family take on a singular character. until the end of the th century, there is no known historical source, whether from stringed-instrument makers or observers who had direct access to their craftsmanship, that precisely de- scribe the materials, tools and processes used to varnish instruments. however, a sketch of the technical context of the coating practices in europe during that era, particularly the coating composition, can be drawn from indirect biblio- graphic sources. from a general point of view, it seems that the development of alcohol- and petrol-based coating and the abandonment of oil-based coating constituted a tech- nical rupture in the middle of the th century. from the early th century onwards, many stringed-instrument mak- ers and research workers are forced to speculate regarding the coating technique of ancient italian stringed-instrument makers, whose instruments are perceived as far better than the contemporary production at the time. faced with the stakes of the conservation and restoration of these bodies, the laboratory makes it a point to defi ne a methodology of physical-chemical analysis dedicated to the most comprehensive characterisation of ancient varnish of musical instruments . we have offered a sequence of ana- lytical techniques that maximises the quantity of data ob- tained (both on the stratigraphic structure and the organic and inorganic composition) and that appropriately matches the thickness scale of the varnishes and the quantities of matter available for this analysis. we were able to apply this methodology to a wide corpus rather than to one in- strument at a time. directed by the musée de la musique , a multi-disciplinary team was brought together to work on this issue. minuscule fragments of varnish have been taken from these instruments in order to be analysed with infra- red microspectrometry at the lc rmf (laboratoire du cen- tre de recherche et de restauration des musées de france) and on the smis beamline of the synchrotron soleil, with raman microspectrometry at the ladir (laboratoire de dynamique, interactions et réactivité, sous la tutelle de l'université pierre et marie curie et du cnrs), with scanning electron microscopy at the institute for analytical sciences in dortmund, and with gas chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry at the crcc (centre de recherche sur la con- servation des collections). fig. - in situ detection of an infestation the atax system (analyse des traces acoustiques de xylophages – analy- ses of acoustical traces of xylophage) can easily be adapted to several types of wooden objects. the micro sensor is fi xed by a completely re- versible interface. signal processing can be performed post-acquisition. the data analysis can be performed in the laboratory, easing the inter- vention on the object. photo : s. leconte© cité de la musique fig. - stratigraphy of a varnish stratigraphy of a varnish and top wood cells from the soundboard of a.stradivarys’ “proviginy” violin, , cremona e. . collection of the musée de la musique, paris. from bottom to top: cellular structure of the wood, typical of conifers; fi rst (white) oil-based layer impregnated in the wood; upper layer (yel- low-orange), a mixture of oil and pine resin containing red pigments. photo : j.-p. echard © cité de la musique archeomatica n° dicembre beyond the concomitant results and recent development in progress at the museum, this research has shown that the var- nish of fi ve of stradivarius’s instruments all have two similar layers of organic composition. the lower layer features drying oil. the upper layer is an oil-based varnish, a mix of drying oil and pinaceae resin. a common practice in europe, adding resin to oil is the basis of numerous varnish recipes used during the period of the instru- ments under study. such a varnish is sometimes referred to as “amber varnish.” moreover, red pigments (iron oxides, vermillion, cochineal lacquer), also used in easel paints, have been found in the upper layer of the varnish of four instruments. according to their composition and pigment concentration, these varnishes are to be connected to the transparent layer of paint in easel paints. they attest to antonio stradivarius’s intention to colour his instruments during the varnishing phase and thus to bestow it with a decisive role in the visual appearance of the instru- ment. in addition to these works, a systematic analysis of numerous recipes and treaties has been carried out. this documented information is precious for the entire scientifi c community as well as for contemporary instrument makers, and it has been centralised in a public database hosted on the cité de la mu- sique’s website. this “vernix” database presently includes over four hundred varnish recipes stretching over centuries. functional modalities, gestures, structures musical instruments hold a function and the musée de la mu- sique when it is both technically feasible and ethically accept- able, maintains the collection’s instruments in working order. this conservation choice does not apply to all corpuses. thus, woodwind instruments, clarinets, oboes and snake fl utes for ex- ample, will not be affected. indeed, the breath of the musician, whose average temperature is ° c and which is loaded with nearly % relative humidity, causes an internal constraint that is incompatible with sustainable conservation. indeed, wood, a mechanical sorbent material, if there ever was one, strongly expands under the effect of a hot and humid breath. the in- side hygroscopic gradient causes irreparable cracks in the tube, permanently ruining the instrument and preventing us from any subsequent interpretation and analysis of its functional quali- ties. to overcome this diffi culty and offer the best possible ap- proach to the instrument’s functional and musical qualities, the laboratory has recently developed non-destructive and non-in- vasive, acoustic impedance experiments providing understand- ing of and documentation on a large part of these corpuses’ acoustic properties without having to play them. offering large quantity of information, these experiments al- low us to discover the playing modes, instrument tuning, com- patible fi ngerings, and they also provide information regarding the instrument’s state of conservation such as the presence of leaks in the air column for example. in some cases, it is pos- sible to reconstruct the diameters of the instruments’ axial canals from the results of these measurements without resort- ing to direct metrology measurement, which can sometimes be tricky. essential information that is all at once relevant for musicologists, researchers and makers. in the case of corpuses of struck, rubbed or plucked string in- struments, the main problematic lies in the mechanical con- straint that the strings apply on the structure. indeed, amount- ing to kg force for a violin whose mass does not exceed grams, this constraint may amount to several hundred kilos or even several tons in the case of pianos. in this case, the labo- ratory implements several tools and methods of investigation. of course, prior to applying any pressure to these instruments, a preliminary study is initiated. among other things, it is based on an external and internal examination of the structure. to do this, the museum uses radiography as a routine examination, which provides invaluable help. however, visual examination and observation are not suffi cient to guarantee the stability of a structure under constraint and the contribution of physics and especially mechanics is essential. this expertise is properly mastered by the museum and it has multiple applications related to the collection. it provides val- uable support in the restoration process. today, thanks to their high-standard multi-disciplinary training, restorers are atten- tive to controlling the consequences of their actions on the works from a conservation point of view as much as from their public perception. this essential approach is complex when it comes to measuring the impact of a restoring intervention on the value of this cultural heritage regarding the musical functionality of an instrument. thus, stabilising fractures in no way guarantees that the structure, the soundboard of a piano or a violin for example, will regain its original vibratory properties. as with any intervention, this one, and particularly its effects on the instru- ment’s vibratory properties, must be documented. since , the mu- seum has been developing research projects related to this issue and uses calculation and fi nite element modelling on a regular basis. accompanying the restoration of joannes couchet’s harpsichord, made in antwerp in , is the fi rst experiment conducted by the museum on this topic. a classifi ed national treasure acquired in , this harpsichord is in an exceptional organologic state. originally fi tted with a single set of feet, a set of feet and a second keyboard were added in . interestingly enough, this is the only signifi cant change it has thus far undergone. this operation, called "restoration implementation," exclusively oper- ated on the instrument’s exterior. therefore, all the structural parts, bars, reinforcements, and the thick- ness of the soundboard are still well preserved original parts from the th century antwerp workshop. this structural authenticity is one fig. - acoustic impedance experimental setup measure of the acoustic impedance of a serpent. the impedance head is placed on the upper extremity of the instrument (on the left of the fi g- ure). the acoustic impedance characterizes the “resistance” of the mate- rial to the passage of sound. it is defi ned as the ratio of sound to particle velocity and is frequency dependent. fig. – radiography radiograph of a “selmer” jazz guitar. all the internal components are perfectly distinguishable, in par- ticular the double resona- tor system, patented by mario maccaferri who was responsible for the guitar fabrication in the compa- ny. a weakness, detached adhesives, or a fracture would be immediately dis- cernible. photo : s. vaidelich© cité de la musique tecnologie per i beni culturali abstract experience the musée de la musique has a research and restoration labora- tory that combines applied research dedicated to the study and conservation of musical instruments while also providing services linked to the collection. the activity of the laboratory falls within the scope of the study of the material and cultural object represented by the musical instrument and the values its legacy is leaving. the research conducted there has a concrete application in the conception and implementation of the conservation choices regarding the musée’s collection: pre-emptive or curative conservation, presentation of works of art as part of different exhibitions, and obviously the maintenance of their working order. parole chiave cultural heritage; restoration and conservation; x-ray fluorescence; radiography; the atax system. autore stÉphane vaiedelich responsable du laboratoire musÉe de la musique avenue jean –jaurÈs paris tel svaiedelich@cite-musique.fr note a list of publication related to this topic can be found at www.cite-mu- sique.fr. under the scientifi c supervision of jean-philippe echard, research engi- neer at the musée de la musique. of the reasons why the instrument is still played and recorded today. however, it is also at the origin of the instrument’s fragil- ity, and structural reinforcements had to be installed within the harpsichord to enable it to withstand kilograms of pressure applied by the strings. by combining mechanical calculations with the measurements of the vibratory properties through the use of acoustic holographic techniques, it was possible to optimise the number and position of these reinforcements. thus, the restora- tion process in respect of deontology is fully reversible. the reinforcements installed in the structure are not glued to- gether and they maintain the same position simply because of the tension applied by the strings. stabilising the instrument, the calculation has made it possible to only place three rein- forcements in the locations providing the essential mechanical effi ciency needed to minimize changes to the vibratory behav- iour of the soundboard. today, it is thus possible to say that the sound produced by the harpsichord is only slightly modifi ed by our intervention. conclusion the scientifi c team of the musée de la musique conducts applied research projects that are directly relevant to the fi eld of con- servation, knowledge and restoration of musical instruments. the implemented multi-disciplinary perspective applied to mu- sical instruments makes them a unique research focus. directly applied to the collection of which the museum is responsible, the results and publications of this research are all available online, on the cité de la musique’s website. bearing broader is- sues, this research is often conducted in partnership with other institutions interested in research in the cultural heritage. fig. - acoustic holograph of the j. couchet harpsichord the microphone grid is placed over the instrument at a precisely known distance. the experimental setup avoids any contact with the instrument and the experimental conditions are easily reproducible. measures are performed yearly. a difference in the measurements would indicate an evolution of the vibrating structure and would result in a reassessment of the conservation conditions. photo: s. leconte © cité de la musique the girl gang: women writers of the new york city beat community a dissertation submitted to the temple university graduate board in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree doctor of philosophy by tatum l. petrich may, examining committee members: miles orvell, committee chair, english and american studies sue-im lee, english eli c. goldblatt, english laura levitt, external member, religion and women’s studies, temple university ii © copyright by tatum l. petrich all rights reserved iii abstract the girl gang: women writers of the new york city beat community seeks to revise our understanding of the beat community and literary tradition by critically engaging the lives and work of five women beat writers: diane di prima, joyce johnson, hettie jones, carol bergé, and mimi albert. this dissertation argues that, from a position of marginality, these women developed as protofeminist writers, interrogating the traditional female gender role and constructing radical critiques of normative ideas in fiction and poetry in ways that resisted the male beats’ general subordination of women and that anticipated the feminist movement of the late s and s. a project of recovery and criticism, the girl gang provides literary biographies that explore how each writer’s experience as a marginalized female writer within an otherwise countercultural community affected the development of her work; it also analyzes a range of works (published and unpublished texts from various genres, written from the early s through the turn of the twenty-first century) in order to illustrate how each writer distinctively employs and revises mainstream and beat literary and cultural conventions. the dissertation’s critical analyses examine each writer’s engagement in various literary, cultural, and social discourses, drawing attention to their incisive and provocative treatment of thematic issues that are central to the postwar countercultural critique of hegemonic norms—including fundamental beat questions of identity, authenticity, and subjectivity—and that are developed through experimentation with literary conventions. ultimately, the girl gang argues that the literary achievements of the new york city women beats collectively reconceptualize the prevailing notion of the beat community and canon. iv table of contents page abstract……………………………………………………………………...………iii introduction: redefining the image of the beat writer: women beats and protofeminism in the beat literary community……….........................v chapter . “so here i am the coolest in new york”: hip slang and the female bohemian in diane di prima’s this kind of bird flies backward………….…………………………………………...……………… . “the outlaws were about to welcome another member”: female subjectivity and (un)gendered social space in joyce johnson’s come and join the dance…………....…...…........ . “the object of everyone’s attention”: interracial motherhood and the postmodernist dilemma in hettie jones’s in care of worth auto parts…………………………….… epilogue: “we are members of that anomalous group of the s”: carol bergÉ and mimi albert…………………………………………......... bibliography…………………………………………………………………….... v introduction redefining the image of the beat writer: women beats and protofeminism in the beat literary community the social organization which is most true of itself to the artist is the girl gang. why, everyone would agree, that’s absolutely absurd! —joyce johnson, minor characters when the beats emerged in the late s and s, mainstream american literature was generally considered “traditionalist” and “academic.” in contrast to representative writers of the period, such as poets t.s. eliot and richard wilbur, and novelists saul bellow and john updike, beat writers experimented with literary form and subject as part of their overt condemnation of contemporary society’s social and political values. with the movement’s defining and controversial publications in the mid- to late s—allen ginsberg’s howl ( ), jack kerouac’s on the road ( ), and william burroughs’s naked lunch ( )—and the obscenity trial of howl in as well as the ban of naked lunch in , the beats established themselves as antithetical to the mainstream’s “academic” literary culture. they were lauded and admired by young rebellious readers, yet criticized and even mocked by the mainstream media and leading intellectuals. however unwittingly, ginsberg and kerouac (and burroughs to a lesser extent) quickly became spokesmen for the beat generation, and this literary community and cultural movement as represented by these writers and their publications became synonymous with a decidedly male ethos. the image of on the road’s sal paradise and dean moriarty, for example, escaping normative male expectations for work and marriage and instead pursuing “girls, visions, everything” on their own terms became the epitome of what it meant to be “beat.” in this representative text and in the beat vi community itself, women were generally considered by the men as mere “experiences,” or as kerouac writes, as “girls [who] say nothing and wear black.” many of the male beats expected women to play the role of lover, housewife, mother, or secretary, and in fact, several of the women beats were romantically involved with and helped support the men. as such, women beats are often positioned in the background of prominent beat texts—fictional and nonfictional—as well as in photographs, letters, and interviews documenting the period. however, many women beats were also aspiring writers who set out, like the men, to radically redefine normative ideas through writing and through their involvement in various literary endeavors, such as the publication of small magazines. nevertheless, women beat writers were subject to conservative postwar notions of the female role and were largely marginalized by their male counterparts accordingly. the attitude of the male beats toward women writers is aptly expressed in a “dream letter” by john clellon holmes (recorded by allen ginsberg in ): “the social organization which is most true of itself to the artist is the boy gang.” the male beats’ assertion that the “true” organization of artists is a “boy gang” reflects their perpetuation of the dominant gender discourse of the period, and in light of this attitude, beat women consistently faced gender-based discrimination—from male beats as well as from the press, critics, and publishers—in their efforts to become writers. importantly, in the epigraph to this chapter, we see how female beat writers resisted their subordination as women within the beat community and their exclusion from the role of artist. the passage in the epigraph comes from beat writer joyce johnson’s memoir and represents her attempt to claim social status for female artists: “the social organization which is most true of itself to the artist is the girl gang. vii why, everyone would agree, that’s absolutely absurd!” in the italicized line, johnson revises the passage by holmes/ginsberg quoted above, appropriating for female artists the recognition of male artists as defining the “true” social organization. the subsequent line in the epigraph, however, illustrates how her effort is ultimately undermined by society’s general attitude toward the idea of the female artist as on par with the male artist; such a possibility, johnson suggests, is considered “absolutely absurd!” significantly, despite the prolonged struggle of women beats to overcome society’s limited assumptions about female writers, the act of revision itself demonstrated in the epigraph—johnson’s attempt to speak for and claim status for the female artist by rewriting the quotation that epitomizes the male beats’ gender discrimination—signifies what adrienne rich referred to in as an act of “survival.” “until we can understand the assumptions in which we are drenched,” rich writes, “we cannot know ourselves.” johnson’s deliberate confrontation of the male beats’ attitude toward and treatment of the female artist, and her attempt to “refus[e] the self-destructiveness of male-dominated society” through writing signifies the fundamental achievement of women beat writers. they refused to be resigned to the margins of the beat literary community and instead set out to develop their own voices as writers and their own critique of postwar society, including a critique of hegemonic—and countercultural—gender norms. much of their work, however, has been ignored by literary scholars due to the pervasive image of the beat as an iconoclastic male figure. the girl gang: women writers of the new york city beat community addresses this limited attention to and the narrow portrayals of these writers as it examines the lives and works of five women beat writers in new york city. i set out to redefine prevailing conceptions of the new york viii city beat literary community by arguing that beat women played an integral role, not merely as support for the male beats, but more significantly as female figures who sought to develop social and political status as artists within this largely male homosocial community. that the women writers were generally marginalized by the male beats and did not foster a female literary community amongst themselves points to the complexity of their experiences within this context and underscores the particular significance of their individual efforts to pursue their literary endeavors while confronted with the limited expectations of their male counterparts. the girl gang: women writers of the new york city beat community examines these efforts through recovery and criticism. as a recovery project, this dissertation aims to provide more insight into these writers’ lives and bodies of work than is currently available—these writers’ literary accomplishments include major works of prose and poetry and illustrate a range of interests and a diversity of styles. as a work of criticism, this dissertation discusses women beats as writers in their own right, providing readings of select texts in order to show how these writers employ and revise mainstream and beat literary and cultural conventions and engage in questions of subjectivity, identity, and community in ways importantly shaped by the female experience. specifically, the girl gang focuses on the poetry of diane di prima and on the fiction of joyce johnson and hettie jones in the main chapters and on the fiction of carol bergé and mimi albert in the epilogue, including unpublished texts and texts published from the late s through the s. at a time when most publications by beat women are memoirs by sisters, wives, and girlfriends of prominent male beat writers and when publications about beat women include studies of figures such as neal cassady’s wife, ix luanne henderson, in order to provide further insight into beat men’s experiences, this dissertation focuses on beat women whose role in beat history and literature exceeds their personal relationships with the men. some of the writers i discuss here employ beat literary techniques, while others generally use traditional literary conventions to write about beat experiences. regardless of their approach, this study reveals serious writers who, collectively, engage in discourses of subjectivity, the contemporary avant-garde, feminist geography, postmodernism, and interracialism, and in doing so, challenge and extend our understanding of their contributions to the beat literary tradition. the girl gang draws attention to female beats who were writing alongside beat men—literally or figuratively—and whose work has distinctive and significant literary, cultural, social, and political implications. *** my study of the lives and work of women beats is predicated on the role that community played in both the genesis and later development of these understudied women writers. it was within the countercultural community of the beats that these women sought freedom from their stifling homes and conservative postwar society as well as inspiration for their independence and artistic interests. they endeavored to become writers, but, as mentioned above, within this bohemian community they faced the male beats’ perpetuation of the hegemonic female gender role. though the men in general dissented against the conventions of the mainstream, their critique of the male gender norm precluded attention to a critique of the women’s. in light of the male beats’ fundamentally conventional and discriminatory attitude toward women writers within this otherwise countercultural community, female beat x writers faced a paradox. as nonconformists in their own right, women beats were able to escape their families’ restrictive expectations by living on their own amongst fellow bohemians within the new york city beat community, but within this same social space, their work as writers was generally not encouraged nor fostered as part of the community’s reaction against the mainstream. that is, as i explore in more detail shortly, the women beats were part of the beat community in that they had friendships, romantic relationships, apartments, and jobs with male and female writers and artists— indeed, the women beats often financially supported many of the male beats and directly participated in the editing and publishing of beat work while writing on their own—but they did not experience the sense of camaraderie or the support for their writing that the beat men did. as a result, many beat women wrote privately during this period, not sharing their work with other writers—male or female. thus, the mutual support and collaboration that was a defining element of the male beat writer’s experience—and is a defining element of literary communities in general—was lacking for most female beat writers, and as such, the very nature of community is especially complex for the women beats. in light of this complexity, this dissertation examines the women beats’ experiences as burgeoning writers within this context and the impact of these experiences on their writing and on the development of female subjectivity within their work. in order to contextualize this framework, i discuss the basic concept of the literary community as well as its role in american literary history before providing an overview of the development of the beat literary community. xi individual literary communities can each be defined by their own particularities; indeed, each is shaped by its own historical, geographical, social, cultural, and political contexts. i use the term literary community broadly to refer to a group of writers committed to producing writing that reflects, not necessarily similar aesthetics, but common social and artistic values, and perhaps shared political and philosophical beliefs. these values and beliefs often take shape in the community as a reaction against an already established group or literary tradition, as in the case of the beats writing in resistance to the academic tradition of the new critics or of the modernists writing in reaction to the realists before them, for example. such groups of writers are also often involved in related literary endeavors, including the founding of literary magazines, book presses, or publishing houses, as well as the organization of literary readings. almost always, the most basic element of a literary community is the fostering of each other’s work. the central role that community has historically played for writers in the u.s. can be traced from the knickerbocker group in new york city in the early s, to the concord group in massachusetts in the s and s, to the boston brahmins in the s and s, to the modernists in new york city and the “robin’s egg renaissance” in chicago during the s and s, and to the harlem renaissance as well as to the literary renaissance in santa fe, both from the s to the s. following such nineteenth- and early twentieth-century literary communities were the several communities contemporary to the beats during the s and s: the san francisco renaissance, the black mountain college school, and the new york school of poets. xii as one of the earliest american literary communities, the concord group helps demonstrate the particular function of community for developing writers. in the mid- nineteenth century, writers such as ralph waldo emerson, nathaniel hawthorne, henry david thoreau, bronson alcott, margaret fuller, herman melville, and walt whitman collaborated with each other and drew inspiration from their concord setting—all of which enabled the production of what would come to define a new national literature. these writers—many of which are identified as transcendentalists —set out to establish an american literature distinct from the european literary tradition, and as perry miller argues, they did so in conjunction with a general resistance to conventional expectations for earning a living. miller writes, “they turn[ed] their protest against what is customarily called the ‘protestant ethic’: they refuse[d] to labor in a proper calling, conscientiously cultivate[d] the arts of leisure, and [strove] to avoid making money.” these writers rebelled against “the materialistic pressures of a business civilization” and fostered a community through which they could pursue their philosophical and artistic interests and develop various styles of literary expression. histories of this literary group emphasize the intertwining of the writers’ personal and literary lives, including various friendships, romantic relationships, and literary inspirations as well as similar political and philosophical beliefs shared amongst them. together, this group of writers held “conversations,” published each other’s works in literary magazines, and ultimately set out to develop a uniquely american literature. importantly, regardless of their common interests and values and relatively similar approaches to writing, each writer is characterized by his or her distinctive writing style, such as emerson’s poetic prose, driven by his reliance on intuition, and whitman’s xiii organic and breath-driven poetry. this representative american literary community illustrates how such a community functions through the development of individual literary practices and aesthetics that are fostered simultaneously through shared attitudes toward the writers’ social, cultural, and political contexts. additionally, the development of the concord literary community reveals the particular significance of its geographical context—that is, the role that place fundamentally plays for literary communities. in the early formation of the concord group, emerson helped convince alcott to move from boston to concord because, as scholar susan cheever explains, “it was in the quieter precincts of concord, calmed by the rhythms of village life, that men could think important thoughts uninterrupted by others’ opinions and obligations.” though the concord writers’ attraction to the rural town of concord presents an interesting contrast to the attraction of the beats to city life (to be discussed below), this emphasis on the distinction between concord and boston— how the former could potentially allow for more intellectual and artistic creativity than the latter—nevertheless highlights the importance of place for the development of a literary community. another example that illustrates the function of place for literary communities is the group of writers in taos, near santa fe, in the early th century. writers such as witter bynner, mary austin, and mabel dodge [luhan] were drawn to the “aesthetic trends developing around architecture in the city” as well as to “positive working conditions for artists there, [and] some aspects of weather, terrain, and [the] proximity of native peoples [“to their ancestral traditions”].” amidst these unique characteristics of the southwestern city, writers found an “artistic milieu and atmosphere of collegiality” xiv that helped foster a literary community. michael davidson likewise emphasizes the particular landscape of san francisco as having influenced the flourishing of writers in the postwar period. he cites “the city’s undeniable physical beauty—its position at the edge of the continent, its hills, its quickly shifting weather patterns, and its wild seacoast” as features that worked in conjunction with its “underground culture” to ultimately become “[an] invariabl[e] central character” in the work of the san francisco renaissance poets. further, the actual shared spaces of the city, “the circles, salons, and bars,” provided the opportunities for “artists [to] invent out of the earthly city a heavenly city of fulfilled potential.” these examples indicate that the role of place for artistic development within literary communities is central, and this will be evident in my study of the women writers of the new york city beat community as well. as for other american literary groups, community provided the beats with an opportunity to develop a collective counterpart to the mainstream in its fostering of nontraditional artistic, spiritual, and philosophical expression. the countercultural nature of the beat community can be traced back to the first group of american bohemians, which took shape in the early decades of the s when avant-garde writers and artists in greenwich village set out to pursue possibilities for cultural transformation as the nation entered a new century. for these earlier bohemians and for the beats, community provided a space within which individuals—particularly nonconformists and artists— could escape and critique the mainstream and its culturally-defined restrictive mandates. as elizabeth wilson argues, bohemianism is undeniably a “collective enterprise,” one that offers an alternative space for those who intend to revolutionize society through art as well as those only somewhat committed to or productive in art. xv ironically, the countercultural beat community was initially formed on the campus of columbia university in the early s. the friendships between columbia students ginsberg, kerouac, lucien carr, and burroughs (a former graduate student), were based not only on a mutual interest in writing, but perhaps more distinctively, on a shared pursuit of what ginsberg referred to as a “new vision”—what edward foster describes as “a new way of understanding the world.” ultimately, what brought these beats together in this community—and the others that would follow—was a common attitude toward the artificiality of american society at the time. in the face of the country’s growing “modernization and homogenization,” the beats sought “a new and authentic space” within which “[they could] found an identity on the bedrock of the naked self, free of compromising cultural and historical accretions, an adamic desire for an experience of freedom, integrity, and authenticity generally unavailable within conventional culture.” regardless of any individual differences in artistic practice, the beats as a group were fundamentally drawn together by a fevered pursuit of the real and authentic—of a lived experience free from the constraints of societal constructs and defined by intimate contact with material reality. and although the new york city beat community began with the friendships of young men, it also attracted young rebellious women, for whom an alternative community had the potential for supporting their own acts of nonconformity—such as dropping out of college, leaving home to live on their own, or immersing themselves in the avant-garde. the experiences of the women within this community may have been quite different from those of their male counterparts, but the men’s and women’s fundamental attraction to new york city bohemia is largely indistinguishable. xvi as mentioned above, new york city itself played a key role in shaping the beats’ attempts to pursue an authentic experience. ann douglas explains that despite the “frightening american empire” growing in certain areas of post-wwii new york city, beat writers found inspiration in neighborhoods that were “then visibly on a downward slide.” for the beats, “the city’s vitality lay in its subterranean life of creative decay, its status as a place, in ginsberg’s words, ‘too vast to know, too/myriad windowed to govern.’” though the male beats traveled all over the world—to mexico, tangiers, and paris, for example—new york city was where they met and began to seek out an authentic american experience; it was where their formative years as writers would take shape, and it would become a central trope in much of their writing. the women beats, on the other hand, did not go “on the road” in the same way the men did, and so they developed as women and as writers strictly within the city—moving out of their parents’ homes, even if only a few blocks away, to explore the city as independent women. in was within new york city that beat women came into their own; they held various jobs, raised children, and wrote and published their work in new york city. thus, new york city was central to the development and writing of the beats in general and of the women beats in particular, and i explore this further as it more specifically applies to the individual writers throughout my discussions of their work. while the new york city beat community emerged as a collective response to what was perceived as the overwhelming and growing confinement of postwar america, it is notably marked by a wide range of aesthetic diversity among its individual writers. indeed, no two beat writers necessarily share the same aesthetic practices—not entirely unlike the concord group discussed earlier. the variety of literary styles among the beats xvii ranges from kerouac’s spontaneous prose method to burroughs’s cut-up method to ginsberg’s whitmanesque breath line as well as to di prima’s vernacular poetics to johnson’s traditional prose style to jones’s postmodern narrative techniques. regardless of this plurality, beat scholars ronna johnson and nancy grace usefully argue that “what is distinctively beat is the historical moment and social context in which its iconoclasms were practiced.” overall, they continue, “beat writers are united fundamentally by their challenges to conservative postwar consumer culture and by their formative mutual associations. … social, artistic, personal, geographical links—literary camaraderie and life relations—underlie most writers’ identification with beat.” despite the women beats’ lack of “literary camaraderie,” this emphasis on various other unifying connections is the logic that underlies my study of the women beats and their experiences within the beat community. it is important to note that although literary communities are often characterized by a plurality, by a diversity of ideas and literary practices, some women beats reject being categorized as part of this literary community. ultimately, however, looking at the women beats—and writers in general—within the context of a literary community, whether they self-identify as a part of the community or not, is useful in examining the myriad ways in which they individually and collectively experience common geographies, social spaces, cultural contexts, and artistic endeavors. the study of a literary community in these terms can reveal how each writer contributes to the particular “literary landscape” as well as what distinguishes the community from their predecessors or contemporaries. grace and ronna johnson argue for the importance of studying writers in the context of communities: xviii it is the function of literary historians and critics to make sense of literature’s evolutions and developments by recognizing and defining schools, movements, and writers’ aesthetic tendencies. and particularly in the recovery of overlooked and negated writers, grouping the beat movement’s female practitioners effects their visibility as artists and makes their literary expressions legible… . following in grace and johnson’s claims about the function of studying writers within the context of a literary community, this dissertation is based on the argument that by studying beat women within the context of the beat literary community, not only do we gain access to writers otherwise absent from literary history, but also we see how their work revises and expands current understandings of the beat community and its literary tradition. the women beats’ marginalization within the beat community as well as within beat studies, though, presents a notable contrast to the general inclusion and recognition of female writers within several different american literary communities that precede the contemporary period. in many of the earlier communities, women writers were leading figures, integral to their community’s literary achievements and various endeavors alongside their male counterparts. these include fuller of the transcendentalists; h.d., gertrude stein, marianne moore, and mina loy of the modernists; harriet monroe of the chicago literary renaissance; jessie fauset and zora neale hurston of the harlem renaissance; and dodge from the santa fe group. a survey of literary communities in the mid-twentieth century including the beats, however, highlights the peripheral status of most women writers. denise levertov and m.c. richards of the black mountain community; barbara guest of the new york school of poets; joanne kyger, helen adam, and lenore kandel of the san francisco renaissance; and the new york city beat writers i examine here—di prima, johnson, jones, bergé, and albert—are almost xix always secondary—if present at all—in discussions and histories of their respective literary communities. charles olson, robert creeley, and robert duncan of black mountain; frank o’hara, john ashberry, kenneth koch, and james schuyler of the new york school; jack spicer, lawrence ferlinghetti, lew welch, philip whalen, gary snyder, and michael mcclure of the san francisco renaissance; and kerouac, ginsberg, burroughs, and gregory corso of the new york city beats—these are the writers almost exclusively associated with these contemporary literary communities. in his discussion of the inescapable politics of inclusion and exclusion within any literary community, michael davidson offers an explanation for this historical disparity. in reference to shari benstock’s study of female modernists in paris, he writes, “salons, circles, and sects became major forums for new aesthetic positions as well as supportive environments for women—heterosexual and lesbian—within masculinist culture.” for example, natalie barney’s salon, benstock explains, “operate[d] as a support group for lesbian women” who were “committed to producing serious art.” and from this woman-centered space, barney led “a feminist effort that would eventually become an endeavor on behalf of lesbian literature and art.” in contrast to the availability of such support for female writers in the early twentieth century, davidson continues, american bohemia of the s lacked all but the most perfunctory recognition of women as artists. without the supportive environment of either an underground salon network or a feminist movement, women writers of the s and early s defined themselves largely within the male ‘circles.’ unlike many female modernist writers, for example, beat women often wrote in isolation without the support of men or women around them, as noted earlier. xx scholars and writers alike provide various explanations for this tendency of contemporary literary communities to be predominantly defined and led by male writers. ronna johnson and grace provide a useful summary: beat has in common with its affiliated literary schools [black mountain college, the new york poets, and the san francisco renaissance] and with the dominant culture from which all emerged unexamined assumptions of women’s intellectual, creative, even sexual inferiority, and in particular, the supposition that women could neither originate nor help to advance the aesthetic and artistic breakthroughs and innovations that galvanized the schools. the general absence of women writers from the literary histories of these contemporary communities does not mean that there were not innovative women writers engaging in key issues of the period. rather, as ronna johnson and grace suggest, the marginalization of women writers within these communities themselves was a direct reflection of the period’s cultural norms. there was a general lack of support from male writers, difficulties getting published as women writers, and the related decision to oftentimes keep their writing private until much later—and this has led to the elision from literary history of women beats and other women writers from affiliated communities. the complex relationship between the women beats and the beat literary community should not preclude attention to how they developed as writers despite these various tensions nor to how they created work with significant literary, cultural, social, and political implications from the margins. indeed, the girl gang explores how precisely from this position, these women developed as protofeminist writers, often exploiting the paradoxical nature of the countercultural community to their own ends. as such, understanding the nature of literary communities broadly and of the beat literary community in particular is central to this project. this dissertation examines the impact of the complexities of the beat women’s experiences within this community on their xxi writing—experiences that were stifling and problematic, as well as generative and inspiring. i examine a variety of connections and disparities between the work of several women beats as a way to illustrate how each writer’s individual experience within the beat community takes shape in her writing and works in conjunction with other women beats’ work to collectively reconceptualize the prevailing notion of the beat community as defined by male writers. *** looking at the actual relationships of the various writers within the beat community helps contextualize how the general differences between the male and female beats’ experiences take shape in their work. the sense of camaraderie that defines the male beats’ experiences within the literary community is represented by their various friendships and influences on each other as developing writers, all of which has been well documented by scholars and the writers themselves. studies of the beats including bruce cook’s the beat generation ( ), john tytell’s naked angels ( ), ann charters’s beats and company ( ), edward hasley foster’s understanding the beats ( ), steve watson’s the birth of the beat generation ( ), matt theado’s the beats ( ), and the more recent brother-souls: john clellon holmes, jack kerouac, and the beat generation by ann charters and sam charters ( ) provide detailed histories of the lives and literature of male beat writers like kerouac, burroughs, ginsberg, corso, snyder, holmes, and cassady—documenting their formative years as individuals and in relation to each other. certainly there were complexities within these various relationships, but of particular importance is the fact that the beat men did not face the issue of whether or not they should or could support each other as writers because of their xxii gender. instead, many male beats unquestionably provided the encouragement and collaboration central to the development of their fellow beat’s work. in contrast, the female beats’ experiences as writers within the community are rarely characterized by such camaraderie—with each other or with the male beats. the women’s relationships with the men were primarily based on romantic relationships, such as johnson and kerouac’s relationship in the late s and jones and leroi jones/amiri baraka’s marriage from to . as i address in more detail in chapter three, jones kept her writing private for many years, even from her husband, who was becoming a well-respected writer of his own during their marriage. johnson, on the other hand, shared some of her early work with kerouac and claims he was encouraging, though the level of encouragement seems somewhat limited. grace explains that, most of the women writers identify males who were sympathetic to their work. however, their story still asserts that the misogynist qualities of beat bohemia did not encourage sisterly relationships to foster the women’s art, did not mentor women artists into the group, and did not validate the women artists as part of the history of the movement. though some of the women may have looked to the beat men as role models— exemplifying through their lives and work the kind of self-defined search for authenticity and independence the women also sought —the men did not play the role of supporter. di prima is an exception in this group of women; although she was romantically linked to baraka, she also forged working relationships with several male beats at the time, including baraka, ginsberg, and kerouac, as well as with writers of affiliated literary communities, such as olson and o’hara. many scholars agree that di prima more fiercely pursued her writing than some of the other women writers; for example, she published her work herself when she couldn’t get it published otherwise. di prima’s xxiii relationship with baraka strained her friendship with jones, however, and although she and johnson went to hunter high school at the same time, they didn’t know each other well. interestingly, during their high school years, johnson didn’t know of other women writers or talk to other women about writing, but di prima recalls sharing her work with fellow female poets at hunter. also, johnson and jones were good friends (and remain friends today), but they did not share their work with each other during the beat period, and johnson was also close with another beat writer, elise cowen, though they also rarely shared their writing with each other, if at all. it is important to note that jones and di prima each contributed to the literary community through their work with baraka on separate projects that supported and published the work of the writers around them. during their marriage, jones and baraka founded a literary magazine, yugen, and book press, totem press; di prima and baraka published the floating bear magazine together beginning in . however, both women recall their major contributions to each endeavor being largely credited to baraka. di prima describes this realization matter-of-factly: though roi and i coedited the bear, and often it was he who got the credit for the whole thing, most of the actual physical work devolved upon me and those friends i could dig up to help me. most of the time. i am sure this was also true for hettie, for the totem press books, in fact, before things got too sticky between us, i often helped her and witnessed how it was she who typed the camera copy, proofed (most of the time) and pasted up (always), but it was roi’s press, and in this he was not any different from any other male artist of his day. it was just the natural division of labor / and credit. as i described earlier, what is often characterized as the misogyny of the male beats is generally attributed to the larger social and cultural contexts of the time, as di prima suggests here. nevertheless, these examples of the women’s relationships with each other and with the male beats begin to illustrate the complexities of their experiences as writers xxiv within this literary community—especially in contrast to the personal and working relationships that existed between the men. the women beats had relationships with the men as lovers and with each other as friends, but their role as writers was, with the noted exception of di prima, secondary to their role as women. the “boy gang” mentality of the beat community is evident not only in the actual dynamics within the community, but also in how women figure into the fiction and poetry of the male beats in limited ways, namely as “mothers, wives, sisters, lovers, virgins, whores, demons, or angels,” which i explore in more detail in the main chapters. in various letters, interviews, and essays over the years, the male beats likewise express a narrow view of women beats. in july , for example, ginsberg writes, yes, it’s all right to blame the men for exploiting the women—or, i think the point is, the men didn’t push the women literally or celebrate them. … but then, among the group of people we knew at the time, who were the writers of such power as kerouac or burroughs? were there any? i don’t think so. we’re responsible for the lack of outstanding genius in the women we knew? did we put them down or repress them? i don’t think so. … where there was a strong writer who could hold her own, like diane di prima, we would certainly work with her and recognize her. for ginsberg, the marginalization of women beat writers was due to their lack of talent. indeed, as noted above, he had a working relationship with di prima and perhaps encouraged her writing; he is also credited as having mentored beat writer, janine pommy vega. nevertheless, the basic perpetuation of the dominant gender discourse of the period within the beat literary community led many women beats to struggle as developing writers or to get their work published in ways most male beats did not experience. as ronna johnson argues, “the men’s tribal ethics of mutual support … xxv nurtured and helped to publish the minor poets peter orlovsky and carl solomon, but not elise cowen.” despite ginsberg and cowen’s friendship before her death in , for example—they had also been lovers briefly in —the poet deemed the work of orlovsky (ginsberg’s lover and longtime partner) and solomon (ginsberg’s friend to whom howl is dedicated) more publishable than that of cowen’s. whether this is because of her status as a female poet, because of their previous romantic relationship, or because she simply was not as strong a writer as orlovsky or solomon is indeterminate. the point remains that the fundamental impetus of the beat community to foster one another’s work was strained when it came to the women, and the various extra-literary writings of the male beats reveal their limited assumptions about women as a whole and about women writers, more specifically. for example, in a similar vein as the ginsberg passage above, kerouac somewhat blithely dismisses beat women in a essay. in “origins of the beat generation,” kerouac categorizes the beats as either “cool” or “hot.” women’s inclusion here is limited to the “girls [who] say nothing and wear black”—not necessarily writers, but girls who belong to the “cool” hipsters. and as amy friedman discusses, when kerouac recommended writers for a beat anthology in , he included only four women; of these four, he described barbara moraff as “best girl poet” and di prima, similar to ginsberg’s distinction noted above, as “other best girl poet.” the distinction kerouac draws between male and female beats in both sources ultimately perpetuates the traditional hierarchy between the two genders, and other male beats express a similar attitude toward women. upon rereading his first novel, go, in , holmes questions in a new introduction: “can it really have been like that? did we really resemble these xxvi feverish young men, these centerless young women?” in holmes’s recognition of the societal changes since he first wrote his novel (a rendering of the early beat community), he points to—however inadvertently—his initially dismissive perception and representation of beat women as “centerless.” as these examples illustrate, though the men acknowledge the presence of women within the beat community, it is clear that they did not consider the women as equals. from the men’s perspectives, the women were mainly there to play the same role expected of them outside of the counterculture—to provide domestic support (in the form of ironing or cooking, paying for rent, food, or bus trips, etc.) or to be girlfriends or lovers. that the women happened to be writers as well was secondary to the men—and that they might have had “such power as kerouac or burroughs” was even less likely. richard peabody writes in his discussion of the women beats’ marginalization: “the male-defined misogynist social climate of the fifties and sixties [is] the primary culprit. too many passive women accepted their assigned roles. others devoted their time and energy to the men, or promoted the men instead of addressing their own work.” the different dynamics of the experiences of di prima and other women beat writers of the new york city community attest to the various complexities that peabody points to here. whereas johnson strongly supported kerouac’s writing career—emotionally and financially—and struggled to find time for her own work, for example, di prima simultaneously pursued her own writing career while helping to promote the work of others. despite any such differences, though, women beat writers were faced with and struggled to negotiate with the somewhat similarly confining role expected of them by the conservative mainstream and within the beat community. xxvii this dissertation argues that studying the women beats as writers in their own right within the context of their experiences described here shows how their work revises the predominant representations of the female beat in the literary and extra-literary writing of the male beats. further, when we include the lives and work of beat women into beat history, we are exposed to a broader, more inclusive narrative of the beat literary community—one that is based on the very struggle of the women beats to overcome their subordination or marginalization as women. looking through a new lens into beat history, we see daring work that addresses the very social structures that have led to the women beats’ elision. accordingly, the girl gang sets out to show how women beat writers make an undeniably important contribution to beat literary history as well as to feminist history, contemporary literature, and postwar american history, more broadly. *** critical scholarship on the beats emerged in the early s when, as jennie skerl explains, “the celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the publication of on the road in marked the beginning of a beat revival and an outpouring of biographies, memoirs, films, recordings, exhibitions, celebrations, and websites.” although this surge in critical attention to the beats eclipsed the negative attention they had received in the s and s by the mass media and academic critics, many beat scholars have since argued that much of this initial scholarship perpetuated the narrow image of the beats as a white male community in its focus on writers like kerouac, ginsberg, burroughs, snyder, ferlinghetti, and corso. significantly, ann charters included a range of writers in the portable beat reader ( ), including non-white beats and several women beats. and in recent years, scholars have made concerted efforts to draw serious xxviii critical attention to african american and chicano male writers such as bob kaufman, ted joans, and oscar zeta acosta, as well as to various women beat writers from the new york city and san francisco communities. although the existing critical attention to beat women remains significantly limited as attention to male beats continues to thrive, it nevertheless reflects the important work of much feminist scholarship in its fundamental efforts to recover under-recognized women writers. the publication of women of the beat generation by brenda knight in and a different beat by richard peabody in established more substantial attempts to redefine the beat literary culture as it is traditionally understood to be a “boy gang.” knight’s and peabody’s anthologies unearthed and brought attention to the lives and work of many women beats. up until this time, women beats appeared in beat histories, biographies, or studies of male beat writers and their work, but in these instances, the women are primarily mentioned within the context of their personal relationships with the men. and when their roles as writers are acknowledged in such texts, it is often only in passing—as secondary to the writing of the men or to their connections to the male beats. thus, knight’s and peabody’s anthologies had a significant impact in beat studies as they put these women’s roles as writers front and center. although these collections did not include critical discussions of the writing, they prompted such work. published the same year as women of the beat generation and a different beat, maria damon’s “victors of catastrophe: beat occlusions” ( ) presents a brief, yet compelling argument for critical attention to beat women, and amy friedman’s “‘i say my new name’: women writers of the beat generation” ( ) and “‘being here as hard as i could:’ the beat generation women writers” ( ) began this very project. in the xxix first essay, friedman discusses the work of bonnie bremser/brenda frazer, di prima, and kyger; in the second, she provides a survey of several beat women’s work, such as jones, di prima, johnson, kyger, kandel, anne waldman, and joanna mcclure. these two essays were undeniably crucial in providing initial attention to the literary value of the women beats’ work, but their task was considerable and the attention to some of the beat women was delimiting as a result. for instance, johnson and jones are identified as memoirists (in both friedman’s and damon’s essays), which precluded subsequent attention to both writers’ fiction, other nonfiction, and poetry. in fact, while johnson’s and jones’s inclusion in charters’s beat down to your soul ( ) signifies important attention to the female beat perspective (they are two of several women beats included), their texts are excerpts from their memoirs of the beat period, while the works of other beat women, such as di prima, kyger, and mcclure, include poetry. this limited portrayal of johnson’s and jones’s status as beat women writers problematically overshadows attention to, for example, johnson’s first novel, which depicts the development of female subjectivity in beat bohemia, or jones’s early poetry or short stories, which similarly engage in important questions of hegemonic cultural norms of the beat and post-beat periods. this is not to diminish the significance of johnson’s and jones’s memoirs nor of such editorial efforts to include the voices and perspectives of women beats alongside beat men—certainly all of this is important work that has led to this dissertation. but the narrow representation of some women beats in such attempts to explore, as charters’s subtitle asks, “what was the beat generation?”, signifies the ways in which, even within efforts to broaden perspectives of beat history, many beat women are marginalized. xxx ronna johnson and grace’s girls who wore black ( ), a collection of essays entirely devoted to women beat writers, was pivotal in expanding critical attention to women beats. there had been a handful of single-author essays previously published in various journals, but in its ten essays, girls who wore black offers sustained critical readings of the poetry, fiction, and memoirs of many women beats, discussing unpublished work (as in the case of elise cowen) and bringing together writers from both coasts: adam, di prima, johnson, jones, cowen, frazer, kyger, pommy vega, and waldman. it is important to note that along with grace’s essay in girls who wore black on the various literary and cultural achievements of the memoirs by di prima, johnson, jones, and frazer, are essays on di prima’s poetry, johnson’s fiction, and jones’s poetry. that is, girls who wore black as a whole simultaneously argues for the importance of the female beat memoir beyond the scope of beat history as well as for the importance of other literary contributions of these particular writers. following in , skerl’s reconstructing the beats includes three essays on beat women, two of which were not the subject of essays in girls who wore black (kandel and ruth weiss [sic]), and grace and ronna johnson’s breaking the rule of cool ( )—a follow-up to girls who wore black—provides an updated essay on the status of women in beat history and scholarship alongside nine previously unpublished interviews with the female writers. all of these recent publications represent significant strides in attention to beat women over the last years or so that promise to continue, and the girl gang is one such effort. this survey of current scholarship on the women beats also clarifies, though, that there is much to be done in the recovery and study of the dozens of women involved in the beat movement and their multi-genre work that spans decades and xxxi continues today. indeed, many women beat writers remain excluded from the relatively small body of existing scholarship. regarding the writers who do receive attention, scholars tend to either treat several works by an individual writer at once, thus providing only cursory insight into each major work (as in the case of di prima) or to focus on only one or two texts by an individual writer, thus overlooking the full scope of their literary achievements (as in the case of johnson and jones). also, there is debate about how to approach situating the work of the women beats within the beat literary tradition. some scholars maintain that the women beats should be considered on par with “the second tier of beats” such as michael mcclure, baraka, and ferlinghetti (maintaining kerouac, ginsberg, and burroughs as the most “important” beat writers), while others argue that a novel such as johnson’s come and join the dance is “on par with renegade declarations of on the road or “howl” or naked lunch.” while such arguments point to the need to explore these distinctions further, they also suggest a delimiting framework for studying the women beats—one that might potentially merely situate them in either of the two “tiers” of male beats. it is my contention that doing so would overlook the ways in which the work of the female beats is importantly shaped by their experiences as simultaneously a part of and marginalized within the male beat literary community. the girl gang examines not only how the women beats were doing work that should be considered as important as the work of their male counterparts, but also significantly, how beat women confronted and revised the patriarchal assumptions that shaped the literature of both the contemporary mainstream and avant-garde from their paradoxical positions within and on the margins of the male-dominated literary community. xxxii in scholars’ attempts to begin to recover the work of and study the women beats, they tend to isolate the work of each female beat from that of another’s, which precludes attention to the myriad ways in which each writer uniquely engages in similar themes or literary techniques, as well as how contrasts in the subjects or forms of each writer’s work may enrich a reading of another’s work and of the beat community itself. this approach to each individual writer and her work, then, essentially overlooks how studying the women beats within the context of the beat community can provide a clearer understanding of how they both individually and collectively responded to the literary, social, and cultural norms of the period—and how their works can mutually inform each other. this dissertation provides a corrective to these gaps. the girl gang is a multiauthor study that critically engages an expanded canon of women beats. this project sets out to continue the recovery work begun by beat scholars by looking at texts that are overlooked in existing discussions of several women beats (in the main chapters on di prima, johnson, and jones), as well as by looking at writers who are absent in current scholarship (in the epilogue on bergé and albert). in my attention to such texts and writers, i expand the discourse on the women beats in multiple ways. first, this project aims to construct a revised narrative of the beat literary community and tradition by focusing on writers and texts from the earlier to the later and post-beat years, which provides a trajectory of the beat movement as it takes shape over the course of several decades. additionally, the texts examined throughout the dissertation represent multiple genres: poetry, the novel, the short story cycle, the novella, and the short story. this approach highlights the diversity of literary modes and the breadth of work among the women beats. xxxiii also importantly, threaded throughout the dissertation is explicit attention to the impact of the beat literary community on the women beats. the girl gang addresses how each writer’s particular experience within the new york city beat community as a developing female writer takes shape in her work, and how this helps us not only better understand the lives and work of these women and the function of community, but also the history of the new york city beat community itself and the development of protofeminist work from within this context. further, this study expands current critical attention to women beats by putting the work of several writers in conversation with each other in more depth than is currently available. specifically, i give explicit attention to the ways in which key beat issues or questions of identity, subjectivity, community, authenticity, and the act of writing itself take shape in the work of the various writers studied here. in doing so, this project highlights the continuities, gaps, and disparities between the work of these writers in order to illustrate how, collectively, their work contributes to our understanding of literary communities in general and how, more specifically, it revises prevailing notions of the beat community and its literary tradition as defined by the male beats and a male ethos. lastly, the girl gang explores the writers’ engagement in various literary, cultural, and social discourses, such as feminist geography, postmodernism, interracialism, and motherhood. this major aspect of my project illustrates precisely why extending the ways in which these writers are included in the beat literary tradition and the contemporary literary tradition more broadly is vital. the work of beat women broadens and complicates the current critical discourse of beat writing. more than adding female voices to beat history and literature, the girl gang draws attention to how the xxxiv female beats’ work addresses issues that are central to the contemporary countercultural critique of hegemonic norms and that are representative of the beats’ experimentation with innovative literary techniques. this dissertation’s literary analyses provide multiple new ways to study women beats’ writing and highlights their incisive and provocative treatment of timely thematic issues—often in conjunction with nontraditional narrative forms or strategies. ultimately, while this dissertation builds upon the existing scholarship on women beat writers in its endeavor to revise prevalent notions of the beats as a male literary tradition and to draw attention to beat women as important writers, it also significantly expands the existing recovery work and extends the current critical discourse on beat women in all of these ways. in addition to its contribution to beat studies, the girl gang calls attention to a group of writers whose work also contributes to and raises important questions for the fields of women’s writing, feminist studies, and contemporary american literature, as well as for the study of literary communities. this dissertation reveals how female beats use writing as a means to consciously construct and assert their voices as female writers—how they set out in reaction to patriarchal discourses “to question, to challenge, to conceive of alternatives” (in the words of adrienne rich). i examine how these writers struggle to construct identities as women writers and endeavor to develop various modes of female subjectivity within their work. in all of these ways, this dissertation broadens and further develops studies of the women’s literary tradition while simultaneously contributing to feminist scholarship in its continued recovery of elided female writers. xxxv further, the breadth and diversity of the women beats’ individual and collective bodies of work point to multiple ways in which this dissertation can inform and enrich not only the field of women’s literature, but also of contemporary american literature, more broadly. the analyses of how these writers engage in questions of genre, theme, and aesthetics as well as in various critical discourses undoubtedly raise new questions for thinking about, for example, the role of the novel, the colloquial, and the social space of the car in contemporary literature by both male and female writers. indeed, within the individual chapters, i situate the primary texts and issues of my analyses within and against both beat and non-beat texts, which begins to illustrate how the dissertation can inform the field of contemporary american literature beyond the scope of beat studies. the girl gang also intervenes in the important study of literary communities—of the mainstream and the avant-garde. the scholarship on american literary communities ranges from studies of the knickerbocker group to those of the modernists and the harlem renaissance writers, and of the language poets. the scope of this scholarship underscores the function of community for major american writers while highlighting the importance of these writers and their respective communities for the study of american literature from its earliest period to the contemporary period. the dynamics of the women beats’ coming-of-age experiences and the bodies of work that initially developed within the beat community undoubtedly raise provocative questions about the nature and function of literary communities in general, as well as about the function of place, the role of gender, and the development of the avant-garde within this discourse. integrating a study of the women writers from the new york city beat community into xxxvi existing scholarship on literary communities would open up such studies in undeniably insightful and productive ways. *** in its attention to understudied women writers, this dissertation is fundamentally a feminist project, whose central purpose is to examine beat women as writers in their own right. specifically, i examine how each individual writer provides a different lens into the beat community and its primary interests in issues of identity, authenticity, and storytelling as these issues are shaped by questions of gender. threaded throughout the dissertation is a focus on how these writers develop a female subjectivity in response to their marginalization as women as well as in response to the typical depiction of women within male-authored beat texts as sexual objects, or more broadly, as intellectually, biologically, or psychologically inferior and therefore unable (or unprivileged) to act as a subject. my use of the term “subjectivity” throughout the dissertation refers to the process of developing one’s consciousness. whereas “identity” refers to one’s sense of self as it is defined by categories such as race, gender, and religion, “subjectivity” refers to one’s ability to act with agency and authority—to assert ownership over one’s thoughts, decisions, and behaviors. defining “subjectivity” in this way follows with leading uses of the term in feminist and beat scholarship. for example, for ronna johnson, subjectivity is signified through “an evolution from understanding to interpretation, from seeing to naming,” and for feminist scholar rita felski, it is a “transformation of consciousness.” further, subjectivity signifies an understanding of oneself in relation to others, to society, to the world. as nick mansfield explains, “the word ‘self’ does not xxxvii capture the sense of social and cultural entanglement that is implicit in the word ‘subject’: the way our immediate daily life is always already caught up in complex political, social and philosophical—that is, shared—concerns.” if we understand “subject” as something fundamentally and constantly developed in relation to others, we can understand the significance of the women beats’ development of subjectivity for their female speakers or characters in relation to post-wwii america, new york city, bohemia, and the beats—in relation to a multitude of forces. understanding subjectivity in this way clarifies a key aspect of the term—that it is a process, not something that is fixed or achieved, or owned or exercised without further or ongoing transformation. sally robinson, for example, explains that subjectivity is an ongoing process of engagement in social and discursive practices, not some immanent kernel of identity that is expressed through that engagement. it is not constructed, once and for all, at some locatable point in the individual’s history; rather, it is a continuous process of production and transformation. subjectivity, like gender, is a ‘doing,’ rather than a being. subjects are constituted, differentially, across complex and mobile discursive practices in historically specific ways that involve relations of subjectivity to sociality, to power and to knowledge. subjectivity in my analysis is therefore used to identify the process by which the female figures in the work of the women beats begin to overcome whatever obstacles impede or diminish their ability to act as a subject. nancy miller’s primary definition of feminist writing is useful for framing my analysis of the women beats’ work. according to miller, feminist writing “articulates as and in a discourse of self-consciousness about woman’s identity.” felski offers a somewhat similarly broad but useful definition of feminist literature as “those texts that reveal a critical awareness of women’s subordinate position and of gender as a problematic category, however this is expressed.” the women beats were certainly xxxviii critical of their marginal position as women in the s and s; this is evident in their work in multiple ways, and is a useful lens into their texts. however, it is important to note that although the women beats’ work falls into the category of feminist literature, much of it was written prior to the women’s movement that began in the late s, and is therefore more accurately considered protofeminist. as ronna johnson and grace argue, to characterize the beat women as feminist would be anachronistic; in fact, the scholars clarify that the protofeminism of the women beats was “fostered unintentionally.” nevertheless, as ronna johnson and grace write: members of the group display a persistent understanding of the importance of asserting themselves as women in the alternative communities in which they lived, and which denied them, during the fifties, and even to some extent today, value as artists specifically because of their gender. their recognition of this condition exemplifies their protofeminist impulses. drawing attention to the women beats’ protofeminism is of primary importance in the girl gang and will be discussed throughout the chapters accordingly. my study of the writing of the women beats as protofeminist literature is not meant to perpetuate their distance from the work of the male beats. in the same way that the men explore issues of identity and subjectivity specific to their gender, so too do the women, and this does not necessitate boundaries to be drawn between a male beat and a female beat literary tradition. doing so would assume consistent similarities within and clear boundaries between the men’s and women’s texts, and this is not necessarily the case. as noted earlier, the diversity of beat writing—among the men and women—points to one of the fundamental characteristics of a literary community. specifically, my analysis is based on the claim that issues of gender largely motivate and shape the women beats’ engagement in questions of identity, subjectivity, race, sexuality, and language, as xxxix well as in various narrative and poetic forms and techniques. the themes explored and the literary techniques used by the women beats may not necessarily be unique—though some are—but the way in which these themes and techniques are employed to make claims about and through the female experience does highlight their uniqueness within the beat context as well as their particular importance in the period preceding second wave feminism. thus, this dissertation will illustrate that beginning with their critique of cultural and literary gender norms is one way in which to enter into the work of the women beat writers and to understand their literary, cultural, social, and political achievements. rather than establishing a female beat literary tradition, the girl gang reveals the importance of the women beats’ work as well as the treatment, through both content and form, of various concerns shared with male beats. in addition to the application of feminist theory, this project also draws on historicist methodologies evident in the basic components of the individual chapters. in the main chapters and epilogue, i situate select texts of each writer within her literary, cultural, and political contexts, as well as within the context of her formative years as a writer in the new york city beat community and her larger body of work. situating the literary texts alongside and against literary predecessors and contemporaries and within the larger cultural and political contexts is based on the assumption that in order to understand the ways in which these writers revise literary and cultural norms, it is important to understand what these norms are and how they may have affected each writer’s understanding of the issues their work explores. as tony trigilio aptly argues, unless we look at “the way that [women beats’] work itself is imbricated in [their] cultural moment,” we cannot fully understand these women as xl writers. to reiterate, “what is distinctively beat is the historical moment and social context” out of which their writing emerged. thus, i highlight how these writers’ texts connect to and diverge from relevant previous and contemporary literature as well as how they engage in issues significantly shaped by the historical context, such as interracialism, in order to draw attention to the various achievements and implications of their work. this attention to the cultural context of the women beats’ work also includes a focus on the role of place, as noted earlier. following in the attention to the function of place in studies of female modernists in paris (benstock), female modernists in new york city and berlin (miller), beat poets in san francisco (davidson), and language poets in new york city, san francisco, and washington, d.c. (vickery), among others, this dissertation is rooted in the assumption that the women beats’ lives and work were shaped by new york city. as i examine in more detail in the chapters, the writers studied here were especially drawn to and came into their own as writers within new york city bohemia. their writing engages both directly and indirectly in the culture of new york city, and as cristanne miller argues in the context of the modernist period, this highlights that “many … writers were conscious of the relevance of location to writing.” although my analysis of the literary works may include how new york city is explicitly treated, of primary importance to this dissertation is how new york city and new york city bohemia, more specifically, “enabl[e] and influenc[e] [the] writing” of beat women. further, situating the writers’ select texts alongside their coming-of-age experiences within the beat literary community and within their body of work employs a xli methodology especially important for the study of beat writers—male or female. trigilio argues that “reader reception of beat writing depends on critical understanding of biography; if anything, the neoromantic impulse of most beat writing demands that readers know something of the sovereign, expressivist self claimed behind each literary work.” however, the tendency to focus mainly on and to mythologize beats’ lives has overshadowed serious critical attention to much of their work, and so this attention to biography needs to be tempered—to be in the service of the writing, not in place of it. indeed, trigilio explains, “when literary commentary collapses [literature] into biography, as it often does with beat writers … such scholarship is undertaken at considerable expense to the cultural work of the [texts] themselves.” likewise, though, trigilio continues, “it would be a disservice to argue that biography should be displaced entirely in favor of [the literature].” the approach taken in the girl gang follows this argument: providing relatively concise literary biographies helps to highlight the writers’ relevant personal experiences and the scope of their work that, together, effectively contextualizes and provides insight into the particular issues addressed in the texts examined in each chapter. *** as the diversity of the beat literary community suggests, there are many women beat writers to consider in a project of recovery and criticism such as this. together, for example, knight’s and peabody’s anthologies include a total of about women, with only overlaps, and peabody recognizes many other writers he considered including. as noted earlier, this dissertation focuses on the work of diane di prima, joyce johnson, hettie jones, carol bergé, and mimi albert. possible other writers to study here include joanne kyger, lenore kandel, brigid murnaghan, margaret randall, janine pommy xlii vega, sandra hochman, fran landesman, barbara moraff, bobbie louise hawkins, and brenda frazer, among many others. the criteria for inclusion or exclusion of women beat writers are different for each scholar and editor, and what this fluidity indicates is that, as ronna johnson and grace explain, “the canon of women beat writers has not been definitively established, but is transitory and subjective.” regarding girls who wore black, for example, the editors discuss that while jane bowles and denise levertov had foundational affiliations with or connections to the beat community, they “proceeded to other movements [and thus] demarcate a beat cusp [and] clarif[y] the way that beat emerged contemporaneously with several other avant-garde literary communities.” as such, bowles and levertov are not the subject of essays included in girls who wore black. tim hunt similarly comments on the fluidity of the canon of women beats. he writes, “joanne kyger’s ties to gary snyder and ginsberg, her travels to japan and india, mark her as beat, yet her approach to writing, which owes little to beat practice, developed as it did almost in spite of her involvement with the beats.” interestingly, kyger is included in both girls who wore black and breaking the rule of cool. peabody, in his anthology, exercised a rather liberal rationale for inclusion of women beats; he includes writers, such as sandra hochman, whose direct connection to the beat community seems to be represented by an appearance in a photograph documenting the beat scene with prominent beat writers. all of these different approaches to the category of beat writers raise undeniably interesting questions about the nature of literary scholarship itself, but more to my point, they speak to the fundamental diversity of the lives and work of beat women themselves. xliii my focus on di prima, johnson, jones, bergé, and albert represents a selection of award-winning writers who, individually, contribute in important and distinctive ways to the beat literary tradition, and who thus, collectively, create a dynamic narrative of beat history. the first criterion for their inclusion is that although they didn’t all remain in new york city after the beat period, they were each born and came of age in new york city, and their formative years as writers took place within the new york city beat community. specifically, di prima lived in new york city until relocating to san francisco in the late s, while johnson and jones still live and write in new york city today. bergé lived in new york city until when she moved to woodstock, ny and continued writing and editing before she moved all over the country for about a decade to teach. she finally relocated to santa fe in the s until her death in . and albert lived in new york city until the s or s when she relocated to the bay area of california, where she continues to write. elise cowen is an example of another possible new york city beat writer to include in this project, but she primarily wrote poetry, and the bodies of work of the five writers i study here include a range of genres—a second criterion for my choices. their versatility exemplifies their breadth as writers and enables me to draw comparisons between their work and a wide selection of other contemporary writers’ work, as well as to explore the ways in which their experiences within the beat community take shape in distinct genres. further, my focus on these particular five writers provides a look into each of the three generations of women beats—a useful structure established by ronna johnson and grace. in the three-generational breakdown, bergé falls into the first generation, which xliv includes the writers born in the s and s, such as adam, weiss, madeline gleason, and sheri martinelli. these writers were contemporaneous with the three core male beats (kerouac, ginsberg, and burroughs) and faced the societal conditions and postwar changes as well as the stifling influence of the “academic and traditional literary models” simultaneous with the men. born in the s, the second generation of women beats, including di prima, johnson, and jones, along with cowen, kandel and others, was “directly influenced by seminal works” of the core male beats and “faced male beat obliviousness to and/or prejudices against their capacities as writers and rebels.” ronna johnson further highlights one of the key distinctions between the first two generations of beat women: “the women writers of the second beat generation were usually not so obviously sidelined as those in the first, but they were nevertheless discounted through presumptions of their inferiority.” bergé’s status as a beat writer in contrast to that of di prima’s, johnson’s, and jones’s—bergé is much less visible in beat studies—begins to confirm this distinction, and i address this further within the dissertation. albert represents the third generation of women beats, accompanied by waldman and pommy vega, all born in the s. interestingly, albert is not included in ronna johnson and grace’s survey, perhaps because, unlike waldman and pommy vega, she was not “included in beat bohemia and literary circles from the start.” pommy vega had close working relationships with several male beats, including herbert huncke, orlovsky, and ginsberg, as did waldman with ginsberg, o’hara and others of the new york school. albert’s affiliations with the beat community itself are less well- documented and presumably less substantial than those of the other writers included in xlv this study, and while pommy vega and waldman “looked to living beat generation writers for influence and inspiration,” albert looked to the beat period and culture “for influence and inspiration”—not necessarily its writers, at least not through personal connections. ultimately, i include writers from each of the three generations of female beats in order to construct a more textured and inclusive narrative of beat history that draws on these generational differences as one way to illustrate how each writer distinctively revises and expands our understanding of the beat literary community. *** di prima, johnson, jones, bergé, and albert had vastly different experiences as beat writers, including different degrees of involvement within the community itself, and this is reflected in the structure of the dissertation. the three main chapters focus on di prima, johnson, and jones—three women beats who knew each other and were, in various ways, part of each other’s lives and experiences as women writers in the male- dominated literary community. more than others, di prima, johnson, and jones appear consistently in beat anthologies and in existing scholarship on the female beats—perhaps because their connections to the prominent male beats initially helped draw attention to their writing. in the main chapters, i expand the current scholarly attention to each of these three writers, illustrating how their experiences within the beat community reflect the contemporary cultural, social, and political contexts in markedly different ways. these three chapters are chronologically ordered by the composition dates of the particular texts i examine, ranging from the s to the turn of the twenty-first century. of the five writers i study here, di prima’s body of work is the largest (comprising about books of poetry, fiction, and memoir), and she is the subject of more critical xlvi discussions than the others. this is perhaps not surprising in light of her status as a “strong writer” among the men during the beat period itself. however, the existing scholarship on di prima is still relatively scant; she is included in the multiauthor essays described earlier and is otherwise the subject of approximately seven single-author essays. that her experience as a female writer within the beat literary community was generally inclusive takes shape in her writing in interesting ways, and juxtaposing the ways in which her work differs significantly from that of johnson and jones illustrates the remarkable dynamics of the beat community itself. in chapter one, i read di prima’s first book of poetry, this kind of bird flies backward alongside a collection of unpublished poetry from her college years in order to trace the development of her poetics as it was largely shaped by the contrast between her suburban social space in college and the urban, avant-garde beat community of new york city. this contrast is most notably represented through her use of hip slang, and this poetic style highlights two key achievements: her resistance to the predominant academic style of poetry of the time, which situates her alongside poets such as ginsberg and olson, and her revision of the representation of women in the work of these and other male avant-garde contemporaries. employing m.a.k. halliday’s theory of antilanguages, my analysis demonstrates how di prima uses the slang of the bohemian community to redefine and substantiate the identity of the bohemian figure as well as to develop a subjectivity for the female bohemian in particular—a move predating the feminist poetry of the s. chapter one explores how di prima resists and revises the commonly objectified or victimized depictions of female figures within the work of her male contemporaries. she gives voice xlvii to female experiences of love, sex, and motherhood—unabashedly portraying the emotions and experiences of desire, jealousy, hostility, and independence that are often subdued or silenced in postwar poetry. through a reading of her first published poetry within the context of her earlier unpublished poetry and the work of her contemporaries, chapter one draws attention to how di prima challenges poetic conventions of the time while bringing uniquely female experiences to the fore with authenticity and honesty. that johnson and jones are largely regarded by scholars as the girlfriend and wife of prominent beat writers, respectively, and that their bodies of work are notably smaller than di prima’s raises important questions about their consistent inclusion in various beat anthologies over the years and the focus on their work in much of the current scholarship on women beats. as i mentioned earlier, when their work is included in beat anthologies, it is almost exclusively each writer’s memoir that is excerpted and used to represent their literary accomplishments. likewise, though friedman and damon include johnson and jones in their foundational critical essays described earlier, they refer to both writers only as memoirists. as such, it can be argued that much of the attention that both johnson and jones have received over the last few decades is due, not necessarily to their individual literary achievements, but to the insight they and their memoirs provide into the lives of kerouac and baraka. both are strong and versatile writers in their own right, however, and have considerable oeuvres that also include fiction (johnson and jones) and poetry (jones). currently, only a total of three critical essays begin to look at these accomplishments, and chapters two and three set out to address this critical neglect. xlviii to date, there is only one attempt to broaden readers’ understanding of johnson’s literary contributions beyond her memoir, which include several novels, non-beat memoirs, and nonfiction texts. in chapter two, i continue the work begun by ronna johnson in her reading of johnson’s first novel, come and join the dance ( ). i examine how in come and join the dance, johnson develops a model of female subjectivity that directly challenges the depiction of female protagonists in male- and female-authored beat and non-beat contemporary novels. my reading reveals how johnson not only revises the way in which women are portrayed by her contemporaries, but also how she does this by transgressing the discourse of traditionally gendered social spaces. by engaging in the tropes of the home, the streets, and the car, johnson destabilizes the hegemonic norms of public and private spaces. my analysis of her first novel is advanced through the lens of feminist geography, which frames my reading of the “paradoxical spaces” johnson creates in her revision of the public/private dichotomy. using the social spaces of the home and the car to do so is especially significant, i argue, in light of the historical and cultural associations of each space. johnson challenges the association of women in the s with the domestic space of the home; she suggests that the home is a stifling and oppressive space for women— anticipating the female malaise explored in betty friedan’s the feminine mystique in . further, she appropriates the american image of the car as a quintessentially male space, as a symbol of freedom and of the male beat pursuit of an authentic american experience to which women were denied. my analysis shows how johnson uses the car as a space within which her female protagonist asserts her subjectivity through sexual agency. interestingly, though, my discussion in chapter two highlights how johnson xlix resists the centrality that di prima gives to sexual agency in her depiction of female subjectivity. further, whereas new york city bohemia is a fundamentally positive space, one that is supportive and fosters individuality in di prima’s early poetry, in johnson’s first novel, the new york city bohemian community is depicted as oppressive and dysfunctional. in all of these ways, i draw attention to the complex and distinctive literary achievements of each writer. what makes jones unique among many women beats is that she kept her writing life private during the beat years and did not start publishing until the s. however, since then, jones has published in a range of genres including short fiction, poetry, essays, and young adult literature, but her work remains largely absent from critical attention. in chapter three, i examine a short story cycle that is currently unpublished, in care of worth auto parts, in order to illustrate jones’s engagement with the gender and racial politics of the s and the literary and cultural context of postmodernism in the s and s. drawing on her personal experiences in the beat community, jones focuses on the figure of the white interracial mother, disrupting hegemonic, hierarchical racial and gender norms and giving voice to this racially-defined figure, whose perspective in literary texts is often overshadowed by the figure of the interracial child. my analysis illustrates how jones employs various postmodernist techniques to portray the experience of the interracial mother as subject to a “social gaze” that fractures and destabilizes her sense of self. the genre of in care of worth auto parts itself is especially significant in the treatment of this complex experience. the short story cycle is defined by its dual structure of independence and interdependence: it includes stories that can be read autonomously, but that only fully make meaning when read in conjunction l with one another. my analysis of in care of worth auto parts demonstrates how jones uses this unique structure to reflect and embody the gradual development of the interracial mother’s subjectivity in the face of others’ racial discrimination, and to stylistically perform its themes of unity and disunity. of particular importance is how jones explicitly considers the intertwining of race and gender, which is treated only implicitly in the other writers’ texts examined here. whereas the main chapters build on the current critical attention to di prima, johnson, and jones, the epilogue integrates two women beat writers, who are almost exclusively absent from critical studies, into the discourse on women beats. although bergé and albert appear in some beat texts, such as peabody’s anthology, there are currently no published critical studies of their work. albert is mentioned in a somewhat obscure article on the women beats by jim burns in , but is otherwise absent from scholarly discussions of the beats, and although bergé is recognized for her inclusion in leroi jones’s four young lady poets ( ) and for her role in the oral poetry scene of the s, she is hardly, if at all, recognized for her prolific body of work that she began publishing in the early s. in the epilogue, then, i discuss the lives and work of bergé and albert in order to begin the important task of expanding attention to women beats who, though currently overlooked in beat studies, nevertheless challenge and contribute to our understanding of the beat literary tradition in significant ways. specifically, the epilogue examines select texts from each writer, employing the critical framework established here. i explore how the work of bergé and albert, like that of di prima, johnson, and jones, simultaneously engages in and diverges from fundamental beat themes in ways importantly shaped by a critique of the period’s social li and cultural norms. first, i examine bergé’s novella, “in motion,” with particular attention to how she treats questions of identity, subjectivity, and authenticity from a distinctively non-beat setting—from the upper east side of manhattan. i examine how bergé embeds her critique of the normative female gender role within a larger critique of the postwar ideal of upward mobility and how she diverges from patterns in much women beats’ work through her development of a female subjectivity that is mutually constitutive instead of defined as an autonomous process. next, i discuss albert’s short story, “the small singer,” with attention to how the writer uses this particular genre to embody the text’s depiction of the female protagonist’s gradually diminishing sense of empowerment and subjectivity. unlike the other female characters or speakers examined throughout the dissertation, albert’s protagonist is not defined by the role of lover, wife, or mother—nor does she struggle under the pressure to eventually accept the latter two roles as they are traditionally defined. rather, albert depicts the life of a singer as largely defined by her artistry, and albert uses the singer’s voice to symbolize the potential for her ability to develop and maintain independence and subjectivity as a woman. albert’s portrayal of female subjectivity, however, diverges from those provided in the other texts included in my study, which highlights one of the important distinctions of albert’s work. in part, i have chosen to focus specifically on bergé and albert because they meet the same criteria for my selection of the writers included in the main chapters. like di prima, johnson, and jones, bergé and albert are each award-winning writers who were born and came of age in new york city and whose bodies of work include a range of literary genres. in light of these general similarities, the epilogue continues to develop a lii cohesive narrative of women writers of the new york city beat literary community. that is, the final portion of my study further demonstrates the distinctive literary achievements of female beats whose individual experiences as women on the margins of the largely male homosocial new york city beat community shaped their work in important ways. in order to extend the narrative of women beat writers, however, i have also chosen to include bergé and albert for the ways in which they each diverge from the relative similarities between di prima, johnson, and jones and thus represent a broader spectrum of female beats. as noted above, bergé and albert remain on the periphery of beat studies—relative to the others that i include in this study, that is—as do many other women beats, such as frazer, kandel, hochman, and weiss. further, neither bergé nor albert was romantically involved with any of the prominent male beat writers (nor does either have a published memoir that explores such relationships), and as such, they represent the many women beat writers who remain peripheral within beat studies in part because they lack the personal affiliations with male beats that may have initially helped bring the existing critical attention to those who did have such relationships. attention to the lives and work of writers such as bergé and albert emphasizes that it is not only beat women who were closely connected to beat men who deserve to be regularly included in the community’s literary history. my discussion of bergé and albert illustrates what is to be gained by entering such unrecognized writers into this important literary and cultural discourse. additionally, as noted earlier, bergé and albert are from the first and third generations of the beat period, respectively. they each represent very different beat histories as shaped in part by their generational differences, which also distinguishes liii them from di prima, johnson, and jones (from the second generation of women beats). specifically, bergé directly participated in the new york city poetry scene as a young writer, and her work engages in beat themes and aesthetics, but generally only indirectly describes or addresses the beat scene itself in her work. in contrast, albert’s involvement in the beat community was more tangential than bergé’s, and she did not start publishing until the late s, but the beat scene itself is an explicit and central focus in her writing, particularly in her two novels. in light of these differences, the epilogue provides insight into these writers’ respective generations and the role that each writer’s distinct historical context played in the development of her work. overall, the inclusion of bergé and albert in the epilogue challenges available frameworks for establishing the canon of women beats as it repositions albert and bergé from the periphery to the center of women beat studies. indeed, the epilogue illustrates how situating such marginalized writers alongside the more recognizable women beat writers can expand our understanding of the various continuities, gaps, and disparities between women beats. the epilogue concludes the dissertation by exemplifying the ways in which attention to a wide range of women beat writers can raise new questions for understanding how these writers individually and collectively contribute to and reconceptualize our understanding of the beat community and its literary tradition. *** the girl gang: women writers of the new york city beat community ultimately illustrates how the lives and work of women beat writers provide a continuous, yet multifaceted view of the new york city beat community. it argues that women played an integral role in this undeniably important literary and cultural movement as writers in liv their own right. this study expands the current canon of women beats in its effort to redefine current conceptions of the beat community as a “boy gang” and to critically engage the protofeminist work of writers who remain marginal within beat studies as well as within the studies of women’s writing and contemporary fiction and poetry, more broadly. this dissertation creates a new, more inclusive beat narrative by looking at both relatively well-known and marginalized female beats and at texts that are published, out of print, or unpublished, from a range of genres, as well as from the early and later years of the beat period. the girl gang shows how women beats engage in key literary and cultural discourses as they resist and rewrite representations of the female figure. through its study of five women beat writers, this project highlights, in johnson’s words, how a “girl gang” of writers can indeed exemplify the role of the artist, and more importantly, significantly contribute to and redefine the notion of the beat writer. lv notes . i address the status of eliot’s writing as both “academic” and nontraditional in chapter one. (see chap. , note .) . ann charters identifies the period between and as when the beat movement “flourished.” foreword to the beats: literary bohemians in postwar america (detroit, michigan: gale research co., ), xii. . jack kerouac, on the road (new york: penguin, ), . . barbara ehrenreich, the hearts of men: american dreams and the flight from commitment (new york: anchor press/doubleday, ), ; kerouac, “the origins of the beat generation” (san francisco, ca: grey fox press, ), . . qtd. in joyce johnson, minor characters (boston, ma: houghton, ), . . johnson, minor, (emphasis in original). . minor, . . adrienne rich, “when we dead awaken: writing as re-vision” (new york: w.w. norton & co, ), . . rich, . . rich, . . women beat writers continue to publish, but these publications are less frequent and perhaps less visible or noted than the others i refer to here—precisely because of the tendency to view women beats as lovers or sisters rather than as writers and to assume that their work is most valuable for its insight into the beat men’s lives. these recent memoirs include joan haverty kerouac’s nobody’s wife ( ), carolyn cassady’s off the road (reprinted in ), edie kerouac-parker’s you’ll be okay ( ), elizabeth von vogt’s lexington ave ( ), and helen weaver’s the awakener ( ). . see gerald nicosia, one and only: the untold story of on the road and of luanne henderson, the woman who started jack and neal on their journey ( ). this isn’t to suggest that scholars are not otherwise furthering the recovery or criticism of women beat writers, but the frequency of such publications has slowed down since the first wave of recovery in the late s and early s, which i discuss further shortly. . my use of the term “bohemian” throughout the dissertation refers to the larger countercultural community of artists, including musicians, dancers, performers, and painters, that also includes the beat writers, who were generally associated with, if not lvi directly involved with artists of this larger group in a personal or artistic capacity. when referring specifically to the beats, i vary between “beat community” and “beat literary community” depending on the context and need for emphasis. in general, “beat community” refers to the group of men and women who collectively resisted mainstream standards in postwar new york city—with the exception of the men’s acceptance and perpetuation of the normative female gender role—and that often worked together on various texts or literary projects, in some cases lived together, and spent time in the same social spaces. . susan suleiman, as discussed by elizabeth frost, refers to this paradoxical position of such women writers as a “‘double margin.’” (qtd. in frost, the feminist avant-garde in american poetry [iowa city: university of iowa press, ], xviii.) frost explains, “along with their male counterparts, [women] are at the edge of the mainstream culture from which they emerge… . but often they also remain on the fringes of the very groups that seek sexual and psychic liberation.” the feminist avant-garde, xviii. . hawthorne, melville, and whitman were not transcendentalists, but they were a part of this broader concord literary community nonetheless. also, the concord community is especially relevant to a discussion of the beats as the transcendentalists are considered one of the beats’ major american influences, both philosophically and aesthetically. tim hunt, for example, describes how the beats saw the transcendentalists “as precursors … who offered a way to think of literature as a way to move beyond the quotidian and contingent.” (“many drummers, a single dance?,” girls who wore black: women writing the beat generation, ed. ronna c. johnson and nancy m. grace [new jersey: rutgers university press, ], .) and jennie skerl writes, “like their american precursors, the transcendentalists, [the beats] fashioned a role as poet- prophets who sought a spiritual alternative to the relentless materialist drive of industrial capitalism.” (reconstructing the beats [new york; houndmills, england: palgrave macmillan, ], .) also, see bradley stiles’s emerson's contemporaries and kerouac's crowd: a problem of self-location for more on the connections between the transcendentalists and the beats. . perry miller, the american transcendentalists, their prose and poetry (garden city, n.y.: doubleday, ), x. . miller, x. . susan cheever, american bloomsbury: louisa may alcott, ralph waldo emerson, margaret fuller, nathaniel hawthorne, and henry david thoreau: their lives, their loves, their work (new york: simon & schuster, ), . . henry jack tobias, santa fe: a modern history, - (albuquerque: university of new mexico press, ), . . tobias, . lvii . michael davidson, the san francisco renaissance: poetics and community at mid-century (new york: cambridge university press, ), - , , . . davidson, . . elizabeth wilson, bohemians: the glamorous outcasts (london; new york: i.b. tauris, ), . . christine stansell writes in her discussion of the development of american bohemianism in greenwich village in the s, “when they imagined bohemia, turn-of- the-century americans called up an imagery of art, hedonism, and dissent from bourgeois life that originated in paris in the s.” she continues, emphasizing the social or communal and countercultural nature of bohemia: “by midcentury the word had acquired a wider meaning, as an enclave of rebels and impoverished artists.” (american moderns: bohemian new york and the creation of a new century [new york: metropolitan books, ], .) and as marty jezer explains, bohemianism is fundamentally developed “out of the requirements of creative work,” and thus the bohemia of the post- wwii period was defined by the need for community. (the dark ages: life in the united states, - [boston: south end press, ], .) see chapters one and two for more on this. . edward h. foster, understanding the beats (columbia: university of south carolina press, ), . . robert holton, “‘the sordid hipsters of america’: beat culture and the folds of heterogeneity,” reconstructing the beats, , , . . throughout the dissertation, i use the term “avant-garde” (somewhat similar to donald allen’s term “new american”) to refer to the various countercultural artists of the postwar period, including not only the beats, but others such as black mountain and new york school poets. my use of the term follows in frost’s definition of the “avant- garde”: “any artistic practice that combines radical new forms with radical politics or utopian vision.” (the feminist avant-garde, xiv.) this usage is also consistent with frequent descriptions in beat scholarship of the beats as an avant-garde group. see johnson and grace, girls who wore black, for example. . ann douglas, “the city where the beats were moved to howl,” the rolling stone book of the beats: the beat generation and american culture, ed. holly george- warren (new york: hyperion, ), . . douglas, “the city,” . . ronna johnson and nancy grace, “visions and revisions of the beat generation,” girls who wore black, . from this point forward, all references to ronna johnson in the body of the text will include her full name in order to distinguish between her and joyce johnson. lviii . johnson and grace, “visions,” . . this rejection of or resistance to one’s categorization in a particular literary group is not unique within the beat community. for more on this issue from the perspectives of the writers themselves, see ann charters’s beat down to your soul as well as grace and johnson’s breaking the rule of cool. . shari benstock, women of the left bank, - (austin: university of texas press, ), . . grace and johnson, breaking the rule of cool: interviewing and reading women beat writers (jackson: university press of mississippi, ), x. . frost notes other contemporary poetic groups, including vorticism, the black arts, and the language poets, within which the women poets have not been “visible spokespeople, theorists, or anthologized representatives.” the feminist avant-garde, xviii. . davidson, . . benstock, , . . benstock, . . davidson, . . johnson and grace, “visions,” . . see also collections of correspondence, such as jack kerouac and allen ginsberg: the letters ( ). . the nature of the beat literary community as a “boy gang” has been well established in studies of the beats as well as in various histories of the period, such as barbara ehrenreich’s the hearts of men and david halberstams’s the fifties. . in discussions of jones and baraka as a couple, most scholars refer to jones by her maiden name, cohen, and to baraka as jones (cohen didn’t become jones until , and jones didn’t become baraka until , after their divorce—first imamu amiri baraka, then the imamu was dropped in ). however, to remain consistent with my use of hettie jones as her authorial name and to prevent confusion between her and her husband during the course of their marriage, i refer to hettie as jones and to leroi as baraka. . in chapter two, i discuss how the aspect of their relationship as it was shaped in part by their shared work as writers is often overlooked, but it is nevertheless important lix to note here that although johnson did share her concerns about her writing, kerouac’s feedback or advice was often superficial. see johnson and kerouac’s door wide open. . grace, “interviewing women beat writers,” breaking, . . see rachel blau duplessis’s “manifests” and “manhood and its poetic projects” for more on the way in which women beat writers were inspired by the male beats, despite their general exclusion from the men’s lives and work. . this is the case regarding the women’s literary pursuits as well as their actual living conditions. as jennie skerl points out, beat women could be argued to have sustained the beat community themselves as the primary “wage-earners.” (“mid-century bohemia redefined: portraits by beat women” presented at the mla conference in december .) the women held regular jobs and pursued their writing during their other time. further, it was their apartments that housed the community itself. see ehrenreich for more on the male beats’ rebellion against the bread-winner role, and see various beat histories for details regarding the women’s apartments as the center of the beats’ activities. . they had an affair on and off for several years during his marriage to jones and had a child together in . . see johnson and kerouac’s door wide open and di prima’s recollections of my life as a woman. . johnson played an integral role in getting kerouac’s visions of cody published in after his death, but this was not a collaboration in the same sense as jones/baraka’s and di prima/baraka’s discussed here. . see jones’s how i became hettie jones and di prima’s recollections. . di prima, recollections of my life as a woman: the new york years: a memoir (new york: viking, ), . . grace, “snapshots, sand paintings, and celluloid: formal considerations in the life writing of women writers from the beat generation,” girls who wore black, . . ginsberg qtd. in a different beat: writings by women of the beat generation, ed. richard peabody (new york: high risk books, ), . . r. johnson, “mapping women writers of the beat generation,” breaking, . . tony trigilio is currently editing a collection of cowen’s poetry to publish. lx . see davidson and ehrenreich for more on the fundamental male homosocial nature of the beats. . kerouac, “origins,” . . “origins,” . . kerouac qtd. in amy friedman, “‘i say my new name’: women writers of the beat generation,” the beat generation writers, ed. a. robert lee (london: pluto press, ), . . john clellon holmes, go (new york: thunder’s mouth press, ), xvii. . ginsberg qtd. in peabody, . . peabody, . . skerl, reconstructing, . . writer norman podhoretz, for example, attacked what he called “the know- nothing bohemians” in a issue of partisan review. (in , podhoretz published “a howl of protest in san francisco” in the new republic, which was then expanded into “the know-nothing bohemians.”) comparing the beats to the previous american bohemianism of the s, which podhoretz describes as having “ideals [of] intelligence, cultivation, [and] spiritual refinement,” he claims that the s bohemianism “is another kettle of fish altogether”: “it is hostile to civilization; it worships primitivism, instinct, energy, ‘blood.’ to the extent that it has intellectual interests at all, they run to mystical doctrines, irrationalist philosophies, and left-wing reichianism. the only art the new bohemians have any use for is jazz, mainly of the cool variety.” (“the know-nothing bohemians,” beat down to your soul: what was the beat generation?, ed. ann charters [new york: penguin books, ], .) for podhoretz and others such as john ciardi, diana trilling, and irving howe, the beats were anti-intellectuals, “miserable children,” who merely put on a “front of disreputableness and rebellion.” (trilling, “the other night at columbia: a report from the academy,” beat down to your soul, .) these contemporary bohemians, such critics claimed, were interested only in superficially protesting against society and were certainly not capable of expanding the american literary tradition with their writing. (see john ciardi’s “epitaph for the dead beats” originally published in saturday review in february , diana trilling’s “the other night at columbia” originally published in partisan review in the spring of , and irving howe’s “mass society and modern fiction,” also published in partisan review .) the maynard g. krebs character of the many loves of dobie gillis (a popular television show that ran from to ) represents a more light-hearted version of this response to the beats—though nonetheless disparaging. krebs was the typical bohemian stereotype, speaking in beat slang like, “chick,” “beat,” and “dig,” and providing a stark contrast to the titular character in his general silliness and aversion to lxi work. also, krebs had a goatee and looked shabby in general, further playing into the bohemian stereotype as sloppy and anti-intellectual. . see, for example, charters’s beats and company, foster’s understanding the beats, and steve watson’s the birth of the beat generation. one notable exception to this is davidson’s discussion in the san francisco renaissance of the poetry of helen adam, joanne kyger, and judy grahn in his study of the (mostly male) beat poets on the west coast. . references to bonnie bremser/brenda frazer fluctuate from the use of her married name (bremser) to that of her maiden name (frazer); for consistency, i use frazer throughout the dissertation. . johnson’s and jones’s texts included in holly george-warren’s the rolling stone book of the beats were also nonfiction recollections of the beat period, essentially updated versions of memoir excerpts, but the entire collection was nonfiction essays documenting and commenting on the period—in contrast to charters’s literary anthology. . hunt makes a useful argument for the importance of the women beats’ memoirs: “the remembering and reconstructing and imaginative probing in works such as how i became hettie jones are context for understanding how writing got done in this period and thereby help us understand the broader cultural negotiation of beat that was not only the process of producing literary texts but also the process of creating literary communities and trying to leverage cultural change through those texts and communities.” “many drummers,” . . for example, see blossom kirschenbaum’s “diane di prima: extending la famiglia” and linda russo’s “on seeing poetic production: the case of hettie jones.” . as i discuss further in chapter three, barrett watten’s essay on jones discusses her memoir as well as her first book of poetry. . graduate students and established scholars alike regularly present conference papers on beat women such as johnson, di prima, cowen, and frazer. . cornel bonca, “the women who stayed home from the orgy,” rev. of women of the beat generation, by brenda knight and a different beat, by richard peabody, college literature : ( ): . . r. johnson, “‘and then she went’: beat departures and feminine transgressions in joyce johnson’s come and join the dance,” girls who wore black, . . as discussed earlier, there are multiauthor essays on the women beats, but, for example, the essays by amy friedman function more like surveys intended to introduce the female beats as writers and briefly discuss exemplary works from their oeuvres without exploring comparisons or contrasts in depth. nancy grace’s “snapshots” lxii also looks at the work of multiple women beats at once and provides an important comparison of the memoirs of four writers, but its focus only on the memoirs has itself been delimiting for several of these writers, as mentioned earlier. . rich, . . the connections between my project and the field of women’s writing stem from the groundbreaking work of sandra gilbert and susan gubar, who in constructing a canon of female writers in the s, identified patterns within the work of women writers, including efforts to consciously develop an identity as “women writers” as well as to, conversely, “[insist] on the genderlessness of the artist’s mind.” sandra m. gilbert, rereading women: thirty years of exploring our literary traditions (new york: w.w. norton & company, ), , . . see fred w. mcdarrah and timothy s. mcdarrah’s kerouac and friends for the use of “non-beat” in reference to poet frank o’hara of the new york school; my use of the term is similar, but more broadly as an alternative to “mainstream.” . see susan friedman’s mappings for a discussion of “identity” as simultaneously constructed by difference and sameness. she explains how identity “involves the perception of common qualities” with others and, at the same time, “requires a perception of difference from others in order for the recognition of sameness to come into play.” mappings: feminism and the cultural geographies of encounter (princeton, nj: princeton university press, ), . . r. johnson, “‘and then she went,’” ; rita felski, beyond feminist aesthetics: feminist literature and social change (cambridge: harvard university press, ), . . nick mansfield, subjectivity: theories of the self from freud to haraway (new york: new york university press, ), - . . sally robinson, engendering the subject: gender and self-representation in contemporary women’s fiction (albany: state university of new york press, ), - . . for more on subjectivity as a process and fundamentally affected by various forces outside of the self, see critics such as linda kinnahan, who draws on the work of diana fuss, teresa de lauretis, and mary gentile in poetics of the feminine and rachel duplessis, who draws on the work of julia kristeva in genders, races, and religious cultures in modern american poetry, - . . as i discuss further in chapter three, it is important to note that the women beats i examine here primarily engage in issues of a white, middle-class subjectivity. although they were marginalized because of their status as female writers, these beat women nevertheless garnered some privileges due to their race and class—not unlike lxiii many of the male beats—and this is reflected in their work as it is often uncritical of hegemonic racial norms or treats them only implicitly. . nancy k. miller, subject to change: reading feminist writing (new york: columbia university press, ), . . felski, . . johnson and grace, “visions,” . . “visions,” - . . the chronological basis of this distinction of the women beats as protofeminists and not feminists is slightly complicated when addressing those of their texts that were written during or after the feminist movement (such as the work of jones discussed in chapter three). but to remain consistent with the rationale provided by beat scholars and employed throughout the dissertation, i use the “proto” qualifier in each case. . as duplessis notes in her study of contemporary women’s writing as feminist in its revisions of (male) literary conventions, “one cannot claim complete exclusivity, as if no male novelist or poet had ever invented anything like … postromantic strategies. … the point does not have to be exclusive to be studied: for reasons that can be linked to their gender position, women writers formulate a critique of heterosexual romance.” (writing beyond the ending: narrative strategies of twentieth-century women writers [bloomington: indiana university press, ], xi.) robinson makes a similar argument in her study of contemporary women writers and their treatment of women’s self- representation. she writes, “to argue for a specificity of women’s writing does not necessarily entail a reading of women’s texts in isolation from men’s texts, the canon, or hegemonic representations of woman, the feminine, and so on.” (engendering the subject, .) likewise, my reading of the women beats’ work as feminist literature is not meant to exclude the possibility of male writers engaging in similar formal techniques or themes. . trigilio, “who writes? reading elise cowen’s poetry,” girls who wore black, . . johnson and grace, “visions,” . . cristanne miller, cultures of modernism: marianne moore, mina loy, & else lasker-schüler: gender and literary community in new york and berlin (ann arbor: university of michigan press, ), - . . c. miller, . . trigilio, . lxiv . trigilio, . . trigilio, . . whereas peabody includes only writers, knight’s anthology also includes “muses” (such as joan vollmer adams and edie parker kerouac) and “artists” (jay defeo and joan brown). . johnson and grace, “visions,” . there is similar debate regarding the male beats as well. see, for example, foster’s understanding the beats, tytell’s naked angel, cook’s the beat generation, and watson’s the birth of the beat generation. . “visions,” - . . hunt, . . interestingly, carol bergé dedicates a poem to hochman, but the nature of their relationship is unclear. see “fragment (a gift)” in from a soft angle. . r. johnson, “mapping,” . (“mapping” in breaking the rule of cool is an updated version of johnson and grace’s co-authored “visions” in girls who wore black.) the subsequent quotations in this paragraph are also from “mapping”: , . . both quotations in this paragraph are from r. johnson, “mapping,” . . ginsberg qtd. in peabody, . . this is the case in charters’s the portable beat reader and peabody’s anthology; knight includes an excerpt from jones’s memoir as well as one story and a few poems. . gillian rose, feminism and geography (cambridge: polity press, ), . . r. johnson, “‘you’re putting me on’: jack kerouac and the postmodern emergence,” the beat generation: critical essays, ed. kostas myrsiades (new york: peter lang, ), . chapter “so here i am the coolest in new york”: hip slang and the female bohemian in diane di prima’s this kind of bird flies backward i. introduction in the beats, one of the first anthologies of beat literature published in , writer and editor seymour krim introduced diane di prima as “one of the very few ultra- swinging girl writers on the scene.” included in this collection of “the most vital and controversial writers on the american scene” was only one other female writer, brigid murnaghan, described simply as “a fine upright beat lady.” as ann charters notes, di prima “didn’t play the role she was supposed to”—that of the silent woman in black. and as mentioned in the introduction, allen ginsberg himself noted di prima’s distinction among other women writers: “where there was a strong writer who could hold her own, like diane di prima, we would certainly work with her and recognize her.” it is unarguable that this recognition of di prima during the beat period itself has contributed to the fact that she is still the most renowned of the women beats. this distinction of di prima among other women beat writers can be attributed to her initiative and dedication to developing as a writer as well as to the quality of her writing itself. di prima’s role as a writer was primary for her; she sacrificed the financial stability that she may have acquired with a standard office job for the pursuit of her artistry. prompted by the publication of howl, she initiated a correspondence with city lights publisher lawrence ferlinghetti about her own writing, and from there developed friendships with various writers of the beat and closely associated literary communities, including ginsberg, jack kerouac, frank o’hara, and charles olson. like such male writers of the avant-garde, di prima experimented in her writing with language, form, and genre, and in , she self-published her first book of poetry with the help of various friends and printers. since that time, di prima has produced a prolific body of work that continues today to draw attention by both writers and critics. di prima’s oeuvre is remarkably varied in terms of genre and style. it represents the evolution of an artist whose work was shaped by a range of experiences that includes her involvement in the beat community of the s and s and in the civil rights and women’s rights movements of the s and s, as well as her practice of zen buddhism and her study of mythology. the progression of her work corresponds with her earliest experiences on the east coast, mostly in new york city but also in upstate ny in the mid- to late s, and later on the west coast, particularly san francisco, where she moved in . comprised of more than books, including poetry, prose, and memoirs, her body of work includes: this kind of bird flies backward ( ), a collection of approximately poems; dinners & nightmares ( ), a combination of poetry, short prose, conversations, and other literary forms that “revel in the domestic squalor and luxury” of new york city bohemia; the politically-charged, performance-based poetry of revolutionary letters ( ); and the prose poems of the calculus of variation ( ). the -part poem, loba (published between and ) is considered seminal in its “visionary exploration of woman as wolf goddess.” and perhaps the most popular of di prima’s work is memoirs of a beatnik, published in . described by di prima as a “potboiler” and by ronna johnson as “soft-core porno for hire,” memoirs is based on di prima’s re-imaginings of new york city that are “enhanced” by her fictional descriptions of “more sex” encouraged by the publishers—a distinct mixing of memoir and tantalizing fiction that helps explain the attention it receives. di prima more recently published a memoir true to the nonfictional promise of its genre, recollections of my life as a woman: the new york years ( ). recollections provides an engaging detailed account of her first years as she grew up and made her way through the early new york city bohemian arts culture, establishing herself as a poet, playwright, and publisher. this more recent memoir also highlights her work as co-founder and editor of ground-breaking literary magazines such as the floating bear, as founder of the poets press, and as co-founder of the new york poets theatre. throughout her prolific literary career, di prima has received numerous awards and honors, including poetry grants from the national endowment for the arts in and , the award for lifetime achievement in poetry from the national poetry association in , the fred cody award for lifetime achievement, and most recently, in , di prima was named san francisco’s fifth poet laureate. in this chapter, i read di prima’s first book of poetry, this kind of bird flies backward ( ), in conjunction with a collection of unpublished poetry as i trace how the development of her poetics was shaped by her shift from a suburban social space in college to the urban, avant-garde beat community in new york city. specifically, i examine how this shift led to a poetics marked by the use of hipster slang and the expression of female subjectivity. my analysis demonstrates how di prima uses the slang of the bohemian community to define and substantiate the identity of the bohemian— male or female—as well as to develop a subjectivity for the female bohemian in particular. i situate an unpublished collection of di prima’s poetry alongside one of her relatively understudied books in order to reveal the importance of hip slang for the development of di prima’s poetics through which she portrays the new york city bohemian culture and the female bohemian in important ways. specifically, i argue that di prima speaks overtly for the bohemian experience, using slang to embody one of the primary distinctions between the bohemian community and the mainstream. writing openly about themes such as individualism, love, and death through this defining characteristic of the beats, di prima gives voice and validation to the experiences of the bohemian. that is, she expresses and celebrates this figure’s subjectivity through the hipster slang that represents one of the countercultural community’s reactions against the mainstream. also importantly, this chapter draws attention to how di prima uses slang to speak specifically for the female bohemian. she develops a subjectivity for this figure who was marginalized and objectified by mainstream gender norms and even within the countercultural work of contemporary male poets, such as ginsberg and olson. as my analysis illustrates more specifically, in this kind of bird flies backward, not only does di prima include women in the bohemian community’s critique of society’s norms, but also she resists and revises the commonly objectified or victimized depictions of female figures as well as notions of romantic love and female sexuality as they were derisively perceived and represented by many mainstream and avant-garde male writers at the time. through the use of beat slang, considered inferior and vulgar by traditional literary standards, she boldly and unapologetically expresses female experiences of love, sex, and motherhood— experiences that are often silenced, suppressed, or distorted in postwar poetry. as noted in the introduction, di prima’s oeuvre receives more critical attention than those of most other female beat writers. current single-author studies on di prima include anthony libby’s “diane di prima: ‘nothing is lost: it shines in our eyes,’” in which libby traces the evolution of her revolutionary poetics, and timothy gray’s “‘the place where your nature meets mine’: diane di prima in the west,” a study of how experiences in various western parts of the country inflect her writing. also, roseanne giannini quinn’s “‘the willingness to speak’: diane di prima and an italian american feminist body politics” and anthony lioi’s “real presence: the numina in italian american poetry” each examine how di prima’s italian heritage takes shape in her work. the particular areas of di prima’s work that i focus on here, the development and practice of a slang and protofeminist poetics, are also present in various discussions of her work. amy friedman, for example, in “‘i say my new name’: women writers of the beat generation,” argues how “di prima eviscerates the myth of female domesticity” in the “thirteen nightmares” of dinners & nightmares and how she “superimposes the experiences of female creativity and fertility, and of motherhood” in poems written in the s, such as “song for baby-o, unborn,” “lullaby,” and “jeanne poems.” michael davidson and alicia suskin ostriker likewise address di prima’s attention to the topic of female identity throughout her work. further, within existing scholarship, as well as in various interviews, scholars consistently acknowledge and inquire about di prima’s experimental use of hip slang. in his attention to di prima’s mixing of opposites throughout her work, for example, libby briefly addresses the appearance of beat slang in the poetry of dinners & nightmares. the scope of libby’s essay, though, prevents a more sustained analysis of this aspect of her work. in fact, the use of slang within her work is more extensively addressed by di prima herself, as she frequently discusses her own understanding of the motivation for and effect of slang within her work in various published interviews. the existing discussions of both of these aspects of di prima’s work raise important issues about her work’s cultural, social, political, and racial implications, but overall, they are limited either to a cursory critical analysis within a broader discussion or to the author’s own descriptions in interviews. my reading of this kind of bird flies backward in conjunction with her unpublished college poetry provides a more sustained look at the development of di prima’s slang and protofeminist poetics in order to effectively understand the significance of her experience within the new york city beat community and how this largely affected her experimentation with language, style, and gender politics. this chapter will highlight the function of community for di prima’s poetics, draw attention to di prima’s first book in new and important ways, and demonstrate her unique contribution to the beat literary tradition as well as to the contemporary avant-garde and feminist studies. ii. the development of a beat poetics di prima’s development as a beat poet can be traced back to her shift from academia to the culturally-vibrant bohemian community of new york city. as a student at swarthmore college, di prima was reading traditional, formal poetry and struggling to write within these conventions. within the countercultural community of new york city, di prima developed a critical perspective toward academia, its poetic tradition, and the mainstream in general that then led to her experimental poetics. di prima was born in brooklyn in , and her earliest poetry found in handwritten notebooks is dated at age six. though she had been writing for several years, at age , di prima realized her desire to “be poet [sic].” when she read novelist somerset maugham’s reference to a keats quotation (“beauty is truth, truth beauty” from “ode on a grecian urn”), she was inspired to seek out keats’s letters, which then significantly shaped her ideas about poetry and strongly influenced her commitment to the arts. in particular, di prima explains that keats’s theory of the imagination had a profound impact on her, helping her realize that “if you could imagine anything clearly enough, and tell it precisely enough, … you could bring it about.” likewise, keats’s concept of negative capability influenced di prima’s sense of how, as a poet, she could write freely, “not pursuing any viewpoint” deliberately through her work, but rather “letting [poetry] come through you. leaving behind opinion and judgment.” immersing herself in keats’s letters, di prima continued to write poetry, but her brief stint at college from the fall of to the end of would prove to be a rather difficult experience for her and inhibit her poetic development as she recalls in her memoir, recollections of my life as a woman. di prima characterizes swarthmore college as having a “cold intellect,” which made her feel “buried alive”—as an environment where she could “smell the ultimate poverty of spirit.” she attended the private liberal arts college in the philadelphia suburbs because her parents thought a relatively small college not too far from their brooklyn home would be most suitable. at age , she initially welcomed the opportunity to be away from her home and family but soon discovered college as a place “cut off from the world” that made her feel lost. she describes constantly trying to write at swarthmore but ultimately being unable to produce: “this is the only place i have ever been where it is next to impossible to write a poem.” she was studying the classics such as chaucer and shakespeare in her english classes, and found her professors to be “tired [and] cynical.” though she had access to outdoor space unavailable at home in brooklyn and took part in conventional college activities such as attending football games, dating, and drinking beer, di prima describes the environment at swarthmore as “dreary”— perhaps a combination of the tiresome approach to studying literature by her “jaded” professors and her superficial attempts to fit in and take part in the “normal” college experience. di prima’s overwhelming desire to go “no day without a line” set her apart from most other students on campus. she attempted to spend some of her time privately, but found that the girls around her worried about such “odd” behavior. she explains, i frequently shut my door, lock it sometimes, play music, write, and daydream. sometimes when i open it, i find people waiting outside. … they always say that they are worried. so unusual is it to lock one’s door that sometimes they wonder if i killed myself. i hate it. feel invaded. hate being spied on. some of di prima’s new friends did share her artistic interests (a group that she describes as “all maverick”), but they began dropping out by the second year. wanting to live as a student and poet on her own terms, di prima began to see that her “hunger for truth [was] turning into rage.” her individual interests and values set her apart from most others, and as her friends in similar circumstances began leaving, the suburban college setting left her feeling isolated and dispirited. in manhattan for winter break in , di prima became overwhelmed with what new york city had to offer, particularly in contrast to that of the college environment: i am again in new york. it is a relief to be here: the energy, the noise of the city. even the crudeness—loud voices on streets and in restaurants—is a blessing. nothing here is muffled or polite. it is huge and unruly and jostling for space. i find it exhilarating. having completed only three semesters, she dropped out of swarthmore at the end of and moved to manhattan—a place that could nurture rather than stifle her independent and artistic spirit. di prima was intensely drawn to the life of new york city from a young age. as she describes in her memoir, her grandfather would take her out at night when she could absorb “the lights, the noises” and “smells of mystery” that captivated her. as a young woman, di prima and her friends “felt safe and at home” in the city. and upon leaving swarthmore, it was in new york city that she, along with fellow artists, be it a “writer, dancer, painter, musician, actor, photographer, sculptor, you name it” sought to live and create. in a vivid passage from memoirs of a beatnik, di prima describes her all- encompassing “love affair” with new york city as: an overwhelming love of the alleys and warehouses, of the strange cemetery downtown at trinity church, of wall street in the dead of night, cathedral parkway on sunday afternoons, of the chrysler building gleaming like fabled towers in the october sun, the incredible prana and energy in the air, stirring a creativity that seemed to spring from the fiery core of the planet and burst like a thousand boiling volcanoes in the music and painting, the dancing and the poetry of this magic city. though di prima would eventually realize that “new york city was not the center, but one center” after taking several trips to different parts of the west of the country beginning in , new york city provided di prima with the culturally- and creatively- stimulating life she sought as a young bohemian. once she moved to the lower east side of manhattan in early , di prima promptly immersed herself in the burgeoning arts scene around her. she had experienced firsthand at swarthmore the deadening impact of the academic establishment and of mainstream conformity in general, and the bohemian community in new york city provided a space within which her critical perspective on academia and literary conventions could be developed and supported. she and her fellow “outlaw artist renunciants” positioned themselves deliberately on the margins of the mainstream so as to escape the growing materialism and “get-ahead thrust of america ”—and they did so collectively. distancing oneself from the mainstream at this time certainly did not entail individual isolation. on the contrary, with other artists similarly seeking refuge from the steadily “progressing” post-wwii society—manifested in what they perceived to be the mainstream’s threatening conformity and homogeneity—di prima found a community of various artists who strongly believed in the importance of fostering personal creativity and individual freedom. as i discuss in more detail later, an essential part of such a countercultural community is the use of language as a means for its members to embody and express their nonconformity. the use of beat slang that reflects this particular community’s cultural and social rebellion appears in di prima’s first book of poetry and continued to evolve throughout her body of work—becoming one of the defining characteristics of her poetics. dinners & nightmares, for example, which contains much of the poetry first published in this kind of bird flies backward, also contains new material, in which di prima extends her use of slang to several other genres, such as short prose and what she calls conversations. in one of the conversations, “the quarrel,” di prima describes the female speaker’s anger and resentment toward her lover, mark, for his sexist assumption that she should do the dishes because she’s a woman and he has more important things to do. capturing the hegemonic hierarchical relationship between men and women even within this bohemian setting, di prima describes the speaker thinking to herself: “i probably have just as fucking much work to do as you do. … i am just as lazy as you. … just because i happen to be a chick i thought.” but the speaker suppresses her anger and doesn’t actually say any of this to mark “because it’s so fucking uncool to talk about it.” in this text’s themes of what ostriker aptly refers to as “masculine self-love and feminine self-suppression hipster-style,” di prima’s use of slang is simplistic and cliché, using words such as “chick” and “uncool.” nevertheless, in conjunction with the use of profanity, this use of slang depicts the female bohemian’s frustrated response to a struggle that is itself clichéd. that is, the male bohemian perpetuates the same gender- based behavior responsible for marginalizing women within the mainstream. and in this way, di prima’s particular use of clichéd slang evenly reflects the situation to which the female bohemian responds. in subsequent poetry, such as that published in the new handbook of heaven ( ), earthsong ( ), and loba, di prima’s use of slang is combined with a more experimental use of space on the page as well as with her adoption of ezra pound’s abbreviations, such as wd, yr, cdnt. a poem such as earthsong’s “the passionate hipster to his chick” exemplifies di prima’s use of slang and humor as she presents a contemporary version of christopher marlowe’s “the passionate shepherd to his love”: come live with me and be my love and we will all the pleasures prove that railroad flat or hot-rod wheel or tea-pads am conceal. and we will sit upon the floor and watch the junkies bolt the door by one cool trumpeter whose beat tells real bad tales for the elite. and i will make a bed of coats and dig with you the gonest notes. you’ll get a leather cap and jacket i know a cat that’s in the racket … i know a bunch that really blows from friday night till sunday goes if all these kickes thy minde may move then live with me, and be my love. writing in the same form as the renaissance poet and using marlowe’s opening and closing lines, di prima quite humorously replaces, for example, marlowe’s shepherd’s offer to share with his love the experience of “seeing the shepherds feed their flocks” and to hand make “a gown made of the finest wool” with her hipster’s offer to “watch the junkies bolt the door” and give his “chick” a stolen “leather cap and jacket”—all while “digging the gonest notes.” also, marlowe’s “delights” are substituted with di prima’s “kickes” in the penultimate line (a spelling itself symbolizing di prima’s playful revision of marlowe’s “literary” language). in this particular example, di prima overtly responds to the formal poetic tradition of the renaissance, which is represented in the contemporary period by the academic poetry of writers such as robert lowell and richard wilbur. in her slang revision of this classic “literary” poem, di prima deliberately mocks the traditional. and it is precisely this playful use of slang that di prima incorporates throughout her work in various ways—all of which functions to represent her interpretations of the new york city bohemian community experience. it is important to note that once di prima left the new york city bohemian scene and settled on the west coast, the appearance of slang within her poetry decreased. timothy gray points out that in conjunction with di prima’s move from “the harsher style of the new york scene” to the west and its “ecological and mystical paradigms,” her “diction and tone [veer] away from hipster irony.” nevertheless, in a poem written in the s such as “a spell for felicia, that she come away,” di prima’s depiction of a “chick” trapped in domestic burdens is powerfully expressed through the hipster slang that characterizes her earliest work. di prima also moves back and forth between hipster slang and more elevated poetic diction throughout loba, an epic poem in which she “rewrites western religious history, its central narratives and characters, to refigure god and the soul in the form of a sister.” given the hip slang’s roots within the new york city bohemian scene, it is not surprising that its prevalence decreases throughout di prima’s later work; as her context and subject matter evolves, so does her poetic style. indeed, the evolution of her use of slang throughout her body of work helps demonstrate the progression of di prima as a poet over + years. iii. the colloquial and slang in american poetry between and , di prima wrote the poetry that would be published in this kind of bird flies backward. like many of her contemporaries, such as olson, o’hara, robert creeley, joanna mcclure, joanne kyger, and carol bergé, di prima followed in the tradition of walt whitman in the use of the colloquial. whitman, along with other key american literary figures such as washington irving and mark twain, championed the value and the literary use of slang. in “slang in america” published in , for example, whitman argues that slang is the root of the american language, that which “produces poets and poems.” he argues, “slang not only brings the first feeders of [language], but is afterward the start of fancy, imagination and humor, breathing into its nostrils the breath of life.” as louis untermeyer describes, whitman was one of the first american writers to favor “the richness and vigor of the casual word” at the expense of “the polite language of the pulpit and the lifeless rhetoric of its libraries.” in an effort to develop a uniquely american literature that would draw on the subtle differences between american speech and the english literary language, whitman elevated the language of the masses through his writing, blurring the boundary between formal or “literary” language and the colloquial. this colloquial tradition strongly influenced modernist poets such as william carlos williams and ezra pound, and for contemporary avant-garde poets, this literary style signified their “reaction against the serious, ironic, ostentatiously well made lyric that dominated the post-war poetry scene.” as james smethurst describes, one of the key factors that characterized di prima and other contemporary poets was the “shared concern with establishing an authentic american diction that was both popular and literary, both self-parodic and self-celebratory, and often saturated with the vocabulary, the usages, and the accents of mass culture.” like their literary predecessors, the avant- garde poets of the s were inspired to cultivate poetry that used concrete particulars and everyday objects for its subject and the “vocabulary drawn from up-to-date american speech” and “the cadences of contemporary american life” for its language and rhythm. the opening lines from o’hara’s “adieu to norman, bon jour to joan and jean- paul” ( ) represent the post-wwii poet’s deliberate use of “non-literary” language: it is : in new york and i am wondering if i will finish this in time to meet norman for lunch ah lunch! i think i am going crazy what with my terrible hangover and the weekend coming up as illustrated here, the work of many “new american” poets (in the words of donald allen) reflected a direct resistance to the willfully complex, symbolist, opaque poetry practiced by t.s. eliot and other formalists. considered to be impersonal and objective, the academic poetry of new critics and the new york intellectuals provided the model against which di prima and other poets in new york city, along with those of contemporaneous communities, such as the black mountain and san francisco poets, would work. di prima and other beat writers, such as ginsberg, however, infused their poetry not only broadly with the colloquial, but also specifically with the slang used by the new york city bohemian community. for example, in love poem # from this kind of bird flies backward, di prima writes, remember you long as sodomy, sure as the black taste of morning timeless as folded to no love backwards lips and the arch ache swinging from back to thighs clued in for crazy cool and endless not enough. not yet. for di prima, the colloquial is highly contextualized—using words and phrases (such as “swinging” and “crazy cool”) derived from and evoking rhythms akin to the s and s bebop scene. and in this particular example, di prima’s use of slang has a sharpness, a vividness, generally lacking in the relatively plain colloquial of o’hara’s poem. somewhat similarly, ginsberg’s use of slang is characterized by an intensity and richness of language. in howl, for instance, ginsberg describes how the “best minds of [his] generation” were a lost battalion of platonic conversationalists jumping down the stoops off fire escapes off windowsills off empire state out of the moon, yacketayakking screaming vomiting whispering facts and memories and anecdotes and eyeball kicks and shocks of hospitals and jails and wars as jonah raskin explains, ginsberg “released a torrent of words, images, emotions, and experiences,” writing “with verbal pyrotechnics, rhetorical flourishes, and dramatic phrases.” in effect, raskin argues, “reading [howl] yields a feeling of intoxication. the words produce an electrical charge that is exhilarating.” ginsberg’s use of slang is notably original, often defying common usage, and this has largely defined ginsberg’s strength as a poet. in contrast to the overt intensity of ginsberg’s poetics, di prima’s slang poetics is generally more subtle and minimalist—fluctuating in her representative first book of poetry from the less frequent but more textured use of slang, such as in the love poem quoted above, to the more frequent literal use of slang and the appearance of some clichéd slang such as “cool,” “dig,” and “flip.” the quotation in the title of this chapter, for example, “so here i am the coolest in new york,” illustrates di prima’s use of the simple and commonplace phrase “the coolest” as well as the considerable sparseness of her poetic line to express the bravado of the beat writer. such stylistic distinctions between ginsberg’s and di prima’s use of slang may suggest that di prima’s poetics is less bold or effective than ginsberg’s. in fact, it could be argued that, at least superficially, her style affirms mainstream critiques of the beats as anti-intellectuals, claims that the use of hipster slang indicates a “simple inability to express anything in words,” as critic norman podhoretz argued in the late s. however, this is not the case. the style of di prima’s slang poetics signifies her endeavor to self-consciously construct and portray the identity and voice of the beat or bohemian figure. writing poetry in a style that is, as seymour krim described in , “honest [and] terse,” di prima asserts and expresses a beat stance with purity and authenticity, using the language spoken on the margins of society as a means of communicating truths from this outsider perspective. she uses beat slang as it is spoken in its basic form as a means to validate and substantiate the experience of the bohemian. while ginsberg reacts against the formal and considerably dense quality of traditionalist poetry in a whitmanesque style, di prima does so in a minimalist style—like that of williams—infusing her poetry with “the vocabulary, the usages, and the accents” of her fellow nonconformists in a manner that is unadorned. within a discussion of how the beats’ language developed through the “absorption of the vocabularies of marginalized cultures and subcultures that had developed distinctive dialects,” robert holton argues that there is more to the use of jargon than what it might represent superficially. in the words of m.m. bakhtin, “language is conceived as ideologically saturated, language [is] a world view.” it is my contention that di prima’s slang poetics embodies this notion of language as representative of a “world view” as it represents her confrontation and revision of the traditional in multiple ways. her slang poetics resists and revises the traditional as it is represented by the poetic use of “literary” language, by the marginalization of the beat or nonconformist in general, as well as by the subordination of women in society and literature. thus, the boldness or intensity of her poetics lies, not necessarily in the actual slang itself—though sometimes this is the case—but in her efforts to express the bohemian experience with honesty and authenticity, as well as to speak directly for the female bohemian—all while using beat slang. importantly, as noted earlier, this latter achievement stands in distinct contrast to much of the work of di prima’s male beat and non-beat contemporaries, including howl and its almost exclusive focus on the experiences of ginsberg’s fellow “underground men.” the motivation behind such efforts is also highlighted when the slang poetics of this kind is situated alongside di prima’s earlier college poetry, as this reveals a deliberate shift from a more sophisticated to a more seemingly simplistic use of language that is nevertheless powerful and provocative. iv. di prima’s slang and protofeminist poetics slang and individualism in this kind of bird flies backward a brief overview of the overall style of this kind is useful to contextualize my more focused discussion of its slang. like williams, pound, and h.d. before her, di prima’s early poetics can be described as “on a thin diet” —seeking precision and directness through minimalism and a use of the vernacular rather than presenting extraneous description and abstract symbolism through “literary” language. as such, throughout this kind, the poetry is concise, using language sparingly, but effectively. the appearance of slang fluctuates throughout the book—more prominent in some poems than in others. overall, this first book of di prima’s poetry reads as casual, playful, energetic, and self-assured. in notably short lines, ranging from monosyllabic lines to the less frequent length of or syllables, there is an immediacy to this poetry; most of the poems are fast-paced and unrhymed, at times staccato-like, expressing an overall informality and spontaneity. also, there is an almost exclusive use of the lowercase throughout this kind, contrasted only infrequently, such as in this first of three playful “riffs” in all capitalized letters: so babe who sez it’s cool to cut just cause the house burned down? the capitalization here clearly evokes a sense of urgency, and the first five lines of two syllables each read with a well-defined beat, evoking its own rhythm as a bebop piece might—an effect suggested by the title of this short series itself, “riffs.” following this capitalized poem is the second “riff” below, which in almost all lowercase and with wider spacing reads much more casually, at a slower pace that virtually embodies the very directions the speaker gives: walk easy hang loose stay cool just once i dare you as in this poem, the majority of poetry of this kind lacks end punctuation, contributing to the casualness or informality of the speaker as well as to the open-endedness of the poem. in the third and final “riff,” di prima poses a question without a question mark: what happens on the day the sky doesn’t fall di prima reverses the typical form of the idiomatic exclamation that the sky is falling here. in conjunction with her resistance to standard capitalization and punctuation, the idiomatic reversal embodies the poetic experimentation and nonconformity that represents the bohemian experience itself. further, the pacing of the poetry throughout this kind is most effectively achieved through the combination of di prima’s experimentation with capitalization, punctuation, and lineation. specifically, the staccato-like rhythm of many of the poems in this kind is often achieved through di prima’s playfulness with enjambment, similar to williams’ lineation in a poem such as “the red wheelbarrow” as well as in the work of his poetic admirer, robert creeley. incorporating similarly unconventional line breaks in her poetry, di prima fragments her poems in unexpected ways, at times emphasizing particular words and images. overall, this helps her achieve a playful, though sometimes choppy pace that may defy readers’ expectations—creating unexpected pauses and, in doing so, actually propelling the reader forward. although the following poem lacks the slang more strongly illustrated in the preceding poems, each stanza of “the window” demonstrates di prima’s use of enjambment in conjunction with the absence of punctuation and sentence- or line-based capitalization that blurs sentence boundaries and achieves a moderate halting effect. here is the poem in its entirety: you are my bread and the hairline noise of my bones you are almost the sea you are not stone or molten sound i think you have no hands this kind of bird flies backward and this love breaks on a windowpane where no light talks this is not time for crossing tongues (the sand here never shifts) i think tomorrow turned you with his toe and you will shine and shine unspent and underground that each stanza begins with an end-stopped line and then proceeds with enjambed lines embodies di prima’s undoing of poetic convention as the poem progresses. the isolation of a word like “noise” in the first stanza gives it particular emphasis as its own line, creating a pause at this insult of the addressee, who is described in this way as a nuisance for the speaker, trivial and bothersome. somewhat similarly, the enjambment of the final four lines of the poem creates suspense as the speaker first hints to the addressee: “and you will,” then teases with the one-word line, “shine,” teases again with the repetition of “and shine,” then concludes with the final defeat: “unspent and underground.” examining the style of this kind in these ways brings into focus how di prima uses beat slang as well as the colloquial, more broadly, to represent the nonconformity and express the agency of the bohemian. for example, most of the end-stopped lines of “the window”: “you are my bread,” “you are not stone,” “i think,” “you have no hands,” and “this kind of bird flies backward” illustrate how di prima speaks for the bohemian from a position of agency. at times, this is illustrated through a contrast between an enjambment like “you are almost / the sea” and the end-stopped “i think,” which is, significantly, the only line to appear twice in the poem. the “you” in this poem has no hands, has lost the ability to feel or touch or reach out on its own. in contrast, the speaker’s presence is asserted clearly and strongly and demands the reader’s attention accordingly in a line such as “i think.” as this analysis suggests, threaded throughout this kind is the theme of the importance and celebration of individualism that is expressed through the speaker’s confrontation of an outside force attempting to objectify or inhibit the speaker, somehow threatening the speaker’s independence and subjectivity. “the window,” notably the first poem of this kind, presents di prima’s speaker as having overtaken a previously overpowering or oppressive force, aptly representing di prima’s effort to assert the voice and agency of the bohemian. having overpowered an omnipresent force, the speaker accepts and embraces that she is different from others. she thrives on her uniqueness: “this kind of bird flies backward / and this love / breaks on a windowpane / where no light talks.” the speaker no longer feels pressured to “fly” in the same direction that others do. it is the “you” of this poem that is doomed to “shine / and shine / unspent and underground.” in this way, di prima presents an image of the bohemian as strong and independent. the lack of standard capitalization exemplified in “the window” also helps convey the collection’s theme of self-assertion and agency. di prima’s consistent adherence to the capitalization of “i” within this kind represents not her adherence to poetic convention—as evident in the variety of experimental uses of language, form, and mechanics—but rather her deliberate assertion of the presence and agency of the “i” for which she speaks. what seems to be her acceptance of convention works in conjunction with the unconventional practices of di prima’s poetics to embody the very nature of bohemia itself: not an outright rejection of all that is considered conventional, but rather a lifestyle defined by oneself rather than by others or the “norm.” of ultimate importance in bohemia and in di prima’s poetry is one’s ability to decide for him or herself—to resist conformity. di prima’s consistent use of the capitalized “i” exemplifies the confidence with which the bohemian speaks as a nonconformist. the second poem of the collection continues the first poem’s assertion and celebration of those who are considered different or those who “fly backward”—in this case, the unicorns: notice to all land offices: investigate new holdings it is rumored that the unicorns have staked a large claim in the rocky mountains di prima uses the simplistic metaphor of the unicorns—a symbol of the unique, of the nonconformist—to describe the individual strength generated by the solidarity of all of the unicorns. this image of the unicorn reappears in “tale for a unicorn” in dinners and nightmares, in which di prima writes that “poets and unicorns … belong to the myth kingdom” in which they can “see each other even when they are invisible to other species and this makes them very attached to each other.” indeed, no longer hiding or living in the outskirts, beyond the center of things, “the unicorns” in this poem are staking their claim in the land, representing di prima’s effort to substantiate the image of the bohemian. and in the third poem of the collection, the final line is a direct and playful example of a stereotypical slang expression of the bohemian: i don’t forget things fast enough, i sing last summer’s ballads winter long like that’s uncool in the last line that is positioned apart from the preceding stanza, di prima marks her poetic style with a hip bravado that maintains the tone of self-assertion established in the preceding two poems. in this short poem, di prima represents another instance of going against the grain; she mocks the idea that a minor deviation from the norm could set someone apart from the crowd and lead to the dismissal of someone who might “sing / last summer’s ballads / winter long” as “uncool.” and in doing so with the poem’s final line that presents a play on the bohemian’s use of slang, di prima writes in a language that smethurst describes as simultaneously “self-parodic” and “self-celebratory.” these representative poems of this kind illustrate the overall poetics of the collection, including di prima’s use of the colloquial mixed with hip slang such as “babe” and the casual and phonetic “sez,” as well as phrases such as “hang loose” and “stay cool.” i suggested earlier that the simplistic or seemingly dated style of this slang may appear to confirm the critique of the beats as anti-intellectual by the mainstream media or academic critics at the time. for many of these critics, the beats’ “know-nothing[ness]” was represented in their literary use of hip slang. more recently, in one of the critical studies of di prima’s work, libby argues in a cursory discussion of her poetic slang that “her use of hip slang, such as ‘cool,’ ‘dig,’ ‘pad,’ and ‘chick,’ … does not wear well.” that is, libby argues, di prima’s use of “self-consciously in-group jargon troubles the surface of the poems” unlike “the less specifically marked colloquial language [that] is an effective counterbalance to the ancient high style of romantic utterance.” in light of such arguments, it is my contention that di prima’s particular use of beat slang—self- consciously cliché at times—signifies her reaction against critiques of the beats as uncultured and as artificial or ineffectual nonconformists and highlights her efforts to speak for the beats’ fundamental resistance to mainstream values in a way that frequently takes shape through a playful irony. that is, she uses slang that might be considered “primitive” with self-awareness —as a means to express the agency of the beat figure and to reinforce the beats’ countercultural critique of mainstream values and conventions that, in large part, is developed through the use of hipster slang itself. indeed, from the start of this kind, her slang poetics works in conjunction with her experimentation with conventions of verse form, lineation, punctuation, and capitalization to speak for the bohemian as a clearly identified “i”—an individual uninhibited by others’ resistance to difference. an earlier poetics of tradition and struggle the emphasis on the nonconformity and individualism of the bohemian that takes place through the slang poetics of this kind is further highlighted when situated alongside and against the poetry that di prima wrote during her years at college. notably, this earlier poetry is relatively traditional in its formal diction and style; it reflects di prima’s study of poetry at the time, including the british romantics and shakespeare. also important to note is that the poetry of her college period is distinct from the previously-discussed poetry of this kind in that it speaks from a position of struggle rather than of confidence or strength in the face of conformity. this examination of di prima’s earlier unpublished poetry reveals an original and often striking use of language and imagery that is especially significant in light of what i described above as a seemingly simplistic use of slang and imagery in this kind. that di prima’s developing poetics shifted from a more overt level of sophistication to a more informal, unadorned, and minimalist style underscores the deliberateness with which her latter “anti- intellectual” poetics was composed. the following poem, dated october , illustrates di prima’s practice of poetic convention in the poetry from her college period: return not twice where ethel goes in youth and dance and song when summer berries burst their skins and summer grass is long but come you back when grass is dry and white bones reach like trees and grave upon your heart in pain what ethel never sees. several aspects of this poem are particularly distinctive when compared to the poetry of this kind. perhaps foremost is the use of the rhyme scheme called common measure, in which the lines alternate from iambic tetrameter to iambic trimeter with an abcb rhyme scheme. such standard form was used by emily dickinson as well as british romantics williams wordsworth and percy bysshe shelley. other notable formalities of this poem include the diction itself, closer in style to that of the academic poetry of the time; the colloquial is absent here, as is the fundamental casualness or energy of di prima’s slang poetics of this kind. with the conventional diction throughout the poem and the inverted syntax in lines one and five, the poem evokes a formal tone. and the use of capitalization and end punctuation further characterizes the overall use of convention here and highlights the contrast to the poetry of this kind. similarly, in the following poem, dated , di prima uses the half measure abab rhyme scheme, maintained through the use of a contraction in line seven: now i turn from dust and stone where the broken things suffice tossing like a driftwood bone in a sea of splintered ice. now from rain i turn to rest quite alone prepare to sleep. cold. the fiercer way’s the best. lad, a restless bed i keep. in its traditional form and standard diction, the poem avoids local references, seeming timeless and placeless—a notable contrast to the locality of slang. and not unlike the previous poem’s imagery of deterioration resulting from the passing of time, this poem represents what will be an eternal struggle as the speaker faces death with resistance, implied by the “splintered” ice, the “restless” sleep, and the “cold” of this final rest that is given particular emphasis in its one word sentence. as these two poems exemplify, di prima’s college-period poetry contrasts with the poetry of this kind not only in its use of formal convention, but also in its theme of the struggle to survive, to maintain one’s sense of self and individuality. throughout the poetry of this short period, the use of regular meter and rhyme scheme is less consistent than the use of formal or elevated diction, standard line capitalization, punctuation, and the themes of isolation, despair, and struggle, all of which works together to express a markedly serious tone. specifically, thematic variations of the inability to maintain one’s individuality are expressed through a poetic voice that is often immobile or struggling in darkness or blindness under some threatening or oppressive force. the theme of struggle in these poems points up the important shift in di prima’s poetry represented by this kind’s emphasis on the acceptance and celebration of one’s individuality. in another example of this darker college-period poetry, di prima writes, i have been taken apart and marked and now, though i walk with many none can touch me. the mark of the brand is deep salve will not heal it nor will the crimson be quieted. angry and searing it eats thru the flesh the pain is chill at my marrow. the speaker suffers at the hands of difference, of being “marked” by something outside of herself, and as such, cannot meaningfully connect to anyone around her. rather, she breathes through the pain and is subject to endure in this way for time to come. in its free verse form, this poem stylistically performs the very chaos and uncontrollability of the speaker’s situation. and while this poem illustrates a higher level of sophistication than the previous examples in their restricted use of traditional form, it also heightens the contrast between the style and theme of this earlier poetry and that of this kind. additionally, throughout her college-period poetry, di prima frequently uses images of threatening or dangerous elements to evoke feelings of suffocation or paralysis for her speakers. in “receive what comes,” for example, an “oil green lake” “swallow[s] all,” making any individual hopes, desires, or questions meaningless. and there is “the fluid / and it is thick, like syrup” that causes “strengthlessness” and the speaker’s plea for others to “stand / walk / try / before you die of it” in “strengthlessness, weak at the hands.” the imagery used in these poems to depict themes of intense struggle and oppression works in conjunction with the use of formal diction, mechanics, and poetic structure described above to express the theme of isolation and struggle throughout this poetry. this earlier collection of poetry uses language such as “redundant ones,” “exiles,” or “the lost ones” to refer to those who were outcast and suffering because of their individualism. in contrast, the poetry of this kind uses relatively cliché language such as “bird,” “unicorn,” and “the coolest” to emphasize the acceptance and celebration of individualism and difference that di prima highlights through her use of beat slang. as i noted earlier, she uses beat slang in such a manner—seemingly simplistic and unoriginal, yet pure and authentic—in order to underscore the function of beat slang in a “self- parodic” fashion. another primary distinction between the two sets of poems is the lighter, self-possessed poetic voice that characterizes the poetry of this kind—a voice expressed through the use of slang and various other unconventional formal practices. in a final illustration of this contrast, di prima contemplates struggle and fear in the following, dated january : god give me strength i am afraid of pain death, though it comes but once is a terrible thing but pain cannot be borne it comes too many times. included in this kind, di prima writes the following: there’s one or two dominions i’d give death rather than have this other thing corrosion sit pretty there not afraid to face death or the pain that accompanies it, di prima’s speaker in this latter poem is willing to concede to death if it means the end of “corrosion” that pretends to “sit pretty” around her. this comparison between di prima’s two early collections of poems demonstrates that along with di prima’s use of slang and experimentation with various other poetic conventions, her poetic voice transformed from more formal and fearful to more casual and bold. the poetry di prima produced during her time at college is dark in tone and theme and restricted in form and language, whereas the poetry produced within the new york city bohemian community is lighter and playful in tone, more self-assured in theme, and unrestricted by form or language. as noted above, these two sets of poems are also distinguished by the former’s sophisticated use of language and imagery in contrast to the latter’s frequent use of dated or simplistic slang and imagery that might suggest a dullness or lack of quality, especially when situated alongside the slang poetics of a contemporary like ginsberg. these contrasts, however, highlight the way in which di prima’s particular use of language and style in this kind works in conjunction with the poems’ thematic emphasis on an unwavering celebration of an authentic american experience that is achieved through resistance to constraining traditions and expectations—including the use of “literary” or academic language. this development of di prima’s avant-garde poetics took shape within the context of the new york city bohemian community. unlike the rigid and formal environment of swarthmore, the bohemian community in new york city represented a space within which nonconformists could thrive as individuals in light of the absence of the mainstream threat of conformity. in its anti-establishment, anti-academic perspective, the bohemian community provided the space within which di prima could move away from tradition and toward a more personal expression of creativity—and it is this emphasis on individualism and authenticity that i argue di prima’s first book of poetry embodies. as described earlier, di prima considers her development as an artist to have truly begun when she moved to new york city. as my analysis illustrates, simultaneous with di prima’s departure from the polite, orderly, prescribed social and cultural context of college, was her departure from the similarly formal and disciplined poetic tradition, and her move toward a slang poetics through which she could move away from struggle and insecurity to express agency as a bohemian. the female bohemian what makes di prima’s poetics in this kind especially important is her use of slang in a consciously “female” way. significantly, di prima gives voice to and develops a subjectivity for the objectified and marginalized figure of the female bohemian. this is particularly important given how even contemporary avant-garde poets like ginsberg, gregory corso, and john wieners continue to perpetuate the inferiority and marginalization of the female gender through their poetry, however unwittingly. in “praise for sick women,” for example, gary snyder seems to sympathize with the female experience of menstruation, as he compares this “sickness” to “hell” as women are “in a bark shack / crouched from sun, five days, / blood dripping through crusted thighs.” yet, he simultaneously and uncritically maintains that women’s physical “fertility” precludes any mental “fertility.” he writes, the female is fertile, and discipline (contra naturam) only confuses her who has, head held sideways arm out softly, touching, a difficult dance to do, but not in mind. routinely subject to this “sickness,” then, women are “wounded,” left only to “[dream] of long-legged dancing in light,” snyder suggests. in contrast to such portrayals of women in which their intellectual, emotional, and physical capacities are limited by their biology, di prima’s portrayal of the female experience reveals women’s participation in the bohemian community’s critique of dominant gender discourse and provides representations of love and sexuality from a female perspective. in doing so, she revises the notions of women as innately distinct from men intellectually, as unconditionally content in or even naturally desiring the role of wife and/or mother, and as “silent.” in these ways, di prima addresses the female malaise that would soon receive national attention with the publication of the feminine mystique in —indeed, this remarkable aspect of this kind highlights di prima’s work as protofeminist. di prima expresses authenticity and honesty in her poems overtly on love and sex, such as the grittiness and hostility or anger often experienced by women who were consistently faced with others’ expectations of submissiveness or passivity. in doing so, di prima exposes aspects of the female experience traditionally expected to remain private and unspoken. what is especially notable about her work is that she does this while using the same style of hip slang that i examined earlier. not only does her particular style of slang poetics in the context of female identity and subjectivity reflect the female beat experience with boldness and bravado, but also it largely relies on clichéd slang as a means to confront and subvert the subordination or objectification of women that has itself become trite. further, di prima was able to integrate women’s experiences into her poetry that, in general, speaks for the bohemian community as a whole—rather than merely reversing the traditional hierarchical gender binary. while contemporary male poets tend to exclude women or narrowly represent them in their writing, men are not absent from nor necessarily subordinated within di prima’s descriptions of bohemia. that is, for di prima, making women visible does not necessarily entail making men invisible or marginal. the title of this kind’s love poems series itself signifies di prima’s resistance to dominant conventions and portrayals of women at the time, as within this series, she starkly disrupts traditional notions of love and of expectations for women’s roles in romantic relationships. the thirteen love poems are written in similar language and style to the other poems of the collection, and using the slang of the bohemian community, di prima provides candid portrayals of the female bohemian’s romantic and sexual experiences. the love poems describe the female speaker’s various reactions to relationships or lovers throughout which she attempts to express and maintain a position of being “cool” and in control of her own experiences and relationships. throughout these poems, the speaker describes extremely intimate knowledge and ownership of her own and her lovers’ bodies, as well as sexual experimentation and assertiveness—all of which reverses the passivity and relative silence of women that normative gender roles assume. the first poem in this series begins abruptly with a violent expression of rage, which functions to quite startlingly raise questions about how the “love” of the series title is defined or by whom: i hope you go thru hell tonight beloved. i hope you choke to death on lumps of stars and by your bed a window with frost and moon on frost and you want to scream and can’t because your woman is (i hope) right there asleep. baby i hope you never close your eyes so two of us can pick up on this dawn. di prima uses a markedly strong tone to express the female speaker’s feelings of jealousy and anger, then concludes more softly as the speaker speaks calmly and expresses her desire that ultimately generates the jealousy. the speaker shifts from being scorned to wanting to have sex with the man that scorned her, and in this way, she exhibits a sexual freedom and desire for sexual satisfaction traditionally suppressed in poetry of the time. in what may seem to perpetuate the stereotypical image of the woman as dependent upon the man, helpless in her overwhelming desire and his commitment to another, this poem makes no attempt to hide the speaker’s desire for her lover. rather, di prima enables her female speaker to express the jealously she experiences honestly—acknowledging the grittiness involved in such relationships rather than hiding or denying it. in subsequent poems, di prima positions the female speaker as sexually assertive and open about her lack of inhibitions with her body and that of her lovers. one example is the second love poem (quoted earlier) that includes some of di prima’s most energetic use of slang: remember you long as sodomy, sure as the black taste of morning timeless as folded to no love backwards lips and the arch ache swinging from back to thighs clued in for crazy cool and endless not enough. not yet. the intensity of the language and imagery here matches the intensity of the sexual experience itself—a combination of sensuality and aggressiveness. in the language such as “timeless” and “not enough,” and particularly in the final line of the poem (“not yet.”), the speaker expresses her insatiableness in this sexual experience—surely unexpected from a woman at this time. the speaker’s strong physical desire is further depicted through the use of enjambment, as di prima places particular emphasis on the lover’s lips and thighs. in these ways, di prima resists the tendency by her contemporaries to obscure the physicality and sensuality of the female sexual experience and instead puts such descriptions at the fore. in the sixth love poem, di prima reverses the typical gender roles of heterosexual relationships; anticipating rejection by her lover, the woman takes control of the situation: in case you put me down i put you down already, doll i know the games you play. in case you put me down i got it figured how there are better mouths than yours more swinging bodies wilder scenes than this. in case you put me down it won’t help much. notably, the speaker here appropriates a man’s use of “doll” to refer to a woman—a term implicitly carrying with it the suggestion of a woman as an object or toy to be played with. di prima appropriates this term for her female speaker and in doing so exemplifies the subjectivity of her female speaker, no longer an object to be condescended to or rejected. burt kimmelman aptly describes the use of slang in this poem: “this is the language of jazz and communal living and it is most of all the proclamation of freedom in an alternative life style—all built into the word ‘swinging.’” in the same way that di prima uses slang in her poetry as a resistance to academic poetry, she uses it to redefine the role of the female bohemian—giving her a freedom and subjectivity denied in the mainstream and by many men of the counterculture. di prima continues this air of sexual bravado in the th and th love poems: no babe we’d never swing together but the syncopation would be something wild you are not quite the air i breathe thank god. so go. in this latter poem, di prima’s speaker is especially confrontational. with concise directness, she severs any potential dependence upon another for survival, expressing a strength and independence which is emphasized in the poem’s final imperative line of dismissal. as illustrated here and in previous examples above, di prima represents the female bohemian in the love poems series as someone in control, often in the dominant position of a relationship. rather than being objectified and limited in her ability to engage in “wild” sexual experiences, the female bohemian in this series expresses a subjectivity, strong sexual desire, and assertiveness that the traditionally hierarchical male/female relationship denies or suppresses. in conjunction with the somewhat overpowering bravado illustrated in the love poems series, the two “pomes for bret” later in this kind strike an effective balance between the aggressiveness described above and a calmer level of contentment. the first of these two poems is similar to the confrontational tone of the first love poem, including lines such as “you’d better watch your step / deari-o. / i seen your tricks / and babe / i’ve got my eye / on you.” but the second poem expresses a revelation of sorts: you know it’s good for once not to be dug because i know so much or i’m so cool or any o-help reasons it’s nice to run a pad where both of us are cool enough to know we’re both uncool by the end of the poem, the speaker backs away from her superficial attempt to portray confidence in the face of rejection. instead, she accepts the circumstance and tempers what began as an aggressive attack on the “mister with [his] i-hate-you love poems.” unafraid to portray the complexities that accompany traditionally-romanticized relationships, di prima represents the female bohemian experience in the love poems series and here in pomes for bret as one characterized by sexual curiosity, assertiveness, bravado, and intimacy, as well as insight and satisfaction. and to do so, she uses the hip slang of bohemia (such as “swinging,” “wild,” “dug,” “cool,” “pad,” and “deari-o”) to overtly represent and speak for the female bohemian experience. without the use of slang in poems such as these, the ability to portray this lifestyle that is a deliberate alternative to the mainstream would be lost. speaking directly for the representative female bohemian and her participation in the countercultural confrontation and revision of gender norms, di prima uses hipster slang to redefine what is largely accepted as the passive position of women. di prima’s revision of traditional conceptions of women defined by normative gender codes continues throughout other poems in this kind, particularly through the theme of motherhood. in “requiem,” for example, di prima explores the struggles and pain that frequently accompany motherhood, representing the complexity of this female experience often romanticized in portrayals of women as mothers. di prima writes: i think you’ll find a coffin not so good baby-o. they strap you in pretty tight i hear it’s cold and worms and things are there for selfish reasons i think you’ll want to turn onto your side your hair won’t like to stay in place forever and your hands won’t like it crossed like that i think your lips won’t like it by themselves notably less energetic than many of the other poems of this kind, “requiem” revises the traditional image of the mother as naturally emotional or sentimental. faced with the death of her baby, the speaker laments her lack of control to provide any real comfort. she responds to this tragic circumstance in a seemingly detached or disconnected tone, focusing on the superficial and unable to express any degree of love or loss. somewhat similarly, in “for babio, unborn,” the speaker poses questions to her body that complicate the notion that women innately become mothers and therefore, without question understand “whose flesh / has crossed my will” or “whose hands / broke ground / for that thrusting head.” as amy friedman points out, in this poem, di prima “focuses on poetic gifts she has to offer her child over material ones.” di prima writes: sweetheart when you break thru you’ll find a poet here not quite what one would choose. i won’t promise you’ll never go hungry or that you won’t be sad on this gutted breaking globe but i can show you baby enough to love to break your heart forever di prima’s speaker identifies first as a poet and second as a mother, acknowledging that this isn’t necessarily “what one would choose.” as such, di prima suggests how her speaker’s identity as a poet willingly compromises her ability to provide for a baby, materially and psychologically, as the conventional role of mother as domestic provider would prescribe. constrained by her unfixed or meager income as a poet, the speaker has only her experiences with and capacity to love to comfort her child. in contrast to the bravado expressed in the love poems series, here the tone is one of confusion and slight sadness or guilt. in this way, di prima challenges the notion that women instinctively or willingly identify as mothers and do so at the cost of anything else, perhaps especially at the cost of identifying as a poet or an artist. significantly, di prima’s protofeminist representations of women exemplified in this analysis of poems such as “requiem,” “for babio, unborn,” “pomes for bret,” and the love poems counter representations of women even in the work of other beat poets like ginsberg, as mentioned earlier. in the example of howl, it is important to note that “the best minds” that ginsberg speaks for are almost exclusively limited to male writers and artists. this is implied in various references, such as one to the struggling writers who “were dragged off the roof waving genitals and manuscripts.” rarely were women of the bohemian community acknowledged as writers at this time—and that they would be described as “waving genitals” seems similarly unlikely. more importantly, the female figures that appear in howl illustrate precisely what di prima confronts and revises in this kind. for example, ginsberg describes the “angelheaded hipsters”: who lost their loveboys to the three old shrews of fate the one eyed shrew of the heterosexual dollar the one eyed shrew that winks out of the womb and the one eyed shrew that does nothing but sit on her ass and snip the intellectual golden threads of the craftsman’s loom in this first explicit inclusion of women in the poem, they appear derisively as “shrews”: one defined by an association between sex and money, one defined by her biological imperative as a mother, and the third defined by doing nothing except deliberately impeding intellectual creativity. in the subsequent line, the female figure is merely second in a list of objects present during copulation: who copulated ecstatic and insatiate with a bottle of beer a sweetheart a package of cigarettes a candle and fell off the bed, and continued along the floor and down the hall and ended fainting on the wall with a vision of ultimate cunt and come eluding the last gyzym of consciousness no more valuable than beer or cigarettes, the “sweetheart” is merely a moment in the men’s process of reaching sexual climax. other females appear in the poem similar to this last passage, in nameless, faceless references to objects of male sexual satisfaction: these descriptions include “the snatches of a million girls,” “innumerable lays of girls” and “gaunt waitresses in familiar roadside lonely petticoat upliftings.” ultimately, this survey of the appearance and function of women in ginsberg’s seminal poem illustrates that, as rachel blau duplessis argues, “while male figures in ‘howl’ have many activities and outlets…, the female figures are far less particularized, and they essentially have no heads.” further, duplessis argues, the poem “actively, sometimes disdainfully suggests that females are part of the forces of containment. … female figures in ‘howl’ are offered a narrow band of reviled or pitied emotion, without capacity for transformation.” the representations of female figures in this avant-garde text are limited to sexual objects or to figures that are intellectually repressive or limited. and the ways in which women figure into ginsberg’s poem are not unlike the work of other contemporary male poets such as olson and creeley of the black mountain school. di prima’s revision of mainstream and countercultural portrayals of women is also particularly interesting in light of her personal recollections that complicate what has now been well-established as the consistent marginalization of women within the new york city beat community. interestingly, she attests to being unaware of the impact her gender had on her life as a writer during this period. in a interview with anne waldman, for example, di prima explains: it’s only more recently i’ve come to spend any time realizing or thinking about the fact that if the body of work i had done by ’ when the new hand book of heaven was out and the calculus of variation was finished had been done by any of the male writers on that scene at that point, who were my close friends, i think the acknowledgement that a body of work was in progress would have been much greater. in her memoir, di prima further explains that “there truly was this male cabal: self- satisfied, competitive, glorying in small acclaims. … but i never saw it then.” on the contrary, di prima considered the various struggles she endured to be shared by most artists at the time. she continues with waldman: in those days, i was just expecting trouble all around, so it never occurred to me. … i didn’t distinguish which of these things is happening because i’m a woman, which of these things is happening because that’s just the way the world is, and there was a lot of that’s just how the world is, don’t forget, in the air in the ‘ s, too. we all expected the worst. di prima’s own sense of inclusion in the beat community in the s is undeniably important for an inclusive history of the period. but more to my point, although she may not have considered herself marginalized or objectified as a woman within the new york city bohemian community, my analysis of gender and sexuality within this kind illustrates how di prima asserts the presence of the female bohemian in revisionary ways. specifically, she uses the language of the bohemian community—at once subtle and bold—to develop a female subjectivity and to include women in the community’s critique of mainstream social and cultural norms. literary and racial boundaries di prima’s slang and protofeminist poetics is complicated by issues regarding the use of slang as a means of communication between those who are a part of the bohemian community and those who are not, as well as by issues of race in light of the beat community’s slang roots in the black vernacular. exploring these complexities entailed in the literary use of slang further highlights important implications of di prima’s deliberate use of a “non-literary” language to speak for the bohemian. as noted earlier, slang, as the term has come to be shaped, refers not only in general to colloquial speech, but more specifically to a particular code of communication between members of a community. in the th century, washington irving described the use of slang as representing “superiority over the uninitiated.” and written over a century later, but nevertheless emphasizing the same point, norman mailer describes slang, or “the language of hip,” as “a special language … that … cannot really be taught—if one shares none of the experiences … then it seems merely arch or vulgar or irritating.” indeed, the use of slang carries with it an “insider” status inaccessible to “outsiders.” exploring this key aspect of slang further, linguist m.a.k. halliday, within a larger discussion of what he calls antilanguages, explains how members of an alternative community of some sort, or what he refers to as an antisociety, develop an antilanguage as “a mode of resistance” to the outsider or mainstream society. it is the community’s antilanguage, halliday argues, that “provides the means of maintaining identity in the face of its threatened destruction” or in the face of pressure that exists by virtue of the very resistance to the mainstream upon which the antisociety is based. therefore, the development of this antilanguage relies upon the “closed communication” of the antisociety’s members. further, it is formed by a partial “relexicalization”—the substitution of some standard words for new words that “are central to the activities of the subculture and that set it off most sharply from the established society.” in fact, halliday emphasizes that “it is … not the distance between the two realities [or languages] but the tension between them that is significant.” therefore, the ways in which slang is used by members of communities to communicate specifically with each other as well as to construct or maintain the identity of the community and its members as somehow resistant to the “norm” are two essential factors of its development and use— and this highlights precisely the purpose that i argue the poetic use of slang serves for di prima. in light of the boundaries that exist between those within a community who use slang and those outside of the community, though, the literary use of slang raises issues regarding the relationship between the writer and reader. as critic gary dyer discusses, through the use of slang in literary texts, writers “poin[t] out and dramatiz[e] the role of codes in communities to which [they] belon[g].” dyer maintains that the literary use of slang is not meant to invite nor enable readers that are not members of these communities to understand or access them. on the contrary, dyer argues that this use of slang serves to “emphasize difference: to deny that there is some ‘we’ that can be appealed to easily, to deny that there is some unproblematic ‘you’ that the poet can address, to deny that there is only one ‘i’ that speaks.” for dyer, this suggests that the use of slang in a literary text “is as likely to reflect constraint as to reflect freedom”—that “it actually indicates only that [the writer] is free to allude to the inhibitions that shape speech and writing.” complicating this argument about the effect of slang for readers, critic brita lindberg-seyersted claims that the literary use of slang actually functions to “lessen the distance between [text] and reader, for it is hard not to be affected by [the use of informal language], whether pleasantly or unpleasantly.” for example, in her reading of sylvia plath’s later poetry, lindberg-seyersted argues that plath’s use of “speech-like language” creates a “voice [that is] speaking to us [as] one we can hear in our daily lives; it may even be our own.” richard bridgman makes a similar claim to lindberg-seyersted in his broader discussion of the colloquial tradition in american prose when he asserts that “the reader’s mind is more than normally engaged by the actual structure of the vernacular word. … vernacular tricks with language arouse various responses in the reader.” neither lindberg-seyersted nor bridgman argues that, in direct contrast to dyer’s position, literary slang categorically enables readers or outsiders insight or access into the writer’s community. more accurately, they suggest that the literary use of slang may affect readers in a stronger manner than traditional literary language might— blurring the very boundaries that dyer insists are reinforced through the literary use of slang. as my analysis illustrates, di prima uses the slang of the bohemian community to represent what distinguishes this community as an alternative to the mainstream and to express the agency of the male or female bohemian while also developing a subjectivity for the female figure. following with halliday’s theory of antilanguages, then, di prima’s deliberate use of slang in her poetics serves to redefine, validate, and sustain the identity of the “insiders”—the bohemian community—and to do so as an act of resistance to the “outsiders”—the mainstream community. as such, her efforts to use the language of the bohemian community as a means to celebrate the bohemian’s agency and to construct an image of the female bohemian as a subject inevitably entail the perpetuation of the already existing boundaries between the bohemians, the “insiders,” and the mainstream, the “outsiders.” what is at stake for di prima isn’t whether or how “outside” readers might respond to her representation of the bohemian; rather, at stake for di prima is what she considers an authentic portrayal of the bohemian. in her efforts to create such a portrayal, di prima speaks directly to and for her fellow “insiders.” whereas dyer suggests that such differences between insiders and outsiders marked and maintained by the literary use of slang reflect pressure or constraint on the writer, for di prima the poetic use of slang represents not constraint but liberation. the poetry of this kind represents di prima’s deliberate choice to work outside of the traditional boundaries of academic poetry, which strictly adheres to the use of “literary” language. it also represents her liberation of the female bohemian either from absence altogether or from being portrayed in various problematic ways by male writers of both the academy and the avant-garde. as a result of these choices, di prima is able to celebrate the development and use of experimental poetics in direct resistance to the mainstream and to enable the female bohemian to speak for herself from a position of subjectivity. this liberation, though, raises important questions in light of the fact that the slang of the bohemian community that di prima uses in these ways is rooted in the black vernacular and bebop culture of the s and s. examples of the hip slang within this kind include: words such as cool, uncool, broad, doll, dig, pad, flip, swinging, syncopation, and jam; the “-o” added to various names and words; and phrases such as “hang loose,” “zigzag beat,” and “stay cool.” regarding such language, nancy grace and ronna johnson, in a brief introduction to an interview published in , point to the fact that much of di prima’s early poetry, particularly that of her first two books, “unabashedly speak[s] the hipster argot that drew on the black vernacular.” because the slang words and phrases that appear in this kind indeed derive from the black vernacular of the period, they carry important implications when used by a white writer, especially when used as a means of constructing and expressing subjectivity. one particular poem of this kind presents the beat community’s slang roots in the bebop culture more strikingly than the other poems in the collection. the following poem not only integrates a more exaggerated version of the slang of the bebop scene than we have seen in previous examples from this kind, but it also depicts the bebop scene itself with strong imagery. the poem is part of the in memoriam series of this kind and is dated august : damn you ghostface sounding quietus now, i thought we’d dig a coupla sets in hell. won’t say i didn’t love you dad back when long hands and dirty tore a breathless blue good morning blues guitar and that junkriding face went coolly wild. you know the games swing wide in hell there’s riffs behind my teeth could keep you flying. but now it’s small fun digging long gone songs while you play square games never out of bounds. like man don’t flip, i’m hip you cooled this scene. but you can hock the jazz guitar, in limbo they play ballads. in this lamentation, di prima maintains the hip bravado expressed throughout the collection. she also deliberately creates an overt tension between the “wild” bebop scene and its “square” counterpart, a tension developed through the exaggerated use of slang. in this poem, we see the slang included throughout this kind, such as “flip,” “cool,” and “dig,” as in “like man don’t flip, i’m hip you cooled / this scene.” but we also see a more inventive and original use of slang here, as in “breathless blue good morning” and “junkriding face went coolly wild,” which creates more depth and distinction in the imagery of the poem while still emphasizing the function of “non-literary” language for di prima’s poetics in general. the bebop tradition in which this slang is rooted is defined by its experimentation with music: the resistance to well-defined form, structure, and style, and the liberation that comes with improvisation and spontaneity—all in an effort to “diverg[e] from the fundamental conventions of popular [swing and big band] music.” it is thus not merely the language of bebop, but more precisely the culture itself that provided an inspiring model for poets such as di prima, who were looking for an alternative to mainstream society and poetry. as such, in expressing feelings of loss over the passing of a friend directly part of and representative of this cultural scene, di prima intensifies the contrast that exists between the mainstream and the counterculture. she reinforces the boundaries between these two communities while expressing the solemn experience of the speaker through the imagery and language of bebop. in light of the boundaries between the mainstream and the bohemian “antisociety” that are underscored throughout the poetry of this kind, and especially in this poem, it is important to note that entailed in perpetuating these divisions is the impetus to blur racial boundaries. that is, di prima’s use of slang that derives from the black vernacular—her use of this “antilanguage”—represents a distance or tension between the beat counterculture and the mainstream that is partly founded on the fundamental desire of the beat community to erase traditional racial boundaries. in its function as an alternative to the “norm,” the beat community resisted the racial divisions and hierarchies perpetuated in mainstream s society. following in this basic desire to develop a countercultural community not defined by race as well as to develop aesthetic forms and practices that reflect an intermingling of racialized art forms, di prima does not set out to construct nor perpetuate racial differences. instead, in her endeavor to develop a critique of the mainstream through an authentic portrayal of the bohemian community throughout this kind, di prima highlights how this community is itself defined by the blurring of racial and social hierarchies traditionally upheld in the mainstream. that di prima’s use of slang signifies the bohemian’s attraction to the style and language of the bebop culture, however, suggests that her poetics is also fundamentally representative of the desire of a white artist to appropriate some form of black culture— of the romanticization of the black culture—despite her beliefs, values, or desires. di prima’s slang poetics is complicated by the issues of race inextricably linked to this “non- literary” language; she may use hip slang to express the subjectivity of the bohemian and to challenge the marginalization and objectification of women within this countercultural community, but, ultimately, she is unable to transcend the racial implications bound up in this very language. it is important to acknowledge that scholars have frequently critiqued the white beat writer’s attraction to and treatment of non-white racial figures, cultures, and discourses, and similar critiques appear within discussions of white non-beat contemporary writers as well as of white modernist poets. as i described earlier, di prima’s and her avant-garde contemporaries’ use of slang or the colloquial can be traced to the championing and use of the colloquial from whitman to the modernists, and the motivation of di prima and others is notably similar to the white modernist poet’s use of black dialect. as michael north discusses in the dialect of modernism, dialect of the modernist period provided an alternative to the mainstream, authoritative “literary” language that was shaped by “printing, education, and ‘elocution masters’”; it represented an act of rebellion in its “purity” and authenticity. during this period of the early th century, north explains, white writers appropriated the language of black culture as a means to blur the boundaries between the literary and nonliterary—to challenge and undermine the privileged status of the former. however, while dialect represented a natural language, speech free from “‘the artificialities of civilization’” for white writers, it represented a language that was suffocating and oppressing for black writers. as north argues, white poets’ use of dialect made it virtually impossible for black writers to use the very language derived from their heritages. in a similar vein, duplessis argues that white modernist writers who sought to resist the authoritative standard language were simultaneously “resisting coequal citizenship with blacks.” in other words, however inadvertently, such writers maintained a hierarchical relationship between the races through their appropriation of black dialect to enact poetic liberation. as a result of such complexities bound up in this use of language, north characterizes the modernist period as one of “confused white attempts to understand, absorb, emulate, or dismiss black language and culture.” applying a similar argument to the white beat writer’s use of slang in the post-wwii period points to an important paradox. while white writers like di prima and ginsberg used slang that derived from black culture to achieve and express an authenticity that they believed was unattainable through academic literary language, black writers like leroi jones/amiri baraka and bob kaufman also used the language of bebop in their work that, though not exclusively, often addressed racial politics of the period. this suggests that white beat writers’ use of slang did not necessarily prohibit or complicate its racially- and politically-charged use by black beat writers. however, widening the context outside the scope of beat writers, it is important to note that the period of di prima’s and ginsberg’s early work overlapped with that of the burgeoning civil rights movement, and in this context, the very language that represented poetic liberation for these writers was also the language that black figures like malcolm x had to abandon in favor of standard english as a means to gain respect and authority in the pursuit of racial equality. in the case of malcolm x, he found that his writing in the vernacular of his community was inarticulate and inappropriate for his interest in issues of racial equality and black nationalism. he needed to learn and use standard english in order for his voice to be heard—in order to fight against the racial discrimination and inequities faced by the black community. in this way, we see that the language of authenticity and liberation for white beat poets was also the language that inhibited many black figures during the civil rights era. and the ineffectual use of dialect for blacks was itself a product of the social, cultural, and political authority of whites—an authority signified through the privilege of poets like di prima and ginsberg to shift between standard english and black dialect in their own literary and cultural endeavors. thus, in the same way that the inclusion of women within the bohemian community did not preclude the perpetuation of hegemonic gender codes in the community as well as in its male-authored literature, the white bohemian’s attraction to black culture and attempts to integrate it into the interracial bohemian community likewise could not automatically erase the racial implications of a white writer’s use of the slang rooted in black culture. my analysis of this kind, particularly in contrast to di prima’s earlier poetry, illustrates how she uses slang to substantiate the identity and subjectivity of the figure of the bohemian, but examining the relationship between language and race points to the complexity of this poetics and indicates that the liberation di prima exercised through experimentation with language, style, and gender politics is inevitably constrained by the fundamental relationship between language and race. this should not, however, diminish the significance of di prima’s poetics as illustrated throughout the chapter, but rather point to the various complexities tied to the use of language and di prima’s attempt to subvert hegemonic gender and racial inequities. v. conclusion like her contemporaries olson and ginsberg, di prima’s poetics took a dramatic turn in the early s from its relatively traditional or academic style in the school of what baraka described as “bullshit school poetry” to what more closely resembles the unconventional, minimalist poetry of ordinary speech in the vein of williams and pound. for olson, the shift toward a new poetics that was put forth in his manifesto, “projective verse,” symbolized his independence as a poet, as he came to believe in “the poem as a ‘field’ of action rather than a sequential ordering of materials.” for ginsberg, it was williams himself who inspired the younger poet to be free of traditional verse and the use of abstract symbolism and to instead find his poetic voice in “the real language,” the “‘actual talk rhythms’ of the everyday world.” for di prima, as she recalls in her recent memoir, leaving the academy by dropping out of swarthmore college in late and immersing herself in the beat avant-garde community on the lower east side of new york city became the turning point that would shape the progression of her poetics for more than years. the juxtaposition of her college-period poetry and that of this kind of bird flies backward illustrates how using the colloquial in general and the hip slang of the new york city bohemian community in particular provided a way for di prima to express the agency of the bohemian figure and to develop a subjectivity for the female bohemian. di prima’s first book of poetry exemplifies how a female writer, not unlike the better known male writers, was experimenting with the poetic tradition in innovative ways and was challenging the hegemonic gender codes of the period. setting her apart from her male contemporaries, however, this kind also demonstrates how a female poet managed to revise notions of the female bohemian by using slang to speak from a position of agency. with her first book of poetry, di prima represents not just a woman writing from within this community, but a woman writing from within this community with a language and about experiences considered artificial or vulgar. using the hip slang of the bohemian community that ginsberg also uses in howl, but using it in a markedly different style and to a significantly different end, di prima addresses the complex relationship between the counterculture and the mainstream in terms of literature, identity, gender, and community. throughout this kind of bird flies backward, di prima resists the formal poetry of the academy and instead uses hip slang to celebrate what helped define the bohemian community as alternative, and she resists the subordination and objectification of women within both the mainstream and countercultural communities and instead puts women’s experiences with love and sex at the forefront. in this way, di prima challenges familiar notions about what is considered literary and about who and what defines this bohemian community. examining di prima’s early contribution to beat literature, especially in contrast to her earlier unpublished poetry, helps to shape our understanding of what the new york city beat community meant for its various members. this community provided a space within which di prima’s critical perspective toward the mainstream and traditional poetics could be developed. rather than prompting struggles with isolation, confusion, and insecurities in the face of conformity and homogeneity, the s new york city bohemian community engendered di prima’s individualism and personal creativity—in ways that strongly differ from the experiences of many of her fellow women beat writers, as i address in the forthcoming chapters. as this analysis of this kind suggests, that the community distinguished itself from the mainstream and from the traditional poetry of the academy through its use of hipster slang provided an important way for di prima to assert the individualism and agency of the bohemian and to develop a subjectivity for the female bohemian. writing in beat slang provided di prima a means to speak directly to and for her fellow artists. importantly, looking closely at this kind expands our understanding of the women beat writers as protofeminists. the resistance to the traditional female gender role is quite remarkably addressed by di prima in this publication. di prima anticipates the issue of female malaise in the broader post-wwii society, which would later lead to the second-wave feminist movement. and in portraying the various complexities of womanhood as they are experienced with the bohemian community, she also undermines the perpetuation of mainstream gender codes by her male contemporaries. with this kind of bird flies backward, di prima demonstrates what it was like to write as a woman in the s, and ultimately, what distinguishes di prima from her contemporaries is her use of beat slang to substantiate the figure of the bohemian—male and female—through a poetic style that was relatively unique and liberating. whereas di prima’s first book of poetry illustrates her reaction against the academic and androcentric poetics of the postwar period, joyce johnson’s first novel reveals her resistance to and revision of the restrictive patterns of female characterizations in the contemporary novel, and this is the subject of chapter two. notes . seymour krim, the beats (new york: fawcett, ), . . krim, front cover, . . charters, beats and company: a portrait of a literary generation (garden city, ny: doubleday, ), . . ginsberg qtd. in peabody, . . r. johnson, “mapping,” . . breaking, . loba was published in increments as each new part was written; the current parts were first published cumulatively in . . di prima, memoirs of a beatnik (new york: olympia press, ), ; r. johnson, “diane di prima’s anarchist heritage and revolutionary letters - : global radical chic,” mla conference paper (december ); di prima, memoirs, . . whereas “colloquial” or “vernacular” refers more generally to spoken language, my use of the term “slang” follows from its definition as a particular mode of communication between members of a countercultural community (to be discussed in more detail later). i sometimes refer to the slang of the s new york city bohemian community as “hipster” or “hip” slang, which is defined by its distinction from the language of the mainstream, the academy, the “square.” slang in this context is recognizable as such in its use of language derived from the s and s bebop scene, such as “cool” or “dig.” (there are more complex variations of slang that i address throughout the chapter.) . as i noted in the introduction, my use of the term “bohemian” instead of “beat” in certain contexts throughout the dissertation is meant to distinguish between the larger new york city community of artists and the specific group of beat writers within this community. both terms refer to groups of both men and women, despite the lack of support or camaraderie regarding the women’s work as writers. . see mary paniccia carden, maria farland, and blossom kirschenbaum for additional essays on di prima’s work. . a. friedman, “‘i say,’” . also appearing in later publications, “song for baby-o, unborn” and “lullaby” were originally published in this kind (the former as “for babio, unborn”). . see davidson’s the san francisco renaissance and alicia suskin ostriker’s stealing the language: the emergence of women’s poetry in america (london: the women’s press, ). . for example, see anne waldman’s interview, published in arthur and kit knight’s the beat road; tim kindberg’s interview, “the movement of the mind” published in magma; and tony moffeit’s interview, published in grace and johnson’s breaking. . this is included in the diane di prima papers (box ) at the syracuse university library, special collections research center. . di prima, recollections, . . recollections, . . di prima, “light/and keats,” talking poetics from naropa institute: annals of the jack kerouac school of disembodied poetics, vol. ., ed. anne waldman and marilyn webb (boulder: shambhala, ), . . di prima, “light/and keats,” , . in a letter dated december , , keats describes his theory of negative capability: “the excellence of every art is its intensity, capable of making all disagreeables evaporate from their being in close relationship with beauty and truth. … several things dove-tailed in my mind, and at once it struck me what quality went to form a man of achievement, especially in literature, and which shakespeare possessed so enormously—i mean negative capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.” qtd. in di prima, “light/and keats,” . . di prima, recollections, , , . . recollections, . . this and the subsequent quotations in this paragraph are from recollections, . . the quotations in this paragraph are from di prima, recollections: , , , , . . this and the preceding quotations in this paragraph are from the same source as above: , , . . di prima, memoirs, . . di prima, recollections, (emphasis in original). . recollections, . . the distinction of di prima among most other women beat writers is important to reiterate here. her own sense of inclusion and the male beats’ recognition of her work at the time undoubtedly contribute to her particular depiction of the bohemian experience throughout her work. this matter becomes more complex regarding her assertion of female subjectivity, however, and i address this in more detail shortly. . most of the new material included in dinners & nightmares was written between the publication of this kind in and dinners in , with the exception, for example, of the thirteen nightmares, which was written in . . di prima, dinners & nightmares (new york: corinth, ), . . dinners, . . ostriker, . . di prima’s experiments with poetic space are perhaps reflective of olson’s theory of projective verse which emphasized that “form is never more than the extension of content.” (collected prose, ed. donald allen and benjamin friedlander [berkeley, ca: university of california press, ], ). as such, the poem is considered “a verbal action” rather than a “sequence of images” determined by form. burton hatlen qtd. in edward foster, understanding the black mountain poets (columbia: university of south carolina press, ), . . interestingly, after exposure to the beat poets in san francisco, lowell’s poetic style changed from what he describes as “distant, symbol-ridden, and willfully difficult” to the open and straightforward style of the beats. qtd. in the norton anthology of american literature, th ed, vol. , ed. nina baym (new york: w.w. norton & company, ), . . like “the passionate hipster to his chick,” the in memoriam series in this kind exemplifies di prima’s confrontation of and resistance to mainstream or standard poetic conventions—revised through the playful use of slang that, to various degrees, rewrites classic, traditional poems. the in memoriam series represents a contemporary version of alfred tennyson’s poem of the same name. for example, she includes more colloquial variations of various phrases or images present in tennyson’s poem: tennyson’s “friend of mine” becomes “brother of mine” and his “white-faced halls” becomes “the whitebellied monster.” further, tennyson’s “thy voice is on the rolling air; / i hear thee where the waters run; / thou standest in the rising sun, / and in the settling thou art fair” takes an unconventional shape in one of the poems of this series, dated may , . di prima writes, “… now in a world of sense / a world of fear you are my guerdon, and when / my gestures large for space throw living out of / focus and the quest screams fearless in the / ending night, it is i remember you who never / were and always are, for you are rain by now / and wind and all the nights of my life black and / young and yes my lad i love you first and truest.” . timothy gray, “‘the place where your nature meets mine’: diane di prima in the west,” journal x: a journal in culture and criticism , no. ( ): . gray defines “the west” for di prima as defined by “a series of encounters in places as diverse as san francisco, wyoming, new mexico, and even upstate new york (one of america’s first frontiers)” that began in the s. “‘the place,’” . . “a spell for felicia, that she come away” is in selected poems, - . . anthony lioi, “real presence: the numina in italian american poetry,” melus , no. ( ): . . walt whitman, “slang in america,” completed poetry and collected prose (new york: literary classics of the united states, ), . . whitman, . . louis untermeyer qtd. in eric partridge, slang, today and yesterday (new york: the macmillan company, ), . . richard bridgman, the colloquial style in america (new york: oxford university press, ), . . mark ford, ed. the new york poets: an anthology (manchester, great britain: carcanet, ), xiii. . james smethurst, the black arts movement: literary nationalism in the s and s (chapel hill: university of north carolina press, ), . . baym, - . . frank o’hara qtd. in ford, . . the beats themselves spoke to this contrast to eliot and the establishment poetry of the academy, such as ginsberg in his mock-letter to eliot in and john clellon holmes in his essay, “unscrewing the locks: the beat poets.” importantly, however, despite this self-avowed distinction, scholars have drawn useful connections between the poetics and theories of eliot and the beats, specifically regarding ginsberg and burroughs. see john tytell’s “the beat generation and the continuing american revolution,” jonah raskin’s american scream, and raj chandarlapaty’s the beat generation and counterculture, for example. . see chapter one of smethurst’s the black arts movement for a more detailed discussion of what he refers to as the “alliance between the new york intellectuals and the new critics,” which is represented by their generally similar literary aesthetic, despite important political differences between the two groups. the black arts movement, . . ginsberg, howl and other poems (san francisco: city lights books, ), , . . raskin, american scream: allen ginsberg’s howl and the making of the beat generation (berkeley: university of california press, ), - . . raskin, . . the quotation is from “three laments” in this kind of bird flies backward (new york: totem press, ), . . podhoretz, . . krim, . . smethurst, . . holton, . specifically, the slang of the beats took shape by drawing on the language not only of the jazz and bebop culture, but also of non-white, lower class americans, and of what holton refers to as “the anomic”—that is, “the diversity of maladjusted individuals existing beyond—or perhaps beneath—the reach of conformity.” included in this category is what holton describes as “a variety of eccentrics: drug addicts and transient carnies, homosexuals and fringe artists, criminals and visionaries, misfits of all kinds.” holton, . . m.m. bakhtin qtd. in holton, . . significantly, within the context of her poems that overtly treat the female experience, di prima’s minimalist style anticipates what suzanne juhasz calls the “first feminist rhetoric” of the feminist movement beginning in the late s. juhasz describes the work of feminist poets such as rich, lucille clifton, kathleen fraser, and susan griffin as marked by a rhetoric “of direct statement; of literally—and with minimal complexity—naming the components of a woman’s life and thereby making those things, emotions, and ideas valid…; of the accompanying honesty, personalness [sic], immediacy, and accessibility.” (“transformations in feminist poetry,” frontiers , no. [ ]: .) certainly, this characterization, much of which is evident in the poems i discuss below, emphasizes the ways in which di prima’s work anticipates the work of feminist writers. that di prima’s minimalist style of honest and authentic expression is used throughout her body of poetry of this period, however—not just within the work that overtly seeks to validate the female experience—speaks to my reading of her dual expression of agency and subjectivity in this kind—that of the female bohemian and of the bohemian in general, male or female. . raskin, . elise cowen is the exception to ginsberg’s reference to his male contemporaries in howl, such as kerouac, burroughs, and cassady. . richard ellmann, ed., the norton anthology of modern poetry (new york: w.w. norton & company, ), . . see, for example, creeley’s “language” in the collected poems of robert creeley, - . . though untitled when originally published in this kind, “the window” appears with this title in di prima’s selected poems - . . di prima, dinners, . . podhoretz. . anthony libby, “diane di prima: ‘nothing is lost: it shines in our eyes,’” girls who wore black, . . libby, . . see the introduction for more on this characterization (note .). . podhoretz, . . though di prima describes having written only one poem at swarthmore, a collection of her unpublished poetry dated through indicates that she was indeed writing during this period. see the collection of early poems ( - ) in the diane di prima papers at the syracuse university library, special collections research center (box ), from which all of the poems from this period discussed in this section come. in addition to writing poetry at college, di prima published one short story, “the ethic of sidney mccosh” in the swarthmore college magazine, the dodd, in the spring of . . smethurst, . . in “manhood and its poetic projects,” duplessis discusses how in their efforts to “bring ‘masculinity’ and normative male expectations up to scrutiny,” new american male poets of the s, including beats and black mountain poets, “implicitly or explicitly reject the possibility of making a bilateral gender critique.” in their “desire to alter male possibility,” di prima’s male contemporaries produced texts within which “often enough, female figures were recast as normative, centrist, [and] controlling.” duplessis notes, though, that this exclusion of women from the male poets’ critique of hegemonic norms “was unconscious, perhaps somewhat conscious; it was unthinking or half-thought; it was uncritical, and perhaps sometimes deliberate; it was innocent, and sometimes maliciously motivated.” regardless of motivation, however, duplessis ultimately helps illustrate how “this peripheral cohort” of s male countercultural poets “participates in centrist thinking” regarding female gender codes. her essay specifically discusses the work of ginsberg, olson, and creeley to support this argument. (“manhood,” - .) see also poems by gregory corso, such as “marriage,” and john wieners, such as “feminine soliloquy,” and the prose of various new american male writers. . gary snyder qtd. in charters’s the portable beat reader (new york: viking, ), . . snyder, in charters, portable, . . snyder, . . this refers to the passage in kerouac’s “origins of the beat generation,” in which he epitomizes the male beat’s expectations for women to be silent and in the background; he describes female beats as “girls [who] say nothing and wear black.” “origins,” . . di prima is not the only contemporary female avant-garde poet to write directly about women’s experiences; however, her work examined here is unique in its use of the slang of the bohemian community to revise both mainstream and countercultural depictions of women—and to do so in the late s. for other female poets writing in the colloquial and addressing issues of gender, see for example carol bergé’s from a soft angle, including poetry written in the s and joanne kyger’s the tapestry and the web, published in . . when some of the love poems from this kind were republished in dinners & nightmares, the series was titled “more or less love poems.” . burt kimmelman, “from black mountain college to st. mark’s church: the cityscape poetics of blackburn, di prima, and oppenheimer,” rain taxi (spring ). . though “pome” can refer to a simple rhyme, when republished in dinners & nightmares, these poems are renamed with the correct spelling as “poems for bret.” . although “baby-o” may be a slang term for men as well, di prima frequently uses this term throughout her treatment of motherhood. in addition to “requiem” and “for babio, unborn” from this kind, see others such as “lullaby” and the “jeanne poems.” also, see a. friedman and ostriker for further discussions of di prima’s treatment of motherhood throughout her work, which include her use of “baby-o” as i suggest here. . a. friedman, “‘i say,’” . friedman’s discussion is within the context of the poem’s reprint as “song for baby-o unborn” in di prima’s selected poems. . the quotations in this paragraph are from ginsberg’s howl: , , , , - . . this and the subsequent quotation are from duplessis’s “manhood”: , . . the poets of the black mountain school, closely associated with the beats, are sometimes distinguished from the contemporary new york school of poetry by their “machismo.” daniel kane, all poets welcome: the lower east side poetry scene in the s (berkeley: university of california press, ), . . di prima, “an interview,” . . di prima, recollections, . . di prima, “an interview,” . . washington irving qtd. in gary dyer, “thieves, boxers, sodomites, poets: being flash to byron’s don juan,” pmla , no. ( ): . . norman mailer, “the white negro,” advertisements for myself (new york: putnam, ), . . m.a.k. halliday, language as social semiotic: the social interpretation of language and meaning (baltimore: university park press, ), . the subsequent quotations in this paragraph are from the same text: , , , (emphasis in original). . see holton, pgs. - for more on the function of a countercultural community’s use of language. . this and the following two quotations are from dyer, . . brita lindberg-seyersted, “‘bad’ language can be good: slang and other expressions of extreme informality in sylvia plath’s poetry,” english studies , no. ( ): . . lindberg-seyersted, , . for lindberg-seyersted, the slang in plath’s poetry is not the same hipster slang i examine in di prima’s work, but expressions such as “keeping in cahoots”—american slang more broadly. . bridgman, . . although this boundary issue is attributed to the use of slang in its fundamental function as an alternative to the mainstream, it is important to note that the demarcation between “insiders” and “outsiders” perpetuated by the literary use of slang is not unlike the boundaries that the poets associated with new criticism enforced between themselves and those outside of the academic poetry establishment. through their exclusive use of the formal, elite language of the academy, such poets excluded new american poets from their conception of the american literary tradition; the latter were considered to be non-academic or anti-intellectual by virtue of their literary use of the colloquial. in fact, this division between the academic and non-academic poets was confirmed in the anthology, new poets of england and america, which only included poets associated with the academy such as ted hughes, philip larkin, w.s. merwin, louis simpson, and anne sexton. edited by donald allen, the new american poetry published in , though, represented a response to the previous anthology’s exclusivity and included the most recognizable poets affiliated with the beats, the black mountain school, the san francisco renaissance, and the new york school. . grace and johnson, breaking, . . holton, . . see chapter three for further discussion of the beats’ attraction to black culture. . michael north, the dialect of modernism: race, language, and twentieth- century literature (new york: oxford university press, ), . an example is from williams’s spring and all (poem xvii): “our orchestra / is the cat’s nuts— / banjo jazz / with a nickelplated / amplifier to / soothe / the savage beast— / get the rhythm / that sheet stuff / ’s a lot a cheese. / man / gimme the key / and lemme loose— / i make ’em crazy / with my harmonies— / shoot it jimmy / nobody / nobody else / but me— / they can’t copy it.” spring, . north’s inclusion of eliot in this context refers specifically to the modernist period, including his letters and works such as the waste land, sweeney agonistes, and “mélange adultère de tout.” it was in the post-wwii period that eliot’s ideas about and approach to writing poetry shifted to the more formal poetics encouraged by the academy—the poetics that helped shape new criticism and against which many contemporary poets reacted. in this later poetics, eliot “insist[ed] on the preservation of poetic diction,” arguing in that “‘if every generation of poets made it their task to bring poetic diction up to date with the spoken language, poetry would fail in one of its most important obligations.’” raskin, ; eliot qtd. in raskin, . . north, . . james weldon johnson asserted in that “‘the passing of traditional dialect as a medium for negro poets is complete.’” (qtd. in henry louis gates, jr., figures in black: words, signs, and the ‘racial’ self [new york: oxford university press, ], .) north affirms this claim in his discussion of how when black writers subsequently “attempted to renew dialect writing by freeing it from the clichés johnson criticized, fashionable white usage of the same language stood in their way as a disabling example.” (north, .) however, claude mckay’s dialect poetry represents one of a few exceptions as he used dialect in a deliberate effort to maintain the identity and culture of his jamaican heritage, reinforcing cultural differences. as wayne cooper explains, in contrast to paul laurence dunbar’s use of dialect that was “inherited from the whites who had forged it to perpetuate the stereotype of negro inferiority,” mckay’s dialect represented an effort “to utilize the language of his people in portraying their life and thought.” the dialect of mckay’s poetry was comprised of “west african words, phrases, syntax and rhythm, as well as a treasury of african folk tales”—a dialect that “assured [the] survival” of jamaicans in the face of british colonization. the dialect poetry of claude mckay (new york: books for libraries press, ). . duplessis, “‘darken your speech’: racialized cultural work of modernist poets,” reading race in american poetry: “an area of act,” ed. aldon lynn nielsen (urbana: university of illinois press, ), . . north, . such attempts include not only the use of dialect, but also the use and exploitation of common racial stereotypes. also, interestingly, despite the racial boundaries argued to have been maintained through this tradition, gates points out that there was at least one successful attempt in the white modernist use of dialect. gates argues that in sweeney agonistes, eliot “uses ridiculous yet sublime language and a portrayal often approaching caricature”; he “has made the american vulgar tongue contain the rhythms and idiom common to its slang uses at the time. yet it is expressive of more serious, almost deadly double entendres and puns.” (figures, .) and, for gates, such success with dialect is only otherwise evident in some of the work of black modernist poets such as langston hughes, sterling brown, and paul laurence dunbar. . aldon lynn nielsen addresses the appearance of dialect and of racial discourse more broadly in the work of contemporary poets. he argues, through examples like robert duncan, frank o’hara, lew welch, and john wieners, that not unlike the modernists, contemporary white poets were, as charles bernstein describes, “trapped in a racist ventriloquism.” (“poetics of the americas,” reading race in american poetry: “an area of act,” ed. aldon lynn nielsen [urbana: university of illinois press, ], .) nielsen cites “comportment” by lew welch, for example: “think jew / dance nigger / dress and drive oakie.” (qtd. in nielsen, reading race: white american poets [athens: university of georgia press, ], .) the racial discourse in poems such as this one, according to nielsen, signifies an “identification with an idealized and romanticized sense of blackness” and does so not through the use of actual dialect or slang, but in reference to the culture from which this derives. (this and the following two quotations are from nielsen, reading race: white, .) nielsen explains, “poets like welch and john wieners accept many of the white assertions about blackness as being adequate referential descriptions and then want those same descriptions to apply to themselves. they want to become ‘niggers,’ to step into the image structure of the farthest outsider.” indeed, similar versions of this desire often take shape in the exoticism of racial others in contemporary poetry. in “the poet in the attic,” o’hara writes, “and as nubian niggers rub / their bellies against his open lips / he fashions a constrictor / out of a dead feather boa.” as nielsen describes, o’hara “wants to kiss this representative of the otherness or primitivism, to fondle it in the privacy of his imagination’s attic.” (reading race: white, .) suggested by this reading of the racial discourse in the work of di prima’s contemporaries and by the motivation behind and effect of the use of dialect in white-authored modernist poetry as north argues, two issues are at stake in the white poet’s use of racial language or discourse: the construction or perpetuation of racial boundaries and the blurring or erasing of racial boundaries, achieved by the romanticization or appropriation of experiences of blackness. . see malcolm x’s description of his “homemade education” in the autobiography of malcolm x (new york: ballantine books, ), . . see chapter three for further discussion of race and beat literature, including white privilege and racial discourse. . baraka qtd. in kane, . . foster, understanding the black mountain poets, . . ginsberg qtd. in raskin, . chapter “the outlaws were about to welcome another member”: female subjectivity and (un)gendered social space in joyce johnson’s come and join the dance i. introduction joyce johnson (née glassman) was an aspiring writer in the late s when she moved out of her parents’ home to live on her own. determined to support herself financially, johnson’s job as a secretary took precedence over her literary pursuits—as did her two-year love affair with jack kerouac, which began in . though she did manage to write a novel during this period—the first female-authored beat novel, come and join the dance, published in —johnson is most commonly identified either as kerouac’s girlfriend when on the road was published and he instantly became a beat icon or as a beat chronicler or memoirist, attributed to her memoir, minor characters: a young woman’s coming-of-age in the beat orbit of jack kerouac. indeed, she is often referred to as the young woman who paid kerouac’s way to new york city “so he’d be in the city when on the road officially came out” and who always gave him a place to stay when he would return to the city for brief visits. after publishing her first novel in the early s, johnson transitioned from being a secretary at literary agencies to an editor. though this became her primary source of income for many years, she also continued to pursue her writing career. her body of work spans several decades and genres, and two publications have received esteemed literary awards. after come and join the dance, johnson published two more novels, two memoirs, a collection of letters, and a documentary nonfiction book—and she continues to write today. notably, minor characters won the national book critics circle award, and the penultimate chapter of her novel in the night café, “the children’s wing,” won the o. henry award first prize. nevertheless, because of her relationship to kerouac and the relatively sporadic publication of her books (an average of eight years between each novel and memoir) johnson’s contributions to the beat literary tradition remain largely overlooked. even though johnson asserted her independence when she left her family as a single young woman to free herself from conservative constraints, her competing roles within the beat community—as writer, girlfriend, and secretary—prevented her from more directly challenging normative gender roles within this context. the title of her memoir, minor characters, aptly describes the secondary role that johnson considers herself and many women of the new york city beat community—including kerouac’s first wife, edie parker, william burroughs’s wife, joan vollmer, and young writers elise cowen and hettie jones—to have played during the late s and s. as has been well-established, johnson and these other “minor characters” were generally expected by the male beats “to sit quietly and listen, to laugh a lot, be sympathetic, and make sure there was something to eat, … to do the dishes and go to bed occasionally.” however “minor” johnson characterizes her role at this time, her commitment to her financial independence and to her writing career challenges how neatly she fits in to this image of the ideal female beat and points to the complicated nature of her experience within the beat community. accordingly, this chapter examines how johnson’s multifaceted experience during this period affected her writing. specifically, this chapter situates come and join the dance within two equally important contexts: the mainstream and the beat literary traditions. johnson began writing her first novel in the mid- s, and at this time, beat and non-beat contemporary fiction tended to depict women in two limited ways. they were represented as subordinate to or objectified by men, or as suffering from madness or depression, often linked to the desire to be an artist. this chapter examines how johnson disrupts these restrictive patterns in her first novel by confronting the hegemonic gender codes from which they derive and developing a prescient model of independent female subjectivity. as the first female-authored beat novel, come and join the dance is significantly distinguished in its representation of early feminist imperatives. my analysis illustrates how the novel’s depiction of female subjectivity—defined as “the individual’s significance in a cultural or theoretical sense” —is achieved by johnson’s reshaping of traditional gender relations within public and private spaces. johnson creates what feminist geographer gillian rose calls “paradoxical spaces”— “space[s] through which to unsettle and displace key assumptions underlying predominant ways of thinking about and experiencing gender.” in doing so, she engages not only in the normative gender discourse of the period of the novel’s composition in important ways, but also in the discourse of what is now identified as feminist geography—rooted in the importance of the relationship between gender and space. this chapter also explores how come and join the dance significantly diverges from the portrayals of female subjectivity and the new york city bohemian community represented in female- and male-authored beat texts. while come and join the dance shares an important achievement with di prima’s work in its resistance to the normative female role, it also interestingly complicates the model of female subjectivity represented in di prima’s work. come and join the dance subtly critiques the viability of this bohemian female subjectivity through the protagonist’s ambivalence toward her psychological and sexual liberation. as shown in chapter one’s analysis of this kind of bird flies backward, di prima consistently depicts female subjectivity of the bohemian community through sexual assertiveness and bravado. this centrality of sexual agency for female subjectivity is undermined in come and join the dance by the way in which johnson’s protagonist, susan, is psychologically and physically unfulfilled by her self- initiated sexual experiences, as well as by the subtle identity crises she faces throughout the novel. in this critique of di prima’s version of female subjectivity, johnson creates a unique and provocative model that raises questions about burgeoning efforts within the beat community to revise the traditional female gender role in the s. further, whereas for di prima and other beat writers such as kerouac, the new york city bohemian community is depicted as a fundamentally positive, supportive, or valuable space that fosters the development of subjectivity, this chapter illustrates how the new york city bohemian community within come and join the dance is represented as ultimately dysfunctional. in the novel, new york city bohemia is unable to provide an effective alternative to the conservative mainstream for susan and her friends, and this culminates in the defeat or hopelessness of the novel’s bohemian characters as well as in susan’s departure for paris at the end of the novel. the one major critical study of this otherwise overlooked novel, ronna johnson’s “‘and then she went’: beat departures and feminine transgressions in joyce johnson’s come and join the dance,” treats the novel’s development of female subjectivity in undeniably important ways (which i discuss in more detail throughout the chapter). my analysis complicates and extends this existing scholarship with attention to how the novel’s female subjectivity is predicated on the relationship between gender and space, as well as to several ways in which the novel challenges key elements of female- and male-authored beat literature that are outside of the scope of ronna johnson’s essay. this chapter highlights johnson’s heretofore unrecognized contributions to the beat literary tradition and challenges johnson’s status as a “minor character,” positioning her alongside di prima as a significant beat writer in her own right. ii. the first female beat novelist many of johnson’s experiences that are fictionalized in her novels or documented in her memoirs reflect an ongoing struggle not uncommon for a woman coming of age in new york city during the post-wwii period: the struggle between the conservative world of her family and the countercultural world of bohemia. from a young teenager to an adult, johnson’s identity fluctuated from what she would describe as a “good girl” to an “outlaw” with a temporary “collegiate” period in between. the gender-based expectations for johnson—those of her family and of the male beats—strongly affected her ability to develop a sense of self as she evolved through these various phases of her life. as such, the issue of gender as it shaped her identity and her understanding of what it meant to be either a “good girl” or a bohemian would come to be one the primary issues explored in her writing. new york city itself plays a significant role in her life and writing as well, as manhattan was the site of her development as a college student and a bohemian, the site of her professional career as a writer and editor, as well as the setting of her body of work. johnson was born joyce alice glassman in brooklyn in . her father, daniel glassman, was considered by her family to be unambitious—never seeking anything beyond what he originally considered a temporary job as an auditor for the metropolitan tobacco company—a job that he held for years until his death in . her mother, rosalind rosenberg (later ross), perhaps overcompensated for the lack of drive in johnson’s father as well as for her own disappointment in abandoning her dream to become a singer for marriage and motherhood (she worked as a housekeeper when johnson was growing up). dreaming that her daughter would become a famous composer or actor and singer, johnson’s mother introduced her to acting and the piano at a young age. johnson became a child actor around age eight, beginning as a dancer in bobino and an acting understudy for i remember mama; at age , she even composed a full-length musical comedy. but as she describes in her memoirs, minor characters ( ) and missing men ( ), during these years on stage and at the piano, johnson felt like an imposter. despite her mother’s fierce ambitiousness, johnson wasn’t drawn to acting or composing; her exposure to the arts at such a young age attracted her to writing instead, and her affinity for the literary arts grew as she explored new york city beyond the broadway theater. in her family’s second home in queens and later in their apartment on the upper west side of manhattan, johnson grew up with what she calls a “cultural loneliness.” the furniture, music, fashion, and values seemed old-fashioned, representative of her parents’ efforts to achieve and maintain an image of having only “the finer things,” and as such, her home was stifling. she recalls painfully her parents’ living room and “the tensions of gentility” that pervaded the atmosphere: “it’s as if all these objects—the piano, the rug, the portrait—are held in uneasy captivity, hostages to aspiration.” johnson explains that she “was to be guarded [by her mother] from the contaminations of everything ‘popular’—chewing gum, soda pop, comic books, the bobbsey twins, [and] frank sinatra.” faced with such prohibitions by her mother, johnson recalls childhood experiences of rebelliousness that would perhaps shape her later, more overt and substantial resistance to conservatism. for example, she recalls being excited by the thrill of danger when she would accompany her father on his routine gambling rounds—kept secret by both johnson and her father from her mother. she describes feeling “thrilled to be invited into” her father’s “faintly illicit” routine that “seem[ed] tinged with glamour.” and upon her first visit to the washington square section of greenwich village at age , johnson would begin more consciously and regularly rebelling against what she considered her parents’ conservative restrictions. with her friend maria, johnson took public transportation every sunday down to washington square—pretending to go to the movies or to be doing homework—where she experienced “real life” in its stark contrast to the conservative culture of her home, her neighborhood, and her school. in downtown manhattan, johnson was exposed to bohemia and its “interesting grownups who had no visible means of support: artists, poets, communists and anarchists, guitar-pickers, jailbirds, scavengers.” for the next few years, she spent time in quintessential bohemian hangouts such as the waldorf cafeteria and the art center, learning about the world outside of her “genteel” home; she was introduced to jung’s theories, existentialism, abstract expressionism, the partisan review, and the existence of current racial and social injustices. but after some time of trying to manage her “long[ing] to turn [her]self into a bohemian” with her good girl image at home—of “moving back and forth between antithetical worlds”—johnson surrendered this “double life,” decided to be a “collegiate,” and entered barnard college at age in . not unlike di prima’s college experience at swarthmore, johnson explains that at barnard, “tradition reigned supreme.” as a child, johnson read classics such as ivanhoe, little women, little men, black beauty, and the last of the mohicans, and at college, she continued to study canonical literature such as the romantic poets and shakespeare. still drawn to the unconventional and unable to subdue her rebellious impulses, though, johnson left barnard in without graduating; she was one course shy of meeting the requirements (and this is the experience that becomes the basis of come and join the dance). ultimately uncomfortable in her deliberate attempt to be a “collegiate” and determined to fulfill her “abstract desire to be ‘free,’” johnson left college and enacted a more controversial rebellion for a young, middle-class woman: she moved out of her parents’ home and into her own apartment a few blocks away in at the age of . the quotation in this chapter’s title, “the outlaws were about to welcome another member,” refers to the implications of susan’s decision in come and join the dance to lose her virginity to a boy she barely knows—yet it fittingly speaks to johnson’s decision to begin living on her own. the quotation captures the invigorating combination of fear, anticipation, and excitement that susan feels as she sheds her “good girl” persona and becomes an “outlaw.” like susan, johnson acted on her irrepressible desire for something unfamiliar and exhilarating, and her ensuing experience with the beats would come to shape her life as a woman and a writer. the new york city bohemian community provided the opportunities for living the kind of culturally-vibrant life johnson yearned for and for escaping the conservative expectations of her family who, like the larger mainstream society at the time, disapproved of her desire to be a young woman living and working on her own. johnson began working as a secretary in order to support herself, but the time outside of her job was what she considered her “real life” when she would write. johnson had first started writing around age eight. she wrote in a variety of genres, including a play that she also directed and starred in when it was performed by her fourth-grade class, patience’s christmas, as well as poetry and monologues, compiled in what her aunt entitled the book of joyce alice glassman by her aunt leona ross. later, she wrote for her high school and college literary magazines, and soon after living on her own, she began writing what would become her first novel. though influenced by some of the canonical writers she had studied, such as henry james, around the time that she left her parents and began her life as an independent young woman, johnson also broke away from her traditional literary studies. she identifies, for example, jane bowles and carson mccullers as two particularly influential contemporary women writers. johnson attributes the motivation to value what she might not have otherwise considered “literary” material such as that “about mothers and daughters” to the drama of bowles, and mccullers’s tendency to critique normative ideas of gender, sexuality, and identity is not difficult to identify in johnson’s own writing. although the style of johnson’s writing isn’t experimental in the way that much work by both male and female beats is, this chapter illustrates how the subject matter and the thematic development of johnson’s work reflects her move away from convention. each of johnson’s three novels, come and join the dance ( , under glassman), bad connections ( ) and in the night café ( ), is set within bohemian new york city in the s or s, and is based on real-life experiences from various periods in her life. this trilogy is marked by johnson’s restrained prose style in the vein of ernest hemingway; she writes with conciseness and efficiency, avoiding elaborate metaphors or abstract language. her style often evokes a sense of urgency, detachment, and at times an alienation reflective of the novels’ post-war contexts. it is through this writing style that johnson comments on and critiques women’s gender roles—whether of the mainstream or of the nascent feminist movement. come and join the dance, which i examine in more detail shortly, fictionalizes johnson’s final days at college, taking place over the course of ten days. susan levitt, a -year-old white, middle-class college student, slowly begins withdrawing from her “good girl” persona and gravitating toward a community of what she considers bohemian “outlaws” in search of a more authentic life. she enacts various kinds of rebellion, including cutting so many physical education classes that she cannot graduate on time, as well as initiating nonmarital sexual experiences and taking a solitary trip to paris at the end of the novel. in the tradition of henry james and his attention to what nancy grace describes as “the psychological dimension of experience,” come and join the dance uses a third-person narrative perspective to explore the psychological element of susan’s experiences. also, having read the french novel, the counterfeiters, by andré gide, in which taboo homosexuality and sexual experiences are made explicit, johnson was inspired to explore the female gratuitous sexual act, which distinguishes come and join the dance from contemporaneous fiction. the development and critique of female subjectivity that johnson expresses through her subtle and witty prose style of come and join the dance is further explored in her subsequent novels. as my analysis of her first novel in the following sections suggests, women’s efforts to resist gender norms and to instead develop an individual sense of self becomes the central theme of johnson’s fictional work—and the roots of this theme are evident in her two memoirs as well. johnson’s second novel, bad connections, is an astute and at times melodramatic retrospective of molly held’s romantic and sexual relationships intertwined with unexpected motherhood in the age of the sexual revolution. not entirely unlike susan from come and join the dance, molly contemplates her true sense of self, as she is caught up in the societal changes achieved by the feminist movement of the late s and the subsequent new pressures to be financially and sexually independent. with incisive humor and irony, johnson depicts molly’s ambivalence toward the feminist movement as molly confronts the “female malaise” that this “new cultural phenomenon” created. for instance, once she frees herself from a loveless and abusive marriage, molly feels more restricted and confined by her relationships with various lovers than she had before. addressing the complexities of women’s roles after the second-wave feminist movement, johnson’s second novel extends the critique of female subjectivity and liberation begun in come and join the dance. but unlike her first novel, in bad connections, johnson moves away from the consistent use of third-person perspective and instead adopts a less conventional shifting between first- and third-person narrative perspectives. doing so enables johnson to move in and out of focus, embodying the very nature of instability and the struggle for clarity or insight that molly herself experiences throughout the novel. in the night café was also influenced by the feminist movement, expressing an ambivalence that simultaneously celebrates the various freedoms afforded women while condemning the unspoken restrictions or expectations bound up in these new freedoms. in in the night café, johnson fictionalizes the experience of losing her first husband to a tragic motorcycle accident. johnson’s third novel tells the story of joanna gold, a photographer who reflects on her marriage as she tries to understand how the relationship has helped shape her sense of self. not unlike the female protagonists of johnson’s first two novels, joanna struggles with her identity, looking to her memories with her husband to help her make sense of particular experiences and sometimes pretending to be someone she’s not in an effort to seem more interesting. in between her second and third novels, johnson published her best known literary work, her memoir minor characters. documenting the pivotal period of the beats in new york city between and , minor characters begins briefly with johnson’s childhood and then details her experiences with the new york city bohemian community, focusing in particular on her friendship with barnard classmate and beat poet elise cowen and on her relationship with kerouac from - , whom johnson met through cowen’s friendship with allen ginsberg. the memoir concludes with cowen’s suicide in and johnson’s subsequent reflections on the s. with a focus on this critical period in johnson’s life, minor characters, draws parallels between the publication of quintessential male beat texts and the authors’ corresponding rising popularity with the various experiences and struggles—literary and otherwise—of johnson and other female beats, namely cowen and hettie jones. though the memoir is recognized as the first text to bring attention to these women who were otherwise overlooked in beat accounts, minor characters is perhaps more often credited as providing “the best portrait we have of kerouac, revealing in fuller detail the kerouac those who love his books encounter.” the memoir opens with johnson’s reflection on a popular photo of male beats in an unidentified book; the photo is of hal chase, ginsberg, burroughs, and kerouac. johnson reimagines the scene of the photograph, filling in some blanks based on what she’s since learned first-hand and otherwise; she then finds her name in the book’s index, and uses this snapshot and her inclusion in the historical moment it captures to frame her recollections of her young adult life in new york city. johnson employs this unique narrative structure throughout the memoir, constructing “simultaneities” —moments of potential overlap (in time, place, or experience) between her life and kerouac’s—to provide insight into her own experiences and their larger context. the importance for johnson of her short-lived love affair with kerouac is further highlighted in her edited collection of letters between the two writers, door wide open ( ). this publication reveals a part of kerouac’s life previously undocumented, and it shares their intimate dialogue about each other’s writing, especially about johnson’s struggles as an early writer. the book shows how johnson struggled to focus, to find the time to write while supporting herself, and to be pleased with her progress and her work. several letters suggest that receiving encouragement from kerouac was particularly important for johnson’s progress as a writer. though she had to negotiate between her innate desire to revise her writing and kerouac’s insistence on minimal (if any) revisions, her annotations of the letters emphasize the importance of his support in light of the general isolation she felt as a woman writer during the late s. johnson’s latest book, a memoir published in , missing men, also focuses on pivotal relationships from throughout her life. in missing men, johnson tells her mother’s story along with her own, and explores her relationships with her father, her first husband, james johnson, and her second husband, peter pinchbeck. johnson’s body of work also includes a nonfiction book published in , what lisa knew: the truths and lies of the steinberg case. in this text, johnson “mingles autobiography, reportage, the gothic novel, and docudrama” as she recounts the famous murder of six-year-old lisa steinberg and the subsequent trial of the girl’s illegally adoptive father, joel steinberg. in her examination of the trial and the events leading up to the murder, johnson offers her own condemnation of steinberg and his lover, hedda nussbaum. in addition to her work as a novelist and memoirist, johnson established herself as an editor and regular writer for various magazines and newspapers. with her initial work experience as a secretary at literary agencies, johnson advanced to the position of editor, and she has worked at various publishing houses over the decades, including farrar, strauss, and cudahy, william morrow, the dial press, and mcgraw-hill. notably, she edited many new left books of the s and early s, including leroi jones’s blue people ( ) and abbie hoffman’s revolution for the hell of it ( ), and she edited and helped get published the complete version of kerouac’s visions of cody in . johnson has also written critical essays, continues to write book reviews for the new york times, and is currently working on a biography of kerouac in which she examines his development as an artist through the lens of his french-canadian background and bilingualism. this overview of johnson’s sustained career as a writer suggests that although it was initially difficult to find the time and focus to write, johnson successfully overcame any such obstacles and has produced a body of work within which gender discourse, the counterculture, and new york city are all integral factors. as noted earlier, johnson appears in various histories of the beat period and in kerouac biographies, but in most of these instances, she is more often given attention as kerouac’s girlfriend and beat chronicler than as a writer in her own right. critical scholarship on her work is almost exclusively limited to discussions of minor characters, and when the memoir is excerpted for beat anthologies, it is almost always passages directly about kerouac that are chosen to represent johnson’s contribution to beat history. subsequently, johnson’s place in beat literary history has been largely established as a memoirist. this is the case even within criticism that seeks to revise beat history as male-dominated. in “victors of catastrophe: beat occlusions,” for example, maria damon notes the “considerable poetic oeuvres” of women beats such as di prima, joanne kyger, and janine pommy vega, but minimizes the literary accomplishments of johnson as she categorizes her as one of “the memoirists of the era” along with carolyn cassady, brenda frazer, and hettie jones. amy friedman’s “‘i say my new name’: women writers of the beat generation” introduces johnson as a novelist, but then also identifies and focuses on her role as a beat memoirist. and in her “‘being here as hard as i could:’ the beat generation women writers,” friedman refers to johnson only as a memoirist. this approach to johnson’s work draws attention to the ways in which she and other women beat memoirists “crystalize and transform extra-literary prohibitions against women to invent an alternative, woman-centered discourse of beat generation dissent” through life writing. scholars argue that the women beats’ use of the memoir has helped “reterritorializ[e] them in the beat community and literary canon from which they have been elided.” however, this narrow focus on johnson’s work, in particular, precludes attention to her work as a novelist, and the two aspects of her literary career should not be mutually exclusive. looking at johnson’s larger body of work reveals how she resisted the assumption that in order to be visible and to “figure [oneself] as subjec[t],” she must write in a genre not used by the male beats —a genre thus considered subordinate to that of fiction or poetry. instead of establishing herself as a writer outside of the genres dominated by the male beats, beginning with come and join the dance, johnson engaged in writing practices also used by her male counterparts. in her novels, johnson used basic fiction techniques in order to “write [her] beat [tale]” — not unlike beats such as kerouac and burroughs. though she didn’t experiment with language or structure in the way that these novelists did, her use of the fiction genre is nevertheless significant. therefore, focusing on her first novel, this chapter sets out to expand our understanding of johnson’s accomplishments as a writer—to reveal the literary, cultural, and social achievements of her work as a novelist that extend the current attention to her work as a memoirist. as i mentioned earlier, the relatively limited scholarship on johnson that is focused on her first memoir is currently accompanied only by one critical essay on come and join the dance. in “‘and then she went’: beat departures and feminine transgressions in joyce johnson’s come and join the dance,” ronna johnson argues that johnson’s first novel should be considered “a beat urtext” alongside the “renegade declarations of on the road or ‘howl’ or naked lunch.” this argument is based on what ronna johnson importantly shows is the development of female subjectivity within come and join the dance. she examines how the novel “both adopts and refutes beat conventions” practiced by male beat writers and in doing so “enact[s] an oscillating subvert/install maneuver” used in postmodern critical discourse. ultimately, my analysis of come and join the dance continues the work begun by ronna johnson and provides new ways in which to understand johnson’s model of female subjectivity as it is developed through a reshaping of the private/public dichotomy and as it challenges common representations of women, men, sexuality, new york city, and the bohemian community within both male- and female-authored beat texts. iii. the female character in the contemporary novel though it wouldn’t be published until , johnson began come and join the dance in , drawing on a piece she had written for a writing workshop at barnard. come and join the dance is an important novel through which johnson simultaneously develops her critical stance toward traditional expectations for women present in society and literature of the time, as well as her skepticism of the role that sexual agency might play in such a critique. a brief overview of come and join the dance within the context of contemporary novels highlights the significance of these achievements. set in the mid- s, come and join the dance tells the story of -year-old susan levitt and her journey toward self-understanding and female subjectivity. at an unnamed women’s college in new york city, susan is divided between the opposing forces of the conservative mainstream—represented by her parents, college, and society in general—and a community of what she considers bohemian outlaws—represented by kay, peter, and anthony. the story takes place over the course of ten days, during which susan takes her final college exam, breaks up with her boyfriend, jerry, a representative “square” character, and spends time with her bohemian friends. the turning point of the novel is when susan loses her virginity to anthony in a deliberate act to initiate herself into the community of bohemians. she then participates in her college graduation even though she has skipped so many gym classes that she cannot officially graduate until she makes up the necessary credits over the summer. the novel concludes shortly after the night of graduation, when susan goes to bed with peter and then embarks on a trip to paris. susan’s attraction to the “mysterious underground brotherhood” inhabited by kay, peter, and anthony is the driving force of the novel as susan propels herself into their world as a kind of refuge from the world of her parents and school. kay has been living in the southwick arms hotel since dropping out of college three months earlier. susan admires kay’s self-defined freedom and feels it is time to make a similar change in her own life. one way in which she attempts to do so is by having “gratuitous” sex with anthony. described by susan’s schoolmates as “a campus bum,” anthony is years old and was recently “expelled from college for bringing a girl up to his room.” anthony recently reached a breaking point at his parochial high school and experienced what johnson describes as “a delinquency of books and violence.” he felt trapped by traditional literature, such as dickens and sir walter scott, and instead felt empowered to write his own poetry after reading the likes of thomas wolfe, arthur rimbaud, and d.h. lawrence. susan’s ultimate attraction, however, is to the divorced peter, whose interest in taking aimless drives in his packard over finishing his master’s thesis has earned him the reputation of a “perpetual student” at age . by the end of the novel, susan acts on this attraction, sleeping with peter the morning she is to set sail for paris. after initially escaping college to experience life as a bohemian, susan ultimately escapes both the new york city mainstream and bohemian communities in her departure for paris. come and join the dance is the first female-authored beat novel and the first contemporary novel to feature a female protagonist who seeks independence and sexual liberation on her own terms. in providing for susan an escape from the confines of society—an escape that results from her own decision-making and leaves her free to explore the world how she chooses—the novel reaches beyond what was available for most young, white, middle-class women within the boundaries of both mainstream society and the bohemian community within s new york city. in contemporary beat novels, such as kerouac’s on the road ( ) and john clellon holmes’s go ( ), women do not play a major role (indeed, beat novels are largely autobiographical). rather, female characters are consistently in the background: silent, submissive, and/or objects of the men’s physical desires. for example, two women in on the road are consistently manipulated by the novel’s hero, dean moriarty, and his seemingly insatiable sexual appetite. sal explains, “dean is balling marylou at the hotel … . at one sharp he rushes from marylou to camille—of course neither one of them knows what’s going on—and bangs her once … . then he comes out with me … then at six he goes back to marylou.” further, dean later asks sal to “work marylou,” presumably because “he wanted to see what marylou was like with another man.” for dean, women are sexual objects and are subject to his self-serving “schedule.” in another example, galatea dunkel, the wife of one of sal and dean’s fellow travelers, is promptly “[given] the slip” by her husband and dean while on the road because she was not meeting their expectations; she “kept complaining that she was tired and wanted to sleep in a motel.” galatea’s “complaints” seemed to confirm for the men that women did not have the capacity—physical or otherwise—to go “on the road” with them. in holmes’s go, the female characters are generally positioned alongside the male characters in their shared existential despair—a balance absent in on the road. nevertheless, many of the novel’s female characters are still subject to the same limitations exemplified in kerouac’s text. both christine and kathryn, for example, have affairs outside of their unhappy marriages, but the former is left devastated when gene stops communicating with her after their affair, and the latter is distraught after her own brief affair when she finds letters that her husband, paul, has been writing to his mistress for the past three years. further, in some ways, both kathryn and paul feel trapped within their marriage and in their lives in general, but kathryn in particular struggles to manage working during the day to support herself and paul, an aspiring novelist, who wants to go out on the town with his friends at night. these few examples of female figures within go and on the road illustrate that the marginalization most women experienced in the beat community is in fact mirrored in male-authored beat novels. not surprisingly, the female protagonists of non-beat male-authored novels of the period play similar roles—even though they are not secondary characters. the eponymous character of herman wouk’s novel, marjorie morningstar, for example, initially pursues her dream to be an actress and something other than a “good girl.” she soon realizes, though, that, in fact, she wants to settle down in the suburbs and be a wife and mother—meeting her parents’ conservative expectations after all. in a relatively more traditional portrayal, the wife of sloan wilson’s the man in the gray flannel suit ( ), betsy rath, is a stay-at-home mother of three. though she feels betrayed upon learning of her husband’s affair when he was away in the war, she ultimately supports his decision to financially provide for the son of his extramarital relationship. in this way, wilson portrays betsy as trapped not only within the confines of her marriage, but also within the confines of her sense of duty as a wife as this role has been culturally defined. it is important to note that within female-authored novels of the time, female characters are likewise marginal, objectified by men, limited to the domestic role, and/or suffering from mental illness or instability—in general, subject to a subordinate role and to various gender-based oppressions. in shirley jackson’s hangsaman ( ), for example, the female protagonist, natalie waite, is a college student struggling to avoid a future like her mother who is “trapped in a kitchen” as well as struggling against her overbearing and authoritative father, who attempts to control every aspect of her life. unable to overcome this oppression, natalie becomes schizophrenic. published three years later, harriette simpson arnow’s the dollmaker ( ) tells the story of gertie nevels, whose desire to become a sculptor is made impossible by her financial obligation to her increasingly impoverished family. grace metalious’s peyton place ( ) daringly made young women’s sexual desires and exploits explicit in her melodramatic novel; however, the female characters are nevertheless limited to the role of wife or mother, ill-fated to suicide or madness, or subject to an abortion or exile from town as a result of their sexual adventurousness. and barbara probst solomon’s the beat of life ( ), though it explores female restlessness in s new york city, concludes with the female protagonist’s suicide after her “therapeutic abortion.” in fact, upon learning she would have to claim to be suicidal in order to get a doctor’s approval for the procedure, natasha protests, “‘but i’d never commit suicide.’” in an ironic turn of events, natasha does commit suicide—a denouement that situates solomon’s novel alongside others in which women are ultimately victim to the various oppressions that surround them. this brief survey brings into focus how come and join the dance astutely disrupts the patterns demonstrated in these representative contemporary novels—of the beat and mainstream literary traditions. susan is not confined to the kitchen or the bedroom; nor is she subject to a fate of madness or death. rather, susan acts on her rebellious impulses, explores her sexuality, and chooses her own fate, which at the end of the novel, begins with a trip abroad. in come and join the dance, johnson creates a female protagonist who may be confronted with society’s limited expectations for women, but who is able to overcome them. in light of the novel’s transgressive portrayals of female agency, rebellion, and sexuality, it is perhaps not surprising that come and join the dance received mixed reviews at the time of its publication. as ann douglas explains, some of the “disapproving” reviews were due in part to the novel’s intervention in the period’s “debate about troubled female adolescents.” readers, like those at time, who “thought the silent generation’s most serious problem was its young women,” certainly would not have embraced johnson’s depiction of susan’s and kay’s rebelliousness. new york times reviewer gerald walker, on the other hand, praised “the depth and the deftness” with which johnson treats susan’s various acts of rebellion. further, he asserted that the novel is “artful and unaffected” as it “reminds us that youth is … . a period of becoming whose essence is flux: the lostness or wildness [that others criticize] are merely way- stations along this road of change.” notably, walker’s appraisals were echoed by kerouac, who provided a decidedly laudatory endorsement of johnson’s first novel; in door wide open, johnson recalls that kerouac “gave [editor] hiram haydn an extravagant blurb for the publication of … come and join the dance: ‘the best woman writer in america.’” it is of course reasonable to argue that kerouac’s intimate relationship with johnson influenced what might seem to be his overstated endorsement of the novel. nevertheless, his enthusiastic approval of come and join the dance has since been echoed by beat scholars, who argue that the novel “claims the seminal status of comparable texts” including major works by kerouac and other male beats. it is likewise my contention that the unconventional and controversial elements of come and join the dance—its daring revisions of literary and social norms—are what define it as an undeniably important novel. iv. female subjectivity in come and join the dance possibilities for resistance in paradoxical spaces female subjectivity within the novel is represented by both susan and kay in various ways. overall, for both women, rebelling against the rules of their families, schools, and tradition represents how they come into their own, deliberately resisting the norm and instead making decisions that reflect their own desires and needs. kay, for example, has dropped out of college and is described as being sexually active, something that not only marks her general nonconformist behavior, but also that is linked to what seems to be her strong sense of self. in a scene in which kay is naked in front of susan, susan thinks to herself: “kay wasn’t a virgin. perhaps once you had irrevocably gone to bed with a man, you took your body for granted—you knew, which was different than knowing about.” as ronna johnson emphasizes in her discussion of the novel, female subjectivity is demonstrated throughout the novel through the female characters’ agency and assertiveness, especially regarding their bodies and sexuality—through their resistance to being treated as objects by men and their “negotiations for the sexual satisfaction that authenticates female subjectivity.” both kay and susan make decisions about who to sleep with and under what conditions to do so—factors which challenge the s expectation that women were to have sex only after marriage and only with their husbands. their rejection of this and other prescriptive standards, as ronna johnson argues, represents a bold model of female subjectivity. through susan, subjectivity is also represented by the novel’s opening act of walking out on her college exam without completing it, as well as by her decisions to stop picking up her campus mail, to hand in term papers late, and to cut a considerable amount of physical education classes—so many, in fact, that, as noted earlier, susan cannot graduate. additionally, as the novel proceeds, susan stands up and then breaks up with her boyfriend, stops returning library books, decides to have sex with relative acquaintances, and in the conclusion, leaves for a trip to paris by herself regardless of her parents’ wishes for her to stay in new york city. all of these acts of nonconformity—some more substantial than others— represent susan’s subjectivity and agency, her willful choices that defy the behavioral standards for a young, middle-class female student. resistant to the traditional expectation that she will behave as a “good girl” and inevitably become a wife and mother, susan exerts her subjectivity as she realizes that she has been experiencing life according to others’ rules. now nearing the end of her college career and facing an unknown future, susan undergoes a “transformation of consciousness” from object to subject. in focusing her novel on this development of female subjectivity, johnson revises the narrative patterns in contemporary novels that perpetuate the subordination or oppression of female characters, and she does so through a transgression of a similarly restrictive gendered association of social spaces. more specifically, the development of female subjectivity within come and join the dance is achieved through a reshaping of the traditional public/private dichotomy. it is unquestionable that in s america, “the ideology that associates men with the public realm and women with the private” dominated. it was within the private space of the home that women were expected to find meaning and through which to define and identify themselves. the extent of this ideology in practice is evident in friedan’s the feminine mystique, which addresses its previously unspoken consequences faced by many women at the time. even in bohemia in the s, it was difficult for women to have access to and situate themselves within, rather than on the margins of public spaces where men could dissent against mainstream america—such as “on the road.” as noted earlier, the female beats were largely expected by the male beats to fit in to one of the following roles: “mothers, wives, sisters, lovers, virgins, whores, demons, or angels”—most, if not all of which are defined by the domesticity of the private space. further, as nancy duncan clarifies, “most men move between public and private spaces and spheres with more legitimacy and physical safety … than most women,” which fundamentally supports the sense of entrapment associated with women’s location in the private space during the s. as susan asserts her subjectivity through the course of the novel, she destabilizes and transgresses this traditionally gendered spatial dichotomy. significantly, johnson displaces the mainstream and bohemian locus of power between men and women in both public and private spaces through the construction of “paradoxical space[s].” within the discourse of feminist geography, space is one way in which feminists “can acknowledge the difference of others” as they define spaces “which [do] not replicate the exclusions of the same [masculine] and the other [feminine].” what makes spaces paradoxical within this discourse, rose explains, is that what “would be mutually exclusive if charted on a two-dimensional map—centre and margin, inside and outside—are occupied simultaneously” as an act of opposition to hegemonic or oppressive norms. she argues further that a paradoxical space is a space that represents the effort “to acknowledge both the power of hegemonic discourses and to insist on the possibility of resistance.” within the paradoxical spaces that johnson constructs in her novel, the gendered dichotomy of private/public is challenged as susan resists what she experiences as oppression within the patriarchal hegemony, representing what rose calls “[a] strateg[y] of subversion.” as the following analysis shows, it is in public spaces, specifically the new york city streets and the car, where susan develops and asserts subjectivity, and it is in private spaces, such as the home, where she lacks subjectivity, where she becomes motionless and disconnected from her sense of self—compromising her ability to act as subject. the streets johnson first challenges the gendered spatial discourse in the beginning of the novel when, after walking out on her exam, susan stands up her boyfriend, jerry, and goes wandering aimlessly around what she’s identified as her six-block new york city radius. she finds herself watching a solitary man walking aimlessly in front of her, and she’s drawn to him. she eventually recognizes this man as peter, who she’s met several times through kay. she runs up to catch him, loudly calls his name, and, as johnson describes, practically startles peter “out of sleep.” susan’s approach is quite powerful here as this becomes the first time she and peter are alone together—an encounter that prompts susan’s sexual interest in peter and leads her to eventually seduce him. she and peter agree to visit the college inn for coffee, and here, susan, already having initiated their meeting, now becomes the “provider” as she buys him coffee and pays for the music on the jukebox. she also then continues to walk the new york city streets with peter “paying off his debts” with her money. throughout this scene, susan is in the dominant position and, as such, reverses normative gender roles. within the context of s bohemia, however, susan in the role of the financial supporter may not initially be considered unusual. in fact, male beats are often described as deliberately rejecting “the family wage system,” as “refus[ing] to undertake the support of women.” in fact, douglas describes how, during johnson’s relationship with kerouac, johnson experienced “the perverse but real pleasures of buying [kerouac] dinner or lending him money.” in contrast to this real-life bohemian relationship, however, susan’s role as temporary financial supporter for peter in the novel is followed by her sexual seduction and ultimate rejection of peter. as such, johnson allows susan to play into the male bohemian fantasy of having a woman support him (the role peter’s parents usually play as they regularly send him checks), yet susan does so not within the private space of the home where the family finances are traditionally handled, but rather in various public spaces throughout the city. in this first example of paradoxical spaces in the novel, it is within two public spaces of the city, the street and the coffee shop, that johnson enables susan to develop and assert her subjectivity. the role of the streets in this context is particularly notable given that the street is frequently the key signifier of the public space, distinguished from the private through the role of the body. phil hubbard explains, one of the central props of [the social etiquette of the streets] is the idea that there are certain activities deemed acceptable in private but wholly inappropriate and ill mannered when performed on the streets. .... the common denominator in these proscriptions [of public activities in the urban west] is that these activities involve a transgression of the boundaries of the body[, such as spitting or defecating]. though susan’s behavior on the streets is not tied to something physically “crossing the threshold of [her] body” through such acts to which hubbard refers, the positioning of her behavior as a subject on the streets illustrates johnson’s critique of the general association of female agency as limited to the privacy of the home. susan’s act of approaching peter in this early scene signifies the frequent sense of power or exhilaration that she experiences on the new york city streets. having initially perceived her six-block radius around campus as overwhelmed by a disappointing “grayness,” susan determines to make new york city hers, and over time, “the streets had since taken on color, had slowly accumulated layers of significance.” walking around these streets, susan gradually comes to see herself more clearly in new york city, to the point at which she “discovered that she could stand still on the street if she wanted to, that aimlessness could have its own legality.” in fact, it is also on the new york city streets that susan later breaks up with jerry. with cars and people rushing around her as she shocks jerry with her decision, susan feels as though she and jerry are the only stable beings at this moment. she finds her grounding on the streets, has built the strength for such a confrontation, and triumphs over the many mirror reflections of herself that she initially tried to avoid. walking the city streets, more intimately learning about herself within this public space, susan makes a connection to her sense of self so that walking aimlessly, meeting with peter, and breaking up with jerry become defining moments of power and freedom. the car when susan decides to initiate herself into the community of outlaws by losing her virginity with anthony in what she describes as “a gratuitous act of sex,” johnson transforms peter’s car into a paradoxical space. in a car ride with peter, kay, and anthony, susan initially feels exhilarated and free from any worries or responsibilities, but she’s soon confronted with the realization that she’s not quite like the others, she’s too much of a “good girl.” as they drive through an epitome of the typical conformist family lifestyle in washington heights—“through endless streets of blond brick apartment houses … and women wheeling baby carriages home from the supermarkets”—peter says to susan, “you be a good girl, susan, and they might let you live up here.” in response to her immediate cry of frustration, “‘i don’t want to be a good girl!’”, peter assures susan to her dismay that “‘that’s your particular fate.’” in a subsequent move she considers “safer” than succumbing to this supposedly pre-destined life of a good girl, susan then daringly matches anthony’s somewhat playful attempt to come on to her. he asks why she doesn’t adopt him, saying “if you do, you’ll have to sleep with me.” she admits to her virginity and ends up telling anthony she’ll meet him the following day—presumably to sleep with him. anthony keeps the game going, asking why not now—why wait until tomorrow, why don’t they meet this afternoon? to everyone’s surprise, at the next red light, susan suddenly gets out of the car. even anthony is caught off guard—he doesn’t think susan would take his teasing seriously. susan asserts, “‘let’s go downtown.’ … ‘aren’t you coming downtown, anthony?’” as anthony figures out what to do—he’s no longer leading the game—susan waits on the street for him. acquiring peter’s apartment key, anthony finally exits the car as well, peter and kay drive off, and susan thinks to herself, “i’m doing it, i’m doing it.” susan initially decides to accept the outlaws’ invitation to go for a ride because she “wanted to be set in motion too, to run mindlessly and not feel too much.” in the car, she, anthony, and kay cannot help but be reminded of the freedom afforded to peter through his car as “he always kept the back seat littered with the fragmentary preparations for a journey.” and although johnson initially explains that “they were all in [peter’s] power that afternoon; he had made the car their only reality,” susan quite promptly takes control of her reality as she makes the aggressive move with anthony and shocks all three friends with her behavior. susan may not be driving the car, able to control where they go or how fast they move, but rather than remain powerless at peter’s position in the driver’s seat and at what he claims is her “conservative” fate, susan asserts her subjectivity and takes control of the situation. in doing so, she stops the car, puts peter in the position to wait for her, and leads anthony to the bedroom. later in the novel, susan acts even more assertively in a car when she seduces peter. after peter’s car breaks down and he sells it for an infuriating five dollars, susan and peter take a taxi home. in the absence of any initiation on his part, susan reaches for peter in the taxi and decides not to go to her dorm, but to go home with him instead. johnson writes, “[she] couldn’t bear not touching him. she was no longer afraid. she turned to peter and put her arms around him, led him close to her.” in a car that belongs to neither of them, after experiencing peter’s loss of what epitomizes his identity (he considers his car “the place where he really lived—he only inhabited his apartment”), susan again acts as a subject and exerts sexual agency. she physically moves closer to peter, comes on to him in the car, and initiates the change of destination for the driver. in doing so, susan portrays the same sense of power and subjectivity here as she did earlier in peter’s car and on the streets. further, and as ronna johnson highlights, peter is stripped of his “male power” in this scene through the demise of his car; susan is the “sexual aggressor” “at the cost of male mobility and the viability of the road tale” epitomized in on the road. johnson revises the traditional gendered association of the car as depicted by kerouac. she transfers the power typically possessed by the man with the car and embodied in his freedom “to disappear for a few days” —as peter has become accustomed to—to susan as she does not hesitate to act on peter’s vulnerability here and, subsequent to the loss of his “male power,” seduces him. the access to public spaces that cars offer apply to both men and women, but the association of cars with male freedom and identity is one that has long pervaded american popular myth and literary history. in her study of the car in women’s fiction, deborah clarke argues for connections between this popular myth, its consistent representation in american literature, and the actual car industry in which “women still report being patronized by car sales personnel and intimidated by auto mechanics.” significantly, in this archetypal masculine space in american literature and society, susan, in the first scene with anthony, boldly reacts to the threat of her future as defined by outside forces rather than by herself, and then, in the later scene with peter, acts on their sexual attraction and uses her physicality to become sexual actor and agent. through susan’s behavior in these two key scenes, johnson challenges both the celebratory and negative aspects of the car as represented in the quintessential beat text itself, on the road. while the image of the car in on the road epitomizes the freedom and power afforded men and denied women and provides the means through which sal can escape convention and conformity, it also “embodies a negative side.” roger n. casey explains: “there is a gradual festering disillusionment with road culture and automobility” as well as “a disenchantment prevalent in sal’s growing awareness of dean’s instability” throughout on the road. like susan, sal isn’t actually the driver of the car during his journeys back and forth across the country, but for sal this means that “he is unable to control america”: he “[does] nothing to claim it, change it, or even interact with it.” in johnson’s depiction of the car as a paradoxical space in the two scenes described above, susan quite deliberately—in acts of outright resistance to her perceived oppression and passivity—seizes the power that anthony assumes to exert when he begins teasing susan at the start of their drive and that peter feels in his car as the driver. in contrast to sal’s behavior, rather than willingly submit to what the others perceive is her fate as a “square” or to feminine passivity in general, susan redefines the nature of this masculine space. the bedroom the significance of susan’s actions in public (and masculine) spaces is further highlighted when contrasted with her lack of subjectivity within private spaces. for example, at peter’s apartment in an early scene with anthony, anthony tells susan that he was about to kiss her before she left his side on the couch. as she now stands at the window looking out, she waits for him to approach her and initiate a kiss. when he remains where he is, susan attributes his reluctance to be aggressive to his timidity or immaturity and doesn’t make a move herself—a stark contrast to her behavior in the car shortly afterwards. somewhat similarly, when in her dorm room, susan is overwhelmed with stillness and inaction—she becomes lazy and sleeps to overcome feelings of entrapment. also, during a conversation in kay’s room about her interest in drawing, susan begins to feel that “she and kay were shouting to each other across space, like people on long-distance phone calls shouting uselessly.” the feelings of stability, strength, or clarity that susan experiences in public spaces disintegrate here in kay’s room. precisely, kay’s room, peter’s apartment, susan’s own dorm room, her bedroom in her parents’ house—all are spaces within which susan feels stifled and immobile. on the city streets, though, susan is time and time again, invigorated and active. more striking examples of susan’s lack of subjectivity within a private space are her experiences in peter’s bedroom—first with anthony and then with peter. despite her behavior on the streets and in the car, susan is not the physical aggressor in the bedroom. having exited the car to anthony’s surprise, once susan is inside the apartment with anthony, she is reluctant to move forward and feels paralyzed to enter the bedroom where anthony waits for her. sitting on the couch, she has to “concentrat[e] fiercely on the impossible act of standing and manag[ing] to uncurl her legs.” the sexual experience itself is even characterized by a lack of physical feeling on susan’s part. johnson writes, there was not even much pain—a vague feeling of something inside her, moving. … his body drove at hers over and over again. her legs were cramped. … she would have to tell him he was too heavy, complain that the sheets were wet. her attempt to do so is silenced by anthony, though, who then ends things abruptly as his “terribly thin” body drapes over hers. susan feels “embarrass[ed]. she had always imagined a rape, an overwhelming of herself, the victim, never that she would be left with a starved, spent child.” instead of having an extraordinary physical experience for her first time, susan’s loss of virginity is characterized by a disconnect from her own body. we see this before she moves into the bedroom, when she feels paralyzed, during intercourse, when her legs cramp and she can’t reposition herself comfortably, and after intercourse, when anthony’s body is on top of hers and she lies unfulfilled. the very ability for susan to assert herself that we see in the public spaces of the car and the streets dissipates in the private space of the bedroom. this is also illustrated when susan sleeps with peter several days later in the same place she slept with anthony. in fact, the two experiences are not that different—most notably because peter, too, fails to bring susan to orgasm. as with anthony, susan is not assertive in the bedroom, and her body and mind are left unfulfilled after sleeping with peter. however, with peter, susan’s physical experience is slightly more intense than with anthony. johnson describes the scene after susan and peter have had sex, when susan begins thinking about her trip to paris that same afternoon and begins to feel the pressure of time as she realizes she needs to pick up her suitcases and catch her train. before she leaves, though, she recalls that “there had been a rightness when his body had entered hers … and then there had come a time when she had felt herself becoming flooded with light, and she had floated up, up—toward something she had almost reached.” though she initiates their sexual encounter in the taxi, once in the bedroom itself, susan is unable to communicate with peter or to even maneuver herself in such a way to achieve the orgasm she had almost reached. in one way of reading these two sex scenes, johnson complicates the traditional notion of the private or domestic as primarily female through susan’s utter lack of physicality, embodiment, and subjectivity in the apartment. this strategy is undermined, however, in light of the paradox that has come to define mainstream notions of the home—that patriarchal authority extends itself from the public space to the private space of the home through sexual relationships, in spite of the home as gendered feminine. referring to the work of marilyn frye, rose explains that “in the bedroom [a woman] has no authority to speak independently. there she is not to speak her mind, but to be eloquent only with her body, for his pleasure.” in these scenes, then, johnson seems to actually perpetuate this paradox, rather than complicate it—allowing anthony and peter to play the normative masculine role in the bedroom, being in control and silencing susan during the respective sexual experiences. however, two key aspects of both scenes complicate this possibility. first, that anthony and peter fail to bring susan to orgasm and ultimately leave her unfulfilled and even disappointed diminishes the full sense of dominance for which the above paradox allows. second, in denying or withholding from susan the subjectivity she develops in public spaces, johnson transforms the bedroom into a paradoxical space within which the image of the sexually assertive female bohemian is undermined. female beats generally resisted the traditional expectation of a woman’s passivity in a sexual relationship. ronna johnson explains that “they performed the socially mandated roles of mother, wife, lover, but with bohemian sexual freedom.” this characteristic of the female beat is evident in both male- and female-authored beat literature. male beats often describe the women with whom they have sexual encounters as uninhibited: for example, in on the road, sal describes how outside of a gas station, “incidentally, a very beautiful colorado girl shook me that cream; she was all smiles too”; in a letter to kerouac, neal cassady tells of a brief affair with cherry mary, who didn’t remain a virgin long after they met: “i ripped into her like a maniac and she loved it.” female beats also share similar characterizations—but with a key distinction. in the men’s accounts, women are seen as objects, fleeting “experiences” in the lives of the men with no real voice or sustained function in the men’s lives. in the women’s accounts of similar behavior, the power is redistributed to the women as they are the agents of their sexual behavior, deciding on their own with whom to sleep and under what conditions. this is evident, for example, in di prima’s this kind of bird flies backward as my analysis in chapter one demonstrates. in this collection of di prima’s early poetry, women are consistently defined by a sexual bravado, celebrating their sexual freedom and emphasizing their sexual assertiveness and connection to one’s body. additionally, in di prima’s memoirs of a beatnik, di prima’s semi-fictionalized depiction of herself “is a self who finds joy and liberation in sex” and engages in various sexually-explicit acts with men and women. similarly, as mentioned earlier, in come and join the dance, kay represents this sexually assertive female bohemian. kay has become comfortable enough with her body to be in her apartment naked in front of susan—a move susan attributes to the fact that kay has certainly been sexually active. susan recognizes in kay’s nonchalant physical behavior a “knowing” of one’s body that susan yearns for and is unable to experience when losing her virginity with anthony and when sleeping with peter. not able to connect to her body through physical aggression or fulfillment in the bedroom, susan relinquishes the subjectivity that she asserts in public spaces and in doing so challenges the common depiction of the bohemian female as sexually confident, assertive, or experimental. in contrasting susan’s behavior in public and private spaces in these ways, johnson daringly destabilizes the traditional relationship between gender and space as well as mainstream and bohemian notions of female subjectivity. the ambivalence of susan’s subjectivity: a critique of bohemian female liberation simultaneous with johnson’s condemnation of hegemonic gender norms and their relationship to the traditional spatial dichotomy is her subtle critique of the bohemian image of female subjectivity, represented largely through sexual agency as described above. susan’s subjectivity is marked by an ambivalence throughout the novel that raises interesting questions about the viability of female agency and subjectivity as it is defined within the bohemian community. in constructing a portrayal of female subjectivity that is ambivalent toward the primacy of sexual agency, johnson deepens our understanding of the literature of the women beats and of protofeminism more broadly as she expresses a skepticism of how female sexual agency seems central to other women beats’ efforts to revise the normative gender discourse. that both anthony and peter fail to bring susan to orgasm is a key element of the novel that helps illustrate the ambivalence that characterizes susan’s subjectivity. after their respective experiences in the bedroom with susan, both men acknowledge their failures. anthony expresses utter frustration at the situation, grabbing susan’s shoulders and shouting, “‘next time it’ll be better. next time i’ll make you come!’” peter is calmer, acknowledging to susan, “‘i didn’t even make you come—i wanted to do that.’” in her response to each, susan experiences brief moments of strength: she daringly tells anthony that “‘it had nothing to do with you. it was an experiment’”; she takes more care to assuage peter’s frustration, telling him “‘i knew what it meant.’” in these responses and her subsequent dismissal of each man’s offer to take her out, susan attempts to hide and essentially escape her true feelings of disappointment. underneath the surface of susan’s bravado here is an effort to subdue what is unquestionably disappointing for her after having initiated these two sexual experiences and having expected something much more satisfying. after the experience with anthony, for example, johnson describes susan’s confusion and disappointment: “where was the moment when everything became luminous and the earth shook? she would remember being bored and not knowing what time it was.” and though she experienced more physical pleasure with peter, susan nevertheless lies to him when she says, “‘it was good anyway.’” susan’s ambivalence is thus rooted in her undeniable disappointment in asserting herself sexually and then finding such anti-conservative behavior anti-climactic. in her essay on come and join the dance, ronna johnson argues that susan’s physical and emotional disappointment that results from her sexual experiences with anthony and peter represents johnson’s revision of “the s freudian discourse which blamed women for sexual failures that were overdetermined by masculinist social norms.” she asserts that in the male lovers’ inabilities to satisfy susan sexually, johnson depicts “male failure” and “male self-doubt rarely voiced by male beat writers.” ultimately, ronna johnson concludes that in susan’s moments of clarity or strength following each sexual experience, johnson privileges the “satisfaction of perspective [over] sexual gratification.” it is unquestionable that johnson notably undermines the male sexual prowess so often celebrated in male-authored beat texts. however, i argue that in consistently highlighting the inability of susan to feel sexually satisfied—despite her obligatory claims of contentment to anthony and peter—johnson also importantly questions the presumed satisfaction that sexual freedom provided women and therefore the nature of female subjectivity as it is defined within bohemia. in chapter one, my analysis of di prima’s this kind of bird flies backward pointed to a connection between the development of female subjectivity and women’s sexual agency. a crucial aspect of di prima’s revision of women’s passivity and objectivity is the bohemian woman’s overt acknowledgment and celebration of sexual agency—in contrast to contemporary literary representations of women as unwittingly silent, passive, or submissive regarding romantic or sexual relationships. whereas di prima fairly consistently emphasizes the sexual satisfaction associated with the assertion of female subjectivity, johnson mildly, yet powerfully, critiques this. though susan acts rebellious in many ways, it is sexual experimentation and assertiveness that she understands will allow her entrance into the bohemian community—that will enable her to come into her own, like kay has, and no longer “[be] only a member of the audience.” however, that her self-initiated “gratuitous” sexual experiences lead to physical and emotional disappointment, cause a sense of confusion and frustration, and provoke what amounts to a superficial bravado challenges the self-assuredness with which di prima characterizes the sexually-liberated female bohemian. in questioning the actual psychological and physical satisfaction of the sexual freedom entailed in female bohemians’ revisions of the traditional female gender role, johnson complicates the possibility for a seamless transition for women from object to subject. susan assumes that sexual agency will be fulfilling and enable her to feel connected to her body and sense of self as she sees in kay; however, when this is not realized, her subjectivity becomes troubled. the ambivalence of susan’s subjectivity is illustrated in multiple ways. when susan is initially playing the role she’s “supposed” to, such as taking her final college exam, she is restless and experiences a moment of disembodiment. johnson writes, “she had watched, far off, the smooth running of her mind, and had thought, i am doing that, but could not really believe it,” which leads to her feeling “frozen into a deadly laziness.” likewise, even in her acts of rebelliousness, susan doesn’t feel composed or real, but rather lost or nonexistent. when looking in the mirror after walking out on her exam and standing up jerry, for example, susan experiences a disconnect: “there were so many mirrors on broadway. her image floated ahead of her like a balloon, hovering in the windshields of cars, appearing transparent, ghostlike.” susan sees an image of herself that represents a distance from or a disappearance of her sense of self. this fractured sense of self is also often manifested in a restlessness, a desire to be where she isn’t. for example, when sitting in the coffee shop with anthony, susan is drawn to the street. she even notices and reflects upon her fundamental unease with wherever she may be at a given moment. johnson writes, sitting in schulte’s with anthony she could not take her eyes off the street. and yet it was funny, she thought—if she had been outside at that moment, she would have been staring in, at the tables, the people, probably at anthony; so in a way you never ended up seeing the place where you really were at all. this anxiety or discomfort that susan feels periodically leads her to make what she calls “gestures”—moves that she thinks represent to others something more meaningful than what she truly feels. this includes using words such as “incredible” or “strange” because she thinks doing so projects an image of detachment, “which was more sophisticated than being innocent.” this tendency to perform along with susan’s moments of disembodiment point to the fundamental instability of her sense of self, even when asserting subjectivity. all of these examples show that even once susan begins “taking certain risks” and acting with agency, she struggles with the implications of this independence—of “taking care of [her]self.” what she yearns is for something to happen to her—something to add “urgency” to her life. and when she resigns herself to provoke such experiences when it seems she has no other option—namely through her sexual assertiveness—she is left disappointed and disconnected from herself and those around her. thus, as susan attempts to resist her tendency to be passive and instead acts on the bohemian model of female subjectivity as exemplified by kay and represented in the work of di prima, she experiences mild identity crises that take shape in moments of disembodiment, pretense, or restlessness during which her sense of self is lost or confused. through this multifaceted and ambivalent depiction of susan’s female subjectivity, johnson reveals perhaps heretofore unrecognized or unspoken concerns associated with the promise of female liberation. she suggests that for female subjectivity to be viable, it must not be primarily defined by sexuality. when it is, as susan’s experiences demonstrate, women may inadvertently perpetuate the way in which men are traditionally dominant and women are relatively powerless in sexual situations. though johnson does complicate this via the inability of the male characters to bring susan to orgasm, that susan is herself unable to exercise the power in the bedroom necessary to fulfill her own needs—or to even let peter or anthony know the true severity of her disappointment—signifies the lack of authentic liberation that such sexual behavior may actually yield. in portraying this potential outcome of the bohemian model of female subjectivity, johnson adds an important dimension to our understanding of how sexuality functions for the development of subjectivity, and how women beats conceived of the approach to and the impact of resisting traditional gender roles. she provides an undeniably important contribution to the discourse of female subjectivity as it takes shape in the protofeminism of the s. subjectivity and the new york city bohemian community: susan’s trip to paris the importance of how johnson’s depiction of female subjectivity within come and join the dance complicates the model portrayed in di prima’s poetry is further highlighted when read in conjunction with johnson’s revision of the function of the new york city bohemian community as well. specifically, come and join the dance undermines the reciprocal relationship between the city and subjectivity mediated by one’s participation in a bohemian or countercultural community—a relationship depicted in beat texts such as di prima’s this kind of bird flies backward and kerouac’s on the road. examining this aspect of the novel further reveals the myriad ways in which johnson’s first novel helps redefine the beat literary tradition and our understanding of the beat community and its effect on various writers. elizabeth grosz argues in “bodies-cities” that the relationship between the body and the city is mutually constitutive and allows for subjectivity to take shape. as neither the body nor the city is fully formed independently, it is within and through the relationship with each other that both bodies and cities are perpetually defined. grosz clarifies, though, that the reciprocation between the body and the city is not equally balanced; she suggests instead “a fundamentally dis-unified series of systems and interconnections, a series of disparate flows, energies, events or entities, and spaces, brought together or drawn apart in more or less temporary alignments.” and it is this mutually constitutive relationship, however imbalanced, grosz argues, that is the basis for the development of subjectivity. she explains that cities establish lateral, contingent, short- or long-term connections between individuals and social groups, and more or less stable divisions, such as those constituting domestic and generational distinctions. these spaces, divisions, and interconnections are the roles and means by which bodies are individuated to become subjects. .... this means that the city must be seen as the most immediately concrete locus for the production and circulation of power. grosz clarifies the particular function of the city as an integral part of the process of subjectivity, and this brings into focus the fundamental relationship between the bohemian, community, and the city. as noted in the introduction, there is an historical link between bohemia and community. writer and historian marty jezer explains: after a day alone at a typewriter or in front of a canvas, there is a need to unwind and relax with convivial company and to share and challenge each other’s ideas. hence an informal communalism and the famous bar scenes of the s and the incessant party going. despite the general marginalization of women within contemporary bohemian or avant- garde communities, jezer suggests that crucial to bohemianism is a community that provides a social space within which members can escape the mainstream and its culturally-defined restrictive mandates and can share and further develop similar ideas, values, and interests. further, bohemian communities are almost always formed in a city. elizabeth wilson, for example, links the development of the bohemian in the nineteenth century to the growth of the city: an essential precondition for the emergence of the bohemian was the expansion of urban society. …. [city life] provided an escape from the responsibilities of the family, and made possible the formation of new groups and friendships based on interests and work rather than on kinship. studies of more modern versions of bohemia continue to emphasize this particular attraction of the bohemian to the city in contrast to the countryside. for example, christine stansell emphasizes the city’s “easy sociability” provided by its “compactness,” “the plethora of cafés and saloons,” and “the twists and turns of the streets.” likewise, raymond williams describes the city as a kind of open, complex and mobile society, [within which] small groups in any form of divergence or dissent could find some kind of foothold, in ways that would not have been possible if the artists and thinkers composing them had been scattered in more traditional, closed societies. indeed, as noted earlier, the cultural geography of new york city played an important role for the beat community, and on the road helps illustrate this relationship. although women were marginalized in the image of the bohemian community depicted in on the road, its importance and its connection to new york city are nevertheless key aspects of sal paradise’s search of “the pearl.” kerouac writes, “la is the loneliest and most brutal of american cities; new york gets god-awful cold in the winter but there’s a feeling of wacky comradeship somewhere in some streets.” this passage draws attention to the undeniable magnetism of new york city—the place sal calls “the great and final city of america”—and the importance of camaraderie or community and its particular presence in new york city. new york city is the initial setting of the novel and is the ultimate destination for sal as he moves from city to city across the country. and an integral part of this journey is the community of “mad ones,” “intellectuals,” and “slinking criminals” as sal refers to its unofficial and often-changing members. likewise, the development of individualism and nonconformity is the primary aspect of the mixed-gender bohemian community that di prima underscores in her first book of poetry; and new york city was indeed central to this experience. in contrast to the creatively-stifling suburb of di prima’s college experience, new york city represented a space within which avant-garde artists and like-minded nonconformists could collectively develop and nurture their interests. johnson interestingly revises this beat discourse of the role of the city and bohemian community in the construction of subjectivity—male or female—through susan’s ultimate rejection of the new york city bohemian community at the end of the novel. in contrast to works by di prima and kerouac, in come and join the dance, johnson suggests a rethinking of what these key beat elements actually offer. in the novel’s conclusion, susan chooses to explore paris as a temporary escape from new york city, and she does so alone. susan’s desire to go to paris by herself is unquestionably motivated by what she begins to see as the dysfunction of the bohemian community. as the novel progresses, susan realizes how the outlaws she once admired are actually falling apart. susan is initially attracted to kay, peter, and anthony because of their self-claimed freedoms: kay has freed herself from college and from her parents and their rigid expectations; peter has freed himself from the burden of being financially independent and from being a steady student tied to deadlines or goals; and anthony has freed himself from the rules of college, now living away from home and writing poetry outside the conventions of traditional or academic literature. in general, as kay explains to susan, each bohemian’s “work” is “living… just living”—on their own terms. though susan may realize that “[n]othing was happening at all” in her friends’ lives, she still initially feels that when she isn’t with them, “everything was happening without her.” this changes, though, when this bohemian community fails to deliver what susan had perceived as its promise of camaraderie based on a shared resistance to conformity. the more time susan spends with these bohemians, the more clearly she begins to realize the level of dysfunction that accompanies their outlaw lifestyles. kay, for example, initially hopes that if she is to become a failure in her new countercultural lifestyle, that she will be a “magnificent” one; by the end of the novel, however, she has dismally accepted what she perceives to be her “mediocrity.” underneath the façade of kay’s contentedness and strong sense of self linked in part to her sexual independence lingers an anger and disappointment in her life. susan observes, for example, how kay’s “face was very tired, as if she knew too much,” and susan notes the despondency with which kay tells susan that “‘everybody uses everybody. that’s the way it is.’” peter, though free in theory from work and school, is still dependent upon his parents’ financial support, and in this way, is still bound to the constraints defined by others—a reality that he often tries to escape by taking aimless drives in his car. the growing hopelessness and deterioration of these characters culminates at the end of come and join the dance, on the day of susan’s graduation. kay would have also graduated the same day had she not dropped out of college, and when susan finds her at the bar, kay is hopelessly drunk and depressed. whether over her regret at dropping out of school or her jealousy of what seems to be peter’s interest in susan (as kay had previously slept with him casually, as part of her sexual independence), it is clear that in this final scene, kay struggles to accept the choices she’s made. susan and peter have to escort her home and put her to bed, and it’s at this time that susan reaches a new understanding of kay’s living space. having initially envied kay’s hotel room as representing “the real world,” susan soon begins to feel emptiness in this room, that rather than enabling kay’s self-defined freedom, the room in fact merely contains “the debris of kay’s life, the pictures that kay had tacked on the green wallpaper that she would not have chosen herself.” within what susan had once considered the epitome of bohemian freedom and independence, susan experiences her final sense of entrapment in this private space: “the room was suddenly much too bright—she could see its sadness too well. this was a room she never could have lived in.” the equivalent of kay’s room at the southwick arms hotel for peter—his packard—similarly deteriorates by the end of the novel. after taking susan for a drive, peter’s beloved car breaks down, and the emasculation he experiences when failing to satisfy susan sexually later the next morning is foreshadowed when he is forced to face the car’s worthlessness and abandon it. no dealer will pay him for it (his highest offer is a five dollar courtesy payment), and so he wrecks it with a hammer before giving it up entirely. peter’s behavior in this scene reveals his frustration with and lack of control over his life as an outlaw. and after they sleep together, the novel concludes with susan’s final assertion of subjectivity: “‘you know,’ [peter] said, ‘you must never regret any thing.’ ‘i know,’ [susan] said. and then she went.” responding to her realization that this community would only further stifle her, susan makes another escape—this time not from the mainstream, but from her bohemian friends and new york city. susan realizes that the freedom she and her friends sought in new york city away from school and family is not attainable here. she witnesses the growing defeat of her friends as they wander in and out of various bohemian hangouts and as they live in their new york city apartments that “had been assembled defiantly” and were perhaps after all “rooms in the same endless apartment … furnished with the massive, imperishable castoffs that parents whose children had left home gave to the salvation army.” the city that susan originally thought would allow and perhaps further nurture her resistance to confining social conventions in fact turns out to disappoint her. simultaneous with susan’s rethinking of her former admiration of her bohemian friends, then, is her consideration of what paris may offer that new york city may not. though somewhat ambivalent about her impending trip to paris throughout the course of the novel, susan gradually comes to terms with experiencing a new city. her parents “didn’t really want her to go [to paris]” and “were somehow able to reassure themselves by imagining a humdrum existence for her even there.” regardless of their reservations, susan cashes in her bonds for her trip. as for so many other americans during the post-wwii period, especially the creative or nonconformist, paris potentially provides susan the opportunity to “breathe more freely” without being subject to “french mores and prejudices” as a foreigner. johnson provides susan an international experience with the opportunity to “over[come] obstacles to independence and self- fulfillment” that she experiences in new york city. rather than include any part of susan’s trip to paris in the narrative itself, johnson enacts a narrative strategy that rachel blau duplessis refers to as “writing beyond the ending.” in employing an open-ended conclusion in come and join the dance, johnson further revises patterns in contemporary beat and non-beat fiction. in her critical study of th -century women writers, duplessis argues that narrative strategies such as an open-ended conclusion—what lisa hogeland refers to as “a kind of textual feminism” —“produc[e] a narrative that denies or reconstructs seductive patterns of feeling that are culturally mandated, internally policed, hegemonically poised.” johnson’s ending of the novel with susan’s departure for paris challenges the conclusions common in contemporary novels, such as “the ending in death and … the ending in marriage, once obligatory goals for the female protagonist” that act “as closure of historical movement and therefore as the end of development.” concluding the novel with an undefined future for susan as she continues her journey of self- development, johnson revises, broadly, the traditional bildungsroman regarding its resolution of the protagonist’s development, and more specifically, the concluding patterns for women within mainstream contemporary novels as noted above. more interesting, the ending of come and join the dance also signifies johnson’s resistance to literary patterns within beat novels. precisely because susan feels that the bohemian community in new york city has failed to satisfy her, she makes change happen for herself—she asserts control, refusing to resign herself to do as others expect. this is quite different from the ending of kerouac’s on the road. casey argues that in the conclusion of on the road, “the car and the system of possibility it represents recede and fail [sal].” casey continues, emphasizing “that kerouac’s travels in on the road ‘end in a tired acceptance of an unchanged self and society.’” whereas on the road closes with sal’s final return to new york city in a state of disappointment and disillusionment, come and join the dance concludes with the continuation of susan’s development, with her hopefulness toward a future that she sets out to experience on her own terms. the conclusion’s open-endedness enacts a significant narrative strategy that challenges standard endings in contemporary fiction. further, susan’s solitary departure for paris undermines the privileging that both new york city and the bohemian community receive in beat discourse and thus implicitly questions the value of these beat elements for the development of subjectivity. in this way, johnson revises the mutually- constitutive relationship between new york city, the bohemia community, and subjectivity. new york city bohemia may have provided the opportunity for susan to initially develop subjectivity, but as we see, she does this only through a revision of the traditional gendered association of public and private spaces. once susan confronts the true “mediocrity” of the community of outlaws in new york city, she sets out to make “a fresh start, a clean break” in another city. v. conclusion come and join the dance undoubtedly signifies important ways in which johnson destabilizes and revises various patterns in mainstream and beat literature of the period. whereas both male and female contemporary novelists tend to limit representations of women to the home or to tragic fates, or more simply to the bedroom as sexual objects, johnson portrays a female protagonist who not only develops subjectivity, but more interestingly, does so in traditionally masculine spaces. throughout the novel, johnson suggests that it is the subordination of women to a secondary role in conjunction with the positioning of this role within the private space of the home that is ultimately oppressive for women. as such, johnson frames her revision of the normative gender discourse within a reshaping of the restrictive gendered public/private spatial dichotomy. in doing so, johnson provides a model of female subjectivity that was absent in contemporary fiction and that speaks to the entrapment so many women were experiencing in the post- wwii period. though the work of diane di prima represents a similar effort to johnson’s—and both writers’ work is unquestionably significant in this way—for di prima, a fundamental element entailed in challenging the oppressive hegemonic female role is sexual agency. for johnson, this association of sexuality with subjectivity is inadequate. certainly, johnson engages in a similarly important resistance to female subordination and objectivity; however, johnson also questions the impact of di prima’s particular approach to redefining gender discourse. as suggested by susan’s sexual and psychological dissatisfaction with her nonmarital sexual adventurousness and her subsequent experiences of disembodiment and confusion, johnson challenges the ways in which defining female subjectivity through sexuality can compromise authentic female liberation. as suggested by susan’s ambivalence toward her experiences and by her trip to paris at the end of the novel, female subjectivity must exceed the limits of sexuality and instead be developed through various acts of agency that do not necessarily perpetuate, however inadvertently, male dominance and female subordination in the bedroom. ultimately, susan’s departure for paris illustrates her resistance to the conventional expectations for her as a white, middle-class woman as well as to the new york city bohemian expectations for her as a woman acting as a subject. for susan, her subjectivity will continue to take shape on her own terms—outside of the new york city mainstream and bohemian communities. in addition to challenging this beat discourse of subjectivity, the city, and the bohemian community, johnson’s achievements exemplified in come and join the dance also challenge the assumption that the only way for women beats to write themselves into the beat literary tradition is through the genre of memoir. as demonstrated through this analysis of her first novel, johnson challenges discourses of gender and sexuality, space, and community through a depiction of female subjectivity that is simultaneously protofeminist and skeptical of the way in which bohemian protofeminism makes sexual agency a primary factor. importantly, she does this in the genre of fiction—engaging in its fundamental elements as do her male beat contemporaries. this is illustrated, for example, in her adaptation of james’s psychological realism and of hemingway’s canonical prose style, as described earlier. notably, she also complicates traditional approaches to the genre by undermining the typical resolution reached in standard coming-of-age novels, and, more interesting, by revising the role that the female protagonist and archetypical literary tropes, such as that of the car, play in contemporary fiction. expanding our attention to johnson’s body of work in all of these ways highlights her valuable contributions to the beat literary tradition and significantly extends our understanding of women beat writers. whereas chapter one explored the connection between di prima’s generative experience within the beat community and her corresponding emphasis on individualism and the development of female subjectivity within this context in her early poetry, this chapter examines the ways in which johnson’s somewhat more complicated experience in the same context manifested in her writing accordingly. my analysis shows that although johnson’s status as a beat writer is largely defined by her relationship with kerouac and by her beat memoir, her work as a writer has many significant cultural, literary, and social implications that should no longer be ignored. looking closely at how johnson’s complex experience within the new york city beat community affected her writing brings to our attention an important writer who dared to challenge mainstream norms and literary practices, as well as various discourses present in male- and female-authored beat literature. as such, this examination of come and join the dance demonstrates how multifaceted each writer’s experience within the beat community was and thus, the myriad ways in which each writer’s body of work can contribute to our understanding of this pivotal period in american literature and society. the next chapter continues this endeavor through a study of hettie jones. i examine how jones engages in the hegemonic discourses of race and gender and in the literary and cultural context of postmodernism through the trope of the interracial mother, and how she opens up the discourse of beat writers in general and of women beat writers in particular in these distinctive and important ways. notes . charters, kerouac: a biography (new york: st. martin’s press, ), . . charters, beats and company, . . see the introduction for my discussion of the women beats as protofeminists, which follows with the use of this term in current beat scholarship. specifically regarding come and join the dance, r. johnson argues: “its instantiation of women as beat subjects anticipates, but does not equal in promise or achievement, the second-wave feminisms emerging in the late sixties and the early seventies. despite the novel’s emphasis on white female subjectivity, it makes no claim to address directly the emancipation of women; its corrective discourses are written in a beat key rather than with the rhetoric that would be familiar from later women’s movements.” “‘and then she went’: beat departures and feminine transgressions in joyce johnson’s come and join the dance,” girls who wore black, . . r. johnson, “‘and then,’” . . liz bondi and joyce davidson, “situating gender,” a companion to feminist geography, ed. lise nelson and joni seager (malden, ma: blackwell pub., ), . consistent with the use of the term “space” within feminist geography (see nancy duncan, phil hubbard, and linda mcdowell, for example), i distinguish between “space” and “place” per michel de certeau’s distinction, as described by tovi fenster: “space is place made meaningful. …. [the] everyday act of walking in the city [for example] is what marks territorialization and appropriation and the meanings given to a space. … de certeau actually defines the process in which a sense of belonging is established, a process of transformation of a place, which becomes a space of accumulated attachment and sentiments by means of everyday practices. belonging and attachment are built here on the base of accumulated knowledge, memory, and intimate corporal experiences of everyday walking.” “gender and the city: the different formations of belonging,” a companion to feminist geography, . . in highlighting similarities and differences between di prima’s poetry and johnson’s novel, my intention is not to blur genre differences but rather to draw on relevant thematic comparisons between the two writers. . see minor characters for johnson’s use of “collegiate” in this context; the terms “good girl” and “outlaw” as i use them here and throughout the chapter come from johnson’s fictional characterization of herself and of other characters within come and join the dance. . johnson, minor characters, . the subsequent quotations in this paragraph are from the same text: , , . until otherwise noted, the quotations in the next few paragraphs are from minor, and for readability, the corresponding note is provided after the final quotation of each respective paragraph. . minor, , . . minor, , , , , , . . minor, , , . . come and join the dance (new york: atheneum press, ), . . minor, . . “in the night café,” interview by grace, breaking, . though antithetical to the beat writing aesthetic, james provided johnson a model for exploring what she describes as “what was underneath the action” and helped inspire her to write prose. “in,” . . johnson, “in,” . . though johnson doesn’t use the term “bohemian” in the novel, her use of “outlaw” implies a meaning similar to “bohemian.” in the context of the novel, the “outlaw” characters are not criminals by any means, but share a general rebelliousness against the conservative mainstream as well as artistic interests (kay is an artist and anthony a poet). the protagonist’s use of “outlaw” to describe these characters reflects her own perception of the significance of their choices to live on the margins of society. my discussion of the novel shows how the two terms (“bohemian” and “outlaw”) overlap, and, as such, i use them interchangeably. . grace and johnson, breaking, . . johnson, bad connections (new york: putnam, ), . . johnson originally began writing in the night café in the early s promptly following the real-life experience of her husband’s death, but she abandoned it for some time when she remarried, had a child, and worked as an editor. she then went back to it after having written and published bad connections and minor characters in the meantime. . douglas, introduction to minor characters, xxvii. . johnson, minor, . . this more detailed documentation of johnson and kerouac’s relationship in door wide open than that of minor characters reveals that their relationship was not just romantic or sexual, but also based on their shared experiences as writers. in a letter dated mid-october , for example, kerouac writes, “write. get your novel done, dont [sic] worry about whether it’s good or bad, just do it ... it’s written in the stars, you have no power over the stars any moren [sic] i do. the already stars.” likewise, in mid- august , he writes, “your prose is probably not as bad as you think. … but if you feel such remorse about yr [sic] prose somehow that sounds good to me, as if you were really doing good. your trouble is probably the same i’m having with memory babe, boredom with the story.” his letters during this two-year period are consistently supportive in this way, and johnson emphasizes that “except for jack’s continued encouragement, i felt very alone with my work.” nevertheless, this aspect of their relationship—their mutual respect as artists—is often overshadowed by her role as his lover and as his source of support—financially or domestically (ironing and cooking for him, for example). door wide open, - , , . . catherine r. stimpson, rev. of what lisa knew: the truths and lies of the steinberg case, by joyce johnson, entertainment weekly may , . . of the following four such anthologies, peabody’s is the only one in which the excerpt is not about kerouac: charters’ beat down to your soul, knight’s women of the beat generation, charters’ the portable beat reader, and peabody’s a different beat. . maria damon, “victors of catastrophe: beat occlusions,” beat culture and the new america: - , ed. lisa phillips (new york: whitney museum of art, ), . damon refers to frazer as bonnie bremser. it is also worth noting that carolyn cassady is a painter, whose only publication is indeed a beat memoir: off the road: twenty years with cassady, kerouac and ginsberg ( ). though also a poet, frazer remains best known for her memoir, troia: mexican memoirs ( ), which tells the story of her relationship with beat poet ray bremser. see chapter three for my discussion of jones as a writer beyond the scope of her memoir, how i became hettie jones. . see also helen mcneil’s “the archaeology of gender in the beat movement” and grace’s “snapshots.” . r. johnson, “mapping,” . . “mapping,” . . “mapping,” . . several male beats have since written in the memoir/autobiography genre, including ed sanders’s tales of beatnik glory ( ) and neal cassady’s the first third (published posthumously in ). . “mapping,” . . this is with the recent exception of katie mills’s two-page discussion of come and join the dance in the road story and the rebel, in which mills argues that the novel “serves as a crucial bridge between kerouac’s road stories and those by women that will come in the next generation.” the road story and the rebel: moving through film, fiction, and television (carbondale: southern illinois university press, ), . . r. johnson, “‘and then,’” . . “‘and then,’” . . johnson, come, . the quotations in the rest of the paragraph are from come as well: , , , , . . the quotations in this paragraph are all from on the road: - , , , - , . . herman wouk, marjorie morningstar (new york: doubleday, ), . . elaine showalter, a jury of her peers: celebrating american women writers from anne bradstreet to annie proulx (new york: vintage books, ), . . see halberstam for a discussion of how peyton place “was a book before its time” regarding the representation of women. (the fifties, [new york: random house, ], .) halberstam also recognizes, referring to kenneth davis, that despite the forward-thinking characterization of women within the novel, they “‘were far from the perfect exemplars of the shining new woman that eventually followed with the onset of the feminist movement.’” qtd. in halberstam, . . barbara probst solomon, the beat of life (new york: great marsh press, ), . . solomon, . . douglas, introduction, xxiv. . douglas, introduction, xxiii. . gerald walker, “fugitive from girlhood,” rev. of come and join the dance, new york times jan. , : . . walker, . . johnson and kerouac, door, . . grace and johnson, breaking, . . johnson, come, (emphasis in original). . r. johnson, “‘and then,’” . . in the next section, i address susan’s rejection of this association between subjectivity and sexual agency as it signifies johnson’s critique of the bohemian representation of female subjectivity. . felski, . . phil hubbard, “women outdoors: destabilizing the public/private dichotomy,” a companion to feminist geography, . as rose explains, this ideological construct “depend[s] on a white middle-class conception of domesticity.” (feminism, .) also, see nancy duncan for a more general discussion of how “both private and public spaces are heterogeneous and not all space is clearly private or public.” “renegotiating gender and sexuality in public and private spaces,” bodyspace: destabilizing geographies of gender and sexuality (london; new york: routledge, ), . . grace, “snapshots,” . . duncan, . duncan notes here that “most men” in this context generally excludes homosexual men. . rose, . the positioning of power that i argue johnson disrupts is of course not unique to the public/private dichotomy. drawing on foucault, duncan reminds us that inherent in any personal relationship is a relationship of power: “it is a statement of fact that personal relationships are also power relationships and that everyone is implicated in the production and reproduction of power relations.” “renegotiating,” . . rose, . see rose, pg. , for a discussion of geography as fundamentally “masculinist” and the subsequent gendered association of the “same” and “other.” . rose, . . rose, . . rose, . . johnson, come, . . come, . . ehrenreich, . . douglas, introduction, xv. . see hubbard and duncan for more on the role of the street in discussing the public/private dichotomy. . hubbard, . . hubbard, . susan’s sexual aggression on the streets is of course considerably mild in contrast to sex workers for whom sexuality is at the forefront of their behavior on the streets. . johnson, come, , . the subsequent quotation in this paragraph is from the same text: . unless otherwise noted, the quotations in the next few paragraphs are from come as well, and for readability, the corresponding note is provided after the final quotation of each respective paragraph. i will use this pattern as necessary throughout the remainder of the chapter. . come, , , , , , , , . . come, , , . . come, , . . r. johnson, “‘and then,’” . . come, . . deborah clarke, driving women: fiction and automobile culture in twentieth-century america (baltimore: johns hopkins university press, ), . . roger n. casey, textual vehicles: the automobile in american literature (new york: garland publishing, ), . . casey, . . casey, . . come, . . come, , , . . come, . . duncan, . . rose, . . r. johnson, “mapping,” . . kerouac, on the road, - ; cassady, “‘joan anderson’ letter to jack kerouac,” the portable beat reader, . . grace, “snapshots,” . . come, , , , , , . . the quotations in this paragraph are from r. johnson, “‘and then’”: , , . . come, . . come, , , . . come, , , . . come, , , . . elizabeth grosz, “bodies-cities,” sexuality and space, ed. beatriz colomina and jennifer bloomer (princeton: princeton architectural press, ), . . grosz, . . jezer, - . . e. wilson, . . stansell, . . raymond williams, “the metropolis and the emergence of modernism,” unreal city: urban experience in modern european literature and art (manchester: manchester university press, ), . . the quotations in this paragraph are from kerouac, on the road: , , , , , . . come, - , . . come, , , . . come, (emphasis in original), , , . . come, . . come, . . benstock, . . benstock, . . duplessis, writing, . . lisa marie hogeland, feminism and its fictions: the consciousness- raising novel and the women’s liberation movement (phila, pa: university of pa press, ), xvii. . duplessis, writing, . . duplessis, writing, , . . casey, . . casey, . . come, . chapter “the object of everyone’s attention”: interracial motherhood and the postmodernist dilemma in hettie jones’s in care of worth auto parts i. introduction a key factor that sets hettie jones apart from diane di prima, joyce johnson, and other women beat writers is that, aside from a few poems and essays published in her college literary magazine between and , jones did not publish any writing until the early s. jones explains that she lacked confidence in and was ashamed of what little writing she struggled to produce during the beat period—writing that she considered “not only bad but worthless.” instead of more actively pursuing her own writing during this time, then, jones worked as a subscriptions manager for the jazz magazine, record changer, and then the partisan review, where she was also managing editor, before taking a more prominent role as co-editor and co-publisher of her and her husband’s (leroi jones/amiri baraka) literary magazine, yugen, in , and poetry and book press, totem press, in . these experiences helped immerse jones in the growing literary and cultural scenes of new york city in the s and s, which unquestionably helped influence her growth as a writer on her own terms and in her own time. jones began publishing her work in the s, gave her first public reading in , and has since produced a body of work that includes poetry, short fiction, non- fiction essays, stories and books for children and young adults, as well as edited collections of prison writing. however, not unlike the impact that johnson’s relationship with kerouac has had on her literary reputation, jones’s relationship with baraka has limited scholarly attention to her work. like johnson, jones is often referred to as a memoirist; her multi-genre body of work is generally overshadowed by her memoir, how i became hettie jones, in which her relationship with baraka and the role that this played in her development as a woman and writer are central. jones’s experiences in the beat community as an aspiring writer and as the wife and mother of an interracial family do indeed provide an insightful angle from which to read her work; however, in an effort to draw attention to her literary accomplishments outside of the scope of her memoir, this chapter examines an unpublished short story cycle through which jones interestingly engages in beat and postmodernist discourses in a genre otherwise absent from the beat literary tradition. as demonstrated in chapters one and two, each writer’s particular experience within the beat literary community uniquely informed her writing. for both di prima and johnson, the objectification and marginalization of women within the mainstream and beat communities and literatures resulted in distinctive and complex representations of female subjectivity in their work. in this chapter, i examine how jones’s short story cycle, in care of worth auto parts: stories at the intersection, is shaped by her personal experiences as a developing writer in the beat community and as the white wife of a black man who left her in because of racial differences. the well-known baraka left his marriage and the interracial beat community because he wanted to authenticate his growing beliefs in black nationalism and to pursue his political leadership in the black community. my analysis of in care of worth auto parts demonstrates how jones destabilizes the hegemonic and hierarchical racial and gender categories that motivated this racially-driven rupture. specifically, it focuses on how the text is informed by two important cultural contexts: the racial politics of the s and the postmodernism of the s and s. these two contexts mutually inform in care of worth auto parts, respectively, through the trope of the interracial mother—a figure who was particularly affected by the intertwining racial and gender politics of the post-civil rights period—and through the fragmentation and shifting of identities, various metanarrative techniques, and the use of magical realism. during the mid- to late s when the civil rights movement for racial equality and integration gave way to black nationalism and racial segregation, a white mother of interracial children was positioned ambiguously between white and black communities, and in particular, between the vastly different experiences of the white and non-white intraracial mother. the racially privileged status of a white woman was significantly diminished for a white mother of interracial children, and she was simultaneously subject to the struggles of “survival, power, and identity” so often experienced by non-white mothers in american society as well. a white mother of interracial children was thus situated on the margins of both racialized communities and subject to a “social gaze” ; as jones writes in this chapter title’s quotation, the figure of the interracial mother was in fact often “the object of everyone’s attention.” a result of the ambiguity surrounding and the tension toward interracialism, this “social gaze” objectified the interracial mother, and her identity would become destabilized and fragmented; her subjectivity would be diminished. throughout in care of worth auto parts, jones explores this fracturing of the self and subsequent efforts by the figure of the interracial mother to develop subjectivity. examining how all of this takes shape throughout the text, this chapter argues that jones undermines the essentialist gender and racial categories upheld in prominent beat fiction. specifically, i explore how jones interestingly reconfigures the beat quest for an authentic american experience and “individual truth” and engages in the discourse of protofeminism through the use of narrative techniques and a genre that work together to reflect and embody the postmodern experience of the interracial mother. the short story cycle is distinct from other genres in its reliance on the “interrelationship [between individual parts] [to create] the coherent whole text.” this genre has been used by classic writers such as giovanni boccaccio and geoffrey chaucer, as well as american modernist writers such as sherwood anderson and ernest hemingway. its use by contemporary women writers to explore the issue of the subject’s fragmentation and fluidity that has come to define postmodernism is most relevant to my reading of jones’s text. literary critic karen weekes explains that particularly “in the wake of the s and the second wave of the women’s rights movement,” “the structure of [this genre] replicate[d] the complex structure of women’s identities” and “reflects attempts to connect these fragments in a meaningful way.” weekes cites lorrie moore’s anagrams ( ), for example, in which the protagonist, benna carpenter, seeks to unify her various roles of widow, singer, professor, and mother that pull her in competing directions and “manifest themselves in a fractured identity.” through the structure of “an evolving sequence of narratives,” characters such as benna “shor[e] ‘up their own fragmented identities’ while the cyclical structure uses the same accretionary method to unite the fragments of stories into a meaningful whole.” this analysis of moore’s novel aptly illustrates how the short story cycle is strategically used by contemporary women writers to achieve a parallel between structure and theme. jones uses the genre of the short story cycle in similar ways, illustrated through the structural parallel of the shifting identities of the female narrator-protagonist, lizzy, who struggles to develop a unified sense of self amidst her various roles of an interracial mother, a woman in her own right, and a storyteller. but jones also notably employs the short story cycle to explore the intersections between gender and race as they were especially fraught in the post-civil rights era. the structure of in care of worth auto parts informs the text’s themes and concerns: the unity and disunity that simultaneously exist between the stories—at once independent of and dependent upon the structure of the narrative cycle—are also explored thematically as the tension between unity and disunity exists between races and is experienced by the racialized mother in particular. throughout in care of worth auto parts, lizzy, a white mother of three interracial daughters, and close friend zulima, a black woman with an interracial son, share stories and experiences that have affected their identities as interracial mothers. through these central characters, jones uses the structure of the short story cycle to highlight the importance of developing not only a female subjectivity that represents a response to the general subordination or oppression of women in post-wwii society—as di prima and johnson address in their work—but also, more specifically, a maternal subjectivity that confronts the ways in which patriarchal motherhood “regulates and restrains” mothers and their mothering. within in care of worth auto parts, lizzy’s effort to develop a maternal subjectivity as an interracial mother represents her struggle toward “empowered” motherhood, an experience in which the mother can claim the “agency, authority, authenticity, and autonomy denied to [her] in patriarchal motherhood” as well as by the racial tensions of the period. as such, jones’s work importantly draws attention to a particular experience of female subjectivity that is affected by the multifaceted context of gender and race politics from the post-civil rights period on. in doing so, jones challenges the representation of race and gender in male- authored beat novels and extends how the issue of female subjectivity figures into the work of women beat writers. in all of these ways, jones makes a unique contribution to our study of the beats. looking at her unpublished short story cycle not only expands current scholarly attention to her body of work, but also reveals her efforts to examine what is at stake in the beat search for authenticity in a genre that is unique within the beat literary tradition. in her exploration of fundamental beat questions of identity and subjectivity through the discourse of postmodernism and from the perspective of the racialized mother, jones establishes herself as an important beat writer whose writing is indeed far from “worthless.” ii. the literary community, marriage, and becoming a writer jones’s gradual development as a writer was undoubtedly shaped by multiple formative experiences. her work as a drama major in college, her jobs at various magazines, and her involvement in the new york city beat community all contributed in unique ways to her understanding of her role as a female writer within a largely male- dominated literary community and as the white wife of a prominent writer and literary and cultural critic. similar to di prima’s and johnson’s experiences, new york city exposed jones to a multitude of perspectives on gender and race as well as on the function and purpose of literature. her diverse body of work reflects the impact of such perspectives and experiences, and reveals a versatile writer who explores a range of important issues. life at college and in new york city jones was born hettie cohen in queens in . from a young age, she felt the lure of manhattan when she and her family would travel from their home through manhattan to visit family. she describes feeling a sense of urgency in manhattan, an intriguing mysteriousness about the manhattan streets that, as a young girl, she hoped to experience and explore firsthand. before moving to manhattan on her own, though, jones attended mary washington college, the woman’s college of the university of virginia, between and . as jones explains in her memoir, how i became hettie jones, this school appealed to her parents because it was cheaper than others in the city, and it appealed to jones because of its distance from home. she was motivated to escape home in queens because, as she writes, “unlike any woman in my family … i was going to become—something, anything, whatever that meant. to accomplish this i felt the need to cloister myself for a while, away from the usual expectations.” as a means to begin exploring life outside of the relatively conservative neighborhood of laurelton, jones left for college at age seventeen. like other women beats, jones claims to have “never had ‘normal’ fifties plans,” and with her venture to college, she hoped to begin her process of “becoming”—though what she would “become” had yet to be determined. similar to di prima’s accounts of feeling different from most students around her at college, jones recalls describing herself in an interview for the school newspaper as a “mutation.” she was reluctant to become a “suburban matron”—the role expected for so many women in the s—and so she gave herself “an odd” haircut and wore “girl scout oxfords that seemed … the perfect signal of a new, sexy but surefooted woman.” jones’s individuality may have made her feel like a “mutation,” but she was an active student at college nonetheless, particularly in the arts. she majored in drama and performed in several plays and musicals, such as george bernard shaw’s arms and the man and thornton wilder’s our town, and at least one of her own plays, “café au lait,” was performed at school as well. the title of her thesis, “the poet in the theater,” signifies her overlapping interests in the theater and literature, and in the hopes of eventually “writ[ing] the plays of [federico garcía] lorca,” jones began developing her writing skills through poetry and short prose that was published in the college’s literary magazine, the epaulet. these short pieces include the poem, “essay on man— modernized slightly,” which appeared in the may issue and is jones’s witty response to alexander pope’s “essay on man,” as well as a collection of humorous observations on the college campus, “grazing the grounds…with the beneficent burro,” and two more poems published in the spring of . as noted earlier, these short works would be the only of jones’s to be published for some time; however, they reveal the early development of jones’s playful poetic style marked by her witty and unabashed critique of her immediate context. after graduating college, jones moved to manhattan. she did postgraduate work at columbia university and worked in the center for mass communication before it lost its funding. she then began working at the jazz magazine, record changer, and, as noted earlier, after this she worked at the partisan review. these jobs would become formative experiences for jones, especially in light of her realization after college that her education was perhaps just beginning—that she had been “barely educated [at college], with great intellectual gaps where everyone else had stored movements and cultures.” now in manhattan and at the partisan review, jones was immersed in the literary and cultural scenes and exposed to the work of a variety of writers and critics—all of which would influence her own writing that she pursued privately during this period. there weren’t many books in jones’s home when she was growing up, and her father once told her, “you won’t find life there [in books].” at the partisan review years later, jones found herself surrounded by “literary quarterlies, international journals, dissent, midstream, hudson, poetry, kenyon, encounter, the london times—and books, books! an ocean of words and opinion surrounded [her].” contrary to her father’s admonition, jones considered all of this literature to be her “present education.” partisan was a leading literary and intellectual journal that published the literary avant-garde alongside its political counterpart, american radicalism. in the center of the literary scene, jones was reading a variety of writers, including new critics (at which she and other beats “balked,” beat poets such as allen ginsberg and gregory corso, african american writers such as ralph ellison, contemporary poets such as denise levertov and frank o’hara, as well as criticism by delmore schwartz and others. during this time, jones also read the work of “academic” writers, such as mark strand and john hollander, but she clarifies that she did so perhaps “not as carefully” as the avant-garde literature to which she was more drawn. with such a wealth of literature at her fingertips, jones was able to gain insight into others’ interpretations and depictions of “these cold war fifties.” and as she continued her “education” at partisan, she found herself in the middle of the beat literary community. jones met baraka at the record changer in , and together they frequented beat “hangouts” such as jazz on the wagon and the cedar tavern. they went to poetry readings and met corso, di prima, o’hara, and others including black mountain poets. in an effort to help promote and disseminate the work of such writers, in the late s, jones and baraka started their own magazine, yugen, and press, totem press. they soon became what fellow beat writer brenda frazer describes as “the mother and father of the literary scene at that time,” hosting parties and housing the production of their publications. the subtitle of yugen, “a new consciousness in arts and letters,” aptly describes the flourishing new york city literary scene that their publications helped to develop. they published a myriad of writers including baraka himself, jack kerouac, corso, ginsberg, basil king, joel oppenheimer, fielding dawson, robert creeley, john wieners, charles olson, gary snyder, frazer, michael mcclure, and william burroughs. jones explains that though she didn’t include any of her own work alongside these others, she found solace in the publication of those around her: “if i hadn’t yet managed to speak for myself, here at least were these others.” from such close contact with these writers and their texts, jones would have access to a range of writing styles that helped show her what kind of writer she did and did not want to be. though jones lacked confidence in her ability as a writer and refrained from publishing during the s and s, she did find a certain sense of creative freedom or empowerment from letter writing to her friend helene dorn. she describes finding herself somewhat awakened by this process: “having been absorbed for hours with trying to tell, i’d be conscious suddenly, and almost surprised to see the dark shapes of the poverty trees at the window. something in language went, now, where nothing else could go.” jones considered letter writing different from other prose because, as she explains in her memoir, she could write “long, detailed, continued accounts, and sen[d] them with bargain remnants from the bins at paterson silks. i said whatever came to mind.” the informal and private nature of letter writing was clearly distinguished for jones from the writing she considered more fit for publication, and it is perhaps through this genre that jones, consciously or not, developed as a writer. jones claims that “nothing but [her] own voice held [her] hostage” during the beat years, but her status as a woman and her relationship with baraka seem to have, to a notable degree, affected her ability to consider herself a writer and to write publicly within a predominantly male writing scene. for example, in how i became hettie jones, she describes how baraka would write poems about “moments of personal failures between [them],” which included his disappointment in her silence as a writer; she also describes being intimidated by his writing as he “wrote the truth” so seemingly effortlessly. in fact, in a interview, jones describes that her perfectionism set her apart from other writers around her, most notably baraka. she explains, i really work on my things and i didn’t understand, because leroi was so adept, he would pull a poem out of the typewriter and come running and show it to me, it was perfect. but my poems had to be revised because they’re not perfect when they come out. this necessity of revision and drive for perfectionism is useful in understanding jones’s insecurities as a poet and why letter writing became her primary writing outlet during these years. further, though she played a prominent role in the production of yugen and totem press—her connections at the partisan review helped get yugen distributed, and she physically assembled the magazine before they could afford for this to be done professionally—she recalls that baraka placed his name on the magazine front and center, while she “had become the ‘advertising and circulation manager’” on the masthead inside. and as baraka emerged as a leading poet and critic during their years together, his increasing popularity would come to overshadow her. she would soon become the silent woman merely seated next to him in interviews, the woman referred to in reviews of his work not as an editor or publisher, but rather as “his white wife, the former hettie cohen.” so not only was jones faced with personal insecurities about her poetry in a literary scene largely dominated by male writers, but also her husband’s role in the literary community had implications for her development as a writer. an interracial beat marriage unquestionably affected by the historical and social contexts during which they were married (between and ), the relationship between jones and baraka is complex. in her memoir, jones provides her perspective on their marriage, emphasizing how “race disappear[ed] in the house” —how, for her, the racial differences that characterized their marriage as taboo for so many people around them vanished in the privacy of their relationship. in an effort to understand how jones’s ideas about interracialism and the role of race in her marriage to baraka shape in care of worth auto parts, i briefly examine multiple ways in which to understand the dynamics of and contexts surrounding their relationship. when jones and baraka got married in , anti-miscegenation laws still existed in more than half of the country, and her family strongly disapproved. in fact, her parents essentially cut her off from contact for years to come. their marriage was one of only a few interracial relationships in downtown manhattan at the time, and jones describes being “unsettl[ed]” by others’ perceptions of their marriage as a “blackman/ whitewoman couple” because, for her, “black/white was … a slippery division.” she recalls, “it was a joke to us, that we were anything more than just the two of us together.” the cultural scene around her seemed to resist the culturally-defined racial categories and hierarchies of the mainstream. her experience with the burgeoning jazz scene played a particular role in this perception. it introduced her to a new language, “a music [she] could trust”—largely because it brought people together in a shared, powerful sensory experience. for jones, the jazz scene was a relatively uncomplicated interracial culture, defined and shared by “all of us there—black and white—[who] were strangers at first.” despite claims that “only blacks had figured out” jazz, jones didn’t hear the difference between white or black musicians, and she recalls everyone at the five spot, “trying to laugh off the fifties”—that there were no racially-based distinctions in bohemia’s response to “the pall of the cold war, the nuclear fallout.” jones was invigorated by the interracial makeup of the jazz scene, and this parallels with her sense of the absence or inconsequential nature of racial differences within the context of her marriage. jones’s perception of the “slippery” nature of racial identities in the late s and s can be traced back to her own understanding of her jewish ethnicity as a young woman. she came from a jewish family and community in queens, but she describes always feeling like “an outsider jew.” at a hillel meeting, for example, jones recalls that “all [she] saw … were people unlike [her].” additionally, she describes thinking about her developing identity as a young woman and considering that she “could have tried for white, aspired to the liberal intellectual, potentially conservative western tradition. but [she] never was drawn to that history.” as deborah thompson explains, “there was a vast whitening of jewish ethnicity” during this period, but for jones, “the shift in american jewish identity from dark semitic other to assimilated white standard didn’t fit.” similar to her experience of feeling different from her female classmates at college, jones felt marginalized within her own ethnic group and, more importantly, that the nature of this ethnic identity was fluid. that is, she did not feel innately connected to her jewish ethnicity, but rather that this was somewhat of a superficial identity marker. undoubtedly, this is useful in understanding what might be considered her romanticism of the status of interracial relationships during this period. for jones, as her memoir suggests, one’s racial or ethnic identity, though defined by one’s heritage, is not necessarily reflective of one’s actual sense of self nor is it stable. the status of her jewish ethnicity had shifted from dark “other” to white “standard,” and this “slipperiness” undermined the fixed nature of ethnic or racial identities upon which socially-constructed identity categories—and racial discrimination—rely. as such, the racial differences within her interracial marriage to baraka that others perceived as problematic were relatively nonexistent for her. what essentially amounts to colorblindness in the context of her interracial marriage, however, is more complicated than jones’s account suggests. in fact, it is possible to interpret jones’s attraction to baraka in terms similar to what has been criticized as the exoticism of blacks by white male beats. jones’s attraction to baraka can be seen as her attempt to reject society’s expectations for her as a white (jewish) woman, to “[break] with ‘the nuclear family, white house, and picket fence.’” as historian renee c. romano argues, “for the women of the beat crowd, an attraction to black men and culture could be a form of rebellion against the strict gender-role expectations of the s. … becoming involved with a black man ensured that [jones] would not end up in suburban westchester.” in this way, jones’s perception of her interracial marriage as transcending racial differences represents a critical paradox: on the one hand, we see her advocacy and practice of racial integration beginning in the pre-civil rights period, and on the other hand, we see her—perhaps inadvertent—exoticism or exploitation of the black race as her marriage to baraka signifies a rejection of the mainstream and its expectations for her as a white woman. interestingly, however, romano explains that jones’s account of the role of race within her marriage was not altogether unusual during this period. she explains, “most [interracial couples] minimized the role that race played in their relationships in an effort to present themselves as legitimate and respectable.” she continues, by highlighting the ways in which their marriages were like any other, interracial couples made a radical statement about race in postwar america, challenging the widely accepted belief that race defined people and that the gulf separating blacks and whites was too vast to cross. accordingly, jones’s marriage to baraka and her efforts to downplay their racial differences may significantly represent a consciously radical act. to this point, it is important to note that even within the bohemian community, jones and baraka experienced racial discrimination, such as catcalls when walking down the street together. jones also describes having witnessed “shocking and painful” race prejudice when without her husband or children in “whites-only groups.” as jon panish explains, interracial couples in bohemia “were plagued by many of the same unequal power dynamics that troubled … other social and cultural interactions.” thus, in the face of such discrimination and as a result of having felt distanced from her own jewish ethnicity, jones perhaps willfully overlooked her and baraka’s racial differences as a means of rebellion and survival—including the survival of their children—not as an act of exoticism or the romanticization of black culture. and as my analysis will show, these very issues of identity and survival take shape in the narrative and structure of in care of worth auto parts in multiple interesting ways. in the mid- s, as the civil rights movement gave way to the black power movement and its cultural offshoot, the black arts movement (in which baraka played a primary role), jones’s attempts to transcend or ignore her and baraka’s racial differences were ultimately defeated. as andrew epstein explains, baraka “was pressured by the increasingly urgent racial politics of the time to reconsider and rediscover his connection to african-american culture.” as a result, in , he abruptly left his interracial family and community in downtown manhattan for harlem and then newark, nj and “became a spokesman for black cultural nationalism and a militant political organizer and leader.” although their marriage had been strained by tensions related to their shared interests in writing and editing, as well as by baraka’s affair with di prima, it is clear that baraka’s racial politics—his desire to authenticate his involvement in the black community—was the primary reason for their divorce. being married to a white woman compromised baraka’s leadership in the black arts movement. subsequently, their personal relationship became quite distanced, but jones maintained a close relationship with baraka’s family, who was devoted to jones and baraka’s two children. outside of this black community, though, jones’s alienation from her family continued—perhaps to a lesser degree—and she would continue to face discrimination as a white mother of biracial children. ultimately, with the destruction of their marriage, jones had to face issues she had previously attempted to avoid. confronting her identity as an interracial mother in the aftermath of the divorce led jones to a clarity about her sense of self that ultimately gave her the strength to come into her own as a writer. just a few years after the divorce, jones began publishing her work, which directly explores these inextricably linked issues of gender and race. jones’s body of work jones’s first publications were texts for children and young adults, including the trees stand shining ( ), an edited collection of native american poems, and big star fallin’ mama: five women in black music ( ), a biography of ma rainey, bessie smith, mahalia jackson, billie holiday, and aretha franklin. she published several young adult novels during the s and into the s as well, such as forever young, forever free ( ) and i hate to talk about your mother ( ). the former novel tells the story of young jannie and tsepo, who attempt to overcome various obstacles in an effort to maintain their friendship across the color line. the latter novel also explores themes of race as well as those of gender, class, and sexuality in its story of alicia prince’s experiences as an adolescent. these earliest publications indicate jones’s attention to key issues that take shape throughout her multi-genre body of work. in , jones published her first collection of poetry and prose in the chapbook having been her. in addition to publishing poetry in various periodicals and anthologies over the years, she has since published three books of poetry: drive ( ), all told ( ), and doing ( ). notably, drive won the poetry society of america’s norma farber first book award. from her start as a poet, jones admired the work of william carlos williams, levertov, o’hara, and barbara guest, but charles olson’s theory of projective verse has perhaps had the strongest influence on her poetry— particularly as she saw its influence on baraka’s writing. jones explains that “[the idea] that one thought leads to another, that you don’t have to have an initial idea that you follow all the way through … that … you learn your own breath [through this process]” is especially appealing. nancy grace explains that in the vein of olson’s theory, “jones uses the page to experiment with long prose and tight haiku-like lines as well as alphabetical and anaphoric catalogues.” as grace suggests, jones’s poetry is marked by a fluidity and an adventurousness in form and style. what remains consistent throughout her work is the strength of the poet’s voice and the honest treatment of her subjects, whether family, romance, or writing. jones has yet to publish a collection of her short fiction, but she began publishing short stories individually in various journals and anthologies in the s. having been her includes the stories “the x-ray technician” and “the indian party,” and over the last few decades, several other stories have been published in various publications, such as “how she beat the bogeyman” in the village voice ( ), “how she recognized her last fling when she found it” and “enough of this” in frontiers ( ), and “his future career” in global city review ( ). like that of many beat writers, jones’s fiction is largely autobiographical, and as such, her new york city bohemian experiences during the s and s are frequently the subject of her short fiction. this isn’t to suggest a limited focus in her stories, though; texts such as “how she beat the bogeyman,” for example, go back to jones’s childhood as she explores various experiences with beauty, loss, and strength that helped shape her sense of self. interestingly, jones has described her short stories as “morality tales”—that she is “a preacher at heart.” for jones, as my analysis of in care of worth auto parts will show, using writing as a means to share the lessons she herself has learned throughout her life is of primary importance. as suggested earlier, the issue of women’s subjectivity is central to much of jones’s writing. grace notes that “a theme repeated almost ritualistically throughout [jones’s] work is the need of a woman to claim her own agency.” in the poem, “she,” for example, jones describes the titular woman’s attempt to find the psychological and sexual satisfaction she desires as she “is getting over divorce.” aroused by the touch of a farm boy, “she drives him to a place where no one can / see them under the stars. … sweet jesus, she pulls him down.” exerting control and sexual agency, the woman seizes the fulfillment for which she longs. further, that she does so outdoors in an open and natural space, where “the grass is high, / wet with rank summer” represents her rejection of the domestic/indoor/private space long associated with such an encounter. in this depiction of sexual agency and female assertiveness outside of the home, jones’s poem addresses issues of vital importance in the post-second-wave women’s movement era and connects with the work of di prima and johnson in significant ways, namely through the emphasis on female subjectivity, as well as the destabilization of the traditionally gendered spatial dichotomy. jones makes a distinction between this attention to gender in her poetry and her focus on race in her fiction. she explains in an interview, “gender issues find their way into poems but not race. but i do deal with it in my stories. perhaps because i’m angrier and therefore less immediately articulate about race issues and i need the space that prose offers to tell the stories that race imposes.” in a poem such as “the man in this house,” though, jones cannot escape the question of race. short and simplistic, this poem describes the sheer and overwhelming joy that the speaker experiences as she admires “[t]he man in this house” and the “aura of bright blue [that] surrounds his brown body.” “if i speak,” she writes, “a hundred doves will fly from my mouth / and fill his small house with their flight.” celebrating the speaker’s happiness and desire for her black lover, this poem treats the theme of interracial love that dominates much of jones’s short fiction. though a survey of her poetry indicates that race is more frequently the subject of her short fiction, there are several poems such as this one that illustrate the thread of gender and race throughout her prose and poetry. jones’s body of work includes not only children’s and young adult literature, poetry, and short fiction, but also collaborations such as the memoir with rita marley, no woman, no cry: my life with bob marley, and from midnight to dawn: the last tracks of the underground railroad with jacqueline l. tobin. additionally, from to , jones led a writing workshop at the new york state correctional facility for women at bedford hills and has published collections of the writers’ work in more in than out ( ) and aliens at the border ( ). in , along with fellow beat poet and prison writing committee member janine pommy vega, jones also published words, walls, wire: how to start a writing workshop in a prison. despite this range of jones’s work, most critical attention is to her memoir, how i became hettie jones ( ). the memoir is set within the new york city beat community, the jazz culture of the time, the civil rights movement, and the beginning of the black power movement. as such, it provides useful insight into the beat period and its surrounding contexts while it reveals jones’s struggle within this literary community to actually become a writer. in her essay on women beats’ memoirs, grace highlights how “jones uses the memoir to pick at the question of whether she is a writer, and if so, what kind.” grace insightfully explores how jones creates a “mosaic effect” throughout the memoir—how “she constructs the copresence of three temporalities: the self of memory, the self of artful creation, and the self of material reality.” the memoir, grace shows, is thus successful not only for providing a new perspective on the beat community, but also for its aesthetic achievements. deborah thompson’s “keeping up with the joneses: the naming of racial identities in the autobiographical writings of leroi jones/amiri baraka, hettie jones, and lisa jones” likewise focuses on jones’s memoir, particularly on the function of naming. in her essay, thompson reads how i became hettie jones alongside the autobiographies of jones’s husband and daughter “in order to historicize white american identity shifts relative to shifts in african american and biracial american identities.” this scholarship by grace and thompson is undoubtedly important in drawing attention to jones as a writer in her own right and, more specifically, in situating her memoir within larger discussions of the genre of life writing as well as of the history of race in post-war american culture. poet and critic barrett watten, however, notably expands—if only minimally—this focus on jones’s memoir in “what i see in how i became hettie jones.” watten argues that jones’s memoir is “an exemplary account of the relation of poetry to knowledge” as he examines “the divergence of the possibility of poetry as material practice.” in order to do so, watten extends his focus on jones’s work from her memoir to her first book of poetry, arguing that “another dimension of the becoming of hettie jones … is the publication of drive.” in his brief yet insightful analysis of her poetry, watten illustrates how drive embodies “a poetics of transformative particularity”: “she writes of everyday details—of cars, lovers, relatives, and kids—but these are framed … in terms of a poetics of identification and solidarity with women in other patriarchal contexts.” in this essay, watten importantly traces the appearance of issues such as identity and gender within more of jones’s body of work than her memoir, and in doing so, he provides several ways to approach her various literary achievements. following in this direction, i extend critical attention beyond jones’s memoir, and my focus on the inextricable link between race and gender in her short story cycle follows in these scholars’ attention to how jones’s experiences as a developing writer within the beat community and as a white woman in an interracial marriage affected her writing. iii. the representation of race in beat fiction and memoir in order to understand jones’s particular revision of and contribution to the beat discourses of gender and race, it is important to more fully examine how race figures into the beat community and its prominent fiction. the beat movement is broadly defined by a resistance to mainstream society’s growing homogeneity and by a desire to create a heterogeneous space within which writers or artists of any racial or ethnic background, social class, even criminal background, could escape the mainstream. despite the interracial makeup of the community itself, as jennie skerl notes, “the reified canon of white male authors obscures the african american and other ethnic presences in beat history,” including writers such as ted joans and bob kaufman. subsequently, in discussions that refer to the beat community as a white literary community—and in fact, reflective of the fundamental impetus for racial and ethnic heterogeneity within the community—the beats are characterized by their attraction to and appropriation of non- european-american cultures, particularly the african american culture, which manifests itself in beat literature in various ways. as norman mailer argues in “the white negro” ( ), in the face of society’s “murderous” nature as demonstrated by the war, “the [white] american existentialist— the hipster” set out (in contrast to “the square”) “to live with death as immediate danger, to divorce oneself from society, to exist without roots, [and] to set out on that uncharted journey into the rebellious imperatives of the self.” african american culture was the model for this response to post-wwii society, because, according to mailer, “the negro … has been living on the margin between totalitarianism and democracy for two centuries.” not unlike the lives of criminals and drug users to which the beats were also drawn, african americans were situated on the outskirts of mainstream society and were thus appealing to the beats who saw this marginality as “a benefit to their spiritual development.” as steve wilson argues, “[kerouac] and other beats believed that black culture revered [“the intense moment … and intuition”] because a life lived outside an anglo worldview … ensured blacks would stay in touch with a certain essential humanness anglos had lost.” the desire to experience the lives of african americans (or other types of marginalized “others”) largely took shape in beat literature through, as robert holton describes, “the appropriation of language … [and] the valorization of jazz, especially bebop.” this appropriation of african american culture by the beats is exemplified in kerouac’s formal experimentation with spontaneous prose—his rejection of the process of revision and his celebration of improvisation. kerouac’s explanation of the composition of the subterraneans in his essay, “essentials of spontaneous prose,” makes direct connections between jazz music and the “essentials” of his formal endeavor. for instance, he compares his use of “the vigorous space dash” to mark “rhetorical breathing” rather than the use of periods for the separation of sentences to how a “jazz musician draw[s] breath between outblown phrases.” though representative passages from his body of work are too long to cite here, regina weinreich points to the language, phrasing, and rhythm throughout kerouac’s writing to demonstrate how his “literary structures are motivated by the same impulses as the structures of jazz riffs.” as this example suggests, african american music provided a way for beat writers to work outside of the boundaries of realism that were considered inadequate for addressing issues arising in the post-wwii era and to instead follow their impulses toward performativity and spontaneity. the complexities and consequences of the beats’ attraction to and appropriation of black culture are perhaps more evident in the prevalent representations of non- european-american identities and cultures in beat literature than in their formal experimentation. in their efforts to resist the period’s growing modernization and homogeneity, to preserve their own white male individuality in the face of a threatening “domestic/conformist absorption of the self/individual,” the core beat fiction writers (kerouac and burroughs) consistently, though to varying degrees and for various purposes, appropriate marginalized identities throughout their work, most often black and mexican, and in doing so, engage in racial practices of primitivism, exoticism, and essentialism. for example, in kerouac’s on the road, sal paradise recalls, wishing i were a negro, feeling that the best the white world had offered was not enough ecstasy for me… . i wished i were a denver mexican, or even a poor overworked jap, anything but what i was so drearily, a ‘white man’ disillusioned. … i was only myself…wishing i could exchange worlds with the happy, true- hearted, ecstatic negroes of america. in this oft-quoted passage, kerouac reveals a limited understanding of or an unwillingness to confront the actual conditions of african americans’ lives during the post-wwii period when this was written and takes place. he overlooks the socially- constructed racial discrimination, subordination, and inequality to which african americans were subject and instead perceives them as “happy” and “ecstatic”—a projection of his own image of the racial other that enables or validates such a fantasy. additionally, grace draws our attention to maggie cassidy, the subterraneans, and tristessa, in which kerouac’s “engagement with the africanist presence fuels the project of self-construction” through the way in which he “conflate[s] racial categories so that [his] creation of dark characters … encodes a subtext of ‘otherness’ that speaks of the black experience as well as that of other marginalized groups.” though grace emphasizes how race functions throughout these three texts to provide kerouac with an “allegory of [his] own condition as a marginalized male, a masculine hybrid,” it is nevertheless important to note how kerouac collapses racial and ethnic differences into one “other” identity category that is set in contrast to white identity, and that his depiction of such characters is ultimately self-serving—as in on the road. likewise, martinez argues that, evident in the yage letters, burroughs was attracted to “the world of the fellaheen [as it provided] a passage into an alternate existence in which the white male can experience difference and its liberating side effects, without having to give up the privilege of whiteness.” at issue in such examples of white writers’ appropriations of black culture is the very freedom of writers like kerouac and burroughs to adopt and adapt other cultures’ traditions for their own purposes. this pattern of white beat prose writers’ appropriations of racial or ethnic others is also evident in brenda frazer’s troia: mexican memoirs. for example, frazer describes the impact of her relationship with the mexican “policewoman procuress” referred to as “j” in the memoir, with whom frazer communicates through “gibberish” as “neither of [them] understands the other’s spoken idiom.” she writes, “i know that i am as much mexican as i am new yorker or even spade, negro, veracruzana, i have undergone the metamorphosis completely and my heart is warm and happy.” in an interview with grace, frazer explains how her experience as a prostitute in mexico led her to this “metamorphosis”: she describes identifying a “darkness in [her]self” with the people in mexico’s “open[ness] to their poverty [or] to the oppression of being down- trodden.” though frazer’s characterization of racial or ethnic others in mexico acknowledges what she sees as their cultural, political, or economic suffering, it nevertheless demonstrates the freedom of frazer as a white woman to, in kerouac’s language, “exchange worlds” with racial or ethnic others and to appropriate their culturally-based identities. all of these examples represent white privilege exercised by beat writers—male and female. regarding the beat practice of white privilege, john cooley explains that “many blacks were forced by birth and racial identity to a desperate way of life,” while the hipster, or beat, “chose to embrace” this life and “could always return to the mainstream of white life if driven to do so.” interestingly, holton points out that many readers overlook the degree to which this white privilege leads to problematic representations of racial or ethnic others—representations that are “ignorant of the actual living conditions [of these others].” instead, holton argues, readers “[respond] positively to such images of heterogeneity.” that some readers perceive such depictions in beat literature as acceptable portrayals of racially marked figures and cultures while others consider them a form of racism (e.g., primitivism or exoticism) illustrates the paradox of the beat community itself that manifests in much of its white-authored literature: the simultaneous rejection and perpetuation of hegemonic racial norms. amor kohli explains that “although the bohemian environment was certainly much more progressive in its views of race relations than was mainstream america, many in that atmosphere were still unable, unwilling, or simply unprepared to comprehend the stories of black people in america.” therefore, although these beat representations of racial or ethnic others do depict an american experience that is defined by a mixing of cultural traditions or experiences, they nevertheless perpetuate what toni morrison reveals to be a pattern of much white-authored american literature throughout the th and th centuries: the use of “africanist presences or characters or narrative or idiom” as a “mediating force” through which to develop a “quintessential [white] american identity.” martinez emphasizes the self-serving nature of the beats’ appropriation of racial and ethnic others by clarifying that this “identification with downtrodden ethnic peoples has been misread as a direct attack on middle-class, anglo conformism. it is rather a maneuver useful for the beats’ own purposes.” he argues, when their vicarious empathy for ethnicized liminality encounters an actual civil rights movement for racial liberation, the individualism based on freedom of personal movement finds its antithesis in a political movement based in a communion of shared values and community of shared identity. in his analysis of beat writers’ appropriations of racial or ethnic others through their lives and work, martinez highlights how, often depicted through essentialism, primitivism, or exoticism, racial or ethnic others function as exploitable objects through which many beat writers attempt to develop and maintain their own individual autonomy and subjectivity when it serves them best and does not compromise their own needs. in addition to this treatment of race within the beat community and beat literature, it is important to acknowledge the work of the black arts movement of the late s and early s that also undoubtedly informed jones’s understanding of race and gender as she set out to address these issues in in care of worth auto parts. strategically similar to the work of many beat writers, the writing of the black arts movement relied on distinctions between races—on the separation of “the black aesthetic” from “the white thing,” “white ideas,” and “white ways of looking at the world”—in its endeavor to represent and express pride in the black experience. in both poetry and prose, the literature of this movement focused on the lives and the historical, cultural, and political experiences of african americans. the poetry, in particular, used the african american vernacular and its use in various african american cultural forms such as sermons and music to embody and emphasize the authentic african american experience. overall, in the wake of the civil rights movement, artists of the black arts movement set out to express a renewed sense of pride in the african american culture. also important, the black arts movement, somewhat similar to the beat movement in this way, limited the role of women in its endeavors. as james smethurst discusses in his study of the black arts movement, “caricatured versions of [the black power movement and the black arts movement] as fundamentally and unusually sexist distort them and the legacy of black women (and some men) in those movements.” however, smethurst also helps clarify that evident in “the relegation of women to a supporting role in umbra” (a poetry workshop for young black writers) and the prevalence of women’s struggles against “male supremacy” in the bam, the movement was “in the mainstream of downtown bohemia in terms of gender roles rather than following some black nationalist imperative.” despite the prominence of several female writers of the blacks arts movement, such as nikki giovanni, sonia sanchez, and gwendolyn brooks, and their attention to women’s issues in their work, the general misogyny of many of the movement’s male leaders overshadowed, if not subordinated, many black women who were interested in like-minded cultural and political changes. this undoubtedly resembles the perpetuation of the traditional female gender role within the beat literary community. this overview of how race and gender figure into the literary and cultural movements preceding the composition of in care of worth auto parts draws attention to the uniqueness and importance of jones’s treatment of race and gender in her text. many white beat writers romanticized or appropriated non-white figures or cultures as a means to escape what they perceived as stifling or oppressive white privilege, and writers of the black arts movement sought to cultivate a literary tradition defined only by african american cultures and experiences, which entailed the exclusion of any “white ideas” or cultural practices. significantly, jones disrupts the tendency of these beat and black arts writers to romanticize, appropriate, exploit, subordinate, or exclude the racial “other” and to marginalize women. in in care of worth auto parts, she examines what is at stake in perpetuating hegemonic socially-constructed race and gender norms, and in doing so, she brings attention to the figure of the interracial mother whose complex experience during the post-civil rights era is reflected through the formal structure of the short story cycle. iv. in care of worth auto parts: interracialism and postmodernism the composition of in care of worth auto parts: stories at the intersection spans from the early s to the early s, and in its current manuscript form, the text includes twenty-one stories—half of which have been published autonomously—and fifteen vignettes. the vignettes function as metanarratives in which the primary narrator- protagonist, lizzy, contextualizes the upcoming story or stories and reflects on the process of storytelling itself to her friend, zulima, who is at times the protagonist of a few of lizzy’s stories. as noted earlier, two of the stories, “the x-ray technician” and “the indian party,” were first published in jones’s chapbook, having been her, in , and nine others have since been published in journals such as ikon and ploughshares, as well as in anthologies such as women of the beat generation and bearing life. archived correspondence indicates that jones first attempted to publish a volume of these stories in , but it was rejected, according to the publisher, because “it seem[ed] premature to think yet of … publishing a volume of the stories.” within the next decade, jones experimented with linking the stories together—with what is now the short story cycle—and she received a grant from the money for women/barbara deming memorial fund in to continue pursuing the project in its new form. however, in , the manuscript was rejected by curbstone press, who urged jones to reshape the content into novel form, reassuring the author that “this work has the makings of being an exceptional novel.” in my recent conversation with the author, jones explained that, despite the publisher’s suggestion, she wasn’t interested in writing a novel and eventually “ditched” the manuscript because she was no longer confident in her attempt to link her stories together as a short story cycle. whether referred to as a short story cycle, a short story sequence, a composite novel, a short story composite, or a story book, the genre of in care of worth auto parts is a collection of stories, each of which has self-contained character and plot development and can therefore potentially be read autonomously, but that are linked together in a variety of ways—such as a narrative thread, one or more characters, the setting, or vignettes—and in this way, work as multiple parts of a larger whole. in fact, although the stories can be read autonomously, writers use this genre in order to convey a larger meaning to be achieved only when the stories are read as part of a coherent whole. rocio g. davis explains: “the term ‘short story cycle’ implies a structural theme for the working out of an idea, characters, or themes, even a circular disposition in which the constituent narratives are simultaneously independent and interdependent.” referring to forrest ingram’s study of several short story cycles, roxanne harde explains that the genre is “dependen[t] on ‘dynamic patterns of recurrence and development.’” nineteenth- and twentieth-century american examples include sarah orne jewett’s the country of the pointed firs, hemingway’s in our time, anderson’s winesburg, ohio, amy tan’s the joy luck club, and tim o’brien’s the things they carried. with in care of worth auto parts, jones joins this list and provides a stylistically and thematically unique short story cycle rooted in the beat pursuit of an authentic american experience. the stories and vignettes of in care of worth auto parts are told from the turn of the twenty-first century as the narrator looks back at her life beginning in her twenties or thirties in s new york city bohemia. as noted earlier, jones’s fiction is autobiographical, and as such, the stories are based on jones’s relationship with baraka and center on lizzy’s and zulima’s particular experiences as interracial mothers. further, the new york city arts culture serves as the backdrop, and so the stories include characters who are painters, musicians, actors, and writers. jones began writing the stories of in care just a short time after the supreme court decision to repeal anti- miscegenation laws nationally. the text is initially set in this post-civil rights era when interracial marriages were officially legal, but such couples were still subject to racial discrimination from both white and black communities, and the cycle traces the evolution of this taboo over subsequent decades. each of the stories of in care is rich with portrayals of the experience of racialized motherhood, but i focus on the stories of the cycle in which the trope of the interracial mother and the use of postmodernist narrative techniques figure through lizzy most prominently and interestingly: “enough of this,” “disintegration,” “no visible means of support,” “minor surgery,” and “full circle.” looking at the first and last stories in addition to a few in between, my analysis addresses the cyclical movement of the text to highlight the various ways in which the particularities of the genre itself contribute to the stories’ thematic development. “enough of this” “enough of this” is the first story of in care, in which jones succinctly establishes the text’s primary topic of racial discord as it is experienced broadly by blacks and whites and, more specifically, by the interracial mother. from the first-person perspective of lizzy, jones describes one particular evening in the s shared by lizzy, her soon-to-be ex-husband and rising trumpet star, elliott, his friend, the “‘incendiary’ playwright” nathan, and nathan’s girlfriend, moonlight sonata. both are interracial couples, and the story centers on a night when they attended a party thrown by a “hip” producer in new york city—they had likely been invited because of nathan’s current popularity as a playwright and elliott’s status as the “new star” according to a poll by the jazz magazine, downbeat. during the course of the party, lizzy reflects on the different dynamics between the two couples as well as on the character of moonlight, a white woman who stands out with her red, curly hair and her bold personality to match. the most interesting aspect of the party involves moonlight as she is mistreated by the host. overall, the story draws attention to the sense of isolation that interracial mothers experience as well as to the perpetual tension surrounding interracial relationships. race is thematized from the start as the story begins with lizzy’s distinction between the ease with which nathan, a black man, “[uses] [moonlight’s] whiteness” to help the group get a cab for the party, whereas elliott “never did that” with lizzy—“[her] being white was never his tactic, he got [their] lofts and [their] cabs.” not unlike jones and baraka’s relationship described earlier, jones suggests here that elliott made a conscious effort to resist whatever discrimination he might face as a black man and not to take advantage of whatever privileges to which he might have access due to lizzy’s whiteness. the way in which lizzy describes this distinction between their and nathan and moonlight’s relationship also suggests her own sense of pride in her and elliott’s mutual understanding that although they are an interracial couple, they do not define their relationship by race. however, lizzy is ultimately unable to escape others’ racial discrimination and the subsequent isolation she faces as a mother of biracial children. she subtly notes, “in those years, having few examples, [moonlight and i] were concerned about raising our interracial children but settled for trying to feed and clothe them.” in this brief passage, lizzy points to the absence of models she and moonlight had to follow in their unique motherhood experiences. additionally, the very issue of being able to provide for and support their children becomes a primary struggle that lizzy continues to deal with throughout the decades and stories to follow. in the somewhat abrupt conclusion of the story, lizzy recalls a particularly memorable moment from the party—the moment after which jones titled the story. seeing moonlight talking to one of the black waiters working at the party, the producer approaches moonlight from behind, “put[s] his hands under her elbows and lift[s] her up and out, as though casting her into flight. … ‘that’ll be enough of this,’ he said.” lizzy then laments in the concluding lines that although “moonlight has gone … nathan died young [and] elliott and i are divorced[,] i’m still … watching america make more of this, more of us.” the producer’s race is unidentified, but his reaction to moonlight in conjunction with lizzy’s comment that this type of behavior still occurs about four decades later, emphasizes the continual resistance toward interracial relationships from within both white and black communities. the story’s conclusion highlights how the motivation behind this incident in which moonlight and the waiter are treated like objects and humiliated for apparently crossing what the producer considered the line between racial and class boundaries is still existent and problematic at the turn of the century. despite the changes in the individual characters’ lives since this incident in the s, there has been a lack of progress regarding the taboo of interracialism. lizzy is “still watching” people’s unease with interracialism decades later. further, lizzy’s use of “us” in the final line (“i’m still … watching america make more of this, more of us”) is especially significant as she draws attention to what ronna johnson refers to as the “social gaze” to which she and moonlight are subject as white mothers of biracial children—alongside their respective partners. as racialized mothers, lizzy and moonlight are subject to discrimination, objectification, and marginalization, and we see this more clearly in the stories that follow. importantly, nathan’s and elliott’s prominent status within the cultural scene suggests that they are not necessarily victim to racial discrimination solely as black men. rather, lizzy’s comment suggests that all four individuals are subject to discriminatory behavior precisely because of their interracial relationships—or, as portrayed in moonlight’s experience at the producer’s party, because of their attempt to transcend or ignore hegemonic racial boundaries. in initially portraying these complex experiences of interracialism and interracial motherhood in the cycle’s first story, “enough of this,” jones begins to disrupt the hierarchical categories of race that essentialist differences between experiences of whites and non-whites assume. we begin to see how the issue of interracialism itself redefines what it means to be both a white woman and a black man in the post-civil rights period. at stake for the former is any previous unearned privileges she had as a white person and for the latter, whatever degree of racial equality the civil rights movement helped achieve. these issues are taken up further in the cycle’s next vignette and subsequent story, as is the issue of shifting and multiple identities. from lena to lizzy in the vignette that follows “enough of this,” lizzy explains that “lizzy” is a nickname, that she had previously changed her name from lena “for the less ethnically challenging leanne, then quickly lost that for liz, plain and simple, lizzy to be cute.” the process of these name changes has implications for lizzy’s understanding of her own ethnic identity as she attempts to erase what she perceives as marked jewish connotations of lena. lizzy deliberately chooses a name that she feels is more neutral, less ethnically marked. her name changing is clearly tied to what i described earlier as jones’s own sense of marginalization as a jew and her unease with unwittingly identifying with this ethnic identity from which she feels innately disconnected. as such, these name changes establish the fundamental struggles that lizzy faces throughout in care regarding ethnic and racial identities and her attempt to develop subjectivity as a racialized mother in the face of others’ assumptions about racial and ethnic identities and their presumed fixity and hierarchical relationships to one another. as the short story cycle proceeds, jones expands upon this postmodern literary device of name changing and the shifting of identities, and as suggested in “enough of this” and explored further in the subsequent story, “disintegration,” lizzy’s particular struggles with her identity and subjectivity are rooted in the taboo of interracial motherhood. “disintegration” the second story of in care, “disintegration,” continues to provide an interesting rendering of jones and baraka’s relationship as well as of jones’s experience as a mother after the divorce, and the story also depicts the postmodern experience in general— symbolized by the renaming and shifting of identities. the title itself signals the societal changes represented in jones and baraka’s divorce, and thus in lizzy and elliott’s split. set against the rise of black nationalism and the corresponding rupture between races, lizzy narrates “disintegration” in the first person, beginning in the summer of after elliott left her, and then jumping to when lizzy is forced to seek welfare because she can no longer provide for her children on her own. because of elliott’s fame, lizzy worries that she won’t qualify for financial assistance; the welfare worker sympathizes with this situation, though, and allows her to apply under a fake name, one that is not legally connected to her ex-husband. using the name nelly, lizzy qualifies for welfare, and the story then focuses on the complex dynamics of this experience of shifting identities. the “disintegration” of the title is represented in the breakup of two of lizzy’s important relationships, first with elliott and next with her friend, betty. lizzy never directly explains why elliott left her, but various moments throughout the story suggest the growing animosity she feels toward him, likely rooted in her feelings of abandonment. describing how she and elliott don’t see eye to eye on how to raise their children, especially after their divorce, lizzy mentions, “elliott calls from somewhere. which could be anywhere, since now he’s everywhere, in sandals and flowing cloth.” references such as this suggest that elliott has left his family to pursue his jazz career, which has taken him all over the world, and this provides a fair fictional parallel for baraka’s actual departure from jones to pursue his political leadership role in the black community. also, elliott is on the cover of time with what lizzy considers a “furious face”—a portrayal reflective of the serious demeanor and dedication with which elliott/baraka pursued his respective commitment to jazz/black nationalism—perhaps at the cost of his family’s well-being. further, jones’s allusion to elliott in traditional african garb is certainly derisive, representative of the resentment lizzy/jones experienced as a white woman left for the black community. despite his success, elliott is clearly not helping to provide for their children, which requires lizzy to apply for welfare. the separation between lizzy and elliott is coupled in “disintegration” with the temporary separation of friends, lizzy and betty. betty is a black woman and the sister of nathan, who appeared in “enough of this.” the two women had been good friends for many years, but around the same time elliott left, so did betty. lizzy never specifies that betty left their neighborhood to be in an all-black community or to pursue beliefs in black power; rather she reveals more broadly in the subsequent vignette that during the s when they didn’t see much of each other, “betty married, divorced, and changed her name to zulima.” that betty, like leroi jones to amiri baraka, changes her name to one that is more ethnically marked, demonstrates the prevalence of black race pride during this period and presents a notable contrast to lizzy’s attempt to escape the ethnic connotations of her given name, lena. and zulima’s return to the new york city bohemian neighborhood coincides with the decline of the black power and black arts movements in the mid- s, further suggesting the motivation behind her departure. overall, through the temporary separation of lizzy and betty/zulima and the split between lizzy and elliott, jones draws attention to the commonality of such racial segregation in society during what lizzy aptly refers to as “dis-integration time.” the racial politics that motivate lizzy’s various experiences of “dis-integration” are also responsible for her frequent encounters with racial discrimination as an interracial mother throughout the story. for example, the girlfriend of the welfare worker in lizzy’s home “gapes” when one of lizzy’s daughters enters the room and jumps onto her mother’s lap. lizzy explains, “she has never seen the likes of us,” and this stranger’s response to lizzy with her children is not uncommon. a toll collector has a similar reaction to lizzy with “several children of color” in her car, and when in the hospital for surgery, a medical insurance investigator initially explains to lizzy that she doesn’t qualify for welfare because she “look[s] intelligent” and “[has] been a teacher.” however, once the investigator notices the picture of lizzy’s children, lizzy “must not be what [she seems]. ‘stay on welfare and go to school,’ [the investigator] says, relenting. ‘make something of yourself.’” seemingly innocuous, such reactions represent the interracial and intraracial tensions that gradually diminish lizzy’s sense of self and subjectivity as she is continually objectified as an interracial mother and struggles to fulfill her fundamental responsibility as a parent to provide for her children. in each of these instances, lizzy is subject to a “social gaze,” and in emphasizing how lizzy is scrutinized by these onlookers and “reconstituted as [a racialized] object,” jones—continuing from “enough of this”—destabilizes the normative racial and gender hierarchies perpetuated in beat literature in multiple ways. specifically, by frequently subjecting lizzy to what ronna johnson refers to as a “punitive gaze,” jones highlights her objectification and marginalization, which presents a notable contrast to the seeming stability of a black figure like elliott. lizzy is characterized in “disintegration”—and throughout in care—as a white person subject to racial discrimination and marginalization. this is contrary to the position of white privilege from which frazer, kerouac, and burroughs speak about nonwhite figures. it is elliott who is seemingly free from the racial struggles that lizzy suffers. he is a black man living in the mainstream of society, not on the margins—not as a racial “other” romanticizing a liminality typically portrayed in texts such as on the road or the yage letters. in frazer’s memoir and in the fiction of kerouac and burroughs, it is the white figure who typically exercises racial privilege and exoticizes or objectifies the racial other. here, jones disrupts and essentially reverses this pattern of white privilege and nonwhite discrimination, marginalization, or objectification. also, without elliott present, lizzy takes on the traditional role of both mother and father; she is responsible not only for maintaining the domestic space and for bringing up her children, but also for financially providing for her children—the role generally assumed by the father in traditional patriarchy. in this way, jones uses the unique experience of the figure of the interracial mother to complicate the traditional gender hierarchy perpetuated in most male-authored beat texts as well. further, jones destabilizes the hegemonic and hierarchical racial categories often perpetuated in beat texts by portraying lizzy’s struggles with what i described earlier as the characteristic themes of non-white motherhood: “survival, power, and identity.” lizzy’s application for welfare itself signifies her struggle to ensure the survival of her children. lizzy also struggles to survive in the face of the “social gaze” that often pushes her to retreat into her own seemingly isolated experience, which has been severed from any larger community. the struggle for power is illustrated in lizzy’s attempt to transcend the effects of the discrimination she faces by internalizing her frustration and relying on the strength of her overall commitment to her role as a mother to help her achieve the authority, authenticity, and agency to which she is entitled. and lizzy’s struggle with identity is manifested in how she unwillingly becomes hyper-aware of her position as a “nontraditional” mother and attempts to develop a subjectivity in the face of the racial discrimination that gradually deteriorates her sense of self. in all of these ways, lizzy experiences racial discrimination not typically associated with white mothers but rather with racial or ethnic minority mothers. as these struggles for “survival, power, and identity” illustrate, though, lizzy’s racial discrimination is not near the degree of racial oppression suffered by minorities whose discrimination is not linked only to their role as mothers. in this multifaceted and ambiguous characterization as a “nontraditional” racialized mother, then, jones continues to undermine essentialist racial categories, blurring the boundaries between white and nonwhite motherhood and therefore redefining what these racially-defined categories mean. the experience of lizzy’s name change to nelly in order to qualify for welfare because elliott does not help support their children perhaps most interestingly represents lizzy’s struggle for subjectivity as a white woman and mother as it simultaneously represents jones’s engagement in the postmodern discourse of shifting or multiple identities. in fact, the storyline in which lizzy experiences an identity crisis once she changes her name and pretends to be nelly illustrates what ronna johnson refers to as “the postmodern destabilization of identity and narrative.” as lizzy describes her experience as “nelly,” her narrative position itself shifts from first to third person, representing the destabilization and fluidity of her identity as well as of her narrative role. as the narrator of “disintegration,” lizzy describes herself as nelly in the third person—shifting between “i” and “she”—which suggests her attempt at the time of the experience to maintain a distance between her true identity and her made-up identity— thus preserving the former. this shift in narrative perspective illustrates a splitting of lizzy’s identity into two parts—each part reliant upon the other—lizzy on nelly for financial stability, and nelly on lizzy to maintain the pretense. under the name nelly, lizzy goes about her life as normal: she shops for groceries, cashes checks, and even goes to the hospital for emergency surgery. however, lizzy gradually has trouble distinguishing between her real identity and her fake identity. she begins to experience “a slow collapse of [herself],” to feel that her “world has ended. and nelly’s has begun.” when she realizes the danger of continuing to pretend to be nelly, lizzy discards the fake identity and tries to provide for her family on her own. but, in doing so, she faces the fear of how to adequately recover the “cherished lizzy thompson, [who was] like a little sister young and tragically dead.” lizzy’s sense of self had already been so troubled by the abandonment of her black husband and by the racial hostility she encounters as an interracial mother that her efforts to preserve her identity as lizzy when she pretended to be nelly were futile. she may have exercised clarity and strength in recognizing the consequences of shifting identities, but she then has to revive herself as lizzy from being “tragically dead.” and this struggle to reclaim her identity as lizzy and to develop a subjectivity as a woman and a mother continues to progress throughout the cycle’s stories. importantly, the tension between unity and disunity portrayed in the relationship between lizzy and nelly is mirrored in a similar tension within the structure of in care itself. the themes developed in “disintegration”—namely, the struggles of the “nontraditional” mother, the disruption of hegemonic racial and gender hierarchies, and the postmodern condition of multiple or fragmented identities—rely upon this story’s connection to the other stories and vignettes within in care to achieve full meaning. only when situated within lizzy’s collective experiences as an interracial mother over the years and through the short story cycle are the social, cultural, and political implications of lizzy’s experiences in “disintegration” substantiated. lizzy’s experience as nelly in “disintegration” is reflected in the fragmented structure of in care, and in this way, jones is able to more effectively draw attention to the various and complex consequences of the perpetuation of essentialist racial categories and the hierarchical relationships and discrimination these categories foster. “no visible means of support” in “no visible means of support,” the following story of in care, jones continues to explore the issue of maternal subjectivity thematically as well as through metanarrative techniques that perform the fracturing and shifting of identities that we first see in “disintegration”—namely, through the shifting of the narrative perspective from first to third person. in this story that is set in the early to mid- s, lizzy is still struggling to support her children, especially after she loses her job at a literary agency for “black militant” beliefs that somehow negatively influenced her ideas on “a book about hunger for children.” after losing her job, lizzy immediately worries about how to pay for rent, food, and laundry. her middle daughter, ten years old here, has even sought a job to make some money, walking a younger child home from school. throughout the story, jones juxtaposes lizzy’s inability to support her children financially with her efforts to support them emotionally and psychologically as they face various obstacles, many of which are a result of their interracial background. this is illustrated in the central conflict of the story when lizzy is called to meet with her daughter’s junior high school sewing teacher and is faced with the teacher’s presumptions about her racial identity. the teacher calls lizzy in to discuss whether or not the african print fabric that her daughter has brought to class will be easily hemmed because the pattern itself may make it difficult to measure accurately. the middle daughter is dark skinned and is described as having a “high wide afro” and an ankh around her neck, and jones suggests that this is why the teacher assumes that her mother is black. thus, as lizzy has come to expect, the teacher, upon seeing her, does a “doubletake, ahem, the eyes jumping around.” she seems nervous and surprised, having expected, perhaps, “someone not only black but unskilled”—both characterizations that are overturned upon sight of lizzy’s white skin and her confident offer to simply help her daughter sew with the african print. like the examples in “disintegration,” lizzy is the object of the teacher’s gaze as a racially-marked mother, and the teacher’s reaction to lizzy forces her to be acutely conscious of her identity and her racial differences from her daughter. though strong when facing the teacher’s ignorant behavior, when she exits the classroom, “lizzy weeps that all she can do to defend her children is be white.” lizzy is frustrated not only that the teacher assumed she would be black, but also that the teacher assumes that a black mother would be “unskilled”—unable to actually help use the african print fabric, and perhaps unable to stand up for her daughter and her interest in maintaining her ties to her african heritage. further, rather than seeing lizzy and her daughter as a black mother and child, as she assumed, the teacher sees them—to her own surprise—as a white mother and a biracial child—as something so startling, she cannot muster anything other than a weak response to lizzy’s offer to help her daughter sew: “oh well, then…,” she manages to say. the daughter had initially come home from school “in a crying rage” because of her teacher’s response to her fabric. now, lizzy’s compassion as a mother for her daughter is overshadowed by the way in which her whiteness is reason enough for the teacher to change her mind. all lizzy has to do is show up, “be white,” and the teacher no longer takes issue with the african fabric. drawing attention to lizzy’s feelings of sadness and helplessness in this situation, jones critiques the white privilege that lizzy unwittingly exercises in her confrontation with the teacher. rather than being identified as her daughter’s white mother, lizzy wants to be treated simply as a mother, regardless of her race or her racial differences from her daughter. she wants to assert a subjectivity that will not be undermined by others’ assumptions about her identity or role as a mother. importantly, in the very beginning of the story, lizzy explains that she “had come to think of [her]self” in the third person—as “she.” throughout the course of the story, she suggests that this shifting sense of self is a result of constantly being objectified and marginalized by others as an interracial mother. after initially acknowledging her narrative shift from “i” to “she,” lizzy writes, “one or two things about her. i answered to my legal name, of course, but who was lizzy thompson? people saw black or white, one thing or another; all i saw was cross-reference. mostly, every which way i turned i was her. through this metanarrative technique, lizzy draws attention to the instability and fragmentation of her identity and to the cause of this situation: others’ inabilities to see beyond the racial differences between her and her children, such as the sewing teacher. as exemplified in her similar prior encounters with various people who misjudge and objectify her as a white mother of biracial children, it is the contrast between what lizzy herself sees and what others see that leads to this fracturing of her identity and her shift in narrative perspective—all of which symbolizes her fundamental lack of subjectivity. more specifically, in describing her perception of herself as “cross-reference” rather than as either black or white, lizzy reflects on her inability to define herself according to others’ categories and thus on her inability to avoid being scrutinized and judged. for lizzy, her experience as an interracial mother invalidates, but is limited by, the socially-constructed categories of white or black motherhood. lizzy feels naturally tied to her children in such a way that she does not necessarily want to be identified as belonging to the white community because that identity carries with it assumptions about her life and her family. conversely, although her experiences overlap with those of nonwhite mothers, as a white woman, she also obviously does not identify as a black woman either. as such, lizzy suffers with what she describes as her sense of “cross- reference.” this ambiguous sense of identity and her marginalization within any context troubles lizzy’s subjectivity. though she determines to provide for her children in any way she can, because she is constantly confronted by others’ attempts to define her—and is therefore subject to the objectification and marginalization this leads to—she struggles to assert a subjectivity that will let her claim authority and authenticity as a white mother of interracial children in this post-civil rights period of racial segregation. and it is precisely this struggle that provokes her to shift her narrative perspective from first to third person, symbolizing what i referred to earlier as “the postmodern destabilization of identity and narrative.” through this metanarrative technique, jones draws attention to lizzy’s role as a storyteller, and in doing so, continues to demonstrate the function of the genre of the short story cycle to embody her particular experience throughout the development of the text. reflective of jones’s experience as a writer, lizzy attempts to discover herself through the process of narrating her own experiences, and she makes this explicit in “no visible means of support” as she identifies herself as the story’s primary character, as a “she” that is “the growing i.” lizzy is unable to speak of herself as a clearly distinguished “i” after the culmination of various experiences with racial discrimination described in this and previous stories. through the genre of the short story cycle, then, which deliberately links these various experiences together and illustrates their continued impact on lizzy, lizzy uses her role as a storyteller to help this “i” come into being. lizzy thus “us[es] writing as a means to create a semblance of order and meaning in [her life].” in these ways, “no visible means of support” further illustrates the significance of jones’s experimentation with the short story cycle genre and continues to demonstrate the ways in which the text simultaneously engages with the historical context of interracialism as taboo and the cultural context of postmodernism in order to explore the issue of maternal subjectivity as experienced by the interracial mother. it is important to note that its focus in this way on maternal subjectivity situates in care within the larger tradition of maternal literature that emerged in the post-second- wave feminist movement. however, in care is nevertheless distinguished within the discourse of maternal subjectivity by its focus on the figure of the “nontraditional” mother—the mother who does not fit into the culturally-determined role of white or black motherhood. the socially-constructed binary of white and non-white motherhood that positions the interracial mother somewhere in the middle of these two communities likewise takes shape in narratives of the “textual mother.” for example, explaining how black motherhood is often explored in twentieth-century prose in ways distinct from white motherhood, elizabeth podnieks and andrea o'reilly clarify that whereas “white women may have experienced a need to sever themselves from their mothers—to disidentify with them … black women in discriminatory societies necessarily ‘struggle to affirm the value of their lives: race, class and gender oppression intensify their need to uncover a strong matrilineal heritage.’” thus, in jones’s focus on the white mother of interracial children, she explores the struggle for maternal subjectivity as it takes shape outside of this dichotomy of racialized motherhood, and in doing so, she not only revises the representation of race and gender in much beat literature, but also expands attention to the figure of the mother within the larger literary tradition of “textual mothers.” “minor surgery” lizzy’s use of the third-person narrative perspective in “no visible means of support” is continued in “minor surgery” and the stories in between them. this story— about a third of the way through the cycle—is set in . the title of this story is a play on the irony of such an expression to refer to and significantly downplay the stigma of abortion. lizzy accompanies her middle daughter to have this “minor surgery,” and throughout the day, lizzy reflects on her own two abortions in the past. in “minor surgery,” jones extends her focus on the experience of the interracial mother depicted in the previous stories of my analysis as she explores an experience that is not necessarily unique for a woman in an interracial family, but rather one that transcends racial differences. further, jones situates this important issue alongside a unique confrontation that lizzy has with a white woman about being a parent to interracial children, and in juxtaposing these two situations, jones thematizes racial equality and integration in new ways. lizzy’s struggle for maternal subjectivity that we saw foregrounded in “disintegration” and “no visible means of support” is de-emphasized here in order to illustrate the potential for racial equality and integration to abate the isolation and fragmentation experienced by the interracial mother. much of the narrative of “minor surgery” describes lizzy and her daughter as they wait for the doctor to arrive and listen to the nurse, mrs. weinberg, in the meantime. the nurse talks to all of the patients—including lizzy’s biracial daughter, a japanese woman, and a white woman—about issues such as birth control options and future pregnancies. during this time and when her daughter is having her surgery, lizzy is lost in her thoughts as she reflects on her abortions in the pre-roe vs. wade era. she recalls, for example, the courage it took for young women such as herself to have gone for an abortion when it was illegal—often alone without anyone for support and to an isolated place “where the authorities wouldn’t’ find [the doctor].” she remembers when there were “women who marched, and testified, and died” for the legal right that young women today are able to take advantage of and, often, with someone to accompany and support them without as much risk—physical or otherwise. one recollection is particularly moving as lizzy currently watches each patient exit the operating room to recover in the waiting area: images of pain crowded lizzy’s mind. images of fear. of hemorrhaging on street corners, of the time the nurse’s tube had taken two weeks to do its job. and before roe, the doctor’s mill in the suburbs of the legal state, where the waiting and recovery room had so few beds that most of those recovering had to lie on the floor. … their clothing had been taken except for dresses and blouses, and so those who’d worn pants were naked below the waist. in this passage, jones rather strikingly depicts the differences between her and her daughter’s experiences, as her daughter has only mild pain and recovers relatively comfortably in the bed with her mother beside her. and even though her daughter makes it through her surgery with no complications, lizzy can’t help but reflect with noted despondence and frustration on the reality that “the lives of all women … still [depend] on a house of cards that could any day, come tumbling, tumbling down.” lizzy is tired of being always indignant about foams that didn’t work and were despicable … and the tasty jelly and rubber baby buggy bumpers that for some women spoiled all pleasure, every ability to work that thing. she went on, raving in her mind, at the pill with its fake pregnancy followed hard by embolism, the iud of babies and untreatable infection. in emphasizing this inner rage that lizzy feels toward women’s limited options for birth control and the all too common need for abortions as a result of contraceptives’ failures, jones shifts the focus—if only temporarily—from lizzy’s frustration when confronted with problems based on others’ resistance to or rejection of her interracial family to a situation shared by women of any color and not defined by race. the focus on this important woman’s issue that transcends racial differences is coupled in “minor surgery” with another incident that somewhat similarly blurs racial boundaries. initially, lizzy is once again the object of a “social gaze” when nurse weinberg noticeably stares at the sight of lizzy and her daughter at the clinic, clearly surprised to see this mother-daughter combination together. jones explains that in response to this loaded stare, “lizzy fixed her with the patient cold eye she assumed to deal with people’s confusion when confronted with herself plus child or children, who were all different shades.” though nurse weinberg glosses over her initial confusion and instead emphasizes “how much it means to [her] to see a mother here with her daughter,” she raises her voice for the other patients to hear, and soon lizzy finds herself “the object of everyone’s attention.” in previous stories, such unsolicited attention drawn to lizzy because of the racial differences from her daughter results in the fragmentation of lizzy’s sense of self and her subsequent use of third-person narration, as the gaze of others objectifies her and reinforces the ambiguity of her societal position. interestingly, in “minor surgery,” the nurse’s focus on lizzy and her daughter has a much different impact because the nurse’s attention to lizzy’s race actually stems from the nurse’s own personal situation. her son has married a haitian woman, and the nurse looks to lizzy for advice about having a biracial grandchild. although the nurse comes across as presumptuous in her assumption that lizzy can or should speak to any such interracial situation, jones uses this as an opportunity for lizzy and nurse weinberg to express their innate willingness to love their children and grandchildren unconditionally—no matter their race. the final line, spoken by lizzy’s daughter, “‘thank you for being my mom,’” is a somewhat trite conclusion, but it nevertheless emphasizes the unconditional love shared between mother and daughter that lizzy hopes will define nurse weinberg’s relationship with her grandchild-to-be as well. in the story’s focus on the shared female experience of abortion across racial boundaries and in this conclusion, then, “minor surgery” continues the cycle’s advocacy of racial integration as well as what is here the implicit erasure of hierarchical boundaries between blacks and whites. lizzy’s use of the third-person narrative perspective in this story continues to represent the negative impact that racial discrimination can have as it has led to a confused and fragmented sense of self that lizzy hopes to better understand through the act of storytelling itself. “full circle” in the final story of in care, “full circle,” jones presents the culmination of the corresponding thematic issues and structural elements developed throughout the short story cycle. the longest story in the cycle, “full circle” is also the most complex as it uses the mode of magical realism to address the “postmodern destabilization of identity and narrative” explored throughout the cycle’s previous stories. a “particular strain” of postmodernism, magical realism “can be used to explore the realities of characters or communities who are outside of the objective mainstream of our culture.” magical realist texts often do so by “depict[ing] the real world of people whose reality is different from ours,” and in doing so, they “de-center privileged discourses and disrupt what may have previously been taken as ‘logical’ or ‘normal.’” though jones’s experimentation with this literary mode only subtly engages with these objectives, she interestingly does so in order to further emphasize the socially-constructed categories responsible for the positioning of the interracial mother as an outsider. stylistically, “full circle” employs this literary mode as it breaks down the boundaries between the story itself and the metanarrative vignettes that throughout the rest of in care have been consistently formally separated from one another by page breaks and by the completion of each respective story before the next vignette. in this final story, jones uses only paragraph breaks and bold font to mark the distinctions and thus enables lizzy, in the first-person, to shift back and forth between the story she tells and her conversations with good friend zulima, introduced earlier as the black mother of a biracial son, about the story and the process of storytelling itself. as such, the metanarrative techniques illustrated in previous stories of the cycle are more explicit and have a stronger impact in this final story, as jones’s deliberate construction of the narrative of “full circle” is revealed as part of the story itself. the story’s plot development—intertwined with the structural development—also represents jones’s use of magical realism. lizzy actually narrates multiple stories within “full circle”—stories that are connected to each other through the passing down of a belt she once owned. she is prompted to tell the stories by a recent visit to a thrift store where she is convinced she saw that same plastic seashell belt for sale. “full circle” begins in and gradually progresses to the present day. lizzy begins the story describing how when they were still married, lizzy and elliott had visited a leatherstore where lizzy traded in her plastic seashell belt for another belt made by al, the leatherman, who ran the store. al, a white man, had put her belt on the street with the garbage, and a passerby, vince, also white, then picked it up and coincidentally wandered into the same bar al was in down the street. the belt caught al’s eye, and this prompted their meeting, which soon evolved into a long-term romantic relationship. at this point in the narrative, lizzy is no longer involved as a character in the story; she steps outside of the text and is simply the narrator of al’s experiences. the narrative picks up in the summer of , when al has a brief affair with a black woman named vera, which leads to the birth of their biracial daughter, sunshine. al doesn’t learn about sunshine until she is five years old, when vera leaves her with him after suddenly showing up at his store, and vera then virtually disappears from their lives. after vince and al adopt sunshine in , they pass the seashell belt on to her, but it is misplaced sometime later. lizzy’s narration then jumps to a scene in which sunshine, in her mid-twenties, is in zulima’s office (her profession is unidentified) and is talking to zulima about her biological and adoptive fathers, al and vince. lizzy suddenly re-inserts herself back into the story as a character, appearing alongside sunshine in zulima’s office and tells zulima in response to her strong feelings of connection to sunshine, “think daughter.” then, in a twist that interestingly complicates the story, lizzy describes how zulima reveals herself as sunshine’s actual mother. zulima says to sunshine, “‘by now vera would appear to you as a total stranger’”—as sunshine hadn’t seen vera since she was a child. sunshine replies that she and her fathers “had a story about that,” and zulima clarifies: “‘well, you’re in it.’” then, in the concluding scene, sunshine is at the thrift store with both lizzy and zulima looking for the seashell belt, and to lizzy’s dismay, the belt is no longer there. sunshine “says kindly, ‘do we need the belt now that it’s come full circle?’” indeed, the belt is no longer worth chasing now that it has effectively brought the estranged mother and daughter—zulima and sunshine—into one another’s lives through lizzy’s intervention in the story. as noted above, magical realism is often developed through the portrayal of a narrator’s or character’s reality that seems counter to objective reality. in this case, the renaming of vera—the shifting of identities from vera to zulima as sunshine’s mother— was revealed through the insertion of lizzy as a character in the latter story of which she is not otherwise a part. as such, this shift in identity invites readers to reconsider the causal relationship between lizzy’s early encounter with al and sunshine’s presence in zulima’s office years later. whereas it initially seems that lizzy tells the story of al, vince, and sunshine as an offshoot of tracing the whereabouts of her belt, we learn that her intention is twofold. first, in order to “make these stories good, so everyone’d want to be in them” and thus include zulima as a character, and, second, in order to emphasize the various experiences of “nontraditional” motherhood, lizzy disrupts the linear plot development and transforms the character of vera into zulima. the previous instances of shifting or multiple identities in earlier stories reflected lizzy’s various struggles to develop a maternal subjectivity as an interracial mother and were treated explicitly by lizzy—such as her description of taking on the identity of nelly to collect welfare in “disintegration” or her deliberate shift from “i” to “she” as the narrative voice beginning in “no visible means of support.” in contrast, in “full circle,” lizzy shifts the character of vera into zulima without explicitly highlighting her narrative intent, requiring her audience to temporarily suspend disbelief and to accept what otherwise seems counter to reality. further, zulima’s immediate willingness, as both lizzy’s listener and character, to “run with” lizzy’s renaming of vera to zulima in the story works in conjunction with the “swollen … parental pride” zulima feels toward sunshine to represent the strong sense of self she has as an interracial mother. this notably contrasts with the struggle for a stable identity and subjectivity that lizzy often experiences as the protagonist in her own stories. changing vera into zulima and inserting herself into the scene with zulima and sunshine at the end of the narrative enables lizzy to construct a parallel between the development of her subjectivity as a storyteller and zulima’s development as an interracial mother. jones intertwines the metanarrative element of the text with the thematic development of maternal subjectivity through the mode of magical realism as this allows lizzy to construct a reality that invites readers to “compassionately experience the world as many of our fellow human beings see it.” that is, it allows lizzy/jones to revise the ways in which characters like lizzy and zulima are so often scrutinized, condemned, objectified, or discriminated against by others as “nontraditional” mothers. in light of this multi-layered story, it is important to clarify several points. first, in terms of understanding how this story’s new characters fit in to the cycle’s theme of interracial relationships and racialized motherhood, it is necessary to reiterate that al is white, and that despite the initial description of vince as white, he is later described as “colored” due to his italian dominican heritage and looks. vera/zulima is black, and sunshine is biracial. second, it is important to acknowledge that as the story shifts from lizzy’s initial experience at the thrift store with elliott to al’s story with his lover, husband, and child, jones shifts the role of the protagonist from lizzy as the interracial mother to al as an interracial father then finally to zulima as an interracial mother (now of both her biracial son, malcolm, mentioned earlier, and of sunshine). further, though al fathered sunshine with vera/zulima, jones’s focus is on his relationship with vince as lovers and as the adoptive fathers of sunshine, indicating another shift in jones’s text from a heterosexual to homosexual relationship. in advancing the narrative of “full circle” and in care in these multiple ways, jones uses the final story of the text to signify the breaking down of barriers that she thematically explores throughout the course of the cycle. by erasing the boundaries between the stories and the vignettes and combining them within “full circle,” jones “self-consciously expos[es] the way her [text] is constructed [and thus] expose[s] the way interracial relationships are constructed.” that is, what jones ultimately accomplishes in “full circle,” and therefore throughout the whole of in care, is to emphasize life’s fundamental interconnectedness—to highlight the importance of transcending the boundaries between different cultures, races, genders, or sexualities that essentialist ideologies perpetuate and of achieving unity as a result. doing so, “full circle” suggests, can allow for the development of subjectivity and a stable sense of self—represented not only through the plot points i have highlighted, but also through the fact that lizzy tells the various stories of “full circle” through the first-person perspective. her various roles of woman, mother, and storyteller that had been fragmented and shifting throughout the previous stories and decades have finally been unified and have thus enabled lizzy to shift back to the narrative perspective of “i.” if the various socially-constructed boundaries described above are perpetuated, the text suggests, figures such as the interracial mother would continue to struggle to develop a subjectivity in the face of discrimination against her “nontraditional” position, and to overcome a fragmented and troubled sense of self, represented in lizzy’s previous use of the third-person perspective. by engaging in magical realism, a literary mode used to “problematize present- day disjunctive realities,” jones extends the text’s earlier engagement with the postmodern discourse of identity fragmentation and destabilization. having gradually progressed from an unstable sense of self that shifted from lizzy to nelly as well as from “i” to “she,” lizzy fully comes into her own as a storyteller here. she narrates from the first-person perspective and interestingly shapes a story that creatively captures the attention of her audience by bridging the gap between what is assumed to be real and what is assumed to be fantasy—particularly through the revelation that zulima is sunshine’s mother. in the end, lizzy’s coming into her own as a storyteller signifies the development of her subjectivity. in this culmination of the thematic and formal elements of the whole cycle, jones uses the genre of the short story cycle to destabilize the hegemonic and hierarchical categories of race and gender and to portray the progression from disjunction and fragmentation to unity. the “happy ending” in depicting what may be described as a “happy ending” in “full circle”—the uniting of the biracial daughter, sunshine, with her black mother, zulima, and lizzy’s development of subjectivity as an interracial mother and storyteller signified in her use of the first person—in care may be scrutinized for perpetuating “the integration illusion”— what suzanne jones describes as “images of racial integration served up ubiquitously by whites in power.” as leonard steinhorn and barbara diggs-brown argue, although desegregation “is a necessary precondition for integration,” the two are not the same. desegregation refers to “the elimination of discriminatory laws and barriers to full participation in american life.” actual racial integration, steinhorn and diggs-brown argue, “is about the realm of life governed by behavior and choice, not by statutes and institutions” and “is built on a universal acceptance of people as individuals.” that is, blacks and whites may indeed live next to each other or work together, but this does not necessarily depict integration, which is more accurately described as when “blacks and whites would choose to live side by side, socialize with ease, see each other with peers, recommend each other for jobs” and so forth. in this definition, racial integration relies on both “color-blind[ness] and color-conscious[ness]”—on one person evaluating another based on character, not on skin color, as well as on each person having a mutual respect of one another’s cultural background, history, and practices. drawing on suzanne jones’s argument about how to effectively evaluate happy endings in interracial literature and distinguish between “the integration illusion” and actual racial integration, i argue that in care does not merely suggest that racial integration and equality—or maternal subjectivity for that matter—can be achieved easily or effortlessly, nor defined by whites as a categorically privileged race. rather, as illustrated throughout the corresponding progression of the structure of the short story cycle and of lizzy’s initially fractured and troubled sense of self and lack of subjectivity, jones uses lizzy’s unique experience as a white mother of biracial children to portray the gradual and complex evolution of race relations in america following from the post-civil rights era. more specifically, she concludes with a “happy ending” that does not carelessly perpetuate “the integration illusion.” jones “suggest[s] that solutions are not simple,” and she shows “how intricately conflict [is experienced] and how believably conflict is resolved.” it is over the course of four decades and many different struggles and obstacles that lizzy’s development and experience of authority, agency, and authenticity take place. circling back to the ending of the cycle’s first story, “enough of this,” it is important to reiterate that in the beginning of in care, jones highlights the ever-present racial discrimination that lizzy still witnesses at the turn of the twenty-first century. even though lizzy has a “happy ending” in “full circle,” this is relative to her multiple complicated experiences with discrimination over the course of many years; it is not to suggest the absence of racial discrimination in the twenty-first century, but rather lizzy’s individual ability to overcome its effects. v. conclusion an anonymous reader for curbstone press in claimed that the primary reason the in care of worth auto parts manuscript was not yet suitable for publication was the lack of “details of the setting, the deep, revelatory contemporaneous details of the people, and the exposing details of the politics and art of the period”—overall, “the raw stuff” necessary “to tell this crucially important story.” the reader’s criticism of in care is fairly accurate; some of the characters and context of the text are underdeveloped. for example, in jones’s focus on the narrative of the interracial experience from the perspective of the white mother, she deprives the protagonist’s children of sufficient characterization that could help readers better understand the mother’s own situation and struggles. additionally, there are a few minor inconsistencies between the stories— though these seem reflective of the status of the manuscript as unfinished—such as the description of the secondary character, nathan, as a playwright in the first story but as a painter in subsequent stories. regardless of any such weaknesses, my analysis illustrates that with in care of worth auto parts, jones significantly redefines our understanding of the fundamental beat pursuit of an authentic american experience in several important ways. drawing on her personal and complex experiences within the beat community, jones disrupts and challenges the pattern of developing a white subjectivity at the expense of the romanticization, subordination, exoticism, or primitivism of nonwhites often portrayed in male- and female-authored beat texts. that is, jones undermines the essentialist gender and racial categories upheld in prominent beat fiction and redefines the beat quest for individual truth. responding to the separation between whites and blacks and the marginalization of women in beat literature and in the post-civil rights period with the rise of the black power and black arts movements, jones draws attention to the multifaceted problems that such racial and gender segregation or discrimination can have. she simultaneously emphasizes the possibilities for and the importance of racial integration and equality as well as female subjectivity. it is through the figure of the interracial mother that jones addresses various complexities of racial and gender politics beginning in the mid- s. she destabilizes the traditional gender and racial dichotomies between whites and nonwhites and between men and women commonly exploited in beat texts by focusing on a figure whose very experience as a white mother of biracial children, in the case of lizzy, undermines the stability or rigidity of these dichotomies. the ambiguity of the interracial mother’s position in between racial communities enables jones to portray white characters whose identities are troubled and fragmented and black characters whose identities are well- defined and strong. in challenging hegemonic racial hierarchies in this way, jones not only revises the representation of race in beat literature, but also shifts the attention onto a female figure often marginalized in both the beat and maternal literary traditions. drawing attention to the interracial mother and her experiences beginning in s new york city bohemia puts jones’s writing in dialogue with that of di prima and johnson in interesting ways. although in care is initially set in the same general context as di prima’s this kind of bird flies backward and johnson’s come and join the dance, a key element of di prima’s and johnson’s work—the new york city bohemian community—plays a notably less prominent role in jones’s short story cycle. as my analysis shows, jones’s text spans from the s to the turn of the twenty-first century, and her emphasis over the course of these four decades is on the ambiguous positioning of the interracial mother between white and black communities rather than within the new york city beat community. as i explained earlier, to varying degrees, the beat community simultaneously resisted and perpetuated hegemonic racial and gender norms, and began to dissolve in the late s. thus, rather than limit her analysis of racial and gender politics to the context of the beat community, jones uses this site as the initial context through which to establish the nature of racial- and gender-based tensions that she then explores more broadly as a way to highlight the implications of their very pervasiveness in society. also importantly, whereas di prima and johnson seek to develop a subjectivity for women in general and for the female bohemian more specifically, this chapter argues that jones seeks to develop a female subjectivity specific to the experience of the mother— and of the nontraditional or racialized mother in particular—which illustrates how jones distinctively engages in the women beats’ discourse of protofeminism. chapter two demonstrated how johnson’s treatment of female subjectivity both engaged in and revised that in di prima’s work; this chapter illustrates how jones’s focus on maternal subjectivity further extends the ways in which both di prima and johnson explore the development of female subjectivity. this isn’t to overlook how some of di prima’s early poetry draws much-needed attention to the female perspective of the experience of motherhood. rather, this is to highlight how, for jones, this experience is inextricably and explicitly linked to issues of race. significantly, jones explores essential beat questions of identity and authenticity by engaging in the discourse of postmodernism. as this chapter illustrates, the postmodern experience of the interracial mother is embodied through the genre of the short story cycle, the thematic treatment of multiple, shifting identities, and the use of metanarrative techniques. in all of these ways, jones illustrates the fundamental fragmentation and self-reflexivity that defines postmodernism. further, in using the unique structure of the short story cycle to stylistically perform the experiences of disunity and unity, jones concludes in care with a “happy ending” that also interestingly disrupts the defining fragmentation and ambivalence of much postmodernist fiction. all of these accomplishments demonstrate that despite any shortcomings of jones’s short story cycle, in care of worth auto parts significantly expands our understanding of jones’s contributions to the beat literary tradition. more than a memoirist, jones is a versatile writer who examines issues of race and gender in ways heretofore absent within the beat tradition. although jones’s development as a writer was more tentative and gradual than other women beats, it is clear that her formative experiences within the beat community shaped her work as a writer in unquestionably important ways. reading her work alongside that of di prima’s and johnson’s illustrates each writer’s uniqueness and highlights the many ways in which they redefine the literary history of the beats. in the epilogue that follows, i add carol bergé and mimi albert to this discussion, shifting them from the margins to the center of the discourse on women beats. notes . h. jones, how i became hettie jones, a memoir (new york: dutton, ), . . for consistency, i refer to hettie jones as jones and to leroi jones as baraka. . as discussed in the introduction, several women beats writers did not begin writing, writing publicly, or publishing until after the beat period. as such, many readings of women beats’ work examine texts written after this literary movement that are, nevertheless, fundamentally rooted in implicit or explicit connections to the beat period through the treatment of quintessential beat concerns or the practice of beat aesthetics. see charters for more on the continuation of beat literature in the s and s. . for example, see damon and a. friedman. . this connection between each writer’s experience and the degree to which this experience shapes her work is not meant to suggest that race is not an issue in the work of di prima or johnson. the distinction here is that while race figures into di prima’s and johnson’s work in the development of a white female subjectivity, it is not an explicit focus for them. more specifically, di prima’s poetic use of slang in this kind of bird flies backward was bound up in the language’s roots in the black vernacular and was simultaneously representative of the beat endeavor to blur racial boundaries, but this aspect of her poetics is only implicitly expressed as she seeks primarily to represent the individualism of the bohemian and the subjectivity of the female bohemian. for johnson, the gendered dichotomy of private and public space was implicitly rooted in the context of a white, middle-class identity that likewise defined the female subjectivity that she constructed throughout come and join the dance, but race was not treated overtly in the novel. jones’s principal focus on the intersections between race and gender in her writing therefore extends the ways in which race is generally treated in much women beats’ work. . emphasizing the relationship between gender and race as it affects the figure of the mother in particular, laura doyle argues that “hierarchies of race and gender require one another as co-originating and co-dependent forms of oppression rather than merely parallel, compounded, or intersecting forms; and … these co-dependent structures of race and sex converge especially on the mother, who reproduces racial boundaries in her function as subservient procreator.” bordering on the body: the racial matrix of modern fiction and culture (new york: oxford university press, ), . . throughout the chapter, i draw on elaine tuttle hansen’s use of the term “nontraditional” to describe this particular experience of motherhood in which the mother is marginalized due to racial differences from her children. in mother without child: contemporary fiction and the crisis of motherhood, hansen identifies various other types of “nontraditional” mothers, including lesbian mothers, mothers without custody of their children, slave mothers, etc. mother, - . . patricia hill collins, “shifting the center: race, class, and feminist theorizing about motherhood,” representations of motherhood, ed. donna bassin, margaret honey, and meryle kaplan (new haven: yale university press, ), . collins explains, “the importance of working for the physical survival of children and community, the dialectical nature of power and powerlessness in structuring mothering patterns, and the significance of self-definition in constructing individual and collective racial identity comprise three core themes characterizing the experiences of native american, african-american, hispanic, and asian-american women.” “shifting,” . . r. johnson, “‘you’re putting me on,’” . . h. jones, in care of worth auto parts, n.d., hettie jones papers, box , folder , rare book and manuscript library, columbia university in the city of new york, . . johnson and grace connect the beats’ emphasis on “individual truth” to a fundamentally “masculinist emersonian” impulse, and i apply this phrasing of “individual truth” to my analysis of jones’s work accordingly. “visions,” . . as noted in the introduction, jones’s work might more accurately be considered feminist in light of the fact that she did not begin writing much of it (including in care) until the s. however, i refer to jones’s treatment of female subjectivity within this text as protofeminist in keeping with the consistent characterization of women beats as such in current beat scholarship. this is not to overlook the importance of how the text is shaped by its composition beginning in the post-civil rights period and the early feminist movement but rather to reflect the fundamental distinction in “promise” and style between the work of many of the women beats and that of feminist writers such as adrienne rich. see r. johnson, “‘and then,’” . . for more on the beats and postmodernism, see r. johnson’s “mapping women writers of the beat generation” and “‘you’re putting me on:’ jack kerouac and the postmodern emergence,” tony trigilio’s “‘will you please stop playing with the mantra?’: the embodied poetics of ginsberg’s later career,” and erik mortenson’s capturing the beat moment: cultural politics and the poetics of presence, as well as various discussions of the work of william burroughs. . farrell o’gorman, “the things they carried as composite novel,” war, literature, and the arts: an international journal of the humanities . ( ): . . karen weekes, “postmodernism in women's short story cycles: lorrie moore's anagrams,” the postmodern short story: forms and issues (westport, ct: praeger, ), , . the subsequent quotations in this paragraph are also from this text: , , . . doyle explains that the figure of “the racialized mother” is one for whom “the boundaries of race or ethnicity crucially constitute [her] importance.” (bordering, - ). i use this term accordingly when referring broadly to the experience of motherhood as significantly shaped in any way by the mother’s race or that of her children. i use the term “interracial mother” when referring more specifically to the particular experience of a cross-racial relationship between mother and child. . elizabeth podnieks and andrea o'reilly, ed., textual mothers/maternal texts: motherhood in contemporary women's literatures (waterloo, ontario: wilfred laurier university press, ), . . podnieks and o'reilly, . . jones, how i became, . . though queens and manhattan are both a part of new york city proper, my general references to the beat community as a new york city community refer specifically to manhattan. here i mark the distinction to prevent confusion with queens. . jones, how i became, . the subsequent quotations in this paragraph are from the same text: , . unless otherwise noted, the quotations in the next few paragraphs are from how i became as well, and for readability, the corresponding note is provided after the final quotation of each respective paragraph. . how i became, , , , . . how i became, . . this representative list of contemporary journals indicates the range of ideas to which jones was exposed. for example, the kenyon review fostered the ideas and poets of the new criticism, while dissent was (and continues to be) “a magazine of the left,” a “radical” departure from the traditionalism pervading the literary scene at the time. dissent, foundation for the study of independent social ideas, , web. . how i became, , - , , , , . . baraka was applying for the position of shipping manager. . how i became, . . “yugen” is a japanese term defined as: “the subtle and the profound. yugen is at the core of the appreciation of beauty and art in japan. it values the power to evoke, rather that the ability to state directly. the principle of yugen shows that real beauty exists when, through its suggestiveness, only a few words, or few brush strokes, can suggest what has not been said or shown, and hence awaken many inner thoughts and feelings.” jonathan p. walsh, “japan - from asahi to zen,” melmoth the wanderer (jonathan p. walsh, ), web. . brenda frazer, “artista,” interview by grace, breaking, . . how i became, . . helene dorn was the wife of black mountain poet ed dorn. per my personal telephone interview with jones on feb. , , she is currently working on publishing a collection of their correspondence. . how i became, - , . . how i became, , , . . jones, “drive,” interview by grace, breaking, . . how i became, , . . how i became, . as before, unless otherwise noted, the quotations in the next few paragraphs are from how i became, noted after the final quotation of each respective paragraph. . see renee romano’s discussion of how interracial relationships, particularly in the s and s, “make clear the tenuous nature of the boundary between what is traditionally considered ‘public’ and what is traditionally considered ‘private.’” race mixing: black-white marriage in postwar america (cambridge, ma: harvard university press, ), . . how i became, , , , , , , , , . . it is important to note that jones is not alone in her optimistic account of the state of interracial relationships during this time and at the five spot in particular. jon panish cites similar accounts by historian terry miller, musician david amram, and writer dan wakefield. in response to such accounts, however, panish argues that “the dawn of harmonious interracial relations in the village … never came close to realization. despite the optimistic rhetoric and high expectations, the achievement of an integrated village community occurred only in relatively superficial interpersonal relationships and myth.” (the color of jazz: race and representation in postwar american culture [jackson: university press of mississippi, ], .) i discuss how this is illustrated in beat literature in the next section. . how i became, , , . . deborah thompson, “keeping up with the joneses: the naming of racial identities in the autobiographical writings of leroi jones/amiri baraka, hettie jones, and lisa jones,” college literature . (winter ): . . romano, . . romano, - . . romano, , . . how i became, , . . panish, . . smethurst notes that in addition to his literary and cultural contributions, baraka “coin[ed] … the term that came to designate the [black arts] movement.” (black arts, .) andrew epstein likewise credits baraka for having founded the movement. see beautiful enemies: friendship and postwar american poetry (new york: oxford university press, ), . . epstein, . . epstein, . . see how i became hettie jones as well as di prima’s recollections of my life as a woman for each woman’s account of the relationship between di prima and baraka, including the details of di prima and baraka’s child. . see baraka’s autobiography for more on this, as well as his autobiographical play, the slave (under leroi jones), which depicts the ambivalence with which baraka struggled surrounding his decision to leave jones. . see romano for a discussion of how baraka’s racially-driven departure from his family and community was not uncommon for black leaders at the time, as well as of the tendency of white partners in interracial families to assimilate into black communities. . jones, “drive,” . . grace qtd. in jones, “drive,” . . jones, “drive,” . . grace qtd. in jones, “drive,” . . jones, drive (new york: hanging loose press, ), . the subsequent quotations in this paragraph are from the same page. . “drive,” - . . this and the next quotation are from drive, . . grace, “snapshots,” . . “snapshots,” . . thompson, . . barrett watten, “what i see in how i became hettie jones,” girls who wore black, . the subsequent quotations in this paragraph are from the same source: . . see chapter one for a discussion of how race figures into beat poetry, and see chapters one and two for discussions of the representation of gender and of female roles, in particular, in beat literature. . skerl, reconstructing, . panish argues that despite the presence of both white and black artists in the beat community, “the village community—including its social, political, cultural, and economic dimensions—remained predominantly separate and unequal during [this] period.” the color of jazz, . . mailer, “the white negro,” , , . it is important to note that mailer’s text has been criticized for its “profound lack of understanding of the ‘mind’ of the racial other.” manuel luis martinez, countering the counterculture: rereading postwar american dissent from jack kerouac to tomás rivera (madison: university of wisconsin press, ), . . mailer, . . steve wilson, “the author as spiritual pilgrim: the search for authenticity in jack kerouac’s on the road and the subterraneans,” the beat generation: critical essays, . . s. wilson, - . for additional discussions of european americans’ attraction to african american culture, see panish and wini breines. . holton, . . kerouac, “essentials of spontaneous prose,” good blonde & others (san francisco, ca: grey fox press, ), . . regina weinreich, kerouac’s spontaneous poetics: a study of the fiction (new york: thunder’s mouth press, ), . . martinez, . . kerouac, on the road, . . grace, “a white man in love: a study of race, gender, class, and ethnicity in jack kerouac’s maggie cassidy, the subterraneans, and tristessa,” the beat generation: critical essays, , . . “white man in love,” . . martinez, - . “fellaheen” is a term derived from german historian oswald spengler, referring to “‘the peasantry, ‘everlasting’ and historyless … the primitive people, surviving when the form of the nation passed away again.’” (qtd. in john lardas, the bop apocalypse: the religious visions of kerouac, ginsberg, and burroughs [urbana: university of illinois press, ], .) according to lardas, “for each beat [kerouac, burroughs, and ginsberg], those despised and rejected people without status qualifications or socially desirable characteristics represented the essence of america.” (bop apocalypse, .) as such, fellaheen functions in the same vein as the racial, ethnic, and social “other” that the beats were fundamentally drawn to, as a broader term that theoretically includes mailer’s image of the african american figure that the beats sought to appropriate. . frazer, troia: mexican memoirs (london: dalkey archive press, ), . . frazer, troia, . . frazer, “artista,” . . kerouac, on the road, . . john r. cooley, savages and naturals: black portraits by white writers in modern american literature (newark: university of delaware press, ), . . holton, . the subsequent quotation is from the same page. . amor kohli, “black skins, beat masks: bob kaufman and the blackness of jazz,” reconstructing the beats, . in a similar vein, panish criticizes scholars who attempt to temper the implications of the beats’ exercising of white privilege. he cites wini breines, for example, who claims, “‘young people and bohemians in the fifties were learning about white culture by appreciating black culture; if they were racist in their objectifications … they were also drawn to it respectfully.’” (qtd. in panish, .) in response to such accounts, panish argues that “if we understand ‘respect’ to connote not only esteem but also the kind of deference that prevents one from interfering with the object of esteem, then we cannot say the white youth and outsiders respected african american culture. it was precisely because these euro americans stood in superior social and political position vis-à-vis african american culture that they could appropriate or exploit these resources.” color of jazz, . . toni morrison, playing in the dark: whiteness and the literary imagination (new york: vintage books, ), , , . this overlaps with my analysis of race in the context of di prima’s (and other white writers’) use of black dialect or slang in their poetry. for additional studies of white american writers’ appropriations of racial or ethnic cultures within both poetry and prose of the th and th centuries, see john cooley’s savages and naturals: black portraits by white writers in modern american literature, renée curry’s white women writing white: h.d., elizabeth bishop, sylvia plath, and whiteness, rachel duplessis’s “‘darken your speech’: racialized cultural work of modernist poets,” aldon nielsen’s reading race: white american poets and the racial discourse in the twentieth century, and jean radford’s “race and ethnicity in white women’s modernist literature.” . martinez, . the subsequent quotation is from the same page. . larry neal, “the black arts movement,” the drama review: tdr : (summer, ): . . smethurst, . . smethurst, . . after its first series from to , which published writers such as fielding dawson, jerome rothenberg, grace paley, and diane wakoski, ikon was reincarnated in with a focus on women artists. the issues that include jones’s stories ( / , , and ) also include works by writers such as audre lorde, cherrie moraga, adrienne rich, sonia sanchez, margaret randall, and meena alexander. ploughshares boasts that “many of today's most respected writers had their first or early work published in ploughshares,” and such writers and guest editors include tim o'brien, robert pinsky, jayne anne phillips, rosellen brown, raymond carver, and tobias wolff. ploughshares (ploughshares, ), web. . sally arteseros, letter to hettie jones, march , , hettie jones papers, box , folder , rare book and manuscript library, columbia university in the city of new york. . sandy (no last name, from curbstone press), letter to hettie jones, november , , hettie jones papers, box , folder , rare book and manuscript library, columbia university in the city of new york. . as she explained to me in our telephone interview on feb. , , jones is working on publishing some of these stories in a collection entitled race tracks. . for a discussion of the genre’s various identifiers, see roxanne harde, “teaching women's story books: genre and gender politics in lives of girls and women,” eureka studies in teaching short fiction . ( ): - . . rocio g. davis, “oral narrative as short story cycle: forging community in edwidge danticat's ‘krik? krak!’” melus : (summer, ): - . . harde, . . jones, “enough of this,” frontiers: a journal of women’s studies . (winter ): . “enough of this” was missing from the archived manuscript of in care, and so my citations in this discussion refer to the page numbers of its published version in frontiers. the quotations in the next few paragraphs are from this source and are noted after the final quotation of each respective paragraph. . “enough,” , . . “enough,” , . . all of the quotations in this paragraph are from pg. . . social class is inevitably linked to issues of race in incidents such as this one but is outside of the scope of my analysis. . r. johnson, “‘you’re putting me on,’” . . jones, in care, . . regarding my earlier review of scholarship on jones’s work, note the overlap between my focus on multiple identities and naming in in care with grace’s attention to the multiplicity of jones’s representation of herself and thompson’s attention to the function of naming within her memoir. this overlap in analyses highlights the various ways in which these thematic and formal elements take shape throughout jones’s body of work. . jones’s choice of “nelly” is worth noting. in baraka’s autobiography, he used “nellie kohn” to refer to jones (with her maiden name, cohen). in my conversation with jones, she recalls deliberately using “nelly” here “out of spite”—that she was “trying to distance [herself] from how [she] felt about being disappeared.” this is implied within the context of this story, when lizzy describes how, as nelly, she felt “a slow collapse of herself” and “decide[s] to call it ‘getting nellied.’” (in care, .) it is interesting to note how she is indirectly indicting baraka here for essentially erasing her from his life. . in care, , . as before, unless otherwise noted, the quotations in this section of the chapter are from the in care manuscript, cited after the final quotation of each respective paragraph. i will use this pattern as necessary throughout the remainder of the chapter. . in care, , . . in care, , , , , . . r. johnson, “‘you’re putting me on,’” . . “‘you’re putting me on,’” . . collins, . . to reiterate, my use of the term “nontraditional” here follows from hansen to refer to a figure such as lizzy who doesn’t belong to either the white or black community by virtue of her interracial motherhood. . r. johnson, “‘you’re putting me on,’” . . in care, , , , . . in care, , . . that jones does not name lizzy’s daughters is particularly interesting in light of the fact that an anonymous reviewer of the manuscript identified this as one of the missing elements of the text that he/she would like to know (and thinks readers should know) more about. (hettie jones papers, box , folder , rare book and manuscript library, columbia university in the city of new york.) in response to this suggestion, jones explained to a publisher (in a letter to victoria—no last name— presumably at curbstone press dated september , ) that although she considered cutting out the other daughters—who are mentioned only once or twice in passing—and including only the middle daughter “with a proper name,” she then took the advice of her own daughter not to do so. jones explains in the letter, “she said that ‘the middle daughter,’ generically, is someone who is often overlooked, or left out, and to focus on her as that would be inclusive rather than dismissive. but then she has not read the ms as a whole. so i am entirely open to suggestion re this.” (jones, letter.) this suggests, of course, that perhaps had jones not abandoned the manuscript, she may have ended up naming this or all three daughters in the narrative. nevertheless, in its current form, the absence of names for her children highlights jones’s attempt to focus primarily on the figure of the mother. . though not exclusively symbolic for african american culture, the ankh is often used to represent “afro-centrism and black pride.” the ankh: key of life (san francisco, ca: red wheel/weiser, ), . . all of the quotations in this paragraph are from in care, (emphasis in original). . same as previous note. . in care, , (emphasis in original). . r. johnson, “‘you’re putting me on,’” . . in care, (emphasis in original). . madeleine sorapure, “paul auster,” postmodernism: the key figures (malden, ma: blackwell, ), - . . as podnieks and o’reilly discuss, following in large part from rich’s of woman born ( ), “mothers are significantly prominent” in “postmodernist plots of the s and s,” representing a “shift from the daughter-centric stories … that [had] … dominated maternal traditions.” textual mothers, , , . . jones’s text also notably shifts the focus of much interracial literature from the mixed-race figure to the white figure of interracial relationships. . the phrase “textual mother” is from the title of podnieks and o’reilly’s book. . podnieks and o’reilly, (emphasis added). . in care, , - , , , . . this isn’t to suggest that jones (or i) overlooks how class differences may complicate the ability for any woman to get an abortion; however, as noted earlier, this is outside of the scope of my discussion. . in care, , . . in care, . . r. johnson, “‘you’re putting me on,’” . . theo l. d’haen, “magical realism and postmodernism: decentering privileged centers,” magical realism: theory, history, community, ed. lois parkinson zamora and wendy b. faris (durham: duke university press, ), ; bruce holland rogers, “what is magical realism, really?,” writing-world (moira allen, inc., ), web. . rogers; thomas crisp, “from romance to magical realism: limits and possibilities in gay adolescent fiction,” children's literature in education: an international quarterly . ( ): . . in care, (emphasis in original), , , . . in care, (emphasis in original), , . . rogers. . in care, . . suzanne w. jones, race mixing: southern fiction since the sixties (baltimore: johns hopkins university press, ), . . jasmina murad, magical realism in toni morrison’s beloved and ana castillo’s so far from god (norderstedt, germany: druck and bindung, ), . . s. jones, , . . leonard steinhorn and barbara diggs-brown, ed., by the color of our skin: the illusion of integration and the reality of race (new york: dutton, ), . the subsequent quotations in this paragraph are from the same source: , , , , . . s. jones, , . . rev. of in care of worth auto parts, hettie jones papers, box , folder , rare book and manuscript library, columbia university in the city of new york. epilogue “we are members of that anomalous group of the s”: carol bergÉ and mimi albert the preceding chapters have argued that the achievements of diane di prima, joyce johnson, and hettie jones extend beyond their few texts that currently receive scholarly attention, namely their autobiographical works. attention to how each writer’s experience within the beat literary community takes shape in select texts reveals daring protofeminist work that explores central beat themes through the lens of the female perspective and, importantly, develops varied models of female subjectivity that are otherwise absent in beat literature. through challenging cultural norms and experimenting with formal literary conventions, these writers significantly revise our understanding of female writers of the beat movement and of its history and literary tradition more broadly. extending current scholarly attention to the lives and work of these three writers, though, is only part of the recovery of women beat writers. noted earlier, the canon of women beats is subjective and fluid. despite this open-endedness, within the existing critical work on women beats there is attention primarily to only a handful of writers. as a result, many female beat writers remain absent from beat studies. the goal of this epilogue is to establish a more expansive canon of women beats as it explores how lesser known female beats also importantly engage in fundamental beat issues. specifically, this epilogue introduces carol bergé and mimi albert into beat literary studies by providing an overview of their lives and work and discussing a representative text from each writer within the critical framework established in the preceding chapters. i set out to enter these currently understudied writers into beat scholarship by exploring the continuities and disparities between their work as well as between theirs and the work of the more recognizable beat women. in doing so, this epilogue provides a more comprehensive narrative of beat literary history and demonstrates the importance of including these and other currently understudied women writers into beat studies. as explained in the introduction, i have chosen to include bergé and albert here not only because they each contribute to our understanding of beat literature and history in important and distinctive ways, but also in light of their differences from the writers included in chapters one through three. that is, although bergé’s and albert’s participation in the new york city beat literary community overlapped with that of di prima, johnson, and jones in various ways, the latter three writers were more intimately connected to one another as well as to prominent male beats. this major biographical difference may largely contribute to the distinction between the current literary status of di prima, johnson, and jones and that of bergé and albert. indeed, bergé and albert represent many other women beats who may also have been relatively less directly involved in the beat community or who were not romantically linked to prominent beat men—but are nevertheless valuable figures in this literary community. my inclusion of bergé and albert endeavors to broaden our current understanding of the women beats by extending critical attention beyond those few writers who more frequently appear in existing scholarship—perhaps because of their personal and working relationships with one another and with beat men. this epilogue presents bergé and albert as undeniably important writers in their own right and as representative of a broader spectrum of women beats who remain unrecognized. the title of this epilogue comes from albert’s novel, skirts, and is useful in signaling that despite the current status of bergé and albert on the periphery of beat studies, these two writers were indeed involved in the beat literary community and have contributed to it through their lives and work in important ways. in the context of albert’s novel, initially set in late , -year old helene elphrick is reflecting on her and her friends’ “misfit” status. in the passage quoted in my epilogue title, “we are members of that anomalous group of the s,” helene asserts that despite any former associations with “conventional” peers or behaviors, she and her friends in fact don’t fit in to the “norm.” they find themselves rejecting the “proper trappings of a new york virgin in the s”; they skip prom in order to be “on ‘the scene.’” they cut school and quit work in order to immerse themselves in the arts scene, hanging out at the cedar tavern and the five spot, getting to know various artists and writers who “create, [who] pull new things out of themselves and let them breathe.” in the terms used to describe the beats, helene and friends find themselves drawn to those who seek—and they are themselves in pursuit of—an authentic experience primarily through art, or in general through a rejection of mainstream culture and values. though their families or peers may have yet to recognize their “misfit” status, helene and friends quite clearly see themselves as part of the postwar countercultural community. it is my contention that this same level of recognition applies to bergé and albert—they were likewise part of the beat community and should no longer be elided from its history. the inclusion of bergé and albert in this study broadens our understanding not only of the women beats, but also of the beat community more broadly. calling attention to the work of bergé and albert allows us to gain more insight into how women beats developed as writers within a literary community and historical context that generally subordinated women to the role of wife, lover, or mother. this expanded beat narrative illustrates how the work of bergé and albert resists and revises literary and cultural conventions in unique ways, further exemplifying the important protofeminist work of the women beats. carol bergé carol bergé (née peppis) was born in manhattan in and published over books, including poetry, novels, short stories, and nonfiction, between the early s and her death in . she wrote her first story at age eight and her first poem at age fourteen; before publishing her writing, bergé worked as a journalist and editorial assistant in the s. she attended (without graduating) nyu, columbia university, and the new school, studying literary arts and production, social science, and the fine arts. during her time at nyu, she had poems published in the nyu-based lines & letters. her first poetry chapbook, the vulnerable island, was published in and was followed by two more chapbooks, poems made of skin ( ) and circles, as in the eye ( ). in , bergé also published her first nonfiction text, the vancouver report: a report and discussion of the poetry seminar at the university of british columbia. these publications were followed by several books of poetry, including an american romance ( ), from a soft angle ( ), and a song, a chant ( ). bergé’s first work of fiction, the unfolding (part ), was published in , and contains two short stories that were then included in a larger collection of short stories and novellas, a couple called moebius: eleven sensual stories ( ). she subsequently published several novellas, including hanging tough ( ), experimental fiction, such as food & love ( ) and watch out for children ( ), and several more books through the early s, such as acts of love: an american novel ( ), fierce metronome: the one-page novels ( ), and zebras; or, contour lines ( ). bergé received various literary awards throughout her writing career: the helene wurlitzer foundation fellowship in , a grant in fiction from the new york state council on the arts in , and a national endowment fellowship for creative writing, with which she published a collection of short stories, timepieces, in . in addition to writing, bergé was an editor for various publishing houses, the founder and sole editor of an international avant-garde literary magazine, center, from to , as well as a teacher at several universities. her diversity as an artist is further evident in her more recent pursuit of her lifelong interest in antiques, opening blue gate art and antiques in santa fe and publishing antics: for everyone who loves antiques… “a book of ours” in , a year before her death. bergé’s inclusion in leroi jones’s four young lady poets in helped establish her as a burgeoning new york city poet and indicates her recognition by male avant-garde writers at the time—not unlike di prima’s status among ginsberg and others. bergé played a prominent role in the s new york city poetry scene: she was one of the original organizers of the reading series at les deux mégots café (starting in ) and played an active role in the readings at le metro café (starting in ). both cafés were predecessors to the prolific st. marks poetry project (starting in ) and hosted readings by beat poets such as di prima, lenore kandell, allen ginsberg, peter orlovsky, and john wieners, black mountain poets such as paul blackburn and joel oppenheimer, and new york school poets such as ron padgett and ted berrigan. undoubtedly, bergé played an integral role in the development of this distinguished american poetry community. in addition to her role as organizer in the lower east side poetry scene, bergé contributed to this community of avant-garde poets and its influence on subsequent cultural forms and practices through her work as a documentarian. the vancouver report ( ) documents the pivotal three-week seminar at the university of british columbia led by innovative new american poets, such as ginsberg, denise levertov, charles olson, robert creeley, and robert duncan. she subsequently published a chronograph of the poets in , and light years: an anthology on sociocultural happenings (multimedia in the east village, - ) was published posthumously in . for this latter book, bergé edited a collection of memoirs by various poets, novelists, and playwrights, who developed as writers alongside visual and performing artists of the new york city downtown scene and created an innovative and influential arts community. as she writes in the introduction, the memoirs illustrate how these writers took poetry off the page, how they developed the heady amalgam multimedia. voices and words were thrust into perspectives where the body and the space around it became extensions of poetry; this is what made the light years poets different from others of its era: taking skills into the realms of audio and visual experimentation, and exercising freedom to reconstitute academic learning so as to create new arts. bergé sets out to highlight not only the uniqueness of this group of artists, but also its impact on later generations. she argues, “[the] chapters [in light years] intimate how the avant-garde becomes classical and is incorporated into culture, with innovative performances and adventurous objets d’art forming a basis for a mainstream of the future.” bergé’s work as a documentarian attests to her contribution to this important piece of american literary and cultural history, and participating in this arts scene in new york city was a vital part of her own development as a writer. through her involvement in this community, bergé developed ideas about and approaches to writing that would take shape throughout her literary career. despite bergé’s active role within the s poetry scene, her work remains largely overshadowed by attention to her male counterparts. as with other women beat writers, bergé was subject to marginalization as a woman writer even by her avant-garde contemporaries. within the particular context of the lower east side poetic community, poet and editor ed sanders illustrates what he considered, as described by daniel kane, “the link between nontraditional sexual mores and oral poetry” at les deux mégots café. in what reads as an advertisement for upcoming poetry readings published in his mimeograph, fuck you: a magazine of the arts, sanders writes: carol bergé: sweet poetess whom the entire editorial board, you may know, would just love to fuck. known to lurk about the les deux mégots coffee house on mondays, wednesdays, & thursdays. mary mayo: fur burger supreme. poetess. hustles at the les deux mégots on mondays & wednesdays. however satirical such references to female poets were intended to be, the sexual objectification of bergé and mayo in these passages is not unlike the misogynist representation of women in male-authored beat poetry and fiction described in previous chapters and similarly undermines the status of such female poets. this treatment of bergé and mayo as sex objects shows the obstacles such female writers confronted and worked to challenge through their writing. bergé may have been a leader and active participant in the avant-garde poetry scene, but her role as a woman unquestionably affected her experiences as a writer and her status in literary history. as mentioned earlier, there are no critical studies of bergé’s work at this time, yet she was a prolific writer with a multi-genre body of work, which signifies her versatility and reveals valuable contributions to the literary tradition of women beats, specifically, and to beat literature and history, more broadly. *** in this epilogue, i examine bergé’s novella, “in motion.” written in and published in her collection of short fiction, a couple called moebius, “in motion” illustrates bergé’s critical stance toward postwar social and cultural norms, undoubtedly shaped by her experiences as a female writer in the beat and contemporary avant-garde arts communities. my analysis of this novella focuses on how bergé, like di prima, johnson, and jones, critiques the mainstream’s “modernization” and its subsequent “homogenization” as well as postwar hegemonic gender norms. my analysis also highlights how bergé diverges from these other writers’ approaches through, for example, non-bohemian characters and settings and a unique take on female subjectivity as it is developed through a mutually constitutive relationship, rather than as an autonomous process. further, looking closely at one of bergé’s novellas—the fourth genre examined in the girl gang—highlights the genre diversity of the women beats. as critic william giraldi argues, “an expert novella combines the best of a short story with the best of a novel.” that is, the novella generally focuses on a small number of characters and a single situation or theme—like a short story—but it does so in considerable depth—like a novel—without losing focus on its movement toward the conclusion. “in motion” demonstrates how bergé skillfully uses the genre of the novella as she tells the story of a couple, louise and len, over the course of a pivotal two-year period in their lives. giraldi asserts that it is “difficult to get a novella to span more than a month” because “development and change take time,” but in this novella’s fourteen sections, bergé provides insight into key moments in the characters’ lives that enable readers to understand the motivation behind and the impact of some of their most life- defining choices and experiences over a two-year period. she also includes excerpts of stories that louise and len have written themselves, which provides a textured narrative perspective and structure that is not precluded by the relatively short length or limited depth of the novella, and she does so without losing focus on the continuity of the story. though any number of bergé’s texts would fit into a discussion of her contributions to the beat literary tradition, “in motion” illustrates bergé’s accomplishments as a writer while importantly drawing attention to the diversity—in character, setting, theme, and genre—of the work of the women beats. “in motion” takes place in the early s. louise was nineteen years old when she met len, who was about twenty years older and a public relations businessman. the text is primarily set in manhattan; however, unlike the other texts examined throughout this dissertation, “in motion” is not set in the downtown beat scene or in bohemian culture in general. rather, bergé explores fundamental beat themes of identity and authenticity from an upper class setting. louise and len represent a mainstream couple on the upper east side of manhattan who attempt to embrace the postwar societal and economic advancements that the beats argued would strip people of their individuality and freedom. in depicting the impact of society’s changes on such non-beat characters, bergé provides a different perspective than that of di prima and jones and exposes how this period was experienced by the very demographic against which the beats rebelled. the nature of louise and len’s experiences themselves ultimately validate the motivation behind the beats’ rejection of mainstream values. specifically, from the beginning of the novella, we see how louise and len struggle as a couple and as individuals in the postwar context. on one level, we see them struggle between an attempt to live as a typical mainstream couple of the s—with len at work on madison avenue and louise at home minding the maid—and the couple’s growing feelings of entrapment in this life that is motivated by materialism and a desire for upward mobility. both characters have an innate passion for the arts (he writes poetry and fiction and she yearns to paint—like key figures in the works of di prima, johnson, and jones), but these pursuits are suppressed by the couple’s attempts to play the roles society expects of them. the majority of len’s time is spent working at a job that he finds creatively stifling but that enables him to provide an affluent lifestyle for him and louise, and louise dutifully fills her time shopping and tending to their home. as the novella begins, they are beginning to realize that this is not a life of their own choosing, but rather a life they think they are supposed to lead. embedded within this larger critique of the postwar ideal of social mobility is bergé’s critique of the dominant gender discourse of the period. through much of the text, louise struggles against her assigned subordinate role as a woman, which is perpetuated by her husband, who continually treats her as something in his control, as one of his possessions. in fact, the oppression that louise suffers culminates when she intentionally overdoses on a bottle of sleeping pills midway through the text. after she recovers from this pivotal experience, however, louise and len seek therapy and endeavor to improve their marriage and their lives in general. at the end of the text, they have left new york city and are living happily on a farm in france, expecting their first child—an ending that intervenes in beat discourses in various important ways. the characterization of louise and len and the complex dynamic between them help illustrate the oppressive female gender norm that bergé sets out to critique throughout the text. notably, louise is different from the female characters developed in the work of the other women beats studied in this dissertation; for example, she comes from a wealthy family and attended finishing-school in maine. her attraction to “sex and pot” might align her with the typical female bohemian in her resistance to conventional “good girl” behavior, but louise’s representative act of rebellion against her conservative parents is interestingly different from a typical female beat’s assertion of independence from her parents often represented through dropping out of school or acquiring an office job. in contrast, having told her parents she was attending another finishing-school, louise, for a short time, worked as a playboy bunny. louise was used to gaining attention because of her looks—she was “brilliantly fair, tall, long-legged”—and so, perhaps her experience as a playboy bunny illustrates her attempt to use her sexuality as a means to provide for herself, to exploit the way in which men tend to objectify her for her own gain. the lack of subjectivity that she exhibits in her subsequent relationship with len, though, suggests that her role as a bunny was not necessarily an act of transgression, but rather indicative of her inability to challenge how she is generally expected to be subordinate to and a sex object for men. throughout much of their relationship, louise passively accepts len’s authoritative position. despite her desire to paint and the consistent boredom or restfulness she endures, she plays the role len expects of her. len’s tendency to objectify louise and treat her as a possession can perhaps be traced to his experience growing up with his family in poverty, an upbringing that—in conjunction with society’s pressures for the man to be the “breadwinner” of the family— drives his fierce pursuit of wealth and upward mobility. whereas male beats sought an authentic connection to the world that was fundamentally defined by a rejection of the consumerist culture and life on madison avenue, len immersed himself in this lifestyle, accumulating expensive things and surrounding himself, for example, in a “forty-five foot living room, with its mild alabaster and marble statues.” but not unlike the beat men’s marginalization or subordination of women, len essentially considers louise another object of beauty that he has acquired, an object to be molded in his hands, despite his awareness of and even respect for her intellect. in fact, it is important to note that while len feels that his responsibilities as a businessman take him away from his interest in writing, it is len himself that impedes louise’s desire to paint. when he learns that louise wants to paint, he decides that this is not “pertinent.” bergé writes, “he guessed she’d get over that”—through her preoccupation and presumed fulfillment with their life together at home, traveling, mingling with friends, etc. len’s overall attitude toward louise is effectively expressed in the following passage: “he thought of himself as europe and of louise as america, magnificent of itself but waiting to be colonized, civilised [sic]; full of natural beauty and natural resources, but unable to put them to use.” this dynamic between len and louise epitomizes a traditional hierarchical heterosexual relationship marked by len’s authoritative position and louise’s disempowerment. louise’s growing unease with and ultimate rejection of this gendered dichotomy, though, signifies bergé’s gradual critique of the mainstream—and beat—gender norms, which culminates in the development of louise’s subjectivity. the development of female subjectivity in “in motion” can be explored through a few key aspects of the text—the role of writing, the turning point in louise and len’s relationship, and the ending of the text—each of which engages with the work of di prima, johnson, and jones in interesting ways. for example, similar to how lizzy’s role as a storyteller in jones’s in care of worth auto parts becomes part of her development of subjectivity—how jones intertwines the thematic and structural elements of the text— bergé integrates the act of writing into her text and uses this as a means to develop and then challenge the traditional hierarchical relationship between louise and len. specifically, both louise and len write stories as part of the narrative of “in motion”; it is through the act of writing that they initially express and explore their otherwise latent or suppressed feelings about the various oppressive forces around them. this narrative element of “in motion” thus provides deeper insight into each character than the third- person narrative perspective of the rest of the novella and demonstrates how the act of writing is itself a means for understanding and examining one’s social, cultural, and political contexts—as bergé herself exemplifies through the composition of “in motion.” interestingly, the contrasts that bergé creates between louise’s and len’s individual stories perpetuate len’s authoritative position and louise’s passivity and struggles as a woman. ultimately, however, this element of “in motion” intensifies bergé’s critique of the dominant gender discourse of the postwar period as the novella ends with a letter that louise has written to her sister in which she asserts her voice and emphasizes her newly- developing subjectivity. in the one story that louise writes within the narrative of “in motion,” women are victim to a tragic fate at the hands of the men around them, and the men are then able to continue living their lives unaffected by the absence of women. louise’s story envisions women as defined strictly by their sexuality and as dangerous and dispensable as a result; men are depicted as authoritative and powerful, and as the only ones deemed worthy or safe to survive. the first of the two stories that len writes, on the other hand, situates the main male and female characters in a shared struggle against the oppressive “majority group” around them; they are not alone in their tragic fate, nor subject to their fate by virtue of their genders. and in len’s second story, the male narrator laments the loss of his beloved wife, emphasizing how their relationship contributed to his life’s fulfillment, as he now celebrates the “purity” of his life in solitude. somewhat similar to his first story, len focuses on the shared experiences between his male and female characters as well as on the surviving husband’s invigorating sense of autonomy rather than on a sense of isolation or danger that he may experience without his wife or simply because of his gender. these contrasts between the stories written by louise and len function as manifestations of their own positioning within normative hierarchical gender roles; louise’s story expresses her understanding of women’s oppression as they are treated as inherently subordinate to men, and len’s stories suggest that, generally, a man’s gender has no bearing on his situation or on his ability to overcome obstacles. however, this traditional gendered dynamic is transgressed as the narrative of “in motion”—and the relationship between louise and len—progresses. in the turning point of the novella, which takes place not long after louise writes her story described above, len finally recognizes the severity of louise’s oppression as a woman when he discovers that she has overdosed on sleeping pills. notably, bergé develops this storyline simultaneous with the composition of len’s first story in which a man and woman are equally oppressed by mainstream society. in constructing these two stories at the same time, bergé suggests that len’s seemingly unintentional treatment of louise as an object—as innately inferior to him and limited to the domestic role—and his inability to see how this gendered role affects her, has willed her behavior. while he writes his story, she experiences ultimate despair, deliberately taking sleeping pills as a means to permanently escape the particular oppression she suffers as a woman. the seriousness of this situation leads len to reconsider how he treats louise, and after she recovers, the couple works together to more openly express their concerns and to help each other overcome their individual and shared struggles. they end up leaving new york city and their life of luxury behind, settling in france on a farm, and expecting their first child. after louise survives her suicide attempt and confronts the various aspects of her life that are causing her to suffer, she reaches a sense of clarity and self-assuredness that has eluded her up until this point. she realizes that deciding things for oneself is worth losing the security that a person may have—a security that may in fact be superficial and meaningless. she says to len, “seems to me there’s more pain in trying to stay far in than in coming out and making a choice.” importantly, her awakening and developing subjectivity motivate len to examine his own life and the way in which he had devalued her and attempted to define her. she helps him see that they don’t honestly know one another because neither is being true to him or herself, and she helps him realize how detrimental his treatment of her is to her well-being—that in fact she isn’t merely his to be handled or controlled. she says, for example, “part of what i have to learn is to talk back and keep myself talking back, not [being] quiet and taking all the punishment.” rather than trivialize or dismiss her concerns as he may have done previously, len now understands that, together, they can transform their lives, and in doing so, they enact bergé’s final critique of postwar mainstream values. they mutually decide to sell their belongings and seek a life in which they can be true to themselves, a life that is authentic and meaningful, not measured by material things or economic or social gain—nor defined by hegemonic gender norms. they both endeavor to pursue their artistic interests; they bring his typewriter and her painting supplies, and are “ready to work with the minimal comforts of the house” in rural france. significantly, at the end of the novella, louise feels as though she has been “reborn”; she has begun to assert subjectivity and agency—to experience life on her own terms. in contrast to the suppression of her voice up until this point, it is louise’s voice that concludes the text, reading a letter she has written to her sister that describes her new fulfilling life marked by an authenticity that had previously been out of reach. for example, she writes, i see len now, and he sees me, and it is good. no more of moving in a trance, moving through life by rote; everything we do feels right, and you can’t imagine how marvelous this is to me. … before, i thought there was a system, or plan, to account for every move or action of any of us. i still think this is somehow true, but now i see how the earth itself, the nature of the earth, and we as animals on the earth, are part of it. … here, we drop the masks or façades we must give to the world, and they ease and disappear. in contrast to the lack of voice, authority, and clarity that louise had earlier, especially compared to len, this letter signifies a renewed sense of insight and clarity that embodies louise’s transformation from object to subject. she “sees” things clearly now and has a deeper understanding of the damage that her and len’s pretense was having on her sense of self. that the novella concludes with louise’s voice reading her own letter illustrates this process of coming into her own—that she is not subject to the same tragic fate as the female characters in the story she wrote earlier. notably, this assertion and emphasis of louise’s voice at the end of “in motion” resembles the consistency with which di prima depicts the strength and agency of her female speakers in this kind of bird flies backward, as well as lizzy’s coming into her own at the end of in care—each indicative of the women beats’ protofeminist desires. also significant is the similarity between this ending of “in motion” and that of johnson’s come and join the dance—namely, each text’s revision of the typical male beat “road narrative.” bergé, like johnson, rejects the confining postwar experience and the typical “ - job in an office or factory” and does so from the female perspective and through an escape from new york city. louise laments life in the united states where people have a “loss of sight which seems almost willful.” however, situated alongside come and join the dance and johnson’s resistance to the traditional “obligatory goals for the female protagonist” as described in chapter two, the ending of “in motion” may seem rather conventional in its resolution. johnson’s conclusion challenges the traditional ending of the bildungsroman as well as of the mainstream contemporary novel, in which the female protagonist is usually positioned within the confines of the culturally-defined restrictive female gender role. on the contrary, louise’s final role as a wife and mother seems to perpetuate the narrative strategies of traditional “patriarchal fictional forms” rooted in the hierarchical ideologies of androcentric culture. however, i argue that louise’s role as a wife and mother at the end of the text is a role that is stimulating and invigorating, not confining nor oppressive; it is a role marked by the development and expression of louise’s subjectivity and voice. and this particular focus on the impact of louise’s upcoming motherhood on her subjectivity importantly overlaps with di prima’s attention to the various complexities of this female experience in this kind as well as with jones’s focus on lizzy’s and zulima’s experiences as mothers in in care, as examined in chapters one and three, respectively. throughout the course of the text, louise is trapped in the role that society has defined for her—that of a wife and potential mother subject to the authority of her husband and his perpetuation of the hierarchical gender binary, and her voice is both suppressed and troubled. at the end of the text, though, louise has overcome this oppression and finally asserts an agency and authority that was previously absent or overshadowed by len. her voice overtakes the dominance and authority of len’s voice as she describes the overwhelming fulfillment she is able to experience as a woman in her own right, a woman who has achieved clarity, who now has a say in her marriage and feels inspired by the child growing inside of her. motherhood is not a biological imperative that may provide a superficial solution to her feelings of loneliness (as suggested earlier in the novella), but rather an enriching experience that helps her further understand who she is as a woman. that louise does not seek independence in the same way susan does at the end of come and join the dance does not diminish the significance of louise’s development of subjectivity. bergé’s intertwining of louise and len at the end of “in motion” interestingly challenges the ways in which johnson, di prima, and jones each—in her own way—emphasizes the development of female subjectivity as represented by an autonomous “i”; for bergé, female subjectivity can be expressed as part of a “we.” as louise explains in her letter to her sister, her life in france has not been perfect and is still shaped by “old angers and anguishes.” but, louise and len ultimately work through such issues and successfully “clea[r] the air, and [get] … through [other] of those official- type ideas which [don’t] belong to [them] at all.” the will that she and len share to escape societal pressures “to impress, to win, [and] to gobble up” has led them to a place in which they “accent each other” and “complement each other.” they now “can work well together” and each mutually contributes to their new lifestyle, signifying the respect each has for the other. together, louise and len reject society’s confining expectations and define their lives on their own terms. this emphasis on louise’s development of female subjectivity as largely shaped by her relationship with len reflects the theme of the collection in which “in motion” is included, as suggested by its title: a couple called moebius. the moebius strip signifies that there is no beginning or end to the connections forged through one’s relationships— no way to completely separate oneself from the impact that another’s life has on one’s own. but rather than consider this intertwining of people’s lives as inhibitive or detrimental to female subjectivity, bergé portrays it as generative and valuable. for her, the development of female subjectivity is defined by the assertion of a woman’s agency and choice, which does not necessarily entail separation from others. louise is no longer positioned in her marriage to len by his control or his domination; she has redefined the nature of their relationship and consciously reshaped her role in relation to him. bergé’s critiques of mainstream norms come to fruition as louise acts as a woman in her own right in a lifestyle that is not defined by materialism. the subjectivity louise exhibits at the end of “in motion” reflects her confrontation of that which was objectifying and inhibiting her sense of self. both louise and len are being true to themselves, and what they seek is not burdened by societal pressures—or by one another. not all of bergé’s texts examine the lives of members of the upper class in new york city or of new york city bohemia, for that matter; in fact, the settings of the stories collected in a couple called moebius range from that of “in motion” to the rural setting of “the farm woman” to the mexican island setting of “the water ceremony,” for example. what remains consistent throughout her work, though, is the confrontation of mainstream social and cultural norms that in various ways stifle or oppress individual development. as illustrated in “in motion,” of particular importance for bergé is the development of female subjectivity, which represents her rejection of the period’s hegemonic female gender role. this, in conjunction with her treatment of the larger issues of individualism and authenticity in the postwar period, highlights the importance of including bergé in the beat literary tradition, as well as her distinctive contribution to the female beat discourse of protofeminism. as noted earlier, it is clear that bergé played a key role in the s poetic community, and this brief look at one of her texts demonstrates what is to be gained by entering currently unrecognized writers such as bergé and albert into beat literary studies—to understand their importance beyond their role in beat history. mimi albert though born over a decade after bergé, albert’s experiences as a young female writer take shape in her work in ways that significantly overlap with and diverge from those of bergé and other women beat writers. mimi albert was born anna cohen in brooklyn in . albert’s adoptive parents were “closet artists,” and under their influence, she grew up with a love for the arts, attending her first opera at age six and taking music, art, singing, acting, and dance lessons as a young child. after a handful of experiences as a young actor (first on the radio, then in an off-broadway play), albert set out to pursue her interest in writing. although she flunked out of city college, she then studied anthropology and philosophy at hunter college and finally earned her m.f.a. in writing from columbia university in or , where she studied under edward dahlberg and richard elman. albert has since published novels, short stories, poetry, essays, and excerpts from a memoir. while working toward her degree, albert published a short story in the transatlantic review, and her thesis later became her first novel, the second story man, published in . while she worked on developing her thesis into a novel, albert had stories published in various literary journals and presses. in , the same year that the second story man was published, albert’s first collection of short stories and poems, the small singer, was also published, notably by shameless hussy press, the first american feminist press. albert would soon write a memoir based on her year living in india, go to calcutta, and though this project remains unpublished as a whole, albert has had several pieces of her memoir published in various collections, including the anthology lips unsealed. she began teaching writing at various colleges and universities as she continued publishing short stories, such as “some human beings” ( ). her next novel, skirts, was published in , and she has continued to publish short stories, including “crone dance” ( ) and “this is what it is to go blind” ( ). albert has received several writing grants and awards throughout her career, including a new york council on the arts grant for fiction, a yaddo foundation grant for fiction, a pen/national endowment of the arts award for short fiction, and the los angeles pen u.s.a. award for best california story. her body of work is marked by incisive attention to the act of rebellion, and, more specifically, to women’s resistance to cultural norms explored through a variety of themes including desire, domesticity, motherhood, marriage, divorce, and the body. like the prose of johnson and bergé, albert’s work mainly can be described as beat in subject and theme rather than in style or form. that is, whereas di prima and jones experimented with formal literary conventions as many male beats did, albert’s work “tell[s] [stories] about beat, but not necessarily … in beat style.” albert’s novels, for example, are comparative to johnson’s novels not only in their portrayal of the new york city bohemian scene of the s and early s, but also in albert’s prose style, which is similarly marked by a general adherence to convention and is in the vein of ernest hemingway in its succinctness and emotional restraint. albert more frequently than johnson uses the first- person narrative perspective in her novels, though, and through this, achieves a confessional-like quality that simultaneously expresses the strength and vulnerability of her narrator-protagonists. as i mentioned in the introduction, whereas the individual experiences of the other writers i study in the girl gang within the beat literary community are relatively well-documented within beat history, albert’s affiliations with the beat community itself are more ambiguous. her inclusion in jim burns’s “beat women” and richard peabody’s ’s a different beat speak to how her experiences living and writing in new york city bohemia during the s and s and how much of her writing itself indeed overlap with the experiences and writing of the more well-established beat writers, but it is unclear to what degree she knew other beat writers, male or female. although she moved around manhattan several times over the beat period, she identifies the lower east side as the “scene of [her] teenage escapades,” and she immersed herself in the new york city arts scene during and after the beat period. further, having her work published by shameless hussy press in the late s and early s put her in contact with female writers associated with the san francisco beat community and the area’s burgeoning feminist literary movement. although the press was located on the west coast, albert formed literary friendships with contemporary poets including alta and judy grahn, which undoubtedly helped shape her experiences as a young writer. albert’s involvement in the new york city beat literary community may have been more tangential than that of the other women beats i discuss throughout the dissertation, but the new york city beat scene is central to much of her work, and she engages in the beat discourses of identity, authenticity, and the new york city bohemian community and, more specifically, in the female beat discourse of protofeminism in important ways. what makes albert’s work particularly unique within a study of the women beats is her attention to the dark underside of new york city bohemia—the stark poverty, criminality, and drug use more often treated by male beats—as well as her depiction of the inability for individual women to successfully overcome the oppressive female gender norm of the postwar period. this latter aspect of her writing works in conjunction with her effectual development of female subjectivity to illustrate a complicated and multi-faceted protofeminism throughout her body of work. in her two novels, the second story man and skirts, for example, albert develops female characters who leave home to seek independence and autonomy outside of the constraints of mainstream social norms. within each respective novel, these young women have various experiences with the world of drugs and crime, which lead to very different conclusions for each novel’s female characters, especially regarding their desire for and development of female subjectivity. at the end of the second story man, mary is unable to overcome her drug addiction and suffers with various degrading jobs, which make her feel like an object, “a machine” and “a human sacrifice,” while barely helping her support herself financially. anna, however, emerges at the end of the novel with a strong sense of self. she resists being victimized by dangerous temptations around her, and even tries to save mary from her self-destruction. anna is able to see that she can only depend on her own choices, and she walks away from mary—not to return home to her family, but to continue developing her subjectivity as an independent young woman defining her life on her own terms. somewhat similarly, in skirts, ruth is found robbed and naked two days after she was beaten to death attempting to deal drugs for the bohemian zalman, while helene forces herself to withdraw from her drug addiction and takes back control of her life. she frees herself from the grip she previously allowed zalman and his lifestyle to have over her. she gets a job and plans to move to chicago to enter a ph.d. program in archeology, and the novel ends with her “on [her] way.” albert’s novels express a critical stance toward the period’s hegemonic female role likewise developed in the work of other women beats. perhaps more importantly, through the contrasting experiences of each novel’s respective characters, albert depicts two possible fates for the female nonconformist, and in doing so, draws attention to the complexities of the period’s protofeminism. though we see other female characters in the works of di prima, johnson, jones, and bergé struggle to various degrees with poverty and oppression as they attempt to develop subjectivity, albert’s portrayals of female drug addicts and petty thieves reveal a side of bohemia more often described by male beat writers and therefore more likely presumed to be outside of the female bohemian experience. in the same way that the other women beat writers studied here redefine the male-dominated beat literary tradition by appropriating, for example, the road narrative or sexual agency for the female bohemian, albert examines the beat subculture of drugs and criminals as experienced by women. that their involvement with drugs and crime may complicate the desire for subjectivity or may lead to material or psychological poverty or death reflects the authenticity and uniqueness with which albert depicts the female bohemian experience. these novels are only a small part of albert’s body of work, though, and her literary accomplishments, like bergé’s, continue to be overlooked within beat studies. in an effort to show in more depth how albert’s work can broaden our understanding of the beat community and add to the beat narrative in significant ways, i focus my attention here on one of albert’s short stories, which continues to highlight the generic and thematic diversity of the women beats’ work. *** “the small singer” was first published in and later published in albert’s first collection of short poetry and fiction of the same name. while other women beats such as di prima and johnson largely wrote in and revised the conventions associated with genres used by male beats (the poem and the novel, respectively), albert, like jones and bergé, experimented with a genre largely neglected by the male beats. in this representative short story that is a mere two and a half pages, albert provides an intimate look at the female protagonist’s struggles to find what she “really want[s].” through economical precision, albert describes her protagonist’s experiences as a young woman, a singer, a teacher, and finally, an older woman looking back on her earlier choices. albert portrays one woman’s struggle to be independent and to lead a meaningful life amid various forces that continually thwart her ability to do so. developing this story through the genre of the short story—and in only two and a half pages—albert demonstrates remarkable control as a writer. like his argument regarding the relation between narrative time and textual space within the novella, giraldi argues that “it is difficult to get an effective short story to span more than a week.” albert is able to span several years in “the small singer,” however, as she seamlessly moves her narrative lens in and out of focus, moving from close attention to specific representative moments in this unnamed woman’s life to more general descriptions of experiences that span many years altogether. through the course of the story, the singer comes to realize that there is only limited time and opportunities to live one’s life the way she desires, and albert uses the genre of the short story to embody this theme in a concise narrative structure. that is, the size of “the small singer” reflects the singer’s empowerment and subjectivity that have been shrunken or diminished over the course of several years. written in the s, “the small singer” is set in an unidentified city (universal in its representativeness), and although it is not set in the bohemian scene as some of albert’s other work described above, this story treats quintessential beat questions of identity, individualism, and authenticity from the female perspective. as many of the female figures in the work of the other women beat writers studied in the girl gang, albert’s protagonist is an artist, as the title suggests. notably, she is not a wife or mother, nor is she defined by a sexual relationship to a man. she is introduced as a woman in her own right, seemingly free from the domestic role which so many women during this period are expected to fill. the story begins after the woman’s final singing performance and establishes her reputation as “the singer” as well as her growing frustration with the city around her as it is characterized by “cracked pavements,” “bad air,” “people beating one another up,” and “lines and lines of cars waiting for what they cannot get.” this image of the city sets the tone of the story as it symbolizes the growing deterioration of society in general. the singer’s personal experiences parallel this gradual decline as what had been her source of confidence and strength—her voice—now “has gone away” inexplicably. as a result, the singer finds herself without money; because her voice is no longer of the quality to sing in commercials and she is “too shy to take off all her clothes” as a nightclub singer, she becomes a singing teacher. by the end of the story, the singer “has become old” and her life has become empty. she no longer sings, teaches, nor hears from any of her old friends, and she is left wondering to herself, “‘why did i ever become a singer? what did i really want?’” like the other texts examined throughout this study, “the small singer” portrays a woman’s attempt to develop her own sense of self and assert agency while facing various obstacles rooted in cultural constructs of the postwar period. significantly, though, as the conclusion of this short story suggests, unlike the other texts i have examined, “the small singer” does not conclude with the assertion of female subjectivity. this particular aspect of the text draws attention to its uniqueness within and contribution to the discourse of the women beats’ protofeminism. throughout the story, the woman’s experiences are marked by a tension that is rooted in her role as a singer. her voice symbolizes the potential for her independence and subjectivity as a woman, but this potential is consistently stifled as she struggles to use her voice to express herself and to make a living in the arts, which presumably values individual expression over material gain. the power that the singer’s voice initially gives her is evident in moments when she stands up for herself against men who objectify her; she quite daringly responds to the “injustice” enacted by strange men on the street who “tell her what they would like to do to her eyes and fingers, her nostrils, her big toe and her cunt.” in response, she shouts things like, “‘pigs! go fuck yourselves! go put it in your mother’s twat!’” through such a reply, the singer appropriates the obscene sexual innuendos spoken by men and uses similarly vulgar language to express her anger and assert her sense of power. she rejects the cultural assumption that she is voiceless or powerless as a woman alone on the street, subject to the men’s crude desires, and this resistance to being sexualized or objectified reflects the protofeminism of the women beats. importantly, it is albert’s protagonist’s singing that brings her such strength in these situations: “this [would happen] because she was a singer, because her own voice, swelling out of her diaphragm, filled her up and gave her courage to respond with violence, with rage.” the woman knows she is one of only a “few women [who] can lam into a man like that,” and this behavior certainly highlights the strength her voice can provide her—how her voice symbolizes her potential subjectivity as a woman. however, such moments are fleeting, and more frequently than not, the singer struggles to express herself. for example, albert writes, “walking alone over the cracked pavements through the city she feels sometimes that her throat is about to swell up and crack with the swelling of the song she has inside her and yet cannot sing.” in moments like these, the singer’s ability to communicate is stifled, seemingly out of her control. she lacks the strength and agency illustrated when she defends herself against male catcallers. once she loses her singing voice, her sense of self and her subjectivity begin to wane. because she is known throughout the city as “the singer” and is often confronted with people’s limited notion of who she is, the woman becomes dependent upon her voice as her only means of communication, fulfillment, and financial support. she believes that once her voice goes away and she can no longer sing, “there is nothing else.” and when her voice is gone, she starts to envision apocalyptic images. the city that was initially characterized by “bad air,” violence, and failed attempts to fulfill one’s needs is now marked by “buildings collaps[ing] [and] streets explod[ing].” the parallel between the loss of the singer’s voice and the final destruction of the city signifies her forthcoming struggles to develop an identity on her own terms and experience an authentic connection to the world around her. specifically, when she becomes a singing teacher, she is confronted with more troubling realities that ultimately contribute to her final experiences of emptiness and powerlessness. for instance, her sense of value as a teacher is diminished as multitudes of students enroll in the school at which she teaches. more and more students want to become singers, but rather than signifying a growing desire for individuality through the development and refinement of one’s voice, this actually represents the growing desire for upward mobility and the increasing conformity of the period. the students want to circumvent the curriculum requirements and skip courses so that they can move ahead faster; they are in pursuit of fame rather than education. in fact, the superficiality of the students’ experiences is illustrated by the characterization of the city as “being polluted and destroyed by noise”—the noise of the students who continue to enroll despite what they acknowledge is their lack of interest in music. this situation speaks to the inauthenticity and meaninglessness of the mainstream pursuit of material things and of upward mobility that is also treated by bergé in “in motion.” in the same way that louise and len superficially pursue the accumulation of the finer things in bergé’s novella, the students in “the small singer” do not seem genuinely interested in what might be gained from learning to improve and share one’s voice with others, from expressing oneself artistically. rather, they want to achieve high grades with little effort. however, the curriculum itself, the teacher learns, makes most students’ attempts at success basically worthless as there are courses in total, and “only one out of three hundred students can qualify for [the final course], and afterwards there’s nothing left for them to do but graduate.” this detail signifies albert’s critique of such stultifying values. the superficial pursuit of success is futile, albert suggests, and this teaching experience thus contributes to the protagonist’s inability to develop an authentic sense of self. as the teacher, this woman is helpless within the guidelines of the program. she goes through the motions with her students, and the way in which albert describes the woman’s actual teaching reflects the monotony and emptiness of the experience. albert writes, “she listens to the songs. tone and modulation. harmony and scales. she begins to teach them all to write their own songs. she teaches them about images. metaphors. similes. authenticity of feeling. ‘what are you singing about?’ she asks again and again.” the teacher recognizes that her students are not truly invested in their work, and the frustration she faces is illustrated here. interestingly, the struggles that the singer faces as a woman and a singer without a voice are captured in the first line of a song that one female student has written: “they buried her and they laughed.” this is the only line of the song that albert provides, and in its isolation, it underscores the misogynistic treatment of women during this period as well as society’s general apathy toward others. this line epitomizes the oppressive circumstances of albert’s title character. the loss of her sense of self, which began with the loss of her voice and its potential to express her sense of agency and subjectivity, is perpetuated as her friendships with members of the singing community vanish. when her old singing friends call her on the phone, “she can barely hear them”—perhaps because they, too, have lost their voices and are struggling to express themselves. whether as a singer, a teacher, or a friend, the protagonist is isolated in the city. like susan in johnson’s come and join the dance, this woman does not fit in to the various communities around her, but rather than leave the city as a symbol of her subjectivity as susan does, albert’s singer remains in the city as she continues to grow old, eventually unable to practice singing, to teach singing, and to communicate with her friends. although the singer’s attempts to be independent, to assert her voice, and to defend herself when objectified and mistreated signify albert’s challenge to the gender discourse of the period—similar to how susan seduces peter in come and join the dance or how louise redefines the notion of motherhood in “in motion”—albert does not conclude her story with her protagonist’s assertion of female subjectivity. unlike the female figures in the other texts examined throughout the girl gang, albert’s singer is unable to overcome the various oppressive factors in society. the men that catcall women on the streets, the young people who relentlessly pursue upward mobility, the loss of individualism they represent, and the institutions that ineffectually “educate” this youth— all of these societal elements stifle the woman’s voice and her ability to develop subjectivity. despite the singer’s assertion of subjectivity illustrated in her refusal to be dependent on a man for financial support and to be objectified and sexualized on the street, she is left wondering “‘why did i ever become a singer? what did i really want?’” however, rather than conclude the story with this sense of confusion and lack of clarity, albert adds the final line: “but most of the time, she knows.” this subtle, yet suggestive line—emphatic as it constitutes its own paragraph—points to the singer’s awareness of the possibility of overcoming the various oppressions that she faces. she realizes that through singing she might have been able to express herself freely and powerfully—that she may have been able to support herself as a single woman through a profession that is based upon the expression of the female voice and thus challenges the traditional suppression of the female voice in the s and s as well as the conventional positioning of the woman in the home. this awareness, however subdued or undeveloped, complements the woman’s previous acts of rebellion against sexual objectification and the traditional female gender role, and in this way, gestures toward the protofeminism of the women beats. however, somewhat similar to johnson’s treatment of female sexual agency in her first novel, the ending of “the small singer” represents albert’s ambivalence toward the development of female subjectivity underlying the protofeminism of this period. through the story’s tentative depiction of female subjectivity, albert draws necessary attention to the struggles entailed in women’s attempts to challenge the hegemonic discourse of the postwar period. her female protagonist is stunted—as the title suggests—by the oppressive social and cultural norms around her that inevitably complicate such feminist endeavors. notably, however, albert does not subject her protagonist to the tragic fate of so many female protagonists in contemporary fiction; the woman, though alone and no longer a singer, is not victim to sickness or suicide, nor is she confined to marriage or any traditional domestic or sexualized role. rather, albert argues for the necessity of challenging constricting hegemonic norms and points to the complexities involved in such a daring endeavor. as suggested in this reading of “the small singer” and in the overview of albert’s novels provided earlier, confronting and challenging the normative female gender role is a consistent theme throughout albert’s work. although the new york city bohemian scene plays a central role in albert’s treatment of this issue in the second story man and skirts, in light of the acute concision of “the small singer,” albert uses an unnamed city as the representative context for her title character’s attempts to develop and express her empowerment as a young single woman. for albert, as for the other women beat writers included in this study, the issue of female subjectivity is of critical importance as it undoubtedly shaped the writers’ own experiences as female artists in the new york city beat community. albert may be the least recognizable of the five writers i discuss throughout the dissertation, but it is clear that her absence within beat histories should not preclude attention to her role as a beat writer whose work has social and cultural implications. by including both bergé and albert in the study of women beat writers, we see how writers of the first and third generations of women beats extend our understanding of the beat community in important ways: exploring, for example, how the mainstream’s thrust toward materialism and social mobility affected those outside of the middle class and the bohemian community. indeed, that each of the five writers i examine may have had a different relationship with the male beats, their work, and their perpetuation of the mainstream female gender norm based in part on their generational differences helps illustrate the importance of broadening the canon of women beats to develop a more inclusive and expansive beat narrative. conclusion with its focus on this currently understudied yet undeniably rich part of beat history and culture, the girl gang reconceptualizes the beat community as indelibly shaped by its female members. this dissertation shifts our focus from how beat women helped shape the lives and work of beat men to how they also developed as writers in their own right in ways that critically engage the hegemonic norms of postwar america. as part of the new york city beat community, the women beats were not only lovers, wives, and co-editors, they were also writers themselves who most notably contributed to the beat community by resisting traditional and academic literary conventions as the male beats did, while also simultaneously challenging the dominant social and cultural discourses of which even the male beats were uncritical. women beat writers thus deepened the community’s development of its countercultural impulses—and this is evident not only through memoirs written after the beat period. these writers produced poetry and fiction beginning in the s and s that reexamined female identities in ways that would later define the feminist movement, and this dissertation begins to delve into this significant body of work. women beats consciously engaged in what adrienne rich describes as a “radical critique of literature,” and the girl gang illuminates how five women writers from the new york city beat community each uniquely problematized, appropriated, and revised social and cultural conventions present in the literary works not only of their male predecessors and non-beat contemporaries, but also in the works of many of their female predecessors and contemporaries as well as of their male beat counterparts. rather than perpetuate the typical absence, silence, objectification, or tragic fate of women within their works, female beat writers transgressed the dominant gender discourse of the s and s and set out to include women in the beat community’s critique of society’s hegemonic norms, primarily through the portrayal of female subjectivity. in diane di prima’s this kind of bird flies backward, the development of female subjectivity is achieved through complex representations of female experiences of love, sexuality, and motherhood—all of which is depicted through the literary use of hip slang. in joyce johnson’s come and join the dance, this entails destabilizing and reshaping the traditionally gendered dichotomy of public and private spaces while simultaneously disrupting the standard bildungsroman resolution and the typical conclusion for the female protagonist in the contemporary novel. in hettie jones’s in care of worth auto parts, female subjectivity takes shape as a maternal subjectivity through the trope of the interracial mother as well as through the use of a genre and various literary techniques that embody this figure’s postmodern experience. in carol bergé’s “in motion,” female subjectivity is developed through a mutually constitutive relationship and through the reclaiming and redefining of the traditionally compulsory and oftentimes confining role of wife and mother. and in mimi albert’s “the small singer,” female subjectivity is expressed through independence and the assertion of one’s voice, but is also portrayed as a complicated and sometimes ineffectual experience. in these unique ways, each of the writers discussed here expresses a protofeminism that undoubtedly alters our understanding of the beat community and that significantly anticipates the feminist movement that began in the late s. ultimately, the girl gang demonstrates how the intertwining of the cultural geography of new york city with the gender politics of the period took shape in the beat literary community in both stifling and inspiring ways, and how the work of women beat writers raises new and important questions for the fields of beat studies, feminist studies, women’s writing, and contemporary american literature. notes . mimi albert, skirts: a novel (new york: baskerville publishers, ), . . skirts, . . skirts, , . . skirts, . . kane explains that four young lady poets was a key exception “to the dearth of published women poets in the early part of the s.” (all poets welcome, .) the three other writers included were barbara moraff, rochelle owens, and diane wakoski. . see kane for more on this history. . as suggested in this brief overview, the poetic community described here was one part of the larger new york city beat literary community. . carol bergé, light years: an anthology on sociocultural happenings (multimedia in the east village, - ) (new york: spuyten duyvil, ). the excerpts quoted in this paragraph are from carolberge.com. . kane, . . sanders qtd. in kane, . . see kane for more on sanders and his use of satire as a way to challenge what were considered sexual taboos at the time ( - ). . holton, . . william giraldi, “the novella's long life,” southern review . ( ): . . giraldi, . . unlike di prima’s female bohemian figures who embrace the impoverished life of the artist and jones’s lizzy who applies for welfare as she struggles to support her children, johnson’s susan is perhaps closer in social class to bergé’s characters in this context. susan comes from a middle-class family, and part of her fundamental struggle in come and join the dance is to negotiate between the life her parents expect of her as an educated, middle-class woman and the life of bohemia to which she is drawn. . carol bergé, “in motion,” a couple called moebius (new york: bobbs- merrill, ), . unless otherwise noted, the quotations in this section of the epilogue are from “in motion,” and for readability, the corresponding note is provided after the final quotation of each respective paragraph. . “in motion,” . historically, playboy has been the subject of feminist critique for its objectification of women in the service of what ehrenreich describes as “something approaching a coherent program for the male rebellion [during the s]: a critique of marriage, a strategy for liberation … and a utopian vision.” (the hearts of men, .) (this critique was perhaps most notably initiated by gloria steinem’s investigative experience as a playboy bunny.) however, more recently, critics have begun to challenge this somewhat narrow view of the magazine and its various manifestations by arguing that the role of the playmate (or bunny) provided women with “the potential for empowerment by directly engaging female sexuality.” carrie pitzulo argues, for example, that “the playmates were undoubtedly a product of the relatively conservative postwar era, but compared to the cultural terrain around them they contradicted the notion that the only place for women’s desire was in the matrimonial bed.” bachelors and bunnies: the sexual politics of playboy (chicago: university of chicago press, ), , . . “in motion,” . . the quotations in this paragraph are from pg. . . as noted earlier, the novella is broken into fourteen sections, and as the narrative progresses in a linear fashion, a few of these sections are comprised of stories louise and len each write separately. . “in motion,” , . . “in motion,” , , . . “in motion,” , . . “in motion,” , . . duplessis, writing, . . ellen g. friedman and miriam fuchs, ed., breaking the sequence: women’s experimental fiction (princeton, nj: princeton university press, ), . . “in motion,” , , , . . when adopted at six-months old, cohen’s name was changed to mimi ginsberg; albert is her married name. . albert, “changeling,” contemporary authors online (detroit: gale, ). . albert was one of the first students to earn an m.f.a. in writing from columbia. . albert refers to dahlberg as “‘the father of the beats’ because of his influence on poet robert creeley and some of creeley's peers.” (“changeling.”) dahlberg briefly taught at black mountain college before charles olson took his place, and creeley refers to dahlberg as his “elder american friend and mentor.” (“a reminiscence,” gravesiana: the journal of the robert graves society . [ ]: .) dahlberg is also one of “the male sources of olson’s key precepts” identified in olson’s “projective verse.” andrew mossin, “‘in thicket’: charles olson, frances boldereff, robert creeley and the crisis of masculinity at mid-century,” journal of modern literature . poetry, poetics, and social discourses ( ): . . bergé’s poetry is similar to di prima’s in its resistance to poetic convention, evident, for example, in her use of the colloquial and hip slang. . grace, “snapshots,” . . albert, “changeling.” . alta (gerrey) founded the shameless hussy press in , and grahn established the women’s press collective in . . albert, the second story man (new york: fiction collective, ), , . . albert, skirts, . . most male beats wrote poetry or novels; a few exceptions include kerouac’s atop an underwood, a posthumously published collection of early short stories, and two kerouac novellas, tristessa and the subterraneans. . albert, “the small singer,” the small singer (san lorenzo, cali: shameless hussy press, ), . . giraldi, . . “the small singer,” . unless otherwise noted, the quotations in this section of the epilogue are from “the small singer,” and for readability, the corresponding note is provided after the final quotation of each respective paragraph. . “the small singer,” , . . the quotations in this paragraph are from pg. . . the quotations in this paragraph are from pg. . . “the small singer,” . . “the small singer,” . . “the small singer,” , . . “the small singer,” . . the quotations in this paragraph are from pg. . . see chapter two for my discussion of the typical treatment of female protagonists in contemporary fiction. . rich, . bibliography albert, mimi. “changeling.” contemporary authors online. detroit: gale, . ---. the second story man. new york: fiction collective, . ---. skirts: a novel. new york: baskerville publishers, . ---. the small singer. san lorenzo, cali: shameless hussy press, . the ankh: key of life. san francisco, ca: red wheel/weiser, . arteseros, sally. letter to hettie jones. march . ts. hettie jones papers, box , folder , rare book and manuscript library, columbia university in the city of new york. baraka, imamu amiri. the autobiography of leroi jones/amiri baraka. new york: freundlich books, . ---. 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malcolm. the autobiography of malcolm x (with the assistance of alex haley). . new york: ballantine books, . obituaries johannes jacobus la grange, meteorologist on the commonwealth trans-antarctic expedition ( - ) and subsequently leader of the first south african national antarctic expedition ( - ), died suddenly on april at his daughter's home in south africa at the age of . la grange was born on october at ladismith in the western cape province of south africa. coming from an unsophisticated background of hard-working and down-to-earth afrikaners of seventeenth-century french huguenot stock, he was educated at the de villiers graaf high school in villiersdorp in the western cape, and he obtained his matriculation certificate at the age of . he was then employed by the south african weather bureau in pretoria, and subsequently took charge of several weather stations in south africa. from to and again in he served as meteorologist at marion island, where he became involved in detailed bird observations in addition to his normal duties. in la grange was initially seconded by the south african weather bureau for one year to participate in preparations for the commonwealth trans-antarctic expedition (tae). in fact, he was later selected as the expedition's meteorologist, and, at the time, vivian fuchs remarked: 'hannes was a blind date, but we need not have worried as he was as solid in character as he was tall and heavy in build.' la grange was an extremely popular member of the expedition. he was both meticulous and painstaking in all he did, and during the crossing of antarctica he participated in the seismic programme, in addition to his meteorological duties. he achieved the distinction of being the first south african to set foot at the geographical south pole. on his return to south africa after the tae, la grange resumed his duties in the south african weather bureau and also began part-time studies in physical geography and zoology at the university of pretoria, where he obtained his degree in . in he was appointed leader of the first south african national antarctic expedition and was immediately faced with the daunting task of selecting an appropriate team for the expedition. his experience gained both at marion island and on the tae served him well in laying the foundations for the success of the first south african national antarctic expedition and its successors. taking over norway station was a challenge, but his previous experience stood him in good stead in his fair, tactful, but firm handling of personnel, for which he was greatly respected, and led to bonds of friendship that persisted for decades. he took part in a six-week dog-sledge journey with victor von brunn and others into the hitherto unknown region south of sanae to study the geology, glaciology, fig. . hannes la grange in a typical moment. and meteorology. during this journey, he encountered the worst blizzard he had ever experienced in antarctica, but this did not deter him from achieving the main objectives of the journey. two years after his return from the antarctic, la grange resigned from the south african weather bureau and took up a post in the south african council for the development of natural resources. his interests had moved progressively from meteorology towards town and regional planning; he obtained an msc for his dissertation on this subject. having held successive posts in the department of planning and environment, la grange was appointed director of town and regional planning for the orange free state. he held this post from until his retirement in . at the age of , he received a phd in town and regional planning from the university of potchefstroom. this demonstrated one of his most impressive personal characteristics — his sustained perseverance and tenacity throughout his life. he remained in bloemfontein after his retirement, working as a private consultant. he later moved to jeffreys bay on the cape coast, continuing his obituaries consultancy business and acting as a consultant to the local municipality. increasingly, he became involved in community affairs, actively serving his church. he volunteered to write a short history of his local church congregation, but it turned out to be a fairly detailed history of the local area from the days of khoikhoi to the present. he also began writing a book on the south african involvement in antarctic research, but, sadly, this was not completed. la grange received many distinctions. for his work on the tae, he was awarded the polar medal (which he received from her majesty the queen at buckingham palace) and also a bronze replica of the gold medal of the royal geographical society. in he received a medal of honour from the south african academy for science and art for his participation in the tae and also a medal from the explorers'club of new york. in he was the first recipient of the south african antarctic medal, in recognition of his outstanding achievements as leader of sanae and his work on marion island. several years after the return of sanae , la grange was instrumental in founding the south african antarctic club, becoming its first chairman. later, he played an important part in the formation of the south african antarctic association, which is open to all those south africans interested in antarctica and antarctic affairs. lagrange was a prolific, meticulous, and wide-ranging writer. from his desk emanated countless publications, ranging from detailed papers on meteorological observations during the tae and 'notes on the birds and mammals of marion island and antarctica' to memoranda on town and regional planning and even to pamphlets of parochial interest. la grange will always be remembered for his humility and modesty, his profound sense of duty and responsibility, his loyalty to others, his integrity, patience, and thoroughness, and his sincere and pleasant nature. all close to him are the richer for having known and associated with 'the man with a very subtle sense of humour.' he is survived by his wife, mettie, a daughter, and two sons. victor von brunn ray adie hilda richardson, secretary general of the international glaciological society (igs) from to , died suddenly on february after a long illness, aged . richardson was born on may in bolton, lancashire. after completing her education in bolton, she worked in the meteorological office briefly at the end of world war ii before going to newnham college, cambridge, where she read geography. in cambridge, she was exposed to the inspirational vaughan lewis and the talented group he had attracted to work with him on austerdalsbre, a small glacier in norway, and also to gordon manley, noted for his research on snow and climate. following her graduation in , richardson went to work for unilever at port sunlight. in gerald seligman, an industrial chemist and a skier with a passion for snow and ice, and james wordie, a geologist and academic who had been with shackleton in the antarctic, began discussions about forming a national body to further studies of snow and ice. it would bring together british groups involved with both the snow and glacier commissions of the international association of hydrology. the resulting association for the study of snow and ice was reborn after the war as the british glaciological society, with seligman as president, honorary secretary, and editor of journal of glaciology. in colin bertram, directorofthescottpolarresearch institute, agreed to provide facilities for the society. by now seligman was anxious to reduce his role in the running of the society. the management structure was reviewed and a decision made to hire a secretary to be based at spri. audrey ashworth was appointed, but resigned a year later. in richardson was appointed secretary to the society, a position she held for the next years. at this time, the society's office consisted of a small desk on the top floor of the scott polar research institute, known as the gallery. after the institute was extended, richardson moved to a larger room above the director's office. from here, and from her home at street farm in shudy camps, she interacted with visitors to the institute and welcomed glaciologists from around the world, often prevailing on them to contribute to the work of the igs. on the strength of her position as manager of a learned society, richardson was able to join the soroptimist international of cambridge, a service club for professional women. she rose rapidly through the ranks, becoming local president in , president of the london and eastern divisional union in , federation president of soroptimist international of great britain and ireland in , and finally president of soroptimist international in . the internationalism of this organization came to be mirrored in richardson's approach to the igs. she realized that for the society to survive and grow, it was necessary not only to recognize the international nature of research on snow and ice, but to reach out to scientists everywhere. in the british glaciological society changed to the glaciological society and, in , added 'international' to its name. by the society had managed to acquire its first non-british president, with the election of the swedish scientist valter schytt. richardson reached out to scientists in japan, the soviet union, and china, organizing tours, symposia, and workshops, arranging for members of the society to visit those countries and welcoming their scientists to cambridge and into the management of the society. to facilitate and increase the flow of glaciological ideas and information, richardson organized symposia on all aspects of snow and ice, the society always having maintained that glaciology covered the entire cryosphere, not just glaciers. in papers from these symposia, which had been published in journal of glaciology, began obituaries to be published in a parallel publication called annals of glaciology, which to date runs to more than timely thematic volumes that periodically summarize the state of the science. during the years richardson served the international glaciological society, she helped transform it from a group of british snow and ice enthusiasts into an international learned society, acknowledged worldwide as the premier organization for glaciologists and the publisher of the two principal international glaciological serials — journal of glaciology and annals of glaciology. a measure of the high standards insisted on right from the start, and maintained today, is that both serials are included in the science citation index. richardson's contributions to the development of glaciology were recognized during her lifetime by the award of honorary membership in ; in the naming of richardson peak on the east side of vallot glacier in the tyndall mountains, antarctica ( ° 's, ° 'w); and by the creation of the richardson medal to honour her on her retirement in . simon ommanney clive holland, arctic historian and former archivist at the scott polar research institute, died september , at his home in haslingfield, cambridgeshire, at the age of . clive anthony holland was born december , in bramhall, cheshire. he matriculated to downing college, cambridge, where he read modern and medieval languages, with an emphasis on french and german. although he was naturally gifted in languages — later adding russian, norwegian, swedish, and danish to his repertoire — it was while at downing that he found his true love — the history of exploration of the polar regions. once he read his first arctic expedition account, he later stated, he knew that he wanted to make that field his life's work, and he went to his tutor to try to change to the history tripos. he was convinced by his tutor, however, to remain officially in modern and medieval languages, in which he received his ba in . four years later he took his ma. while at downing, holland represented his college in cricket and rowing. years later, he still would emphasise to graduate students the advantages that could be gained by participating in college sports, particularly promoting the mental and physical health that came from all of those early mornings at practice on the cam. in holland began a long-term relationship with spri, working with assistant librarian alan cooke on compiling 'a chronological list of expeditions and events in northern canada,' a monumental reference work published in parts in polar record between and . holland's meticulousness was recognised with his appointment in as library cataloguer. then, in january , he became assistant librarian and curator of the museum. three years later, he added the position of curator of manuscripts to his job description. holland was the ideal person to serve as curator of manuscripts: not only did he know intimately everything in the institute's holdings, but he took great pride in providing service to scholars visiting the archives, giving them valuable information about hidden treasures in the institute and little-known works elsewhere. it was this unusual combination of service and holland's in-depth knowledge of the history of the polar regions that made the institute archives one of the main focal points for researchers around the world. holland's help to other researchers extended beyond the physical limits of the spri archives. in he and cooke published the exploration of northern canada, to : a chronology (toronto: arctic history press), a reference work further expanded from their earlier chronological lists. for more than two decades this has served as one of the essential tools of any serious arctic historian. in fact, little respect would accrue to any historian of the arctic who is not familiar with, and has not at least attempted to purchase, 'cooke and holland,' which sold out immediately and has long been one of the most coveted prizes for any polar antiquarian book- collector. four years later, holland published his manuscripts in the scott polar research institute, cambridge, england: a catalogue (new york: garland), which listed each manuscript in the holdings with an outline of its contents. this is not only a crucial document for use of the spri archives, it is invaluable for its information about other archival collections throughout the world. when harry king retired as librarian in , holland served for half a year as acting librarian, until valerie galpin was appointed to the position. he then continued in his former role until a grant from the leverhulme trust allowed him to work full-time on what proved to be his magnum opus. this was ultimately published as arctic exploration and development c. b.c. to : an encyclopedia (new york: garland, ). this book is arguably the most important reference work ever produced for a historian of arctic exploration. it extended the range of 'cooke and holland' throughout the circumpolar arctic, although the latitude of the second book did not extend as far south as the former. the book includes summaries of each expedition to the arctic, a vast bibliography of works referring to those expeditions, an appendix of main expedition members, some pages of maps, and two indexes, one general and one specifically of ships. it is a remarkable tool that passes on to the modern scholar the advantages not only of holland's command of languages — since much of the information had to be gained from russian, german, norwegian, and other languages — but of his exacting research skills. after completion of this project, he received a two-year grant to extend this work to . unfortunately, this new encyclopaedia remained incomplete at his death. shortly after he left the scott polar research institute, holland produced his major effort dealing with the antarctic, editing sir clements markham's personal obituaries narrative of robert falcon scott's first expedition. this was published as antarctic obsession: a personal narrative of the origins of the british national antarctic expedition - (bluntisham: bluntisham books, ). as well as numerous publications in polar record and the dictionary of canadian biography, he also edited a volume of accounts of arctic exploration, published as farthest north: the quest for the north pole (london: robinson, ). for a number of years after his official departure from spri, holland continued his affiliation with it. he lectured there regularly, supervised a number of students for the mphil degree, and generously gave of his knowledge. in , i became his only student ever to receive a phd. unfortunately, he later broke official relations with spri — although he continued to give me feedback about polar record — and withdrew to a great extent from the polar community, disappointing and puzzling many of his friends and colleagues. in his final years, he served as librarian for wolfson college, cambridge. even today, there can be few serious historians of arctic exploration who have not been influenced or assisted by clive holland. his chronological encyclopaedias will make certain that this remains true of future generations of historians as well. beau riffenburgh raymond lowry, phd, peng, one of the brightest lights of the polar remote-sensing community in canada, died of cancer in calgary, alberta, on november , at the age of . raymond theodore lowry was born on may in biggar, saskatchewan, a small prairie town with a big sign outside it, saying 'new york is big but this is biggar.' he went on to obtain a phd in electrical engineering from imperial college, london, in . he then joined the defence research establishment in ottawa (dreo, remote sensing section), which at that time was carrying out pioneer work on the nature and distribution of sea ice in the canadian arctic. at dreo, lowry worked with the indomitable moira dunbar and took part in a number of polar missions using the specially adapted canadian forces argus aircraft or 'slargus,' fitted with side-looking airborne radar (slar) and a laser profilometer, and made available for research. lowry moved on to the canada centre for remote sensing (ccrs) (applications division) in , where he worked with the newly developed synthetic aperture radar (s ar) fitted to a convair research aircraft, again with an emphasis on snow and ice applications. in , as both the canadian federal government and industry became increasingly interested in new radar technology, 'uncle ray'joined intera technologies ltd in ottawa as senior staff consultant; he moved to calgary in as senior radar engineer/scientist. during his years at intera, he played a leading role in the planning, development, support, and promotion of intera's star- and star- airborne sar systems and their uses for sea-ice monitoring and terrain applications. intera had the contract for supplying the system to carry out ice-patrol missions for the atmospheric environment service across the arctic. fluently bilingual, lowry trained numerous radar engineers, software developers, and applications specialists in the technical details of radars. he had a wonderful knack for making this not only interesting, but also fun. lowry wrote more than papers and had a worldwide network ofassociates and friends in the radarfield. in he joined the national research council in calgary as an industrial technology advisor (irap program), specializing in geomatics, and was instrumental in supporting new geomatics ventures in alberta. he was an active board member of the alberta geomatics group, a new industry association, and vigorously supported geomatics education at the university of calgary and elsewhere. in addition to his significant technical contributions in the radar field, lowry had a wide range of other interests, which he pursued with passion. he had a love of music and played jazz guitar with the calgary westwinds musical society. a life-long athlete, he was a member of the university of calgary triathlon club. lowry was a tireless and passionate spokesman for the end of starvation and absolute poverty, and was a founding partner of results canada. he was also a founder and dedicated leader of the new frontier men's team in calgary. he had a genuine interest in people, an irreverent sense of humour, and the capacity to invent truly dreadful puns — all these will be sadly missed by his family, friends, and the scientific community at large. my personal memories of lowry begin in march at the icebound canadian forces base of summerside, prince edward island, where we joined the slargus for a transpolar laser profiling flight designed to cover the same terrain as the british submarine dreadnought had profiled two years earlier, the aim being to match upper and lower ice topography. the most dangerous part of this mission was attending a saturday night hop in the lofoten islands at journey's end. in spring we again worked together in the slargus from inuvik, profiling over the aidjex camp in the beaufort sea. then followed two larger pieces of co-operation that i shall always remember fondly. in lowry operated the slargus in an arctic ocean mission, where it flew directly over a track being profiled from below by hms sovereign, gaining the first genuinely concurrent measurements of upper and lower surface topography of sea ice. lowry continued this involvement in , when he ran an intera sar mission along the track of hms superb in the arctic ocean, again permitting direct comparison of upper and lower ice surfaces. these projects brought us together for many friendly sessions of planning, fieldwork, and paper-writing on the statistical properties of sea ice. lowry is survived by his wife, sarah rose, his children phoebe and bevis by his first marriage to vivien, and his stepdaughters, jenny and rebecca trew. peter wadhams detecting intra- and inter-categorical structure in semantic concepts using hiclas acta psychologica ( ) – contents lists available at sciencedirect acta psychologica j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : w w w . e l s e v i e r . c o m / l o c a t e / a c t p s y detecting intra- and inter-categorical structure in semantic concepts using hiclas eva ceulemans a,*, , gert storms b, a department of educational sciences, university of leuven, vesaliusstraat , box , b- leuven, belgium b department of psychology, university of leuven, tiensestraat , box , b- leuven, belgium a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t article history: received december received in revised form november accepted november available online december psycinfo classification: keywords: modeling semantic concepts inter-categorical structure intra-categorical structure - /$ - see front matter � elsevier b.v. a doi: . /j.actpsy. . . * corresponding author. tel.: + ; fax: e-mail addresses: eva.ceulemans@ped.kuleuven storms@psy.kuleuven.be (g. storms). eva ceulemans and gert storms contributed equal in this paper, we investigate the hypothesis that people use feature correlations to detect inter- and intra- categorical structure. more specifically, we study whether it is plausible that people strategically look for a particular type of feature co-occurrence that can be represented in terms of rectangular patterns of s and s in a binary feature by exemplar matrix. analyzing data from the animal and artifact domains, we show that the hiclas model, which looks for such rectangular structure and which therefore models a cognitive capacity of detecting feature co-occurence in large data bases of features characterizing exem- plars, succeeds rather well in predicting inter- and intra-categorical structure. � elsevier b.v. all rights reserved. . introduction german shepards, poodles, rottweilers, etc. artifacts are likewise ever since rosch and her collaborators (rosch & mervis, ; rosch, mervis, gray, johnson, & boyes-braem, ) published their influential studies on semantic concepts in the mid seventies, both the structure between categories and the structure within categories have been studied extensively in cognitive psychology (see medin, lynch, & solomon, ; murphy, , for over- views). moreover, an important topic of debate – on which we fo- cus in this paper – is how people detect this inter- and intra- categorical structure. . . inter- and intra-categorical structure of semantic categories regarding inter-categorical structure, or the structure between categories, rosch et al. ( ) focused on the hierarchical nature of many semantic concepts. the animal category, for instance, falls apart into mammals, birds, fish, insects, reptiles, etc., that is, into mutually exclusive categories that are defined at a lower level of abstraction. each of these lower level categories is further subdi- vided into less abstract categories. the mammal category, for in- stance, consists of dogs, cats, cows, horses, elephants, and so on, and categories such as dogs can even be further subdivided into ll rights reserved. + . .be (e. ceulemans), gert.- ly to this paper. structured hierarchically. a particular object can be referred to as a jazz guitar, a guitar, a string instrument, a musical instrument, or an artifact. regarding intra-categorical structure, or the structure within categories (rosch et al., ; rosch & mervis, ) convincingly showed that not all exemplars are equally good examples of a cat- egory. people agree rather well on how typical exemplars of com- mon semantic categories are. for example, most people agree that a cow is a better instance of a mammal than a whale (even though they will agree that both of these animal kinds are mammals) and that a piano is a better instance of a musical instrument than an indonesian gamelan (mccloskey & glucksberg, ). moreover, ratings of typicality are quite consistent over time (barsalou, ; hampton, ). the graded structure of semantic catego- ries, as measured by rated typicality, has been shown to predict performance in many other category-related tasks, such as induc- tive reasoning (osherson, smith, wilkie, lópez, & shafir, ), exemplar production (storms, ), category naming (storms, de boeck, & ruts, ), priming effects (rosch, ), memory interference effects (keller & kellas, ), and response times from a speeded categorization task (hampton, ). it thus seems that semantic categories display a stable internal structure that needs to be accounted for by any theory of concept representation. both the inter- and the intra-categorical structure are reflected in two aspects of semantic concepts: the extension and the inten- sion. the extension of a concept corresponds to the class of entities that the concept refers to. the intension of a concept is the idea http://dx.doi.org/ . /j.actpsy. . . mailto:eva.ceulemans@ped.kuleuven.be mailto:gert.storms@psy.kuleuven.be mailto:gert.storms@psy.kuleuven.be http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/ http://www.elsevier.com/locate/actpsy table hypothetical exemplar by feature data matrix d. exemplar feature has nipples breastfeeds warm- blooded soft feathers air sacs whale zebra blackbird woodpecker e. ceulemans, g. storms / acta psychologica ( ) – associated with the concept, or, the set of salient or psychologically important features that delineate the concept. the inter-categorical structure is reflected extensionally in which entities belong to which of a series of (contrasting) catego- ries. for instance, carrots and tomatoes belong to the vegetable cat- egory, while apples and oranges belong to the category of fruits. the intra-categorical structure is reflected extensionally in the ex- tent to which a particular exemplar of a category is typical of the category. pears are generally considered to be more typical for the fruit category than water melons. but one can also look at inter- and intra-categorical structure from an intensional point of view. the features belonging to the intension of a semantic concept x but not to the intension of another concept y and the features belonging to the intension of y but not to that of x are thus crucial to the differentiation between both concepts, or, to use different words, to the inter-categorical structure of both concepts. tasting sweet, for instance, is important in distinguishing fruits from vege- tables. finally, the intra-categorical structure is reflected intension- ally in the features that contribute in making exemplars more or less typical of a category. though strawberries and blackberries are fruits that do not grow on trees, more typical fruit exemplars like apples and oranges do grow on trees. since semantic concepts are, as mentioned above, usually hier- archically structured, intra-categorical structure (i.e., which fea- tures apply to which exemplars) and inter-categorical structure (i.e., which features differentiate exemplars from non-exemplars) cannot be separated. of course, if a category x, defined at a hierar- chically higher level, falls apart into categories a, b, and c at a lower level, then intra-categorical structure of x reflects inter-cat- egorical structure of a, b, and c. . . studying the cognitive capacity to detect inter- and intra- categorical structure the question how people learn to assign stimuli to categories has drawn a lot of attention, which resulted in the development of a large number of (formal) categorization models that have been tested extensively in experiments with artificial categories. for an overview, see for instance, ashby and maddox ( ) and smith and minda ( ). the related question of how people carve up common entities in the real world into more or less homogeneous categories is more difficult to answer. many categories like animal sorts and artifact categories are learned by children in non-verbal ways at very early ages, which makes the process difficult to study in rigorously con- trolled settings. as a result, researchers are forced to study young children using indirect measures (mandler, ), or take refuge in studying categorization of novel stimuli into well-known cate- gories in adults (e.g., ameel, storms, malt, & sloman, ; smits, storms, rosseel, & de boeck, ; storms, de boeck, & ruts, ). another way to study how the virtually infinite diversity of entities in the world gets carved up into categories is by developing models that mimic human categorization. recently, rogers and mcclelland ( ) proposed a parallel distributed-processing ap- proach to model the category learning process faced by children. in this paper, we take another approach and explore the possibility that people deduce the inter- and intra-categorical structure of semantic concepts from the correlational structure of psychologi- cally salient features in the entities in the world (storms & de boeck, ; storms, van mechelen, & de boeck, ) and we model this process by using hierarchical classes analysis (hiclas: de boeck & rosenberg, ). thus, the central idea to our approach is that the world outside us is structured in such a way that the entities are carved up into categories that are characterized by similar patterns of psycholog- ically important features and, as rosch and mervis ( ) argued in the seventies, that intra-categorical structure arises from corre- lational structure within categories. moreover, if people are sensi- tive to this correlational structure, they may learn to use some features to divide the entities in the world into separate categories, while using other features to determine typicality within the cate- gories and ignoring still other features when structuring categories at a particular level of abstraction (note, for instance, that the mod- el of zeigenfuse and lee ( ) incorporates the assumption that people ignore some features). the way we approach the problem of predicting inter and intra categorical structure is by analyzing exemplar by feature data and by looking for dense regions in the data, after reorganizing rows and columns of the exemplar by feature matrices. such dense re- gions reflect (near) monothetic or rectangular patterns and, as will be explained below, they can be found by applying the disjunctive hiclas model (de boeck & rosenberg, ). as such, the hiclas model mimics the potential cognitive ability of finding correla- tional structure in the data. in the remainder of this paper, we will first briefly describe the hiclas model and then continue with a presentation of the results of the hiclas analyses of two data sets: one consisting of exemplar by feature data from the animal domain and another data set with artifact data. the paper will be concluded with reflections on the cognitive implications of the use of data analytic tools such as hi- clas to study inter- and intra-categorical structure. . hiclas the hiclas model (de boeck & rosenberg, ) is a structural model for a binary i exemplars by j features data matrix d. in the following paragraphs, we will use the hypothetical four exemplars by six features matrix in table as a guiding example. in this table, a value of indicates that the corresponding exemplar is character- ized by the feature in question; a value of implies that this is not the case. for instance, it can be read that a zebra is warm-blooded, but has no air sacs. given a binary i exemplars by j features data matrix and a rank r, hiclas approximates the data by a binary i exemplars by j fea- tures model matrix m, such that the following loss function is minimized: l ¼ xi i¼ xj j¼ ðdij � mijÞ ; ð : Þ subject to the restriction that, permuting the exemplars and fea- tures, m contains r possibly overlapping rectangles of ones. this approximation is achieved by reducing the exemplars and features to r overlapping clusters, called bundles, using an alternating least squares or simulated annealing procedure (ceulemans et al., ). from the exemplar and feature bundles, the exemplar by feature model matrix can be computed by means of the following associa- tion rule: mij ¼ � r r¼ eir fjr; ð : Þ table hiclas model matrix m of rank for the data in table . exemplar feature has nipples breastfeeds warm- blooded soft feathers air sacs whale zebra blackbird woodpecker e. ceulemans, g. storms / acta psychologica ( ) – where � denotes the boolean sum (i.e., � ¼ ), and eir and fjr indicate the entries of the exemplar bundle matrix e and the feature bundle matrix f, respectively. for instance, table shows a hiclas model matrix of rank for the data in table , which is obtained by reducing the exemplars and features to two bundles. the corre- sponding exemplar and feature bundle matrices e and f are given in table . comparing tables and , one can derive that this hi- clas model has a loss function value of . the bundles of the exemplars and the features are linked to one another, implying that exemplars that belong to a specific exem- plar bundle are characterized by all features that belong to the cor- responding feature bundle. for instance, table shows that in the hiclas model blackbird and woodpecker are characterized by is warm-blooded, is soft, has feathers, and has air sacs. this is reflected in table , as blackbird and woodpecker belong to the second exem- plar bundle and is warm-blooded, is soft, has feathers, and has airs sacs constitute the second feature bundle. the one-to-one correspondence of the exemplar and feature bundles imply that exemplars and features that belong to linked exemplar and feature bundles, constitute a rectangle of s in the data matrix. similarly, exemplars and features that do not belong to the corresponding exemplar and feature bundles, form a rectan- gle of s in the data matrix. for instance, in table , blackbird and woodpecker belong to the second exemplar bundle only, whereas has nipples and breastfeeds belong to the first feature bundle only. this is reflected in table in that these two exemplars and two features constitute a rectangle of s. it can be concluded that whereas each rectangle of s represents a category, the corre- sponding exemplar bundle represents the extension of the cate- gory and the corresponding feature bundle represents its intension. for instance, in table , the first exemplar and feature bundles constitute the category of mammals; zebra and whale are the extension of this category, and has nipples, breastfeeds, is warm-blooded, and is soft are the intension. whale blackbird . . hierarchically organized classifications an important feature of the hiclas model is that it includes hierarchically organized classifications of the exemplars and fea- tures. this hierarchical structure is obtained by applying a closure operation to the bundle matrices e and f at the end of the alternat- ing least squares or simulated annealing procedure (see e.g., ceule- mans et al., ); this closure operation does not alter the loss function value of the obtained solution. with respect to the classi- table bundle matrices e and f of rank for the data in table . exemplar bundles feature bundles i ii i ii whale has nipples zebra breastfeeds blackbird is warm-blooded woodpecker is soft has feathers has air sacs fication, exemplars that are characterized by the same set of fea- tures constitute an exemplar class, whereas features that apply to the same set of exemplars constitute a feature class. these clas- sifications of the exemplars and the features are represented in the bundles, in that all the elements of a class belong to the same set of bundles. for instance, from table it can be read that zebra and whale are characterized by the same set of features (has nipples, breastfeeds, is warm-blooded, is soft); hence, these two animals be- long to the same exemplar class. this is reflected in table in that both zebra and whale belong to the first bundle, but not to the sec- ond one. similarly, has feathers and has air sacs constitute a feature class, as both features apply to the same two exemplars (i.e., black- bird, woodpecker). as such, has feathers and has air sacs have iden- tical bundle patterns in table . with respect to the hierarchical organization of the classifica- tions of the exemplars and the features, an exemplar class is hier- archically lower than another exemplar class if the set of features that apply to the first class is a subset of those that apply to the lat- ter class. similarly, a feature class is hierarchically lower than an- other feature class if the set of exemplars that are characterized by the first class is a subset of the set of exemplars that are char- acterized by the latter class. the hierarchical relations between the exemplar classes and the feature classes are also represented in the bundles, in that the bundle pattern of a hierarchically lower class is a subset of that of a hierarchically higher class. for instance, table shows that has feathers and has air sacs are hierarchically lower than is warm-blooded and is soft, because the first two fea- tures only apply to blackbird and woodpecker, whereas the last two features apply to all exemplars. this hierarchical relation is represented in table in that has feathers and has air sacs only be- long to the second bundle, whereas warm-blooded and is soft be- long to both bundles. . . graphical representation a graphical representation of the hiclas model in tables and is given in fig. . in this figure, the hierarchical classifications of the exemplars and the features are drawn in the upper and lower half of the representation, respectively, where the feature hierar- chy is represented upside down. the classes are indicated by the boxes and the hierarchical relations between the classes by the lines between the boxes. finally, the zigzags represent the linking structure between the exemplar bundles and the feature bundles. . . model selection in practice, the structure of binary exemplar by feature data can only be perfectly reconstructed (i.e., loss function value equals zero) by means of a hiclas model with a large number of bundles. such models are too complex to be useful, however. therefore, one will usually look for a model that describes the data well without zebra woodpecker has nipples breastfeeds has feathers has air sacs is warm-blooded is soft i ii fig. . graphical representation of the hiclas model in table . e. ceulemans, g. storms / acta psychologica ( ) – being overly complex. this is achieved by fitting hiclas models with increasing numbers of bundles r to the data. subsequently, the solution that best balances fit to the data (i.e., low l-value) and complexity (i.e., number of bundles r) is selected by applying some model selection procedure. recently, a range of such procedures has been proposed, includ- ing a numerical convex hull-based extension of the well-known scree test (ceulemans & van mechelen, ), a pseudo-binomial test (leenen & van mechelen, ), and, recasting hiclas in prob- abilistic terms, a pseudo-aic criterion (ceulemans & van meche- len, ), bayes factors and posterior predictive checks (leenen, van mechelen, gelman, & de knop, ). in this paper, we only consider the original, deterministic hiclas model, and will there- fore use the numerical convex hull-based procedure and the pseu- do-binomial test. the numerical convex hull-based procedure selects the solution on the lower boundary of the convex hull of a number of bundles vs. loss function value plot, after which the decrease in loss func- tion levels off (ceulemans & kiers, ; ceulemans & van meche- len, ). the pseudo-binomial test selects the smallest rank or amount of bundles r, for which the probability of observing a value x smaller than the loss function value of the model of rank r + is greater than some small number, say, . given that x is binomi- ally distributed as follows: x � bin(ij, lr/ij), with ij equaling the number of cells in the data matrix and lr indicating the loss func- tion value of the solution with r bundles (leenen & van mechelen, ). . . fit measures apart from the loss function value, which boils down to the number of discrepancies between the data and the model (i.e., the number of cells with a in the data and a in the model or vice versa), another fit measure that is often used in hiclas analysis is the jaccard goodness-of-fit index (sneath & sokal, ), which takes values between and : j ¼ nd¼ ;m¼ nd¼ ;m¼ þ nd¼ ;m¼ þ nd¼ ;m¼ ; ð : Þ where nd¼ ;m¼ indicates the number of cells with a in the data and a in the model, nd¼ ;m¼ indicates the number of cells with a in the data and a in the model, and nd¼ ;m¼ indicates the number of cells with a in the data and a in the model. this jaccard index can be calculated for the overall model as well as for each exemplar and each feature separately. through the varying jaccard values for the exemplars and the features, the hiclas model leaves room for gradedness, both on the extensional and on the intensional side (storms et al., ). specifically, the jaccard indices for the exem- plars can be considered a measure of prototypicality and the jaccard indices for the features a measure of category relevance. for in- stance, the jaccard indices for zebra and whale equal / ( + + ) = and /( + + ) = . respectively, indicating that ze- bra is a more prototypical mammal than whale. note that the jac- card index is closely related to the similarity index sij between a pair of objects i and j in the ratio model of tversky ( ), which takes the common and distinctive features of both objects into account. . . relations to other models in the past decades, many models and associated algorithms have been proposed that can be applied to binary exemplar by fea- ture data in order to obtain a clustering of the exemplars as well as the features (for an overview of two-mode clustering methods, see van mechelen, bock, & de boeck, ). the models differ in many respects, however: are the models deterministic or stochastic? does the induced clustering of the exemplars and the features take the form of a partition or is it an overlapping clustering? is the number of exemplar and feature clusters fixed throughout the esti- mation procedure or is it dynamically updated? comparing hiclas to two two-mode clustering techniques that have recently been proposed in the categories and concepts litera- ture, i.e., the infinite relational model (kemp et al., ) and the crosscat model (shafto et al., ) shows that hiclas differs in all three respects from these models: whereas the infinite relational model and the crosscat model are stochastic, the original hiclas model that is used in this paper, is deterministic (for a minimal sto- chastic extension of hiclas, see leenen et al., ). hiclas yields an overlapping clustering of the exemplars and the features, which also implies a partitioning of both sets however, based on the sub- set of the overlapping clusters to which an exemplar or feature be- longs; applying the infinite relational model and the crosscat model results in partitions of exemplars and features. finally, the existing hiclas algorithms require the specification of the number of overlapping clusters (bundles), whereas the infinite relational model and the crosscat model determine the number of clusters dynamically. . applying hiclas to detect inter- and intra-categorical structure in semantic concepts two data sets out of the leuven natural concept database, ta- ken from de deyne et al. ( ) were analyzed with the disjunctive hiclas model (ceulemans, van mechelen, & leenen, ; de boeck & rosenberg, ). the first data set consisted of a exemplar by feature matrix for the animal domain (i.e., the type iv data set from de deyne et al. ( )). the exemplar set contained a sample of mammals, birds, fish, insects, and reptiles and amphibians, representative in terms of pre- sumed typicality, ranging from very atypical exemplars to very typical exemplars of these categories, but with the restriction that all the selected exemplars had to be familiar to the vast majority of an adult population in the dutch-speaking part of belgium (note that the participants in the generation study of storms, , on which the exemplar selection was based, did not know the differ- ence between reptiles and amphibians very well, generating a lot of overlapping exemplars for both categories. therefore, these two categories were treated as a single category). the features were selected from a feature generation task in which participants were asked to name features that define (technically or loosely speaking) each of the five animal categories. they were encouraged to include different kinds of features, including physical, perceptual, and functional features as well as encyclopaedic knowledge. for each of the animal categories, different participants generated features. for the categories birds, fish, insects, mammals, and reptiles, respectively , , , , and features were selected for inclusion in the exemplar by fea- ture matrix, but note that some features overlapped. the second data set consisted of a exemplar by feature matrix for the domain of artifacts (i.e., again the type iv data set from de deyne et al. ( )). unlike the animal categories, the artifact categories are not mutually exclusive and no generally ac- cepted delineation of these categories exists (unlike for the animal categories, for which it is assumed that there is a biological taxon- omy of non-overlapping categories). several objects were gener- ated frequently by participants as instances of more than of the artifact categories under study. assigning exemplars to the cate- gories where they were generated with the highest frequencies, the exemplar set included a sample of musical instruments, tools, vehicles, clothing items, kitchen utensils, and weap- ons. again these exemplars were selected to be representative in mammals orca (f) whale (f) dolphin (f) feat. birds reptiles fish insects feat. feat. feat. feat. feat. feat. feat. feat. feat. feat. feat. feat. feat. feat. feat. feat. feat. feat. feat. feat. feat. feat. feat. feat. fig. . hiclas model with five bundles for the animal data set. e. ceulemans, g. storms / acta psychologica ( ) – terms of presumed typicality, ranging from very atypical exem- plars to very typical exemplars of these categories, but with the restriction that all of the selected exemplars had to be familiar to the vast majority of an adult population in the dutch-speaking part of belgium. the features were again selected from a feature generation task in which participants were asked to name features that define (technically or loosely speaking) each of the six artifact categories. as for the animal data set, they were encouraged to include differ- ent kinds of features, including physical, perceptual, and functional features as well as encyclopaedic knowledge. for the categories clothing, kitchen utensils, musical instruments, tools, vehicles, and weapons, respectively , , , , , and features were se- lected for inclusion in the exemplar by feature matrix, but note that some features overlapped. the entries in the analyzed animal and artifact exemplar by feature matrices were the number of subjects (out of four) who judged (for every feature-exemplar pair) whether the feature char- acterizes the exemplar or not. the reliability of the two exemplar by feature matrices was estimated by de deyne et al. ( ) using the spearman–brown split-half technique. as there are only three different ways to divide four subjects in two groups of two, all three possible splits were evaluated, resulting in reliability esti- mates of . , . , and . for the animal matrix, and . , . , and. for the artifact matrix. as a measure of the intra-categorical structure, we used typical- ity ratings in the eleven studied categories, also gathered by de deyne et al. ( ). the reliability of these ratings was quite high, with estimated values all above . , except for the category of in- sects, where the estimated value was . . . . results and discussion of the analysis of the animal data set the animals by features data matrix was dichotomized using a majority rule, that is, by replacing values ranging from to by and values ranging from to by . hiclas solutions including – bundles were obtained, of which the loss function values and the jaccard goodness-of-fit indices are shown in fig. . both the numerical convex hull-based model selection pro- cedure (ceulemans & kiers, ; ceulemans & van mechelen, ) and the pseudo-binomial test (leenen & van mechelen, ) indicated the selection of the hiclas solution with five bun- dles. fig. shows a graphical representation of this solution. in this figure, the animal classes are labeled by indicating to which of the . . . . . . . number of bundles lo ss v al ue /d at a si ze animal artifact fig. . loss function values (divided by data size) and jaccard indices of the hic five underlying categories – mammals, birds, reptiles, fish, insects – (most of) the animals in the class belong. additionally, animals for which the class and category membership do not correspond are printed in italics, with the category membership indicated be- tween brackets. inspecting fig. , one immediately notices that the exemplar structure, consisting of five classes only, is much simpler than the feature structure, which is composed of classes. moreover, the five animal classes, which each belong to only one bundle, per- fectly correspond to the underlying categories – mammals, birds, reptiles, fish, and insects – with three exceptions only: orca, whale, and dolphin are assigned to the mammal bundle instead of the fish bundle. this makes perfect sense as, although these three animals were generated as exemplars of fish in the exemplar generation task (de deyne et al., ), according to a biological taxonomy they are mammals and not fish. it can be concluded that hiclas yields a perfect delineation of the animal categories under study and as such succeeds in recovering the inter-categorical structure. though we concentrate on the exemplar structure in this paper, it is important to notice that the feature structure is complicated, but clearly interpretable. examples of good-fitting features (with a jaccard index above . ) in the bundle specific feature classes corresponding to mammals, birds, reptiles, fish, and insects, were has nipples, has feathers, is cold-blooded, breathes through gills, and has feelers, respectively. the features in the hierarchically higher . . . . . . . . . . . number of bundles ja cc ar d in de x animal artifact las solutions with up to bundles, for the artifact and the animal data. e. ceulemans, g. storms / acta psychologica ( ) – classes were equally well-interpretable. lays eggs, for instance, shows up in a feature class that spans all categories except mam- mals, and features like eats and has brains are assigned to the fea- ture class that applies to all animals. as stated in the introduction, not all exemplars are equally good examples of a category, implying that semantic categories have a graded structure. this intra-categorical structure is reflected in the rated typicality of the exemplars for the categories. to study whether hiclas retrieves this intra-categorical structure, the jac- card goodness-of-fit indices of the animals within a category were correlated with the corresponding typicality ratings. note that orca, whale and dolphin were excluded from these calculations, be- cause their typicality ratings concerned typicality for the category fish instead of typicality for the category mammal. for reptiles (r = . , p = . ), insects (r = . , p = . ), fish (r = . , p = . ), and birds (r = . , p < . ), the obtained correlations were signifi- cantly positive. for mammals, however, the correlation coefficient amounted to . (p = . ) only. a possible explanation for this low correlation may be our familiarity with the mammal category. as barsalou ( ) showed, typicality is highly correlated with familiarity as expressed in word frequency. in order to control for the effect of word frequency, we first predicted typicality in the mammal category from (the loga- rithm of) word frequency (de deyne et al., ) and then corre- lated the residuals with the jaccard goodness-of-fit indices from the hiclas analysis. as a result, the predictive correlation rose to . , a value that is nearly significant (p = . ). another consequence of our extensive familiarity with mam- mals is our detailed knowledge of this collection of species, which makes the mammal category less homogeneous than the other (rel- atively lesser known) animal categories. as we will explain below (see section ), the resulting presence of subcategories in the mam- mal category may also account for the decreased correlation be- tween fit and typicality. . . results and discussion of the analysis of the artifact data set like the animal data set, the artifacts by features data matrix were dichotomized by replacing values ranging from to by and values ranging from to by . the dichotomized data matrix was analyzed with the hiclas algorithm with the number of bundles varying from to . applying the numerical convex vehicles lawnmower (t) weapons go-cart (v) cart (v) skateboard (v) sled (v) kickscooter (v) tools rope (t,w) ki ut scissors ( knife (ku axe (t,w) drill (t) hammer (t) pickaxe (t) crowbar (t) shovel (t) grinding disc (t) saw (t) tank (w) fig. . hiclas model with six bun hull-based procedure and the pseudo-binomial test to fig. , which shows the loss function values and the jaccard goodness-of-fit indices of the eight resulting hiclas solutions, resulted in the selection of the solution with six bundles. fig. shows a graphical representation of this solution; note that only the hierarchical clas- sification of the artifacts is displayed, as the hierarchical classifica- tion of the features is very complex (i.e., it consists of classes). with respect to inter-categorical structure, it can be read from fig. that some artifact categories can be more easily delineated by means of hiclas than others: whereas musical instruments and clothing are clearly separated from the other categories, vehi- cles, weapons, tools, and kitchen utensils are slightly intertwined. this is no surprise as the artifact categories under study are not mutually exclusive and no generally accepted delineation of these categories exists. indeed, de deyne et al. ( ) report that in the artifact generation task multiple artifacts were generated fre- quently by participants as instances of more than one of the six artifact categories. for instance, axe and rope were generated as in- stances of weapons as well as tools. note also that, as in the analysis of the animal data, the categories detected by hiclas are, in terms of the vertical structure of semantic concepts (rosch et al., ) defined at the superordinate level. as in the analysis of the animal data, the feature structure is complicated, but clearly interpretable. examples of features with a jaccard index above . in the feature classes that are linked to kitchen utensils, musical instruments, tools, and clothing only, were is used by cooks, is used in orchestras, is used to work with, and is sewn, respectively. the features in the hierarchically higher classes were again easily interpretable. is a good invention, for instance, is classified in a feature class that spans all categories except weap- ons, and features like can wear off and is available in different types are assigned to the feature class that applies to all artifacts. with respect to intra-categorical structure, correlation coeffi- cients were computed between the typicality ratings of the arti- facts and their jaccard goodness-of-fit indices. in these calculations only the artifacts that belong to the hierarchically low- est artifact classes (i.e., the classes with the category labels) were used, thus excluding artifacts that were assigned to more than one bundle and also discarding artifacts for which the typicality ratings did not concern the category to which they were assigned to by hiclas (e.g., lawnmower, cart, apron). for clothing (r = . , tchen ensils musical instruments clothing apron (ku) ku) ,t) dles for the artifact data set. e. ceulemans, g. storms / acta psychologica ( ) – p = . ) and tools (r = . , p = . ) the obtained correlations were significantly positive. for the other categories, however, the correlation coefficients were not significant, implying that the in- tra-categorical structure could not be predicted on the basis of the hiclas solution. . . . . . . . . . can opener plate toaster bottle stove fridge glass towel kettle whiskpercolator bowl spoon microwave oven mixer nutcrackerplace mat oven pan pot grater spatula mug teaspoon colanderforkelectric kettle scales wok sieve jaccard ty pi ca lit y fig. . scatter plot of the typicality ratings versus the jaccard goodness-of-fit indices of the kitchen utensils. . general discussion in this paper, we investigated the hypothesis that people use feature correlations to detect inter- and intra-categorical structure. more specifically, we studied whether it is plausible that people use a strategy of looking for a particular type of feature co-occur- rence that is reflected by rectangular patterns in a binary feature by exemplar matrix. analyzing data from the animal and artifact domains, we showed that the hiclas model, which looks for such rectangular structure and which therefore models a cognitive capacity of detecting feature co-occurence in large data bases of features characterizing exemplars, succeeds rather well in predict- ing structure between categories, and even, to a certain degree, within categories. regarding inter-categorical structure, hiclas was capable of splitting up a large number of animals in the correct number of underlying superordinate categories and of classifying all animals into the appropriate category. interestingly, the model even suc- ceeded in correctly assigning animals such as orca, whale, and dol- phin to the mammal category, rather than to the fish category, in which these animals would be categorized if the judgments were solely based on superfluous perceptual and behavioral features. furthermore, even though nothing prevented the model from clas- sifying exemplars into hierarchically higher exemplar classes that correspond to the intersection of the base categories (i.e., the exemplar classes that belong to one bundle only), it assigned each of the animals to one of the base categories, just like human subjects do when classifying living creatures in these categories. in line with common sense expectations, the feature structure con- sisted of clearly interpretable feature classes that apply exclusively to a single base category as well as feature classes that apply to multiple categories. looking at the results of the six-bundle solution for the artifacts, it is obvious that the base categories used to compose the stimulus set of the artifact domain can be clearly distinguished. unlike in the solution of the animal domain, several exemplar stimuli were classified as belonging to multiple categories. the fact that hiclas puts forward mutually exclusive categories in the animal domain and overlapping categories in the artifact domain fits nicely with findings from the literature that artifact and natural kind catego- ries have a different nature in this respect (ruts, storms, & hamp- ton, ; sloman & malt, ). the feature structure of the artifact solution was again complicated, but clearly interpretable. regarding intra-categorical structure, the fit of the animal exemplars within the base category to which they were assigned, succeeds in predicting typicality well for four of the five categories. only in the mammal category the prediction turned out to be poor. we hypothesized that this lack of predictive power resulted from a relatively more elaborate knowledge, which results in a further de- tailed structure in this category. more specifically, we think that the fit of an exemplar within a bundle-specific class reflects typi- cality only if the corresponding category is rather homogeneous. if, on the contrary, this category falls apart into several subcatego- ries, that is, if some of the relevant features for the category func- tion to distinguish between the subcategories, then the applicability of the relevant feature set as a whole will poorly pre- dict the typicality ratings of the exemplars for the category. phrased yet differently, we hypothesize that typicality ratings in a heterogeneous category reflect a complicated relation towards one or more of the subcategories that does not straightforwardly correspond to the number of relevant category features that apply to the exemplar. looking in detail at the scatter plot of the typicality ratings ver- sus the jaccard goodness-of-fit indices of the exemplars, we saw that, for most categories with non-significant correlations, differ- ent subclusters could be clearly distinguished. for kitchen utensils, for instance, the group of electrical kitchen appliances yielded rel- atively low goodness-of-fit values in the hiclas solution, but was rated as highly typical (see fig. ). the other exemplars showed a fairly linearly increasing pattern between fit and typicality that was broken by this subcategory of electric appliances. likewise, for weapons, a fair correlation between fit and rated typicality was broken by a subcategory of fire arms with relatively low fit values, but that was rated as highly typical. a similar pattern was not immediately obvious in the mammal data, but because this animal category is a very familiar one, about which we have de- tailed knowledge, it probably falls apart into a much larger number of subcategories. in order to further test the hypothesis that the lack of correla- tion between typicality and goodness-of-fit is – at least partly – caused by the presence of clearly separate subcategories, we looked at the hiclas solution with just one bundle for the animal data. this means that the (very heterogeneous) animal category, which – as we showed earlier – falls apart into several subcatego- ries, and is treated as a single concept. ratings of the typicality of all animals for the category of animals were gathered from participants. they rated typicality on a -point scale, with a -value referring to very atypical and a -value referring to very typical animals. in line with our expectations, the correlation be- tween rated typicality and goodness-of-fit within this heteroge- neous animal category were very low (r = . ). . . relating the hiclas model to theories about semantic concept representation hiclas (ceulemans, van mechelen, & leenen, ; de boeck & rosenberg, ) is a data analytic technique for binary two-way two-mode data that can be used to obtain hierarchical classifica- tions of the elements of both modes. one may ask the question why the results of a hiclas analysis can be interpreted as evidence for a particular type of cognitive processing of semantic concepts. as stated before, we entertain the hypothesis that people use a particular type of feature correlations to detect inter- and intra- e. ceulemans, g. storms / acta psychologica ( ) – categorical structure. the type of feature correlations that hiclas is sensitive to corresponds to a monothetic view on categories. in other words, if the rectangular patterns that hiclas looks for are ‘perfect’ rectangles (i.e., rectangles constituted by a complete fea- ture set that applies perfectly to a complete exemplar set), then the application of hiclas corresponds to the classical view (sutc- liffe, ), where concepts are assumed to be represented by defining (i.e., singly necessary and jointly sufficient) features. how- ever, as is generally known, this classical view on semantic con- cepts has been proven wrong in lots of empirical studies (murphy, ; smith & medin, ). completely in line with this, perfect rectangles will, of course, allow no differential predic- tions of typicality, as every exemplar within a category would show a perfect goodness-of-fit index. despite the overwhelming evidence against classically defined concepts, a weaker version of the same idea has been proposed by several authors, in which concepts are assumed to be repre- sented by characteristic instead of defining features. such charac- teristic features are not strictly necessary for every category exemplar, but they have substantial probabilities of occurring in the different instances of the concept. for examples of such a view, see for instance, rosch and mervis’ ( ) family resemblance view and hampton’s ( ) prototype view. also, when assuming that semantic concepts consist of relatively coherent clusters of exemplars (and equating the animal names with the exemplar le- vel), the so-called exemplar view on semantic concepts (nosofsky, ; storms, ) is also compatible with approximate rectangles. when the hiclas model is used to parsimoniously describe the important patterns in binary data, the input exemplar by feature matrix is not perfectly, but approximately, represented by a hi- clas solution with a limited number of bundles. this implies that the rectangles that hiclas looks for are not perfect rectangles, but approximate rectangles. such approximate rectangles correspond to semantic concepts being represented by characteristic features. furthermore, the goodness-of-fit of the exemplars (which is a func- tion of the number of s in the discovered rectangles and of the s in the non-rectangular areas of the matrix) should then predict rated typicality within the concepts. as was shown in our study, the goodness-of-fit of the exemplars does correlate significantly to rated typicality and thus corresponds with the intra-categorical structure, at least in sufficiently homogeneous semantic concepts. finally, one may wonder whether our use of hiclas as a cogni- tive model implies that we assume that concepts are organiza- tional principles of an ‘objective’ material reality. in other words, do we adhere to a radical realist ontological view on concepts, in which the structure between and within concepts is given by the outside world (van mechelen, de boeck, theuns, & degreef, ), rather than assuming that the concepts are mental repre- sentations, as is usually held by cognitive scientists? a fundamen- tal answer to this question would require philosophical arguments that cannot be dealt with in this paper. suffice it to say that the fea- tures on which the input data are based were taken from a feature generation study in which participants selected relevant properties of the studied categories, and that this selection process roots our usage of the hiclas model at least partly at the mental level, rather than solely at the objective material reality. acknowledgements the research reported in this paper was partly sponsored by grants ot/ / of the leuven research council and g. . of the ‘fonds voor wetenschappelijk onderzoek – vlaanderen’ to gert storms. the contributions to this special issue were first pre- sented in a workshop, organized by the research group on con- cepts and categories of the psychology department, k.u. leuven, in june , which was sponsored by the ‘fonds voor wet- enschappelijk onderzoek – vlaanderen’ (k. . . n). references 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( ). categories and concepts: theoretical views and data analysis. in i. van mechelen, j. a. hampton, r. s. michalski, & p. theuns (eds.), categories and concepts: theoretical views and inductive data analysis. london: academic press. zeigenfuse, m., & lee, m. ( ). finding the features that represent stimuli. acta psychologica, ( ), – . 	detecting intra- and inter-categorical structure in semantic concepts using hiclas 	introduction 	inter- and intra-categorical structure of semantic categories 	studying the cognitive capacity to detect inter- and intra-categorical structure 	hiclas 	hierarchically organized classifications 	graphical representation 	model selection 	fit measures 	relations to other models 	applying hiclas to detect inter- and intra-categorical structure in semantic concepts 	results and discussion of the analysis of the animal data set 	results and discussion of the analysis of the artifact data set 	general discussion 	relating the hiclas model to theories about semantic concept representation 	acknowledgements 	references ecological restoration : ■ december ecological restoration, vol. , no. , issn - e-issn - © by the board of regents of the university of wisconsin system. e d i t o r i a l in july, i participated in a two-day meeting dubbed “restoring or renaturing? the presence of the past in ecological restoration: a transatlantic workshop.” the meeting, which was held at the zurich botanical garden in switzerland, was hosted by environ- mental historian marcus hall and featured speakers from europe, canada, the united states, and japan. the group included many environmental historians and a smaller contingent of ecological restorationists, paleoecologists, anthropologists, and environmen- tal activists. marcus envisioned the gathering as a discussion that would lead to a better understanding and implementation of ecological restoration practice. he suggested that our interdisciplinary dia- logue would focus on questions such as: • which conditions should be brought back, and do such condi- tions represent new natures or betters pasts? • what historical assumptions do we hold when we set out to restore, and what are the political and social implications? • what can the historical record tell us about the nature of degradation? • can rewilding be a legitimate goal in europe, or is this a holy grail better pursued in the new world? • how can restoration history improve our current efforts to restore? answers to, or at least discussions of, these and other questions, he reasoned, would help ecological restorationists on both sides of the atlantic understand the commonalities and differences of their practices. i guess we can all have great hopes for conferences, work- shops, meetings, and the like. i know that both marcus and i did for this one. in my estimation, however, a meaningful interdisci- plinary discussion didn’t occur at this meeting. we spent too much time simply trying to stay on schedule with our appointed presentations. that isn’t to say that there weren’t some excellent presentations—those by david lowenthal, daniel mccool, and eric higgs come quickly to mind. eric spoke after i did, and a comment he made during our subsequent panel discussion especially hit home with me. he said that he felt that too many ecological restorationists, including many of the current leading thinkers and opinion makers, had forgotten that a certain level of historical fidelity (a term eric uses to mean “a loyalty to predisturbance conditions”) is necessary in ecological restoration projects. like eric, i have seen ecological restoration move solely from a practice intended to care for the land and its other-than-human beings to a practice that involves a large element of social activism and human-centered concerns. i suggest you read keith bowers’ ser international column in this issue to see my point. this shift, or additional emphasis on human-centered goals, is a significant one. it raises questions about the practice and activities we call ecological restoration. reflecting back on the zurich workshop, i’ve come to realize that the “elephant in the room” was the lack of attention that we all paid to the idea of historical fidelity (what i will refer to here as authenticity or genuineness) and its relation to ecological restora- tion, renaturing, or whatever re- activity you want to name. the dictionary definition of “authentic” indicates that the word describes some thing or some one “conforming to fact and therefore worthy of trust, reliance, or belief; having an undis- puted origin, genuine; bona fide, unquestionable, veritable.” in common vernacular, an authentic person or thing is “the real deal.” the word “genuine” is similar and has even closer etymo- logical roots to our subject. it comes from latin word, “genuinus,” which means “native, natural,” which itself is from the word “gignere” or “beget” (which is also the root word for genus). in this same vein, the latin word “genu,” which means knee, rec- ognizes the ancient custom of a father acknowledging paternity of a newborn by placing the child on his knee. so, take your pick—authentic or genuine—they both indicate a sense of known origin and, perhaps more importantly, a badge of legiti- macy and credibility. so, why did we avoid this discussion at the workshop? we had our opportunities—nicki whitehouse’s excellent talk about the value of paleoecological studies of irish peatlands and their value to biological and cultural conservation was one. nothing. daniel mccool’s report on his work for a new book, the river commons, gave us an opening when he emphatically stated, “eco-authenticity fails in the face of political will.” no takers. similarly, when activist josh donlan gave his pitch for rewilding north america with pleistocene megafauna. eileen crist’s pre- sentation about the use of cloned extinct and/or endangered ani- mals brought no response, either. this lack of reaction leads me to believe that either we were all so happy to be in an air-conditioned auditorium and out of zurich’s heat wave that we weren’t thinking or that creating or attempting to create an authentic or genuine ecosystem is no longer what people consider as ecological restoration. there were, in fact, many talks about ecological restoration solely or authentic ecological restoration largely with a focus on human goals. perhaps, the question at the end of mark bain’s abstract about his work restoring the hudson river park after the / attack summed it up best: “what restoration strategy is appropriate for a humanized system?” when i first began my studies in ecological restoration at the university of wisconsin-madison, we made a field trip to the uw arboretum’s greene prairie, which the botanist/mycologist henry greene had planted by himself over the course of about years, beginning shortly after world war ii. upon its completion, greene prairie was a beautiful example of authentic ecological restoration—a project that was loyal to the ecology of the wet- mesic prairie ecosystem that greene made every effort to repli- cate and restore. much of the magic of that restored prairie remains today, despite encroaching stands of invasive reed canarygrass, and, like an alfonso ponticelli cover of a classic django reinhart jazz guitar solo, it swings through the seasons with a powerful yet nuanced sense of beauty and faithfulness to itself and greene’s reference sites. now, it may be that greene prairie is an exception to the rule (although it is certainly not alone in terms of projects that have been wedded to an authentic baseline), and it’s certainly true that greene was meticulous in his work and generally unburdened by outside influences. nevertheless, this type of approach serves as an ideal that every ecological restoration pro- ject should aspire to—a strong attention to detail, a use of exist- ing sites and/or historical reference information to determine the predisturbance conditions, and a conviction that this approach will be the best way to restore ecosystems that are in danger of being lost or otherwise compromised. yes, we can argue about whether the restoration of processes or structure or both are needed, but what we cannot fall prey to is the seemingly inces- sant need to put humans and human values first and foremost. as dennis martinez has pointed out, we must reestablish a kin- centric relationship with the rest of nature; we must become, as aldo leopold wrote, “citizens of the land community.” paying attention to the historical fidelity or genuineness of our projects can help greatly to move us in that direction by forcing us to look deeply into those beings and forces we seek to unleash so that they may pursue their way of life. otherwise, we are likely to fall prey to the mass consumerism that surrounds us—creating gardens where we maintain beings as “things” strictly for our use and admiration. i recognize that some will criticize me for being stuck in the past; that i am failing to see the potential of ecological restora- tion and the future. they may be right. however, i feel it is nec- essary for some people, like eric and myself, to stand up and say that, in terms of ecological restoration, the past is important, that it does makes a difference, and that a study of past condi- tions serves as one of the most important foundations of an eco- logical restoration project. i certainly recognize that possibility is always more tantalizing than actuality or the past, and that we shouldn’t feel that we are captives of our past. but rather than simply denying that the past matters, i strongly encourage prac- titioners to engage in a dialogue that includes both actuality and possibility, both past and future. by doing so, we will ourselves become more authentic and, likewise, produce more genuine restoration projects. *** this editorial marks the end of my stay as a member of the staff of restoration & management notes/ecological restoration. in gen- eral, the plus years i was with the journal were an extremely positive and productive experience. i have many people to thank for making it so. the first, of course, is bill jordan, the journal’s founder, editor, and guiding light for two decades. bill played a huge role in my development as an editor, writer, and thinker about ecological restoration. the decade of the s that we spent working together on this journal, i will always think of as our time and remember it well. thanks, bill. i also want to extend my warmest appreciation to mary ann pels, who began working with bill and me in the late s, and began her time as the journal’s associate editor during my stint as editor. mary ann and i formed a solid friendship that continues to this day. we encouraged and supported each other through some tough times and laughed through the good times. i still expect to see her when i open the door to my new office even though i know full well that she’s , miles away. my many other colleagues at the arboretum also deserve recognition for their support, and i wish them well as that institution finds a way to incorporate its glori- ous heritage with its future possibilities. i also have had a long and cheerful relationship with the folks at the university of wisconsin press journals division—steve miller, john delaine, susan kau, adrienne omen, ken sullivan, rita emmert, and judith choles. keep up the good work! i want to thank kevin ducey and bridget brown for their many hours of work on the eco layout—solving all kinds of problems that i threw their way. a big thanks to julie hayward for her tireless efforts proofreading manuscripts and for providing me a country hideaway when needed. thanks go out to many others, especially the various abstractors i’ve worked with, the members of the editorial advisory board, and joy and paul zedler for their continuing help with the journal. i also want to recognize efforts of the staff and board of the society for ecological restoration international, with whom the journal has had a long and fruitful relationship. thanks most of all to the readers of restoration & management notes/ecological restoration. i trust that you’ll continue to find the journal a leading source for information about the practice we all care so deeply about. so, what am i doing? as of october , i took a position as edi- tor/writer with the ecological restoration institute at northern arizona university. i am working with wally covington, diane vosick, and the rest of the eri staff to help forge a new paradigm of restorative land care for the frequent-fire forested landscapes of the southwestern united states. it’s definitely an out-of-bioregion move for me, but i’m looking forward to learning the ropes here and enjoying the climb. the past endures. the present is. the future beckons. dave egan dave.egan@nau.edu / - ecological restoration : ■ december ‘men between’: the role of zambian broadcasters in decolonisation* robert heinze (department of history, university of bern) this article traces the history of a group of zambian broadcasters who established the first radio station in the country and made their mark on broadcasting for years to come. it describes their contribution to modern zambian culture and to nationalist mobilisation. african broadcasters developed formats, ways of presenting and music that appealed to zambian listeners and established new, authentically local styles. while radio quickly established itself as an integral part of everyday life and culture in the colony, its effect was highly ambivalent. broadcasters at the same time undermined and enforced the colonial project of using the medium as a transmitter of modernisation ideology. the article explores thomas turino’s characterisation of this team as “cosmopolitans” influenced by bbc ideas of journalism and modernisation ideology, looking at the relationships between african broadcasters and their european superiors as well as their political activity. this shared value system brought them into conflict with the post-independence government and its plans to bureaucratise radio, despite their nationalist commitment and strong support for unip before independence. radio played a decisive role in zambia's decolonisation. despite the colonial and federal states' rigid control of media content, particularly in the one mass medium over which they held a monopoly, they could not prevent subversive practices by both broadcasters and listeners. the reasons for this are manifold and present a combination of general characteristics of radio as a mass medium and more specific historically, politically and culturally contingent factors, such as language diversity in african colonies, the colonial situation, british liberalism and its influences in the central african federation and african nationalism. first, radio in general – like most mass media – has never been a one-way medium, despite brecht's and others' inhibitions. the minimum option listeners had was not to listen, which automatically gave them some limited influence on broadcast content – every propagandist knows about the sugar of entertainment that has to coat the whip of ideology. secondly, by the time colonial states introduced radio sets affordable for a big minority of middle and working class africans, international broadcasting had rendered state monopolies over radio an illusion. as listeners could choose from alternative sources of information, simple propaganda would not help to control the flow of information to colonial subjects. even the most controlled information programmes could not hide everything from their audience. thirdly, because of the need to produce popular content, african broadcasters received much leeway in the production of cultural and entertainment programmes, while information broadcasts remained under rigid control. this, i will argue, provided some space for subversive practices among broadcasters. however, concentrating on broadcasters and their role in subverting colonial radio helps to clarify that while politically, most of them were radical nationalists to the point of risking their positions as civil servants, they were also cosmopolitans in that they shared fundamental ideas about the role of broadcasting in the future nation with their colonial supervisors and with journalists in the metropoles. this enabled them to criticise colonial information control from the federation of the rhodesias and nyasaland, also called the central african federation, was a peculiar constitutional construct uniting the three british colonies northern rhodesia, southern rhodesia and nyasaland under the roof of a central government voted into power by white settlers, and the still existing british colonial administration. established after years of political pressure from settlers, it significantly extended their influence. because the overwhelming majority of settlers lived in southern rhodesia and were very conservative, and because agrarian southern rhodesia profited the most from closer union with the industrial mines of the north, africans especially in the other two territories felt that this was a move to further subjugate them, economically and politically. therefore the introduction of the federation met with widespread, but ultimately unsuccessful, resistance. r. rotberg, the rise of nationalism in central africa: the making of malawi and zambia, -- (cambridge [mass.], harvard university press, ). the marxist writer bertolt brecht, in an influential essay, described radio in bourgeois society as a one-way ‘apparatus of distribution’, which needed to be changed into a two-way ‘apparatus of communication.’ many media theorists have followed this idea to a certain extent. b. brecht, ‘der rundfunk als kommunikationsapparat’, in b.brecht, gesammelte schriften, vol. (frankfurt/m., suhrkamp, ), pp. - . both positions are far from being mutually exclusive. rather, nationalism is itself a result of cosmopolitan exchange, as partha chatterjee has argued. p. chatterjee, nationalist thought and the colonial world (minneapolis, university within – by referring to bbc standards of journalism – but would eventually pit them against the post-colonial nationalist government. while the circumstances of production are an essential part of media analysis, they are often reduced to their formal aspects – how are media outlets structured, which influences, specifically from politics and state institutions are possible and so on. very few histories and contemporary studies of media institutions have looked at production circumstances from the perspective of broadcasters. to cite the most important contribution: debra spitulnik has emphasised circulation aspects of media and taken the production sphere of the post-kaunda broadcaster into account to analyse the dynamics between the broadcaster and its audience. while taking up the analytical implications, this article considers how some of spitulnik’s themes -- specifically the recurrent central trope of national unity -- emerged in post-independence broadcasting. also, it focuses on the global influences on journalists’ attitudes to their own work and their role in zambian society. such an analysis has to rely in large part on oral history. this, of course, has some problems and limitations. the research of which a part is presented here is based on interviews with former journalists of both the colonial and the post-colonial stations, held in lusaka during two visits, in and / . most importantly, these interviews were conducted with professional journalists or ex-journalists. thus the interviewees had ample experience in conducting journalistic interviews and were likely to be more conscious of the implications. additionally, the interviews were strongly informed by contemporary discourse. to take these limitations into account, oral testimony here is combined with published autobiographies of some of the central actors, as well as contemporary reports and protocols, to allow a contextualisation of these oral sources. the pioneers of african broadcasting of minnesota press, ). a recent example is s.p: lekgoathi, ‘bantustan identity, censorship and subversion on northern sotho radio under apartheid, s— s, in l. gunner, d. ligaga and d. moyo (eds), radio in africa: publics, cultures, communities (johannesburg, witwatersrand university press, ), pp. -- . the story of colonial broadcasting in northern rhodesia is a particularly fascinating one, not simply because the central african broadcasting services (cabs) pioneered broadcasting to african colonial subjects, nor because of its role in developing the first battery-powered radio set affordable for the african middle and (partly) working classes. more than that, the cabs was a fundamentally ambivalent project from its outset. it was driven by the colonial administration's need for information control, but developed into a source of information and education for colonial subjects as well as a mediator of social change and, finally, an intellectual forum for zambia's decolonisation. this was primarily due to the people working inside the station. two information officers, harry franklin and kenneth bradley, pressurised the colonial government to introduce a full- fledged station after radio had been used in the second world war to broadcast news from the battlefield and exchange greetings between soldiers in the king’s african rifles regiments and their families in the colony. however, they could only implement their ideas in the post-war period. after coordination between all british colonies in central and east africa, and some subsequent experimentation, the project of a full-fledged radio station for all three central african territories was accepted by the central african council in . only south africa could boast of such a territory-wide service at the time. information control was one of the motives of the colonial government in introducing the information offices and, through them, media for african consumers in the s. franklin argued that if the colonial administration did not establish its own media, colonial subjects would turn to alternative sources of information and be ‘easily misled by discontented agitators of the “intelligentsia” class’. the establishment of the first newspaper in african languages, mutende, in (which franklin edited) had come after the colonial government realised that watchtower j. muller, k. tomaselli and r. tomaselli, currents of power: state broadcasting in south africa (denver, anthropos, ). national archives of zambia (hereafter naz) / , h. franklin, report on the development of broadcasting to africans in central africa (lusaka, government printer, ), p. . tracts circulated among the population and could become dangerous if not countered. the project for african radio went far beyond this, however. franklin knew that for a mass medium to establish itself as the central source of information and entertainment, it needed to take the audiences’ needs and wishes into account. looking at his work and his relationship with his colleagues, one must also acknowledge that franklin was committed to establishing a radio programme produced by africans for an african audience. given his liberal political commitment, it is quite possible that his use of the agitator argument was tactical – to convince his superiors – rather than ideological. soon after the station was established, he employed african announcers, and together with his successor michael kittermaster, he ‘created around him a team among whom colour-discrimination was completely unknown’, an assessment which is corroborated by their african colleagues. the cabs also soon became extremely popular with its audience, not least because of its first african producers. creative pioneers, edward kateka and edwin mlongoti managed to adapt zambian oral literature and other local cultural forms to the new medium. this was no small feat, given that radio needed a fundamentally different approach to orature, mostly because it eliminates the visual elements of performance as well as the possibility for interaction with the audience. these first cabs broadcasters were extremely inventive and left a permanent mark on zambian radio. mlongoti, despite his relatively good education, had worked as a railwayman before joining mutende as an office-orderly. he had started in broadcasting during the war, but only as a translator for government talks. franklin brought him back when cabs took off, and mlongoti -- nicknamed ‘ha-hi-ha’ because of his infectious humour, quickly became one of the most popular broadcasters. his death from diabetes in came as a shock to many, and his funeral saw northern rhodesia’s small artistic and intellectual elite gather to mourn him. kateka, ‘a falstaffian man’, had a similar the african watchtower movement, although different from jehovah’s witnesses, followed their literature in its opposition to all forms of earthly government. r. smyth, ‘war propaganda during the second world war in northern rhodesia’, african affairs , ( ), pp. -- , . p. fraenkel, wayaleshi (london, tauris, ), p. - . interview andreya sylvester masiye, lusaka, january . e.r. wendland,‘from the eyes of a girl to the eyes of a goat: julius chongo's visualization of dramatic narrative for an invisible radio audience’, research in african literatures , ( ), pp. -- . background and produced a live music and entertainment programme, earning the bemba nickname ‘mfumfumfu’, ‘he from whom words pour unceasingly like a river down a waterfall’. peter fraenkel gives some examples of their artful production skills. cabs influenced zambian broadcasting for years to come, well beyond the country's independence. although it nominally existed ten years, the first half of this period was decisive to found this tradition. from , cabs was forced to act as a propaganda station for the central african federation, which completely lost it the listeners' trust it had built up in the five preceding years. in , it was incorporated into the newly established federal broadcasting corporation (fbc) as its african services. however, the time from to was later hailed as ‘the golden years of broadcasting in northern rhodesia’ – and rightly so. franklin already left the station in , because he felt the increasing power of rhodesian settlers had damaged the ‘paramountcy policy’: ‘what was certain (or so it seemed to me) was that either increasing white political power in northern rhodesia or total white political power in a federation spelled the end of the policy of the paramountcy of african interests[,] the only policy under which i felt i could work’. he would stay true to his convictions and eventually became the representative for african interests in the legislative council and minister for african education and social services. kittermaster took over, but soon left himself. fraenkel stayed until , but later reprimanded himself for thinking he would be able to ‘mellow’ the ‘increasing illiberalism’ in the federation. it is a sign of their influence that the cabs never completely lost its liberal roots, and most african broadcasters who played a role in zambia's decolonisation had started under kittermaster. who were these people and what was their role in the decolonisation process and independent fraenkel, wayaleshi, p. . ibid. to my knowledge, no recording of their plays has survived. m.v. sichalwe, the development of radio broadcasting in northern rhodesia (ma thesis, university of zambia, ), p. . h. franklin, the flag wagger (london, shepheard-walwyn, ), p. . ‘paramountcy policy’ refers to the condition required by the british government under which it accepted a closer union between the three colonies, only if the interests of africans received precedence over those of white and indian citizens. see rotberg [please use short title] . fraenkel, wayaleshi, p. . he elaborates in his later work; p. fraenkel, no fixed abode: a jewish odyssey to africa (london, tauris, ), p. . zambia? the station in lusaka had begun relatively small, but grew to african and european broadcasters and technicians in , and established a studio in kitwe. before the fbc african service was restructured to prepare for the country's independence in , african broadcasters could only actively produce cultural and entertainment programmes. in news and political feature programmes, their role was reduced to announcing and translating. also, they earned considerably less than their european colleagues. nevertheless, from written autobiographical sources and interviews one finds that they formed a closely knit team. even under federal control, while censorship and listener protests made the work extremely frustrating, the cultural programmes offered some freedom, and kittermaster’s successors, cyril sapseid and donald lightfoot, continued the liberal tradition inside the station. the broadcasters at cabs and the fbc were part of a network that connected colonial officers with african civil servants and teachers. one of the veterans of broadcasting in the country, andreya sylvester masiye, had ventured into broadcasting while a soldier in the king's african rifles during the second world war. after a time working as headmaster of katete development school, he returned to radio in when kittermaster invited him to join cabs. he had remained in contact with franklin and the cabs throughout that time, and had recorded nyau songs in the katete district for use on the radio. another, joseph chileshe, lost his job as a clerk due to taking part in the anc's two-day prayer and stay-away protest against the introduction of the federation in . his former colleague lightfoot, however, asked him to join him at cabs. the broadcasters’ network seems to have been strong enough to allow such a move: despite his openly nationalist political commitments, chileshe could return to the colonial civil service of whichcabs was a part. from , however, repression gradually increased – in the federation as a whole, as well as in radio itself. censorship and control grew more important in day-to-day work. masiye recounts instances of spying among his colleagues, and federal authorities used contacts versed in local languages (mostly missionaries) across the three territories to listen to the african language services. however, cabs -- and from the fbc's african service -- remained in lusaka.moreover, donald lightfoot and peter fraenkel, the cabs liberals retained important positions. this meant that some important aspects of cabs persisted, which might have played a role in african broadcasters’ resilience against federation. furthermore, broadcasters in lusaka had firsthand experience of the consequences of losing listeners' trust. after cabs was forced to broadcast federal propaganda, rumours circulated in northern rhodesia that they were the newest victims of banyama – vampire men who, instead of sucking blood, controlled their victims' minds, so that even people like nkhata and kateka supported the federation. peter fraenkel saw the rationale behind the rumour: ‘how could the announcers broadcast “bad news”, news which displeased africans, unless they had lost all their will-power? how else could they be made to read pro-federation propaganda on the air?’ the story acquired a very real power when a mob assembled at edward kateka’s house -- whom they accused of having abducted a child -- and chased him until he found refuge in a police station. luise white speculates that the specific banyama rumours about african broadcasters were connected to their work as, essentially, storytellers: ‘what did cause these accusations? was it the general panic, the men themselves, the stories newscasters told on the air or the way they told those stories?’ she suggests that ‘it was the work that was suspicious, not the man’. for many african broadcasters, the situation in radio under federal control was extremely frustrating and tense, especially during the latter half of the s when nationalists radicalised, and conflicts multiplied. although the banyama rumours subsided eventually, the censorship, control and spies remained. however, broadcasters – and listeners – creatively sought out spaces for subversive communication. andrea masiye, after a successful career in broadcasting that had brought him into the a.s. masiye, singing for freedom: zambia's struggle for self-government (nairobi/london/new york, oxford university press, ), pp. -- . fraenkel, wayaleshi, p. . l. white, speaking with vampires: rumour and history in colonial africa (berkeley, university of california press, ), p. . zambian ministry of information, wrote a book that stands alongside fraenkel’s account as one of the most fascinating sources for the history of broadcasting, not only in zambia, and even more for the history of african cultural resistance to colonial rule. in it, he recounts the history of singing under colonialism, of the constantly changing ‘traditional’ songs, reinterpreted popular and ‘modern’ tunes, and political texts that expressed everyday resilience. he also explains the involvement of broadcasters in the circulation of these songs. the cabs attached great value to what they called 'traditional' songs and had undertaken a grand archiving project. vans went on tours throughout the region to record performances for use in radio. broadcasters shared ideas about aspects of ‘traditional’ music in the colonies, and the archiving project fixed this music in space and time. hugh tracey's ethnomusicological research and recording tours strongly inspired the project. alick nkhata had worked with tracey in the s, and was also involved with the cabs vans. the cabs broadcasters had a clear sense of the value of ‘traditional’ music and shared tracey's view that it was gradually dying out. this means that they saw ‘traditional’ music as a part of ‘traditional’ african society, and likewise something old, immutable and without significant history. again, black and white broadcasters shared this view, at least in part. thomas turino sees the connection between kittermaster, once a producer responsible for indigenous music in the sabc, and nkhata, who had worked with another sabc expert, hugh tracey, as one of shared ‘cosmopolitan ideas about indigenous arts’. cosmopolitanism was the foundation for the shared mindset of broadcasters at cabs. thus, it can be understood as ideology in the gramscian sense of a ‘conception of the world which is uncritically absorbed by the various social and and cultural environments in which the moral individuality of the average man is developed’. this need not be a coherent, uniform ideology; rather, ‘even in the brain of one individual, [it] is fragmentary, incoherent, and inconsequential, in t. turino, nationalists, cosmopolitans, and popular music in zimbabwe (chicago/london, chicago university press, ), p. . conformity with the social and cultural position of those masses whose philosophy it is’. cosmopolitanism included assumptions about zambian culture and society as well as ideas about the country’s future. in northern rhodesia, it was connected to a liberal tradition that influenced colonial and nationalist intellectuals alike. turino understands cosmopolitanism as a type of ‘cultural formation’ that is ‘simultaneously local and translocal’, and which has long been associated with elites and privilege. his research shows this applies to a certain extent to cabs and fbc broadcasters, although one should be wary of neglecting the differences in racial privilege between black and white broadcasters in colonial society. also, one must note that these cultural formations mirror global hierarchies. they are ‘more heavily influenced by certain particularly powerful sites’ – enforced through colonial or neocolonial structures, be they economic, political or cultural. the cosmopolitan environment at cabs brought with it a variety of assumptions about the characteristics of ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ african music. for example, cabs broadcasters were convinced of the ‘poverty’ of zimbabwean music. the connections between nkhata, tracey and the cabs team ‘provide an important glimpse of how early ethnomusicological ideas, such as the need for preserving ‘the traditional’, might have been popularly diffused and influential beyond scholarly circles’. broadcasters looked for a specific set of characteristics to identify ‘indigenous’ music; however, more often than not, they defined it by the absence of ‘modern’ characteristics, such as european rhythms or instruments. consequently, an annual report of the station stated that ‘indigenous music’ was even in the rural areas ‘becoming adulterated by rhythm and melodies a. gramsci, selections from the prison notebooks (london, lawrence & wishart, ), p. . for our purposes, it might be better to replace ‘masses’ with ‘social groups’; gramsci of course is interested in the question of why the italian peasants and proletariat were in the grip of catholicism in the nineteenth century. b.j. phiri, a political history of zambia (london, awp, ) describes the history of (ultimately doomed) liberal efforts such as the capricorn africa society to influence colonial politics. the liberal nationalism of harry nkumbula and the anc, the first nationalist party in the colony, is explored by g. macola, liberal nationalism in central africa: a biography of harry mwaanga nkumbula (new york, palgrave macmillan, ). turino, popular music in zimbabwe, p. . it thus transcends not only the opposition between nationalism and cosmopolitanism that appiah, for example, creates, but also questions that between ‘localist’ and ‘cosmopolitan’ cultural styles set up by ferguson. see k. appiah, cosmopolitanism: ethics in a world of strangers, (new york, w.w. norton, ); j. ferguson, expectations of modernity (berkeley, university of california press, ), p. . ibid., p. . fraenkel, wayaleshi, p. . turino , p. . adapted from european tunes’. such an idea of ‘adulteration’, however, was only possible if there was a concept of ‘unadulterated’ music fixed in time and space; at cabs they ignored long histories of musical change and exchange of forms and instruments. they saw ultural change as problematic, and the report worried that it seemed ‘almost inevitable that the indigenous music is gradually dying out’. nevertheless, the broadcasters could not resist fast-changing listener tastes and subsequent demands for contemporary music in programmes –‘hilly-billy’ and ‘tsabatsaba’ music were played more and more throughout the decade. both styles were associated with the working class, which might have played a role in the broadcasters' dismissal of them as inauthentic. however, as masiye shows so impressively, zambian music had already developed and adapted to the colonial situation. zambian songs had long commented on social and political grievances and, for example, expressed anger about plans for amalgamation – of which federation, as they saw it, was only a superficially moderate version. when people turned against the radio for propagating federation, cabs recording vans ‘had their tyres punctured in remote villages’, and africans refused to perform for the recording teams. even if ‘they could be persuaded to [record songs], many of their songs had the refrain, ‘we don't want federation’. masiye quotes from the song: ‘ife sitifuna federeshoni/tifuna boma la anthu akuda (we do not want federation/we want a black government)’. however, what happened in lusaka in the late s went beyond everyday popular resilience. and the african broadcasters were at the heart of it. early on, cabs had developed music request programmes, the most popular being ‘zimene mwatifunsa‘ (cinyanja: yours for the asking). listeners would write to the station to request a song, usually attaching greetings or a message. zimene mwatifunsa was for a long time the single most popular programme, because of its up-to-date music (it was also the basis for the hit parade), but more importantly because it facilitated contacts and the exchange of messages between workers in the cities and their families in the rural areas. messaging programmes such as zimene all quotations from naz / , northern rhodesia information department: annual report for the year , p. . fraenkel, wayaleshi, p. . masiye, singing for freedom, p. . italics in the original. mwatifunsa have remained an integral part of broadcasting in zambia as in other african countries, and their relevance has only diminished with the advent of mobile telephones. although the fbc cancelled zimene mwatifunsa, it introduced another programme in the same format, lucky dip, broadcast in each of the seven african languages used in radio separately. the change was significant, as ‘zimene’ had been more nationally inclusive. lucky dip’s concept was in tune with federal policies to counter nationalist tendencies and to build a federal model in radio. at the time, these programmes were the most direct way listeners could influence broadcasting content (later, the phone-in discussion programmes would take their place). through these two channels – recordings and requests – dissident messages hidden in poetic lyrics found their way into a heavily censored programme. andrea masiye cites a host of examples, from which only some can be quoted here. for instance, there was a sweet religious melody by a group of watchtower adherents. it spoke about the wickedness of man who had exalted himself to a high position in this mundane world. man was trampling on the rights of others, bringing untold misery and suffering. there was no peace. god almighty would one day descend on them and punish such people. he would take away their brief authority. the exalted would be vanquished forever. and those who were suffering under the usurpers would live on to celebrate their victory. this tune was for a long time at the top of the weekly request programme hit parade. christians, muslims and heathens alike asked for it. the reason was obvious to both african broadcasters and listen-ers, but not to our european colleagues and supervisors. to the africans, the hymn was not referring to an imaginary people in a fictitious situation. it was pointing to the africans of central africa, particularly those of northern rhodesia. a detailed analysis of the post- broadcaster is d. spitulnik, 'personal news and the price of public service', in e.s. bird (ed), the anthropology of news & journalism: global perspectives (bloomington, indiana university press, ), pp. -- . masiye, singing for freedom, p. - . at the beginning of the s, another political song followed this banned watchtower tune on the top of the hit parade. more outspoken, it still managed to slip through censorship for a while. masiye cites parts of the song: "lidzafika liti dzuwa lopulumuka kwa anthu amu africa wosauka africa, mazunzo ndi ambiri komabe tidzawagonjetsa koma kale-kale mu africa timali kugulitsidwa ukapolo africa, mazunzo ndi ambiri komabe tidzawagonjetsa when will freedom day come for the poor african people africa, persecution is too much but we shall overcome long ago in africa we were sold as slaves africa, persecution is too much but we shall overcome the text seemed to be about either religious deliverance or freedom from slavery, but the chorus in the present tense alluded to ongoing struggles for political freedom. given the repressive nature of fbc broadcasting, it is astonishing that such a song could be played day and night. this was partly due to broadcasters' cunning. broadcasters were very aware that once british officials knew about the subversive nature of the song they would ban it. to assure listeners that so far there was no danger, another song came in handy. it was a release by a white group calling themselves the tokens. their innocuous sounding number was called 'the lion sleeps tonight'. it was an assurance from one listener to others, or from the announcer to his listeners, that the british were not aware of what was happening. ibid., ; r. malan, in the jungle: how american music legends made millions off the work of a zulu tribesman who died a pauper (london, coldtype, ) describes the complex history of this song and its place in the history of global pop music. in the end, the song was banned after an african announcer – according to masiye an informant planted in the station by the federal government – divulged its implications to the officials. through the knowing cooperation of african broadcasters, locally composed songs circulated widely in the federation. thus, an old local practice – commenting on and mediating political and social developments through song – developed into contemporary national discourse. as debra spitulnik has correctly remarked, request programmes in zambia ‘have played a critical role in constructing an imagined – and concretely participated in – national community that extends beyond the immediate world of face-to-face encounters’. the more or less unspoken collaboration between nationalist broadcasters and listeners, who subverted federal censorship, infused the national community with anti-colonial discourse. a host of contradictory developments arose from this: on the one hand, listeners saw african broadcasters as ‘capricornists’ – collaborators with settlers, on the other, they sent in requests for dissident songs. similarly, broadcasters worked as propagandists for the settler regime, reading out censored news, while contradictorily, they established subversive practices. however, these discrepancies play an integral part in the way resistance plays out in repressive circumstances. subversive discourse was indirect and usually metaphoric or poetic. moreover, listeners eventually came to understand the constraints placed upon broadcasters. much more interesting for an analysis of the broadcasters' role in the decolonisation of zambia is the fact that although many broadcasters took risks by engaging in subversive practices, they also shared many colonial ideas about zambian society and culture and zambia's political and social future. these values did not clash with zambian nationalism, nationalism expressed them. zambian nationalists did not question the goal d. spitulnik, ‘personal news’, p. . the capricorn africa society (cas) was an ultimately unsuccessful attempt by white liberals to influence federal politics. they wanted to integrate an african elite into federal politics and envisioned democratic citizenship for all races, provided that all subscribed to the values of ‘western civilisation’. thus, it was hated by settlers and nationalists alike. nationalists called those they accused of collaboration ‘capricornists’, because they suspected the society of operating clandestinely to support the federation. thus the society attracted banyama rumours, because ‘capricorn’evoked a conspiracy theory. see phiri, political history, pp. -- . (to achieve a modern society, which promised much, most importantly a significant rise in living standards), but the means by which it would be achieved and who was to lead the way. many african broadcasters sympathised with nationalist politics, and the music programmes allowed dissident messages to slip through federal censorship. moreover, federal spies often lacked a deep understanding of local languages, and broadcasters learned to speak figuratively to disguise political meaning. during the federation period, nationalist mobilisation grew again. the anc, which had taken an enormous hit after failing to prevent the introduction of federation, recovered only slowly.; however,the the party split, leading to the formation of the more radical zambia african national congress (zanc) and, subsequently, the united national independence party unip), which increased nationalist pressure against federal racial discrimination. andreya sylvester masiye, one of the most senior broadcasters, and alick nkhata, the famous musician, were both actively involved in unip. masiye had written a two-hour historical radio play called ‘journey to the lands of kazembe’, with barely disguised anti-colonial overtones. this led to a raid on the lusaka premises by federal police (probably because one of the spies reported it before broadcast). in , following a personal request by kenneth kaunda, masiye left the fbc to organise unip election broadcasts from dar es salaam. alick nkhata had become famous in the s both as a solo guitarist and bandleader of the lusaka radio band. he managed to blend local ‘traditional’ styles with global pop music such as blues, reggae and calypso to create a new, distinctly zambian music. in his songs, he tackled problems of social change and its consequences for africans: ‘he sang of town “wives” who painted their lips, of the awkwardness of wives from the rural areas, of the loneliness of men away from home, of the fear of dying away from relatives, of the joys of town life, of drinking, of “jiving”, of sex’. in the s, nkhata performed at unip rallies during the election campaign, together with the other great zambian musician of the time, a. masiye, d. lightfoot, journey to the lands of kazembe, undated recording, znbc sound archives, cat. no. . masiye, singing for freedom. h. powdermaker, copper town: changing africa (new york, harper & row, ), p. - . bartolomeo bwalya. nationalist politics separated the african broadcasters from their liberal superiors, but other things united them. the african broadcasters at cabs belonged to a zambian intellectual elite -- most had finished secondary school and worked as teachers and civil servants before joining the station. they shared ideas about modernity, development and african cultures that would shape radio programmes until after independence. this is most visible in cultural and entertainment programmes that, during the s, emphasised ‘traditional’ music and told stories of rural africans coming to the city, encountering problems and conflicts on the way as theydeveloped into ‘modern’ subjects. feature formats had less flexibility, forming part of a scheme to propagate modern values, such as hygiene, the work ethic and the rule of law in the colonial state. entertainment and music programmes did not spout blatant propaganda, however, but showed sensitivity for the needs and anxieties that accompanied social change in the zambian urban areas. cosmopolitans and transnational hierarchies peter fraenkel, in his account, describes his african colleagues as members of an intellectual class that had developed under colonialism, which he dubs ‘men between’. according to fraenkel, they stood between african tradition and the modern education and culture colonialism had brought to the territory, between town and country, between their african peers and european colleagues. his binary analysis is problematic because it employs the very categories african intellectuals defied, but it hints at the very real situation of broadcasters in colonial radio. broadcasters were men between in more than one sense, and not only in their class position. they all too often found themselves between different cultures, between different styles of broadcasting and between colonial politics and their listeners’ views. again,bwalya’s and nkhata’s popularity and nationalist engagement transcend ferguson’s distinction between clearly separated ‘localist’ and ‘cosmopolitan’ cultural styles. see ferguson, expectations of modernity, pp. - . an analytical expression for the issue fraenkel identified is the concept of cultural brokers. often used in the social sciences to describe ‘indigenous’ actors in non-western societies the cultural brokers’role is, often uncritically, seen as that of mediators in areas such as education, health services and development aid. historians and ethnographers, however, have for some time called for a different concept of cultural brokerage and of the persons involved, one that avoids the essentialism and dichotomies that inform much of the literature. andreas eckert, writing about african clerks, describes them as ‘cultural brokers’ situated in a space beyond colonial binaries that distinguished between old and new, indigenous and western or between tradition and modernity. this intermediate space, he writes, showed the limits of the colonial order. david coplan sees south african musicians as cultural brokers engaged not only in vertical but also horizontal mediation, because they ‘occupy linkage roles between sectors of society and mediate between cultures in contact in ways that affect the perception and action of their listeners’. alick nkhata, who ‘may well have [had] a deep understanding of the different cultural and aesthetic positions involved’ in his work as a musician, ethnomusicologist and broadcaster, can serve as an example of both types. there are alternative concepts, the most attractive being thomas turino's analysis of cabs broadcasters as ‘cosmopolitans’. to describe them as ‘cultural brokers’, turino argues, is to take over ‘essentialist ideas of race or regional heritage’, which may have been the underlying reason for employing them in the first place. cultural brokerage was something that they did – or were supposed to do – but does that mean they were cultural brokers? also, to see all cabs broadcasters as cosmopolitans means to emphasise their shared traits more than their differences. the ‘closely knit team’ of black and white broadcasters at cabs shared ideas about african culture, about modernity and its effects on ‘traditional’ african societies and about the desired path of zambian society. although white broadcasters may have had a less radical vision than staunch nationalists a. eckert, herrschen und verwalten: afrikanische buerokraten, staatliche ordnung und politik in tanzania, - (munich, oldenbourg, ), p. . “kulturelle makler“ in the original; my translation. d. coplan, 'the urbanisation of african music: some theoretical observations', popular music, [issue number? there is no issue number, rh] ( ), p. - . turino, popular music in zimbabwe, p. . like masiye and nkhata, all were convinced that africans needed greater political power and that the desired goal was a democratic, industrialised and urbanised 'modern' zambia. following the connections between local cultural formations and global hierarchies mentioned earlier, one must ask how much cabs and fbc broadcasters were influenced by colonial and bbc ideas about the role of radio in society, what constitues ’good radio‘ andtheir role as broadcasters in northern rhodesia and independent zambia. this question needs much more complex answers than it might seem, and the influence of bbc culture is subtle and not always visible in the work at cabs. more importantly, broadcasters did not simply take over a hegemonic bbc culture, but transformed it into something new – a cabs culture influenced, but not totally dominated, by its famous british example. also, bbc ethics may have had an ambivalent effect that subverted colonial policy more than supporting it. structurally, cabs didn't follow the bbc model, but interestingly, the fbc did – to a degree. again, the credit goes to harry franklin. the federal constitution entitled prime minister godfrey huggins to take control of broadcasting, and the colonial government of northern rhodesia would have let him do this. however, franklin, newly elected representative of african interests in the legislative council, argued that the station, which was already in crisis, would lose listeners’ trust completely if it were directly subordinated to federal government. using public pressure, he managed to force huggins to appoint a commission headed by bbc experts, among them hugh carleton-greene who had ample experience from his work in northern germany after . in , the commission recommended centralising the three stations of the central african territories in one overarching institution. it also recommended the organisation of this institution as an independent corporation, however. this happened in , and the headquarters transferred to salisbury. the new institution united broadcasting for ‘africans’ and ‘europeans’ under one roof. the fbc was, following the recommendations, established as a nominally independent corporation led by a broadcasting board, thus following the bbc model. however, contrary to the h. franklin, unholy wedlock: the failure of the central african federation (london, allen&unwin, ), p. . recommendations, the members of the board were appointed by the governor-general (i.e. the british colonial representative in the three-tier federal government). this left no representation of african interests, although broadcasting to africans was a declared goal of the fbc. in , with the incorporation of the cabs as an ‘african service’, the fbc was established. the commission had suggested that the board members be appointed ‘without regard to race’ and ‘not [...] as representatives of any particular territory or racial group’. this rejection of quotas led to an all- white board consisting mainly of public figures from southern rhodesia. the board answered to the federal minister of home affairs. it appointed the director general and (in consultation with him) the heads of the different services, laid down programming and employment policies, set the salaries of top management posts and supervised the finances. thus, the board held considerable power over the station, although its members were appointed by the highest ranking official without any consideration about representing the diverse population of the federation. moreover, the government could ‘require that an announcement should be made or that a particular broadcast should not take place’, and in case of emergency it reserved the right to completely take over the station. however, during the state of emergency in southern rhodesia and nyasaland in early , the government did not seem to have deemed a takeover necessary, as the corporation had complied with ‘vital measures of secrecy’, handling the situation ‘with high responsibility’. nevertheless, the independent corporation model gave the fbc more leeway than if it had been totally subordinate to the state. although upper management was largely unaffected, as well as the english service, the african service could retain its liberal working environment, because it was based in lusaka where sapseid and lightfoot did their best to uphold it. in contrast, the english service in salisbury ran increasingly into conflict with the bbc’s external services, with broadcasters constantly complaining about the bbc’s coverage of nationalist campaigns in southern rhodesia. the fbc regularly relayed bbc news broadcasts, and listeners often bbc written archives center (hereafter bbc wac) e - , - , report of the broadcasting commission of inquiry, , p. . ibid., . bbc wac e - , - , fbc annual report, february -- june , p. . complained about the coverage. john parry, head of the european service, forwarded these complaints, but also constantly corrected even minor mistakes. the federal prime minister roy welensky himself complained about what he called the bbc’s ‘slant’ and in several instances considered sueing for libel. the bbc had no sympathy for the views of the fbc settler broadcasters and insisted on designing programmes that complied with broadcasting values such as newsworthiness, non-interference and the refusal to let censorship affect programme contents. after ian smith’s ‘unilateral declaration of independence’ in , the conflict escalated to the point where the fbc’s rhodesian successor, headed by the same managers, accused the bbc (which broadcast from transmitters in botswana) of ‘murder by radio’ in a pamphlet distributed among british mps, accusing the bbc and great britain of inciting ‘murder, arson, sabotage and destruction in rhodesia’ through subversive broadcasts from zambia and botswana. nevertheless, the bbc’s influence ramified in additional ways. the expansion of fbc services as well as staff positions required additional professional training. the first broadcasters at cabs had either been trained in the military or on the job. some had organised their own stay; joseph chileshe, for example, went to london in to teach bemba at the school of oriental and african studies and took the opportunity to work at the bbc, producing broadcasts for what was later called the world service. individual broadcasters, including edwin mlongoti's son cosmo, visited journalism courses at the african american institute in dar es salaam, which were sponsored by unip. the bbc began organising courses in lusaka only in , but they taught individual broadcasters from the african services before that. producers trained in the special course for overseas broadcasters and then were attached to the bbc's african service for an overall period of bodleian library, rhodes house (oxford): papers of the rt. hon. sir roy welensky, kcmg, -- (hereafter welensky papers), / : correspondence with the dg of bbc and others concerning bias in radio and television coverage of events in the federation, -- . it was dismissed by government representatives as well as bbc representatives as extremely weak. pro fo / : allegations that radio zambia with british aid incited rhodesian africans to violence, . interview, cosmo mlongoti, lusaka, october ; unip party archives, lusaka, / / , a.s. masiye to sean kelly, september . six months. this model was used in all british african colonies, providing training opportunities for african staff while at the same time using their skills in the bbc’s multilingual empire service broadcasts. many of the african broadcasters saw the bbc, its journalistic ethics and its techniques as the goal for radio in northern rhodesia and zambia. the english (general) service in salisbury, however, came increasingly into conflict with the bbc, primarily for their reporting on the political situation in southern rhodesia. the media in general and settler newspapers in particular noticed numerous examples of negative or perceived negative bbc reporting, sometimes going so far as to demand censorship of relayed bbc broadcasts, asking that in critical times the fbc should consider recording the bbc news bulletins, vetting them for offensive material and only transmitting an approved version – with official answers on contentious points. ultimately the fbc censored itself. it had submitted to the settler government's rationale and agreed to report on events from the settler perspective. the bbc colonial service had no sympathy for this stance and insisted on designing their programmes strictly according to newsworthiness, non-interference and the refusal of censorship. via bbc news relays, listeners to the english service (the name which replaced ‘european service’ to reflect its large african listenership) recognised the difference between the two, which resulted in the bbc having a good reputation among african listeners. the bbc’s culture also affected the work environment at cabs and its successors. colonial information officers cited the bbc as a model for their work: always we told the truth, according to the gospel of the b.b.c., in so far (sic) as we knew it. if we had not, and had tried to gloss over set-backs and disasters, we could not have lived with ourselves and we should also have floundered from lie to lie into ever worse confusion. honesty was not only the best, but the only possible policy. cabs managers followed the same principle: ‘the long-term advantages of a reputation for honesty far outweighed the short-term disadvantages in telling the whole truth to primitive listeners. ‘at a time of tension bbc is found wanting’, the chronicle weekend magazine, march . k. bradley, once a district officer (london, macmillan, ), p. . this became an article of faith with me, as it was with kittermaster’. however, even for the bbc, the ‘telling the truth’-policy does not mean that the bbc [world service]'s goal, to influence foreigners' minds in favour of the political principles it represents, differs fundamentally from that of any other external service. it so happens that those principles are the minimally offensive ones of liberalism, moderation, and parliamentary democracy; and that the best way to promote them is through liberal, moderate means. the notion of ideological persuasion is not absent, it is merely tacit. thus, importantly, bbc ethics did not necessarily conflict with the colonial officer’s role in colonial society. harry franklin, the first director, remarked that the station ‘tried to keep politics […] out of broadcasting as much as possible’, which meant first ‘white politics’, but soon also ‘african [i.e., nationalist] politics’. he claimed that the reason for the station's popularity was its ability to ‘[steer] clear of politics’. this ethic is similar to the bbc's self-image as impartial, which in the colonial situation translated into upholding the social and political status quo. in both the colonial and federal states, this was hampered by outright censorship and the federal government’s desire to use broadcasting as blatant propaganda. as shown above, fbc censorship was harsh and control strong, but the liberalism of the african service in political reporting, as well as media ethics, provided some counterbalance. however, the influence of ‘powerful sites’ – in this case, london and ‘bush house’ (where the bbc's empire service was based) – went far beyond that. the bbc's ethics and style were important influences, primarily on the news and commentaries formats. african broadcasters saw the journalistic ethics embodied by the bbc as ideals to strive for, especially when they struggled fraenkel, wayaleshi, p. - . j. hale, radio power: propaganda and international broadcasting (london, temple, ), p. xv. franklin, flag wagger, p. . in its early years, the bbc's role (e.g. in the general strike) can be seen in a similar way; a. briggs, the history of broadcasting in the united kingdom vol. : the birth of broadcasting (london, oxford university press, ), p. - . with federal control. with the end of federation, they appeared to have won. the northern rhodesian broadcasting corporation, established on january in expectation of the independence of zambia, was structured as an independent corporation, this time with african representatives in decisive posts on the board. because of a lack of sufficiently educated african personnel, the post of director general was for some time after independence occupied by whites. the first was donald lightfoot, followed by michael kittermaster, who returned to zambia in . however, the fact that these two had been chosen also speaks to their long time commitment to african broadcasting and their opposition to the central african federation.the ethics of objective, disinterested journalism are of course connected to the kantian, normative notion of cosmopolitan citizenship, reformulated in the s by david held and again, post- / , by kwame anthony appiah. although neither refers explicitly to journalism, and appiah only to media in a chapter on cultural imperialism, their notion of citizenship relates to the ethics of objective journalism, which seeks to produce educated citizens capable of making informed decisions in democratic politics. david harvey criticises this normative notion of a new cosmopolitanism as, basically, old-style universalist liberalism that only apparently addresses the postcolonial critique and ignores global hierarchies of hegemony and power. his notion of the enduring geographical unevenness inherent in cosmopolitanism is important here, because it relates to the global material and intellectual hierarchies within which the broadcasters functioned. however, these were not the only hierarchies to which they were subjected. ironically, their embrace of bbc ethics put african broadcasters at odds with the unip government after zambia's independence. from its inception, unip assumed that it represented the majority of african voters, and that, as it was the true representative of african interests, democratic decision-making processes inside the party were unnecessary: ‘seventy years of colonial rule had d. held, cosmopolitanism: ideas and realities (cambridge/malden, polity, ); appiah, cosmopolitanism; d. harvey, cosmopolitanism and the geographies of freedom (new york, columbia up, ), p. -- . not demonstrated the power of political debate’. unip's leaders refused to negotiate with the more moderate anc unless absolutely necessary. the party's victory in the january elections for its leaders showed a clear rejection by the electorate of the ‘multi-racial politics’ preferred by the british, in favour of african nationalism. initially unip considered itself both the symbol and the main proponent of national unity. in the first years after independence the party retained its dominance in zambian national politics, but it was challenged by intra-party conflict as well as an anc opposition that, albeit on a small scale, had a stable electoral base. conflicts inside the party as well as with the anc opposition were soon given an ethnic interpretation. the anc's electoral base was southern zambia, while every time a unip body or the parliament itself contained a majority from a particular region or ethnicity, political conflicts would be expressed in ethnic terms. the increasing authoritarianism of unip in government, and its leaders' conviction that the process of nation-building could only be achieved by a strong party in power, led it to overhaul the autonomous model of the nrbc in , incorporating the new station – renamed the zambia broadcasting services (zbs) – as a parastatal. the nationalisation process at zbs redefined the role of the medium as well as that of the broadcasters. their self-definition differed significantly from the expectations the new government put on them. of the broadcasters i interviewed, those who had started before the restructuring of zbs, complained bitterly about the censorship, control and administrative barriers put in place by the unip government. significantly, the younger generation of broadcasters, who had joined after the establishment of zbs, accepted this as part of their job:so we were being controlled by the state. and you also knew what to do, because you can't just go on phiri, political history, p. . see the recent studies that revise zambian contemporary history. c.m. chabatama,y.a. chondoka and b.j. phiri (eds) zambia: forty years after independence, - (lusaka, university of zambia press, ); j.-b. gewald, m. hinfelaar and g. macola (eds), one zambia, many histories: towards a history of post-colonial zambia (leiden, brill, ); g. macola, liberal nationalism in central africa: a biography of harry mwaanga nkumbula (london, palgrave, ). air and say something which will not please the government. you'll be in trouble’. the responsibilities were made clear for aspiring journalists: ‘once you joined the institution, you were being oriented for three months. during this period, you were told the function of the particular institution you were joining’. this function was quite clear: ‘with the government services at that time, i think there were no problems, because we were inclined to fulfill the requirements of the government. our duties were specifically to promote the activities of the government. we were an agent or the mouthpiece of the government’. looking at the region, this was not unusual. the tanzanian broadcasting corporation (tbc) developed in a similar way and even carefully censored tanzanian music (which never happened in zambia) mainly because of the musical tradition of taarab which was used by the tanu government as propaganda. the restucturing of the zambian station as a parastatal led to significant changes in hierarchy, career paths and working conditions for broadcasters, most of which the older generation, who had resisted cabs and fbc censorship, could not accept. what specifically did not go down well with them was the introduction of strict censorship by the ruling party to the news and actuality programmes, which had opened up to african producers and nationalist content only two years before. while young broadcasters who had joined the zbs from accepted the new regime, older journalists saw their expectations of doing bbc-style independent journalism ruined. this was not just because of censored programmes, but also because they felt obstructed in day-to-day work. cosmo mlongoti, who had joined the relatively new zbs tv station, explains: they didn't even appreciate the constraints of having only one camera to undertake services of government operations and other, civic operations. to them, what was most important was government operations. we experienced times when there was a camera assigned for state house operations. and even if there was something very important that was taking place interview, emelda yumbe, lusaka, december . interview, mwansa kapeya, lusaka, december . k. askew, performing the nation: swahili music and cultural politics in tanzania (chicago/london, chicago university press, ), pp. - . elsewhere, that camera should never leave the station, it should stay. [i] had served during colonial times, and i had colonial bosses, and we were free to move equipment to whatever case or priority. we did it freely. we came into a time when you could not do that freely. i don't know who would ever give you permission. you'd probably have to ask the minister for permission to use the camera elsewhere, to avoid any conflict between state house [and] your organization. the director himself would never allow you, because if he did, he'd lose his job. and as i said, quite a number of guys lost their job[s] because of that kind of thing. in , this development culminated in the employment of broadcasters as civil servants, thus falling below even fbc practice.the last time broadcasters had been employed as civil servants had been when the colonial government had used cabs as its mouthpiece. with incorporation into the bureaucracy came a significant cut in salaries. many broadcasters were not happy with this development: they looked at broadcasters and tried to fit them into civil service slots or job descriptions. so you became a clerical officer or senior clerical officer. [...] but, you see, that was not the only problem. [...] there were even more serious structural things, where people expected you to be in the office at the same time as the civil servants, oblivious of the fact that at p.m. the typical civil servant goes home. you as a broadcaster are continuing with the work. alick nkhata, now deputy director general, protested, but without success: a broadcaster is not a clerical officer in the sense that he types drafted material. a broadcaster is creative. he makes up his own stories, produces them and these are later broadcast. now if we take into consideration the fact that stories or talks which find their way into programmes must be informative, educational and entertaining, then we must admit that a broadcaster must be a creative personality if he is to provide material required of his interview, cosmo mlongoti, lusaka, october . according to eddie mupeso per cent. interview, eddie mupeso, lusaka, january . interview, charles muyamwa, lusaka, september . profession. [...] we shall never attract good men to the broadcasting profession if they are going to do a more difficult and exacting job to be paid the same salary as a man who merely types letters day in and day out. nkhata’s idea of zambian broadcasting combined journalistic ethics with authentic zambian culture in programmes, not only through ‘traditional’ content, but by going beyond merely having the right education (i.e. journalism courses at evelyn hone college or the bbc). broadcasting, he argued, was a creative profession, and qualifications included an understanding of, for example, ‘deep’ bemba – a deep understanding of icibemba, one of the largest language groups in zambia: we firmly believe that a bemba announcer or lozi announcer should be able to understand the idiomatic and proverbial aspect of his language, to make broadcasting more interesting. we also believe that he should be able to have some idea of how people live in his tribal area, etc. etc. these qualities are abundant in persons who have had education up to standard six in the rural areas, during the period - . we do not see any reason why people of this educational standard with extensive experience either in the teaching or clerical field, should be barred from joining broadcasting as broadcasters. this submission, which the government ignored, shows that nkhata still adhered to ideas about the path to modernity that had been shaped during colonialism. his concern to further develop an authentic zambian style of cultural broadcasting (which he, as well as kateka, mlongoti and others, had masterfully shaped) he shares with many of his colleagues in colonial broadcasting, that the country should become more modern socially, while remaining true to its traditions culturally in order to reconcile social and cultural change. this, for them, was the only way to develop an authentically zambian national identity. consequently, they organised programming so that lozi, tonga or bemba cultural programmes wove together in formats like ‘zambian jazz’ or ‘zambian institute of commonwealth studies (hereafter ics), / / , a. nkhata, written submission to the administrative commission of inquiry into effectiveness of zambia information and broadcasting services, november , p. . ibid., pp. - . musicians’ that featured a zambian-produced music, that blended several musical traditions (jazz, guitar music and urban zambian music). this coincided with listeners’ tastes, as an audience survey established in : nearly half of all interviewees wanted more zambian music on the radio. in , the government decreed a per cent quota for zambian music played on zbs, and the station reintroduced ‘zimene mwatifunsa’. but nkhata's model -- which represented the journalists’ practical and ethical ideals – was frustrated by a government that conflated the stability of the young zambian nation with the party's longevity in power, convinced that unip was the only true representative of the zambian nation. shortly before choosing the authoritarian option, the president, kenneth kaunda, held a two-day ‘national mass media seminar’ for the country's journalists. in a ‘lengthy and “brutally frank”’ address, he sharply criticised them for failing to fulfil their duty to help build a ‘humanist society’. for kaunda, ‘the mass media were to be an instrument of nation-building’, but instead journalists ‘still lived in the colonial past’ and were ‘caught up in the cobwebs of the so-called ethics of journalism, a lot of which were no more than colonial myths designed to mislead young zambians in order that they could work against zambian interests in furtherance of foreign interests’. this paranoid worldview, in which not just criticism of government, but all negative reporting was deemed counterproductive and a threat to nation-building, stood behind the government's repressive measures against the media. by , these policies had already affected the media so strongly that the assembled journalists ‘unanimously endorsed the president's remarks’. for zambian politicians, ‘[t]he press was to foster national unity in all that it published. any article that could possibly cause disunity in the nation was anathema to the party’. all journalists who had joined the station during the colonial and federal periods had left the station by the time kaunda introduced the one-party state. the new generation had fewer qualms f. kasoma, the press in zambia: the development, role and control of national newspapers in zambia, - (lusaka, multimedia publications, ), p. . kenneth kaunda, cited in ibid. ibid., p. . ibid., p. . about their role in zambia, at least partly due to their training in courses organised in lusaka. a bbc broadcaster seconded to zbs reported in : great stress was laid in these courses on the broadcasters' responsibilities to the country and to the part they could play in its further development. early in a rather formal 'hand-out' about a speech of president kaunda's urging zambians to form co-operatives had been broadcast. each course discussed at some length how, as broadcasters, they could help to keep people interested in this idea by using different radio forms. thus, the journalists role was not ‘objective’ and autonomous reporting (a goal that had been set in theory before independence, albeit never structurally enabled), but to contribute positively to the country’s development – i.e., nation-building. in unip's worldview, in which the party and its government was the only guarantor of national cohesion, criticism of either amounted to endangering national unity. under the colonial government, there had been no conflict for journalists between bbc liberalism and unip's nationalism, for the censorship in colonial radio that suppressed discussion of nationalism was a clear violation of the bbc's core principles. now, however, the nationalist government continued the policy of censorship, albeit based on a different ideological reasoning. while nationalist broadcasters continued to be sympathetic towards unip and its project of nation-building, they could not tolerate constant interference in their day-to-day work. masiye took a position in the ministry of information and broadcasting but eventually left to study and practice law. as deputy director, nkhata struggled unsuccessfully with governmental restrictions and finally returned to his career in music. in , he retired to his farm in southern zambia. chileshe had already left in to become a public relations officer for the anglo- american corporation in kitwe. mlongoti and others also left, frustrated by the working conditions. by the early s, all of the more prominent broadcasters who had started in colonial radio had left the station. bbc wac e / / , s. booth, report of secondment to zambia . tragically, he was killed in during a rhodesian army raid on a nearby camp of zimbabwe african peoples union fighters, which operated (with unip’s support) from zambian soil. conclusion colonial radio was a fundamentally ambivalent project, because it had to respect listeners' wishes if propaganda was to reach its target audience. african broadcasters, who had been integrated into the system for exactly that reason, participated in this ambivalence. their political commitment and creativity played an important role maintaining this ambivalence through a particularly repressive period in zambia's colonial history. in music and entertainment programmes, african broadcasters, in cahoots with their listeners, subverted the very propaganda that they translated and announced in the controlled news slots. however, they could count on their direct superiors’ sympathy. this cosmopolitan formation took ideological ambivalence a good step further, not just subverting colonial propaganda, but also influencing african broadcasters' attitudes towards nationalism, zambian culture and their own role as journalists in colonial and post-colonial society. while this strengthened their resolve in challenging the colonial state, it also put them at odds with unip’s increasingly authoritarian style of government from onwards. cosmopolitanism -- as a class-based analysis of an intellectual formation -- can explain the apparent contradiction between dedicated nationalist broadcasters and their nationalist government. it also highlights their attitude to modernity in general and zambia's path to achieving it in particular. thus, zambian broadcasters, as a part of the country's intellectual elite, absorbed many colonial ideas about zambian culture, modernity and the nation. they also saw their role as journalists in light of the bbc ideal of objectivity and autonomy. while an analysis of broadcasters' attitudes allows us a close look at how colonial ideology influenced post-colonial elites, it also shows the cleavage through these elites after independence, influenced by their social and political position. although unip politicians and broadcasters shared ideas about the future of the zambian nation, about the character of that nation and its path to modernity, and although broadcasters might even have shared unip’s identification of the party with the nation itself, they could not tolerate the authoritarian attitude the party and government exhibited toward journalists. while unip’s attitude towards nation-building is not unique in the region, other nationalist parties in the following years would build up their own specialised media staff. in countries such as angola, namibia and zimbabwe, lengthy guerrilla wars and the cohesion developed by nationalist movements in exile, led to the establishment of nationalist propaganda media outlets, among them radios broadcasting from external services in thoseafrican countries that supported them (zambia being one of the mostimportant). after independence, the staff of these external stations took the higher positions of new broadcasting stations in their home countries. particularly in namibia and zimbabwe, the main problem consisted in bringing together two formerly opposed teams of journalists. in s zimbabwe, the new station, zbc, ' found itself in a hostile media environment, surrounded by institutions with long colonial experience’. thus, it remained under strong government control, with loyal zimbabwe african national union (zanu) cadres, many of them with experience in the former external radio 'voice of zimbabwe’, staffing key posts.during the first years after independence, unip became more and more nervous about ethnic rifts inside the party, and in the nation, and reacted sensitively to any criticism of government, which it saw as endangering national unity. what for unip was a prerequisite for national unity, the broadcasters saw as endangering the liberal, democratic? society they wanted to build. what had united them before independence, set them apart after it. dr. des. robert heinze department of history, university of berne, switzerland länggassstrasse , bern e-mail: robert.heinze@hist.unibe.ch tel: + -( ) - - j. zaffiro, media & democracy in zimbabwe, - (colorado springs, colorado international academic publishers, ), p. . [pdf] chemical signals in terrestrial vertebrates: search for design features. | semantic scholar skip to search formskip to main content> semantic scholar's logo search sign increate free account you are currently offline. some features of the site may not work correctly. 	doi: . /c np g corpus id: chemical signals in terrestrial vertebrates: search for design features. @article{apps chemicalsi, title={chemical signals in terrestrial vertebrates: search for design features.}, author={p. apps and p. weldon and m. kramer}, journal={natural product reports}, year={ }, volume={ }, pages={ - } } 	p. apps, p. weldon, m. kramer 	published 	biology, medicine 	natural product reports we compiled a data set of the compounds that terrestrial vertebrates (amniotes) use to send chemical signals, and searched for relationships between signal compound properties and signal function. overall, relationships were scarce and formed only small-scale patterns. terrestrial vertebrate signalling compounds 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accept & continue powerpoint presentation physical modeling of musical instruments on handheld mobile devices. pat scandalis (cto, acting ceo) gps@moforte.com dr. julius o. smith iii (founding consultant) nick porcaro (chief scientist) moforte inc. moforte.com’s technical deck / / / / mailto:gps@moforte.com first a quick demo! / / demo (youtube) demo: modeled guitar features, purple haze http://youtu.be/pweown pgkc http://youtu.be/pweown pgkc http://youtu.be/pweown pgkc overview • a brief history of physically modeled musical instruments as well as some commercial products that have used this technology. • demonstration what is currently possible on handheld mobile devices using the moforte guitar. • brief overview of where the technology is heading. / / what is physical modeling synthesis? • methods in which a sound is generated using a mathematical model of the physical source of sound. • any gestures that are used to interact with a real physical system can be mapped to parameters yielded an interactive an expressive performance experience. • physical modeling is a collection of different techniques. / / why musical physical models on handheld mobile devices? • handheld mobile computing devices are now ubiquitous. • these devices are powerful, connected and equipped with a variety of sensors. • pervasiveness of mobile/sensor rich computing devices has created an opportunity to revisit parametrically controlled, physically modeled, virtual musical instruments using handheld mobile devices. / / properties of handheld mobile devices • ubiquitous • small • powerful • multi-touch screens • sensors: acceleration, compass, gyroscope, camera, gestures • connected to networks • socially connected • integrated payment systems / / why even model a guitar, don't samples sound great? • sampled guitars do sound great. but they are not interactive, and they can have a flat repetitive playback experience. • by modeling the guitar its possible to make interactive features like, feedback, harmonics, pick position, slides brightness, palm muting part of a performance. • moforte has identified a list of around guitar articulations that can be used by players. the physicality of the model makes it possible for these articulations to be used in performances. / / currently implement articulations apagado arpeggio strum bend bend by distressing the neck burn or destroy guitar feedback harmonics finger picking glissando hard dive with the whammy bar harmonic muted strum pinch harmonic play harmonics with tip of finger and thumb polyphonic bend polyphonic slide, polyphonic slide + open strings scrape slide staccato steinberger trans- trem strum surf apagado surf quick slide up the neck tap time vibrato walk bass whammy bend whammy spring restore future articulations bottleneck (portamento slide) bowing bridge/neck short strings ebowing finger style (eddie van halen) hammer, polyphonic hammer individual string pitch bend legato pluck, sharp or soft pick pop prepared string (masking tape) pull, polyphonic pull rasqueado reverb spring bang. scrape+ (ala black dog) slap strum and body tap strum and string tap touching ungrounded cable trill trill up the neck into echo vibrato onset delay volume pedal swell volume pedal swell into delay device brief (though not complete) history of physical modeling synthesis as well as a few commercial products using the technology / / the voder ( - ) - homer dudley • analog electronic speech synthesis • analog model of the vocal tract • develop from research on voice compression at bell labs. • featured at the worlds fair • youtube / / http://youtu.be/msdfu xdozk kelly-lochbaum vocal tract model ( ) / / daisy bell ( ) • daisy bell (mp ) • vocal part by kelly and lochbaum ( ) • musical accompaniment by max mathews • computed on an ibm • based on russian speech-vowel data from gunnar fant’s book • probably the first digital physical-modeling synthesis sound example by any method • inspired arthur c. clarke to adapt it for “ : a space odyssey” the hal ’s “first song” / / http://ccrma.stanford.edu/~jos/mp /daisy-klm.mp http://ccrma.stanford.edu/~jos/mp /daisy-klm.mp http://www.moforte.com/wp-content/uploads/ / /hal .mp karplus-strong (ks) algorithm ( ) / / • discovered ( ) as “self-modifying wavetable synthesis” • wavetable is preferably initialized with random numbers • licensed to mattel • the first musical use of the algorithm was in the work “may all your children be acrobats” written in by david a. jaffe. (mp ) http://www.moforte.com/wp-content/uploads/ / /maycba .mp eks algorithm (jaffe-smith ) / / • musical example “silicon valley breakdown” (jaffe ) (mp ) • musical example bwv- (used to intro the next machine ) (mp ) http://www.moforte.com/wp-content/uploads/ / /svb.mp https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~jos/mp /bachfugue.mp digital waveguide models (smith ) • useful for efficient models of – strings – bores – plane waves – conical waves / / sheila vocal track modeling (cook ) / / perry cook’s spasm "singing physical articulatory synthesis model” • diphones: (mp ) • nasals: (mp ) • scales: (mp ) • “sheila”: (mp ) https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~jos/mp /diphs.mp https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~jos/mp /diphs.mp https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~jos/mp /nasals.mp https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~jos/mp /nasals.mp https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~jos/mp /vocaliz.mp https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~jos/mp /vocaliz.mp https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~jos/mp /vocaliz.mp https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~jos/mp /shiela.mp https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~jos/mp /shiela.mp https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~jos/mp /shiela.mp https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~jos/mp /shiela.mp commuted synthesis (smith) ( ) / / commuted synthesis examples / / • electric guitar, different pickups and bodies (sondius) (mp ) • mandolin (stk) (mp ) • classical guitar (mikael laurson, cumhur erkut, and vesa välimäki) (mp ) • bass (sondius) (mp ) • upright bass (sondius) (mp ) • cello (sondius) (mp ) • piano (sondius) (mp ) • harpsichord (sondius) (mp ) http://scandalis.com/jarrah/audio/guitarpickups.mp https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~jos/mp /mandolin .mp https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~jos/mp /prelude.mp https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~jos/mp /bass.mp http://www.moforte.com/wp-content/uploads/ / /bass.mp https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~jos/mp /cello.mp http://www.moforte.com/wp-content/uploads/ / /sondiuspiano.mp http://www.moforte.com/wp-content/uploads/ / /sondiuspiano.mp http://scandalis.com/jarrah/audio/harpsichord.mp http://scandalis.com/jarrah/audio/harpsichord.mp yamaha vl line ( ) • yamaha licensed “digital waveguide synthesis” for use in its products including the vl line (vl- , vl- m, vl- m, ex- , ex- , chip sets, sound cards, soft-synth drivers) • shakuhachi: (mp ) • oboe and bassoon: (mp ) • tenor saxophone: (mp ) / / https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~jos/mp /shakuhachi.mp https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~jos/mp /shakuhachi.mp https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~jos/mp /oboe-bassoon.mp https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~jos/mp /oboe-bassoon.mp https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~jos/mp /tenor-sax.mp https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~jos/mp /tenor-sax.mp korg synthkit line ( ) • synthkit ( ) • prophecy ( ) • trinity ( ) • oasys pci ( ) • oasys ( ) • kronos ( ) / / “the next big thing” ( ) / / the next big thing / the history of pm / stanford sondius project ( - ) • stanford otl/ccrma created the sondius project to assist with commercializing physical modeling technologies. • the result was a modeling tool known as synthbuilder, and a set of models covering about two thirds of the general midi set. • many modeling techniques were used including eks, waveguide, commuted synthesis, coupled mode synthesis, virtual analog. / / synthbuilder (porcaro, et al) ( ) • synthbuilder was a user- extensible, object-oriented, nextstep music kit application for interactive real-time design and performance of synthesizer patches, especially physical models. • patches were represented by networks consisting of digital signal processing elements called unit generators and midi event elements called note filters and note generators. / / the frankenstein box ( ) • the frankenstein box was an dsp k compute farm build by bill putnam and tim stilson • there was also a single card version know as the “cocktail frank” • used for running models developed with synthbuilder • the distortion guitar ran on dsps with an additional dsps used for outboard effects. / / http://scandalis.com/jarrah/images/frankenstein.gif http://scandalis.com/jarrah/images/p _next_frankenstein.gif the sondius electric guitar ( ) • pick model for different guitars/pickups (commuted synthesis, scandalis) • feedback and distortion with amp distance (sullivan) • wah-wah based on cry baby measurements (putnam, stilson) • reverb and flanger (dattorro) • hybrid allpass delay line for pitchbend (van duyne, jaffe, scandalis) • performed using a -channel midi guitar controller. • with no effects, strings ran at k on a mhz motorola dsp. • waveguide guitar distortion, amplifier feedback (mp ) / / http://scandalis.com/jarrah/audio/distortionguitar.mp http://scandalis.com/jarrah/images/waveguideguitar- .gif http://scandalis.com/jarrah/images/waveguideguitar- .gif sondius sound examples ( ) • waveguide flute model (mp ) • waveguide guitar model, different pickups (mp ) • waveguide guitar distortion, amplifier feedback (mp ) • waveguide guitar model, wah-wah (mp ) • waveguide guitar model, jazz guitar (es- ) (mp ) • harpsichord model (mp ) • tibetan bell model (mp ) • wind chime model (mp ) • tubular bells model (mp ) • percussion ensemble (mp ) • bass (mp ) • upright bass (mp ) • cello (mp ) • piano (mp ) • harpsichord (mp ) • virtual analog (mp ) / / http://scandalis.com/jarrah/audio/waveguideflute.mp http://scandalis.com/jarrah/audio/guitarpickups.mp http://scandalis.com/jarrah/audio/distortionguitar.mp https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~jos/mp /gtr-wah.mp http://scandalis.com/jarrah/audio/jazzguitar.mp http://scandalis.com/jarrah/audio/harpsichord.mp http://scandalis.com/jarrah/audio/tibetanbell.mp http://scandalis.com/jarrah/audio/windchimes.mp http://www.moforte.com/wp-content/uploads/ / /tubularbells.mp http://www.moforte.com/wp-content/uploads/ / /cms_percussion.mp https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~jos/mp /bass.mp http://www.moforte.com/wp-content/uploads/ / /bass.mp http://www.moforte.com/wp-content/uploads/ / /bass.mp https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~jos/mp /cello.mp http://www.moforte.com/wp-content/uploads/ / /sondiuspiano.mp http://www.moforte.com/wp-content/uploads/ / /sondiuspiano.mp http://scandalis.com/jarrah/audio/harpsichord.mp http://scandalis.com/jarrah/audio/harpsichord.mp http://www.moforte.com/wp-content/uploads/ / /tekno.mp coupled mode synthesis (cms) (van duyne) ( ) • modeling of percussion sounds • modal technique with coupling • tibetan bell model (mp ) • wind chime model (mp ) • tubular bells model (mp ) • percussion ensemble (mp ) / / http://scandalis.com/jarrah/audio/tibetanbell.mp http://scandalis.com/jarrah/audio/windchimes.mp http://www.moforte.com/wp-content/uploads/ / /tubularbells.mp http://www.moforte.com/wp-content/uploads/ / /cms_percussion.mp virtual analog (stilson-smith) ( ) • alias-free digital synthesis of classic analog waveforms • digital implementation of the moog vcf. four identical one-poles in series with a feedback loop. • sounds great! (mp ) (youtube) / / http://www.moforte.com/wp-content/uploads/ / /tekno.mp http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-r opcibhes synthesis tool kit (stk) ( ) • synthesis tool kit (stk) by perry cook, gary scavone, et al. distributed by ccrma • the synthesis toolkit (stk) is an open source api for real time audio synthesis with an emphasis on classes to facilitate the development of physical modeling synthesizers. • pluck example (mp ) • stk clarinet (mp ) / / https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~jos/mp /plucked.mp https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~jos/mp /clarinet.mp seer systems “reality” ( ) • stanley jungleib, dave smith (midi, sequential circuits) • ring- sw midi synth. native signal processing. • offered a number of sondius models. / / aureal asp chip ( - ) • targeted for sound cards • hardware implementation of digital waveguide • a version of the electric guitar ran on this chip / / staccato synthcore ( ) • staccato systems spun out of sondius in to commercialize physical modeling technologies. • synthcore was a ring- synthesis driver that supported both dls (down loadable sounds) and staccato’s proprietary down loadable algorithms (dlas). it was distributed in two forms. • packaged as a ring- “midi driver”, synthcore could replace the wavetable chip on a sound card, as a software based xg- lite/dls audio solution (synthcore-oem) (sigmatel, adi) • packaged as a dll/com service, synthcore could be integrated into game titles so that games could make use of interactive audio algorithms (race car, car crashes, light sabers) (synthcore-sdk) (electronic arts, lucas arts…) / / synthcore game models ( ) / / • jet (stilson) (mp ) • race car (cascone, et al) (mp ) • example models from staccato ~ (windows only) http://www.moforte.com/wp-content/uploads/ / /jet.mp http://www.moforte.com/wp-content/uploads/ / /racecar.mp http://scandalis.com/jarrah/physicalmodels/staccatodemo.zip synthcore wavetable chip replacement • about half of the general midi set was implemented with physical models though few existing midi scores could make use of the expression parameters. • staccato was purchased by analog devices in . adi combined staccato’s ring- software based xg-lite/dls midi synth with a low cost ac codec and transformed the pc audio market from sound cards to built-in audio. / / faust-stk ( ) • faust [functional audio stream] is a synchronous functional programming language specifically designed for real- time signal processing and synthesis. • the faust compiler translates dsp specifications into equivalent c++ programs, taking care of generating efficient code. • the faust-stk is a set of virtual musical instruments written in the faust programming language and based on waveguide algorithms and on modal synthesis. most of them were inspired by instruments implemented in the synthesis toolkit (stk) and the program synthbuilder. / / smule magic fiddle ( ) / / smule | magic fiddle for ipad [st. lawrence string quartet] (youtube) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u wjfmlqjt compute for string models over the years • next machine ( ) – motorola dsp mhz k dram, k sample rate • plucks • or - guitar strings • frankenstein, cocktail frank ( ) – motorola dsp mhz k dram, k sample rate • guitar strings, feedback and distortion, • reverb, wah-wah, flange running on a additional dsps • staccato ( ) – mhz pentium, native signal processing, k sample rate – strings, feedback and distortion used around % cpu • iphone s ( ) – mhz a , k sample rate – strings, feedback and distortion use around % cpu • ipad ( ) – mhz a , k sample rate – strings, feedback and distortion use around % cpu / / moforte guitar / / demo (youtube) demo: modeled guitar features, purple haze http://youtu.be/dfdajgf_dtk http://youtu.be/dfdajgf_dtk http://youtu.be/dfdajgf_dtk moforte guitar features • modeled distortion and feedback • strumming and powerchord modes • selection of guitars • modeled guitar articulations including: harmonics, pinch harmonics, slides, apagado, glissando, string scraping, damping and auto-strum. • , + chords and custom chords • fully programmable effects chain including: distortion, • compression, wah, auto wah, -band parametric eq, • phaser, flanger, reverb, amplifier with presets. • authoring tool for song chart creation. • share creations with friends on popular social networks. • in-app purchases available for charts, instruments, effects and feature upgrades • heterogeneous computing model that fully exploits the device’s cpus, gpus, dsps and sensors to bring an interactive emotional experience to our users. / / "conduct and express” metaphor • moforte's mission is to provide highly interactive, social applications that empower everyone to make and share musical and sonic experiences. • moforte has developed a unique “conduct and express” performance metaphor that enables everyone to experience performing the guitar. the performance experience has been transformed into a to a small number of gestures: – tap/hold, for electric lead “powerchording” – swiping, for strumming) – rotations and hold swiping for expression • moforte guitar makes it possible for everyone to experience strumming a guitar, to experience what it’s like to play feedback- distortion guitar. / / the moforte guitar stack / / the dsp guitar model • numerous extensions on eks and waveguide • can be calibrated to sound like various guitars. realized in faust • charts can access and control ~ controllers. • a selection of controllers: – instrument (select a calibrated instrument) – velocity – pitchbend, pitchbendt (bending and bend smoothing rate) – t (overall decay time) – brightness (overall spectral shape) – velocity – harmonic (configure the model to generate harmonics) – pinchharmonic (pinch harmonics) – pickposition (play position on the string) – apagado (palm muting) / / demo: different guitars, rock and roll - strum the effects chain • chart player, guitar, distortion, compressor, wah, auto wah, band parametric eq, phaser, flanger, reverb, amplifier. • realized in faust. / / demo: strumming chart the performance model • strumming and powerchording gestures. • slides • strum separation time • variances • strum kernels • chart player / / disrupting the uncanny valley • we want the playing experience to be fun. • aiming toward “suspension of disbelief”. • use modeling to get close to the real physical sound generation experience. • sometimes “go over the top”. its expressive and fun! • use statistical variances to disrupt repetitive performance. / / controls with statistical variance • velocity • pickposition • brightness • t • keynum • strumseparationtime • strumvariation (in auto strum mode) / / demo: strum variations strum kernels • small strumming sequences that model how guitar players strum. • separates the harmonic context and the musical presentation. thus the same chord sequence can be performed with different strum kernels. • a strum is an rhythmic event that is part of a strum kernel. each strum can model, direction, strings, velocity, pickposition, t , brightness, strum separation time. • many types of expressive performance possible, strumming, strum clamps, finger picking, comping. / / demos: finger picking, stairway to heaven, rasguedo what’s next: modeling more articulations / / currently implement articulations apagado arpeggio strum bend bend by distressing the neck burn or destroy guitar feedback harmonics finger picking glissando hard dive with the whammy bar harmonic muted strum pinch harmonic play harmonics with tip of finger and thumb polyphonic bend polyphonic slide, polyphonic slide + open strings scrape slide staccato steinberger trans- trem strum surf apagado surf quick slide up the neck tap time vibrato walk bass whammy bend whammy spring restore future articulations bottleneck (portamento slide) bowing bridge/neck short strings ebowing finger style (eddie van halen) hammer, polyphonic hammer individual string pitch bend legato pluck, sharp or soft pick pop prepared string (masking tape) pull, polyphonic pull rasqueado reverb spring bang. scrape+ (ala black dog) slap strum and body tap strum and string tap touching ungrounded cable trill trill up the neck into echo vibrato onset delay volume pedal swell volume pedal swell into delay device what does moforte’s near term product timeline look like? • we are pushing toward a split of the app into two consumer products (guitar-inator, guitaroake) and two products for musicians (moforte guitar, powerstomp), followed by a hard launch. / / near term products / / guitar-inator (~july/ ) -targeted for ~ m consumer enthusiasts - freemium guitaraoke (~july/ ) -targeted for ~ m consumer enthusiasts - freemium moforte guitar (r . march/ ) -targeted for ~ m musicians - accompaniment and song writing - freemium powerstomp (~july/ ) -targeted for ~ k amplified musicians - paymium shared code base moforte’s near-term product roadmap ( of ) • guitar-inator (~july/ ) – targeted for consumer enthusiasts: ~ m – game-ified tablature – "conduct and express” performance metaphor – performance sharing • guitaroake (~july/ ) – targeted for consumer enthusiasts: ~ m – unique spin on karaoke: guitar accompanied karaoke, karaoke unplugged – performance sharing / / moforte’s near-term product roadmap ( of ) • moforte guitar (r . march/ ) – targeted at musicians: ~ m (~ k are guitar players) – musical instrument • touch screen strumming, “conduct and express” • midi (future) • auto-solo (future) – accompaniment – song writing – performance sharing • powerstomp (~july/ ) – targeted at guitar players (~ k) – all-in-one effects chain – plug in a real guitar – special cable available – special pedal available / / heterogeneous computation • heterogeneous computing model that fully exploits the device’s cpus, gpus, dsps and sensors to bring an interactive emotional experience to our users. • guitar/effects model runs on cpu and dsp • sprites, particles run on gpu • dsp used for mix-down and effects during social sharing • sensors used for sonic interaction / / technology faqs / / when will it be available for android? • we plan to support android by holiday . • we see android as an important opportunity and key to meeting our target goals. • the core dsp is implemented in faust which is emitted as c++. faust now supports android, and the core dsp is easily ported. • we are still evaluating what strategy to take with the performance model (likely a c++ port) and the ui. / / what is moforte's "conduct and express" metaphor? • moforte's mission is to provide highly interactive, social applications that empower everyone to make and share musical and sonic experiences. • moforte has developed a unique “conduct and express” performance metaphor that enables everyone to experience performing the guitar. the performance experience has been transformed into a to a small number of gestures: – tap/hold, for electric lead “powerchording” – swiping, for strumming) – rotations and hold swiping for expression • moforte guitar makes it possible for everyone to experience strumming a guitar, to experience what it’s like to play feedback- distortion guitar. / / can users jam together across the internet? ( of ) • moforte has investigated this area but is not currently working on creating a platform for jamming across the internet. • latency is a significant issue. – see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/latency_(audio) • the shared performance experience is particularly sensitive to perceived latency. within the mi (musical instrument) industry its a rule of thumb that if key->sound latency is much larger than ms, the performer will need to "play ahead" leading to a performance that is “loose”, error prone and even frustrating. • audio latency facts: – audio latency in air at sea level/room temp ~ ms/ft – using the speed of light the fastest round trip around the earth is ms (vacuum) - ms (fo cable). – real inter-network latencies can be much greater and more variable. / / http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/latency_(audio) can users jam together across the internet? ( of ) • some types of performances are possible: – slow performances – cascaded – side by side (one player after the other) – electrifying, tight duets, or real ensembles are less likely to work. • for consumers an experience like a band jamming across the internet is not likely be a good experience / / • in flamenco music the interaction between two players is referred to as duende "it comes from inside as a physical/emotional response to art. it is what gives you chills, makes you smile or cry as a bodily reaction to an artistic performance that is particularly expressive". these players are performing and syncing with around ms of air latency. this is typical of many performance situations. what is the latency? • the largest source of latency (for ios) appears to between screen interaction and the guitar model. note that the audio buffer latency is about ms. • we started at ms screen to audio out. • we brought this down to - ms by replacing apple's gesture handlers with a custom gesture handler. this makes sense. gesture handling requires analysis of a moderate amount of state to initiate an action. • we have not yet measured midi/osc to audio latency, but we believe that it will allow us to get close to our ms goal. • powerstomp which is audio-in/effects chain/audio out is around ms. / / what about wireless audio out of the device? • we've looked a number of wireless audio solutions. most are intended for playback of recorded music and have significant latency; some as much as second. • we've not found a solution yet with reasonable latency. • we've also looked a number of "legacy" wireless fm transmitters. none of what we have tried have good audio performance. • we may need to build our own technology in this area. / / what about wireless synchronized performances (virtual orchestras)? • we have been experimenting with the idea of wireless conductor/performer. • one device is the conductor and the source of time. • each device (performer) has its own part. • the performers receive temporal corrections from the conductor using techniques similar to ntp. • these temporal corrections can be very minimal data in the wireless network. we estimate that temporal corrections can be as infrequent as once every seconds. • this will enable a large number of devices in a wireless network to coordinate a performance. / / what about playing along with your music library? • its possible, but may not be a great user experience. • currently the screen->sound latency is a bit long (~ - ms) to make this a great user experience. • playing along with the music library may be possible via midi/osc or even the guitar-iinator enclosure concept. / / can the app listen to your music library and automatically generate charts to play? • we've been looking at various mir (music information retrieval) technologies to support this idea. • there are a number of products on the market that try to do harmonic context recognition (the chords) with various degrees of success. – capo an assisted/manual transcription program used by music transcribers has some support to recognize chords using spectral techniques. – a website called chordify.net that works to recognize the chords for a song using mir techniques. • this is an active area of research. • we may partner with other companies that work in this area. the goal would be to get them to generate our chart xml based on mir techniques. / / what will the social network sharing look like? / / will moforte do physical models for games? • at staccato we did physical models for games: http://www.scandalis.com/jarrah/physicalmodels/index.ht ml#staccato – we had adoption success ( - ): the race car and crashes in the ea nascar line of games, a light sabre for lucas arts. – the monetization opportunity was not there. the studios wanted to pay as little as $ k/title for a buyout of the technology. • in games were selling upwards of $ /seat. today a game is a few dollars and we don't think that there is a reasonable monetization opportunity. / / http://www.scandalis.com/jarrah/physicalmodels/index.html http://www.scandalis.com/jarrah/physicalmodels/index.html http://www.scandalis.com/jarrah/physicalmodels/index.html http://www.scandalis.com/jarrah/physicalmodels/index.html can you sense pressure/impulse with the touch screen? • this would be useful for percussion and other instruments. • we've experimented with using the accelerometer to extract a parameter that correlates with pressure. there are a number of challenges with this approach. – on ios devices the accelerometer appears to be under-sampled to properly identify an impulse peak. – the result is highly skewed by how rigidly the user is holding the device, and when the device is set down on a rigid surface (table), it does not work at all. • we believe that there is a correlation between spot-size and force. this would need to be sampled at a reasonable rate and integrated over an appropriate window. – ios has some non-public api to read spot size, but use of this api is known to be a reason for app rejection. – we understand that android provides access to spot size for a touch. we've not yet experimented with this. • search reveals that there are a number of efforts to implement a hw solution. / / do you have backing tracks? • we are planning to support backing tracks in a future release. • playing with a backing track involves some of the same latency issues that exist as with playing along with your music library. • we are developing an "auto-solo" technology that will mitigate most of these issues and allow even the enthusiast to play along with a backing track and sound like an amazing player. / / how much of the cpu is moforte guitar utilizing? • we are currently running six strings and the effects chain. • on an iphone s or ipad this is using about % or the cpu… ~ % for the guitar strings. • visualization graphics are running on the gpu. • the compute opportunity gets better with time and we plan to exploit that. / / how accurate is the timing in moforte guitar? • in ios for audio we are using coreaudio with ms buffers. • the sequencer is very accurate. in ios we are using a coreanimation timer which is tied to the graphics refresh rate. • we are using standard techniques to manage jitter (~ ms on average). / / why even model a guitar, don't samples sound great? • sampled guitars do sound great. but they are not interactive, and they can have a flat repetitive playback experience. • by modeling the guitar its possible to make interactive features like, feedback, harmonics, pick position, slides brightness, palm muting part of a performance. • moforte has identified a list of around guitar articulations that can be used by players. the physicality of the model makes it possible for these articulations to be used in performances. / / currently implement articulations apagado arpeggio strum bend bend by distressing the neck burn or destroy guitar feedback harmonics finger picking glissando hard dive with the whammy bar harmonic muted strum pinch harmonic play harmonics with tip of finger and thumb polyphonic bend polyphonic slide, polyphonic slide + open strings scrape slide staccato steinberger trans- trem strum surf apagado surf quick slide up the neck tap time vibrato walk bass whammy bend whammy spring restore future articulations bottleneck (portamento slide) bowing bridge/neck short strings ebowing finger style (eddie van halen) hammer, polyphonic hammer individual string pitch bend legato pluck, sharp or soft pick pop prepared string (masking tape) pull, polyphonic pull rasqueado reverb spring bang. scrape+ (ala black dog) slap strum and body tap strum and string tap touching ungrounded cable trill trill up the neck into echo vibrato onset delay volume pedal swell volume pedal swell into delay device do you model all oscillation modes of the string, x-y-torsional. coupling, multi stage decay? • we are modeling one of the primary modes. • we are looking at adding bridge coupling • as available compute increases we may add a second primary mode as well as other features. / / what about acoustic guitars and all the other chordophones? • yes we are working on many different types of electric and acoustic chordophones. • moforte is developing a calibration process that will allow us to generate model data for these different instruments. • these instruments will be offered as in-app purchases for moforte guitar. / / when will moforte offer a ukulele? • we are working on modeling a ukulele along with a number of other chordophones. • these instruments will be offered as in-app purchases for moforte guitar. • the ukulele is one of the most requested instruments that we are asked about ;-) / / can i plug my real guitar into the effects chain? • moforte has been working on an in-app upgrade to moforte guitar called powerstomp that will allow a user to plug a real instrument into the effects chain. • powerstomp can be combined with a special audio in/out cable to connect the guitar, device and amplifier. also powerstomp supports the airturn next/previous pedal to step through a chart of effects changes. • we demo-ed powerstomp at namm in january. • powerstomp will likely ship in the spring or summer. / / what’s the plan for growing the number of effects that are offered? • moforte's monetization model includes selling additional effects both for the model guitar and for powerstomp, the effects chain upgrade. • there is a large body of open-source and bsd effects processor algorithms to draw on. we will likely re-implement these processors in faust. • moforte has a list of effect units that it plans to offer for sale in the near term. we expect this list to grow to between - different types of effect processors. / / the distortion sounds great. what about overdrive? • our distortion unit implements hard distortion. • as we expand our effects offerings we will offer an amp/tube/overdrive modeling unit • there is a body of open-source and bsd algorithms in this area to draw on. we will likely re-implement these algorithms in faust. / / tell me about the chart editor • the chart editor is an advanced feature that allows users to create their own charts. • moforte's underlying chart representation is specified as xml with an xsd for validation. • the chart editor that creates chart xmls is currently designed for a phone size device. • over time we will provide an alternative more expansive chart ui for tablet devices. • we may also provide a browser based ui for chart creation. • we may also open our chart specification for rd party apps to be able to create charts. / / tell me about the chordtape ui • the chordtape is the ui presentation of moforte guitar’s chart format. • moforte started out with the concept that a score is a simple list of chords that you strum. • we quickly moved on to supporting lines (riffs) with single note chords. • moforte will soon make a transition to tablature as its primary chart presentation method. • tablature is a very well known score presentation method, used by millions of guitar players. there is a large body of tablature literature that can be brought into moforte guitar. / / why would a guitar player be interested in moforte guitar? • guitar-inator is aimed at entertainment (gamified-tablature, guitar accompanied karaoke) • moforte guitar offers real utility to musicians and guitar players in the form of: – real instrument performance – effects processor for real instruments – accompaniment – song writing. / / will you do plugins vst, audio units, other audio plugin architectures? • at the present time there are roughly different audio plug-in architectures and dozens of different digital audio workstations (daws). • the task of qualifying and supporting a plugin for these combinations is enormous. • many of the plug-in companies dedicate large number of resources to qualification and support. • at the present time moforte does not plan to market and sell plugins. • however we may partner with a plugin company to offer moforte guitar. / / how are you different from the guitar hero & rock band line of games? • the guitar hero and rockband line of games are rhythm games. – the goal of game play is for the player to win points by tapping (and strum) notes at the right time based on cues on the screen. – the player is presented with a pre-recorded track, – the player earns scores and feedback about the performance. – in these games the virtual guitar does not appear to be organized like a real guitar. thus game play does not translate into a real learning experience. – because playback is a pre-recorded track, slowing down for learning mastery is difficult. • in contrast in moforte’s guitar-inator – the goal is to learn the rhythm of the part so that the part can be played and expressed in a performance visualizer. – the player is not presented with a pre-recorded track. the user is actually playing the guitar part. – if the user plays with the correct timing a tally is incremented to show the number of correct taps. – the user can play the guitar and share that performance with friends. – guitar-inator is a gamification of guitar tablature and as such can be used to learn to play the song on a real guitar. – playback can be slowed down for learning mastery. • note that moforte guitar is not a game. its a set of performance and composing tools for musicians and guitar players. / / will moforte provide guitar training software? • training software is targeted to the market of aspiring guitar players. • this is a complex educational problem and requires a significant body of training material to be authored and proven. • a the present time we are not approaching this market, though we may license our technology to companies who are working on this problem. • we will however, be providing the means for guitar players (~ m in the us) to learn to play specific pieces of music via single stepping through tablature (~r . ) / / what’s next? • more content • more instruments • more effects units • features like midi, audiobus, powerstomp, auto-solo • more apps, percussion, theremin, flute, digitaldoo … / / thanks! • mary albertson • chris chafe • john chowning • perry cook • jon dattorro • david jaffe • joe koepnick • scott levine • fernando lopez-lezcano • otl • danny petkevich • nick porcaro • bill putnam • kent sandvik • gregory pat scandalis • julius smith • tim stilson • david van brink • scott van duyne • yamaha / / and ccrma beyond band: perspectives on the high school jam session by patricia joan southworth b.ed., the university of alberta, m.arts, gonzaga university, a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of doctor of philosophy in the faculty of graduate studies (curriculum studies) the university of british columbia february © patricia joan southworth, abstract this mixed-method case study examined effects of high school musicians' participation in the jam session, a student-directed extracurricular music activity. the single case study site was a rural british columbia high school exceptional for its support of jamming. forty-four subjects, including subjects who fully met stated criteria for jammers, subjects who partly met stated criteria for jammers, and non-jamming subjects, were studied over a period of four months. the general research question was: does participation in a band room jam session benefit students cognitively and motivationally? the specific research questions were: do students who informally jam on various forms of music enhance their music skills in the perception and meaningful manipulation of music elements, and if so, how? in what ways does csikszentmihalyi's flow theory explain the continued participation of students in the jam session? three quantitative instruments were administered to jammers capable of playing a bb concert scale on a melody instrument as well as to a comparable group of non- jammers. these instruments included gordon's advanced measures of music audiation (amma), froseth's test of melodic ear-to-hand coordination (tmehc), and a researcher- developed test of ear-to-hand coordination (sor). based on anova, the researcher found no difference between jammers and non-jammer groups on amma scores (p< . ). anova showed a notable but not significant difference (p= . ) between groups on the tmehc, while a repeated measures analysis of pre-post test tmehc scores showed no effect of jamming over a period of weeks. anova showed a very clear difference between groups on the sor (p< . ). qualitative data collected via journaling, interviews, observation, and participant- observer tasks indicated that jammers were perceiving and manipulating music elements in meaningful ways, and also supported csikszentmihalyi's flow theory as an explanation for jam participation. in particular, flow characteristics including transformation of time, loss of self-consciousness, and challenge/skill balance were both observed and reported. the role of the teacher, the presence of a music subculture, and the pseudo-curricular nature of jamming were noted as possible topics for further research. ii table of contents abstract......................................................................................................... ii table of contents.......................................................................................... iii list of tables................................................................................................. vi acknowledgments......................................................................................... vii dedication......................................................................................................viii introduction.............................................................................................. . introduction: beyond band...................................................................... . specific statement of the research questions........................................ . brief description of method..................................................................... . study boundaries, limitations, and delimitations................................ . description of the case study site........................................................... . autobiographical positioning................................................................... . significance and contribution of this study.......................................... literature review..................................................................................... . introduction and overview....................................................................... . literature addressing the first research question............................... . . audiation......................................................................................... . . ear-to-hand coordination............................................................ . literature addressing the second research question........................... . . flow theory.................................................................................... . . flow: related scholarship............................................................ . . experience sampling method....................................................... . . applications of the esm............................................................... . . non-esm-based flow study: balara........................................... . . non-esm-based flow study: custodero..................................... . . flow: the connections................................................................... . emergent themes and additional perspectives..................................... . . constructivist perspective............................................................. . . jamming: multiple meanings....................................................... . . school music subculture............................................................... . . ear-playing..................................................................................... . . composition and creativity.......................................................... . . garage rock band model: transmission of knowledge........... . . popular music in schools.............................................................. . . reporting culture: van maanen's “tales of the field”............ iii methodology............................................................................................................... . introduction and overview....................................................................... . rationale for mix of methodology............................................................ . research instruments................................................................................ . . first research question instrument: amma............................. . . first research question instrument: tmehc........................... . . second research question instrument: flow observation........ . . second research question instrument: questionnaire.............. . . instruments addressing the general area of inquiry................ . administration of instruments................................................................. . . consent forms, demographic information, and pseudonyms.. . . research plan................................................................................. pilot study and adjustments............................................................................... . pilot study................................................................................................... . modifications to the research plan.......................................................... . . limitations of the tmehc........................................................... . . additional instrument: sor......................................................... . . ancillary questions........................................................................ main study................................................................................................................. . research timelines.................................................................................... . identification/designation of subjects..................................................... . first specific research question.............................................................. . . quantitative results....................................................................... . . conclusions based on quantitative results................................. . . qualitative interpretations........................................................... . second specific research question: qualitative interpretations......... . . observations of flow indicators................................................... . . challenge-skills balance............................................................... . . other flow characteristics........................................................... . . autotelicity..................................................................................... discussion................................................................................................... . first specific research question: discussion.......................................... . second specific research question: discussion..................................... . additional themes and related perspectives: discussion..................... . . constructing knowledge............................................................... . . jamming: evolving and complex................................................ . . the role of the teacher................................................................ . . school music subculture............................................................. iv . suggestions for practice........................................................................... . . suggestions for practice: ear-to-hand playing......................... . . suggestions for practice: flow theory....................................... . . suggestions for practice: social dimension............................... . . suggestions for practice: inclusion............................................. . . suggestions for practice: bottom-up implementation............. . opportunities for further research....................................................... . coda............................................................................................................ bibliography.................................................................................................. appendices..................................................................................................... appendix a: jammer profiles.............................................................................. appendix b: letters of contact, information, and consent............................. appendix c: letters/certificates of approval................................................... appendix d: research timelines......................................................................... appendix e: jammer designation questionnaire.............................................. appendix f: subject information........................................................................ v list of tables table : anova analysis of amma, tmehc, and sor test scores....................... vi acknowledgements i acknowledge, with thanks, the support and assistance given to me by my supervisor, dr. scott goble, and the members of my committee: dr. anthony clarke, dr. peter gouzouasis, and dr. william pinar. vii dedication i dedicate this work to my family: husband keith and sons mike and marty. without your help and love i could never have undertaken this wonderful journey viii introduction . introduction: beyond band i was in my second year of teaching band at my school. one morning as i arrived for work i saw a group of a dozen or so unfamiliar adults at the other end of the hall. this was not an unusual situation; the principal had designated us as a “lighthouse school” (our staff shirts featured a dazzling beam of light and read “lighting the way”), and he frequently hosted groups of educators wishing to be illuminated. this principal was a good leader, albeit one with a laser focus on two areas: academic excellence and basketball. as the group reached the door of the band room, i had a premonition that i would be invited to his office before noon, with some things to answer for. it crossed my mind to try to stop him, but it was too late; he had opened the door and feedback from an electric guitar, accompanied by manic drumming, was assaulting the ears of the group. he quickly slammed the door shut again, cringing, and i was close enough now to hear him say: “these students are here morning, noon, and night. the new band teacher we hired last year encourages this, says there is educational value in it. what i want to know is this: are these students learning? what are they learning? how are they learning? and why are they here?” the jam session, (a participant-directed, informal music activity) occurred regularly in band rooms in which i both taught and observed. i found that unless the school or classroom teacher expressly prohibited it, music students were frequently found playing their vignettes in this chapter, with the exception of . , are based on pre-study personal experiences. instruments in the band room during unscheduled and unstructured times of the day. no grade or credit was given for this in-school activity; students appeared to be participating of their own volition. i wanted to know more about student participation in jamming (the process of participating in a jam session). i asked myself two questions, knowing that there could be many more: were students enhancing their music performance through their participation in the jam, and if they were, in what ways were they doing so? could their continued participation in the jam be explained by an existing theory of motivation? the principal did an abrupt about-face and led the group back towards the gym, where i was certain that large numbers of students were shooting baskets. one member of the group saw me standing at the band room door and came back to talk. “i'd be really interested to see what is going on in there. at my school, that sort of thing is not allowed, but i must admit it does look like fun. do you really think they're learning anything useful?” beginning in the s, there was a gradual shift in many types of music-related instruction in schools, a shift from extracurricular status to curricular status. this shift meant that many band classes were subsequently offered for credit, although they still differed from many courses in the regular curriculum in that they were elective and required a commitment of time outside school hours. however, some music activities in schools remained outside the formal band curriculum and were considered part of the music extracurriculum. as defined by berk, “the extracurriculum refers to those activities and events sponsored by the school which occur outside the formal school curriculum” (berk, , p. ). whether the band room jam sessions i experienced or observed were activities sponsored by the school or ones merely tolerated by it was a matter for discussion, but the fact that jamming occurred in the school and involved music potentially placed it in the same extracurricular category as, for example, the “glee clubs” of the s. surprisingly, i found that very little was known about this common extracurricular music activity. i eased open the band room door, revealing not only the guitar player and the drummer we had heard a moment ago, but also a sax player, a singer with a trumpet in one hand, and a bass player. the music they were playing with such enthusiasm defied description, although i had a hunch that it might be related to ska. noting my companion's hands over his ears, i blinked the classroom lights to get their attention. the sax player turned to us: “hey, wanna hear this new song i wrote for the remembrance day assembly next week? i was just showing these people how the riff goes, and they were putting a groove and some changes to it.” i proposed this study because i believed that a greater knowledge of the jam session was critical to our understanding of music participation in schools. i suggested that more information was needed about this musical activity that occurred voluntarily, spontaneously, and occupied a position of significance in the school day for many students. i contended that the jam session was unique among school music activities in that it was student initiated, interactive, and largely student directed. surprisingly, i noted that there was a dearth of existing research that addressed this common event. my companion surprised me with her reaction: “i was really enjoying that, actually! could you play it again?” they did so, playing a bit self-consciously at first. within a minute or so, however, the sax player's eyes closed; as he was playing by ear rather glee clubs typically involved singing, with a repertoire designed to boost school spirit. than reading the music; to my companion's surprise, this did not appear to impede his performance. soon he was in the zone , swaying back and forth and oblivious to our presence. i decided to examine the jam session by means of a case study. it was my aim to provide a thick description that could draw the reader into the world of the jam session, in order that the reader might better understand what was happening. stake suggested that case study researchers should aim for “...a personal capture of the experience so, from their own involvement, they can interpret it, recognize its contents, puzzle the many meanings while still there, and pass along an experiential, naturalistic account for readers to participate themselves in some similar reflection” (stake, , p. ). my decision was to examine the jam session using a mixed-method approach, using both qualitative and quantitative instruments which were either existing or self-developed. in reporting my research findings, i employed a variety of strategies designed to more fully involve the reader in the world of the jam session. one of these strategies involves the use, throughout this document, of vignettes, some taken from field notes, others taken from past personal experience. following my office drubbing on the topic of school tone and my contribution (or lack of) to it, i drifted into the staff room. my arrival was greeted by the staff with some surprise, as i almost always spent my lunch hours in the band room. “what's the matter, couldn't stand the noise?” one colleague joked. “hey, come on, those guys have really improved since the beginning of the year,” said another, in my in this instance, being in the zone refers to mihalyi csikszentmihalyi's theory of flow. a flow state is: “the holistic sensation that individuals feel when they act with total engagement, often losing track of time, space, and the self” (pintrich & schunk, , p. ). defense. “at least it keeps them out of the halls, and the smoke pit,” was the statement offered by the noon-hour supervisor, while the councilor added: “at least they are still in school.” “total waste of school equipment!” muttered a grumpy teacher from the corner of the room. i wondered what the jammers themselves would made of this conversation. when completed, my case study report resounded with multiple voices, different realities, and conflicting views. my aim was to present a snapshot of a complex event, taken in a real-life context. participant voices, invaluable in describing how things were at a particular place and at a particular time, were a primary focus in my case study report. in my roles as observer, participant/observer, and researcher, my voice also appears in this research report. . specific statement of the research questions my general research question was: how does participation in a band room jam session benefit students cognitively and motivationally? my specific research questions were: do students who informally jam on various forms of music enhance their music skills in the perception and meaningful manipulation of music elements, and if so, how? and in what ways does flow theory explain the continued participation of students in the jam session? the jam session at a school was not necessarily limited to one band room. i found that it could encompass several designated areas, which i have referred to as jam spaces. in this context, meaningful manipulation was understood in the context of the conventions of western music practices and the variants based on it, including those of popular music. csikszentmihalyi's flow theory, a theory of motivation, is discussed in detail in chapter . . . brief description of method in order to examine the phenomenon of the high school jam session, i chose an exploratory case-study approach. yin suggested that a case-study approach was the most suitable method when a 'how' or 'why' question was being asked about a contemporary set of events over which the investigator has no control” (yin, , p. ). my general research question, above, asked “how” about a contemporary event over which i had no control. yin further stated that: “a case study is an empirical inquiry that investigates a contemporary phenomenon within its real life context, especially when the boundaries between phenomenon and context are not clearly evident” (yin, , p. ). to summarize, i decided that case study was the most suitable method for examining the jam session, where the context of the high school in which it occurred was part of the phenomenon itself. my case study investigation employed a mixed-method approach. qualitative methods included observations, participant-observer tasks, interviews, and journaling, while quantitative methods included existing as well as self-developed tests. at the request of school district personnel, no student was identified by name during the writing of my research report. instead, i asked the students who were my subjects to choose a pseudonym by which they wished to be represented; these pseudonyms were used in reporting my qualitative data. . study boundaries, limitations, and delimitations stake defined the case as a bounded system, with integrated parts making up the complex whole, and surrounded by a boundary (stake, ). my single case was a bounded system that encompassed the jam session participants in one school, the sullivan campus of salmon arm high school. the musicians were the integrated parts that made up the complex whole. for purposes of my case study, the main unit of analysis included all students who were part of the jamming community: that is, subjects who were involved in music activities in the band room during unstructured times of the school day. for purposes of comparison in one aspect of my study, i also examined a comparable group of non-jamming subjects. in describing how things were at this particular place and at this particular time, i feel that it is necessary to caution the reader regarding the atypical nature of this unique case. as i will explain further in the section of this introduction addressing the site, this case was an unusual one in which jamming was well supported both by the physical and instructional school environment. however, i am convinced that this case bears relevance to other cases experienced by many readers of my research report, and that by reading my case study, readers might discover for themselves a “commonality of process and situation” (stake, , p. ). despite this conviction, however, i realize that generalization of my findings to other populations is not necessarily appropriate. a second limitation of my study stems from the very real possibility that subjects were also involved in music activities outside the school setting, and that some of the skills and characteristics demonstrated by the subjects i examined originated or were developed outside in settings outside of my observations. one delimitation of my study is that i cannot claim to have examined or observed all jamming subjects equally. instead, i have given emphasis, in my report, to subjects who were present on a consistent basis during my observations. a second delimitation of my study concerns the use of quantitative instruments that informed one aspect of my study. as i discuss in some depth in chapter , certain subjects, by reason of skill level or instrumentation, were necessarily excluded from participation in certain measures. thus, the data gathered are not necessarily complete for all subjects. . description of the case study site when i interviewed students, i often asked them if they thought that the music program at their school was similar to other programs around the province. they always said no, and some were able to name and describe another school that a friend attended that was “nothing on what we have here. we've got everything here that a musician could want!” “sometimes a typical case works well, but often an unusual case helps illustrate matters we overlook in typical cases” (stake, , p. ). for reasons both physical and instructional, my case study site is an atypical one. the band room of the sullivan campus, where the main study was conducted, is configured in a most unusual way. a relatively small, high ceilinged, horseshoe-shaped main room is used for band and choir classes. this room contains an acoustic piano, a drum kit, and several amps, along with music stands and chairs. around the outside of this room, and separate from it, are several smaller rooms that are available for students' use even when classes are in session. one of these rooms contains an electronic music composition lab with five keyboard/computer stations. attached to the main room is studio a, composed of a control room with four-track recording equipment, linked to an adjacent tracking room with drum kit, piano, and amplifiers. next door is studio b, a former television production studio which has been converted to a recording studio. the control room of this studio contains a computer with software for recording and mixing, various peripheral effects modules, and speakers for playback and mixing purposes. the main tracking room next door contains a drum kit, an acoustic piano, and several amplifiers. on the other side of the control room is an iso booth (a small room used to isolate the sound of certain instruments being recorded). rooms are well equipped with mic stands and a variety of specialized microphones to be used for recording purposes. each of these three rooms is large enough to accommodate five or more students at a time. these rooms are used for both jamming and recording at all hours of the day, including before and after class, at noon, and in the evenings. due to the popularity of these rooms, students usually reserve them in advance. the sullivan campus of salmon arm high school is also atypical in terms of curricular music courses that are offered to students. in addition to band, jazz band, choir, and musical theater classes, the school offers three fully enrolled blocks of music composition and technology; it is one of very few in the province to offer this course. in contrast, the band room of the jackson campus of salmon arm high school where the pilot study was conducted is a traditional band room in which only concert band and jazz band are offered. it is a large, square room with a high ceiling and sound-absorbing materials on the walls. an electronic piano, a drum kit, and several amplifiers are part of the room's furnishings, along with music stands and chairs. band classes as well as jamming activity takes place in the main room. no recording facilities are available for student use. the two campuses of salmon arm high school are administered as one school, and students are frequently shuttled back and forth between them. the school runs on the semester system, with exceptions made for certain courses including concert band. together, the two campuses enroll approximately students. salmon arm is a rural community of , located in the interior of british columbia. . autobiographical positioning as i began this study, i believed myself to be strongly positioned, as a result of life experiences, to examine the high school jam session. sparkes ( ), in his work regarding narrative research, considered an autobiographical statement both beneficial and appropriate to a case study report. he suggested a brief and embedded autobiographical positioning statement to be a useful tool for facilitating reader understanding (sparkes, , p. - ). in the following autobiographical statement, i describe the ways in which my personal experiences with jamming informed the multiple perspectives from which i examined this phenomenon. as these perspective are addressed in the following statement, i note the role that each of these perspectives played in the development of my research questions. i first came to know the world of the high school jam session as a junior-high student in a rural school in which not a single music course was offered. my music education to date had consisted of private piano lessons in which playing from a written score was strongly emphasized and playing by ear was strongly discouraged. our art teacher, who was also a guitar player, encouraged us to bring guitars to school and learn some chords during lunch hour. i soon discovered i could play by ear, an asset when figuring out songs in the company of my peers. in a short time i was playing along with the records my friends had brought. in playing music by ear in this manner, i was drawing upon both music aptitude, which was innate, and music achievement, which was learned. i had found something i was reasonably good at. during those lunch hours, i participated for the sheer joy of it, lost track of time, and even forgot to be self- conscious about playing in front of others. i was motivated by my experiences to continue playing music. in my research, i examined continued participation in the jam session from a motivational perspective. at a time when i was struggling to establish contact with a positive peer group, this teacher provided me with a much-appreciated opportunity. instead of roaming the halls, getting into trouble downtown, or hanging out in the smoking room, i had a place where i felt both comfortable and competent. in a school with no curricular music, this informal music curriculum filled an important need in my life. in addition to addressing my specific research questions, i was cognizant of the social and environmental factors that impacted jam session participation. many years later, when i became a band director, i tried to provide a similar lunchtime environment for my students. several times, at-risk students told me that jamming was the only reason that they came to school at all. sometimes what students did at lunch made a difference in curricular music too. i recall one boy, blind due to a hereditary disorder, playing the piano by ear every lunch hour. i talked him into trying the bass clarinet, and i seated him in concert band, next to a good player whom he imitated most competently by ear. in a jamming environment, some students whose aptitude was overlooked in regular band classes were able to use their ear-playing skills to produce music. as well, students who were either over-challenged or under-challenged in curricular music classes sometimes experienced, in the jamming environment, a comfortable balance between their skills and the challenge provided. currently, i practice once a week with a rock band in which i sing and play keyboards, and have rediscovered, on a personal level, the importance of my two specific research questions. i am delighted when my fingers find on the keyboard, a riff that i last heard years ago; i marvel at the sensation of the notes just being there, without thinking about them. when our bass player suddenly realizes what time it is and leaves for his job at the mill, i find myself wondering where the last three hours went and discover that i have lost track of time. jamming is also a social activity for me, one in which we all play a leadership role. as well, we figure out out all our repertoire by ear, no one is self-conscious about mistakes, and the culture we share reflects the diversity of a group of musicians whose ages range from to . my personal experiences with jamming have led me to believe that the two specific areas of inquiry outlined by my research questions plus attention to additional perspectives were all necessary lines of inquiry, if i was to study the high school jam session. accordingly, in chapter , i first examine literature related to my two specific research questions. following that, i present a number of additional perspectives and overarching themes, drawn in part from my autobiographical positioning as articulated above. embedded in these sub-chapters, where relevant, are connections drawn from existing literature that relate these multiple perspectives to each other. first, however, i present my views regarding the importance of this topic. . significance and contribution of this study despite the fact that the sight and sound of students jamming in my band room or the band rooms of colleagues is so commonplace that it seldom occasions comment, i found very few references to jamming in music education research literature. i concluded that the jam session was an aspect of school life that was, if not completely unnoticed at least disregarded by those not directly involved. perhaps the ubiquity of jamming had rendered it, as jackson put it, one of those features of school life that we have become acclimatized to. (jackson, ) i wanted to establish, through my research, an understanding of the importance of the jam session as part of the music life of the school. i placed jamming in the context of the school by noting that curriculum presented in schools is often mandated, teacher-directed, compulsory, and competitive. this has resulted in schools that are often extrinsic-reward driven, externally organized, regimented, and, at times, even somewhat uninteresting to the young people involved. however, on occasion, school activities that are quite different from these are encountered. these activities, often extracurricular, are voluntary, involve shared leadership, are intrinsically rewarding, interactive, and sometimes intensely interesting to students as well. in this document i have suggested that jamming in the band room as i encountered it is one such activity. this jamming took place in a school setting, appeared to result in cognitive and motivational benefits to students, and was voluntary, interactive, and possibly i am indebted to tony clarke for his inspiration and input on this subject (personal communication, ), both intrinsically rewarding and interesting for them. based on these recognitions, i concluded that jamming had research significance. in this research document, i provide the reader with thick descriptions, vignettes, and both quantitative and qualitative data. my personal goal in doing so is to make it possible for the reader to experience the musical worlds of the jam session, and, where possible, to do so through the eyes of the jammers themselves. literature review . introduction and overview as stated in the previous chapter, my general research question was: does participation in a band room jam session benefit students cognitively and motivationally? my specific research questions were: do students who informally jam on various forms of music enhance their music skills in the perception and meaningful manipulation of music elements, and if so, how? and in what ways does flow theory explain the continued participation of students in the jam session? in addition to these specific research questions, i was also attentive to other related factors in the environment that pertained to jamming my first specific research question was approached in this chapter through methods suggested by the conceptual publications of edwin gordon and peter gouzouasis as well as the empirical publications of james froseth. my second specific research question was addressed by examining conceptual publications and empirical research by mihalyi csikszentmihalyi; empirical publications by others based on his work were also examined. following an examination of literature relevant to my specific research questions, i explored literature pertaining to these other factors in the form of overarching themes and additional perspectives. where possible, i emphasized the interconnectedness of my two specific research questions, as well as ways in which they intersect with these other themes and perspectives. . literature addressing the first research question in order to explore fully the ways in which students perceive and meaningfully manipulate the elements of music, i approached my first specific research question from two different perspectives. . . audiation during the last four decades of the twentieth century, psychological research in the area of music aptitude has been dominated by the work of gordon, who coined the term audiation to describe an ability that formed the foundation of scholarship regarding music aptitude: “audiation takes place when we assimilate and comprehend in our minds music that we have just heard performed or have heard performed sometime in the past” (gordon, , p. ). as part of his extensive research in the area of audiation, gouzouasis offered a companion definition: “audiation is the ability to conceptualize music sound without the sounds being physically present. it is the ability to conceptualize and compare the immediate past in music listening with the present, and to connect that which has been heard and that which we are hearing with our expectations of what we are about to hear” (gouzouasis, a, p. ). gordon suggested that the ability to audiate was developmental until about the age of nine, after which time it was stabilized (gordon, , p. xiv). interestingly, he also stated that it was possible for persons to learn to audiate, regardless of age, but that older subjects would require more time to develop this ability (gordon, , p. ). although it may seem contradictory, gordon believed that the ability to audiate (the basis for music aptitude) was innate, and also that it could be developed if a child was given proper instruction at a suitable age. gordon described six stages of audiation, consisting of: ) hearing sound, ) organizing sound into pitches and durations, ) recognizing tonal and rhythmic patterns, ) recognizing tonality, key, meter and tempo, ) recognizing similarities in tonal and rhythmic patterns, and ) predicting what will occur next in the music. he also described eight types of audiation, consisting of : ) listening to familiar or unfamiliar music, ) reading familiar or unfamiliar music, ) writing familiar or unfamiliar music from dictation, ) recalling and performing familiar music from memory, ) recalling and writing familiar music from memory, ) creating and improvising unfamiliar music while performing or in silence, ) creating and improvising unfamiliar music while reading, and ) creating and improvising unfamiliar music while writing (gordon, , p. - ). gordon developed his theory of audiation in response, initially, to the experience of being taught to play string bass by an accomplished ear-player and, later, to the experience of jamming with small groups of army musicians who played jazz. to clarify the concept of audiation, gordon used the following illustration: audiation is to music what thought is to language. consider language, speech, and thought. language is the result of the need to communicate. speech is the way we communicate. thought is what we communicate. music, performance, and audiation have parallel meanings. music is the result of the need to communicate. performance is how this communication takes place. audiation is what is communicated. (gordon, , p. ) additionally, gouzouasis used an example from early childhood to build upon the language metaphor: “as language babble is a young child's early attempt to produce linguistic sounds, musical babble is a young child's first attempt to produce musical sounds” (gouzouasis, , p. ). further, dalby suggested a way of enhancing audiational ability in older children: teach familiar tunes by ear. singing and playing familiar tunes by ear are essential for developing the ability to connect audiation to the physical manipulation of the instrument. unfortunately, many students leave the public school system with seven or more years of instrumental music instruction but little ability to play without notation. (dalby, , p. ) it was my informal observation that jammers play largely by ear. dalby's connection of audiation to the physical manipulation of the instrument is suggestive of ear-to-hand coordination, the topic of the following section. gerhardstein made this connection even more strongly: every musician has two instruments of great importance. one is a physical instrument (piano, violin, saxophone, or the voice) while the other is invisible. the invisible instrument is the instrument of the mind, or one's audiation instrument. for understanding to occur between two or more individuals, knowledge must be shared. audiation is the vehicle by which this sharing of musical knowledge takes place. (gerhardstein, , p. ) are jammers audiating? in my casual observations of high school jam sessions, i have noted that printed music is seldom in evidence. often, i noted that a student had brought a recording and that the members of the group were listening to the playback and singing or also playing along in an attempt to internalize and understand what they were hearing. i noted that this behavior fit the fourth and sixth types of audiation listed above. for jamming musicians to be able to do this requires them to be in the fifth or sixth stage of audiation, as they must not only be able to hear and recognize tonal and rhythmic similarities, but also able to predict what will come next. because i was interested in knowing if jam session participants were in fact high audiators, and thus possessed high levels of music aptitude, i examined two tests developed by gordon for this purpose. gordon's musical aptitude profile (map) (gordon, e., , chicago, g.i.a. publications) has been widely used as a test of music aptitude. unlike older tests of auditory discrimination, where unrelated pitches were presented out of context, the map is concerned with tonality and melodic contour. the map is the most comprehensive of gordon's tests, providing test scores, featuring seven sub-tests including two tonal tests (melody and harmony), two rhythm tests (tempo and meter), and three preference tests (phrasing, balance, and style). the map was designed for grades four to twelve and was intended to be administered over three class periods. (gordon, ). gordon's advanced measures of musical aptitude (amma) (gordon, e., , chicago, g.i.a. publications) provides, as part of the testing package, united states national norms for older subjects. the amma is designed for grades eight through twelve, and provides three test scores including scores for two sub-tests (tonal and rhythm) (gordon, ). the short testing time required for the amma made it more suitable than the map for use in my research. in addition, the fact that music reading skills were not required in order to take either test was important, as not all jam session participants are fluent readers of music notation. as the name of the test would suggest, gordon considers the amma to be a test of music aptitude, as distinct from tests of music achievement. however, gordon's comments regarding this distinction are worth noting: it should be kept in mind that although music aptitude and music achievement are different, they are not mutually exclusive. a music aptitude test is designed to measure music aptitude. it is not possible, however, to construct a pure test of music aptitude, just as it is not possible to construct a pure test of music achievement. if a test emphasizes music aptitude, it is considered to be a music aptitude test. if a test emphasizes music achievement, it is considered to be a music achievement test. (gordon, , p. ) with that in mind, i examine next an instrument designed primarily as a test of music achievement. . . ear-to-hand coordination james froseth defined ear-to-hand coordination as “the essential means to transfer what is heard, recalled, or imagined to musical performance” (froseth, , p. ). as noted previously by dalby ( ) and gerhardstein ( ), the connection between audiation, which occurs in the brain, and the physical manipulation of an instrument to produce music, which occurs in the muscles of the face, hands, and limbs, is an important one. although i could argue that the the mind-body dichotomy suggested here is perhaps not as separate and distinct as that representation indicated, i agree that the important skill of playing by ear is dependent upon this connection. however, as dalby ( ) pointed out, above, it is quite possible to participate in music activities throughout one's school career while developing little skill in this area. an ear-training class for first year music majors at university is often the first experience these students have with ear-testing (often initially explored by means of gordon's third type of audiation, writing familiar or unfamiliar music from dictation), an experience for which school music classes had likely not prepared them. convinced of the value of what he termed aural musicianship, froseth began a longitudinal study in , first, to determine the levels of aural musicianship in first year university music majors, and, second, to determine if those levels could be improved through training and practice. for the purpose of testing aural musicianship, froseth developed the test of melodic ear-to-hand coordination (tmehc) (froseth, j., , self-published). :he administered the tmehc to all university of michigan freshmen music majors in years through , testing a total of subjects. froseth found ear-to-hand coordination in this group to be extremely heterogeneous, with some students severely deficient in aural skills. froseth developed the test of melodic ear-to-hand coordination (tmehc) in order to measure ear-to-hand skills, and, as well, developed the aural skills training program (astp) as a means of improving ear-to-hand -skills. froseth emphasized the importance of ear-to-hand aural skills in this way: melodic ear-to-hand coordination is the essential means employed to transfer what is heard, recalled, or imagined to musical performance. lack of ear-to-hand coordination can restrict an instrumentalist to performance “by eye.” eye-bound (repertoire restricted) performers engage in what might be described as a sophisticated form of musical typewriting. performing eye-to-hand is, essentially, playing what is seen without hearing what is seen. (froseth, , p. ) when asked, during a recent email conversation, for his views on why tmehc subjects were so heterogeneous in their test scores, froseth noted: the heterogeneous nature of the score for the freshmen we tested at michigan reflects the preoccupation with eye training associated with a printed repertoire-dominated instrumental curriculum. many of these students were never given the opportunity or training to play by ear. most of the students who did display a strong aural orientation to their instrument developed their ear-to-hand skills outside of school in rock bands, jazz combos, folk groups, and informal church ensembles. (froseth, personal communication, , italics mine) i consider it significant that the music ensembles noted by froseth as having a strong aural orientation were ensembles where jamming was more likely to take place. . literature addressing the second research question my second research question addressed flow, which is defined as “the holistic sensation that individuals feel when they act with total engagement in the task, often losing track of time, space, and the self” (pintrich & schunk, , p. ). flow theory is one of several perspectives on intrinsic motivation developed during the second half of the previous century. early work in the area of intrinsic motivation included the scholarship of white, who postulated that individuals had a strong need for efficacy and personal mastery. in the late ’s, rotter expanded this social learning theory to include locus of control, stating that individuals with an internal locus of control believed that they had control over their own actions and that their actions had impact on outcomes. in the late s, harter developed a theoretical model that emphasized the need of individuals to master their environments, while the work of deci and ryan in the s suggested that a sense of autonomy and control was a basic human need. upon this foundation, mihalyi csikszentmihalyi and others developed a related perspective, that of emergent motivation. emergent motivation theory suggests that individuals are motivated by goals and rewards discovered as a result of interacting with their environments. in emergent motivation theory, interest, affect, and emotion are examined; each of these aspects is thought to play a role equal to that of cognition. building upon maslow’s work, which regarded self-actualization as the highest in a hierarchy of needs, and rogers’ study of meaningful learning and personal involvement, csikszentmihalyi identified a holistic state of complete involvement known as flow (pintrich & schunk, ). . . flow theory as a doctoral student at the university of chicago, csikszentmihalyi was intrigued by the intensity of involvement he observed in artists at work. he noted that they focused so completely on their work that they ignored the passage of time and their physical discomforts. most significantly, he observed that once the work was completed, the artists showed little interest in what they had created, as if the effort of creating was the reward, rather than the finished product. based on these observations and others like them involving many different areas of human endeavor, csikszentmihalyi developed flow theory. he first introduced the components of flow in , calling them elements of enjoyment (cskikszentmihalyi, , p. ). he based his list of elements on studies of such optimal experience conducted with subjects from many different cultures participating in many different experiences. although his original list contained eight elements, later publications by cskiszentmihalyi and others referred to nine dimensions, or components, of flow. each of the components of flow is briefly described here: • challenge-skills balance: the flow state is a state of equilibrium, where the subject’s capabilities are in balance with the subject’s opportunities. if the opportunities, or challenges, are beyond the individual’s skill level, worry and anxiety are the result. if the task is below the skill level of the individual, boredom and anxiety are the result. an individual must view a given task as sufficiently challenging, yet believe she has the skill and ability to meet the challenge, for flow occur. maintaining an optimal ratio of challenge to skill requires constant adjustment, because as skills increase the task needs to become more challenging if flow is to continue. • merging of action and awareness: the holistic experience of becoming one with the activity is often described as “being in the zone” (jackson & csikszentmihalyi, ). involvement is spontaneous; and the activity itself and participation in it become the focus. • clear goals: for flow to occur, the individual must be aware of what she wants to do and be willing to follow through on a course of action. • clear and unambiguous feedback: flow is enhanced when the subject is aware that goals are being met. • concentration and focus: in a flow state, irrelevant thoughts are eliminated from consciousness, leaving the mind to concentrate on the task at hand. the person is present and in the moment. complete involvement and enjoyment of the activity leaves no room in the mind for disorder or irrelevant thoughts. • sense of control: knowing that one has the skills to handle the task at hand results in a sense of control, enhancing the flow experience. it is worth noting that: “what people enjoy is not the sense of being in control, but the sense of exercising control in difficult situations” (csikszentmihalyi, , p. ). • loss of self-consciousness: the flow experience transcends the self; the individual is freed from self-doubt and experiences complete concentration on the activity. • transformation of time: paradoxically, individuals in flow report time passing both more quickly and more slowly, depending on the individual and the activity. this is possibly a result of concentrating deeply on the task, wherein the task takes exactly as long as is required, irrespective of the actual clock time. • an autotelic experience: the word autotelic is derived from two greek words, auto which means self, and telos which means goal. an autotelic experience is defined as “a self-contained activity, one that is not done with the expectation of some future benefit, but simply because the doing itself is the reward” (csikszentmihalyi, , p. ). an autotelic experience is enjoyable for itself, is intrinsically rewarding, and is performed entirely at the volition of the individual. before looking at empirical work using the methodological framework csikszentmihalyi developed to measure flow, here i briefly examine the way in which some of his peers concurred with, collaborated with, and built upon his scholarship regarding flow. . . flow: related scholarship pintrich and schunk ( ) stated: “despite being nebulous, the notion of flow makes intuitive sense” (pintrich & schunk, , p. ). they considered flow theory important enough to summarize it and build upon it by suggesting ways to apply flow theory in the classroom. a music-specific illustration was used, in which the authors suggested that sections of a band be encouraged to find ways to set and meet performance goals as a group. beckman and kazan used flow theory to advance their model of action versus state orientation in athletic endeavors: “performance-related action orientation indexes the ability to get absorbed in an activity, which is a crucial prerequisite of the so-called flow experience, a functional state of the organism that promotes peak performance” (beckman & kazan, p. ). despite their use of the qualifier 'so-called' they appeared to concur with the existence of a flow state. in a more music-oriented discussion, kenny and gellrich suggested that “peak experiences or flow states assist improvisers to move not only beyond the literal texts of referents, but also beyond their own cognitive limits in non-flow states” (kenny & gellrich, , p. ). david elliott borrowed freely from csikszentmihalyi in creating a new philosophy of music education (elliott, ); many of the characteristics of flow (challenge-skills balance, deep concentration, clear feedback, loss of self-consciousness) appear in elliott's work, where he referred to them as characteristics of self-growth. elliott's view on the importance of flow to his philosophy of music education is reflected in this statement by goble: “elliott argues that the development of skills and the taking on of challenges in both music making and music listening (in all world traditions) are unique and important ways of effecting flow and bringing order to consciousness, and that they lead to self-growth, self-knowledge, and raised self esteem” (goble, , p. ). however, as goble also points out, elliott does not show that these benefits are unique to musical involvement. possibly because flow theory is so accessible to the casual reader, there has been reluctance on the part of some scholars to accept csikszentmihalyi's work as valid. some of the empirical work subsequently linked to flow theory has had significant limitations. furthermore, flow appears to be morally neutral: a microbiologist searching for a cure for alzheimer's disease, a distance runner participating in a marathon, and a hacker stealing data from a bank computer may all experience flow. nor do flow-producing activities necessarily result in long-term benefits for the individual, as one might conclude after watching a student spend most of his day playing videogames. one strength of the flow model, its proponents argue, is that it makes quantitative research possible in an area long considered to be in the exclusive domain of qualitative research, namely the study of emotion and affect. csikszentmihaly, in a interview, alluded, with some amusement, to the higher status of quantitative data in the research community. it’s kind of ironic that so many people need the trappings of scientific methodology before they’ll pay attention to what they already know in their gut. when people hear about flow, they say, ‘oh yeah, i know that!’ but unless you can quantify and measure something, it’s not seen to have much significance. anyway, i have a lot of fun crunching the numbers (csikszentmihalyi, quoted in cooper, , p. ). in response to what he regarded as an emphasis on the negative aspects of psychology, csikszentmihalyi emphasized the contributions that flow theory made to the study of happiness. speaking in a keynote address, he put it this way: in thirty years as a research psychologist, i have been studying the question, “what makes people happy in their lives?” i decided to ask that question partly because so much of psychology dealt with pathology, with what went wrong with people, what made people neurotic and psychotic and deviant and so forth. no one seemed to know what made people happy about their lives: what made life meaningful? what made it enjoyable? what made life worth living? csikszentmihalyi, , p. ) in order to provide quantifiable data regarding flow, csikszentmihalyi developed a specific method, as discussed below. . . experience sampling method the experience sampling method (esm) has been used to measure the flow state in a wide variety of applications. csikszentmihalyi first used this method in , and since that time the esm has been the instrument of choice for a sizable body of research. csikszentmihalyi outlined the use of the pager for data collection in a high school setting. persons who participate in esm studies wear an electronic pager and carry a booklet of self-report forms for a week. each day, at randomly chosen intervals, signals activate the pagers, and the respondents then fill out a page of the self- report booklet, describing their behavior and subjective states in minute detail. (csikszentmihalyi et al., , p. ) typically, subjects wore the pager for seven consecutive days, and signals were transmitted during waking hours, seven to nine times a day. within minutes of receiving a signal, subjects completed an experience sampling form (esf), a questionnaire containing questions addressing both external and internal dimensions of experience. data were gathered using three scales: nine-point likert-type, semantic-differential, and categorical. as well, open-ended questions requiring written answers were asked. . . applications of the esm csikszentmihalyi's methods were used or adapted for use by a large number of researchers for the purpose of examining flow in various settings. for example, jackson and marsh developed a research methodology suitable for examining flow in a sport/physical exercise context, using esm pagers but creating a sports-specific questionnaire (jackson & marsh, ). pagers have also been used in flow research in school settings; shernoff, csikszentmihalyi, schneider and shernoff used pagers in a high school setting to study student engagement from a flow theory perspective (shernoff et al. ), while in the same year, csikszentmihalyi and hunter used a similar method in a similar setting to study happiness in teens (csikszentmihalyi & hunter, ). as well, sloboda, o'neil, and ivaldi conducted a study related to music outside a school setting, in which esm research methodology was used to explore the context and the content of music listened to by non-musician adult subjects; although listening to music was seldom the main focus, subjects doing so reported present-focused, positive, and alert affective responses to music. in addition to the above music-related esm study, i found three studies that specifically examined flow in music in an educational setting. the first study used the esm in a conventional way, while the following two represented a departure from the standard esm applications. o’neill studied student musicians from one state school and one specialist music school, examining their practice habits and using esm to determine incidence of flow throughout the day. the results were not surprising. high achievers from both schools spent more time practicing than the moderate or low achievers; as well, the high achievers from the specialist school reported frequent incidents of flow experience (o'neill, ). several years later, byrne, macdonald, and carlton used the esf but not pagers to study the connection between the flow experience and creativity in music composition (byrne, macdonald, & carlton, ). i am critical of the interpretation or data employed in this study, for although the compositions produced were rated for creativity by experienced raters, the rating of creativity itself seems questionable. most recently, bakker examined the possibility of a flow experience crossover between music teachers and their students (bakker, ). the method in this study seem problematic; questionnaires addressing the flow experience were filled out by the teacher after a considerable amount of time had passed, and only four students per class, supposedly selected at random, filled out a questionnaire. the research methodology employed by two other researchers, balara ( ) and custodero ( ), were also applicable to my research interests, despite the fact that both addressed flow in subjects and settings very different from my own. . . non-esm-based flow study: balara in a qualitative study of jazz musicians, balara asked the question: “what, if any, are the categories, processes, and/or themes to emerge from musicians engaged in the social-participatory experience of creating collective jazz improvisation?” (balara, , p. ). based on a literature review, he identified three constructs: the social construction of the self, social creativity, and flow. balara observed a group of four jazz musicians in a performance context for three hours on each of three separate occasions. in addition, he conducted post-performance phone interviews with each musician on two separate occasions and interviewed each musician briefly after each set. the data were interpreted in light of the three constructs identified above. this study supported the presence of flow in the jazz context studied. characteristics of flow theory, including deep concentration, loss of self- consciousness, merging action and awareness, and transformation of time were all noted in the data collected. (balara, ) balara's work, an ethnographic case study, was of interest to me in that it used instruments for observations and interviews, a research method i was considering. as well, flow was examined in the social context of the performance in which it occurred. similar to the jam session, balara's performing group constituted a music subculture that was part of the culture embodied in the performance venue, but with distinct differences that distinguished it from the audience or other onlookers. like jammers, these musicians shared an experience with one another in ways that others in the room did not. . . non esm-based flow study: custodero custodero developed a research method of her own suitable for studying flow in very young children. instead of using beepers and questionnaires designed to study flow in adult subjects, she developed a protocol based on observable behaviors thought to indicate flow in children. this protocol was used in several different studies. in , custodero studied four- and five-year-olds who participated in weekly one-hour music classes over a period of eight weeks. the classes were videotaped for later analysis, with the video operator instructed to follow one child or group of children throughout one activity and to be as unobtrusive as possible. the videotape was later coded using the flow indicators in musical activities (fima) form, an author-developed version of the esm. this form contained behavioral indicators in a -point likert-type scale, as well as affective indicators in a semantic differential seven-point scale. the last question, “was the child in flow?” was answered by observation of focus, affect, and obliviousness to surroundings. based on these observations, custodero confirmed the presence of flow in young children participating in musical activities, and she suggested that teacher awareness of the flow state be used to facilitate adaptation of the activity in order to maintain challenge/skills balance (custodero, ). custodero built upon this original study in a longitudinal study of challenge and its role in the musical learning of children. she invited three subjects from the original group of children, now aged and , to watch and comment on the videotape obtained in the study. in addition, the children and their parents were interviewed for further insights into their perspectives on challenge. her research revealed that children’s dispositions regarding challenge were fairly stable over time, and that a preference for setting challenges either with or without adult intervention was also observable seven years later (custodero, ). in a more recent study, custodero again used the esm-based fima to examine young children in four different music-learning environments. she videotaped an informal music session involving eighteen day-care children under the age of three, six primary students in a suzuki violin program, and five primary students in a dalcroze program. these settings provided a diversity of structure suitable for later observation and coding of different indicators of flow. she discovered that self-assignment of musical activity, as well as a desire to continue that activity post-instruction, was most prevalent in preschool-aged children, and declined as children reached school age. peer awareness during these activities increased with the age of the child, while awareness of adults remained stable throughout the age groups (custodero, ). custodero's work is of interest to me because it provides an alternate method for studying flow. while the esf requires beepers that would not be heard in a jam session format, and would disrupt the flow for all participants if they were heard and heeded, custodero's fima is based on analysis by a trained observer. . . flow: the connections throughout my review of the literature, i was aware of the connections that could be made between flow and ear-to-hand coordination. i noted that one characteristic of flow, the challenge/skills balance, could be connected to ear-to-hand coordination in that jammers possessing strong ear-to-hand coordination skills might be more comfortable with the high level of challenge required to copy or compose a song in a jam session format. conversely, i noted that students experiencing the intrinsic motivation associated with flow may be motivated to practice their instrument more, thus enhancing their ear-to-hand skills. fredericks and others stated it this way: “adolescents' perception of being good at their activity seems to motivate them to keep investing effort over time” (fredericks, alfeld-liro, eccles, patrick, & ryan, , p. ). although csikszentmihali acknowledges the importance of music in both his life and his work, he does not profess to be a musician. in his conceptual writings, references to the school music curriculum, although positive in nature, usually included music in the more general category of fine arts. one exception appears in the keynote address that csikszentmihalyi delivered to a group of choral teachers. in his speech, he provides a specific choral music example for each of the nine conditions of the flow experience, and he lauds the school choir as an activity providing unique accessibility to the flow experience (csikszentmihalyi, ). . emergent themes and additional perspectives . . constructing knowledge early in my teaching career, i prepared a lesson for the grade eight clarinet players showing them the new notes they had to learn in order to be able to play the next song in the band method book. during the class, as i began to explain about the break, and the register key, i was interrupted by one of my beginning clarinetists, who blurted out: “i know how to do that! i watched those guys jamming in here yesterday, and then i went home and tried it myself, and it worked!” during informal observations made in my own band room, i noted the possibility that jammers were constructing knowledge and deriving understanding from personal experiences that existed outside the formal school music curriculum, and using them to enhance their playing during curricular music. conversely, i also noted that constructs learned in a band class or other formal music instruction were often used as tools to help build musical understanding useful in the jam session. as shively pointed out: “it is in the application of the knowledge base developed in the class to musical experiences inside and outside the classroom that understanding is demonstrated. it is in learning a musical idea - such as form - in one context and applying it in another that learners demonstrate further understanding, applying the knowledge in an unfamiliar setting, thus deepening and broadening their knowledge base” (shively, , p. ). campbell, in reporting on garage bands, and particularly the strategies employed by their members in copying (imitating) a song, concurred: the lesson to be gained from a glance at garage bands may be more related to an understanding of the nature of music learning than to the matter of curriculum development. young rock musicians, most of whom received training through the lessons and ensemble experiences of school music programs, seek to learn the performance skills of their preferred music sometime in early adolescence. contrary to what it may seem, there may well be a considerable relationship between aural skills honed in school and those utilized in copying a song. (campbell, , p. , italics mine) . . jamming: multiple meanings following the early-morning jazz band rehearsal, a guitar player and a sax player stayed to work on a solo for the upcoming music festival. the guitar player played through the chord progression a number of times, while the sax player tried a few soloing ideas based on the blues scale suggested by the teacher. at noon the same day, two students with guitars and one student on the piano were fooling around with a riff that one of the guitar players had come up with. the other guitar player experimented with some bass lines played on the lowest four strings of his guitar, while the piano player, looking increasingly bored with this riff, decided to figure out o canada by ear instead. meanwhile, on the other side of the room, a trumpet player worked painstakingly on a song, trying a riff, then laboriously copying it to manuscript paper. occasionally, he looked up and listened to what the group was doing and added a complementary riff or two of his own. one of these riffs ended up becoming part of the song he was writing. during the first afternoon block, three students from the cooking class down the hall wandered into the band room. none of them were musicians in the generally accepted sense of the word. one played an mp of some beats that he had downloaded from the internet while the other two rapped to it, creating two completely different sets of lyrics. in the corner, completely ignored by them, an acoustic guitar player played a lead line that meshed perfectly with the beats. after school, a drummer, a bass player and a guitar player added some tracks to a song they were writing for the graduation ceremony. the piano player, who had to work after school, had recorded a vocal track and a piano track earlier in the day. they jammed along with it, and when they were satisfied with their musical contributions, they recorded them. were any of these people jammers? some of them? all of them? the term 'jam session' is widely used to describe jazz improvisation, a phenomenon that has been examined in both its social and musical aspects. monson, in an ethnomusicological study of jazz musicians, argued that “the musical and social context of the ensemble is essential in explaining the sequence of musical events and musical choices that occur during jazz improvisation” (monson, , p. ); he found evidence of interdependence among jamming musicians. building upon this theme, berliner emphasized the communication between musicians, likening it to a conversation. in the same way that a conversation could veer off into unplanned territory, unexpected turns could occur in a jam session. “such events occur typically when the natural flow of ideas conceived in performance leads a particular improviser outside the group’s agreed formats or musical arrangements, and other players follow along” (berliner, , p. ). becker, a jazz musician with extensive experience in the chicago music scene, provided a unique interpretation of the ways of knowing and understanding during improvisation: “the players thus develop a collective direction that characteristically feels larger than any of them, as though it had a life of its own. it feels as though, instead of them playing the music, the music, zen-like, is playing them” (becker, , p. ). ted aoki, an educator, found meaning in the spontaneous and unique nature of the jam session, and his writing suggested a link to curriculum building in both its formal and informal aspects. here, aoki advocated using improvisation as a metaphor for awareness of the situational aspect of curriculum implementation. he asked jazz trumpeter bobby shew to describe improvisation: he spoke of how in improvising he and his fellow musicians respond not only to each other, but also to whatever calls upon them in that situational moment, and that, for him, no two situational moments, like life lived, are exactly alike. (aoki, , in pinar & irwin, , p. ) in a link to both of my specific research questions, kenny and gellrich suggested a connection between improvisation and the themes of flow and ear-to-hand coordination. discussing the presence of flow in the moments when musicians surrender to the creative moment they stated: ... this quasi-narcotic flow state may be one of the most important reasons that motivate improvising musicians to persevere with their craft, despite the often- adverse conditions it is produced under. once possessed by the moment, musicians begin to forget personal problems, lose critical self-consciousness, lose track of time, and eventually feel that the activity that they are engaged in is worth doing for its own sake. (kenny & gellrich, , p. ) later in the same document they addressed the theme of ear-to-hand coordination, acknowledged that kinesthesia was an understudied area, and noted that we are only beginning to understand how the integration of body and mind served to facilitate the improvising process. some of the research on improvisation that makes connections between simple motoric movement and musical structures, thereby often informing technological pedagogy, may have to be rethought in terms of a more holistic technique. only then may we more fully understand why some musicians are able to move beyond technical automation to arrive at a more direct and meaningful form of communication. (kenny & gellrich, , p. ) coker, a jazz musician, also suggested a link between improvisation and my first specific research question, audiation, when he stated: “the improviser is working with imagined sounds which, when translated, are played on his instrument” (coker, , p. ), and later “the brain uses memory and intellect to translate the imagined sound, also emanating from the brain, into fingerings for the instrument (coker, , p. ). in an additional link between improvisation and my second research question, csikszentmihalyi collaborated with rich in a systems-model (person, domain, field) examination of improvisation in the contest of the flow experience. they applied the characteristics of flow to the creative process of jazz improvisation, using an interview-based method, confirming both the occurrence of flow and the applicability of improvisation to the systems-model they proposed (csikszentmihalyi & rich, ). although all the above examples of jamming-interpreted-as-improvisation address this phenomenon in the context of adult professional musicians, the research literature also addresses jamming-interpreted-as-improvisation undertaken by school-age amateur musicians. here, i look at four studies related to improvisation/jamming that involve students, beginning with the youngest subjects first. my interest in using case study methodology in my own work was informed, in part, by a case study on improvisation involving two fifth-grade boys. in , freundlich explored musical thinking and the educational ramifications thereof, through jam sessions involving the two subjects on an orff instrument (a simple diatonic xylophone) and the teacher/researcher on guitar. the standard -bar blues was used as a frame, and the improvised material contributed by the subjects was recorded and later transcribed for analysis using standard musical notation. freundlich found that subjects of this age “... can generate authentic musical ideas without reference to notation, and that the musical concepts furnished by the improvisation procedure are logically organized and amenable to developmental study” (freundlich, , p. ii). my methodology was further informed by three additional studies, all of which used observation, participant-observation, and interviews to examine jamming among school-age subjects. these three studies also served to expand the multiple meanings of jamming, which included but were not limited to improvisation. in a study that involved nine male subjects in two different bands, ranging in age from fourteen to sixteen, campbell observed the processes by which jamming in a garage or basement was employed for the purpose of song-getting: to get is to copy a song, to learn its melody and words, chordal progressions (and strumming rhythms), the drums' rhythmic accompaniment, the formal organization of sections (introduction, bridge, verses and choruses, and closing), lead guitar “riffs” and all the stylistic nuances identified with the recorded song. (campbell, , p. ) here, in contrast with the previous study, the purpose of jamming was not spontaneous composition, but the opposite, the copying of a song with the goal of sounding as much like the recording as possible. however, as the older of the two bands acquired more skill, developing a repertoire of original songs became a goal. to accomplish this, the guitarist presented his ideas to the group, and they jammed along and added ideas of their own. in , mcgillen used a similar methodology to mine, including observation, participant observation, and interviewing, to examine an extracurricular school music group called jungle express. this group was slightly older, on average, than the group campbell observed, ranging in age from fourteen to eighteen. the group rehearsed after school once a week, and at the time of the study contained musicians, with instrumentation similar to that of a stage band. in contrast to the study above, no songs were copied; instead, all music was written by the students themselves. jamming was the method used to progress from an idea presented by one of the group to a finished song, with all content learned entirely by ear. mcgillen examined this version of the jam session through four lenses: cooperation, identity/ownership, relationships, and belonging (mcgillen, ). a study by davis examined a band containing older student subjects, in this case one high school senior and two college freshmen. the methodology was similar to the above studies, including observation (field notes as well as audio/video recording) and interviews. davis related one of many instances where an original composition grew out of an idea presented by one of the members: the group played almost nonstop for the first fifteen minutes without a break or discussion of tempo, scale, or stylistic approach. it became apparent that this was not only a jam session but also a type of search or journey for a song. after observing subsequent rehearsals, i realized it was a common process in their music making. (davis, , p. ) in this case, the jam session was a vehicle for group composition and collaboration. other themes addressed by davis included the social characteristics of rock bands, aural musicianship, and music enculturation. the multiple meanings of jamming discussed so far have included that of traditional jazz improvisation, twelve-bar blues improvisation, jamming for the purpose of song-getting, and jamming for the purpose of collaborative composition. recently, advances in technology have expanded the spectrum of meanings that could be applied to the concept of jamming. digital jamming, which takes place with the aid of computer software, involves playing along with computer-generated chord changes in a specified style. technology is also readily available for those who wish to jam with themselves, recording the backtracks and then improvising on top of them. web jamming or virtual jamming, which also involves computer software, enables musicians to jam with other musicians worldwide (olofsson, , p. ). in this instance, jamming is a solitary and individual pursuit, in which the technology presents both advantages and disadvantages. advantages include continual access to backtracks for jamming at any time and an opportunity to improve one's musicianship in private. disadvantages include the lack of feedback from fellow musicians and various technical difficulties such as unacceptable latency and delay in receiving and transmitting information. in the vignettes that introduced this section, i questioned whether or not the designation of jammer could be applied to each of the situations described. given the multiple meanings of jamming as reviewed in the literature, i conclude that all the musicians so described could be considered jammers. the above vignettes also revealed another important aspect of jamming: the mosaic of social groupings in which students jammed. as a result of his research, mcgillen became acutely aware of the importance of the social as well as musical aspects of the jam session. indeed, he created both a name and a definition for this phenomenon: socio-musical engagement, which he defined as “the dynamic and all-encompassing interrelationship between the sonic product of a cooperative process that is dependent upon specific contextual reference points and the active world view each of the participants (brings) to the situation” (mcgillen, , p. ). the social aspects of jamming are addressed further in the following section. . . school music subculture maher and midgely view the term school culture as a metaphor for discussions about schools, and they acknowledge the contributions of organizational theory to the development of the school culture concept. they point out that “culture is a matter of the mind. culture is a thought, perception, or belief; it is primarily part of one's cognitive life but also associated with behavior, objects, form, and function” (maher & midgely, , p. ). they also emphasize the uniqueness of each individual school culture, stress the importance of perceiving each school as a meaningful whole, and point to the importance of school culture as an aspect of education as a whole. woody provides a musical perspective: many music students around this age will begin to identify with a “musical subculture.” most middle and high school music teachers are familiar with “band kids” or choral students who form a close-knit group. such groups award social recognition to individuals who demonstrate notable musical identities. (woody, , p. ) in a discussion that holds a number of implications for my research, morrison identifies the world of the school band, choir, or orchestra as an authentic musical culture, one that is part of, but distinct from, the school culture as a whole. morrison favors swanwick's definition of a sub-culture: “any group of peoples sustained by a common interest or a set of shared values will develop customs, conventions, and conversational manners of a more or less specialized kind, creating a subculture” (morrison, , p. , citing swanwick, , p. ). morrison identifies eight dominant themes applicable to the subculture of the school ensemble; so comprehensive is this list of themes that i use it here as a framework with which to address the contributions of other authors regarding the school music subculture. morrison's first theme is identity. students demonstrate personal ownership of the group, and through their participation develop an identity connected to it. “a home away from home” is the way adderley et al. described what they observed, with student musicians referring to themselves as “choir geeks” or “band dorks” with irony and humor but also with some pride. they also noted the presence of identifiers, such as band jackets, that served to set the band members apart from the school as a whole (adderley, kenny, & berz, ). as well, lamont looked specifically at the musical identities of children, discovering that participation in school music activities did not necessarily mean that the children would think of themselves as musicians; a number of cultural and social factors, including a music- oriented peer group, were instrumental in developing such an identity (lamont, ). more recently, mcgillen selected identity/ownership as one of four themes emerging from collected data. here, the process of group composition served to enhance ownership and define group identity. the presence of jungle express as a subgroup of the school was notable: “the creation of a distinctive identity within the school was a significant by-product of the cooperative approach within rehearsals” (mcgillen, , p. ). morrison's second theme is transmission. he discusses the apprenticeship of new members of the performing group to a senior musician, either a fellow student or a teacher/director. mcgillen echoes this theme: the presence of a cross-age profile within the group (students were aged from to ) seemed to be a significant element of its success and the resultant approach to music creation. there existed relatively few platforms within the school for students from different year levels to work together. it emerged that the older members naturally took on a mentoring role with the younger members going through an informal type of apprenticeship in songwriting and improvisation. (mcgillen, , p. ) morrison's third theme is the social dimension. group members share goals, interact extensively, and develop their own social structure. adderley, et al. found that student interviews confirmed this: “benefits of being in a group included the sense of community engendered in the ensembles, the diversity that was apparent in the membership, the opportunity to participate in something musical as a group, and the chance to improve social skills” (adderley, kenny, & berz, , p. ). mcgillen concurred: “successful creative music-making was born out the relationships between students as they operated as small groups and as they related to each other on an interpersonal level' (mcgillen, , p. ). morrison's fourth theme is practical and personal boundaries. unlike regular school classes, school performing groups often have expectations that include home practice, concerts, trips, and extra rehearsals. mcgillen noted that jungle express, in addition to meeting for practice once a week after school, performed extensively state-wide (mcgillen, ). interestingly, morrison points out that for ensemble members to be insiders, there must be also be outsiders, those not part of the group, while adderley, et al. found conflicting evidence in this area: “comments indicated that many students viewed themselves as part of the larger school population, while other saw themselves as separate, part of an experience that was totally unique from all others in their school” (adderley, kenny & berz, , p. ). morrison's fifth theme is organizational hierarchy, or an internal, formal power structure. mcgillen found that the hierarchical lines were blurred in the case of a group like jungle express. despite the fact that one or more members of the teaching staff of the school played with the group on a regular basis, leadership was fluid and contingent upon who had composed the song on which the group was currently working (mcgillen, ). morrison's sixth theme is traditional song, or the repertoire that the performing organization is associated with. mcgillen's jungle express played exclusively original repertoire, developed in a unique group composition process, for which they were known throughout the community. adderley, et al. looked at band, orchestra, and choir classes, whose repertoire was appropriate to the performing group but also offered variety, as the words of one male participant reveal: “we had a guy's group that does barbershop quartet and i really like it 'cause its fun and we pick up the music nicely, too, from, like, spirituals to requiems” adderley, kenny, & berz, , p. ). morrison's seventh theme is traditional performance practices, whereby the subculture is perpetuated by emulating groups that are seen as outstanding performance models. adderley, et al. offered a transcription of an interview where participation in a music clinic was considered an incredible accomplishment by one participant, and served to model performance standards that might inspire current and future musicians in the group (adderley, kenny, & berz, ). morrison's last theme is the diaspora, where members leave the performance group at some point, usually graduation. thus, the composition of the subculture is constantly changing. here, morrison himself makes an interesting point. he suggests that the reality of music performance ending at graduation for many students, does not necessarily signify a failure on the part of school music instructors. instead, he suggests that losing one's place in a comfortable social structure (the band, orchestra, or choir) means that making new connections in ensemble playing will be, at first, unfamiliar and even uncomfortable. . . ear-playing my beginning band method book contained the song are you sleeping?, playable with the first six notes the students had learned. the last phrase, doh then sol below doh, then doh, had been rewritten to read doh doh doh, so that the students would not have to learn an unfamiliar note at that point in their instruction. several students had tried the song before, at home,and one of them had figured out how to play it “the right way.” an adult, who was attending the class for the purpose of learning an instrument along with her daughter, was unhappy with this departure from the music manuscript. “that boy is not playing what the notes say” she told me. “can't you do something about it?” priest, in promoting creativity in instrumental classes, stated: should we not be somewhat pleased with our students when they are able to play a melody by ear? is this not evidence of their musical sensitivity? playing by ear is a valuable skill. it is integrally related to our ability to perform, to sight read, to improvise, to compose, and to listen to music. (priest, , p. ) most jammers who i have informally observed play the majority of their repertoire by ear. if printed material is used at all, it is usually in the form of chord slash-charts, lyric sheets, or guitar tabulature. campbell found this as well: “oral practices were prevalent, however, in that no melody was ever written, nor any accompaniment parts. while at least seven of the group members could read music, the song-sheets showed only words and the letter names of chords” (campbell, , p. ). in a related research project that spanned three years, lilliestam examined literature pertaining to ear-playing and proposed ways to analyze the processes associated with aural transmission. he found both a lack of knowledge of, and a general disrespect for, playing by ear, a disposition that puzzled him, as “the vast majority of all music ever made is played by ear” (lilliestam, , p. ). lilliestam makes the point that, in the same way we can speak without being able to read or write text, we can make music without being able to read or write music. in our western culture, knowledge of music and traditional academic musicology have come to be associated with a notation pedagogy, a dynamic that tagg called notational centricity (tagg, , p. , as cited in lilliestam, , p. ). ear players often have developed a number of strategies for recalling musical information in the absence of a written score. lilliestam suggests that at least four kinds of memory assist in this process, either singly or in combination with each other. the first kind, auditive memory, refers to hearing and remembering music to be reproduced later. the second kind, visual memory, refers to the recalled shapes or forms such as finder placement, that indicate notes on the actual instrument. the third kind, tactile memory or muscle memory, is the way something feels when we play it. the fourth kind is verbal memory, or the naming of certain musical events; represented as mind maps in the brain (lilliestam, ). in a statement that provides a segue to the following section, lilliestam further suggests: “a band may improvise together and make songs out of jams. someone may come up with a basic idea that is elaborated by the members of the group” (lilliestam, , p. ). . . composition and creativity “hey, want to hear our song? we were just jamming on an idea we picked up at the concert last night, and we made our own song out of it!” lilliestam notes that “when you play by ear the difference between composing and rehearsing is unclear and may cease to exist” (lilliestam, , p. ). davis, observing a session with the band our delay (a three-member group), one that started out as a rehearsal and developed into a collaborative composition session, noted something similar: experimentation through fiddling (testing and modifying short musical phrases) is a compositional technique the band used to get started in the rehearsal. ostinato and repetitive chord progression provided a vehicle for moving the members forward. sometimes players mirrored a riff in unison until another riff could be worked out and then the originator would branch off and play the newly devised riff as a complementary pattern to the original. (davis, , p. ) in a related study, wiggins, working with groups of elementary students in a general music class, asked her subjects how they came up with their musical ideas. despite the disparate context in which composition was taking place, the students' replies showed a remarkable similarity to the observations of davis: “you think of an idea and then you try it again and again until you get it. after you have an idea, you fiddle with it” (wiggins, , p. ). the group davis observed was completely participant-directed, while, in contrast, the groups wiggins worked with were within a school setting and directed by the teacher. after many years of teaching composition at the elementary level, wiggins began to see her role as one less concerned with the monitoring of student work, and instead one more focused on providing the students with time to create, free from interruption. challenges faced by those who foster creativity and collaborative composition by means of the jam session include coming to terms with the noise levels and apparent disorder that accompany these activities. in observing the activities of the students in the group jungle express, mcgillen described the emerging compositional process as a noisy and messy one. the rehearsal and writing process was evolutionary. after extended ‘jamming’ or ‘exploration,’ scenarios were explored and the exchanges became more focused. the solution eventually appeared, but only after many varied possibilities were posed and rejected through a process of negotiation.there was a chaotic feel to the rehearsals. the delineation between off-task behaviour and exploration was often difficult to identify, and it appeared that the constant undercurrent of noise was a part of the process just as much as the finite teacher-centred exchanges.(mcgillen, , p. ) . . garage rock band model: transmission of knowledge “we jam here at night until the custodian kicks us out. then we go to the drummer's place and keep going.” three studies in my literature review suggested the use of a research model based on the garage rock band. fornas, lindberg, and sernhede ( ) studied three swedish garage rock bands; these bands met in settings other than schools, although the participating musicians were students in their last two years of high school. these groups used the jamming format to develop repertoire, with improvisation serving as a tool to that end, rather than being the main focus of the activity. in a study addressed in the previous section, mcgillen noted: “the 'garage' model of interactive peer-centered music-making has some relevance to jungle express and its approach to group composition and the informality of the rehearsal environment” (mcgillen, a garage rock band, or, more commonly, a garage band, is one that jams in a private setting as opposed to a school setting. , p. ). he conceded that this model was only partially useful in his research, as there were aspects of both curricular band and garage band evident in the functioning of jungle express. campbell's use of the term garage bands in the title of her study acknowledged this model in her examination of two bands, a band of eighth and ninth grade musicians, and a band of ninth and tenth grade musicians. here, garage bands were groups of young males who met in basements or garages to make music. instrumentation included keyboards, bass, guitar, and drums. they met regularly (twice a week for two to five hours per week) and pursued, as a group, musical goals that included 'getting' (learning) songs recorded by other bands and attempting to come as close to the original sound as possible. less commonly, the groups wrote their own songs within the genre (campbell, ). regarding the transmission of knowledge, campbell found that, typically, one member of the group would figure out a song by ear, then show it to the others to learn, also by ear. campbell used a vygotskian interpretation of knowledge transmission as a model, examining what she observed in terms that forman, minick, and stone define as the “collective, interrelated zones of proximal development” (forman, et al., , p. ). i found that campbell's description of the process of writing a song within the genre had applicability to an aspect of my first specific research question, ear-to-hand coordination: not surprisingly, the original song was replete with many of the musical conventions of pieces they listen to and play. players know an extensive repertoire of standard patterns, which they receive aurally and develop kinesthetically. a short chord pattern, a melodic figure, or a bass line that settles comfortably in the kinesthetic memory were especially likely to be retrieved and utilized in the band's process of creating an original piece (campbell, , p. ). as the vignette that introduced this section illustrated, and as campbell observed, the music that students listened to greatly influenced the music that they chose to create. wiggins, in an examination of students' composition, put it this way: “students' products are heavily reflective of their knowledge of the songs of their musical environment, particularly when they write songs” (wiggins, , p. ). . . popular music in schools the school orchestra was playing a piece of music of the type usually sold as “popular music,” in this case a song with almost no melody called mony mony. as i listened to the violins saw their way through this barren landscape (root, root, b , root, repeat ad infinitum) i had to conclude that some popular music was never meant to be transcribed for school band. yet, many of us have picked music like this with the best of intentions; we were trying to connect school music to student music, to find something that would sound familiar to teenage ears. and, although no one would say so, we were often desperately trying to keep our enrollments up. “music, according to sociologists, is an aspect of peer-group organization” (frith, , p. ). perhaps this is why the names of cliques in secondary schools are so often given the names of music genres: metalheads, punks, rappers. some school music peer groups organize around traditional choir, band, and orchestra participation, regardless of what music they may listen to outside of school. however, students whose musical performance interests lie outside the formal music curriculum, in one of the popular music genres, may not find nor seek acceptance as part of the school music subculture. relatedly, shepherd ( ) discusses the dearth of popular music in post-secondary music studies: it is possible to make two generalizations concerning the situation of popular music teaching within university music departments. firstly, given contemporary patterns of 'serious' and 'popular' music, it is grossly under-represented. secondly, if it is included in the curriculum, its presence is controlled in one of two ways. either it is subjected to examination in terms of categories derived from traditional academic discourses in music, or it is marginalized and exploited. (shepherd, , p. ) tagg, addressing the lack of popular music studies at post-secondary institutions, offers a possible solution: “.. .rather than deplore the undemocratic character of academe and its elitist attitude to the vast majority of the population and their music, it is more productive to consider what can be done to improve the quality of music studies” (tagg, ). he goes on to suggest that both musicologists and sociologists need to be open to change regarding the meanings ascribed to music. the type of curricular music offered in schools, usually concert band, jazz band, choir, and orchestra, provides opportunities for learning to play an instrument. or use the voice. it also offers the opportunity to learn to read notation, and as well the opportunity to be part of a large ensemble. for many students, curricular music provides the music experience they seek. however, for a number of reasons including lack of confidence, lack of funds, or lack of interest in certain types of music, not all students in a school choose music as it is currently offered. should we be complacent about this situation, or, do we ask, as kuzmich does. “...should we broaden our base of operation by including students who are outside our regular music classes?” (kuzmich, , pg. ). declining enrollments in traditional ensemble classes is a matter of concern amongst music educators internationally. in the uk, concerns have been raised regarding the low numbers of students involved in school music (referred to there as music service): “currently available data relating to music service provision indicates that about % of children and young people within the state school sector are accessing music making activities (primarily instrumental tuition) via music services” (youth music, , pg. ). a move is afoot to drastically alter school music organization, with the offering of programs more in line with student interest: “schools and music providers need to connect their music provision more meaningfully with young people's own interests, passions, and motivations” (music manifesto, , p. ). in the us, as one example, the garage bands studied by campbell contained students passionately interested and motivated by music who were pursuing their interest outside the school setting. campbell, in a statement that evoked the challenge/skills balance aspect of csikszentmihalyi's flow theory, asked why they were no longer enrolled: by the time of the interviews, all had “quit” their school bands, three had begun to study guitar through formal arrangements, and both drummers were taking lessons from private teachers. for some, the decision to drop band from their school schedules had to do with the slow pace of the rehearsals or the “simple, easy music” of the band's repertoire. most, however, did not explain their reasons for quitting beyond noting their boredom at rehearsals, their disinterest in the concert (or marching) band sound, and the greater meaning of rock music to them. (campbell, , p. ) davis, a fellow us music educator, has a clear vision for bringing students interested in music back into the music classroom: formal music education certainly has much to learn from the ways that young people learn music informally outside the walls of the classroom. we need to find ways to bring into formal music learning the ownership, agency, relevance, and means of personal expression that will enable our students to begin to feel as passionate about school music experiences as they do about non-school music experiences. (davis, , p. ) in an examination of the canadian music classroom with regards to creativity, lowe summarizes the current shortcomings of the classroom music curriculum. he notes a serious attitudinal decline as students enter the secondary school years (lowe, ) resulting in low enrollments in music once an option to avoid it exists. could a focus more inclusive of popular music in schools reverse this trend by changing student dispositions regarding school music? in australia, the success of contemporary composition ensembles such as jungle express is not an isolated phenomenon. such groups are enrolling students in school music by providing options for alternate instrumentation and a larger focus on popular music. however, such performing groups are most attractive to students who already possess strong music skills. are those without such skills necessarily lost to curricular or extracurricular music? high school general music, long the poor relative to the more elitist performing groups such as concert bands, has been suggested as one way of including the less skilled musician, thus increasing school music enrollment. as far back as the s, educators recognized the potential value of general music classes. in discussing appropriate curriculum and instruction for a general program, and in a statement that evokes csizkszentmihalyi's flow theory, discussed earlier, hughes suggests that “the instructor must balance an appropriate degree of challenge with the possibility of achieving success in the near future” (hughes, , pg. ). perhaps the general music designation will prove to be more amenable to the inclusion of popular music culture than the standard high school performance-based groups have been. relatedly, reimer's vision for general music classes suggested that students should be actively engaged while taking into account the possible roles music could play in their lifelong learning. he noted that, while it was important to understand music as experienced by the professional, it was equally important to consider the role of the amateur (a person engaging in a musical role for enjoyment, as opposed to for a career) and the aficionado (a person seeking musical experiences in a multitude of other ways) (remier, ). would the offering of of classes in rock musicology necessarily solve the problem of inclusion? campbell expresses her reservations about including rock music in schools: do we open the curriculum to the inclusion of 'rock music appreciation' courses? this is probably not necessary, as rock music is already widely accepted. furthermore, the genre demands the listener's thorough engagement rather than the passive listening associated with appreciation courses. rock music may be less an academic discipline, to be dissected and dulled by discussion of its features, than it is intended (and rightfully interpreted by its young listeners) to be a visceral experience. do we consider the rock band as a chamber ensemble worthy of our coaching? perhaps, although the contextualization of rock music in its rehearsal and performance is closely wedded to its sound; rock music in a school band room may be blatantly out of context. as well, rock music has historically contained within it an element of rebellion, and as such, has been intended to be heard and performed by adolescents and 'twentysomethings' beyond the reach of parents, teachers, and other adults. uninformed teachers might not make convincing coaches. (campbell, , p. - ) lilliestam is even more direct: the guitarist jimmy page, from led zeppelin, says: “the good thing about the guitar was that they didn't teach it in school. teaching myself was the first and most important part of my education. i know that jeff beck and i enjoyed pure music because we didn't have to. i hope they keep it out of the schools. (davis, , p. , as cited in lilliestam, , pg. ) page's wry comment says volumes about about music educators' track record when it comes to developing school music programs that are viewed as relevant by students, or at least by the ones who become famous rock guitarists! in reality, the picture is probably nowhere near that bleak. it is interesting to note, however, that historically, the tension between what designers of curriculum feel is appropriate for school music, and what students themselves might like to learn, is ongoing. as an example, a issue of the music educators journal contained a dialog regarding the evolution of band programs, from concert bands to marching bands to jazz bands, and possible meanings that could be attached to this progression. howell offered a contentious but thought-provoking point of view: the educational establishment has always been much more conservative than we would like to admit, and throughout history no musical ensemble has ever been admitted to the school curriculum until the life cycle of that ensemble was on its downcurve. for example, in the 's when jazz was still growing and developing, jazz in the schools was strictly forbidden. today we have jazz ensembles in the schools and university degrees in jazz studies, but nothing comparable in rock music, which is still developing. (howell, , pg. ) by the time we are ready to recognize rock, will something different be on the horizon? although a suitable direction is not completely clear, it is possible that, if we remain open to change and alternate possibilities, the inclusion of popular music in schools in some form may prove to be a positive direction. as an extracurricular activity, an examination of jamming in schools may help to point the way. my final theme addresses not the jam session itself, but instead one of the means of reporting observations regarding the jam session. . . reporting culture: van maanen's “tales of the field” my own culture was a small-town, middle-aged, teacher-oriented one. given that, some of my most revealing glimpses of other cultures and other lives lived have come from conversations with my two grown sons, one a north vancouver music producer and composer, and one who is an officer with the vancouver police department. when i convince them to tell me a few tales, i vicariously experience other worlds. during the period between and , john van maanen embarked upon a field study of the culture surrounding police work. his embedded perspective (as a police recruit, and as such at least a ride-along, and often a participant) enabled him to experience what few outsiders could, the world of a city policeman. in writing up his fieldwork account, he used what was at the time best described as a somewhat unconventional form of ethnography, which he defined as “... the peculiar practice of representing the social reality of others through the analysis of one's own experience in the world of these others” (van maanen, , p. ix). to emphasize the storytelling aspect of the ethnographic write-up, van maanen used the word tales, highlighting the once-removed representational nature of these accounts. he considered realist tales, in which the writer was generally absent, and the opposite, confessional tales, in which the writer's presence was paramount, before describing impressionist tales, which, he stated: “... are personalized moments of fieldwork cast in dramatic form; they therefore carry elements of both realist and confessional writing” (van mannen, , p. ). it is the impressionist tale, a term borrowed from a form of visual art and capturing an impression of a scene at a moment in time, that i consider most appropriate for representing some of the qualitative information included in this study. “impressionist tales are not about what usually happens but about what rarely happens” (van maanen, , p. ). i hope to see what others might miss: the unusual, the interesting, the atypical. indeed, “impressionist tales suggest that we learn more from the exceptional than from the topical” (van maanen, , p. ). ideally, the tale combines the worlds of the observed, the participant-observer, and the reader, who brings to the tale his own experiences through which he interprets what he reads. characterization and rising action are tools that may be employed in the impressionist tale in order to more thoroughly involve the reader. it is worth noting that the profile of the reader i imagine viewing my work spans a range from the fellow researcher, to the musician/colleague, to the more general reader with an interest in school culture. there is a great deal of trust involved in my asking to be part of a subject's musical experiences and privy to my subject's private thoughts; because of this, my list of characters is relatively small. as well, i realize that even when my presence is accepted without question, i am not one of them. “researchers are to a degree always alien to the social worlds they study if only because of their detached and professional interests in those worlds” (van maanen, , p. ). throughout this dissertation, i have inserted into the larger blocks of regular text short impressionist tales in the form of vignettes. these vignettes include reflections of personal experiences from a time prior to my research proposal, illustrating events that piqued my interest in jamming as a phenomenon worthy of study. as well, vignettes based on observations made throughout the period of my research are presented in the form in which they were recorded in my field notes. it is my hope that these will serve to inform, add characterization, and more thoroughly involve the reader. methodology . introduction and overview “the case is a specific, complex, functioning thing” (stake, , p. ). my case, which examines informal music participation (jamming), was specific to one unique school (the sullivan campus of salmon arm high school, or sahs), complex (involving interactions on many levels in favor of many purposes), and functioning (units of analysis, though loosely defined, displayed a degree of organization focused on the pursuit of some musical long or short term goal). my case study focused on a single case, the jamming musicians at one school, the sullivan campus of sahs; a group of non-jamming music students were also studied briefly for comparative purposes. prior to beginning my main study, i piloted all instruments at the jackson campus of sahs. my decision to study jammers at a single school, rather than to compare multiple populations of jammers, was one i made only after a great deal of deliberation. after all factors were considered, i concluded that what i could learn from one unique case would have the most benefit for me as a researcher. i also believed that this initial exploration of a previously unexamined phenomenon would make the greatest contribution to the field through the examination of one case, in depth and with attention to its complex and multifaceted nature. because a review of the literature served to convince me that no single method would provide the information i sought, i chose to conduct a mixed-method study. i was convinced that this was the only way to achieve my goal stated in chapter , that of describing how things were at this particular place and time. to summarize, my dissertation is a case study of the jamming population of the sullivan campus of salmon arm high school (sahs). non-jamming subjects at this same school played a small role in my case study for comparison purposes. jamming subjects at the jackson campus of sahs served as my pilot case subjects. in writing this chapter, i first addressed my criteria for selecting the specific mix of different types of instruments. next, i looked at each research instrument in depth. then, i looked at my plan for administering these instruments. . rationale for mix of methodology “case studies can be based on any mix of quantitative and qualitative evidence” (yin, , p. ). although this statement may initially appear too general to be useful, it was an important starting point in the evolution of my research plan. my original interest in the jam session stemmed from a desire to know more about the way jammers, who usually play by ear, were perceiving and manipulating the elements of music. in order to explore this interest further, i chose to use two existing quantitative instruments, the advanced measures of music audiation (amma) and the test of melodic ear-to-hand coordination (tmehc). the two tests were designed to test different aspects of musicianship; the amma was chosen because it addressed music aptitude, and the tmehc was chosen because it addressed music achievement. as well, i believed that observation and participant observation would reveal additional information regarding the perception and manipulation of music elements by jammers. thus, i decided that my first specific research question would best be explored using both quantitative and qualitative data. however, as i recalled jam sessions in which i had both participated and observed, i was certain that there was another perspective that merited inclusion in the form of a second specific research question. the degree of motivation that participants displayed, as well as the feeling of being “in the zone” that i had experienced, led me to consider csikszentmihalyi's flow theory as a possible explanation for these phenomena. as previously discussed in chapter , despite the fact that a quantitative instrument was available for this purpose, i was not convinced that it was suitable for my research purposes. for this reason, i developed several qualitative instruments, one of which was also designed to produce quantitative data. in addition, i predicted that my case study would be a journey presenting me with both expected and unexpected outcomes. for this reason, i developed qualitative research instruments of an open-ended nature, with the intent of allowing for perspectives on jamming that i had not anticipated to emerge. i was convinced that both qualitative and quantitative modes of inquiry were necessary for my exploration of this case. as eisner suggests, quantitative instruments provide data in terms of representational symbols such as numbers, while qualitative instruments provide data in terms of presentational symbols such as words (eisner, ). i strongly believed that both were needed; the quantitative data would provide me the opportunity to compare within and between groups by means of numbers, while the qualitative data would give me the opportunity to provide thick description, to “allow the reader to experience what he or she has not experienced directly” (eisner, , p. ). . research instruments i organized the following descriptions of instrument protocol by research question addressed: first specific research question, then second specific research question, followed by the general area of inquiry. . . first research question instrument: amma gordon's amma was designed for large-group use, and i thus planned to administer it to all subjects present in the concert band and music composition classes. the amma asks subjects to determine if pairs of melodies are the same or different. this test, which does not require formal music skills to complete, is designed to examine and quantify the audiation levels of subjects. the amma consists of three practice exercises followed by actual exercises. each exercise consists of a music phrase which is played twice; the subject is then asked to determine whether the two phrases are the same or different. if a subject concludes that the two phrases are the same, she marks the 'same' column on the bubble sheet provided. if a subject concludes that they are different, he is asked to identify the way in which the phrases are different by selecting 'tonal' or 'rhythm' on the bubble sheet. the cassette tape accompanying the test contains all verbal instruction and all music phrases (played on a synthesizer), resulting in a high degree of test standardization. the amma takes minutes to administer. scoring is accomplished by means of a mask which enables the marker to determine the scores for t (tonal correct), t (tonal incorrect), r (rhythm correct) and r (rhythm incorrect). twenty points are added to the correct scores, then wrong answers in each category are subtracted from right ones to penalize guessing. this process results in a raw score for each of tonal and rhythm as well as a total raw score based on both. from these scores, percentile ranks for each subject are selected from the age-specific norms provided. . . first research question instrument: tmehc froseth's tmehc was designed to be administered to subjects on an individual basis. i thus planned to administer it to students taken individually from band classes. the tmehc asks subjects to replicate a short music phrase on their instrument. this test is designed to examine and quantify the ear-to-hand achievement of subjects. the tmehc consists of patterns, divided into nine sequences of variable length with a five-second break between each. first, a sequence of practice examples is given in order to familiarize subjects with the procedure. a synthesizer is used to produce melodic patterns, each of which is four beats long. a click track provides the quarter note for both the pattern and the subject’s imitation of that pattern. thus, the subject hears a melodic pattern and is required to perform the pattern upon his or her major instrument in the following measure. the test administrator records the subject’s responses on the coding sheet provided, with responses being identified as either correct or incorrect. the number of correct responses out of constitutes the subject’s test score. the starting note in concert pitch is given for each sequence. the sequences contain intervalic patterns that increase in difficulty from the first sequence to the ninth sequence. early sequences consist of stepwise melodic patterns, diatonic intervals, and arpeggios based on major and minor chords. later sequences also contain intervals up to a perfect fifth, non- diatonic intervals, and arpeggios based on augmented and diminished chords. the entire test, including the practice sequence, takes minutes to administer. froseth provides interpretation guidelines for the tmehc based on student scores; these norms are designed to be used with first-year college music majors. . . second research question instrument: flow observation as suggested in chapter , the presence of flow may be detected by a trained observer. based on custodero's flow in musical activities (fima), i developed the following form, observation of flow indicators (ofi) for use with older subjects. in addition to writing field notes, i used this form to code my jam session observations. coding form for observation of flow indicators ( ofi ) semantic differential (v-very, q-quite, s-somewhat, n-neither) happy v q s n s q v sad involved v q s n s q v detached cheerful v q s n s q v irritable excited v q s n s q v bored focused v q s n s q v distracted comfortable v q s n s q v uncomfortable engaged v q s n s q v disengaged satisfied v q s n s q v frustrated likert-type scale - ( =not at all, =somewhat, =quite a lot, =very much so) music appeared to be appropriately challenging student appeared to possess suitable skill levels student lacked self-conscious behaviour student appeared to lose track of time student appeared focused throughout the session student demeanor appeared confident student concentrated despite distractions gaze/”thousand-yard stare” kinesthetic involvement of body/limbs . . second research question instrument: questionnaire as noted in chapter , balara examined the flow experiences of jazz musicians. based on balara's work, i developed the following questionnaire to be used in either written or spoken form following a jam session. post-jam session flow questionnaire . was today's music session fun? why or why not? . did you feel that you made a contribution to the session today? if so, can you give an example? . were you happy with how you played today? why or why not? . did you feel distracted at any time? if so, because of what? . did you ever feel “in the zone” today while playing? if so, when? can you describe the feeling? . . instruments addressing the general area of inquiry the following instruments were developed to provide qualitative data in support of the general area of inquiry. as well, because i planned to remain cognizant of other factors that might be pertinent to my study of the high school jam session, some of the instruments i used (below) contained open-ended questions or tasks. i developed three scripts to assist me in better understanding jamming from the subjects' point of view. i used questions in the first script, below, as journaling prompts. selected subjects were given the set of questions and asked to respond to them in journal form. journaling prompts . what instruments do you play? which one do you like playing most, and why? . have you ever taken private lessons on an instrument? if so, did the teacher use printed music most of the time, or did he/she show you things to play in another way? if so, how? . let's say you had to learn a new song on your own. how would you do that? for instance, would you be more likely to look on the internet, or look for printed music in a store, or ask someone to show it to you, or listen to it and figure it out? . what music courses are you taking this year? despite the fact that you take actual music courses, you come to the band room during your free time and play – why? . did you practice an instrument at home this week? if so, why did you do that? . if a class in the school was canceled for the day, how would you spend that time? . do you think you are good at reading music, say, in band class, or in piano lessons? . do you think you are good at playing by ear? why, or why not? . do you tend to jam with the same people most days? why these people? . are you as good a musician as these people you jam with, or are they better or worse than you? why do you think so? . are these people you jam with your friends too? do you tend to hang out together? . five years from now, what role do you think (or hope) music will play in your life? . when you jam in the band room, are you nervous? why or why not? . is your band teacher supportive of jamming? if so, what does he do that helps? . does what you have learned in choir, concert band, jazz band or music comp help you in your jamming? if so, in what way? . would you say you are fairly happy when jamming? in what ways might this activity make you feel good? do you ever feel bad after you jam? why or why not? . what do you think other people in the school think of people like you who hang out in the band room and play? does this matter to you? why or why not? . what do you think you learn musically from this experience? . in what ways is this a positive experience for you? . does jamming have any effect on the rest of your life? i also developed two interview scripts, one for use with individuals, and one for use with a group. i used these scripts to gain knowledge in support of my general research question. as well, these instruments were designed to inform me regarding other aspects of the jamming environment, as explored in the additional perspectives and overarching themes section of chapter . script for individual interview . (name), please tell me a bit about yourself as a musician. how long have you played the (jam session instrument), and why did you choose this instrument? . tell me about what it was like to learn to play this instrument. how did you get started? did anyone help you, and if so, in what ways? . what are some of your favorite things about (what do you like best about) playing the (jam session instrument)? . have you learned anything in regular music classes that has helped you play here? what classes, and what did you learn, specifically? . do you see yourself as a good student overall? are there some parts of school that are more satisfying for you than others? . why do you come here, as opposed to, say, going to mcd's to hang out? . would you say the people you play with are your friends? why do you think that is? . sometimes, other students come in the band room and listen to you and the others playing. why do you think they do that? what do you figure they think of you and your music? . do other people in this school think of you as a musician? does that matter to you? . do you like figuring songs out by ear? why or why not? . do you write your own songs? do you share them with others? (if so) how would you explain to other musicians what to play on one of your songs? . do you play alone sometimes? why, or why not? . are you nervous playing in front of an audience, and can you tell me about a time when you were not nervous? . have you ever been surprised that the time has gone so quickly when you were playing? can you tell me about a time when that happened, what it felt like? . if somebody offered to give you money to practice your instrument, or perhaps a really good mark on your next report card for doing so, would that make you practice more? . are you good at this? (jamming) are the others you play with just as good? . do you have any plans for continuing in music after you leave school? if so, what do you see yourself doing musically? . has this ever happened to you: you are listening to a song with your (jamming instrument) in your hands, and your fingers seem to just know where to go, without you thinking about it? if so, can you give a specific example of this happening? script for group interview . how long have you been working together as a group? . do you think you work well together, generally speaking? why do you think this is? . how close are you? do you ever finish each other's sentences, or read each other's thoughts, figuratively or musically speaking? . do any or all of you bring your own music ideas to a practice to show the others? if so, do you encourage the others to contribute different ideas that might fit? can you give an example? . do you, as a group, see yourselves as part of the music program at this school, even though what you are doing here is not a course? . do you get musical support and help from anyone in the school, and if so, from whom? . do other students think of you as musicians? do they know you have a band going here? do they support you in any way? . what would be your usual way of learning a new song? or do you do this in several ways? can you give an example or two? . does what you are doing here help all of you to become better musicians? . looking back to when you first started doing this, do you think you are a better musician now than you were then? in what ways? . let's just say you all became band teachers, five years from now. do you think any of what you learn from playing together as a band would help you in that job? what, specifically? . if you were a band teacher in a school like this one, in what ways do you think you would be able to help others to have a similar music experience to what you have had? . do you like playing by ear? do we, as band teachers, do a good job of teaching people to play by ear? how do you think this could be improved? . why do you play? for grades? for status in the school? because your parents want you to? for some other reason? . lots of people play in band in this school, yet i don't see them here, like you are. why do you think this is? . when you are playing together, i often get the impression that you are really into it, really involved. can you describe what that feels like? . if you were not allowed to do this in school, could you and would you find another way of playing together? . what do you get from this personally? . does jamming make the rest of your life better in any way? i was also interested in knowing more about the strategies employed by groups of musicians (rather than individual musicians) when learning a song by ear, or when transmitting that ear-based knowledge to other musicians. i wanted to know if musicians who jam together frequently employ some type of strategy for capitalizing on individual strengths, and if so, how they build upon the synergy created. with this purpose, i created two participant-observer tasks designed to provide me with insights into the ways in which musicians working in groups perceive and manipulate music elements. the first task involved asking a group of musicians to learn, by ear, an unfamiliar song provided by me. below is the script for this task: script: first participant-observer ear-to-hand task for group “today i would like you to show me how you would approach the task of figuring out a song that you don't know, one that might not even be the sort of thing you play normally. i have a recording of it here, and i can tell you that it is short and it could be played with the instrumentation that you have in this band. don't worry too much about the words, it's the way you figure out the music that is of more interest to me. would you like me to tell you the key it's in? i have paper and pencils here if you want to write anything down; that's up to you, though. discussing things out loud with each other while you are doing this will help me understand what you are doing. because i don't want to take too much of your jamming time, i'd like to set a time limit for this task. it's not a very complicated song. would minutes be a reasonable amount of time? ok, then, let's see how much of this song you can pick up in minutes. ready?” the song was the theme from cartoon show king of the hill. i have used this song for similar purposes a number of times in the past; students have usually found it vaguely familiar, but no student has ever actually known it. the chord changes in this song were somewhat predictable, though not to the extent that a bar blues would have been. there was an identifiable, repeated guitar riff to figure out. the bass line was easy to hear, and the groove (pattern that the drummer plays), while unusual, was not particularly difficult in terms of either tempo or technique. the form was one frequently used in rock music. the second task was in some ways the reverse of the first. i asked a group of musicians to teach me one of their songs, reasoning that observing the way in which subjects transmit music knowledge might give me insights into their perception of music elements. script: second participant-observer ear-to-hand task for group “today, let's just say you needed a keyboard player on one of your songs for a gig you were doing. i play keyboards, and i wondered if you would be willing to teach me your song? i am most interested in how you would explain it to me, or show it to me, so please think out loud as much as you can. i would also be interested in how you might see an additional instrument fitting into the arrangement of the tune, so you can ask me to play something that is different to what you are playing on the guitar, if you feel that is appropriate. again, i don't want to take too much of your jamming time; would minutes be a reasonable amount of time? ok, then, teach me your song.” this session was audiotaped, and from this tape, field notes were produced. . administration of instruments . . consent forms, demographic information and pseudonyms prior to administering any instrument, written consent of both the subjects and the parent/guardians of those subjects was obtained. then, demographic information on each subject in both the pilot and the main study was obtained from school administration, and each subject, in alphabetical order, was assigned a subject number. in accordance with school district regulations regarding privacy of information, subjects were asked to choose their own pseudonym to represent them. . . research plan after providing potential subjects and their parents/guardians with written and verbal information regarding my study and obtaining consent forms from interested subjects, i piloted my study at the jackson campus of sahs over a period of two weeks. for the pilot study, i first administered the amma, following the protocol as outlined above. then, i observed noon hour jam sessions and wrote field notes. next, i administered the tmehc to pilot subjects, following the protocol outlined above. finally, i conducted individual and group interviews with pilot subjects. for the main study at the sullivan campus of sahs, i first offered information about the study and distributed consent forms to potential subjects, in the same manner as i did for the pilot study. then, i administered the amma, on a group basis, to all consenting subjects in the concert band and music composition classes. next, i administered the pre-test of the tmehc to individual subjects. following that, i administered the sor , another aural skills test, (described in a following section, . . ), to subjects, and concurrently observed noon hour jam sessions, using both the ofi coding form and field notes to record my observations. at this time i also distributed journals and prompts to individuals selected on the basis of consistent jam session participation, conducted individual and group interviews, and presented participant-observer tasks. finally, i administered the post-test of the tmehc. this research activity occurred over a period of four months. pilot study and adjustments . pilot study i began my pilot study on february , , and concluded my pilot study on february , . during that time period i was at the jackson campus of sahs a total of eight times. my arrival at jackson campus, on the first day of my pilot study, was greeted with enthusiasm by a small group of students who were just finishing their lunches. “are you our sub?” they asked hopefully, perhaps anticipating a fun-filled hour putting a new teacher through her paces. the arrival of the regular band teacher, mr. j., made it clear that i was not a sub. in the brief time before classes began for the afternoon, i asked mr. j. about his noon-hour jammers. “i don't really have many this year,” was his reply. “some years they appear, some years not.” i explained my study to the grade nine and ten band classes, and told them that i would be in the band room the following lunch hour to distribute information and consent forms to interested students. when i entered the band room on the following day, a small group of students were clustered around the piano, eating their lunches, talking, and occasionally playing a little on the piano and an electric guitar. i talked to the students and handed out several consent forms. as mr. j commiserated with me regarding the small number of jammers this year, i glanced over his shoulder. two young males, one with a violin and one with a classical guitar, had entered the room quietly and set up in the back corner. “what about those two?” i asked. “i've never seen them in here before!” he replied. i hastened to give them information and consent forms, and i asked if they planned to be back the following day. based on the recommendations of the band teacher as well as my personal observations, i identified six potential subjects, all of whom returned consent forms and agreed to participate. over a period of two weeks i observed these subjects and piloted the instruments to be used in the main study. finding a place to administer the amma, my first instrument, proved to be problematic. it was very difficult to find a place without distractions, quiet enough to be able hear clearly, and in a spot where we wouldn't be disturbing others. sporadic student attendance proved to be a problem as well; in the two-week period of my pilot study, the best i could do was to administer the amma to five of out of the six subjects. i interviewed the six subjects either individually or in pairs, using the script that i had developed. questions examining aspects of flow usually produced the strongest responses. for example, rose, a tenth grade bass player with a great sense of humor, described her experiences with the flow characteristic concentration and focus. “people tease me because of my look of concentration, they say i look like i am waiting for the bus! (laughs) but i am really thinking of the rhythm, and thinking ahead!” rose also told me about an instance when she lost track of time, another characteristic of flow. “i look and there is minutes left and then five seconds later the bell goes and the time has gone, and i haven't noticed because i am having so much fun.” peanut, a diminutive tenth grade guitar player, had also experienced this: “sure, when something is a lot of fun, the time goes by really quickly!” she also discussed two other characteristics of flow, loss of self-consciousness and sense of control. “i am used to being on stage, i'm not nervous. actually, i am always a little nervous, but i don't show it, because if you do, it is a domino effect.” as well, peanut revealed her autotelic personality when answering my question about practicing: “i practice all the time anyway. it is up to the student, you know, if they really want to do it.” alexandra, a confident tenth grade trumpet player, told me how comfortable she was performing, and how she lost track of time in a concert situation: “yeah, it often happens that we are playing a concert or something, and we are just started and then, wow, we're done!” with regard to the social aspects of jam participation, rose and bertha (a clarinet player) talked about their identities as musicians: “my friends call me 'bass girl' and we both get called 'band geeks' but we don't mind!” dante, a classical guitar player, and virgil, a violin player, provided me with opportunities to look for observable indications of flow. my field notes stated, in part: the guitar player played a theme based on a classical composition. the violin player listened intently with his eyes closed, then started weaving an intricate countermelody. they both played for a good five minutes without stopping, exhibiting the “thousand-yard stare”and moving their bodies in time to the music they were creating. when the bell went, they looked up, surprised. i was also able to interview the band teacher at the jackson campus, mr. j, and get his perspective on why students jammed and what they learned from doing so. he stated that he believed students were learning important skills from jamming: “when you figure they have to organize and analyze music, the structure, the form! it's so good for the right-brain musician.” he also noted that jamming provided an important practice opportunity: “they are practicing and enjoying it!” he also had an explanation for why students jammed: “it' s good motivation, they find it feels good to do it, and things sound good.” in order to gain practice at administering the tmehc, i first tested mr. j. not surprisingly, as he is the best ear-to-hand player i have ever met, he scored out of . pilot subjects found the tmehc very difficult. bertha, whose score was , was visibly upset by the experience. dante scored , virgil scored , while rose scored . peanut scored and immediately wanted to try again. only alexandra displayed characteristics of flow while doing the tmehc; her score was . intrigued by this score, i asked more questions about her background and experience. she indicated that her parents had been very involved in music as a result of their occupations, and that she had shown “early promise.” alexandra had been playing her instrument for about seven years. administering the tmehc as part of the pilot study revealed the difficulties of using this test with relatively inexperienced players. based on my pilot experiences, i developed and piloted another ear-to-hand instrument, as discussed in . . , below. . modifications to the research plan . . limitations of the tmehc. at the proposal stage, my research methodology specified the use of two quantitative instruments, the amma and the tmehc, as introduced in chapter and outlined in chapter . however, during the pilot study it became clear to me that my intended use of the tmehc with subjects of this age and level of musicianship was problematic. the limitations of this test, given my research purposes, were apparent in three main areas. first, the item difficulty was clearly inappropriate for most of this group; it was not uncommon for students to become discouraged even on the practice patterns, and many found it impossible to continue with the test past the first sequence of patterns. i consider it significant that froseth's subjects were two to five years older than my subjects, were college music majors, and most importantly, had an estimated eight or more years of experience on their instruments. by contrast, my subjects were high school generalists with six months to four years of experience on their instruments. many lacked the skill to play the notes required fluently, often during the bb concert sequences, and especially when non- diatonic notes appeared in later test sequences. second, i found that certain characteristics of some of the instruments played by the subjects during the test contributed to test inequalities related to key. the tmehc was in the key of bb concert (or the relative minor of g minor concert), a key that most beginning concert band students learned first, and were generally comfortable with. however, string players, and particularly guitar and bass players who had played only in the rock genre, had seldom or never encountered this key during these early years of their playing and were therefore at a disadvantage from the outset. as well, given the tuning of these instruments (with open strings including e, a. d and g), the key of bb concert appeared to be noticeably non-intuitive for less experienced string players. third, although froseth tested all percussionists as well as all vocalists on piano, i did not find this feasible, as in most cases the subjects lacked the rudimentary piano skills required for the task. my non-jamming subjects represented a fairly typical concert-band instrumentation; clarinets, flutes, trumpets, and a smattering of low brass and woodwinds. the jammers, however, were weighted heavily in favor of the rock-band type of instrumentation, including six guitar players, a bass player, three piano players, three drummers, and two subjects who were vocalists with no instrumental skills whatsoever. wouldn't comparing these two groups on the basis of tmehc scores be a bit like comparing oranges and apples? during my pilot study, when the above problems with the test first became apparent, i contacted james froseth with my concerns. he replied, in part: the difficulty of a test is always an issue. however, tmehc is a highly sequenced test that includes virtually all of the diatonic vocabulary in our tonal system including scale patterns and harmonic patterns. it is sequenced, beginning to end, with easy, moderately difficult, and difficult test items. testing to the limit of the students ability is a modification that you can describe in your report. i should mention that whenever we halted a test we offered the student an opportunity to try again, usually the same day (froseth, personal communication by email, ). where possible, i followed froseth's suggestion for “testing to the limit of the students' ability” as well as offering the subject the opportunity to try again. however, i found that, for some subjects, even with this degree of test modification the tmehc was not workable. it soon became apparent to me that to insisting upon pre- and-post-testing of all subjects using the tmehc would create undesirable levels of anxiety in some subjects. this test was so hard on some subjects that i was surprised that there weren't tears, or worse. i took to marking the “practice” exercises so that i at least had something positive to comment on when we stopped. to be fair, there were several subjects who got all the way through the test, turned to me, and said, “can i do it again? i'm sure i could do it better because now i know what to listen for!” for this reason, i decided upon a criterion to limit tmehc participation to those subjects for whom it would not cause undue discomfort. before testing, i asked each subject to play a bb concert scale, in two octaves if possible. if they were unable to do this, i concluded that further administration of the tmehc would be counterproductive, and i did not continue with it. for those subjects able to play the required scale, i followed dr. froseth's suggestion to “test to the limit of their ability.” in most cases, this meant stopping the test after the third sequence, although a small number of subjects was able to continue well past that point. observing subjects as they performed the test also served the purpose of augmenting my qualitative data regarding flow. because administering the tmehc to all subjects was not possible, i implemented an alternate strategy for defining the study group required for answering one of my ancillary questions. by asking subjects to play a bb concert scale prior to doing the tmehc, as mentioned above, i obtained a roster of jammers. i already had a comparable group of non-jammers, bringing the total number of subjects to be tested using the tmehc to in total. upon examining subject demographics, i found the subjects in these two groups to be highly comparable. . . additional instrument: sor based on the limitations of the tmehc, as noted above, i decided that an additional quantitative instrument was needed in order to more fully explore the ear-to-hand capabilities of the jamming population. for this reason, i added to my research instruments a self- developed task based on the melody for somewhere over the rainbow (sor). i chose this melody for two reasons: first, it was likely to be familiar to subjects, but unlikely to have been learned. second, all the diatonic notes within the range of an octave, plus an interval based on the relative minor appeared in the 'a' section, while several of the most common non-diatonic notes appeared in the more challenging 'b' section. furthermore, i expected that the nature of this test, with its more relaxed, exploratory dynamic, would be ideal for ascertaining whether or not subjects could hear common music intervals and transfer them to their instrument. with the intention of using the sor during my main study at the sullivan campus, i piloted it on several subjects at the jackson campus. i hoped that this test would examine ear- to-hand skills in a manner better suited to the capabilities of my subjects as developing musicians. for that reason, test protocol was developed in response to the three main limitations of the tmehc discussed earlier. first, i sought to provide item difficulty more appropriate to younger, less experienced players. therefore, i produced a task based on the melody of an actual song, wherein all the intervals (ranging from a minor second to an octave) required to be reproduced were diatonic ones. for subjects who easily performed this task correctly, i provided an optional task, based on the melody of the bridge of the same song and requiring subjects to correctly perceive and play a non-diatonic interval, as well as play a more challenging rhythm. second, i sought to overcome the disadvantages placed on non-wind-instrument players by offering each subject his or her choice of key. most keyboard players picked the key of c, most wind instrument players picked the key of bb concert, and string players usually picked the key of a or e, often the most comfortable choice for each group. third, i was able to involve some of the previously untestable vocalists and drummers by first showing them the c scale on piano (all white notes) and then asking them to do the task. in this way, i was not only able to provide an atmosphere more conducive to success, but also put myself in a good position to observe emerging ear-to-hand skills. a number of subjects, having had a fairly discouraging experience on the pre- tmehc, were, while not exactly avoiding me, noticeably lacking in eagerness when i brought them into studio b to take the sor. several of them were actually shaking with fear. it delighted me to see, at the end of the five minutes, many confident smiles. “can we figure out another song? that was fun!” one additional benefit to sor was the more relaxed demeanor that most subjects immediately displayed, in contrast with the tmehc, where the relentless pressure to perform each pattern to a metronomic beat impeded, in my observation, the demonstration of fragile but emerging ear-to-hand skills in some subjects. the more subject-friendly method of administering the sor, however, also contributed to a limitation of this test. the fact that i played (on the piano) the patterns to be reproduced by the subject, rather than recording them on a cd and playing it in a similar manner to the tmehc, did make it possible to adjust the key to the subject and probably lowered the anxiety level of the subject, but it also made standardization of the sor more difficult. i took several steps in order to increase standardization. first, i placed a time limit of five minutes on the task, with the task ending when time was up. second, i placed a music stand in such a way as to conceal my hands and the piano keyboard from the subject, lest visual clues might contaminate the results. third, i used the same coding form (below) in the same way with each subject, providing continuity in the way scores were recorded. fourth, i followed a script (below) for my presentation of the task to each subject. if the subject completed the main task in less than five minutes, the remaining time used on one or both of the optional tasks (shown below as part of the coding form). at the end of five minutes, test results were shown to the subject immediately, and each subject was briefly interviewed in order to obtain possible insights into her or his perception of task performance. it should be noted that although every subject who performed this task found the melody familiar (many could name it), no subject had ever actually played it. “oh, i know this! it's something from american idol, right?” i had to admit that i had no idea. illustrated below is the coding form that i used in the administration of the sor. note that the melody was broken down into four, four-measure phrases. each of these phrases was played for the subject as many times as was required for the subject to duplicate it. each phrase was further broken down into intervals to facilitate my coding of the task, although being able to name the interval was not required of the subject. as the subject replicated each phrase i played, i circled the number of tries the subject required in order to correctly play each interval. in this way, the task proceeded uninterrupted while still maintaining the integrity of the coding process. coding form for sor main task circle the number of tries necessary for successful replication of each interval phrase one octave falling m falling m scalewise tones phrase two recognize tonic m implied p phrase three recognize la m recognize m recognize do re mi implied p phrase four recognize re, ti scalewise tones recognize tonic first optional task phrase five (four measures): p m m la phrase six (four measures) p # ti re p second optional task circle number of times appropriate chord/bass note/harmony note is chosen (tonic) iv (subdominant) v (dominant) vi, (relative minor) ii or iii v of v (in phrase ) i also developed a standard procedure for marking the sor. each “ ” circled on the form received marks, each “ ” received marks, each “ ” received marks, each “ ” received marks, and each “ ” received one mark. if the subject required more than tries to find the interval, an x was put at the end of that line and no mark was given for that interval. a perfect score for this portion of the task was . time taken to complete the task was also marked, with completion in one minute or less given additional marks, one to two minutes given marks, two to three minutes given marks, three to four minutes given marks, and four to five minutes given marks. if the subject did not complete the task before five minutes were up, no time marks were awarded. the two marks were added together, resulting in a score out of . although i coded the optional tasks if required, performance or non-performance of this task did not affect the mark out of . instead, i made field notes additional to the coding form regarding the completion of optional tasks, with this information adding qualitative data regarding the sor. as mentioned above, i followed a script during the administration of the sor. this script appears below. script for administration of sor “i am interested in observing the way in which you figure out, by ear, a melody on your instrument. first of all, we need to decide on a key that is comfortable for you. it should be a key in which you feel comfortable playing a major scale. what key would you suggest? now, just listen to the whole melody first.” [here, i play eight measures of somewhere over the rainbow in the agreed-upon key.] “do you recognize it? have you ever played this melody before? now i am going to play it again, two measures at a time. when i finish each two-measure phrase, i'd like you to try to play it. if you think you have played a wrong note, just correct it as you go. when you think you have the phrase figured out, play it through once, correctly.” [using the coding form, i evaluate their efforts, repeating the process for each of the four, two measure phrases.] “on a scale of to , with being most difficult, how difficult did you find this task? [check if there is time remaining in the five minute limit.] “if you found it easy, would you like to continue? could you play the bridge, or the b section, of this melody, if i was to play it for you first? [if time still remains, continue.] “how about if i play the melody and you play chords (or a harmony line or a bass line) that you think would fit?” [chords would be used for a polyphonic instrument such as piano or guitar, a harmony or bass line would be used in the case of a monophonic instrument, giving me an insight into their skill at harmonizing a melody ear-to-hand.] “thank you for your efforts, what you did was very interesting.” as noted above, i became aware of the necessity for an additional instrument during the pilot study phase of my research. my research plan was then modified to include the sor in the main study. . . ancillary questions during the pilot study i also became aware of the need for greater organization of the data i was collecting. although i was satisfied that my research questions were suitable to my research purposes, i found it increasingly helpful to consider each of the several facets that made up each question. based on this, i decided to examine (and, below, italicize) key words in each question, and then break each question into several ancillary questions. my first specific research question asked “do students who informally jam on various forms of music enhance their music skills in the perception and meaningful manipulation of music elements, and if so, how?” my first ancillary question based on this question addressed a quantitative measure of music aptitude, the amma, and examined the perception of music elements aspect of my first specific research question. my purpose in including the amma, as a measure of aptitude in the perception of music elements, was twofold. first, administering the amma provided quantitative data permitting comparison of aptitude between my sample jamming population and my sample non-jamming population. secondly, administering the amma provided insights regarding the aptitude of single jammer subjects profiled in my case study. relating to my first purpose in using the amma i asked this ancillary question: how do the amma scores of the jammers in my sample compare to the amma scores of the non-jammers in my sample? my second ancillary question addressed a quantitative measure of music achievement, the tmehc, and focused on the enhancement of skills aspect of my first specific research question. my purpose in including the tmehc as a measure of achievement in the enhancement of skills was twofold. first, administering the tmehc provided quantitative data permitting comparison of ear-to-hand achievement (an enhanced music skill) between my sample jamming population and my sample non-jamming population. secondly, administering the tmehc provided insights regarding the ear-to-hand achievement (an enhanced music skill) of single jammer subjects profiled in my case study. relating to my first purpose in using the tmehc, i asked this ancillary question: how do the tmehc scores of the jammers in my sample compare to the tmehc scores of the non-jammers in my sample? my purpose in including in my research the sor, a self-developed test of achievement, was, as noted previously, to provide an additional measure of ear-to-hand coordination more suitable for subjects of this age, experience, and instrumentation. as also noted previously, data gathered using the sor had both quantitative and qualitative aspects. this test, which, like the tmehc, focuses on the enhancement of skills aspect of my first specific research question, served a twofold purpose. first, administering the sor provided quantitative data permitting comparison of ear-to-hand achievement (an enhanced music skill) between my sample jamming population and my sample non-jamming population. secondly, administering the sor provided insights regarding the ear-to-hand achievement (an enhanced music skill) of single jammer subjects profiled in my case study. relating to my first purpose in using the sor, i asked this ancillary question: how do the sor scores of the jammers in my sample compare to the sor scores of the non-jammers in my sample? my second purpose in using all three of these instruments was to provide insights into both the music aptitude and the music achievement of single jammer subjects. i used information taken from all three tests, as well as other results, in order to create profiles of individual jammers, as presented in chapter . in addition to quantitative data comparison, i also addressed my first specific research question by means of qualitative data, obtained through the processes of student journaling, interviews, field notes based on observations, questionnaires, and participant-observation tasks. corroborating evidence was collected to discover how music elements were being both perceived and meaningfully manipulated. in order to facilitate interpretation of this qualitative data, i asked an additional ancillary question: what quantitative evidence was gathered that supports my contention that jammers are perceiving and manipulating music elements in a meaningful way? next, i used a similar process to develop ancillary questions to support my second research question. my second specific research question asked: in what ways does flow theory explain the continued participation of students in the jam session? as noted in previously in chapter , csikszentmihalyi's flow theory contained nine observable characteristics .based on observations made during my pilot study, i determined that two of these characteristics were of primary importance to my research and required exploration singly by means of separate ancillary questions. the remaining seven characteristics were addressed together. first, i asked this ancillary question: what evidence was gathered that supports my contention that the challenge/skills balance aspect of flow theory could explain the continued participation of students in the jam session? then, i asked: what evidence was gathered that supports my contention that merging of action and awareness, clear goals, clear and unambiguous feedback, concentrations and focus, sense of control, loss of self-consciousness, and transformation of time (all aspects of flow theory) could explain the continued participation of students in the jam session? finally, i asked: what evidence was gathered that supports my contention that an aspect of flow theory, the autotelic personality (self-developed goals, and participating in an activity for its own sake) could explain the continued participation of students in the jam session? with the modifications of an additional instrument as well as ancillary questions based on my research questions, i was ready to collect data at my main study site. main study . research timelines i began my main study on february , , and concluded my main study on june , . during that time period, i was at the sullivan campus of sahs a total of times. i arranged for my observations, interviews, and tasks to be conducted at the convenience of the classroom teachers; as well, i had to allow for times when school was not in session. during the first week of my study, i collected consent forms, then administered the amma during two regular band classes. i handed out the special amma bubble sheets to all subjects, then started the tape. i was looking out at many tense faces. when it came to the part in the instructions where the voice explained that they would be asked to tell if a melody was the same or different, most of them visibly relaxed. “oh, this will be easy,” i could almost see them thinking. then the first practice example was played. as the melody went on, and on, and on, the tense faces reappeared. “whoa, these examples are so long! this is going to be tough after all.” because a number of subjects were not present in class the day i administered the amma, i offered an opportunity to do the test the following week. sixteen minutes and thirty examples might not seem like much, but most subjects looked like they had been running a marathon when that tape finished. i wondered about several of the students that i knew had been diagnosed with attention deficit disorder (add) and who appeared to find it very difficult to concentrate for that long. how well had they coped? how accurate were their results likely to be? despite being given several opportunities to do so, four subjects did not take the amma. the reason for this was the students' irregular attendance during the time i was in possession of the test. during weeks two and three i observed the jam sessions taking place at lunchtime, and administered the tmehc pre-test individually to students during class time in an adjacent room and with permission of the band teacher. as well, i distributed journals and journaling prompts to the six subjects who, based on my observations, were the most consistent jammers. i finished the pre-test tmehc just before spring break (a period of two weeks during which school was not in session.) when the students returned, i spent the next two weeks observing noon jam sessions, using both the ofi and field notes to record indicators of flow. i also interviewed individually four subjects who were consistent jammers; i audio-recorded these interviews and made field notes as well. of all the research instruments i used, the personal interview was, by far, the one that subjects responded to most positively. here was an adult, another teacher in fact, asking them how they felt about things, and really listening to their answers. this kind of personal validation must be rather rare in a school setting. at this time i also took photographs of subjects jamming (school district regulations required that i not show their faces) as additional indicators of flow. during weeks six and seven, i administered the sor on an individual basis. some subjects did the test in another room during class time, while others were tested during their spare block or over the lunch period. in week eight, i post-tested the tmehc on an individual basis. my decision to do this at this time was based on two factors: first, the school bands were going on a tour/retreat the following week, and second, when they returned, preparations for final exams and the graduation ceremony would be taking much of their time. i was disappointed with this time line; the pre-and-post-test tmehc was separated by a period of only ten weeks, with school not even in session (and therefore a cessation of school jamming) for two of those weeks. weeks nine and ten of my research were spent in the administration of the flow questionnaire, group interviews, and my two participant-observer tasks. at the end of my research, i collected artifacts related to jamming (including recordings and transcripts of songs written and recorded while jamming) and interviewed the band teacher. . identification/designation of subjects for the main study at the sullivan campus of sahs, i identified potential subjects in several ways: by observing in the jamming spaces, by speaking to curricular music classes, and by interviewing the band teacher. in each situation, i gave a brief overview of my study, pointed out that i was seeking both jammers and non-jammers as subjects, and i offered to potential subjects consent forms and letters of information regarding the study. following my presentation at the main study site, the concert band class was silent, even a bit suspicious. i asked if there were any questions. one very large male student blurted out: “forget it! there is no way i'm going to do any more tests and stuff!” when i moved about the room to hand out consent forms, he turned angrily away as i came closer. initially, a total of subjects returned the consent forms and were identified in this manner. over the next two weeks, during my initial observations, i identified an additional four potential subjects who were not part of curricular music but were frequent occupants of the jamming spaces. at my invitation to join the study, these subjects received and returned consent forms, bringing my total number of subjects to . in the music composition class, following my brief presentation, the mood was the opposite; lively bordering on raucous. as i looked around, i recognized at least a dozen of the students i had seen in the jam spaces earlier that day. i was pleased when consent forms were seized eagerly by a large number of curious students. satisfied that i had given forms to each interested student, i prepared to leave so that the teacher, mr. pj, could get on with the class. “hey, what about me?” came the shout from the corner of the room. it was the same very large student, the one who had snubbed me in the previous class. “i'm gonna do it now. i changed my mind.” at this point in my study i was satisfied that i had identified and obtained as a subject any student who could currently be considered a jammer at the sullivan campus of sahs. as well, i had obtained a pool of demographically similar non-jamming subjects, useful for comparison purposes in one of the quantitative aspects of my study. the process of separating the pool of subjects into jammers and non-jammers was more problematic than i had initially thought it would be be. in most cases, the designation was clear: some subjects were occupants of the jam spaces on a very regular basis and were always playing an instrument during those times making them easily identifiable as jammers. conversely, some subjects were never seen in the music rooms outside of class time, making them easily identified as non-jammers. for a few subjects, however, the designation was more nebulous and resulted in a number of questions. was a subject who was always in the jam spaces but never played an instrument a jammer? was a subject who appeared in the jam spaces only occasionally, but always participated musically during those times a jammer? could a subject who never jammed at school but jammed every day at home, or every week at a local music store, really be considered a non-jammer for comparison purposes? what about the subject who was a rapper and played no instrument, but was frequently in the jam space creating a musical product; was he a jammer or a non-jammer? what designation could i put on a subject who appeared in the jam spaces for the first few days, and was never seen there again after that time? how could i define a subject who became interested in jamming only part way through the study, and was a regular occupant of the jam spaces by the end? it appeared that my initial observations had raised a number of questions. clearly, a defensible set of criteria was required. defining jammers as musicians occupying the jam spaces on a non-curricular basis would serve my research purposes only as a generalization. in order to help me further define the category of jammers, i used four sources of information. first, during the course of my observations, i took note of which subjects were in the jam spaces and details of their participation, particularly as to whether they were musically involved or merely observing. second, i spoke to all subjects personally, asking if they considered themselves jammers, and if so, where they did their jamming. one male student eagerly identified himself as a serious jammer, both at school and at home in his basement, where he practiced with not one but two bands. he invited me to come to his next gig. i left the school that day very pleased indeed; i had definitely found a model subject. over the next weeks, i did not see him with an instrument in his hand even once. his friends said that he was now into psychology. third, i gathered artifacts in the form of music room log book entries used by some subjects to reserve a jam space for their use. fourth, i developed a questionnaire that i subsequently administered to subjects. my purpose in administering this questionnaire was to compile more specific information from the perspective of the subjects themselves regarding their jamming, as well as to provide me with information regarding certain aspects of each subject's musicianship. using the information thus gathered, i compiled a list of subjects who were musicians and also met my criteria as jammers. the selection of non-jamming musicians for comparison purposes was much more straightforward. if subjects stated that they never jammed, and if my observations confirmed that fact, they were considered part of the comparison group of non-jammers for a quantitative aspect of my case study. thirteen subjects qualified for status as non-jammers. i also became aware, as my research progressed, that variables beyond my control might influence my results, particularly when comparing jammer and non-jammer tmehc scores. subject # , a non-jammer, attributed her reasonable degree of success on the tmehc to something she called a “perfection ear-training cd.” i was beginning to realize that out-of -school experiences with ear-playing, over which i had no control at all, could have major effects on my results. in this instance, i would have never known about the ear training she was undertaking unless she had volunteered the information herself. an additional ten subjects expressed interest in being part of the study and returned consent forms. some of these subjects appeared in the jam spaces at least occasionally, and were part of my observations during those times, but did not fully meet my criteria as jammers for several reasons. several subjects neither played an instrument nor sang during my observations, and thus i could not consider them musicians for purposes of my study. three subjects called themselves rappers; they were jammers, but whether or not their participation qualified them as musicians in the traditional sense was a matter of debate. one subject had graduated the previous year and thus did not meet my criteria because he was not currently a student of the school. however, his frequent presence, his musicianship, and his musical interactions with others in the jam spaces required me to mention his participation in my field notes from time to time. as my research unfolded, i became increasingly aware of the evolving nature of what i was observing. bands formed and dissolved, songwriting partnerships developed from the ranks of individual composers, musicians devoted only to heavy metal in february became mellow acoustic performers by may. sometimes the catalyst for change was clearly due to a single, readily identifiable cause, but in other situations there appeared to be multiple factors at work. as well, unlike a regular curricular band class, patterns of leadership were diffuse and constantly changing. in the terms of complexity thinking theorists, each organism appeared to be interacting with the environment in dynamic ways, manifested as disequilibrium and constant change. to summarize, the main unit of my study included subjects who met the criteria for jammers and were capable of playing a bb concert scale on a melody instrument, subjects who met the criteria for jammers but who were not capable of playing a bb concert scale on a melody instrument (and thus unsuitable for testing using the tmehc), additional subjects who did not fully meet the criteria for jammers but were part of some jam sessions observed, and non-jamming subjects, for a total of subjects in total. . first specific research question my first specific research question was examined in terms of both quantitative and qualitative data. here, i examine first the quantitative data collected by means of the amma, the tmehc and the sor. my results are summarized in table , below. fs table : anova analysis of amma, tmehc, and sor test scores test amma pre-tmehc post-tmehc sor mean of total sample n= . . . . jammers n= . . . . non-jammers n= . . . . . . quantitative results to address the first research question i performed several statistical tests using spss. the results of three tests, the amma, the tmehc, and the sor were used in the analysis. before beginning my analysis, amma raw scores, which were measured on a scale from to , were converted to percentages. this was done for convenience of use when presenting data as part of individual jammer profiles, as tmehc and sor scores were already in percentages. as examined in detail in a previous section, identification/designation of subjects, the two groups ( jammers and non-jammers) were highly comparable as to grade, gender, and overall letter grade average. as also noted, the sample of jammers was selected on the basis of possessing the skills required to play a bb concert scale. thus, for all three comparisons below, the study group was n = , the comparison group was n = , and the total sample was n = . as noted in a previous section, my first ancillary question, regarding amma scores, asked: how did the amma scores of the jammers compare to the amma scores of the non- jammers? i looked first at the distribution for all subjects (n= ) to determine if amma raw scores constituted a normal distribution. the mean for the group taken as a whole, at . , did show normal distribution. then an anova test was performed to determine if a significant difference existed between the means of the jammers (n= ) and the non-jammers (n= ) groups. the mean of the jammers was . while the mean of the non-jammers was . . based on the anova test, there was no significant difference between jammers and statistical package for the social sciences, version . ( ). chicago:spss inc. non-jammers groups on amma scores (p< . ). my ancillary question regarding tmehc scores, asked: how did the average tmehc scores of the jammers compare to the average tmehc scores of the non-jammers? before comparing jammer and non-jammer groups, i first looked to see if the pre- test/post-test protocol would reveal a possible effect of jamming. for this purpose i used a repeated measures analysis. for the pre-test, the mean of the total sample tested (n= ) was . . the mean of the jamming group (n= ) was . , and the mean of the non-jamming group was . . for the post-test, the mean of the total sample was . . the mean of the jamming group was . and the mean of the non-jamming group was . . both groups improved over time, but overall there was no significant difference between the pre-test and the post-test. although no treatment was applied during that time, based on the results of this sample, jamming (as a self-applied form of treatment) had little or no effect over a period of ten weeks. since the mean scores for each group appeared to be quite different, i decided to compare their average scores between pre-test and post-test. the average score of the total sample was . . the average score of the jamming group was . , while the average score of the non-jamming group was . . i used a one-way anova test to compare these average mean scores by groups. the difference, while not statistically significant, was notable (p= . ). my ancillary question regarding sor scores asked: how did the sor scores of the jammers compare to the sor scores of the non- jammers? a one-way anova test was performed to compare the sor scores of jammers (n= ) and non-jammers (n= ). the mean of the total sample tested (n = ) was . , the mean of the jamming group was . , and the mean of the non-jamming group was . . the difference in the mean was . in favor of the jammers. based on the results of the anova test, i noted that the sor scores showed a very clear difference (in ability to play a familiar melody by ear) between jammers and non-jammers (p< . ). . . conclusions based on quantitative results my first analysis (above) addresses this question: how did the amma scores of the jammers compare to the amma scores of the non-jammers? there was no significant difference between the scores of the jamming and non-jamming groups. in the present study, subjects who jammed were not more audiationally capable than subjects who did not jam. my second analysis (above) addressed this question: how did the average tmehc scores of the jammers compare to the average tmehc scores of the non-jammers? pre and post test administration of the tmehc showed no significant difference between groups over time. therefore, in the present study, jamming as a self-applied form of treatment in popular music contexts did not improve hear-to-hand coordination skills. while it seems that there could be an impact on jammers, the results were not significant, thus no definitive claims can be made. my third analysis (above) addressed this question: how did the sor scores of the jammers compare to the sor scores of the non-jammers? the sor did show a very clear difference between jammers and non jammers. in the present study, subjects who jammed did show greater skill at working out a familiar melody by ear than did non-jammers. the results and conclusions based on the quantitative data above constitute one element of my mixed-method case study. it is important to keep in mind that my study is not primarily a quantitative study, instead, it is a case study with both quantitative and qualitative elements. it is to the qualitative elements that i turn next. . . qualitative interpretations in addition to the quantitative data that addressed my first specific research question, i collected qualitative data with regard to another ancillary question, which asked: what quantitative evidence was gathered that supported my contention that jammers were perceiving and manipulating music elements in a meaningful way? in chapter , i suggested the possibility that jammers were constructing knowledge, meaning, and understanding from their personal experiences while jamming. i further suggested that meaning constructed in informal music settings might have a reciprocal relationship with meaning constructed in formal music settings. in answering my first specific research question, i looked for evidence that jammers had constructed knowledge of music elements and were using that knowledge to perceive and manipulate these elements, as knowing more about this relationship could have pedagogical implications for teachers of curricular music. my corroboration strategy was to gather evidence from multiple sources (sometimes described as triangulation of qualitative data) in support of this question. subject responses in both journaling and interview sources are shown, below, in quotation marks. field notes based on observations, are shown, below, as block quotes. as i introduce each case study subject, i provide a jammer profile containing both qualitative and quantitative information regarding that subject; for easy identification, these profiles appear as italicized block quotes. as well, in order to both assist the reader and clarify my thinking, the elements of music that i believe were being manipulated in each example, below, are italicized. as previously discussed in chapter , all subject names are pseudonyms selected by the subjects themselves. directed journaling directed journaling, the first of my multiple sources, provided insights into student perceptions as to how jamming had improved their ability to perceive and manipulate music elements. some students also alluded to a reciprocal learning relationship between formal and informal music activities. jammer profiles were included here the first time each of the jammers was discussed or quoted. profiles of jammers who appeared in my transcriptions but were not identified in my results or my discussion were included in the appendices. jammer profile: brandon instrument played, number of years: guitar, years jam participation: always jam notes: facilitator and capable leader of the jam amma percentile rank: tmehc average score: sor score: ofi score: n/a field notes used instead notes re q : very skilled at manipulating the elements of music notes re q : autotelic, flow very evident when playing other: quit school part way through my research brandon wrote about combining knowledge obtained from jamming with what he has learned in music composition in order to enhance his ability to solo: “learning to identify keys/key changes by ear helps you to know which scale to use, and knowing which scale to use tells you which notes to play.” jammer profile: snoop instrument played, number of years: guitar, year jam participation: always jam notes: seldom joins a group, usually jams from the other side of the room amma percentile rank: tmehc average score: test not taken sor score: test not taken ofi score: out of notes re q : large repertoire from which he extrapolates music elements notes re q : autotelic, embodies flow whenever he plays other: does not often choose to play in close proximity to others a journal entry by snoop indicated that music theory learned in curricular music was useful to him in jamming for the purpose of writing a song: “i learned that songs are based upon chord progressions but that the notes and rhythms played within two identical chord progressions can make them sound entirely different.” jammer profile: doris instrument played, number of years: guitar, year jam participation: half the time jam notes: records frequently with others amma percentile rank: tmehc average score: sor score: ofi scores: and (two observations) out of notes re q :very adept at using the elements of music to compose notes re q : flow is evident when she plays, autotelic other: confident and bubbly, jams off site as part of a church youth group doris agreed, and added that working with others, whether jamming for fun or in order to compose, helped her learn to work with others and refined her technique: “working together in a group has taught me how to conform to different music abilities and helped me pick up on playing techniques.” jammer profile: bonjovi instrument played, number of years: guitar, years jam participation: always jam notes: jam facilitator amma percentile rank: tmehc average score: sor score: ofi score: out of notes re q : manipulates elements well in a wide variety of music styles notes re q : autotelic, flow is evident when playing other: returning to school after graduation to take more music classes bonjovi put it simply: “my knowledge of music expands the most from just jamming.” interviews the content of the above written statements is echoed in the verbal comments gathered during individual and group interviews. bonjovi told about how jamming helped him learn the importance of form, an element of music: “oh yeah, it [jamming] has helped me out so much. i used to not even write whole songs, i used to write riffs, i had a ton of riffs, but they weren't songs, i had to learn about structure.” jammer profile: apro instrument played, number of years: trumpet, years jam participation: always jam notes: usually plays and writes alone, jams with others if invited amma percentile rank: tmehc average score: sor score: ofi score: out of notes re q : very knowledgeable in the use of music elements notes re q : autotelic, focused, concentration can be quite easily disrupted other: plays in a cadet band, plays a wide variety of notation-based repertoire apro explained how music ideas came to him during noon sessions, and how jamming with those ideas became a written composition: “i write or i practice [in the band room]. when i write i just noodle and then when i have what i like i get it on paper, that would be the last part.” field notes regarding observations/participant observer sessions in my jam session observations, i frequently saw evidence of, and made field notes regarding, jammers employing various elements of music in meaningful ways. here, the melodic interval of an octave was used in several ways: apro experimented with octaves on the piano. bonjovi said that octaves were good for a disco groove and suggested they try octaves of f#, f#, a, e in a disco style. bonjovi added wah-wah with his pedal. in another session: brandon returned, discussed the use of octaves in the groove with gus. in the following exchange, these jammers had their own way of approaching the subject of major versus minor chords, and also showed a good grasp of the chromatic scale. jammer profile: simpson instrument played, number of years: vocals, years jam participation: very often jam notes: writes own songs, records frequently, often works with others amma percentile rank: tmehc average score: test not taken sor score: test not taken ofi score: n/a field notes used instead notes re q : uses elements of music in her original songs notes re q : autotelic, confident in the use of her voice other: will be attending music college next year jammer profile: jordan instrument played, number of years: drums, year jam participation: very often jam notes: jams off site frequently amma percentile rank: tmehc average score: test not taken sor score: test not taken ofi score: n/a field notes used instead notes re q : uses music element of rhythm with ease notes re q : autotelic other: chose to transfer to this school because of the music facilities. bonjovi, simpson, and jordan were jamming. “how do you play an f minor?” “well, it's like an e minor but with a bar.” “kind of like a power chord but you lose the rd.” in another example, these jammers have grasped the importance of chord tones in the development of a bass line; and jamming gives them experience in developing that line: apro plays a chord on the piano requested by brandon, who develops a bass line. jammer profile: hatha instrument played, number of years: piano, years jam participation: a little jam notes: always works alone at school, jams using sequencing software at home amma percentile rank: tmehc average score: sor score: ofi score: n/a field notes used instead notes re q : uses knowledge of music elements to figure out songs by ear easily notes re q : flow is very fragile and often disrupted other: scarcely participates in concert band, jazz band classes, appears indifferent in a participant-observer session, hatha had a strategy for determining the tonality of a song that she wanted to play: sitting at the piano, she poked around while the intro was playing, and came up with the key of c. she then found sol and la on the second try. she recognized and plays immediately the octaves in the melody, and the chromatic passages in the bass line. in another participant-observer session, ear-to-hand ability was evident as these two jammers found the key, and from that, determined what diatonic and non-diatonic notes to use: snoop and bonjovi used their knowledge of the blues scale to decipher the guitar riff, which contained the b and the b , as well as doh and sol. their hands seemed to find the likely notes without thought. “it goes to the v there” says snoop . in this session, i helped a bit with finding a note in the complex bass line of 'chameleon'. bonjovi sat down at the piano and tried to figure out the complicated bass line by ear. he found the starting note quickly and was equally quick to recognize a chromatic passage when he heard it. however, the interval of a minor seventh confused him. after he had tried several times, i showed him where it was. once bonjovi knew the interval, he correctly observed that the pattern was repeated higher on the scale. he then used this knowledge to transpose the pattern to figure out the second riff. jammer profile: captain instrument played, number of years: clarinet, years jam participation: very often jam notes: places emphasis on getting the notes correct amma percentile rank: tmehc average score: sor score: ofi score: n/a field notes used instead notes re q : applies music knowledge capably notes re q : challenge/skills in balance, constantly seeking new challenges other: quite aggressive and competitive, both in music class and in the jam here, two jammers competed informally with each other to see who had the best ear and could play ear-to-hand most successfully. in a continuation of the above session: captain was intrigued, picked up a bass and tried to copy what bonjovi was doing on the piano. it came relatively easily to him. bonjovi commented that the riff was a lot easier to play on guitar, implying that this is why it was also easy for captain on bass. jammer profile: jim instrument played, number of years: drums, years jam participation: half the time jam notes: plays along but will not draw attention to himself in any way amma percentile rank: tmehc average score: test not taken sor score: test not taken ofi score: n/a field notes used instead notes re q : possesses music knowledge but very tentative about using it notes re q : usually, self-consciousness impedes flow other: almost always works with others, seldom works alone bonjovi told me several times during my initial research that he did not have a good ear, but that he was working to improve. i observed near the end of my study that his skill at identifying chords by ear had become progressively more sophisticated, as the following field notes reveal: jim entered the room and played a dominant th chord on the piano. he and bonjovi discussed chord structure. apro joined jim at the piano and played a chord. bonjovi correctly identified it by ear as being b minor . he was delighted that he was right. jammers also shared information regarding technique with other players: bonjovi played arpeggios on guitar. this attracted the attention of c, who asked him for tips on how to do this better and faster. bonjovi told him, with a touch of humor, that lots of practice, as well as using an effect on the guitar to cover mistakes, was helpful! although it did not occur often, occasionally i observed a jammer with considerable skill in translating what he was playing by ear into music notation, evidence of strength in manipulating the elements of music. when i entered the band room, apro was alone at the piano, “writing a melody so i can do something with it,” he told me. satisfied with what he had created, he then warmed up on the trumpet and sat down at a music stand. he neatly printed key and time signatures on a piece of manuscript paper, and found his starting note on the trumpet. he then wrote, audiating from memory, playing on the trumpet every few bars in order to check his work. usually, he wrote an entire phrase before checking it out on the trumpet, and he was seldom wrong in what he had written. jammer profile: catt instrument played, number of years: clarinet, years jam participation: a little jam notes: wants to participate but lacks confidence and skills amma percentile rank: tmehc average score: sor score: ofi score: n/a, field notes used instead notes re q. : far prefers reading notes to playing them by ear notes re q : self-conscious while playing, loses focus quickly other: removed from school for fighting before my research ended to my surprise, terms learned in music composition class occasionally appeared in jammer vernacular, as happened here when two subjects decided to jam using a modal scale: during the last week of my observations, he [catt] barged into studio a, borrowed guitar in hand and apro in tow, to show me “this twisted latin cheesy thing we were working on yesterday.” he had learned to play an e minor chord on the guitar, and apro was doing what he called “phrygian mode stuff” over that chord on his trumpet. when they asked me how to make the chord “move up” on the guitar, i showed catt how to form a bar chord. apro then pounded out the progression he wanted him to play on the piano, and catt copied the tones and semitones on the guitar, listening rather than looking, and getting it correct on the first try. elements of music being manipulated here included modes, and tones/semitones, as well as rhythm; by combining these elements, catt and arpo created an original composition. despite catt's limited skills on the guitar, he was able to help facilitate the songwriting efforts of a fellow jammer. it was also the first time i saw catt experience flow. jammer profile: kenneth instrument played, number of years: bassoon, years jam participation: half the time jam notes: often works alone, writes and records own songs amma percentile rank: tmehc average score: sor score: ofi score: n/a field notes used instead notes re q : uses elements of music in a very unusual way in his compositions notes re q : autotelic, time is transformed when he is playing other: special needs; possibly a form of autism jammer profile: gus instrument played, number of years: drums, year jam participation: always jam notes: often a jam facilitator amma percentile rank: tmehc average score: test not taken sor score: test not taken ofi score: n/a field notes used instead notes re q : perceives and manipulates rhythms easily notes re q : challenge/skills balance, autotelic other: very adverse to testing, says he has add in another example, a jammer, although unable to play the piano well enough to learn the song, did make a musical contribution: kenneth came in, and started trying it [figuring out an unfamiliar song as part of a participant-observer session] on the piano. he [invented] an ostinato that was not in the song, but fit perfectly, to his delight. gus was now helping out on the drums, and everyone finished the song in grand style. in the following lengthy observation, jammers were perceiving and manipulating the elements of music in a meaningful way. as well, patterns of song transmission and informal leadership structures were evident. s , in an informal leadership role, played a chordal pattern on the guitar, establishing the key, the harmonic structure, and the form: vi, v, iv, iv (repeat x) as the a section ii, v, ii, v (repeat x) as the b section brandon and gus played the groove while s soloed, experimenting with an ostinato over the changing chord pattern being outlined by the bass. s started another chord pattern; this one was modal and contained major ths, giving the line a feel more like jazz than rock. s and snoop [from different sides of the room] soloed to the chords at the same time. s was an exchange student from switzerland. he was only in the band room once, and at the school for a short time. he is mentioned here because his contribution to the jam impacted the contribution of the others. brandon and gus maintained the groove; harmonic pattern was audible from the bass line, so no chords were needed: im , vi, iv (phrase was unusual in that it was measures long, instead of ) this jam demonstrated the enhanced skill levels of these experienced musicians. they employed a number of elements of music in their jam: form, rhythm/groove, harmonic/chord structures, soloing based on understanding of scales, and melody on both guitar and bass; their jam was complex and they manipulated elements of music with ease. this jam reflected a sophistication born of many years of jamming. in all examples given, jammers perceived and manipulated music elements in a way that held meaning for them. this was confirmed through corroboration between three different sources. this final example illustrated both enhanced music skills as well as flow, as examined in the next section of this chapter. in the following observation, snoop was so absorbed in creating his own song, using elements taken from popular repertoire, that he was oblivious to the exit of a fellow jammer: snoop switched to a rock version of 'hall of the mountain king.' catt got up and left. snoop didn't even notice. he switched to 'ocean pearl,' then to arpeggiated chords, becoming very interested in a progression and building onto it by adding octaves above and ths below. he did not notice that the bell had gone. . second specific research question: qualitative interpretations . . observations of flow indicators data produced using my ofi coding form served to indicate the flow experience, helping to provide an affirmative answer to my second specific research question. as noted in chapter , the observation form was in two parts: first, a semantic-differential seven-point scale, and second, an agree-disagree nine point scale. this form was used in the observation of seven jam session subjects; one subject was observed twice in different settings. as also noted in chapter , a numeric value was assigned to each point on the scale, with one being the lowest. a score for each part of the form plus a total for the whole form was generated. the maximum possible score for the semantic-differential part of the form was , while the maximum possible score for the agree-disagree part of the form was . the total score for the whole form was . the indicators for each subject are summarized below; a numeric value for each part of the form was calculated, followed by a total for the form. snoop very happy ( ) very involved ( ) very cheerful ( ) quite excited ( ) very focused ( ) very comfortable ( ) very engaged ( ) quite satisfied ( ) total score for this part: music appeared to be appropriately challenging ( ) student appeared to possess suitable skill levels ( ) student lacked self-conscious behavior ( ) student appeared to lose track of time ( ) student appeared focused throughout the session ( ) student demeanor appeared confident ( ) student continued despite distractions ( ) gaze/countenance indicated flow ( ) total score for this part: total score for whole form: apro somewhat happy ( ) very involved ( ) somewhat cheerful ( ) somewhat excited ( ) very focused ( ) somewhat uncomfortable ( ) quite engaged ( ) somewhat dissatisfied ( ) total score for this part: music appeared to be appropriately challenging ( ) student appeared to possess suitable skill levels ( ) student lacked self-conscious behavior ( ) student appeared to lose track of time ( ) student appeared focused throughout the session ( ) student demeanor appeared confident ( ) student continued despite distractions ( ) gaze/countenance indicated flow ( ) total score for this part: total score for whole form: doris (solo session) very happy ( ) very involved ( ) very cheerful ( ) somewhat excited ( ) quite focused ( ) quite comfortable ( ) quite engaged ( ) somewhat satisfied ( ) total score for this part: music appeared to be appropriately challenging ( ) student appeared to possess suitable skill levels ( ) student lacked self-conscious behavior ( ) student appeared to lose track of time ( ) student appeared focused throughout the session ( ) student demeanor appeared confident ( ) student continued despite distractions ( ) gaze/countenance indicated flow ( ) total score for this part: total score for whole form: bonjovi quite happy ( ) very involved ( ) very cheerful ( ) quite excited ( ) very focused ( ) very comfortable ( ) very engaged ( ) quite satisfied ( ) total score for this part: music appeared to be appropriately challenging ( ) student appeared to possess suitable skill levels ( ) student lacked self-conscious behavior ( ) student appeared to lose track of time ( ) student appeared focused throughout the session ( ) student demeanor appeared confident ( ) student continued despite distractions ( ) gaze/countenance indicated flow ( ) total score for this part: total score for whole form: parker somewhat sad ( ) quite involved ( ) somewhat cheerful ( ) somewhat excited ( ) quite focused ( ) somewhat uncomfortable ( ) very engaged ( ) somewhat satisfied ( ) total score for this part: music appeared to be appropriately challenging ( ) student appeared to possess suitable skill levels ( ) student lacked self-conscious behavior ( ) student appeared to lose track of time ( ) student appeared focused throughout the session ( ) student demeanor appeared confident ( ) student continued despite distractions ( ) gaze/countenance indicated flow ( ) total score for this part: total score for whole form: doris (group session) very happy ( ) very involved ( ) very cheerful ( ) very excited ( ) very focused ( ) very comfortable ( ) very engaged ( ) very satisfied ( ) total score for this part: music appeared to be appropriately challenging ( ) student appeared to possess suitable skill levels ( ) student lacked self-conscious behavior ( ) student appeared to lose track of time ( ) student appeared focused throughout the session ( ) student demeanor appeared confident ( ) student continued despite distractions ( ) gaze/countenance indicated flow ( ) total score for this part: total score for whole form: corey very happy ( ) very involved ( ) quite cheerful ( ) quite excited ( ) very focused ( ) very comfortable ( ) very engaged ( ) quite satisfied ( ) total score for this part: music appeared to be appropriately challenging ( ) student appeared to possess suitable skill levels ( ) student lacked self-conscious behavior ( ) student appeared to lose track of time ( ) student appeared focused throughout the session ( ) student demeanor appeared confident ( ) student continued despite distractions ( ) gaze/countenance indicated flow ( ) total score for this part: total score for whole form: jaytee somewhat happy ( ) very involved ( ) somewhat cheerful ( ) somewhat excited ( ) quite focused ( ) quite comfortable ( ) very engaged ( ) quite satisfied ( ) total score for this part: music appeared to be appropriately challenging ( ) student appeared to possess suitable skill levels ( ) student lacked self-conscious behavior ( ) student appeared to lose track of time ( ) student appeared focused throughout the session ( ) student demeanor appeared confident ( ) student continued despite distractions ( ) gaze/countenance indicated flow ( ) total score for this part: total score for whole form: as the only quantitative measure used for the purpose of answering my second specific research question, i found the ofi form useful in several unexpected ways. first, it heightened my awareness of flow indicators, and as a result i was able to address more succinctly in my field notes to a greater extent. second, the completed forms collectively provided an additional source of data that confirmed my other findings regarding certain individual subjects. third, i was able to compare the flow experiences of subjects with different levels of skill, subjects with varying degrees of autotelicity, and subjects displaying few or many of the other characteristics of flow. fourth, i was able to observe and code one subject twice, under two different sets of jamming circumstances, and note the way the context affected flow in the same individual. in retrospect, however, i found field notes, interviews, and journaling to be more informative than the ofi form overall. . . challenge-skills balance my first ancillary question regarding flow asked: what evidence was gathered that supported my contention that the challenge/skills balance aspect of flow theory could explain the continued participation of students in the jam session? evidence presented here was gathered from three different sources:directed journaling, interviews, and field notes. subjects both demonstrated and articulated the importance of the challenge/skills balance in achieving flow. jammers included here were profiled in the previous section, with the exception of jaytee and parker, whose profiles are included in the following text. directed journaling all subjects who completed a journal reported a balance of challenge and skills, in answer to my question: “are you as good a musician as these people you jam with, or are they better or worse than you? why do you think so?” doris expressed the view that the challenge/skills balance could shift, depending on jam session instrumentation: “it is tough to say because we don't play the same instrument. i was more experienced than than the people that i played with last semester, but simpson, who sang in our band, was a stronger singer than i am.” here's how simpson saw it: “many people are much better at reading music and playing instruments than me, which i am totally ok with. i haven't been doing this whole music thing for a long time so i'm happy with how far i have come already. i must say, i may be a little more experienced in working with my voice than others...” snoop was more direct, and had an explanation for any deficit in skill that he may have occasionally felt. “i think i am as good as the people i jam with most of the time. even if they are better, they have probably been practicing longer than me.” bonjovi's confidence in his skills was strongly stated: “i think i am a pretty good player, and i am about the same skill level as the people i jam with.” brandon had a well-thought-out answer to my question that contained several important points: skill levels can be very different, but in a jam session everyone is kind of evened out. skills and traits come out while jamming, like if someone is a good riff writer, then they'll start things off, then if someone is a good soloer then they'll pull off a face- melting solo. often a bassist will do whatever they think will make it sound good without pulling attention off the rest of it. a good jam will be all musicians supporting each other and not trying to stick out or sound better than each other. generally, most of the people i jam with are similarly skilled but our jams are all complementary so it wouldn't really matter. i've jammed with people better than me, but usually i just play in my comfort zone and they make it work. to summarize, brandon stressed that different jammers possess different areas of strength, and he noted the importance of group support if a jammer is to feel a balance of challenge and skills. furthermore, as doris pointed out, although challenge levels were not uniformly optimum during each jam session; the overall balance was what was important. “sometimes i like to play without having to concentrate too much, but sometimes i am ready for more of a challenge.” brandon provided the last word, showing his feeling of overall balance regarding challenge and skill: “it rarely feels negative during a jam, sometimes it might get a little boring, and occasionally if you know that you played bad you might feel a little down, but other than that it doesn't matter what you did because it's just a jam. nobody cares if you mess up, and you're free to try new things because that's what they're for.” another group of jammers expressed their views regarding the challenge/skills balance verbally. interviews during the interview process, i found that most jammers were quite aware of their strengths, as well as adept at using those strengths on the skills side of the equation. conversely, they were often aware of areas where they were not as strong, and were motivated to seek out additional challenges in those areas. thus, they seldom reported either discouragement or boredom. for example, apro's strength, his technique, balanced out his reluctance to rely on his ear. he expressed it this way: “i usually need to know what key things are in. some is successful, some not, different styles can be harder. but i think i am just as good.” jammer profile: jaytee instrument played, number of years: guitar, year jam participation: half the time jam notes: generally works alone amma percentile rank: tmehc average score: sor score: ofi score: out of notes re q : very knowledgeable regards chord structure, form notes re q : self-conscious at times when playing other: frequent absences from school jaytee, on the other hand, achieved a balance by relying on her ear: “let's say i'm jamming with some friends and they are playing a song. i will look at their fingers a couple of times on the fret board and figure out where they are starting, and then i can just follow them by listening.” jammers often expressed their skill levels in terms of comparison with fellow jammers, indicating a general level of comfort with their ability but also an element of challenge that keeps them striving to improve. jordan, talking about the people he jams with, stated: “the bass player is excellent, the guitar player is really good too, but i would say we are all equal.” snoop, despite his lack of experience, was not daunted by playing with others more experienced: “i've only been playing for a year and a half, and i think i'm good for how long i've been doing it. if there's a really good guitar player that's been playing for years i still don't feel bad.” however, not every student interviewed expressed a feeling of challenge/skills balance in every jam session. jaytee expressed her over-challenged experiences in this way: “on guitar, i am not very good, i'm not always good at playing with others. i feel good doing the rhythm part, but i find it really hard to play the lead parts.” as i became familiar with the skill levels of the jam session subjects, i was able to more accurately observe additional incidences when challenge and skill appeared to be in balance, providing a third source of data that favored an affirmative answer to my ancillary question. field notes regarding observations/participant observer sessions the following was an excerpt from my field notes regarding a noon-hour jam session. in a segment of the jam that lasted about three minutes, i observed the following activity: s began “under the bridge” by the red hot chili peppers, on guitar brandon picked this up immediately and played confidently and instinctively on the bass. gus kept steady time on the drums written during a brief period of reflection immediately following the jam, my notes indicated: challenge and skill appeared to be in balance for all the players: the music was difficult enough that they had to work at it somewhat, but never was anyone overwhelmed by the challenge enough to quit playing. all appeared to enjoy the experience. this was an exemplary jam from the point of view of challenge/skills balance; although one player was new to the group, they worked together in a way that appeared to produce a flow experience for each of them. a subsequent jam, although it involved some of the same personnel, was not as successful at producing a balance of challenge and skill for all players. my notes read: although bonjovi had brought a cd of possible material, he was unable to get the group to focus on it. for the others, challenge exceeded skill, and they quickly became discouraged and quit trying. bonjovi was clearly disappointed, and he referred to the jam as “pretty boring” at one point. for bonjovi, as jam session instigator, flow was impeded, not by his lack of skill, but by the inability or unwillingness of the others to musically engage with the material. he would probably have experienced more flow, and specifically a balance of challenge and skills, if he had jammed to the recording, alone. although most jammers i observed appeared to find involvement with other musicians conducive to flow, the following two players were most in flow when alone, composing or jamming along with a recording. it was in this situation that they appeared to be most in balance concerning challenge and skill. observing apro one lunch hour, as he composed an original song for trumpet, i noted the following: flow was present when the room was quiet and he was alone; he was involved in the melody and challenge and skill were in balance as he audiated internally the music he wished to write. another session, in which i set a task for hatha of figuring out a song while i observed as well as participated, resulted in the following demonstration of her skills perfectly balanced by the challenge of the task. my field notes read: within a minute or so, she was totally involved in the song. she played along with great accuracy, head nodding. i was sure she had forgotten i was there. when we reached the end, i started the song again, and sat down to play the bass line while she played the melody. it was not an easy song, but her skills were up to this challenge. for both apro and hatha, flow was apparent, but fragile. my notes indicated that, in both cases, the intrusion of another person entering the room was enough to completely disrupt flow for both these players. this was not the situation with snoop. on a number of occasions, i observed a flow state characterized by a concentration so deep that even loud noises and the disruption of the next class coming into the room could not disrupt him. here, my field notes recorded a typical session, in which he started with a song or riff that he knew and could play without difficulty. as he required more challenge, the progression became more complex, requiring more skill. snoop had a riff reminiscent of “hotel california” worked out. he had a bass line and chords as well, in a pattern eight bars long. he played the chords, then the riff, then the bass line, one after another, over and over again. for each repetition, he added a new idea. for snoop, improvisation provided a challenge that tested, but did not exceed, his level of skill. as his skill level increased, a greater degree of challenge was required for him to maintain flow. improvising, alone in this case, provided this augmented challenge. on one particular day, a very inexperienced player got a guitar and sat beside him, hoping to jam but not knowing where to start. snoop, as usual, was in flow and oblivious: catt appeared to be desperate to play along. he kept looking at [snoop's] fingerboard; he [catt] appeared to play almost exclusively by eye. he was most in flow when he stopped worrying about what snoop was doing and instead concentrated on finding some whole notes that he could, with his limited skill level, play in order to add to the jam in a meaningful way. however, he was very easily frustrated: “i suck, i'm no good at this...” catt's skills were almost completely unequal to the challenge he had set himself. moments of flow were fleeting, if evident at all. however, his skills improved enough over the time of my research that he could contribute to the composition process of a fellow jammer, and experience enjoyment and flow. my three sources of data generally confirmed the presence of flow, as a result of a challenge/skills balance. subjects appeared to seek out more challenging situations as their skill level increased, thus maintaining a flow state. surprisingly, even in subjects with a very low level of skill, a flow experience appeared possible as long as the task was appropriate, and thus flow appeared to provide motivation for the subjects to continue to develop skills. . . other flow characteristics in my next ancillary question, i asked: what evidence was gathered that supported my contention that merging of action and awareness, clear goals, clear and unambiguous feedback, concentrations and focus, sense of control, loss of self-consciousness, and transformation of time (all aspects of flow theory) could explain the continued participation of students in the jam session? qualitative data obtained from directed journaling, interviews, and field notes provided affirmative evidence in support of this question. i observed and coded examples of flow, and, as well, noted the presence of these flow characteristics in interviews and journals. the motivational benefits provided by jamming as examined in the context of the above seven characteristics were evident. directed journaling student journals revealed subjects' clear goals that extended beyond the short time period of the current jam session. here, doris articulated the long-term goals that kept her jamming: “i always hope to have a passion for music. i hope i will always have the ability to write songs because it is very fulfilling. i play music on the worship team at my church and so i hope to continue doing that.” snoop's goals were different, but no less clear: “i have always dreamed of having a band and playing gigs, so of course i hope i am in a band. i also would like to become a recording engineer.” simpson also had clear long-term goals, with a specific visualization that helped maintain her focus on music: “i hope i will be at that point [five years from now] playing in clubs, bars, on a cruise ship and stuff like that. i just want to perform wherever i can and try and record too. i just want to be on stage in the warm spotlight. . . ” brandon's goals were perhaps more realistic, but similar in several ways: “i don't think that i'm good enough of a musician to be professional, but in the next five years i know i'll still be playing the same instruments as now, maybe even more, and i might play at coffee shops, or maybe even with my own band.” jamming provided one means of pursuing the clear music goals articulated by these four subjects. as doris wrote: “i think jamming, or playing music in general, gives me a sense of purpose, and other people's music inspires me to make my own.” flow appeared to be enhanced when subjects received information that suggested that they were making an important contribution to the jam. such information could be in the form of clear and unambiguous feedback, a characteristic of flow. often, this information was transmitted by fellow jammers. snoop wrote about feedback as part of a collaborative songwriting process: “we both write songs and show them to each other so we can add whatever our instrument has to offer.” in bonjovi's case, the teacher also provided helpful feedback: “he [mr. p.j.] is so supportive, he will help jam by showing us ways to improve, and sometimes he joins the jam.” brandon's written statements addressed two other aspects, the individual feedback provided by listening to one's own performance, and the musical conversation that provided feedback when jamming with a group: “just something about musical fusion feels great especially when it sounds great. to me, jamming is exactly like chillin' with your friends, except instead of talking, you're using music to communicate with each other. . .” brandon went on to write about the sense of control that he experienced during a jam session, stating that “you can precipitate change [in the jam] depending on your actions.” even if the jam session did not go as expected, brandon's confidence as well as his desire for knowledge helped him maintain a sense of perspective and control: “most musicians don't make you feel inferior, they'll help you out, plus those kind of sessions are a great place to pick up tips.” journal entries regarding another characteristic of flow, loss of self-consciousness, revealed that this state occurred frequently during jamming, but that it was a fragile state, depending on the demands of the situation and the particular composition of the group. apro considered himself to be successful at minimizing self-consciousness: “it is not a performance. i am not playing for anyone else but me. ” bonjovi expressed the importance of keeping the jam session informal: “it is not a really big deal. it's a comfortable environment.” other respondents, when asked if they ever got nervous while jamming, usually replied in the negative but specified situations that could increase the possibility of self- consciousness. doris revealed her discomfort regarding the use of her voice: “no, except when i am singing along. i am not that confident with my vocals yet.” snoop and brandon, both guitar players, stated that their perceived inexperience on the guitar occasionally jeopardizes flow: “most of the time in the band room i am not nervous when i am jamming, unless i have a difficult part to play or someone who is very good at playing is jamming with me, then i might be nervous” and “the only time i'm nervous in a jam is when all the other people have like five years more experience than me, but generally when that has happened, it is because you're not sure if you can keep up.” interviews during the interview process, a number of subjects indicated that they experienced a special mental state during the process of jamming. this state, a merging of action and awareness, was usually described by subjects using the vernacular being in the zone. bonjovi described this feeling as part of the creative process: “you get in the zone, especially when you write something new, you're like, you love it, you want to just play it for hours.” doris told about a similar feeling she had when jamming with others, and later, alone: “yes, when i got the notes right i felt in the zone. also when i was playing piano randomly by myself.” doris also talked about the challenges of maintaining this feeling in the context of recording, of jamming electronically with herself: “it is difficult for me to get in the zone unless i am playing and singing at the same time. but the closest to in the zone i felt today was when i was doing the vocal track.” in a statement that touched on several of the characteristics of flow, snoop said: “yep, i have a lot of fun when i'm playing and when i get into that zone, and i'm kinda playing and i get carried away, and time flies.” snoop also articulated clear goals that motivated him to jam: "i want to keep practicing like i do, learn some different instruments, maybe get a band together. . . ” doris's more traditional goals kept her on track: “ i want to go to university, be a music major,” while apro saw the possibility of jamming taking him in one of several directions: “i was thinking of joining the canadian armed forces and being a military musician. maybe post secondary ed, be a music teacher too.” jaytee had her long term goals in music very clearly delineated: “ i am going to go to selkirk college, and i am going to major in sound engineering.” another characteristic of flow, clear and unambiguous feedback, involved awareness of and building upon one's own musical contributions, as well as receiving musical support and feedback from one's peers. jaytee talked about the freedom to create her own music she experienced in the jam session situation: “but whenever i jam with my friends, we get a jam going, we pass the mic around, everybody gets a turn doing vocals, everybody gets to play bass, and i'm always really comfortable there, it's such a spontaneous sort of thing. it's a real jam, that is, we are making up songs as we go along.” brandon told about an experience during a recording session: “the beginning [of the session] was total trance playing.” a sense of control was also a characteristic of the flow state. the player might note that she was in control of her own playing, and also that she could take control of the jam if necessary, if, for instance that situation arose during improvisation. snoop discussed how he used a visualization strategy to keep his sense of control: “most of the time i just get into my own zone and just play it for myself. i just try to picture myself playing guitar alone, and then i don't have to worry about being nervous.” in a flow state, musicians may have experienced a loss of self-consciousness. this characteristic of flow was addressed frequently in my interviews with subjects, especially in the context of a jam or performance where there was an audience. the pressure to play a solo delayed the loss of self-consciousness for doris, but she found that she could overcome it: “maybe when i have a solo i might be a little nervous. most of the time, though, i'm not even aware of the audience.” apro gave a concrete example of how his self-consciousness vanished during a pressure situation: “you can't get around that, you're a little nervous, especially if you have a solo. a couple of times when i was playing the last post at the remembrance day ceremony i was not even aware of the audience.” interestingly, both of these subjects mentioned the absence of audience-awareness as part of the flow state. no interview topic elicited a more animated response from subjects than the one addressing the last characteristic of flow discussed here, transformation of time. frequently, subjects laughed as they related stories associated with this aspect of flow. jammer pseudonym: adam instrument played, number of years: bass, years jam participation: very often jam notes: works as part of a duo to write, perform, and record amma percentile rank: tmehc average score: sor score: notes re q : perceives and manipulates music elements with ease notes re q : autotelic, challenge balanced by skill, transformation of time other: self-taught, learns very quickly by ear adam, who had to take a bus between campuses at mid-day, said: “last week i [was jamming] missed the bus [to the other campus]and i didn't even care if i had to walk!” jamming at lunch time was a frequent cause of subjects nearly being late for their next class, as conscientious apro related: “yeah, that happens every time! sometimes i'm just noodling on my trumpet and like an hour has passed and i thought it was only minutes!” after the school day ended, the transformation of time was even more complete for jordan: “time just flies by when i'm playing. the other day, it was just me and my bass player, and four hours went by really quick,” a statement echoed by bonjovi: “time sure flies by when you jam.” i observed many of the same characteristics, expressed above verbally or in written form, during my research in the school. these observations took the form of field notes; what i saw generally corroborated what my subjects had expressed. field notes regarding observations/participant observer sessions my field notes revealed evidence of a number of flow indicators, with several characteristics of flow often mentioned in reference to one observation. for purposes of clarity, i have identified the main characteristic illustrated and examined them in the same order as followed above. during the main study, an unplanned participant-observation opportunity presented itself; the result was a vivid demonstration of action and awareness merging: snoop was sitting in the corner of the room at lunch time, playing his acoustic guitar alone, as he often does. i heard the familiar introductory notes to the first song i ever learned on guitar myself, 'house of the rising sun' coming from snoop's guitar. “hey, i know that one!” i said, “do you want to jam it?” snoop nodded shyly, and i sat down at the piano. we started at the beginning. i knew the words to the six verses by heart, and so did he. he knew the introduction. i knew keyboard solo, on which he backed me up like a pro. as we built each verse in intensity, his head bent lower and lower over the fingerboard, and his toe tapping becomes whole-leg-tapping, then whole-body-tapping. i had the feeling that if the ceiling had fallen in, snoop would not have noticed. in in his flow state, he had totally lost track of his surroundings. about ten seconds after we finished the last few notes of the ending, the spell was broken. snoop looked up, his eyes shining. “that was just exactly like the recording!” while snoop experienced flow in the performance of standard repertoire, corey, a guitar player from last year's grad class, demonstrated a second characteristic of flow in the recording of an original composition. i did not do a jammer profile on corey; because he did not do any of the tests, and in fact, was not even a student at the school. however, according to mr. pj, he was one of the most productive of last year's jammers. corey was mentioned here because his state of flow when he was recording was unmistakable. here, corey had set himself a clear goal of completing an album of his own songs, and as my notes indicated, he showed total involvement in the pursuit of that goal: he was playing the screen with the recorded tracks on it like others might play a videogame, trimming the length of a track, fading another, bringing the drums up in the mix. then he grabbed his guitar, tuned quickly, checked for the sound he wanted, and began to add guitar overdubs in several places in the song. he would back up the recorded material for four measures or so, set it to punch in at the spot he wanted, and let it run. he would then whirl around in his chair so that he was facing away from the screen, close his eyes, hunch over the guitar, rocking back and forth, and play as if in a trance. then he would turn back, rewind, listen intently, and try it again. as shown above, corey's pursuit of his clear goal also illustrated another aspect of flow, clear and unambiguous feedback, as he listened to what he had played, decided if it was what he wanted, and played it again if it was not. later, bonjovi, in a duo jam involving figuring out a riff by ear on an unfamiliar instrument, the piano, received feedback from a fellow jammer, who joined in and provided musical reinforcement for his ear-to-hand playing. [bonjovi's] experience was heightened by feedback from captain, who started working on the riff himself. it was my perception that captain felt a strong sense of competition with other musicians, and the fact that he was interested enough to play along heightened the experience for bonjovi as well as affirmed the accuracy of his own playing. a number of times during my lunchtime observations, mr. pj, the band teacher, took part in the informal music sessions. frequently, he would sit at the drumset and help keep the rhythm steady as others soloed, and students often requested his help in deciding on an appropriate drum part for an original composition. jammer profile: parker instrument played, number of years: vocals, years jam participation: a little jam notes: lacks confidence in his abilities amma percentile rank: tmehc average score: test not taken sor score: test not taken ofi score: out of notes re q : moderate success with the manipulation of music elements notes re q : flow is rarely achieved, often self-conscious other: responds well to positive feedback from others as well, as a student-to-student example of clear and unambiguous feedback, my field notes indicated the importance of bonjovi's feedback to parker's flow experience: however, with repeated takes, [parker] gained confidence. bonjovi put out the iso- booth lights, turned on a black light instead, and kept the encouraging feedback coming. hearing himself sounding good helped parker, too. after minutes, he was getting into it, taking chances with his improvisation, and coming up with a few interpretations that delighted them both. by the end of the session, he was swaying back and forth with his eyes closed, oblivious to other stimuli. upon hearing the playback, he smiled: “yeah, i like that, that's great!” the clear feedback offered by bonjovi helped parker attain and maintain the flow experience. my field notes contained a number of observations based on visible indicators of flow. i contended that an important aspect of flow, concentration and focus, manifested itself in a number of observable physical actions, which included the gaze, or 'thousand-yard stare', as well as a kinesthetic response, observed as toe tapping and head nodding. here, snoop demonstrated his concentration and focus by ignoring distractions: he [snoop] entered the room with an acoustic guitar. he stood on the other side of the room, facing away from the group, and soloed quietly to the chords. several friends stood beside him, talking and laughing, but snoop did not appear to hear them. snoop's concentration, indicative of his flow state, was also noted in another observation session: he [snoop] became very interested in a progression that he was building. apro started putting away chairs, walking right in front of him and making a lot of noise, but snoop did not appear to notice. he remained involved even though apro was now helpfully putting out stands for the next class. the stands made a loud and horrible off-key squeak as he adjusted them, but snoop was still oblivious, staring at the fingerboard and playing with a steady rhythm. apro literally rearranged the room around him, but still snoop did not notice. even when somebody got a note stuck on a keyboard in the midi lab, making a shrill high-pitched noise, he didn't seem to hear it, so involved was he in the new progression that was building from an existing song. the bell went. someone wearing a christmas tie that was playing a tinny version of 'jingle bells' walked right in front of snoop, finally breaking his trance. with a small smile, snoop got up and put his guitar away. in another observation, corey, the guitar player from last year's class demonstrated exemplary concentration and focus, as well as another aspect of flow, loss of self- consciousness: corey was working on his own in studio b control room, jamming to the bass, drums and rhythm guitar tracks already laid down by others earlier in the week. he barely looked up when i came in, nodded briefly when i asked if i could watch, and got right back to work. he ignored me completely after that although he had no idea why i was there; no self-consciousness was evident. the following two players were observed exhibiting the sense of control indicative of a flow state. although she was having considerable difficulties in recording, doris demonstrated a confidence that helped her stay in control, and in flow, during a recording session. throughout the session she appeared a bit frustrated but still confident. having to do several takes to get it [playing with the click track] right did not bother her; in fact, with every take she swayed her whole body to the music even more. in a live session, s, following a solo, took control of the ending of the song. s cued the ending by nodding his head to indicate the tempo of the last few chords. the others followed him without difficulty. doris demonstrated loss of self-consciousness as she worked in the recording studio: even though a number of people were witnessing her performance from the control room, she did not appear in the least self-conscious. as she exited the room at the end of the session, her eyes were shining with excitement. “what a great school, we can just come here and jam like this.” corey provided an example of the flow characteristic transformation of time: several times people came in while this [recording] was going on, and they were all ignored. when the student who had the room signed out for the following hour appeared asking how much longer corey was going to be, the look on corey's face was one of complete surprise that the time was up so soon. as well, during a lunch-hour jam, i observed a lack of recognition on the part of some subjects that the time available, a little more than half an hour, was up: the bell went to end the lunch period. apro got up to leave immediately. gus, brandon, and s appeared not to have heard it. mr. pj [the teacher] told them to wrap it up. brandon put away the amps and s put away his guitar, but gus continued to drum for several moments longer. snoop, still at the other end of the room, finally put away his acoustic guitar as the room was filling with people getting ready for the next class. when questioned, participants at this jam were surprised that the time had gone so quickly. finally, field notes of this participant-observer session, which involved two members of a former band, illustrated multiple indicators of flow. csikszentmihalyi's definition of autotelic as self-goal was a powerful description of the behavior these two displayed. they were hard at work on an album, and since they had no drummer, they had decided that it would be an acoustic album instead. they were carrying on with their goal, despite setbacks. flow was evident: toe tapping, swaying back and forth on the chair, complete involvement in the task, giving each other feedback constantly, absence of self-consciousness, and loss of track of time: “crap! was that the bell? [adam looked at time display on cell phone, jumped to his feet] i've missed my bus to jackson [the other campus where he took math and english]!” . . autotelicity my last ancillary question asked: what evidence was gathered that supported my contention that an aspect of flow theory, the autotelic personality (self-developed goals, and participating in an activity for its own sake) could explain the continued participation of students in the jam session? qualitative data were gathered from the same three activities in order to address the flow characteristic of autotelicity. directed journaling one of the questions i asked subjects to answer in their journaling was: “did you practice an instrument at home this week? if so, why did you do that?” i reasoned that jammer subjects who were setting self-developed music goals might reflect this in their instrument practice habits: doris responded: i play my piano at home whenever i have time. i do it to relax, to unwind, and just because i enjoy it. i wrote a song this week which is always a musical booster for me. i'm always trying to write my own songs, and sometimes they come together nicely without too much effort like this one did. snoop wrote: i did practice an instrument at home this week. i practiced on my guitar and a little on my bass. i practice at least once a week, but most of the time i practice every day, sometimes a few times a day. in fact, i don't think i have let a week go by without practicing since i started playing. the reason i practice is to stay sharp and play as accurately as i can. if i didn't practice i would lose what i have gained by practicing. home is where i practice the most. brandon noted that practice could serve purposes other than the improvement of technique: i generally leave my classical guitar at school all week so if i've had a rough day at school i'll just crank up the gain on my electric guitar and thrash out some metal riffs. helps me blogg out some steam. bonjovi admitted, however, that other aspects of school life can interfere: “yes, a little, not as much right now because of grad. i practice because i like to improve myself, and because it is enjoyable.” another question i posed for subjects to respond to in their journals was: “if a class in the school was canceled for the day, how would you spend that time?” bonjovi was definite in his response: “i would spend it practicing in the band room. if one of my classes was canceled then i'd grab my guitar and go sit in the hall, or outside and play a bit, work on some songs.” however, doris was a bit more tentative in her response: “it is possible that i would venture over to the music room, especially if there wasn't a class in session. if i did make it to the music room i might work on a song that i have in progress. ” snoop wrote: “if a class was canceled for a day i would most likely go to the band room to get my guitar so i could play, then i would look for people i know. if the band room wasn't in use, i would stay in the band room to be free from distractions or find someone to jam with or play me a song. most of the time would be dedicated to music.” however, simpson's frank reply differed from the others. she wrote: “i would hit the gym for the rest of the day, actually. . . “ the word autotelic, in addition to its literal meaning of self-goal, also implied that the activity was enjoyable and was being engaged in for its own sake. doris's journaling supports this meaning: yes, jamming is almost always a good experience for me, whether i am in a group or alone. some of my favorite times have been spent jamming. i don't think i have ever felt bad after jamming unless i felt bad to begin with. in other words, jamming does not put me in a bad mood. even if i don't accomplish anything (like writing a song) i still feel productive because i am doing something i love. interviews as part of the interview process, i spoke to mr. pj, the band teacher at the sullivan campus. when i asked him: “do you know the term autotelic? it means self-goal. could you give me a top of autotelic students?” he immediately “sure: apro, gus, bonjovi, corey, maynard, azalea, simpson, doris, lucas, and a__.” the fact that he could list these students as spontaneously as he did indicated to me that music students who were self-goal oriented and participating in music activities because they enjoy them were both readily identifiable and exceptional, even in an exemplary program like this one. snoop's verbal response to why he liked to jam echoed the autotelic theme: “i am usually happiest when i am jamming, and it is almost my favorite activity. most of the time i jam in my free time, which is very relaxed and generally the most fun.” i found, during the interview process, two common threads that also indicated the autotelic nature of many jammers. the first common thread was that autotelic music students often practiced at their own volition, without requiring incentives or threats to do so. jaytee stated it in this way: “ i find that music inspires me. i want to play it every waking moment. i don't think it is possible to practice more!” in a humorous statement, apro responded in this way to my question asking if he would practice more if he were paid to do it: “yeah, a little incentive is always good, but i practice a lot anyway!” the second common thread was that autotelic music students took responsibility for their own learning. as well as making the most of opportunities that were offered to them, nearly every subject i observed appeared to be adept at creating further opportunities for themselves in order to advance their musicianship. for example, jaytee told me how she learned to play the guitar: “i'm pretty much self taught. i downloaded tabs from the computer, i got the idea from that. i found them pretty easy to read, actually. it is like a diagram of the neck. i also took lessons for a month, just to find out things like how to do a hammer-on or a pull-off.” field notes regarding observations/participant observer sessions early in my research, while administering the tmehc, i observed frustration on the part of many subjects; however, the autotelic nature of some subjects was evident in their desire to improve. i noted that many subjects were eager to try again in june, stating that they knew they could do much better at it if they thought about and practiced intervals more in the meantime. my field notes contained a number of references to the autotelic nature of subjects that i observed. the first observation, which included other observations of flow as well, was of corey: corey's actions were autotelic; he was doing this [recording] for its own sake. he was completely absorbed in what he was doing, oblivious to any interruption. he got clear feedback by listening with a critical ear to what he had just played. the music was challenging enough that he needed more than one take to play it to his satisfaction, but he has the skills needed [to get the take he wants eventually]; challenge and skills were in balance. snoop also demonstrated autotelicity. my field notes indicated that: snoop appeared to be in flow throughout, playing for the sake of playing. in the chapter that follows i discuss further my findings and observations. discussion in the discussion that follows, i look first at the juxtaposition of quantitative and qualitative results regarding my first specific research question. next, i discuss the implications of qualitative data collected with regard to my second research question. following that, i look at and discuss additional themes and findings that were revealed as part of my case study observations. then, i look at suggestions for practice and opportunities for further research. my final section is a coda that reflects on the changing nature of the music extracurriculum. . first specific research question: discussion when i proposed this study, i wanted to know if students who informally jammed on various forms of music were enhancing their music skills in perception and meaningful manipulation of elements. an interesting juxtaposition of results was produced by my quantitative and qualitative data, particularly in regard to my first two ancillary questions. how do the amma scores of the jammers in my sample compare to the amma scores of the non-jammers in my sample? i asked this question because of my desire to know if subjects who gravitated to jamming were more likely to do so because they possessed high levels of music aptitude, that is, were high audiators. based on my sample, amma scores revealed no significant differences between jammers and non-jammers, making it possible for me to conclude that subjects who gravitated towards jamming did not possess higher levels of music aptitude than non- jammers, and that they therefore were not higher audiators than non-jammers, as measured by the amma. however, for several reasons, i consider this result inconclusive. to begin with, the results were based on a very small sample. when i prepared my research plan, i was aware that a case study involving a single school would likely not produce subjects in sufficient numbers to answer this question definitively. because the focus of my study was to produce a snapshot of jamming with a variety of qualitative and quantitative data, the decision to proceed as i did was made knowing that definitively answering this question would likely require further study involving a far larger number of subjects. as also noted in chapter , i had a second purpose in obtaining amma scores for my subjects. i wanted to be able to examine amma scores on an individual basis, and interpret other data collected using both quantitative and qualitative methods with regard to amma scores. some might argue that this was a questionable use of these scores; i personally had reservations about interpreting them in this way. still, as i found from reading the guidelines that accompanied the test, examining scores individually, with the goal of creating an aptitude profile, is exactly how amma results have been used by most music educators who have employed them. indeed, gordon ( ), in his discussion of the use of test results, listed seven purposes to which the test could be put; all seven of these purposes involved examining amma scores on an individual basis. one of these purposes was: “to establish objective and realistic expectations for the music achievement of college and university music and non-music majors” (gordon, , p. ). given that six out of seven of gordon's test purposes were framed in terms of college/university subjects (although he did provide norms for high school subjects), i still thought it was appropriate to consider this question: “would knowing amma scores of subjects in advance have resulted in realistic expectations for the music achievement of these high school jammers?” also, gordon appeared to suggest that the more audiationally-capable students might tend to gravitate to additional music opportunities when he stated: “a self selecting process is operating. it is natural for some students with high levels of music aptitude to follow music both educationally and vocationally, whereas students with low levels of music aptitude tend less to do so” (gordon, , p. ). i felt it was appropriate to consider this question as well: “did my results show subjects with high levels of music aptitude to be more likely to pursue music educationally (including jamming) and vocationally?” keeping these two questions in mind, i examined the profiles of five jammers. i selected these five on the basis that they are, as i noted in chapter , unusual, interesting, and atypical. jammer pseudonym and subject number: pfin # instrument played, number of years: clarinet, years jam notes: works with others, jams off site frequently amma percentile rank: tmehc average score: sor score: notes re q : perceives and manipulates music elements easily notes re q : challenge/skills balanced other: confident and cheerful player, often appears to be in flow. pfin fulfilled expectations one might have held for a student scoring in the st percentile in the amma: successful on measures of ear-to-hand coordination, flow was enhanced by her balance between challenge and skill, and she jammed both inside and outside of school with obvious enjoyment. jammer pseudonym and subject number: brandon # instrument played, number of years: guitar, years jam participation: always jam notes: facilitator and capable leader of the jam amma percentile rank: tmehc average score: sor score: notes re q : very skilled at manipulating the elements of music notes re q : autotelic, flow very evident when playing other: quit school part way through my research based on amma scores, brandon also qualified as a high audiator. his lack of success on the tmehc could easily be attributed to the fact that he was a guitar player, whose repertoire choices did not provide him with familiarity with the bb concert scale. his skill levels, consistent with what one would expect of a musically capable and motivated student, were balanced by the challenges he set for himself in the jam session. yet, his autotelic nature, not to mention both his high aptitude and high achievement, were not enough to keep him at school until the end of the year, even though he stated that jamming was the best part of his life. jammer pseudonym and subject number: hatha # instrument played, number of years: piano, years jam participation: a little jam notes: always works alone at school, jams using sequencing software at home amma percentile rank: tmehc average score: sor score: notes re q : uses knowledge of music elements to figure out songs by ear with great ease notes re q : flow is disrupted extremely easily other: scarcely participates in concert band and jazz band classes; appears indifferent hatha produced the highest overall test scores of any subject i studied; she also scored the highest on the amma of any subject. my participant-observer sessions with her confirmed her high scores, both audiational and ear-to-hand. she did not jam often with others, but given a definition of jamming expanded by virtual jamming and sequencing software, i felt that she could be considered a jammer. yet, she was utterly detached and indifferent in all her music classes, and rarely if ever experienced flow in music situations that involved playing with others. she did not appear drawn to music either educationally or vocationally. jammer pseudonym and subject number: snoop # instrument played, number of years: guitar, year jam participation: always jam notes: seldom joins a group, usually jams to the song from the other side of the room amma percentile rank: tmehc average score: n/a sor score: n/a notes re q : large repertoire from which he extrapolates music elements notes re q : autotelic, embodies flow whenever he plays other: does not often choose to play in close proximity to others snoop was in the band room jamming or playing more often than any other subject in my case study. he was the embodiment of flow: totally involved, challenge/skill balanced, autotelic, and completely oblivious to his surroundings. both my frequent observation of him and my participant-observer sessions with him confirmed my initial impression of a dedicated and skilled player, one determined to pursue music both educationally and vocationally. however, given his amma score, i would certainly not have anticipated this. jammer pseudonym and subject number: doris # instrument played, number of years: guitar, year jam participation: half the time jam notes: records frequently with others amma percentile rank: tmehc average score: sor score: notes re q :very adept at using the elements of music to compose notes re q : flow is evident when she plays other: confident and bubbly, jams off site as part of a church youth group doris composed constantly, and was in the process of recording a whole album. she was much in demand as a jam partner or a session player during recording. yet, her amma scores were so low that i might have expected her to have had little to no interest or achievement in music. when i proposed this case study research, i expected that there would be many aspects of the jam session that would not be fully explored by my research questions, and also that there would unpredicted outcomes. during my research, i made a conscious decision to delay any examination or interpretation of amma scores until my research was concluded, lest expectations on my part might contaminate my observations. when, at the conclusion of my study, i examined the scores on an individual basis, i was surprised; in many instances amma scores were almost completely disconnected from what i had observed. i asked myself this: if i had been a classroom teacher in this school, and had known the amma scores of this group in advance, what value would have be served by this knowledge in the planning of a program to meet the needs of these subjects? would this information have helped me to fulfill the last of gordon's seven purposes: “to efficiently and diagnostically adapt music teaching within a classroom and ensemble and in private instruction to the individual musical differences found among high school students” (gordon, , p. )? in some instances, with hatha, for example, i might have looked at her high score, concluded that boredom might be a factor in classroom instruction, and attempted to improve my instruction with regard to this student. however, might i also have looked at the scores of doris and snoop and concluded that they were not likely to accomplish much? to have even been subconsciously influenced in this way would have been a great disservice to these students. perhaps it is for this reason that gordon stated: “it is recommended that all information available about a student, both subjective and objective, be used in conjunction with the results on the advanced measures of music audiation in making educational decisions” (gordon, , p. ). in short, my first ancillary question provided few answers and raised many more questions. in my second ancillary research question, i asked: how did the tmehc scores of the jammers in my sample compare to the tmehc scores of the non-jammers in my sample? although both sets of scores were low compared to the scores of the first-year college music majors it was designed for, jammers did score higher than non-jammers on the tmehc. however, several aspects of this result invited further consideration. first, as noted with regard to the previous question, the sample size was very small. as previously noted, had i been seeking an exhaustive examination of this particular test, a case study would not have been the vehicle for doing so. i made the decision to use the tmehc because it was the only already-developed test available for examining a factor i thought would be important to the understanding of jamming, ear-to-hand coordination. as also noted earlier, my experiences with the tmehc resulted in an opportunity for me to develop my own test, one more suitable to the instrumentation and experience of my subjects. i had hoped to administer the tmehc twice with an interval of at least six months in between, in order to examine the possible effect of jamming as a form of self-administered treatment. due to factors beyond my control, i was unable to begin my study until well into the second semester, and thus, the interval between pre and post was reduced to ten weeks, with two of those weeks being when school was not in session. as disappointing as this was, it led me to an interesting result. both the jamming and non-jamming groups improved their scores over this period, indicating that jamming as a treatment over this period of time had little effect. however, the improvement of scores in both groups was large enough to suggest test effect. while this test effect was certainly an undesirable factor in my quantitative research, it indicated to me a possible overall benefit of ear-to-hand testing in general. if subjects generally improved their scores the second time they took the test, might this point to a way to improve ear-to-hand achievement? in fact, froseth did develop and use at the university of michigan, a program for the improvement of aural skills based on the format of the tmehc. indeed, during my ear-to-hand testing, i had a number of subjects suggest that they could do much better the second time, once they had thought about, and perhaps practiced, intervals in this way. interestingly, administering the tmehc also provided me with insights into my second research question regarding flow. when there was a balance of challenge and skillon the test (this occurred very rarely) subjects exhibited observable physical indications of flow, including a distant gaze/eyes closed, moving of extremities in time to the music, and swaying back and forth. the metronomic and relentless pace of this test appeared to contribute to flow in these individuals. conversely, when there was not a balance of challenge and skill, the pressure to perform “in time” seemed to inhibit flow even more. in my third ancillary question, i asked: how did the sor scores of the jammers in my sample compare to the sor scores of the non-jammers in my sample? based on my quantitative data, the sor showed a very clear difference in scores between jamming and non-jamming subjects. again, my research here was based on a small sample, but this result did point to the strengths of the sor as a tool for examining ear-to- hand coordination in subjects of this instrumentation and experience. based on the qualitative data that i also gathered, the sor was also much more likely than either of the other two tests to result in a flow experience for subjects. flow appeared to be enhanced by the “no-pressure” administration of the sor; i observed a loss of self- consciousness in a number of subjects. also, subjects taking the sor often indicated that they were experiencing a balance between challenge and skill. interestingly, i found that the sor produced an apparent challenge/skills balance in subjects with a wide variety of skill levels. perhaps this was due to the built-in provisions, through the use of optional tasks, for additional challenges when required. perhaps also the short time period that subjects were required to concentrate and the more personal manner of administration were factors as well. whatever the reason, many subjects expressed their enjoyment of the process, an unusual event in a testing situation. in my fourth ancillary question, i asked: what evidence was gathered that supported my contention that jammers were perceiving and manipulating music elements in a meaningful way? in journaling, in interviews, and in observations, an affirmative answer to this question was very well supported. in many cases it was difficult to draw a line between elements acquired in the jam and elements acquired during curricular music classes. these distinctions became even more blurred as subjects constructed knowledge originating from a number of sources. this knowledge appeared particularly meaningful to subjects composing new songs using elements of music acquired in these multiple ways. . second specific research question: discussion based on the results of my research, i concluded that csikszentmihalyi's flow theory explained the continued participation of students in the the jam session in a number of ways. as noted in chapter , i created ancillary questions based on my specific research questions in order to report my findings. below, i use these same questions in order to facilitate my discussion. first, i asked: what evidence was gathered that supported my contention that the challenge/skills balance aspect of flow theory could explain the continued participation of students in the jam session? i found it interesting to note that subjects who possess a wide spectrum of skill levels generally reported an overall feeling of balance during the challenges of a jam. this was surprising, given that the reported number of years on the jam session instrument varied from several months to more than ten years. in my observations, students appeared to take responsibility for their own challenges, applying one of several strategies in order to facilitate a flow experience for themselves and others. one strategy involved the mentoring or scaffolding of a less skilled player, enabling him to be involved on some level, while adding to the instrumentation of the jam. in this example, arpo, who was in the band room every day, appeared to want to be involved, but did not play a jam instrument. i observed the efforts of the others to mentor him and draw him in for their mutual benefit: apro sat with the group but did not play. [several minutes later] apro held the bass while brandon left the room briefly to solve an equipment problem; gus showed apro how to play an octave on the bass. [still later apro went to the piano and played a chord requested by brandon, who used the notes of the chord to develop a bass line. [towards the end of the jam] apro, who had wandered off, returned. several moments were spent organizing apro to play the woodblocks attached to the timbales. apro, a good musician but one without bass or percussion skills, was able to contribute to the jam within his skill level, supported by the others. i observed that flow was experienced by all those involved in the jam. another strategy was that of averaging out, in that participants adjusted their expectations for the jam to embrace a broader spectrum of balance between challenge and skill. for example, brandon was accepting of brief moments of boredom, and was equally accepting of his performance when he did not play as well as he had hoped. by broadening his perception of what might constitute a satisfactory jam experience, brandon had increased the likelihood that flow would occur. as well, i observed players increasing their level of challenge by improvisation, by creating more challenging melodies or rhythms that both complemented and built upon the existing chord structure of the jam. snoop often did this; not wanting to be intrusive or take over leadership of a jam that might be too easy for him, he still found a level of challenge to match his skill by inventing a countermelody, an ostinato, or by soloing over the chords that others provided. based on the flow indicators i observed, he experienced flow during such jams. the final strategy that i observed could be called a maybe-next-time outlook. bonjovi's experience in the unsuccessful jam described in my results certainly diminished his feelings of flow, and he was clearly disappointed at the reluctance shown by others to engage with material he personally found challenging. however, he continued his participation in a jam the next day; after this jam, involving other players, he reported feelings of flow. as a general observation, i was often surprised by the responsibility that jammers took in facilitating not only the possibility of their own flow experiences, but also in creating a sense of community that included concern for the flow experiences of fellow jammers. next, i asked: what evidence was gathered that supported my contention that merging of action and awareness, clear goals, clear and unambiguous feedback, concentrations and focus, sense of control, loss of self-consciousness, and transformation of time (all aspects of flow theory) could explain the continued participation of students in the jam session? in my results, i reported incidents of flow that pertained to all seven of the characteristics addressed in my question. however, i discovered that there were degrees of subject engagement when various characteristics of flow were discussed as part of the interview process. i found that two of the characteristics of flow produced the strongest reaction in subjects when discussed in journals or during an interview situation. as reported, nearly all subjects responded with enthusiasm and often with a great degree of detail, to the flow characteristic transformation of time. they talked and wrote about the shortness of the lunch period, whether they were jamming in a group, recording alone or with others, composing, or just practicing. they talked about how time flew by after school, too, whether they were playing a concert, recording, or jamming informally. this certainly confirmed the flow experience in all subjects with regard to this characteristic. was this transformation of time entirely a reflection of the activity, music-making, or could other factors have been involved as well? certainly, subjects became very involved in the music they were jamming, and it is not surprising, considering their level of engagement, that they lost track of time. however, i wondered at the time if this experience might have been heightened as a result of contrast with the regular school day. as i addressed briefly in my literature review, flow in the school context (most often examined through the use of pagers) was generally reported as low. perhaps the contrast between jamming and looking at the clock during a regular class and wishing the class would end sooner amplified the subjects' perception that time was passing very quickly during a jam. although there was a clock clearly visible in the band room, it was my observation that jammers seldom glanced at it, and that if they did, the glance was often followed by an expression of dismay. the lunch time jam was usually ended by a bell, often unheard or ignored, followed by the teacher telling jammers to wrap it up, or by members of the next class nudging the jammers aside as they set up for the next class. while loss of self-consciousness was a condition of flow very often mentioned by subjects, their reporting of this experience produced, at times, conflicting results. while all jammers agreed that they experienced a loss of self-consciousness at some point while jamming, nearly all subjects also reported incidents of what they usually referred to as nervousness. subjects were generally well aware of what contributed to this nervousness, and they usually mentioned one of four factors: first, if challenge exceeded skill, that is, if they were jamming with someone they thought was considerably more experienced or more skilled, they were more likely to be nervous. second, the repertoire was a factor; playing one's own music tended to mitigate nervousness, while playing unfamiliar music tended to increase it. third, most jammers reported that repeated exposure to playing/performance experiences lessened the feeling of nervousness. fourth, it was noted by several subjects that soloing added additional pressures and often resulted in nervousness. interestingly, several subjects mentioned lack of awareness of the audience as an indication of flow. in my third ancillary question, i asked: what evidence was gathered that supports my contention that an aspect of flow theory, the autotelic personality (self-developed goals and participating in an activity for its own sake) could explain the continued participation of students in the jam session? evidence gathered during jam session observation indicated that jammers were pursuing self-developed goals, as one would expect in an activity performed at the students' own volition. because my observations did not extend to other contexts inside and outside the school, i could not say for certain that these subjects were naturally or habitually oriented toward setting and pursuing self developed goals in other aspects of their lives. all jammers interviewed or asked to journal indicated that they practiced their instruments regularly. when i asked them why, they usually said that they did so because they had set finite musical goals for themselves that they hoped practicing would help them to achieve. many subjects also reported that they practiced because they enjoyed it. perhaps this autotelicity was particularly observable in jammers due to the contrast it provided with the external motivators often associated with other aspects of school. marks were not being given for jamming, parents and teachers were not pressuring students to jam, and, apart from the occasional battle-of-the-bands, there was little hope of reward in terms of money or fame, yet these subjects continued their participation in the jam session. upon examining my qualitative data, i concluded that flow theory, and particularly the autotelicity characteristic of flow theory, was important in explaining this continued participation. as well, when observing the jamming that took place in the recording studio, i was impressed by the way that available technology had enhanced the options available for autotelic jammers. i saw students initially jamming on a song, using what they had jammed to compose a song, getting others to play parts on their song (or even playing all the parts of the song themselves) and then recording the product. subjects whose self-goal was to record an album of original music were now able to do so using the technology available at this school. finally, i observed that jammers both articulated and displayed the autotelic trait of participating in an activity for its own sake, for the enjoyment alone. although a number of subjects expressed hope of finding a vocation in music, all seemed to agree that whatever life after school entailed, music would definitely be a part of it. as noted earlier in this chapter i was aware, during the development of my research plan, that my specific research questions, while important, would address only certain aspects of what i anticipated i would observe. i was also aware that other, unanticipated perspectives regarding the jamming phenomenon might arise. because no specific research questions addressed these additional themes and perspectives, my findings in this regard were not discussed in chapter . however, because i feel that these additional themes and perspectives are an important part of my case study research, i will discuss them here. . additional themes and related perspectives: discussion . . constructing knowledge during my case study, i repeatedly observed that knowledge constructed during music classes or private lessons was being used to inform the jam session, and conversely, that knowledge constructed during the jam session was informing participation in curricular music classes. my field notes regarding one of my participant-observer sessions reflected the use of knowledge constructed as part of other music experiences; references to these are italicized below. references to construction of knowledge were added, also in italics: snoop, bonjovi, jim, and captain were gathered to figure out my 'mystery song,' the theme from “king of the hill.” i played the song for the first time. bonjovi and snoop immediately begin plunking around trying to find the key. [tonality is a concept that was introduced and reinforced in both band and choir classes.] they had a good sense of when doh appeared in the bass line, and quite quickly decided upon the the tonic note, and thus, the key. snoop and bonjovi used their knowledge of the blues scale [acquired, in bonjovi's case, in jazz band, and in snoop's case, in informal lessons] to decipher the guitar riff, which contained the b and the b , as well as doh and sol. their hands seemed to find the likely notes without thought. [this was an example of ear-to-hand playing.] “it goes to the v chord there” says snoop. [tonic, subdominant, and dominant chords were discussed in music composition class.] now that snoop and bonjovi had the riff, they were not sure where to put it. they correctly decided to put it in the intro and the first four bars of the first verse. they were confused for a moment at bar five, then snoop discovered that it was just transposed up a p th, or one string higher on the guitar, for measures five to eight of the verse, then back to the original riff for the rest. [transposition and form were both introduced in music composition.] when the second verse came around, they put the riff in the proper place without difficulty. “this is a bridge” said bonjovi, but neither he nor snoop could catch the shift to the relative minor before it was gone; it was a short bridge, and only played once. [the concept of a bridge was probably first introduced in music composition class, and it was reinforced by the music they listened to outside of school.] snoop and bonjovi were now focused on the extro. “it's the v, then the i,” they decided between them. “there's like a lead part in there somewhere too!” when i played the song the second time, they played along quite capably. “here comes that bridge again!” snoop tried some bass notes, getting all but one of them. using a combination of single note riff, chords, and bass notes between them, bonjovi and snoop got most of the verse, chorus, and bridge. by this point, captain was singing along with most of the words. [perhaps his experiences in musical theater taught him to anticipate a rhyming scheme, which he then used to facilitate memorization.] this time jim picked up the feel that was used in the bridge, then went back to the the basic rock beat for the rest of the song. [mr. pj had spent some time teaching jim different rhythmic patterns on the drums.] this time bonjovi got the lead line: “hey, i figured it out!” this was a unique school, atypical both in the degree to which jamming was facilitated and in the way that playing by ear was promoted in band classes through use of scales and modes, improvisation, and figuring out familiar melodies. also, as i noted in chapter , the sullivan campus of sahs was also atypical in that it offered that three blocks of the course music composition and technology / ; in fact, it was one of the few schools in the province that offered the course at all. in this course, i observed students participating in ear-training and sight singing, inventing melodies, hooks, and riffs based on scales; and learning about chords, form, notation, and recording techniques. knowledge constructed during jamming was also frequently used in curricular music classes, perhaps to a lesser degree in band and jazz band, but definitely to a greater degree in music composition and technology. in fact, i estimated that over half of the student compositions submitted for credit in this class originated, and were often developed and even recorded, during a jam. in the participant-observer session i examined above, jammers themselves were exhibiting aural skills in the context of copying an unfamiliar song. interestingly, i played little part in the organization of the session or the makeup of the group; i merely put on the song and suggested that perhaps the jammers in the room could figure it out while i observed. . . jamming: evolving and complex early on in my research, it became apparent to me that the jam session at this school, rather than being a static, definable phenomenon, was a continuously evolving one; field notes written at that time expressed my concern and confusion. my study thus far has reflected constant change. the group of jammers identified in september, when i finished the proposal, had changed somewhat by november, when i submitted my ethics review, and changed again by february, when i finally received permission to conduct my study. during the pilot study, the teacher looked up in astonishment as two jammers never seen jamming together created music before our eyes. in the main study, the band i identified in october as a sub-group for study was in the process of deterioration, while one promising subject identified by the teacher as always jamming at the beginning of the year scarcely picked up an instrument the entire time i was there. conversely, a number of students who were not jammers in december became interested, and, after the second semester began, started developing skills. a few students who had formerly played every day started to use the time to eat their lunch and socialize instead. students who had already graduated suddenly appeared in april, and jammed during every available moment at the invitation of the teacher and fellow students. jam sessions moved from the school to someone's garage, and then back to the school again for recording purposes. although my discomfort thus expressed was relatively short-lived, i became and remained aware of the interactive nature of not only the cognitive and motivational factors identified in my specific research questions, but a number of social and organizational factors as well. three of these organizational factors are addressed below. first, the participant-observer session i described in the previous section was almost completely self organized. like most jam sessions i observed, participants 'showed up' and self-organized into a configuration suitable to the task at hand. at times, this meant that multi-instrumentalists played an instrument other than their preferred one. as well, various strategies for sharing power and transmitting knowledge were used, depending upon the demands of the task. in other observations, i saw groups of musicians link together in pursuit of a musical project or goal, capitalizing on each other's various strengths in order to meet the goal, and then re-forming or reorganizing in the pursuit of a subsequent goal. second, i observed jammers forming short term relationships, usually bands, trios, or duos. these groups worked together as long as group-held goals were being addressed, then re-formed in other combinations when this dynamic no longer existed. i observed a number of such short-term relationships during the four-month period of my study. third, as the following vignette illustrates, disequilibrium in school participation as well as in jam session participation was characteristic of some participants. my recently-adopted theme of constant change hit me in the face most unexpectedly a few days later. brandon, the guitar player with the great ear, the facilitator, is always able to get a jam going. brandon, who writes long and lyrical answers to all my journal questions, brandon, the grade student so mature that his presence is more like having another adult in the room, quit school. actually, he is asked to leave, having burned his bridges everywhere except for the band room. i don't believe it; i am convinced there is some mistake. he is much more philosophical about the whole thing than i am. “yeah, i got some issues,” he states, and we have to leave it at that. here is a student who tests out in the top three on the amma, could actually do the tmehc, embodies every characteristic of flow, and he has quit, four weeks from graduation. i would not have predicted this, based on the quantitative and qualitative data i have collected. multiple and complex factors are at work in every relationship that a human being has with his/her environment, and we as teachers, and especially as researchers, often have no idea of the power or the nature of these other factors. however, as my research progressed, i began to view the constant change that characterized the jamming at my case study site not as detrimental to my study, but instead as a positive force in the direction of a viable and vigorous jamming culture. . . the role of the teacher as my study progressed, i became more aware of the role of the teacher in creating the unique environment i was observing. facilitating the jam session, or at least providing a supervised space where it could occur, added additional time demands to the already-full day put in by the band teachers i observed. i interviewed the band teachers at both my pilot and main sites in order to explore their reasons for allowing jamming, in order to determine the positive and negative impact of jamming on them personally. both teachers stressed the importance of the facility being used to the maximum. mr. j, the band teacher at the school i used for my pilot study, stated: “i think it is important to do it, i want the room to be used, i want students to feel welcome here,” while mr. pj, the band teacher at the school i used for my main study, added, “i like to look around this room, all this professional equipment, all set up, in good working order, and being used.” also, both teachers were well aware of the importance of the social impact of providing students with a place to pursue their interests informally, a place to meet friends and hang out, a place where students felt both stimulated and safe. yet, there was a downside to allowing students access to the band room at all times. both teachers told me that they had experienced problems in the past with students who did not respect the privilege. mr. j explained the nature of the problem and his solution: yes, there has been abuse of the equipment in the past, misuse of the amps and the drum set especially. sometimes garbage left lying around too. usually it was unscreened guests, not music kids. if it gets too bad, i lock the door for a while, they lose the privilege. mr. pj experienced this as well: the way i do it is that i want it for music students. others are welcome once they are vetted. i had a kid once who basically obliterated everything, just cleared the room whenever he started drumming, and that we can't have. it's no good having people hitting the drums really hard and being obnoxious. there were differences between the two teachers regarding levels of supervision. mr. j, in his last year of teaching after years at this school, usually went to the staff room during lunch: i don't tend to stay in here, but i try to stay aware. i keep in touch with the noon supervisors. . . if they eat their lunch in here they have to pick up their own garbage. it should be music students only. i screen it, don't want to collect the undesirables in here. i always lock my office door, too. mr. pj, at about the midpoint his career, spent almost all his lunch hours in the band room. he explained why: a big part of it is that i really like hanging out here! (laughs) it's part of being a musician. i believe in it, so i gotta be here. this is an integral part of the program. the casual informal stuff is where so much learning takes place, and where relationships happen, too. . . besides, it's a lot more fun than the staff room! then, reflecting the sense of humor that was characteristic of his teaching style, he added: “then too, i think i'm like an ad kid, with a need for lots of rapid-fire stimulus!” however, realizing that burnout was a very real possibility in his job, he noted that he usually spent his preparation period elsewhere in the school. there were other hardships apparent in facilitating the jam session. the constant high levels of sound, as well as the irritation of the same mistakes being made and the same songs being played year after year, was something that both teachers realized took its toll. also, administration and fellow staff members were not always understanding or supportive. mr. j noted: “well, it can be hard on the ears (laughs), but it is fun to teach a few kids this way once in a while, too, [but] in a school there are always a few control-freaks who object.” mr. pj offered some specifics as to the negative aspects of the jam session from his point of view: 'chopsticks' and 'heart & soul' and 'smoke on the water' [three very common riffs] a million times (laughs), and sometimes the noise just gets to me, and i need a break!” my research indicated that mr. pj's support of jamming did not go unnoticed by the students. in both interview and journaling, students gave him his due with regard to creating a positive jam session atmosphere. when asked if they received musical support from anyone in the school, these two jammers did not hesitate: adam and bonjovi (at exactly the same time): “pj!!” bonjovi: “he's awesome.” adam: “he's like the best music teacher ever. he knows so much, but without the pretentiousness that lots of teachers get; he's so down-to-earth.” bonjovi: “he's so easy to understand, and what he has set up for us here. . . ” adam: “amazing! unreal!” brandon concurred, and noted the effect that he felt this support had on student achievement: “pj is totally supportive of jams, he lets us stay after school, and come in at lunch, or before school. he lets us use his equipment as long as we take care of it. i think that's why there are so many good musicians in our school.” doris echoed this view regarding the support she and her fellow musicians receive, and, as well, addresses the social aspect that is examined below: “pj is the best. he treats everyone's musical talent equally. he always leaves the band room open and rarely has a problem with anyone/anything. he still controls his room though and creates an inviting atmosphere that pulls all kinds of people in. pj is highly respected around the school, so the band room is a cool place to be.” . . school music subculture the band teachers in both my pilot study and my main study had much to say regarding the importance of the music subculture, particularly as it related to the students who spent their free time jamming in the band room. mr. j stated: [i see] a lot of friendships. sometimes they are carrying on a tradition from their old schools. most important, it is social: they get peer approval, its a safe place for them. helps them build self-esteem, fills a need for expression. mr. pj added: this [jamming] is an integral part of the program. the casual informal stuff is where so much learning takes place, and where relationships happen, too. it creates a sense of community in the music room, it's a circle you can join. watching them help each other, nobody is the boss, they collaborate – it's natural learning, not forced. it's a place to belong, positive and non-judgmental. they can find what they are good at. they can watch until they feel ready, then participate. . . information gathered during student interviews and recorded in the form of student journals supported the band teachers' observations and indicated the presence of a jam culture, a specific form of music subculture. as noted in chapter , morrison ( ) suggested themes by which a school music subculture could be identified. one of morrison's themes was identity. when i asked doris if people in the school thought of her as musician, she answered: “yes, and i think of myself as a musician too.” jaytee found that a school music identity could have its negative aspects: “people in band, they can get labeled a band geek, like why aren't you out there playing sports or something?” however, she adds: “i really like it [being thought of as a musician], it's a very defining thing in my life, and it's nice to be recognized as a musician.” adam and bonjovi identified themselves as musicians with their former band that had played a gig earlier in the year: “we have tons of support here in the school.” arpo, on the other hand, didn't think his identity as a musician was recognized in the school: “most people don't think of me outside the music room. being a musician matters to me, though.” another of morrison's themes was transmission. i found that, among jammers, knowledge was transmitted in ways quite different from those used in most curricular music classes. my field notes here recorded the introduction of a new member into a jamming group; while morrison might have viewed this as an apprenticeship situation, my observations showed that, providing his skills were equal to the task, a newcomer was as likely as any other jammer to adopt a temporary leadership role: the group was joined by s on guitar. s was an exchange student, and new to the jamming community. brandon, in an informal facilitator role, got s an amp from the theater and set it up. s played casual chords to warm up. several moments later, s, in an informal leadership role, played a chord pattern on the guitar, establishing the key, the harmonic structure, and the form. brandon and gus played the groove while s soloed, experimenting with an ostinato pattern over the changing chord pattern being outlined by the bass. later, s played a riff on the guitar, which brandon copied by ear on bass. gus kept time with brushes. relatedly, mr. pj expressed his views regarding the transmission of knowledge in a jam session situation: musically, there is so much informal learning, and they don't even realize it. like the elements of music: form, harmony, technique, melody, rhythm. it's peer to peer, not master teacher stuff. you have to build on that if you are going to form a band. each person has to know their part, even when you are learning cover tunes. actually, someone does have to take charge on each element, otherwise you just go round and round in circles. in a different aspect of knowledge transmission, that of collaborative composition, adam and bonjovi, who have written songs together all year, discussed during an interview how they shared ideas and built upon them: adam: “like, a lot of times he [bonjovi] will have the basic idea for a song, and i'll just kind of build off that and add my own ideas.” bonjovi: “like he [adam] will tweak it a bit and it will start sounding quite a bit better.” adam: “bonjovi always comes up with the basic idea for the song, chord changes and stuff, then i add my own ideas.” the conversation between bonjovi and adam also illustrated another of morrison's themes, the social dimension, in which, as members of a group, goals were shared and the members interacted extensively. they talked about the demise of their band, and their subsequent re-emergence as a songwriting duo: bonjovi: “it all fell apart right after our first show, which was too bad because we had really good reviews, people really liked the show.” adam: “we were together about two months, and then after that we just stopped, cause we couldn't practice, so we just started doing some acoustic stuff together instead.” bonjovi: “we play together on odd days, we jam together a few times a month 'cause we are so busy.” adam: “we started working together during music comp, writing stuff together, and that eventually led to our band. we want to do some coffee shop gigs (laughs) but they keep closing, so there goes that tour idea!” bonjovi: “i like working with adam better than any other people.” adam: “it just works.” bonjovi: “we're both different, but we both have the same expectations.” morrison's final theme, the diaspora, was especially meaningful to my examination of the jam session music subculture. i was surprised to find the sense of community so among jammers so strong that a number of them reappeared in the band room after graduation. sometimes, as was the situation with bonjovi, jammers stated their intention to come back to school after grade twelve to take more music courses and keep jamming. other times, as was the situation with corey, jammers returned in order to use the recording facilities and equipment, usually with the goal of completing an album. i asked mr. pj if he encouraged this: former students are welcome as long as they respect the equipment; i charge them one mic cord a year, you know how often those things break or disappear! (laughs) i love having grads in here because usually these are my high-end people from last year, and they have such attention to detail. they are such good role models for my current classes, audio-wise and otherwise. it is possible that this partial diaspora may help to perpetuate the jam session subculture. findings related to both the additional themes and the specific research questions identified above have implications for the school music curriculum. . suggestions for practice . . suggestions for practice: ear-to-hand playing my subjects came from several different feeder schools. when administering the sor, i could usually tell when i had a former student of mr. j's sitting in front of me, for when i started to explain that i wanted her to play back a melody she had probably heard somewhere, the response was often “oh, mr. j used to have us do this kind of stuff in class!” mr. j, a professional musician as well as a band teacher in my pilot school, stated that he believed strongly in teaching ear training. his method for promoting the skill of playing by ear involved spending five minutes per band class having the students figure out a familiar song ear-to-hand. as i observed during my pilot study, this could be a somewhat chaotic activity, with all the students at once trying to be the first to get it and show the rest of the class, after which they all played it together, phrase by phrase. it was my informal observation that certain students achieved a success during this ear-playing activity that well exceeded their successes in reading music. of course, many students were very good at both reading music and playing by ear, but for some, this ear-to- hand task was an area of strength and thus appeared to provide a much-desired balance of challenge and skill, at least for that five minutes. i also observed that some of these same familiar songs were played later at lunch time by some of these students as part of a little jam. teachers of all subjects know that students learn differently, and that a variety of teaching methods, including visual and aural, written and spoken, should be a part of every lesson. as music teachers we are aware of this as well, but we still tend to focus almost exclusively on repertoire-based eye playing. mr. j puts it bluntly “most band classes are recipe-reading, really.” based on what i have learned during this case study research, i have two recommendations for improving the ear-to-hand skills of student musicians. first, i would suggest that five minutes of every band class be devoted to playing familiar melodies by ear. second, i would recommend that opportunities to refine these melodies, explore other melodies, and create new melodies and arrangements based on familiar melodies, be provided to students by making available an area in which students can jam outside of class time. this opportunity could be open to band students as well as other interested individuals, as long as they respect the privilege, and it could include instruments not part of the standard band instrumentation. possibly, a “showcase” featuring students playing music learned while jamming could be part of an occasional band class. . . suggestions for practice: flow theory when i began my main study, i expected that i would be observing instances of flow displayed by my subjects. i had not given much thought to whether i would be observing instances of flow displayed by the teacher. despite having looked at bakker's ( ) study on the crossover of flow between teacher and students, i had not considered the possibility that flow as experienced by the teacher could be contagious to the students, my subjects. mr. pj is a professional drummer as well as a band teacher. he possesses strong music skills as well as extraordinary interpersonal skills. he also appears to be in flow throughout most of the school day. to watch him teach is to see a person immersed completely in a role, in the way that an experienced actor might be. in addition to modeling for students a complete lack of self-consciousness, a personal balance of challenge and skill, and the autotelic personality, he has an uncanny ability to transform time for himself and his students, both during and outside of class. based on flow indicators observed in both teacher and students, i believe that there is, on a number of occasions, a transmission of flow between mr. pj and his students. the following vignette illustrates one of those occasions. today, a large number of students have gathered informally with the purpose of becoming more familiar with the music from west side story, next year's musical theater production and the subject of next week's auditions. some of them cluster around the piano while one student with rudimentary piano skills tries to find the melody by ear and another student attempts the complex rhythms on the drum kit. mr. pj teacher enters the room, sits at the piano at the immediate invitation of those gathered there, and plays the tonic chord with a great flourish. “everybody try the 'jets' song,” he calls, “guys and girls, it doesn't matter.” with much laughter and mock posturing, everyone does. “now, everybody try the 'pretty' song! come on, guys too!” though several males look aghast at the idea, they are soon swept away by the fun of the situation. flow is evident as they lose self-consciousness, give each other feedback in mock roles, and move freely to the music. “such a pretty dress, such a pretty face, such a pretty smile, such a pretty meeeee!” they all sing, and in the , , between the end of the that phrase and the pickup of the chorus, mr pj, with comic timing, calls out “how do you feel?” “i feel pretty, oh so pretty. . . ” they all sing out in reply, completely oblivious to the presence of a few on-lookers in the room. in a reflection following this observation, i wrote: about half of these students are from the grade nine/ten campus; this room and many of their fellow students are unfamiliar to them. it would be ordinarily be very difficult to get students of this age to contribute in an uninhibited manner in such a situation. flow carries them along: they lose their shyness, the feel their skills are equal to the challenge, and they want to be part of this for its own sake. they lose track of time. the teacher is in flow, and his flow is contagious. i observed that mr. pj is a confident teacher, willing to risk looking undignified if it might help him get the students involved. in the above observation, he was modeling flow for his students; in particular, he displayed loss of self consciousness. from this observation comes an implication for practice. although it is likely that most teachers are not in flow as often as mr pj is, i suggest that most experience some such moments. as a suggestion for practice, i would urge teachers to have the courage to model the flow they are experiencing during those moments. . . suggestions for practice: the social dimension the importance of friendships within the music community, as a part of the music subculture, cannot be overstated. in my research, subjects emphasized repeatedly the friendships they developed by jamming, and the importance of these friendships to the development of a peer group. brandon stated it most emphatically: “like, everyone i jam with are my everyday friends; i've met some of my best friends from jamming. for me, jam sessions are a great way to meet new musicians, a lot of people will just jam without knowing each other first, and get to know each other through jams.” shelby alluded to a two-tier structure: “a few of them are my really good friends, most of the time we hang out and just have a good time. if some of us don't hang out, it's understood that we're all still good acquaintances. we learn a lot from one another.” not every jammer is this social, as snoop's comments showed: “i usually don't play with other people but when i do it is with good friends.” doris talked about the band room as a comfortable place: “it's less crowded here than in the halls, in the band room. my friends are here. we eat lunch, play the piano and other instruments.” with regard to the comforts offered by the music subculture that meets in the band room, mr. pj told me on several occasions that he saw the band room as a safe place for students to be, “a place to belong, positive and non-judgmental.” my observations confirmed this; one student with special needs spent much of his time there outside of class, practicing, writing music, and on more than one occasion, becoming part of the jam. however, as much as the band room was as safe a place as it could be, there were times when even that was not enough. catt, the subject most difficult subject i worked with was suspended from school today. catt, who wanted nothing to do with my “tests and stuff” then triumphantly brought his consent form one day, desperate to be part of my research. catt, who tested at the th percentile in the amma, left the room in huff after the tmehc, and told me repeatedly how much he sucked at playing by ear. catt, who turned from a non-jammer to a jammer overnight, badgering other players to show him what they were doing and let him be part of it. now he is gone for good. apparently, he reacted so physically and violently to a perceived disrespect from a fellow student that the other student was sent for medical treatment. mr. pj hoped that the band room would be a safe place for catt; sadly, he could not spend the entire school day there. . . suggestion for practice: inclusion during my second year of teaching, the principal met me at the door one morning with a familiar message:“i've suspended three more of those jammers of yours.' i have always promoted jamming in my own programs because i felt strongly that the music program at a school should offer something for every student who shows interest. for many students, concert band, choir, jazz band, and orchestra adequately fill that need. however, for the marginalized and disenfranchised student, the choices are fewer. most districts provide an instrument to a student in the case of genuine financial hardship: such instruments are not usually in a condition that would make anyone eager to play, especially when surrounded in class by shiny new horns. as well, given the chaotic nature of some students' homes, home practice is out of the question, and often the student gets further and further behind until he quits. furthermore, trouble reading print materials and trouble reading music seem, for whatever reason, to go hand in hand: few of these students are eager for one more failure to add to their already long list of failures. it is in the case of students like this that jamming really shines. with a few garage sale guitars and some occasional help in learning a new chord, some of these students can experience success. for this reason alone, jamming in schools is worthwhile. at the very least, a few moments of the school day, for a few of the neediest students, may be a positive experience. even for students who are experiencing success in regular band classes, some needs may not always be met. coan ( ), a proponent of critical theory in music education, addresses this issue, and asks a relevant question: if decreasing student numbers and interest do exist and are continuing to develop in music programs, they prompt questions for the critical theorist. there is an advocacy movement for music education, but has it been effective? is music education, in fact, less valued in our culture that it has been? what do these trends mean when music stores in the region where i teach (st. louis metropolitan area) have waiting lists of students wanting to study guitar and drums? why do i have on average to non- music majors coming to me every fall semester to enroll in our music fundamentals course because they want to learn to read music? perhaps these people are looking for a certain kind of music education that they did not receive in elementary and high school, an education that fits their personal goals for a fulfilling life that includes music as an important part. is “music for every student” a motto that we live up to? (coan, , p. italics mine) i am not sure that we do. although i would suggest that school music programs vary in the degree to which they successfully address the personal musical goals of students, i am in general agreement with coan that decreasing enrollment and apparently declining student interest are matters for concern. i too have observed, along with coan and campbell ( ), the rejection of traditional band instrument instruction in favor of personal exploration on common jam session instruments such as guitar and drums. through jamming, students are expanding their knowledge base, driven by their own interest. through the provision of a jam-friendly environment, we can provide this opportunity for all students, not just the ones who can afford to buy equipment, take lessons, and find suitable space to pursue a music education that addresses their personal goals. nearly a century ago, dewey emphasized the legitimacy of true interest in the learning process thus: “interest is normal and reliance upon it educationally legitimate in the degree to which the activity in question involves growth or development” (dewey, , p. ). he further suggested that learning occurs best in an atmosphere of both seriousness and playfulness, an idea later embraced by csikszentmihalyi and others as part of flow theory. as i have shown in my research, jamming provides an additional educationally legitimate opportunity for student interest-based musical development and musical growth. . . suggestions for practice: bottom-up implementation my case study school is atypical in many respects, not the least of which is the physical plant and equipment for facilitating the jam session. the number of rooms separate from the main band room, and in particular the recording facilities, are most unusual. as mr. pj related, however, the facilities and the equipment that i saw during my research emerged and evolved over a number of years, and they continue to evolve based on student needs. when this school was designed and built [ ] it was conceived as a music room, not a band room. i wanted other rooms as well as the main one. i know it is smaller than the typical band room, but it offers different areas [midi labs and classrooms] for people to work in. in , the recording studio idea was born when a parent offered to help. we started with studio a [two rooms at the back of the main room] and then when the television production class was no longer offered, we moved into that space and it became studio b. that was great because it was built properly for sound. over the years we have had so many fundraisers, the big band dance, and career prep money has helped too, and we've been able to add new stuff every year. we use cubase score and cubase sl, and some day i hope to have nuendo [a professional program for sound recording and editing] too. i have included mr. pj's chronicle of jam-friendly growth here because it illustrates a form of bottom-up and emergent program growth, with all stakeholders, students, teachers, parents, and administrators, involved. the creation of an environment that encourages jamming need not supplant existing band programs; instead, as i have shown, they can coexist and enrich one another in a number of cognitive, motivational, and social ways. . opportunities for further research my case study provides a number of possibilities for further research on the high school jam session. a case study of the jammers in additional schools would be a logical next step, and would provide an opportunity for assessment of my conclusions based on my qualitative data. as well, a different research design, one that emphasizes certain aspects of my quantitative research, could provide additional insights into the ways jammers perceive and manipulate the elements of music. in particular, a study involving a larger number of subjects could provide more conclusive data regarding the audiational abilities of jammers as compared to non-jammers. the amma could be used for this purpose. alternately, the map could be used to provide data that address each aspect of audiation more specifically. this, however, would require a larger investment of subject and researcher time. as well, an opportunity exists for further standardization of the sor. it would be possible, given available technology, to produce the melody to be replicated by the subject in electronic form, in a number of different keys, ensuring continuity in what each student heard. finally, the sor could be used as a pre and post test to obtain data on the possible treatment effect of jamming. challenges would include the very real possibility of test effect, the challenge of identifying jammers versus non-jammers, lessening the interference caused to test results by jamming outside a school situation, and ensuring that a sufficient period of time was allowed for the self-administered treatment. it is my hope that this case study provides a starting point for more research into the phenomenon of jamming. . coda in my literature review, i suggested that jamming could be considered part of the extracurriculum of the school. upon completing my research, i still believe that to be an appropriate designation. however, in the case of the sullivan campus of sahs, it would appear that jamming is, or at least is becoming, more than that. the lines between extracurricular and curricular began to blur for me, as i observed students jamming in order to compose or record assignments for their music composition and technology class, jamming on songs for next year's musical theater class, or practicing solos for concert or jazz band class. the near-constant presence of the teacher added to my feeling that jamming was at least approaching pseudo-curricular status. it will be interesting to see what the next few years bring in terms of the curricular status of jamming at this particular school, and others as well. as the music curriculum continues to evolve, will jamming be part of what lies beyond band? biblography adderley, c., kennedy, m., & berz, w. 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( ). implications of extracurricular activity participation during adolescence on positive outcomes. journal of adolescent research, ( ), - . javascript:ol('http://www.youthmusic.org.uk/'); appendices appendix a additional jammer profiles jammer pseudonym and subject number: simpson # instrument played, number of years: vocals, years jam participation: very often jam notes: writes own songs, records frequently, often works with others amma percentile rank: tmehc average score: n/a sor score: n/a notes re q : uses elements of music in her original songs, but lacks instrumental skills notes re q : autotelic, confident in the use of her voice other: will be attending music college next year jammer pseudonym and subject number: kenneth # instrument played, number of years: bassoon, years jam participation: half the time jam notes: often works alone, writes and records own songs amma percentile rank: tmehc average score: sor score: notes re q : uses elements of music in a very unusual way in his compositions notes re q : autotelic, time is transformed when he is playing other: special needs; possibly a form of autism jammer pseudonym and subject number: jaytee # instrument played, number of years: guitar, year jam participation: half the time jam notes: generally works alone amma percentile rank: tmehc average score: sor score: notes re q : very knowledgeable regards chord structure, form notes re q : self-conscious at times when playing other: frequent absences from school jammer pseudonym and subject number: adam # instrument played, number of years: bass, years jam participation: very often jam notes: works as part of a duo to write, perform, and record amma percentile rank: tmehc average score: sor score: notes re q : perceives and manipulates music elements with ease notes re q : autotelic, challenge balanced by skill, transformation of time, unselfconscious other: self-taught, learns very quickly by ear jammer pseudonym and subject number: bartho # instrument played, number of years: piano, years jam participation: half the time jam notes: frequently works with others recording or performing amma percentile rank: tmehc average score: sor score: notes re q : perceives and manipulates music elements easily notes re q : autotelic, challenge/skills balanced other: frequency of jamming increased throughout my research jammer pseudonym and subject number: pfin # instrument played, number of years: clarinet, years jam notes: works with others, jams off site frequently amma percentile rank: tmehc average score: sor score: notes re q : perceives and manipulates music elements easily notes re q : challenge/skills balanced other: confident and cheerful player jammer pseudonym and subject number: apro # instrument played, number of years: trumpet, years jam participation: always jam notes: usually plays and writes alone, jams with others if invited amma percentile rank: tmehc average score: sor score: notes re q : very knowledgeable in the use of music elements notes re q : autotelic, focused, concentration can be quite easily disrupted other: plays in cadet band and works on a wide variety of repertoire jammer pseudonym and subject number: jordan # instrument played, number of years: drums, year jam participation: very often jam notes: jams off site frequently amma percentile rank: tmehc average score: n/a sor score: n/a notes re q : uses music element of rhythm with ease notes re q : autotelic other: chose to transfer to this school because of the music facilities jammer pseudonym and subject number: bond # instrument played, number of years: bass, years jam participation: half the time jam notes: writes with others amma percentile rank: tmehc average score: sor score: notes re q : manipulates music elements well notes re q : challenge/skills balance other: quiet, confident participant jammer pseudonym and subject number: catt # instrument played, number of years: clarinet, years jam participation: a little jam notes: wants to participate but lacks confidence and skills amma percentile rank: tmehc average score: sor score: notes re q : far prefers to read notes than play them by ear notes re q : self-conscious while playing, easily loses focus other: removed from school for fighting before my research ended jammer pseudonym and subject number: gus # instrument played, number of years: drums year jam participation: always jam notes: often a jam facilitator amma percentile rank: tmehc average score: n/a sor score: n/a notes re q : perceives and manipulates rhythms easily notes re q : challenge/skills balance, autotelic other: very adverse to testing, says he has add jammer pseudonym and subject number: hatha # instrument played, number of years: piano, years jam participation: a little jam notes: always works alone at school, jams using sequencing software at home amma percentile rank: tmehc average score: sor score: notes re q : uses knowledge of music elements to figure out songs by ear with great ease notes re q : flow is disrupted extremely easily other: scarcely participates in concert band and jazz band classes; appear indifferent jammer pseudonym and subject number: alexa # instrument played, number of years: guitar, years jam participation: half the time jam notes: is sometimes impatient with others who help her record her songs amma percentile rank: tmehc average score: sor score: notes re q : uses music elements very capably in both performance and composition notes re q : autotelic, flow is evident when she is playing other: has her own band and performs frequently jammer pseudonym and subject number: bonjovi # instrument played, number of years: guitar, years jam participation: always jam notes: jam facilitator amma percentile rank: tmehc average score: sor score: notes re q : manipulates elements well in a wide variety of music styles notes re q : autotelic, flow is evident when playing other: returning to school after graduation to take more music classes jammer pseudonym and subject number: azalea # instrument played, number of years: piano, years jam participation: half the time jam notes: frequently records her own songs and plays for the recordings of others amma percentile rank: tmehc average score: sor score: notes re q : very knowledgeable in use of music elements notes re q : autotelic, flow is evident when playing, challenge/skills balance other: has written and recorded an original album jammer pseudonym and subject number: snoop # instrument played, number of years: drums, years jam participation: always jam notes: seldom joins a group, usually jams to the song from the other side of the room amma percentile rank: tmehc average score: n/a sor score: n/a notes re q : large repertoire from which he extrapolates music elements notes re q : autotelic, embodies flow whenever he plays other: does not often choose to play in close proximity to others jammer pseudonym and subject number: brandon # instrument played, number of years: drums, years jam participation: always jam notes: facilitator and capable leader of the jam amma percentile rank: tmehc average score: sor score: notes re q : very skilled at manipulating the elements of music notes re q : autotelic, flow very evident when playing other: quit school part way through my research jammer pseudonym and subject number: jim # instrument played, number of years: drums, years jam participation: half the time jam notes: plays along but will not draw attention to himself in any way amma percentile rank: tmehc average score: n/a sor score: n/a notes re q : possesses music knowledge but very tentative about using what he knows notes re q : usually, self-consciousness impedes flow other: almost always works with others, seldom works alone jammer pseudonym and subject number: captain # instrument played, number of years: clarinet, years jam participation: very often jam notes: places emphasis on getting the notes correct amma percentile rank: tmehc average score: sor score: notes re q : applies music knowledge capably notes re q : challenge/skills in balance, constantly seeking new challenges other: quite aggressive and competitive, both in music class and in the jam jammer pseudonym and subject number: parker # instrument played, number of years: vocals, years jam participation: a little jam notes: lacks confidence in his abilities amma percentile rank: tmehc average score: n/a sor score: n/a notes re q : moderate success with the manipulation of music elements notes re q : flow is rarely achieved, often self-conscious other: responds well to positive feedback from others jammer pseudonym and subject number: doris # instrument played, number of years: guitar, year jam participation: half the time jam notes: records frequently with others amma percentile rank: tmehc average score: sor score: notes re q :very adept at using the elements of music to compose notes re q : flow is evident when she plays other: confident and bubbly, jams off site as part of a church youth group appendix b letters of information and consent university of british columbia department of curriculumstudies faculty of education main mall vancouver, bc, v t z tel: xxx-xxx-xxxx doug pearson, superintendent of schools north okanagan-shuswap school district # box , salmon arm, b.c. v e n dear mr. pearson: my name is joan southworth and i am a phd student in the department of curriculum studies, in the faculty of education at the university of british columbia. i am currently on leave from the school district # in order to pursue case study research in music education. i am conducting research on the high school jam session, an improvised, student directed music session, in order to examine possible musical and motivational benefits of this activity. this dissertation project is being supervised by dr. scott goble, an assistant professor in the department of curriculum studies at ubc. the study will be conducted with approval of the ubc behavioural research ethics board; permission from this board is currently being requested. i am seeking your written approval (and that of the school board if so required) in order to conduct research at the sullivan campus of salmon arm secondary. with your approval, research will begin in mid-january (with the pilot study, conducted at the jackson campus of salmon arm secondary) and continue with the main study during the second semester, february until mid-june. my research subjects will be students who are in the band room during unstructured times of the day (noon and before and after school), participating in musical activities of their own volition. the aim of this research is to examine student participation in the jam session from several perspectives; to deepen understanding of why students participate, how they participate, and what they may be learning musically through participation. knowing more about the jam session, which occurs frequently and spontaneously in many band rooms as part of the informal music curriculum, has important implications for the formal music curriculum of the school. as you are aware, i am a band teacher with over twenty years of experience in your district. i have also taught a secondary music pedagogy course at ubc. i have a longstanding working relationship with the other band teachers in the district, including salmon arm secondary band teachers brian pratt-johnson and jim johnston, whose cooperation is essential to this research. more detailed information regarding this research is attached, including a short statement regarding the rationale for, and educational importance of, this study. as well, i include a letter of information for the principal,staff, parents and students of the sullivan campus of salmon arm secondary, a letter of student assent and parent/guardian consent, and detailed information regarding research instruments and methods to be employed in the study. case study methodology will be used for this study, with students identified in the dissertation document by first name only, or by a pseudonym upon request. if you have any questions regarding my research, please feel free to contact me at xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx thank you for your support of my research, joan southworth version january , mailto:scott.goble@ubc.ca the university of british columbia department of curriculumstudies faculty of education main mall vancouver, bc, v t z tel: xxx xxx xxxx letter of information my name is joan southworth and i am a phd student in the department of curriculum studies, in the faculty of education at the university of british columbia. as part of my dissertation, i am conducting research on the high school jam session, an improvised, student directed music session, in order to examine possible musical and motivational benefits of this activity. in many band rooms, students can be found during unstructured times of the day, voluntarily and spontaneously playing music, an activity sometimes known as a jam session. the aim of this research is to examine student participation in the jam session from three perspectives; to deepen understanding of why students participate, how they participate, and what they may be learning musically through participation. if you are a student who plays an instrument or sings in the band room in the company of other musicians, outside of class time, i invite you to be part of this study. the commitment of time on your part will be minimal. i will be observing, and occasionally recording or videotaping, the music produced in the band room at lunch hour several days a week during the second semester. in addition, i will administer to both jam session participants as well as some students in the regular music program, two short tests of fifteen minutes each that are designed to explore your ability to recall melodies and rhythms and play by ear. i am also looking for a group of students who have formed a band and would be willing to participate in interviews and journaling regarding this music activity. please note that your participation in all parts of this study is voluntary, and that you can discontinue your participation at any time. the results of the two short tests will be revealed only to you (upon request), and will not be identified with your name in any document. students who consent to be interviewed will be identified only by a pseudonym of their choice. participants will be given the opportunity to see the study when it is completed if they so wish. students jam in the band room on a regular basis, yet very little is known about why and how they do so. by being part of this study, you will be making a contribution to understanding and knowledge about the high school jam session. as a band teacher and a musician, i appreciate your participation in finding out more about jamming at school. if you have any questions regarding this study and your possible participation in it, please contact me at xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx. joan southworth version january , the university of british columbia department of curriculum studies faculty of education main mall vancouver, bc, v t z tel: xxx xxx xxxx letter of student assent and parent/guardian consent this research is being conducted by joan southworth, a third year phd student at the university of british columbia. the principal investigator supervising this thesis work is dr. scott goble, an assistant professor in the department of curriculum studies at ubc. this research examines the high school jam session from both musical and motivational perspectives. timelines this research will take place from mid-january to mid-june, a duration of five months. during this time, joan southworth, the graduate student conducting this research, will be observing music activities in the band room (sometimes called a jam session) two or three times a week during unstructured times of day (noon and after school). occasionally, the researcher will make audio or video recordings of this music activity. research tasks as a student involved in music activities, you may be asked to complete two short tests (approximately minutes each) designed to measure your ability to recall melodies and play melodies by ear. these test results will be identified only by a code number which will be given to you. your score will be given only to you, the student, upon request, and will not affect your music grades in any way. your name will not appear in any document. if you are chosen to be part of a smaller study (consisting of three to five students who have formed a band that practices at the school) you will also be asked to participate in several interviews and keep a short directed journal. interview transcriptions or journal entries appearing in the thesis itself will be identified only by a pseudonym which you/your child will choose. no identifying data except for pseudonym will appear in any document. privacy of information information gathered will be kept in a locked filing cabinet or password protected computer file. please note that participation by you/your child is voluntary, and can be discontinued by you/your child at any time. non-participation will not affect your musical activities in any way. if you have any questions about this project now or during the course of your involvement, please feel free to contact joan southworth at xxxxxxx. you may also contact the principal investigator dr. scott goble at scott.goble@ubc.ca. if you have any questions about how you have been treated as a research subject, you may contact the director of research services at the university of british columbia at - - . consent if you, as a student, are willing to participate in this research project, please indicate your assent by signing in the space below. if you, as a parent/guardian are willing to allow your son/daughter to participate in this research project, please indicate your consent by signing in the space below. thank you. i, ____________________(print student name)consent to participate in the study beyond the boundaries of band, three perspectives on the high school jam session. i have received a copy of this letter. _________________________________ ______________________________ signature date i, _______________________(print name of parent/guardian) give my consent/do not give my consent (cross out non-applicable phrase) to allow my child to to participate in the study beyond the boundaries of band, three perspectives on the high school jam session. i have received a copy of this letter. _________________________________ ______________________________ signature date version date jan. , mailto:scott.goble@ubc.ca appendix c letters/certificates of approval north okanagan - shuswap school district # p.o. box - shuswap st. n.e. - salmon arm, b.c. v e n - january , ms. joan southworth department of curriculum studies faculty main mall vancouver, bc v t lz dear joan : i am approving your request to conduct research as outlined in your proposal. approval is conditional to meeting the parameters and requirements of your ubc ethics committee (copy to be submitted) and adhering to the protection of privacy act that governs the use of personal information for students and staff of school district # north okanagan-shuswap. i wish you the best of luck in your research and the completion of your ubc doctoral program. upon completion of your research, i would appreciate receiving a copy of the results which could be shared with district staff and trustees. yours truly, doug pearson, superintendent of schools dp/ https://rise.ubc.ca/rise/doc/ mcm chk f noetgdqia ... the university of british columbia office of research services behavioural research ethics board suite , agronomy road, vancouver, b.c. v t z lof certificate of approval - minimal risk principal investigator: institution i department: ubc breb number: james scott goble u bc/education/curriculum h - studies institution(s) where research will be carried out: institution i site ubc point grey site other locations where the research will be conducted: salmon arm secondary school salmon arm, b. c. co-investiga tor(s): joan southworth anthony clarke james scott goble william f pinar peter gouzouasis sponsoring agencies: n/a project title: beyond the boundaries of band: three perspectives on the high school jam session. certificate expiry date: february , documents included in this approval: date approved: february , document name i version i date protocol: . protocol n/a november , consent forms: version consent form january january , , questionnaire questionnaire cover letter tests: . interview script, informal tasks, directed journalling nov. , november , letter of initial contact: letter of information january january , , letter of initial contact january january , , other documents: letter of approval, school district january , the application for ethical review and the document(s) listed above have been reviewed and the procedures were found to be acceptable on ethical grounds for research involving human subjects. approval is issued on behalf of the behavioural research ethics board and signed electronically by one of the following: dr. peter suedfeld, chair;; dr. jim rupert, associate chair dr. arminee kazanjian, associate chair; dr. m. judith lynam, associate chair appendix d research timelines dates of school observations/data gathering feb. jackson campus: explanation, letter of consent distributed feb. sullivan campus: explanation, letters of consent distributed feb. jackson/sullivan: reminder re letters of consent feb. jackson/sullivan: reminder re letters of consent feb. jackson: interviews feb jackson: amma to pilot feb. jackson: tmehc to pilot feb. jackson: interviews, tmehc, sor to pilot sullivan: picked up letters of consent feb. jackson: noon hour observations, interview band teacher sullivan: amma feb. sullivan: began tmehc feb. sullivan: continued tmehc, obtained student data mar. (all activities at sullivan campus from this point onward) tmehc, noon observations mar. tmehc, noon observations mar. tmehc, noon observations mar. tmehc, noon observations apr. distributed journals, interviews apr. observations apr. observations apr. interviews, observations apr. observations apr. observations apr. observations apr. observations apr. observations may sor, observations may sor, picture taking of site may sor, observations may sor, observations may sor, observations may post-tmehc may post-tmehc may post-tmehc may observed and videoed a songwriting duo jamming june interviewed band teacher, first participant-observer task june flow questionnaires june flow questionnaires june flow observations june group interview, second participant-observer task june gathering of artifacts, collection of journals, last day of classes june further interviews with band teacher, data verification appendix e jammer questionnaire/ designation instruments played number of years played lessons outside of school and where . . (please use back of the page if you need more space) please circle the phrase or word that best describes your participation: do you do vocals? never /a little /sometimes /often /always can you operate the recording equipment? no /a little /some /fairly well /very competently do you write your own songs? never /occasionally /sometimes /often /all the time are you in the school music rooms outside of class time, that is, before and after school, at noon and during spare blocks? never / a little/ half the time/ very often /always if you do go to the band room outside of class time, could you tell me your usual reasons for doing so? (ie. to practice, to write songs, to record, to jam with others, to eat lunch, to be with friends, etc) do you play in a group or with friends outside of the school? if so, could you tell me who and where? (ie. church group, a band in a basement/garage, a group session at a music store, a cafe gig, etc) do you play by ear? never / a little / sometimes / often/ all the time if you do play by ear, could you tell me the circumstances? (ie. figure out songs that my friends are playing, figure out original songs, learn songs from my mp player, etc) how good do you think you are at playing by ear? poor/ fair/ good/ very good /excellent appendix f: subject information roster of subjects, main study: number, demographics, and pseudonym subject # subject name: (deleted as per school district request) gender grade age @ sept. aver. letter grade pseudonym # female b+ simpson # male c kenneth # female b jaytee # male b adam # female c+ bartho # male a deebee # female c+ cathy # male b- sven # female a pfin # male b- rudabeg # male a apro # female a kendra # male b jordan # female b+ jinx # male b bond # male c catt # male b- gus # female a beth # male c+ tosh # female b- hatha # female b alexa # male c bonjovi # female b+ azalea # male a maynard # female b froggy # male c snoop # male c- brandon # male a ghandi # female c+ veronica # female b midgito # male c jim # male c captain # male b- parker # male b toller # female b+ maryann # female a doris # male b- freagan # male c- dwnsyde # . male c+ ali # male b jay # male c ron # male grad grad corey # male c nik # male b- lucas roster of subjects, pilot study: number, demographics, and pseudonym subject number subject name: (deleted as per school district request) gender grade age pseudonym # male virgil # female alexandra # male dante # female rose # female bertha # female peanut jammer designation criteria subject # jam frequency: self-reported jam frequency: my observations studio log: # of bookings* jams outside of school? where? # very often half the time home/ friends # half the time half the time no # a little a little n/a no # a little a little n/a home/ friends # half the time half the time no # a little half the time church/ group # a little half the time n/a home/ friends # very often half the time country band # always always garage band # a little a little church/ group # very often very often n/a community band # always always n/a cadets # half the time half the time church/ group # very often very often no * music composition students use the log book to sign out the two recording studios, for the purposes of playing, jamming, and recording. concert band, jazz band choir and orchestra students, who do not ordinarily do this, are shown here as n/a. the following subjects also met the above criteria used to identify jammers. however, these subjects were not included in the matched pairs used to compare test scores of jammers and non-jammers due to an inability to play a bb concert scale on a melody instrument; they were not pre-and-post-tested on tmehc. however, these subjects were observed, with some of these subjects given informal tasks to perform, asked to journal, and interviewed. the following table illustrates the criteria used to identify them as jammers. subject # jam frequency: self-reported jam frequency: my observations studio log: # of bookings jams outside of school? where? # very often very often no # very often very often garage band # very often always basement band # very often always home/ friends # very often very often no comparison of demographics by matched pairs: jammer/non jammer jammer* subject # jammer grade/ age @ sept. ammer gender jammer average letter grade non- jammer* subject # non-jammer grade/ age @ sept. non- jammer gender nonjammer average letter grade # gr. / female b- # gr. / female c+ # gr. / female b+ # gr. / female b # gr. / female b # gr. / female a # gr. / female b # gr. / female a # gr. / male b # gr. / male b+ # gr. / female a # gr. / female b+ # gr. / male c+ # gr. / male c # gr. / female b # gr. / female b+ # gr. / male c # gr. / male b # gr. / male a # gr. / male a # gr. / male c # gr. / male c # gr. / male a # gr. / male a # gr. / female c+ # gr. / female c+ two additional subjects met the criteria used to determine jammer/non jammer status but were not included in the matched pairs due to missing tmehc scores. they were: jammer # , gr. , , male, c-, withdrew from school before tmehc posttest non-jammer # , gr. , , female, b, left room before tmehc posttest was completed subjects by main instrument number of subjects instrument subjects guitar # , # , # , # , # , # , # , # clarinet # , # , # , # , # , # piano # , # , # , # , # drums # , # , # , # flute # , # , # , # rapper/ no instrument # , # , # , # bass # , # , # sax # , # trumpet # , # trombone/ baritone # , # bassoon # violin # subjects by gender male female comparative test scores (tmehc/amma/sor) and relevant factors subject # jammer/ non tmehc pre/ post test amma tone/ rhythm/ total raw scores/ percentile rank sor relevant factors? # /j / / / / - years piano lessons -learns songs from mp player by ear -reports using ear skills to memorize songs # /j /* / / / -multi-instrumentalist: guitar, bass, drums -uses ear skills to write songs # /n / ** / / / -grade royal conservatory violin -grade royal conservatory piano # j / / / / - years piano lessons - years vocal lessons # j / / / / -uses ear skills to write music -observed playing every available moment # j / / / / - years piano -jams outside of school as well -uses ear skills to play songs from memory # j / / / / -plays in a church group and with friends -plays by ear tunes that are in his head # j / / / / -plays the bagpipes as well as guitar and sax -says songs “just happen” in his head # j / / / / -in musical theater -displays accurate sense of pitch while singing # n / / / / - years piano lessons -uses “perfection ear-training cd” # n / / / / - years royal conservatory piano -jams with friends outside school -plays in a church group # j / / / / - years piano lessons -plays in a church group twice a week # n / / / / -in jazz band, loves to play jazz # j / / / / - years piano lessons -plays in a church worship group # n / / / / - years lessons on jazz guitar -plays in a jazz combo # j / / / / -multi-instrumentalist: bass, guitar, piano -learns songs on mp player by ear # n / / / / -plays violin in string orchestra # n / / / / -considers himself a fair ear-player # n / / / / -considers himself a very poor ear-player # n / / / / -considers himself a poor ear-player # n / / / / -considers herself a poor ear-player # j / / / / - years piano lessons -jams with friends outside of school -writes songs by ear # n / / / / -plays the bassoon and digeridoo -writes own songs # n / / / / -considers herself a fair ear-player # j / / / / -considers herself a very good ear player -figures out songs by ear on guitar # n / / / / -considers herself a poor ear-player # j / / / / -plays in a band -likes to figure out parts of songs on guitar # n / / / / -wants to jam but finds it very difficult * withdrew from school before tmehc post-test; not used in matched-pair comparison **left the room before post-test tmehc complete; not used in matched-pair comparison 	the science and psychology of musical performance: creative strategies for teaching and learning. new york: oxford university press. 	kuehn, j. w. 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( ). group creativity, innovation through collaboration. 	new york: oxford university press. books recently published books recently published karen r. little, james procell notes, volume , number , march , pp. - (article) published by music library association doi: for additional information about this article [ this content has been declared free to read by the pubisher during the covid- pandemic. ] https://doi.org/ . /not. . https://muse.jhu.edu/article/ https://doi.org/ . /not. . https://muse.jhu.edu/article/ english alexander, lauren. more mad for miley: an unauthorized biography. new york: price stern sloan, . p. isbn (pbk.). lc - . andrews, deborah. how a voice teacher shapes the performance of his students: a study of the pedagogy and life of giuseppe de luca. lewiston, ny: edwin mellen press, . viii, p., leaves of plates. isbn . isbn . lc - . argyle, ray. scott joplin and the age of rag- time. jefferson, nc: mcfarland, . x, p. isbn (pbk.; alk. pa- per). isbn (pbk.; alk. paper). lc - . asaf�ev, b. v. symphonic etudes: portraits of russian operas and ballets. lanham, md: scarecrow press, . xxviii, p. isbn (hbk.; alk. paper). isbn (hbk.; alk. paper). isbn (pbk.; alk. paper). isbn (pbk.; alk. paper). lc - . translation of: simfonicheskie ėtıu� dy. bandurina, tatiana. voices of our children: stories of music education. richmond, bc: quintecco educational products, . p. isbn . isbn . lc - . bankes, ariane, and jonathan reekie. new aldeburgh anthology. woodbridge, uk; rochester, ny: aldeburgh music/boydell, . p., p. of plates. isbn (hbk.). isbn (hbk.). lc - . baraka, imamu amiri. digging: the afro- american soul of american classical music. berkeley: university of california press, . p., p. of plates. isbn (hbk.; alk. paper). lc - . music of the african diaspora, barnett, lashonda k. i got thunder: black women songwriters on their craft. new york: thunder’s mouth press, . xxi, p. isbn (pbk.). isbn (pbk.). lc - . bayer, gerd, ed. heavy metal music in britain. farnham, england; burlington, vt: ashgate, . xii, p. isbn (hbk.; alk. paper). isbn (hbk.; alk. paper). lc - . ashgate popular and folk music series beckler, s. r. a catalog of the musical works of stanworth russell beckler: compo- sitions s– . stockton, ca: balona - books, . p. isbn (pbk.; alk. paper). lc - . bell, vince. one man’s music: the life and times of texas songwriter vince bell. denton: university of north texas press, . xii, p. isbn (hbk.; alk. paper). isbn (hbk.; alk. paper). isbn (pbk.; alk. paper). isbn (pbk.; alk. paper). lc - . north texas lives of musicians series, no. bennet, barbara. clannad: moments in a lifetime. belfast: appletree press, . p. isbn . lc - . berendt, joachim-ernst, and günther hues mann. the jazz book: from ragtime to the st century. th ed., rev. and ex- panded. chicago, il: lawrence hill books, . xiv, p. isbn (pbk.). isbn x (pbk.). isbn (hbk.). isbn (hbk.). lc - . books recently published compiled by karen r. little and james procell for information about the scope of this column, consult the headline in the september issue (p. of this volume). � books recently published bernstein, burton, and barbara b. haws. leonard bernstein: american original; how a modern renaissance man transformed music and the world during his new york philharmonic years, – . new york: collins, . xviii, p. isbn . lc - . biersdorfer, j. d., and david pogue. ipod: the missing manual. th ed. sebastapol, ca: o’reilly, . xv, p. isbn (pbk.). isbn (pbk.). lc - . the missing manual series bishop, john leslie, and graham richard barker. piano manual: buying, problem- solving, care, repair and tuning. sparkford: haynes, . p. isbn (hbk.). isbn (hbk.). lc - . bohlman, philip vilas, ed. jewish musical modernism, old and new. chicago, il: university of chicago press, . xix, p. + cd. isbn (hbk.; alk. paper). isbn (hbk.; alk. paper). lc - . boyt, susie. my judy garland life: a mem- oir. new york: bloomsbury, . p., p. of plates. isbn (hbk.). isbn (hbk.). lc - . brasseaux, ryan a. cajun breakdown: the emergence of an american-made music. oxford; new york: oxford university press, . xv, p. isbn (hbk.; alk. paper). isbn (hbk.; alk. paper). lc - . american musicspheres bridger, bobby. bridger. austin: university of texas press, . viii, p., p. of plates + dvd. isbn (hbk.; alk. paper). isbn (hbk.; alk. paper). lc - . brad and michele moore roots music series brockschmidt, kraig. the harmonium handbook: owning, playing, and maintain- ing the indian reed organ. nevada city, ca: crystal clarity publishers, . p. isbn . lc - . brun-lambert, david. nina simone: the bi- ography. london: aurum, . , p. isbn (hbk.). isbn (hbk.). lc - . budden, julian. verdi. d ed. new york: oxford university press, . xv, p. isbn (alk. paper). lc - . the master musicians buhler, james, david neumeyer, and rob deemer. hearing the movies: music and sound in film history. new york: oxford university press, . xxiii, p. isbn (pbk.). isbn (pbk.). lc - . bukaty, sang-eun lee. grace notes: a story of music, trials, and unexpected blessings. glasgow: triple one pub., . p. isbn . lc - . burns, james. female voices from an ewe dance-drumming community in ghana: our music has become a divine spirit. farnham, england; burlington, vt: ash - gate, . xvii, p. + dvd. isbn (hbk.; alk. paper). isbn (hbk.; alk. paper). lc - . soas musicology series chuilon, jacques, and e. thomas glasow. mattia battistini: king of baritones and bari- tone of kings. lanham, md: scarecrow press, . xxv, p., p. of plates. isbn (hbk.; alk. paper). isbn (hbk.; alk. paper). isbn (ebook). isbn (ebook). lc - . coelsch-foisner, sabine, dorothea flothow, and wolfgang görtschacher, eds. mozart in anglophone cultures. frankfurt; new york: p. lang, . vi, p. isbn . isbn x. lc - . salzburg studies in english literature and culture, v. cole, laurence. dusty springfield: in the middle of nowhere. london: middlesex university press, . p. isbn (pbk.). isbn (pbk.). lc - . cook, ida. safe passage: the remarkable true story of two sisters who rescued jews from the nazis. new york; don mills, ontario: harlequin, . p., p. of plates. isbn (pbk.). lc - . cooper, barry. beethoven. oxford; new york: oxford university press, . xvi, p., p. of plates. isbn (pbk.). isbn (pbk.). lc - . the master musicians copland, aaron. what to listen for in mu- sic. new york: new american library, . xxxvi, p. isbn (pbk.). isbn (pbk.). lc - . covach, john rudolph. what’s that sound?: an introduction to rock and its history. d ed. new york: w. w. norton, . v. isbn (pbk.). lc - . cox, patsi bale. the garth factor: the ca- reer behind country’s big boom. new york: center street, . x, p., p. of plates. isbn . lc - . cyrus, miley, and hilary liftin. miles to go. new york: disney/hyperion books, . p., p. of plates. isbn . isbn . lc - . damone, vic, and david chanoff. singing was the easy part. new york: st. martin’s press, . xii, p., p. of plates. isbn . isbn . isbn . isbn . lc - . david, jonathan c. together let us sweetly live: the singing and praying bands. urbana: university of illinois press, . xx, p. + cd. isbn (hbk.; alk. paper). isbn (hbk.; alk. paper). isbn (pbk.; alk. paper). isbn x (pbk.; alk. paper). lc - . music in american life davis, sharon. lionel richie: hello. london; oakville, ct: equinox, . p. isbn (hbk.). isbn x (hbk.). lc - . popular music history d’cruz, anna-marie. make your own musi- cal instruments. new york: powerkids press, . p. isbn (li- brary binding). isbn (library binding). isbn (pbk.). isbn (pbk.). isbn ( -pack). isbn ( -pack). lc - . do it yourself projects! de silva, preethi. the fortepiano writings of streicher, dieudonné, and the schiedmayers: two manuals and a note- book, translated from the original german, with commentary. lewiston, ny: edwin mellen press, . x, p., p. of plates. isbn . isbn . lc - . denton, sandra, and karen hunter. let’s talk about pep. new york: pocket books, . xiv, p., p. of plates. isbn . isbn . lc - . deutsch, stacia, and rhody cohon. jermaine dupri. philadelphia, pa: mason crest, . p. isbn (hbk.; alk. paper). isbn (pbk.; alk. paper). lc - . sharing the american dream: overcoming adversity doll, susan, and david morrow. dimebag darrell: he came to rock! n.p.: big vin records, . p. + dvd. isbn (pbk.). isbn . lc - . dougherty, steve. justin timberlake. new york: franklin watts, . p. isbn . isbn . lc - . junk food: tasty celebrity bios dye, david. the best of world cafe: great conversations from npr’s most popular contemporary music show. philadelphia, pa: running press, . p., p. of plates + dvd. isbn (pbk.). isbn x (pbk.). lc - . eaton, bruce. radio city. new york: continuum, . vii, p. isbn (pbk.; alk. paper). isbn (pbk.; alk. paper). lc - . / einarson, john, and chris hillman. hot burritos: the true story of the flying burrito brothers. london: jawbone, . p. isbn (pbk.). isbn (pbk.). lc - . notes, march ellis, iain. rebels wit attitude: subversive rock humorists. berkeley, ca: soft skull press: distrb. by publishers group west, . ix, p. isbn (alk. paper). isbn (alk. paper). lc - . espejo, roman, ed. what is the future of the music industry? detroit, mi: green - haven press, . p. isbn (hbk.). isbn (hbk.). isbn (pbk.). isbn (pbk.). lc - . at issue. mass media evans, allan. ignaz friedman: romantic master pianist. bloomington: indiana uni - versity press, . xiii, p. isbn (hbk.; alk. paper). isbn (hbk.; alk. paper). lc - . evans, julie, and chris philpott, eds. a practical guide to teaching music in the secondary school. new york: routledge, . xi, p. isbn (pbk.). isbn (ebook). lc - . routledge teaching guides faithfull, marianne, and david dalton. marianne faithfull: memories, dreams and reflections. london: harper perennial, . p., p. of plates. isbn (pbk.). isbn (pbk.). lc - . finane, ben. handel’s messiah and his english oratorios: a closer look. new york: continuum, . vii, p. isbn (pbk.; alk. paper). isbn (pbk.; alk. paper). lc - . magnum opus flinn, denny martin. the great american book musical: a manifesto, a monograph, a manual. new york: limelight editions, . xvii, p. isbn (pbk.). isbn (pbk.). lc - . forbes, brandon w., and george a. reisch, eds. radiohead and philosophy: fitter hap- pier more deductive. chicago, il: open court, . x, p. isbn (alk. paper). isbn (alk. pa- per). lc - . popular culture and philosophy, v. fornatale, pete. back to the garden: the story of woodstock. new york: touchstone, . xxix, p., p. of plates. isbn (hbk.). isbn (hbk.). lc - . freer, patrick k. tips: the first weeks of middle school chorus. lanham, md: rowman & littlefield education, . iii, p. isbn (pbk.; alk. pa- per). isbn (pbk.; alk. paper). isbn (electronic). isbn (electronic). lc - . gabrielová, jarmila, and jan kachlík, eds. the work of antonín dvořák ( – ): aspects of composition, problems of edit- ing, reception: proceedings of the interna- tional musicological conference, prague, september – , . prague: institute of ethnology, academy of sciences of the czech republic, . p. isbn . isbn . lc - . garrett, greg. we get to carry each other: the gospel according to u . louisville, ky: westminster john knox press, . x, p. isbn (alk. paper). isbn (alk. paper). lc - . gavin, james. stormy weather: the life of lena horne. new york: atria books, . p., p. of plates. isbn (hbk.). isbn (hbk.). isbn (pbk.). isbn (pbk.). lc - . gelinas, robert. finding the groove: com- posing a jazz-shaped faith. grand rapids, mi: zondervan, . p. isbn (pbk.). isbn (pbk.). lc - . george-warren, holly. grateful dead . new york: abrams, . leaves. isbn . isbn . lc - . gerbino, giuseppe. music and the myth of arcadia in renaissance italy. cambridge; new york: cambridge university press, . ix, p. isbn . isbn . lc - . new perspectives in music history and criticism gill, julian. the other side of the coin: an unauthorized & unsanctioned collection of kiss related interviews, articles, and focus books recently published additions. san francisco, ca: kissfaq .com, . p. isbn (pbk.). isbn (pbk.). lc - . gjerdingen, robert o. music in the galant style. new york: oxford university press, . ix, p. isbn . lc - . gray, tyler. the hit charade: lou pearl - man, boy bands, and the biggest ponzi scheme in u.s. history. new york: collins, . xxx, p., p. of plates. isbn . isbn . lc - . greathouse, patricia. mariachi. salt lake city, ut: gibbs smith, . p. + cd. isbn . isbn . lc - . greenhalgh, pam. all we like sheep?: a -year history of the edgecumbe choir. whakatane, n.z.: edgecumbe choir, . p., p. leaves of plates. lc - . grout, donald jay. a history of western mu- sic. th ed. new york: w. w. norton & company, . v. (various pagings). isbn (hbk.). lc - . haines, luke. bad vibes: britpop and my part in its downfall. london: william heine mann, . x, p., p. of plates. isbn (pbk.). isbn (pbk.). lc - . harder, paul o., and greg a. steinke. basic materials in music theory: a pro- gramed course. th ed. upper saddle river, nj: pearson education, . p. + cd. isbn (alk. paper). isbn (alk. paper). lc - . harper-scott, j. p. e., and jim samson, eds. an introduction to music studies. cam - bridge, uk; new york: cambridge univer - sity press, . xv, p. isbn (hbk.). isbn x (hbk.). isbn (pbk.). isbn (pbk.). lc - . hawks, tony. one hit wonderland. london: ebury press, . p., p. of plates. isbn (pbk.). isbn (pbk.). lc - . hearn, marcus, ed. pink floyd. london: reynolds & hearn, . p. isbn (pbk.). isbn (pbk.). isbn (hbk.). isbn (hbk.). lc - . rex collections, heile, björn, ed. the modernist legacy: es- says on new music. farnham, england; burlington, vt: ashgate, . xvi, p. isbn (alk. paper). isbn (alk. paper). lc - . heine, steven. bargainin’ for salvation: bob dylan, a zen master? new york: continuum, . xvii, p. isbn (pbk.; alk. paper). isbn (pbk.; alk. paper). lc - . hoffer, charles r. music listening today. th ed. boston, ma: schirmer cengage learning, . xviii, p. isbn . lc - . hoskyns, barney. lowside of the road: a life of tom waits. new york: broadway books, . xxix, p. isbn . isbn . lc - . howes, paul. the complete dusty spring - field. rev. and expanded ed. london: reynolds & hearn, . p., p. of plates. isbn (pbk.). isbn (pbk.). lc - . howland, john louis. “ellington uptown”: duke ellington, james p. johnson, & the birth of concert jazz. ann arbor: university of michigan press, . x, p., p. of plates. isbn (hbk.; alk. pa- per). isbn (hbk.; alk. paper). isbn (paper alk. paper). isbn (pbk.; alk. paper). lc - . jazz perspectives hubbard, ben. the history of pop. new york: crabtree pub., . p. isbn (hbk.; alk. paper). isbn (hbk.; alk. paper). isbn (pbk.; alk. paper). isbn (pbk.; alk. paper). lc - . crabtree contact hugill, andrew. the digital musician. new york: routledge, . xx, p. isbn notes, march (hbk.). isbn (hbk.). isbn (pbk.). isbn (pbk.). isbn (ebook). isbn (ebook). lc - . hurley, andrew wright. the return of jazz: joachim-ernst berendt and west german cultural change. new york: berghahn books, . xxiii, p. isbn (alk. paper). isbn (alk. paper). lc - . hurwitz, david. brahms’ symphonies: a closer look. new york: continuum, . vii, p. isbn (pbk.; alk. paper). isbn x (pbk.; alk. pa- per). lc - . magnum opus hutchison, thomas w. web marketing for the music business. amsterdam; boston: focal press/elsevier, . xiv, p. isbn (pbk.; alk. paper). lc - . jackson, laura. brian may: the definitive biography. london: piatkus, . x, p., p. of plates. isbn (pbk.). isbn (pbk.). lc - . jackson, nina. the little book of music for the classroom: using music to improve memory, motivation, learning and creativ- ity. bancyfelin: crown house, . ix, p. isbn (hbk.). isbn x (hbk.). lc - . independent thinking series johnson, heather. born in a small town: john mellencamp, the story. london; new york: omnibus press; exclusive distrb., music sales corp., . vii, p., p. of plates. isbn (hbk.; alk. pa- per). isbn (hbk.; alk. paper). lc - . johnston, richard, dick boak, and mike longworth. martin guitars: a history. new york: hal leonard, . x, p. isbn . isbn . lc - . kachian, christopher. mel bay presents composer’s desk reference for the classic guitar. pacific, mo: mel bay publications, inc., . p. isbn . isbn . lc - . kaliss, jeff. i want to take you higher: the life and times of sly & the family stone. new york: backbeat books, . xvii, p., p. of plates. isbn . isbn . isbn (hbk.). isbn x (hbk.). lc - . kapchan, deborah a. traveling spirit mas- ters: moroccan gnawa trance and music in the global marketplace. middletown, ct: wesleyan university press, . xiii, p. isbn (hbk.; alk. paper). isbn (hbk.; alk. paper). isbn (pbk.; alk. paper). isbn x (pbk.; alk. paper). lc - . music/culture karas, joža. music in terezín, – . d ed. hillsdale, ny: pendragon press, . xviii, p. isbn (alk. paper). isbn x (alk. pa- per). lc - . kassler, michael. a.f.c. kollmann’s quarterly musical register ( ): an anno- tated edition with an introduction to his life and works. aldershot, england; burling ton, vt: ashgate, . xviii, p. isbn (alk. paper). isbn (alk. paper). lc - . katz, israel j. the traditional folk music and dances of spain: a bibliographical guide to research. new york: hispanic seminary of medieval studies, . v. . xlii, p. isbn . bibliographic series (hispanic seminary of medieval studies), v. katz, martin. the complete collaborator: the pianist as partner. oxford; new york: oxford university press, . xix, p. isbn (alk. paper). isbn (alk. paper). lc - . keen, robert earl. the road goes on for- ever and the music never ends. austin: university of texas press, . p. + cd-rom. isbn . isbn x. lc - . brad and michele moore roots music series kenner, rob, and rakia clark, eds. the vibe q: raw and uncut. new york; london: vibe street lit; turnaround distrb., . ix, p., p. of plates. isbn books recently published (pbk.). isbn (pbk.). lc - . kent, brittany. miley cyrus: this is her life. new york: berkley boulevard books, . viii, p. isbn (pbk.). isbn (pbk.). lc - . kerry, gordon. new classical music: com- posing australia. sydney: unsw press, . vii, p. + cd. isbn . isbn . lc - . kinderman, william. beethoven. d ed. oxford; new york: oxford university press, . xiv, p., p. of plates. isbn . isbn . isbn . isbn . lc - . koegel, john. music in german immigrant theater: new york city, – . rochester, ny: university of rochester press, . xxv, p. + cd. isbn (hbk.; alk. paper). isbn . lc - . eastman studies in music kot, greg. ripped: how the wired genera- tion revolutionized music. new york: scribner, . vii, p. isbn . isbn . lc - . krasnow, judy gail. rudolph, frosty, and captain kangaroo: the musical life of hecky krasnow, producer of the world’s most beloved children’s songs: a memoir. santa monica, ca: santa monica press, . p., p. of plates. isbn . isbn . lc - . lee, wendy. chinese composers, western piano works: unpacking aspects of musical influence. saarbrucken switzerland: vdm verlag dr. müller, . iv, p. isbn . isbn . lc - . leeson, daniel n. gran partita. blooming - ton, in: authorhouse, . p. isbn . lc - . leikin, molly-ann. how to write a hit song. th ed. milwaukee, wi: hal leonard books, . xii, p. isbn . isbn . isbn . lc - . lemay, matthew. xo. new york: continu - um, . xvi, p. isbn (pbk.; alk. paper). isbn (pbk.; alk. paper). lc - . / lesser, beth. dancehall: the rise of jamaican dancehall culture. london: soul jazz publishing, . p. isbn (pbk.). isbn (pbk.). lc - . levin, flora r. greek reflections on the na- ture of music. cambridge; new york: cam - bridge university press, . xxiii, p. isbn (hbk.). isbn (hbk.). lc - . lipsitz, george. footsteps in the dark: the hidden histories of popular music. minneapolis, mn: university of minnesota press, . xxv, p., p. of plates. isbn (hbk.; alk. paper). isbn (hbk.; alk. paper). isbn (pbk.; alk. paper). isbn (pbk.; alk. paper). lc - . littleproud, brad, and joanne hague. wood stock: peace, music & memories: th anniversary. iola, wi: krause publications, . p. isbn (pbk.). isbn (pbk.). lc - . locke, ralph p. musical exoticism: images and reflections. cambridge; new york: cambridge university press, . xviii, p. isbn (hbk.). isbn (hbk.). lc - . lockwood, lewis. music in renaissance ferrara, – : the creation of a musi- cal center in the fifteenth century. oxford; new york: oxford university press, . xxvii, p., p. of plates. isbn . isbn x. lc - . long, pamela h. sor juana/música: how the décima musa composed, practiced, and imagined music. new york: peter lang, . viii, p. isbn (hbk.; alk. paper). isbn (hbk.; alk. paper). lc - . ibérica, v. lopez, steve. the soloist: a lost dream, an unlikely friendship, and the redemptive power of music. new york: g.p. putnam’s notes, march sons, . ix, p. isbn . lc - . marcozzi, rudy t. strategies and patterns for ear training. upper saddle river, nj: pearson prentice hall, . xiii, p. + cd-rom. isbn (pbk.; alk. paper). isbn (pbk.; alk. paper). lc - . mazor, barry. meeting jimmie rodgers: how america’s original roots music hero changed the pop sounds of a century. oxford; new york: oxford university press, . viii, p. isbn (hbk.; alk. paper). lc - . mcclatchie, stephen, ed. the mahler fam- ily letters. oxford; new york: oxford university press, . xiii, p. isbn (pbk.). isbn (pbk.). lc - . originally published: . mcwaters, debra, and broadway theatre project. musical theatre training: the broadway theatre project handbook. gainesville: university press of florida, . xiii, p. isbn (alk. paper). isbn (alk. paper). lc - . mikkonen, simo. music and power in the soviet s: a history of composers’ bu- reaucracy. lewiston, ny: edwin mellen press, . ix, p. isbn . isbn . lc - . milan, jon. detroit: ragtime and the jazz age. charleston, sc: arcadia publishing, . p. isbn (pbk.). isbn (pbk.). lc - . images of america miller, donald gray. resonance in singing: voice building through acoustic feedback. princeton, nj: inside view press, . viii, p. + cd-rom. isbn . isbn . lc - . milner, greg. perfecting sound forever: an aural history of recorded music. new york: faber and faber, . x, p. isbn (hbk.; alk. paper). isbn (hbk.; alk. paper). lc - . mitchell, mark, and allan evans, eds. moriz rosenthal in word and music: a legacy of the nineteenth century. bloomington: indiana university press, . xx, p. + cd. isbn (pbk.). isbn (cd). lc - . moisala, pirkko. kaija saariaho. urbana: university of illinois press, . viii, p. isbn (hbk.; alk. paper). isbn (hbk.; alk. paper). lc - . women composers morton, laura. burning up: on tour with the jonas brothers. new york: disney - hyperion books, . p. isbn . isbn . lc - . mouskouri, nana, and lionel duroy. memoirs. london: phoenix, . viii, p. isbn (pbk.). isbn x (pbk.). lc - . translated from the french; this translation originally published: london: weidenfeld & nicolson, . moyle, richard m. songs from the second float: a musical ethnography of takū atoll, papua new guinea. honolulu: center for pacific islands studies, university of hawai�i press, . xxiv, p. isbn (hbk.; alk. paper). isbn (hbk.; alk. paper). lc - . pacific islands monograph series, mshaka, thembisa s. put your dreams first: handle your entertainment business. new york: business plus, . xvii, p. isbn . isbn . lc - . neal, jocelyn r. the songs of jimmie rodgers: a legacy in country music. blooming ton: indiana university press, . xviii, p. isbn (hbk.; alk. paper). isbn (hbk.; alk. paper). isbn (pbk.; alk. paper). isbn (pbk.; alk. paper). lc - . profiles in popular music nessen, cindy. bamboo heart. phila - delphia, pa: xlibris, . p. isbn (hbk.). isbn (pbk.). lc - . noble, richard e. number # : the story of the original highwaymen. denver, co: outskirts press, . xv, p. isbn books recently published (pbk.; alk. paper). lc - . northcott, bayan. the way we listen now: and other writings on music. london; rochester, ny: plumbago books: published in association with the cosman keller art and music trust; boydell & brewer distrb., . xii, p. isbn (hbk.). isbn (hbk.). isbn (pbk.). isbn (pbk.). lc - . poetics of music o’flynn, john. the irishness of irish music. farnham, england; burlington, vt: ash - gate, . xiv, p. isbn (hbk.; alk. paper). isbn (hbk.; alk. paper). lc - . ashgate popular and folk music series o’neal, hank. the ghosts of harlem: ses- sions with jazz legends. nashville, tn: vanderbilt university press, . vii, p. + cd. isbn (hbk.; alk. paper). isbn (hbk.; alk. pa- per). lc - . revised and expanded from the ghosts of harlem (les fantômes de harlem): l’histoire du quartier mythique du jazz, published by Éditions filipacchi . . . ( ). opstad, gillian. debussy’s mélisande: the lives of georgette leblanc, mary garden and maggie teyte. woodbridge, uk; rochester, ny: boydell & brewer, . x, p., p. of plates. isbn (hbk.). isbn (hbk.). lc - . o’shea, helen. the making of irish tradi- tional music. cork: cork university press, . xii, p. isbn . isbn . lc - . owsinski, bobby. how to make your band sound great. new york: hal leonard books, . xvi, p. + dvd. isbn (pbk.). isbn (pbk.). lc - . music pro guides peckham, rick. berklee jazz guitar chord dictionary. boston, ma: berklee press, . p. isbn . isbn . lc - . phillips, everard m. the political calypso: a sociolinguistic process of conflict transfor- mation. port of spain, trinidad and tobago: personal power unlimited, . iv, p. isbn . isbn . lc - . phillips, william, and brian cogan. en - cyclo pedia of heavy metal music. westport, ct: greenwood press, . xxi, p. isbn (alk. paper). isbn (alk. paper). lc - . pieslak, jonathan r. sound targets: american soldiers and music in the iraq war. bloomington: indiana university press, . x, p. isbn (hbk.; alk. paper). isbn (pbk.; alk. paper). lc - . pinksterboer, hugo. tipbook amplifiers and effects: the complete guide. d ed. milwaukee, wi: hal leonard, . xiv, p. isbn (alk. paper). isbn (alk. paper). isbn . lc - . the tipbook series pinksterboer, hugo. tipbook cello: the complete guide. th ed. new york: hal leonard books, . xiv, p. isbn (pbk.). lc - . the tipbook series pinksterboer, hugo. tipbook piano: the complete guide. d ed. milwaukee, wi: hal leonard books, . xiv, p. isbn . isbn . lc - . the tipbook series pinksterboer, hugo. tipbook violin and vi- ola: the complete guide. d ed. milwaukee, wi: hal leonard books, . xiv, p. isbn (pbk.). isbn (pbk.). lc - . the tipbook series pinksterboer, hugo. tipbook vocals: the singing voice: the complete guide. th ed. new york: hal leonard books, . xiv, p. isbn (pbk.). isbn x (pbk.). lc - . the tipbook series plummer, mary. garageband ’ . berkeley, ca: peachpit press, . ix, p. + dcd-rom. isbn (pbk.). isbn (pbk). lc - . apple training series notes, march raab, timothy h. it wasn’t just a dream: images of catskills irish arts week. albany, ny: timothy h raab: northern photo, . v. (unpaged). isbn (hbk.). isbn (pbk.). lc - . rainbow, bernarr. four centuries of music teaching manuals, – . wood - bridge; rochester, ny: boydell press, . xxiii, p. isbn (hbk.). isbn (hbk.). lc - . classic texts in music education; razdan, vijay bazaz. hindustani ragas: the concept of time and season. delhi: b. r. rhythms, . p., p. of plates. isbn . isbn . lc - . originally presented as the author’s thesis (m.a., ethnomusicology)–university of pittsburgh, . rees, jasper. a devil to play: one man’s year-long quest to master the orchestra’s most difficult instrument. new york: harper, . p. isbn . isbn . lc - . reimer, bennett. seeking the significance of music education: essays and reflections. lanham, md: rowman & littlefield edu - cation, . vi, p. isbn (hbk.; alk. paper). isbn (hbk.; alk. paper). isbn (pbk.; alk. paper). isbn (pbk.; alk. paper). isbn (electronic). isbn (electronic). lc - . reynolds, simon. totally wired: post-punk interviews and overviews. london: faber and faber, . xi, p. isbn (pbk.). isbn (pbk.). lc - . rhodes, don. say it loud!: my memories of james brown, soul brother no. . guilford, ct: lyons press, . xvi, p., p. of plates. isbn (alk. paper). isbn (alk. paper). lc - . rice, john a. mozart on the stage. cam - bridge; new york: cambridge university press, . xv, p. isbn (hbk.). isbn (hbk.). isbn (pbk.). isbn (pbk.). lc - . composers on the stage richards, keith, and jessica pallington west. what would keith richards do?: daily affirmations from a rock ‘n’ roll survivor. new york: bloomsbury, . p. isbn . isbn . lc - . rochberg, george. five lines, four spaces: the world of my music. urbana: university of illinois press, . xii, p., p. of plates. isbn (hbk.; alk. pa- per). isbn (hbk.; alk. paper). lc - . rodgers, stephen. form, program, and metaphor in the music of berlioz. cam - bridge, uk; new york: cambridge uni - versity press, . x, p. isbn (hbk.; alk. paper). isbn (hbk.; alk. paper). lc - . roesner, edward h., ed. ars antiqua: or- ganum, conductus, motet. farnham, england; burlington, vt: ashgate, . xix, p. isbn (alk. pa- per). isbn (alk. paper). lc - . music in medieval europe rombes, nicholas. a cultural dictionary of punk: – . new york: continuum, . p. isbn (pbk.; alk. paper). isbn (pbk.; alk. paper). lc - . rona, jeffrey c. the reel world: scoring for pictures. d ed., rev. and expanded. new york: hal leonard, . xvi, p. isbn (pbk.). isbn (pbk.). lc - . musicpro guides rosen, steven. history of rock. new york: crabtree pub., . p. isbn (pbk.; alk. paper). isbn (hbk.; alk. paper). lc - . crabtree contact rushton, julian. mozart. oxford; new york: oxford university press, . xi, p., p. of plates. isbn (alk. paper). isbn . lc - . the master musicians ryals, lexi. more jammin’ with the jonas brothers: an unauthorized biography. new books recently published york: price stern sloan, . p. isbn (pbk.). lc - . sadoh, godwin simeon. intercultural di- mensions in ayo bankole’s music. new york: iuniverse, . xi, p. isbn (pbk.). isbn x (pbk.). isbn (ebk.). isbn (ebk.). lc - . sadoh, godwin simeon. the organ works of fela sowande: cultural perspectives. new york: iuniverse, . xii, p. isbn (pbk.). isbn (ebk.). isbn (ebk.). isbn . lc - . salas, jo. do my story, sing my song: music therapy and playback theatre with trou- bled children. new paltz, ny: tusitala pub., . p. isbn . isbn . lc - . saslow, joan m., allen ascher, and robert eustis morsberger. top notch pop song- book: songs and karaoke for english language learning. white plains, ny: pearson/longman, . xiii, p. + cds + cd-rom. isbn (pbk.). isbn . lc - . schwartz, daylle deanna. start & run your own record label: winning marketing strate- gies for today’s music industry. d ed., fully updated and expanded ed. new york: billboard books, . xvii, p. isbn . isbn . lc - . seldes, barry. leonard bernstein: the polit- ical life of an american musician. berkeley: university of california press, . xiv, p., p. of plates. isbn (hbk.; alk. paper). isbn (hbk.; alk. paper). lc - . shimonski, robert, and chris basile. pro tools kit: the complete professional work- flow for music production. amsterdam; boston, ma: focal press/elsevier, . xv, p. isbn (pbk.; alk. pa- per). isbn (pbk.; alk. paper). lc - . shrock, dennis. choral repertoire. oxford; new york: oxford university press, . viii, p. isbn (alk. pa- per). isbn (alk. paper). lc - . shuker, roy. understanding popular music culture. d ed. london; new york: rout - ledge, . xi, p. isbn (hbk.; alk. paper). isbn (pbk.; alk. paper). isbn (hbk.; alk. paper). isbn (pbk.; alk. paper). lc - . silkman, ty. bob dylan: alias anything you please. london, england: reynolds & hearn, . p. isbn . isbn . lc - . silverman, jerry. new york sings: years of the empire state in song. albany, ny: excelsior editions, . x, p. isbn . isbn . lc - . smirnov, dmitri. the anatomy of theme in beethoven’s piano sonatas. berlin: kuhn, . viii, p. isbn (pbk.). isbn (pbk.). lc - . studia slavica musicologica, bd. smith, chris. albums that changed popular music. new york: oxford univer - sity press, . xxi, p. isbn . isbn . lc - . sterling, robert. the craft of christian songwriting. new york: hal leonard books, . xvi, p. isbn . isbn . lc - . music pro guides streissguth, michael. eddy arnold: pioneer of the nashville sound. jackson: university press of mississippi, . xiii, p. isbn (pbk.; alk. paper). isbn (pbk.; alk. paper). lc - . american made music series streissguth, michael. johnny cash: the bi- ography. philadelphia, pa: da capo press, . xviii, p., p. plates. isbn (cased). isbn (cased). isbn (pbk.). isbn (pbk.). lc - . suart, richard, and a. s. h. smyth. they’d none of ’em be missed. london: pallas athene, . p. isbn (pbk.). isbn x. lc - . notes, march suisman, david. selling sounds: the com- mercial revolution in american music. cambridge, ma: harvard university press, . p. isbn (alk. pa- per). isbn x (alk. paper). lc - . suskin, steven. the sound of broadway music: a book of orchestrators and orches- trations. oxford; new york: oxford uni - versity press, . viii, p. isbn (alk. paper). isbn (alk. paper). lc - . swedien, bruce. make mine music. new york: hal leonard books, . p. isbn . isbn x. lc - . tansey, séamus. the bardic apostles of innisfree continued–: a catalogue of irish traditional musicians of county sligo alive or dead, at home or in exile, who played such a mammoth part in the preservation of irish traditional music to this present day. northern ireland: tanbar publica tions, . xii, p. isbn (pbk.). isbn (pbk.). lc - . taraborrelli, j. randy. diana ross: an unauthorized biography. new york: citadel press, . xviii, p., p. of plates (some col.). isbn . isbn . lc - . tedman, ray. led zeppelin. london: reynolds & hearn, . p. isbn (pbk.). isbn (hbk.). lc - . rex collections thomas, greg. hip-hop revolution in the flesh: power, knowledge, and pleasure in lil’ kim’s lyricism. new york, ny: palgrave macmillan, . xii, p. isbn . isbn x. lc - . thompson, dave. i hate new music: the classic rock manifesto. new york: backbeat books, . xvi, p. isbn . isbn . lc - . thompson, gordon. please please me: six- ties british pop, inside out. new york: oxford university press, . xii, p. isbn (alk. paper). isbn (alk. paper). lc - . tick, judith, ed. music in the usa: a docu- mentary companion. oxford; new york: oxford university press, . xxxvii, p. isbn . isbn . lc - . tirro, frank, and michael j. budds. the birth of the cool of miles davis and his associates. hillsdale, ny: pendragon press, . xxv, p. + cd. isbn (alk. paper). isbn (alk. paper). lc - . cms sourcebooks in american music, no. vennum, thomas. the ojibwa dance drum: its history and construction. st. paul: minnesota historical society press, . p. isbn (pbk.; alk. pa- per). isbn (pbk.; alk. paper). lc - . waksman, steve. this ain’t the summer of love: conflict and crossover in heavy metal and punk. berkeley: university of cali fornia press, . xi, p. isbn (hbk.; alk. paper). isbn (hbk.; alk. paper). isbn (pbk.; alk. paper). isbn (pbk.; alk. paper). lc - . wald, elijah. how the beatles destroyed rock ’n’ roll: an alternative history of american popular music. oxford; new york: oxford university press, . x, p., p. of plates. isbn (hbk.; alk. paper). isbn (hbk.; alk. paper). lc - . welch, jonathon. choir man. pymble, n.s.w.: harpercollins, . p., p. of plates. isbn (pbk.). isbn (pbk). lc - . whitburn, joel. joel whitburn presents across the charts, the s. menomonee falls, wi: record research, . p. isbn . isbn . lc - . wilson, blake mcdowell. singing poetry in renaissance florence: the “cantasi come” tradition ( - ). firenze: olschki, . p. + cd-rom. isbn books recently published . isbn x. lc - . italian medieval and renaissance studies, winkler, allan m. to everything there is a season: pete seeger and the power of song. oxford; new york: oxford university press, . xvi, p. + cd. isbn . isbn x. isbn . isbn . lc - . new narratives in american history winn, john c. that magic feeling: the beatles’ recorded legacy. volume two, – . new york: three rivers press, . xi, p. isbn . isbn . lc - . wyn jones, david. the life of haydn. cambridge, uk; new york: cambridge university press, . ix, p. isbn (hbk.; alk. paper). isbn x (hbk.; alk. paper). lc - . musical lives zobel, mark, and michael j. budds. the third symphony of charles ives. hillsdale, ny: pendragon press, . xi, p. isbn (alk. paper). isbn x (alk. paper). lc - . cms sourcebooks in american music, no. catalan brugués i agustí, lluís. la música a girona: història del conservatori isaac albeniz. gerona: diputació de girona: conservatori de música isaac albéniz de la diputació de girona, . p. isbn . lc - . col·leccio isaac albéniz croatian škunca, mirjana. mostovi gra�eni glazbom: skladatelji-izvoditelji-djela. split: knjževni krug, . p. isbn . lc - . biblioteka znavstvenih djela, czech kordík, pavel. vitězslav novak a symbolis- mus: Údolí nového království, op. , . praha: etnologický ústav av čr, . p. isbn . lc - . dutch bergé, pieter, and mark delaere. als orpheus zingt: de klassieke oudheid in de west-europese muziek: opstellen voor en door ignace bossuyt. leuven: davidsfonds, . p. isbn . lc - . blachly, alexander, et. al. beghinae in cantu instructae: muzikaal erfgoed uit vlaamse begijnhoven (middeleeuwen-eind de eeuw). turnhout: brepols, . p. isbn . lc - . collection “Épitome musical” straatman, franz. de witte kuif op het frontbalkon: jan willem loot, muziek en management. amsterdam: nieuw amster - dam, . p. isbn . lc - . estonian kuljus, ene. Ühe suve kroonika: ellu elleri mälestused: sortavala puhkekodu, karjala, . a. suvi. tallinn: eesti teatri- ja muusi - kamu useum, . p. isbn . lc - . oras, janika. viie . sajandi naise regi- laulumaailm: arhiivitekstid, kogemused ja mälestused. tartu: eesti kirjandusmu - useumi teaduskirjastus, . p. isbn . isbn . lc - . eesti rahvaluule arhiivi toimetused, commentationes archivi traditionum popularium estoniae, finnish järvinen, minna riikka, and janne seppänen. kainuun laulut: armas launis ja eino levón kajaanin kihlakunnassa . helsinki: suomalaisen kirjallisuuden seura, . p. isbn . isbn ( juminkeko-säätiö). lc - . suomalaisen kirjallisuuden seuran toimituksia, french angeli, daniel. johnny hallyday. neuilly- sur-seine: lafon, . p. isbn . lc - . bayle, laurent, ed. musique et temps. paris: cité de la musique, . p. isbn . isbn . lc - . notes, march benbekaï, yasmina. le dico du dj. paris: scali, . p. isbn . lc - . blanqué, pascal. musique, cité et politique: histoire du musicien à l’âge moderne. paris: economica, . p. isbn (pbk.). isbn (pbk.). lc - . bosseur, jean-yves. la musique du xxe siècle à la croisée des arts. paris: minerve, . p. isbn (pbk.). isbn (pbk.). lc - . collection musique ouverte brandl, emmanuel. l’ambivalence du rock, entre subversion et subvention: une en- quête sur l’institutionnalisation des musiques populaires. paris: harmattan, . p. isbn . lc - . logiques sociales. sociologie des arts brierre, jean-dominique, and mathieu fantoni. johnny hallyday: histoire d’une vie. paris: fayard/chorus, . p. isbn . lc - . département chanson brisson, elisabeth. opéras mythiques. paris: ellipses, . p. isbn . lc - . brousselle, andré. l’oreille musicale du psychanalyste. paris: harmattan, . p. isbn . lc - . psychanalyse et civilisations bruguière, philippe, et. al. le musée de la musique. paris: cité de la musique: somogy, . p. + cd. isbn . lc - . brus, vincent de, and guy zilberstein. johnny vu par. paris: gawsewitch, . p. isbn . lc - . cantagrel, gilles. de schütz à bach: la musique du baroque en allemagne. paris: fayard, . p. isbn (pbk.). isbn (pbk.). lc - . cart, william, ed. wagner & liszt: d’après leur correspondance. paris: stalker, . p. isbn . isbn . lc - . pan castanet, pierre albert. quand le sonore cherche noise: pour une philosophie du bruit. paris: m. de maule, . xiii, p. isbn (pbk.). isbn (pbk.). lc - . coljon, thierry. sttellla bio de jean-luc fonck. bruxelles: luc pire, . p. isbn . isbn . lc - . voix personnelles du closel, amaury, et. al. déracinements: musique, exil et transfert culturel pendant et après le troisième reich. paris: hermann, . p. isbn (pbk.). isbn x (pbk.). lc - . collection voix étouffées duguay, michael. jean-michel jarre, le magicien du son et de la lumière. cesson- sévigné: coëtquen, . p. isbn . lc - . dusapin, pascal. une musique en train de se faire. paris: seuil, . p., p. of plates. isbn (pbk.). isbn (pbk.). lc - . la librairie du xxie siècle farret, georges. alain vanzo: le werther du palais garnier. gémenos: autre temps, . p. isbn (pbk.). isbn (pbk.). lc - . temps mémoire françois-sappey, brigitte. la musique dans l’allemagne romantique. paris: fayard, . , p. isbn . isbn . lc - . gétreau, florence, ed. iconographie musi- cale: enjeux, méthodes et résultats. paris: cnrs, . p. isbn . isbn . lc - . musique, images, instruments, gloaguen, hervé. À hauteur de jazz. paris: martinière, . v. (unpaged). isbn . isbn . lc - . gregsky. voyage au pays d’un souffleur. nice: france europe Éditions, . p. + cd. isbn . lc - . halbreich, harry. l’œuvre d’olivier messiaen. paris: fayard, . p. isbn books recently published . isbn . lc - . hilda, irène. a la rencontre des étoiles. orléans: demeter, . p. isbn . lc - . huppert, rémi. le manager musicien. paris: eyrolles, . p. isbn . lc - . huret, sandra. le paysage intérieur du mu- sicien ou les processus en jeu dans l’expérience musicale. paris: harmattan, . p. isbn . lc - . collection univers musical kosmicki, guillaume. musiques électron- iques: des avant-gardes aux dance floors. marseille: mot et le reste, . p. isbn . lc - . formes lecourt, edith. la musicothérapie analy- tique de groupe: improvisation, écoute et communication. courlay: fuzeau, . p. + cd. lc - . collection consonance ledent, david. la révolution symphonique: l’invention d’une modernité musicale. paris: harmattan, . p. isbn . lc - . esthétiques leroux, philippe, and elvio cipollone. musique, une aire de jeux. paris: mf, . p. isbn . lc - . collection paroles mercier, hélène. au fil des notes. paris: plon, . p. isbn . lc - . montagnier, jean-paul. henry madin, – : un musicien lorrain au service de louis xv. langres: d. guéniot, . p. isbn (pbk.). isbn (pbk.). lc - . olivier, philippe. olivier messiaen, ou, la lumière: essai. paris: hermann, . p. isbn (pbk.). isbn (pbk.). lc - . point d’orgue ouellette, antoine. le chant des oyseaulx: comment la musique des oiseaux devient musique humaine: essai biomusicologique. montréal, qc: triptyque, . p. isbn (pbk.). isbn (pbk.). lc - . collection chanson/musique perret, pierre. a cappella: des trois baudets à l’olympia. paris: cherche midi, . p. isbn . lc - . collection documents piazza, françoise. juliette greco: merci! paris: carpentier, . p. isbn . lc - . les géants de la chanson française pierre boulez: oeuvre: fragment. paris: gallimard: musée du louvre Éditions, . p. + dvd. isbn (gallimard). isbn (gallimard). isbn (musée du louvre). isbn (musée du louvre). lc - . published in conjunction with an exhibition held at musée du louvre, paris, november to february . piot, cyrille. lorenzo da ponte: le libret- tiste de mozart, – . paris: l’harmattan, . p. isbn . isbn . lc - . univers musical roncigli, audrey. le cas furtwängler: un chef d’orchestre sous le iiie reich. paris: imago, . p. isbn . lc - . roy-gerboud, françoise. la musique comme art total au xxe siècle: sons- couleurs-formes, systémique et symbolique. paris: harmattan, . p. isbn . lc - . univers musical solis, michel. henri tomasi, un idéal méditerranéen: esquisse biographique à plusieurs voix. ajaccio: albiana, . p. + cd. isbn . lc - . tadié, jean-yves. le songe musical: claude debussy. paris: gallimard, . p. isbn . lc - . l’un et l’autre wodrascka, alain. marie laforêt: portrait d’une star libre. paris: carpentier, . notes, march p. isbn . lc - . georgian k’ut’at’elaże, rusudan. mze kvlav amova: sulxan nasiżis c’xovrebada šemok’medeba. t’bilisi: gamomc’emloba “saari”, . p. isbn . lc - . german brauer, juliane. musik im konzentrations - lager sachsenhausen. berlin: metropol, . p. isbn . isbn . lc - . schriftenreihe der stiftung brandenburgische gedenkstätten, bd. erben, dietrich. komponistenporträts: von der renaissance bis zur gegenwart. stuttgart: p. reclam, . p. isbn . isbn . lc - . goebl-streicher, uta. das reisetagebuch des klavierbauers johann baptist streicher – : text und kommentar. tutzing: h. schneider, . ix, p. isbn (pbk.). isbn (pbk.). lc - . herne, stadt., ed. “–in liebe zerflossenes gefühl–”: die klarinette: symposium im rahmen der . tage alter musik in herne . münchen: musikverlag katzbichler, . p. isbn (pbk.). isbn (pbk.). lc - . hieber, lutz, gisela theising, and andreas urban. music is my only friend: jazz-, blues- und rockplakate im kontext; katalog zur ausstellung im historischen museum hannover, vom . märz bis . september . hannover: historisches museum, . p. isbn (hbk.). isbn (hbk.). lc - . schriften des historischen museums hannover, bd. hübner, georg. musikindustrie und web . : die veränderung der rezeption und distribution von musik durch das auf - kommen des “web . ”. frankfurt: peter lang, . p. isbn . lc - . europäische hochschuleschriften. reihe v, bd. jewanski, jörg, and hajo düchting. musik und bildende kunst im . jahrhundert: begegnungen, berührungen, beeinflus - sungen. kassel: kassel university press, . p. isbn . isbn . lc - . kollo, willi. “als ich jung war in berlin–”: literarisch-musikalische erinnerungen. mainz: schott, . p. + cd. isbn . isbn . lc - . loreto, marcos barcellos. johann sebastian bachs h-moll-messe und die figurenlehre. berlin: pro-universitate verlag, . p. isbn (pbk.). isbn (pbk.). lc - . maier, elisabeth. anton bruckner als linzer dom- und stadtpfarrorganist: aspekte einer berufung. wien: musik - wissen schaftlicher verlag, . p. isbn . isbn . lc - . anton bruckner dokumente und studien, bd. nemtsov, jascha. der zionismus in der musik: jüdische musik und nationale idee. wiesbaden: harrassowitz, . p. isbn . isbn . lc - . jüdische musik, bd. pury-gysel, anne de. die römische orgel aus avenches, aventicum. bern: schweizer - ische akademie der geistes- und sozial - wissen schaften, . p. lc - . akademievorträge / schweizerische akademie der geistes- und sozialwissenschaften, heft ruzicka, peter. ins offene: texte zur musik. erstausgabe. hofheim: wolke, . p. isbn . isbn . lc - . schauenberg, eva-maria. das politische lied in politik- und musikunterricht: unter besonderer berücksichtigung der bay- erischen volksschullehrpläne seit . baden-baden: nomos, . p. isbn . isbn . lc - . würzburger universitätsschriften zu geschichte und politik, bd. books recently published schmidt, anne-kristin. musik als werkzeug der indoktrination: am beispiel der festouvertüre von ottmar gerster und dem mansfelder oratorium von ernst hermann meyer. mainz: are edition, . v, p. isbn (pbk.). lc - . musik im metrum der macht, bd. sponheuer, bernd, and wolfram stein - beck, eds. robert schumann und die grosse form: referate des bonner sym - posions . frankfurt; new york: peter lang, . p. isbn (pbk.). isbn (pbk.). lc - . bonner schriften zur musikwissenschaft, bd. stöck, gilbert. neue musik in den bezirken halle und magdeburg zur zeit der ddr: kompositionen, politik, institutionen. leipzig: gudrun schröder, martin-luther- universität halle-wittenberg., . p. isbn . isbn . lc - . strasser, peter. simon sechters abhand - lung über die musikalisch-akustichen tonverhältnisse: erstveröffent lichung, kommentar und konsequenzen fü die aufführungspraxis. bern: peter lang, . p. isbn . lc - . salzburger beiträge zur musik- und tanzforschung, bd. italian al, bano, and roberto allegri. con la mu- sica nel cuore. milano: mondadori, . p. + cd. isbn . isbn . lc - . ingrandimenti barbieri, daniele, luca marconi, and francesco spampinato. l’ascolto musicale: condotte, pratiche, grammatiche. lucca: lim, . xi, p. isbn . isbn . lc - . bernardoni, virgilio. verso bohème: gli ab- bozzi del libretto negli archivi di giuseppe giacosa e luigi illica. firenze: l. s. olschki, . x, p. isbn (pbk.). isbn (pbk.). lc - . testi e documenti / centro studi giacomo puccini, biagi ravenni, gabriella, and giulio battelli, eds. puccini e lucca: quando sen- tirò la dolce nostalgia della mia terra na- tiva. lucca: m. pacini fazzi, . p. isbn . isbn . lc - . bösel, richard, ed. la cultura del fortepi- ano – : atti del convegno inter- nazionale di studi, roma, – maggio = die kultur des hammerklaviers – : akten der internationalen studientagung. bologna: ut orpheus edizioni; roma: istituto storico austriaco a roma, . p. + cd. isbn (hbk.). isbn (hbk.). lc - . quaderni clementiani, international conference proceedings. careri, enrico. dopo l’opera quinta: studi sulla musica italiana del xviii secolo. lucca: libreria musicale italiana, . xv, p. isbn . lc - . caroccia, antonio, and marta picchio. mozart day: itinerari storici, sociologici ed artistici. terni; arrone (terni): centro studi storici terni; thyrus, . p. isbn . isbn . lc - . bibliotheca di “memoria storica”, chiocchetti, fabio, et. al, eds. il canto popolare ladino: nell’inchiesta “das volkslied in Österreich” ( – ). vigo di fassa (trento): istitut cultural ladin ‘majon di fascegn’; brescia: grafo, . v. + cd-rom. isbn . lc - . ciliberti, galliano, ed. ubaldus hodie coli- tur: musiche per s. ubaldo dal medioevo all’ottocento. gubbio: tmm, . xiv, p. p. of col. plates. lc - . dalla, lucio, and marco alemanno. gli oc- chi di lucio. milano: bompiani, . p. + cd + dvd. isbn . lc - . grandi assaggi de benedictis, angela ida, and vincenzina c. ottomano. claudio abbado alla scala. milano: rizzoli: edizioni del teatro alla scala, . p. isbn . isbn . lc - . notes, march de ranieri, oriano, mauro lubrani, and giuseppe tavanti. puccini e le donne: la famiglia, gli amori, la musica. firenze: polistampa, . p. + cd. isbn . isbn . lc - . lamacchia, severio. il vero figaro, o sia il falso factotum: riesame del “barbiere” di rossini. torino: edt: de sono, . xvi, p., p. of plates + cd-rom. isbn x. isbn . lc - . tesi, meucci, renato. strumentaio: il costruttore di strumenti musicali nella tradizione occi- dentale. venezia: fondazione cologni: marsilio, . p. isbn (pbk.). isbn (pbk.). lc - . mestieri d’arte rambotti, fiorella. la musica è una mera opinione e di questa non si può dar certezza veruna: antimo liberati e il suo diario sistino: con una riproduzione della lettera a ovidio persapegi. perugia: morlacchi, . p. isbn (pbk.). isbn (pbk.). lc - . quaderni di “esercizi, musica e spettacolo”, renzo, giovanni. atlas coelestis: la musica e le stelle. messina: mesogea, . p. + dvd. isbn . lc - . la piccolo, reuning, christopher, ed. cremona – : nell’olimpo della liuteria: catalogo mostra = the olympus of violin making: ex- hibition catalogue. cremona: fondazione antonio stradivari cremona - la triennale: consorzio liutai antonio stradivari cremona, . p. isbn . isbn . lc - . sità, maria grazia. béla bartók. palermo: l’epos, . p., xvi p. isbn (pbk.). isbn (pbk.). lc - . autori & interpreti – , zanzotto, andrea, and paolo cattelan. viaggio musicale. venezia: marsilio, . p. + dvd. isbn . isbn . lc - . gocce zotto, gastone. grandi artisti dell’insegna- mento musicale: sintetico profilo metodologico e annotazioni informative su: edgar willems, justine ward, maria montessori. padova: armelin musica, . p. isbn . lc - . manuali, latvian beitāne, anda. medn̨evas dziedātājas. rı̄ga: latvijas universitātes literatūras, folkloras un mākslas institūts, . p. + cds. isbn . lc - . tradicionālā mūzika latvijā ievin̨š, atis, and kristı̄ ne matı̄ sa. xxiv vispārējie latviešu dziesmu un xiv deju svētki: raksti, foto. rı̄ ga: tautas mākslas centrs, . p. isbn . lc - . kukuvass, adrians, and una griškevič a. menuets: piever acis un atkal kā toreiz. rı̄ga: poligrāfijas infocentrs, . p. isbn . lc - . macedonian golabovski, sotir. renesansa i barok. skopje: menora, . v. . isbn . lc - . kodžabašija, jane. crkovnoto peenje vo makedonija. skopje: centar za vizantološki studii, . p. isbn . lc - . norwegian hovland, ragnar. dr munks popleksikon. oslo: det norske samlaget, . p. isbn . lc - . polish baranowski, tomasz. ksiązę muzyki naszej: tworczość stanisława moniuszki jako dziedz- ictwo kultury polskiej i europejskiej: studia. warszawa: uni wersytet muzyczny im. f. chopina, . p. isbn . lc - . books recently published notes, march bias, iwona, and monika bieda. andrzej jasiński: artysta i człowiek. katowice: akademia muzyczna im. karola szyman - owskiego, . p. isbn . isbn . lc - . fedyczkowska, ewa. pieśni lasowiakow: folklor wokalny terenów dawnej puszczy sandomierskiej na podstawie archiwalnych nagrań franciszka kotuli. rzeszów: wydawn. uniwersytetu rzeszowskiego, . p. isbn . isbn . lc - . jochymczyk, maciej. pietas & musica: damian stachowicz schp: życie i tworczość w kontekś cie epoki. kraków: wydawn. “musica iagellonica,” . p. isbn . lc - 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. biyografi-hatırat, ukrainian hryts� a, sofiıa� iŏsyfivna, ed. k ul�turolohiıa� ta mystets� tvoznavstvo: zbirka stateı̆ . kyïv: kyivs�ke derzh� vyshche muzychne uchylyshche im. r.m. hliıe� ra, . p. lc - . kyïvs�ke muzykoznavstvo, vyp. in russian and ukrainian. lysenko, ivan. muzychna kul�tura ukraïny u spohadakh, materialakh, lystakh. kyïv: rada, . p. isbn . lc - . in russian and ukrainian. contemporary “latin american” composers of art music in the united states: cosmopolitans navigating multiculturalism and universalism contemporary “latin american” composers of art music in the united states: cosmopolitans navigating multiculturalism and universalism marc gidal latin american music review, volume , number , spring/summer , pp. - (article) published by university of texas press doi: for additional information about this article [ this content has been declared free to read by the pubisher during the covid- pandemic. ] https://doi.org/ . /lat. . https://muse.jhu.edu/article/ https://doi.org/ . /lat. . https://muse.jhu.edu/article/ latin american music review, volume , number , spring/summer © by the university of texas press, p.o. box , austin, tx - a b s t r ac t: the diverse perspectives of contemporary composers of art music who were born in latin america and now work in the united states, as well as performers and critics of their music, reveal the various ways that these composers navigate two, sometimes confl icting, popular discourses: multiculturalism and universalism. these composers promote their latin american identity in a music market that has increasingly embraced ideals of multicultural- ism, while competing in music academies that celebrate the autonomous creativity of each composer more than affi liations based on ethnicity or nationality. after introducing theories of multiculturalism, universalism, and cosmopolitanism, with respect to composers tania león (b. ) and oswaldo golijov (b. ), the article discusses fi ve up-and-coming composers born in the s: jorge villavicencio grossmann, josé luis hurtado, felipe lara, pedro malpica, and mauricio pauly. ■ ■ ■ keywords: latin american composers, united states, multiculturalism, universalism, cosmopolitanism r e s u m o : as diferentes perspectivas dos compositores contemporâneos de música erudita que nasceram na américa latina e atualmente trabalham nos estados unidos, bem como seus intérpretes e críticos, revelam as diversas maneiras que usam para lidar com duas ideologias americanas populares—e às vezes confl itantes—nos estados unidos: o multiculturalismo e o universalismo. os compositores promovem suas identidades latino-americanas num mercado de música que adere cada vez mais aos ideais do multiculturalismo e, ao mesmo tempo, competem no mundo acadêmico da música que celebra antes a criatividade autônoma de cada compositor do que afi liações étnicas ou nacionais. depois de apresentar teorias de multiculturalismo, uni- versalismo e cosmopolitanismo sobre os compositores tania león ( –) e oswaldo golijov ( –), o ensaio discute cinco compositores promissores que nasceram na década : jorge villavicencio grossmann, josé luis hurtado, felipe lara, pedro malpica e mauricio pauly. ■ ■ ■ palavras-chave: compositores latino-americanos, estados unidos, multiculturalismo, universa- lismo, cosmopolitanismo ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ m a r c g i da l contemporary “latin american” composers of art music in the united states: cosmopolitans navigating multiculturalism and universalism ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ _gidal_ - _lamr- - _ _gidal_ - _lamr- - _ / / : : pm / / : : pm contemporary “latin american” composers of art music in the u.s. ■ “when you play a piece by composers who were born in europe, . . . they’re not depicted by race, they are not depicted by nationality, they are not depicted by gender.” — ta n i a l e Ó n “what i do is even more extreme because my career often zigzagged and because the world is more globalized. it’s not because i said, ‘let’s com- bine latin with this other.’” — o s va l d o g o l i j ov “latin american composers” is a fl ag, an advertisement. although i don’t want people thinking about that, it’s something i cannot avoid.” — j o s É l u i s h u rta d o a “latin american” presence in the contemporary art-music scene of the united states raises questions about place, identity, and musical meaning. when and why do composers born in south america, central america, and the caribbean refer to themselves and, more often, are referred to as “latin american” while living in the united states? for whom does their music sound “latin american” and for whom does it not? how have iden- tity politics aff ected their self-presentation and reception among audiences and critics? how can theories of global connectedness and cultural iden- tifi cation help explain their experiences, opinions, and music? referring to themselves as “latin american” while being in the states is, on the one hand, an easy shorthand. “latin american” serves as a social category that the general u.s. public understands to mean born south of the border. on the other hand, the terms “latin america” and “latin american” carry sig- nifi cant ideological baggage, including an intellectual history fraught with inter-american, interclass, and interracial confl ict. as walter mignolo has argued, “‘latin’ america is not so much a subcontinent as it is the political project of creole-mestizo/a elites” ( : – ). this article explores how and when a selection of composers and their observers use the descriptor “latin american.” the composers tend to identify with and promote vari- ous latin american cultural heritages in a classical-music market that has increasingly embraced multiculturalism, while they emphasize their idio- syncratic aesthetics in music academies and art-music circles that revere the autonomous creativity of composers. the discourse of “latin ameri- can” in the contemporary art-music scene in the united states, i will ar- gue, functions within tensions between competing ideologies of what i am calling “american multiculturalism” and “aesthetic universalism.” cosmo- politanism off ers a framework that mitigates these tensions and refl ects the experiences and opinions of the composers. _gidal_ - _lamr- - _ _gidal_ - _lamr- - _ / / : : pm / / : : pm ■ m a r c g i da l generally speaking, multiculturalism celebrates diff erences among groups distinguished by social categories (e.g., race, ethnicity, culture, reli- gion, nationality), whereas universalism, with regards to aesthetics, focuses on the allegedly common sensibilities and thereby foregrounds the idio- syncrasies of individual expression rather than social groups. outside the fi elds of theology and ethics, universalism is most often distinguished from particularism and cultural relativism, while the ideologies of multicultural- ism and pluralism in american intellectual history are typically contrasted with assimilation and individualism. the objective of this article is not to reify dichotomies between universalism and particularism, pluralism and assimilation, individuals and culture, global and local (or, for that matter, between latin america and the united states, or latin america and an- glo america). instead it calls attention to ways that multiculturalism and universalism manifest in art-music circles by examining how latin ameri- can composers working in the united states encounter and navigate these ideologies. cosmopolitanism, as theorized by ulf hannerz, james cliff ord, and bruce robbins, off ers an appropriate framework to interpret these com- posers’ situations for several reasons. first, this approach to cosmopoli- tanism balances particularist (i.e., latin american) and individualist (i.e., art-music composer) identifi cations with which these composers struggle. second, it speaks to their transnational mobility, including migration and occupational travel. third, it addresses hierarchies of social status and the privileges of elite culture pertinent to art-music circles. although cosmo- politanism situates their experiences and perspectives within current dis- courses on global connectedness and local emplacement, i will not argue that their music is “cosmopolitan.” the details of this social theory do not translate neatly into musical analysis. these issues surface in case studies of seven contemporary composers originally from argentina, brazil, costa rica, cuba, mexico, and peru. a discussion of tania león (b. ) focuses on parallels between changes in her approach to composition and those within the academic art-music world since the late s, as multiculturalism began ameliorating a pre- vailing aesthetic universalism. while she began incorporating music and topics from her cuban background (among other infl uences) into her com- positions, she continued utilizing the discourse of universalism to combat the tendency of u.s. multiculturalist agendas to identify artists based on social categories. next, the more recent compositions of osvaldo golijov (b. ) and their critical reception in the united states illustrate how dis- courses of multiculturalism and aesthetic universalism have addressed mu- sical eclecticism and overt musical borrowing. the article then introduces fi ve up-and-coming composers born in the s—jorge villavicencio grossmann, josé luis hurtado, felipe lara, pedro malpica, and mauricio _gidal_ - _lamr- - _ _gidal_ - _lamr- - _ / / : : pm / / : : pm contemporary “latin american” composers of art music in the u.s. ■ pauly—who formed a consortium called “áltavoz” (“loud speaker,” “loud voice”) to concertize their music collectively and foster cross-cultural edu- cation. their decidedly abstract compositional styles, and myriad levels of comfort identifying as “latin american,” compete with their strategy to market the collective as “latin american” and endlessly frustrate attempts to locate a “latin american” sound in their music. focusing on these seven composers from the americas, who live and work in the united states, also supplements the understudied history of this topic, which aurelio de la vega fi rst introduced in this journal ( a). de la vega compared the various levels of contact that ten composers from latin america experienced with the art-music scene in the united states and provided a historical review of the topic. following the new industrial strength of the united states in the global economy at the turn of the twen- tieth century, and the subsequent growth of art-music institutions, he in- formed us, composers born south of the united states increasingly traveled to the united states in addition to europe, for education and performance (de la vega a: ). the visibility in the united states of art-music by these composers increased after world war i, when composer collectives, arts organizations, and government agencies began promoting dialogue within the americas through the arts. in , composers chávez, cowell, ruggles, verèse, and whithorne formed the pan american association of composers with the objective of creating “music of the western hemi- sphere” (root ; parker ; oja : ). although u.s. policies toward nations to its south have historically been hostile and self-serving, the u.s. government actively promoted cultural exchange through the pan- american union, which established a music division in as part of roosevelt’s “good neighbor” policy ( – ). the music division pre- miered hundreds of works by latin american composers at music festivals held in washington, d.c. the music division’s publications are arguably the fi rst scholarly treatments in the united states (chase [ ] : ; haskins ; de la vega a: – ; oja : ). it was not until the s that attitudes in the united states toward latin american art music began improving to begin fostering a “rewarding and healthy” interchange among composers in the united states and latin america (de la vega a). the chilean-american composer/scholar juan orrego-salas established the latin american music center of indiana uni- versity in . in the past two decades organized eff orts to present art music by latin american composers include tania león’s festival sonidos de las américas (part of the american composers orchestra), uruguayan- american composer/conductor gisele ben-dor’s music discovery project, james brooks-bruzzese’s symphony of the americas, and mexican pianist/ conductor alondra de la parra’s philharmonic orchestra of the americas (founded in ). _gidal_ - _lamr- - _ _gidal_ - _lamr- - _ / / : : pm / / : : pm ■ m a r c g i da l multiculturalism, universalism, and cosmopolitanism no one actually is or ever can be a cosmopolitan in the full sense of belonging everywhere. . . . the interest of the term cosmopolitanism is located . . . in its local applications. . . . its provocative association with privilege is perhaps better understood, in this context, as the normative edge that cosmopolitanism tries to add to the inclusiveness and diver- sity of multiculturalism—as an attempt to name a necessary but diffi - cult normativeness. the term is not as philosophically ambitious as the world “universalism,” though it does some of the same work. (it makes room for moments of generalizing, one might say, without off ering li- cense for uninhibited universalizing.) nor is it as politically ambitious as the word “internationalism.” (robbins : ) there are no simple, clear-cut defi nitions of multiculturalism, universalism, and cosmopolitanism. even their etymologies fail to convey their historical developments, contemporary usage, and diverse roles in local identity poli- tics. their interrelationships at specifi c historical moments become critical for understanding their signifi cance. this section introduces each term as i will use it to interpret the situations of the featured composers. although multiculturalism is now passé as an analytic framework (robbins : ; mishra ), it still permeates the american performing-arts industry in which composers promote their works. néstor garcía canclini distinguishes between two “narratives of multicultural so- ciety” that are useful here: “academic theories” and “sociopolitical move- ments.” the former “conceive[s] of identities as historically constituted, imagined, and reinvented in ongoing processes of hybridization and trans- nationalization, which dissolve their ancient territorial roots,” a process that is closer to the notion of cosmopolitanism i will utilize. multicultur- alism as “sociopolitical movements,” on the other hand, “unequivocally emphasize[s] the original territorial foundations of ethnic groups and na- tions, dogmatically avowing the telluric and biological traits associated with that origin, as if they were unaff ected by historical vicissitudes and current changes” (garcía canclini : – ). garcía canclini’s two defi nitions of multiculturalism are, without a doubt, interrelated: in so far as population groups are socially defi ned and diff erentiated due to competition rather than bound by a set of inherent and autonomous characteristics (barth ), multiculturalism in the states sought to overcome the resulting social inequalities through, what charles taylor calls, a “politics of equal recognition” (quoted in mishra ). because multiculturalist discourses diff er by nation, i am calling the sociopolitical movement in the united states “american multiculturalism.” _gidal_ - _lamr- - _ _gidal_ - _lamr- - _ / / : : pm / / : : pm contemporary “latin american” composers of art music in the u.s. ■ american multiculturalism has provided new opportunities to pro- mote a “latin american” identity in the performing-arts marketplace. this agenda has increasingly infl uenced the policies of art institutions since the s, though to a lesser extent the programming of concert music than other types of performing and visual arts (pankratz : ; heilbrun and gray : ; garcía canclini : ). concurrently, the musical tastes of “highbrow” american audiences have broadened “from snob to omnivore” during the s, which “signifi es an openness to appreciating everything” (peterson and kern : ). this article will explore how a thirst for cul- tural diversity in the arts has assisted the promotion of contemporary latin american composers in the united states, while irritating some of them because of tendencies to pigeonhole them into social categories. although various defi nitions of universalism have been forwarded by re- ligions, philosophers, legislatures, and human rights activists, it is a belief in a universal aesthetic judgment—what i’m calling “aesthetic universal- ism”—that permeates the culture of american music conservatories. with philosophical roots in the universalism of immanuel kant and the euro- pean enlightenment, certain european composers (mostly germans) were canonized beginning in the nineteenth century and eventually were taught in american music academies as near-autonomous geniuses who com- posed “great works” (kerman ; kingsbury ; nettl ; burkholder ). even the inclusion in music education curricula of traditions other than western classical music from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (however minimal and marginalized) began only within the last fi fty years (nettl : ). aesthetic universalism in art music circles reveals the tastes of those in power, masking a normative, eurocentric attitude. robbins urges scholars to look for who controls and gains from such normalizing claims ( : ). in this spirit bruno nettl and others have remarked that the discourse of universalism in art-music institutions has unhitched the canon of com- posers from their cultural and national contexts, and treats them as super- human, supranational, and thus universal geniuses (nettl : ). the very same eurocentric vision of art-music led critics to dismiss the prospect of an “original contribution of latin america within contemporary compo- sitional techniques,” as gerard béhague argued, which was a bias that re- sulted from the “presumed universality of musical creation in the western art-music tradition” ( : ). at the same time, claiming that aesthetics and techniques of art-music composition are “universal” has also proved a powerful strategy for composers who want to avoid being categorized, based on their national origin, gender, or ethnicity, in order to compete on an even playing fi eld worldwide and/or to distance themselves from nationalist trends. depending on the situation, the composers discussed _gidal_ - _lamr- - _ _gidal_ - _lamr- - _ / / : : pm / / : : pm ■ m a r c g i da l below either favor or eschew universalism, which reveals their mixed feel- ings about this ideology. because i am arguing that contemporary latin american composers in the united states encounter and must navigate discourses of american multiculturalism and aesthetic universalism, it is i who have chosen to in- terpret their experiences using an approach to cosmopolitanism that ad- dresses three pertinent topics: local and global affi liations, transnational mobility and migration, and privileges of membership in elite culture. first coined in ancient greek philosophy and revived by kant, cosmopolitanism has been adopted more recently to explain the circumstances, attitudes, and politics of individuals and communities who tend to circulate inter- nationally and acquire cultural competences, or at least an empathy for otherness, within the various localities in which they dwell (hannerz : – ; werbner : ). among the myriad cosmopolitanist theories, those articulated by bruce robbins, james cliff ord, and ulf hannerz aptly address the situations of latin american composers in the united states. pnina werbner recently used homi bhabha’s term “vernacular cosmopoli- tanism” (bhabha ) to group the common arguments of these authors as follows: vernacular cosmopolitanism—an apparent oxymoron that seems to join contradictory notions of local specifi city and universal enlightenment— is at the crux of current debates on cosmopolitanism. these pose the question fi rst, whether local, parochial, rooted, and culturally specifi c loyalties may coexist with translocal, transnational, transcendent, elit- ist, enlightened, universalist and modernist ones; and second, whether boundary-crossing demotic migrations may be compared to the globe- trotting travel, sophisticated cultural knowledge and moral worldview of deracinated intellectuals. indeed, the question is often reversed to ask whether there can be an enlightened normative cosmopolitanism which is not rooted, in the fi nal analysis, in patriotic and culturally committed loyalties and understandings. (werbner : ) travel, mobility, and migration are clearly central to cosmopolitan experi- ences, perspectives, and activities, though the details of exactly how con- tinue to be debated. “not all postcolonial cosmopolitans are travellers [sic]—nor are all travellers (as hannerz reminds us) cosmopolitan,” writes werbner ( : ). robbins noted how hannerz defi ned the cosmopolitan by way of exclusionary statements: not merely someone who “moves about in the world” with “a willingness to engage with the other,” not tourists since they don’t participate, not exiles and not ordinary labor migrants. in- stead, hannerz asserted, “transnational cultures today tend to be more or less clearcut [sic] occupational cultures (and are often tied to transnational _gidal_ - _lamr- - _ _gidal_ - _lamr- - _ / / : : pm / / : : pm contemporary “latin american” composers of art music in the u.s. ■ job markets)” (hannerz : ; quoted in robbins : ). art-music composers constitute one such cosmopolitan occupational culture. tania león, osvaldo golijov and even the young composers of áltavoz have moved in and out of the americas due to family relocation or advances in their music education and careers. the “routes” they have traveled, to employ cliff ord’s framework of “discrepant cosmopolitanism” ( ), have remained mostly within an international circuit of music schools, universi- ties, and conservatories, and they tend to trace their journeys in terms of their education and mentors. although the greek term “cosmopolitan” means “citizen of the world,” cosmopolitans are still deeply aff ected by the specifi c places and histori- cal moments through which they pass. “for it is still the case that no one lives in the world in general,” asserted cliff ord geertz. “everybody, even the exiled, the drifting, the diasporic, or the perpetually moving, lives in some confi ned and limited stretch of it—‘the world around here’” ( : ). for this reason the specifi c locations and eras in which these com- posers live will prove inseparable to their experiences and actions. argen- tina, in the era of astor piazzolla and the dirty war, impacted golijov’s musical sensibilities and provoked his emigration. león’s early composi- tions in new york city embraced aesthetic universalism at a time before multiculturalism had strongly infl uenced art-music circles. the strictness of mexican music conservatories aff ected hurtado’s initially conservative style. and the group of young composers in áltavoz formed and adopted a latin american group identity specifi cally in boston. any study of cosmopolitanism, multiculturalism, latin american iden- tity, and art-music culture—and especially all four topics combined— should address issues of class hierarchy and elite culture for three reasons. first of all, western art music tends to function symbolically as “highbrow cultural capital” (bourdieu [ ] ; peterson and kern ; dimaggio and mukhtar ; small ). second, discussions of multicultural- ism and cosmopolitanism can mask class privilege (higham ; griffi n and tempenis ) and u.s.-centrism (yúdice ; neilson ). and third, the ideologies surrounding “latin america” are intimately connected to postcolonial class stratifi cation (mignolo ). the notion of “cosmo- politan mobility” is, therefore, as applicable to socioeconomic class as it is to international travel and migration. although the specifi c composers to be discussed come from middle- to upper-middle class families and strug- gled fi nancially while studying abroad, they have already achieved or expect to achieve upward mobility due to the fi nancial earnings and high social status in elite western culture gained as professional composers and uni- versity professors. musicologists have variously evoked cosmopolitanism, though incon- sistently. the concept often appears in concert with foreign, modernist, _gidal_ - _lamr- - _ _gidal_ - _lamr- - _ / / : : pm / / : : pm ■ m a r c g i da l mass-mediated, and/or eurocentric infl uences and opposed to local, in- digenous, nativist, and/or traditional music. in studies of western art music in europe, “cosmopolitan” often serves to off set the nationalistic associations of specifi c composers (cavallini ; tusa ), whereas in the united states (crawford ) and latin american (turino ) “cosmopolitan” art music has denoted eurocentric aesthetics and tech- niques. scholars of popular music outside europe and the united states (bilby ; turino ; olaniyan ) have described musicians and producers who incorporate “cosmopolitan” idioms—defi ned as foreign, western, eurocentric, and modern—into music otherwise considered in- digenous, local, and/or traditional. turino, for example, who also draws on hannerz, appiah, cliff ord, and robbins, uses “cosmopolitan” to denote a eurocentric, high-modernist aesthetic which he distinguishes from “local- ist,” folk aesthetics. cosmopolitans for turino tend to utilize folk aesthetics in order to localize themselves. by contrast, at least two musicologists have used cosmopolitanism as an outlook or practice that balances the global/local opposition. brigid cohen recently utilized bhabha’s “vernacular cosmopolitanism” and edward said’s “plurality of vision” to interpret how composer stefan wolpe sought to in- tegrate his multinational, yet locally grounded life experiences and artistic collaborations into a developing modernist aesthetic ( : – , – ). and paul greene found “a spirit of cosmopolitanism” among nepali youth who are both “very inclusive of many ethnic groups” while they “retain their cultural distinctiveness” ( : ). for greene cosmopolitanism and multiculturalism are synonymous in nepal and oppose a “model of syn- cretic fusion” ( ) (see also, stokes : f.; bohlman ). other scholars use cosmopolitanism to balance both global and local affi liations, as outlined in werbner’s quote above. cliff ord’s “discrepant cosmopolitanisms” also aims to forge a middle ground between “the exces- sive localism of particularist cultural relativism, as well as the overly global vision of a capitalist or technocratic monoculture” (cliff ord : ). jacqueline loss likewise uses cosmopolitanism to describe latin american authors and artists who are engaged in an inter-american dialogue while remaining rooted in local scenes. loss’s cosmopolitanism “verifi es context and specifi city at the same time that is driven toward archiving those cul- tural objects that uniquely portray un-homely and decontextualized sites.” in doing so, cosmopolitanism introduces “a mode of negotiating the disci- pline of latin americanism” to expand current understandings of regional- ist affi nity ( : – ). as a way to mediate global and local affi liations, my use of cosmopolitanism aligns closely with these writers and musicologists cohen and greene. at diff erent times, in diff erent situations, and for diff erent reasons, the composers featured here have engaged the discourses of multiculturalism _gidal_ - _lamr- - _ _gidal_ - _lamr- - _ / / : : pm / / : : pm contemporary “latin american” composers of art music in the u.s. ■ and universalism in the art-music world of the united states. but they never completely agree with either ideology, neither claiming to represent their particular cultural affi liation nor denying it. cosmopolitanism speaks to the commonalities of their varied situations and attitudes with regards to their diverse affi nities, transnational mobility, and participation in an elite occupational culture. tania león tania león has mixed feelings about being included in a discussion of latin american composers and probably about being labeled “cosmopolitan.” al- though she is proud of her cuban roots, she resents being categorized as anything other than musician, composer, and conductor. nonetheless, be- cause of her transnational biography, her use of cuban music, her role in promoting latin american composers in the united states, and her rec- ognition by others as a latin american artist, she is of great interest to the present study. in the s she began intentionally incorporating into her compositions music from cuba and elsewhere (united states, europe, mexico, japan), and in the s she actively helped expose u.s. audiences to latin american art music as the cofounder and musical advisor of the music festival, sonidos de las américas. her acute awareness of historical fl ows of people, music, and ideas informs both her self-identity and her compositions. as jason stanyek poignantly phrased this, “león sounds these histories—that’s sound as a verb” (stanyek ). also of interest here, the progression of her musical output parallels the coincidental rise in mul- ticulturalist agendas within an art-music scene in the united states that hitherto emphasized aesthetic universalism. i am not arguing that multi- cultural agendas bolstered her success, but rather that an increased accept- ability in art-music circles for the expression of personal heritage created an environment in which her new approach to composition could fl ourish. meanwhile she has continued leveraging universalistic arguments to coun- ter pigeonholing based on race, gender, and national origin. león was born in havana, cuba, in to a non-musical family of af- rican, spanish, chinese, and french ancestry. after completing degrees in music, music education, and accounting in cuba, she wanted to continue her music studies in paris. but in a free airplane ticket provided by a catholic organization brought her to new york instead where she soon found work as an accountant. thanks to guidance from the american council of Émigrés in the professions, she received a full scholarship to study music at the new york college of music and thereafter at new york university with ursula mamlok. a chance encounter with arthur mitchell led to her long association with his dance theater of harlem as a found- ing member, which jumpstarted her professional music career. since _gidal_ - _lamr- - _ _gidal_ - _lamr- - _ / / : : pm / / : : pm ■ m a r c g i da l she has taught music at brooklyn college where she fi rst became the claire and leonard tow professor, and then a distinguished professor of the city university of new york (in ). she has earned prestigious awards from the american academy of arts and letters, the national endowment for the arts, and guggenheim foundation as well as honorary doctorates and residencies, nationally and internationally. león’s arrival in the united states coincided with the late civil rights movement and the beginning of the multiculturalist movement in the art- music world. león recalls feeling the eff ects of the public’s interest in di- versity as a woman composer, starting in the mid- s, but more so in the early s when she served as music director of the community concert series of the brooklyn philharmonic and programmed works by compos- ers of african descent (interview with author, july , ). in addition to her acclaim as a composer, she has noticed that multiculturalist agendas have brought her new audiences in u.s. cities outside of her home turf of new york, where she has a loyal following: they want to program latin americans and they do the research and my name comes up. they want to program women and my name comes up. they want to program people of color and my name, you know. they want to program cubans, there we go. (ibid.) despite receiving additional exposure, it is perfectly understandable that she would protest, “i am totally anti-label” (raymond ), for she has been pigeonholed into almost every social category that her gender, race/ ethnicity, and national/regional affi liations might allow. witness her pres- ence on surveys of american composers (upshaw, zinman, and orchestra of st. luke’s ), north american women composers (rickards ; snell and foundation philharmonic orchestra ; solomon ), latin american composers (voices of change and rives-jones ), latin amer- ican women musicians (mendoza ), cuban celebrities (martínez- fernández ), african american composers (thamyris ; walwyn ), and african american conductors (lundy et al. ). she once de- fended herself against such trends to a question about being a black con- ductor, saying: i am not a feminist, am not a black conductor, and am not a woman conductor. i am nothing that the people want to call me. they do not know who i am. the fact that i am using this physical costume does not describe my energy, does not describe my entity. my chosen purpose in life is to be a musician, a composer, a conductor. this is the way i am making my contribution to mankind. (quoted in lundy et al. : ) _gidal_ - _lamr- - _ _gidal_ - _lamr- - _ / / : : pm / / : : pm contemporary “latin american” composers of art music in the u.s. ■ a decade later she vented, “every time i read a diff erent article, i have a dif- ferent category” (raymond ). her critique is perfectly applicable to the present article, for which i selected león and golijov based on their affi liations with latin america as well as their acclaim, whereas the composers of áltavoz explicitly promote the group as “latin american.” the validity of describing composers and compositions as “latin american” will indeed be explicitly examined with respects to áltavoz. león contrasts her reception in the united states to that in europe, where she has felt none of the eff ects of a multiculturalist movement, but instead an enthusiasm for her compositional style and aesthetics. “they have not been concerned about my looks, my gender, my ethnicity, noth- ing. . . . i don’t know if they get attracted to the energy in my music. i don’t know if they get attracted to my syntax, to my harmonizing, to my way of using pitch, because i am tonal, atonal, post-tonal, you know. it’s like a big jambalaya. and for them it’s very, very attractive” (interview with author). while it would be unwise to envision the european art-music scene as egal- itarian and colorblind based on león’s impressions, they underscore the relatively higher emphasis on cultural and ethnic identifi cation that she has experienced in the united states in comparison to europe and cuba. león also wrestles with the competing discourse of aesthetic universal- ism in the art music world, a presence that she has noticed give way over the past two decades to an increased awareness of the cultural and soci- etal infl uences on composers and an acceptance of more explicit cultural references in music. “when people talk about beethoven, they don’t talk about the fact that he was my height. they don’t talk about the color of his skin or what kind of hair he has. . . . beethoven is beethoven” (interview with author, emphasis hers). defending her use of popular cuban dance genres like rumba, león has argued that although canonical composers, such as bach and beethoven, also drew on familiar dance rhythms (not to mention other composers), they were often misconstrued posthumously as autonomous geniuses: “so [bach was] using his own popular fl avor of folk, of his own culture, in his music. we have distilled the whole thing in such a way that all of a sudden, his music comes from heaven. we don’t want to hear those traces in there” (raymond ). when she began studying composition in the united states, she recalled, the most infl uential con- temporary composers were iannis xenakis, pierre boulez, and karlheinz stockhausen, who were discussed in terms of the “complexity” and “mech- anisms” of their compositions. meanwhile, overtly ethnic references in the music of aaron copland damaged his reception among academic compos- ers (interview with author). in the art-music environment of the s, león adopted the prevailing attitude of aesthetic universalism when composing _gidal_ - _lamr- - _ _gidal_ - _lamr- - _ / / : : pm / / : : pm ■ m a r c g i da l and presenting herself, fearing that, as k. robert schwartz wrote, “her di- versity would be a liability . . . by a new-music community that might have sneered at her heritage” (schwartz : ). as the multiculturalist movement began contesting aesthetic univer- salism in the art-music world, león’s music also began to change. she was inspired during a trip to cuba, after a nostalgic twelve years away, when she saw her father for the last time. “i felt an explosion inside of me. i realized that there were very cherished things in me that i was denying. and i felt the sounds of my environment, the sounds of my childhood, starting to come back to me” (quoted in clark ). león be- gan integrating her deep-seeded knowledge of cuban music and themes of cuban culture into her compositions—as she had done and still does with many music traditions. she began including direct musical refer- ences and borrowings, such as a rumba guaguancó accompaniment in “a la par” ( ) and “batéy” (composed with michael camilo in ) and a comparsa melody and carnival theme in “indígena” ( ) (schwartz ). león had internalized the melodies and rhythms she would later utilize having studied classical music in a cuban conservatory, played popular music with friends through adolescence, attended religious cer- emonies as a child, and simply grown up with music all around her. “we know these things. when you grow up in certain countries, or certain ethnicities, certain cultures, you are absorbing this without really realiz- ing that you are really absorbing it” (interview with author). through the processes of composing and teaching music, she added, “my understand- ing of rhythm, i think, has grown immensely by being able to dissect all of that. so therefore i can actually go into it, drop it, pick it up, manifest it when i want to” (ibid.). león has developed systems for composing and teaching so that complex rhythms can sound as “natural” as possible. joseph kerman and gary tomlinson connect león’s diverse musical train- ing with her unique rhythmic style, evident in “kabiosile” ( ), which “owes something to african and latin drumming, and also something to modernist masters of rhythm such as stravinsky and bartók” (kerman and tomlinson : ). one of león’s fi rst compositions after visiting cuba was “batá” ( ), which exemplifi es her explicit integration of cuban music and european modernist approaches to express personal sentiments, here honoring the memories of relatives. reiner analyzed this six-minute, one-movement orchestral piece as emphasizing accented beats and frequently changing tempi, meters, and dynamics, and featuring an overall tempo shift from fast to slow to fast (reiner : – ). it was dedicated to her father, who, during their reunion in cuba, suggested that she begin incorporating cuban music into her compositions. he died a half-year later. as she re- called, “he said, ‘well, your music style is very interesting but where are you _gidal_ - _lamr- - _ _gidal_ - _lamr- - _ / / : : pm / / : : pm contemporary “latin american” composers of art music in the u.s. ■ in your music, i mean, you’re missing.’ and that’s when he told me, ‘come on. use some of the things you know so well. listen to the music of cuba’” (interview with author, emphasis hers). a piccolo carries a melodic frag- ment at the beginning and end of “batá,” symbolizing childhood memories of her father’s whistling. “batá” also draws on the rhythms played on the double-headed, hour- glass-shaped drums of the same name, traditionally played in a set of three to accompany the cuban religion variously called santería and regla de ocha. although she dedicated “batá” to her father, she attributes her direct exposure to santería rituals to his mother, who was also the one to enroll león in a music conservatory when she was four years old. the specifi c af- rican roots of this religion and music are important to león: the batá drums and their rhythmic polyphony come from the yoruban people of the region that is now nigeria, diff erent than the infl uences from regions in benin, ghana, togo, angola, and elsewhere that are evident in other religions of cuba and the african diaspora. “calling it ‘african’ is like calling it ‘latin american,’” she said referring to the religion and anything assigned the prefi x “afro” (personal communication, october , ; see hagedorn : f.). specifi city continues to trump generalization for león. the rhythms of the batá drums infl uenced her orchestration throughout the piece, yet they are not heard verbatim until the conclusion, where they func- tion to “narrow the focus to the energy that the rhythms carry themselves” (personal communication). león also drew on batá rhythmic polyphony in composing “rituál” ( ) for solo piano. unlike batá performance in ritual settings, the tempi of her pieces “batá” and “rituál” do not accelerate, be- cause she found it too diffi cult for concert performers. similarly in “four pieces for cello solo” ( ), which also pays tribute to her father, explicit references to cuba only emerge in the last movement as the cello is played percussively to sound a clave ostinato. an interpretation of león’s experiences and attitudes through the lens of vernacular cosmopolitanism would emphasize her local and global af- fi liations, transnational mobility, and relationship to elite culture. having migrated from cuba to the united states and lived in new york for many years, as well as her professional travels to europe and within the united states, she has gained several points of view on the politics of ethnic diver- sity within the u.s. art-music world and her cuban identity within it. when she visits cuba the locals assume her a foreigner because she has indeed become a new yorker (interview with author). león also gained upward mo- bility in economic class and social status from when she fi rst moved to new york city and worked as an accountant and part-time musician, to when she gained professional positions as conductor, composer, and university professor, and later earned prestigious honors and awards. león exhibits a fusion of the particularist and universalist aspects of cosmopolitanism _gidal_ - _lamr- - _ _gidal_ - _lamr- - _ / / : : pm / / : : pm ■ m a r c g i da l in her pride of her family background, local affi liations (havana and new york city), and her participation in musical conversations within the inter- national art-music scene. “i am who i am, thanks to my mestizo heritage and my ancestors from china, nigeria, france, and spain. i’m a citizen of the world with a global consciousness” (quoted in spinazzola ). león views her mixed heritage as bolstering her “global consciousness” as a “citi- zen of the world,” a catchphrase of cosmopolitanism (appiah : xv ff .). she identifi es with the cultural expressions she learned from specifi c rela- tives, always emphasizing historical routes and personal experiences that inform her idiosyncratic aesthetic and eschewing generalizations like race, ethnicity, and national origin. osvaldo golijov “golijov is picking up where philip glass left off ,” surmised jack sullivan, “drawing a new crowd and issuing a loud rejoinder to a culture that keeps issuing premature death warrants for classical music” (ritter and sullivan ). arguably one of the most publicized composers active in the con- cert world today, osvaldo golijov’s career catapulted over the last ten years, starting with his collaborations with the kronos quartet in the late s and his acclaimed version of the st. mark passion, la pasión según san marcos ( ). in he was honored as the featured composer of a lin- coln center festival and won two classical grammy awards. a year later he became the fi rst composer-in-residence at lincoln center’s mostly mo- zart festival, which presented la pasión. concerts of golijov’s works have been widely popular among younger audiences, which is good business for classical-music institutions. golijov’s cosmopolitan mobility began with studies in music academies on three continents. born in la plata, argentina, in to jewish par- ents from eastern-europe (a pianist mother and a physician father), golijov was “raised surrounded by chamber classical music, jewish liturgical and klezmer music, and the new tango of astor piazzolla.” he studied com- position in a la plata conservatory with gerardo gandini, in jerusalem with mark kopytman, and in the united states with oliver knussen at tanglewood and george crumb at the university of pennsylvania where he received his phd. golijov holds a professorship in music at college of the holy cross in worcester, massachusetts, and lives in a boston suburb. a closer examination of la pasión ( ) and its reception illustrates golijov’s musical eclecticism, his use of latin american themes, and the current critical climate regarding multiculturalism in the arts. by featur- ing a jesus of african descent and afro-latin music traditions, instru- ments, and movement, golijov’s la pasión was heralded as a millennial sign that classical music and christian iconography have been uprooted _gidal_ - _lamr- - _ _gidal_ - _lamr- - _ / / : : pm / / : : pm contemporary “latin american” composers of art music in the u.s. ■ from europe and transported to south america (eisert and bomba ). the fi rst and last numbers of the work, “vision” and “kaddish,” join the brazilian berimbau (iconic of capoeira), accordion, strings, horns, voices, and electronics to create sonic waves inspired by minimalism, a recurrent style in the work. the third through sixth numbers juxtapose choral coun- terpoint and cuban batá drumming, sections that function as “narrative equivalents to recitatives in bach” (golijov and guzelimian ). borrow- ings from cuban music continue in other sections, including rumbas, a tres solo, and improvisations on conga drums. “silencio” is set to spanish fl amenco, while brazilian music reappears when carnival samba accompa- nies the “crucifi xión.” golijov incorporates into his compositions popular, folk, and religious music often in a strikingly literal way, which sometimes sounds more like he has incorporated elements of art-music into popular and folk genres rather than the other way around. his eclectic musical palette includes traditions from south america and the caribbean (e.g., tango, rumba, ca- poeira, santería), spain and the middle east, and his jewish background (e.g., liturgical texts and music, klezmer, and sephardic melodies). golijov often explains that he metaphorically “modulates cultures like other com- posers modulate keys” (quoted in [n.a.] ; see also, tsioulcas ; gurewitsch ; golijov and guzelimian ). he utilizes the associa- tive power of myriad genres to evoke specifi c meanings, for example, he intended fl amenco to evoke a certain emotion (tsioulcas ). golijov in- forms audiences that he wants to situate the st. mark passion in a contem- porary afro-latin cultural context. but it is up to the listener to interpret his genre juxtapositions—be they choral oratorios with santería drumming, or brazilian samba accompanying the crucifi xion of jesus—regardless of his intended symbolic meanings. at fi rst listen it might seem that golijov has incorporated the street sounds of his early years in south america and draws on theological per- spectives he observed in catholic argentina and multi-religious, multi- ethnic jerusalem. yet golijov never lived in cuba, brazil, or spain, where the musical traditions other than western classical used in la pasión origi- nated, nor does he play these music genres himself. instead he collaborated with musicians and dancers skilled in these traditions to compose and per- form parts of la pasión, whose contributions he graciously acknowledges in the recording’s liner notes (eisert and bomba ). through two bos- ton institutions, the berklee school of music and the brazilian cultural center of new england, golijov met collaborating musicians gonzalo grau, mikael ringquist, ringquist’s students damián alejandro padró and ruskin vaughn, deraldo ferreira, reynaldo gonzález fernández, michael ward bergeman, and aquiles baez. each of them either moved to boston from latin america (cuba, brazil, and venezuela) or learned the traditions _gidal_ - _lamr- - _ _gidal_ - _lamr- - _ / / : : pm / / : : pm ■ m a r c g i da l they played with golijov while they were students at berklee. in addition to calling attention to the collaborative nature of some of golijov’s works (including la pasión, ainadamar, and ayre), these details acknowledge their debt to the global networks of brazilian capoeira, the music and dance of cuban santería, and spanish fl amenco as they intersect within music edu- cation institutions in boston. several critics have asked, if only to play the devil’s advocate, whether “it even make[s] sense to call mr. golijov a ‘classical’ composer, when so much of his material comes straight from popular and folk traditions, current and ancient” (gurewitsch ; see also, eichler ). critiquing com- posers who reference others’ compositions or non-classical genres as lack- ing creativity has actually been a leitmotif of music historiography since the late eighteen century, one that is related to aesthetic universalism, as discussed earlier. yet borrowing from popular and folk genres—whether rhythms, melodies, or entire performance practices—is nothing new, nei- ther for classical music nor for latin american composers. in sinfonia Ín- dia, a well-known example of the nationalistic style from the fi rst half of the twentieth century, carlos chávez utilized specifi c amerindian melodies, rhythms, and instruments from mexico to forge a “mexican” sound for con- cert music in the years after the revolution. this point has not been lost on golijov’s critics. sullivan compared his use of “collage and pastiche” to charles ives (ritter and sullivan ), while alex ross has argued that a penchant to “overrun the borders between genres” is common among latin american composers across genres ( ). ross has repeatedly com- mended golijov and björk for transgressing outdated boundaries between classical and popular music ( : ). to be fair, critics have attended to aspects of golijov’s compositions other than his most explicit genre-references. reviewing a performance of la pasión during the mostly mozart festival, allan kozinn quickly moved beyond the musical borrowings to analyze the music as western art-music by mentioning the recurring themes in the string section, “more acerbic, tonally ambiguous writing” elsewhere, the gregorian and classical styles in the choral parts, and golijov’s use of biblical texts (kozinn ). reviewing la pasión for the same newspaper a year earlier, anthony tom- masini emphasized the moments he found most innovative, “when he fi l- ters, say, a south american chorus through his own trained ear and comes up with something startling and modern” (tommasini ). innovation still trumps imitation in the art-music world. nonetheless the press has continually associated golijov’s music, bi- ography, and success with the popularity of multiculturalism in today’s performing-arts market. golijov is labeled “multicultural” and a “polyglot” (ross ; [n.a.] ) both because of the “mash-up of genres” (eichler ) in his compositions and because of his multinational biography. _gidal_ - _lamr- - _ _gidal_ - _lamr- - _ / / : : pm / / : : pm contemporary “latin american” composers of art music in the u.s. ■ a review in the economist was subtitled “osvaldo golijov’s multicultural music” ([n.a.] ), while gurewitsch claims, “mr. golijov, as one might guess, is his discipline’s poster boy for multiculturalism” ( ). while audiences can easily imagine golijov’s biography in aspects of his music, it is likely that the popularity of his concerts owe more to the accessibility of the music genres he incorporates and the spectacle of his productions such as la pasión (kozinn ; ritter and sullivan ). ben fiane, who called la pasión a “multicultural, interfaith setting of a christian text,” stated the matter bluntly: “golijov, , needn’t worry over listener comparisons to mozart’s requiem as the audience will surely be too busy enjoying the groove of ‘la pasión’s’ afro-cuban and west african rhythms” ( ). when golijov weighs in on these debates, he sounds more cosmopoli- tan than multicultural. “i am kind of announcing a new era in music, an era in which boundaries will disappear” (golijov and guzelimian ). rebuking critics who foreground the argentine and jewish infl uences on his music and identity, he points to the ubiquity of global networks of art and music. “there are very few isolated places in the world today,” he rea- sons. “so identity—whether cultural, religious or musical—is a very fl uid concept” (quoted in tsioulcas ). dismissing those who question the legitimacy of his musical borrowings, golijov counters that composers have always “played with symbols,” be they tonal areas, modes, or genres (gurewitsch ). in sum, golijov argues that his music expresses his family background much less than utilizes resources available to anyone paying attention to the global fl ow of sounds and ideas. his “omnivorous” taste in music, as sociologist richard peterson would say, echoes those of “highbrow” americans of all ages since the s (peterson and kern ) as well as resonating with multicultural agendas. golijov’s musical eclecti- cism suits contemporary elite culture. this, and his international mobility, bolster a cosmopolitanist reading of golijov. whereas león’s compositions since her trip to cuba evince an amalgamation of personal heritage and modernist aesthetics, golijov’s recent work refl ects his omnivorous eclecticism more than his multinational biography. five composers meet in boston compared to the music of león and golijov, the music of the composers in the collective áltavoz sounds more abstract and harder to locate sonically in latin america. while these composers want to be evaluated by the criteria of aesthetic universalism, they chose to identify their collective as explicitly “latin american.” in this introduction of fi ve up-and-coming composers, and their collaborative association, cosmopolitanism helps explain their seemingly paradoxical use of both multiculturalism and universalism. _gidal_ - _lamr- - _ _gidal_ - _lamr- - _ / / : : pm / / : : pm ■ m a r c g i da l áltavoz is currently comprised of jorge villavicencio grossmann, josé luis hurtado, felipe lara, pedro malpica, and mauricio pauly—from peru, mexico, brazil, and costa rica. grossmann (b. ), the collective’s cur- rent director and an assistant professor of music theory/composition at university of nevada, las vegas, was born in lima, peru, to a peruvian scientist and a brazilian mother. due to peru’s instability in the late s, his family migrated to são paulo, brazil, the home of his mother’s family. after studying violin in lima as a child and in a são paulo conservatory (ba, faculdade santa marcelina), grossmann moved to miami to study composition (ma composition, florida international university) and then to boston (dma composition, boston university). at boston university, grossmann met pedro malpica (b. ), another peruvian composition student who had studied guitar in lima (conserva- torio de lima) and guitar, composition, and music education in puerto rico (ba, music education, minor in composition, conservatorio de música de puerto rico). malpica was shocked to fi nd another peruvian composer at bu, because of their miniscule numbers in the united states. after three years at bu (m mus and doctoral studies), malpica moved to new york to study composition for a year at the juilliard school (graduate diploma) and then composition and theory at the graduate center at city university of new york (phd student, composition). grossmann and malpica visited peru in to participate in festivals of new music and lecture at the conservatories, experiences that were personally rewarding for both, yet in- creased their doubt about the economic feasibility of resettling in peru. costa rican composer mauricio pauly (b. ), joined the two peruvi- ans at bu. previously a professional pop and jazz bassist with a background in vocal performance and computer science (universidad nacional, costa rica), pauly became interested in composition when studying music in mi- ami (ba, composition and jazz bass, university of miami). after complet- ing his master’s degree in composition at bu, he followed his girlfriend to hungary and composed independently. in addition to pursuing com- position and a renewed interest in pop-music production, pauly studied sonology in the netherlands and is currently earning a phd in the united kingdom (university of manchester). the three students organized a concert of their music at bu in and decided to include other local composition students from latin amer- ica to participate. they invited josé luis hurtado (b. ) and felipe lara (b. ) to join their eff ort, with whom they had become friends through grossmann. during a summer composers conference at wellesley col- lege, grossmann had met hurtado, a mexican composer who was to begin his doctoral studies in composition at harvard. a descendent of several gen- erations of professional mexican musicians based in morelia, in the state of michoacán, hurtado was born in the small town of cd. valles, where his _gidal_ - _lamr- - _ _gidal_ - _lamr- - _ / / : : pm / / : : pm contemporary “latin american” composers of art music in the u.s. ■ parents taught high school. he studied piano with the only teacher in town. after high school he moved to his father’s home city of morelia to attend its conservatory (ba, piano and composition, conservatorio de las rosas). during further composition studies in xalapa (ma, composition, univer- sidad veracruzana), hurtado met the visiting composer mario davidovsky, who encouraged him to apply to harvard. as a doctoral candidate at har- vard, hurtado has organized a small festival of new music at his alma ma- ter in morelia since , presenting works by malpica and himself as well as schoenberg, carter, berio, and lutoslawski. recordings of his works will be released on the labels urtext (mexico), atma classique (canada), and capstone records (usa). grossmann also introduced lara to the collegial group. previously a gui- tarist of samba and jazz, lara moved from são paulo, brazil to boston (ba, film scoring, berklee college of music) after briefl y studying jazz guitar in london. having become interested in art music and composition while in boston, lara continued to study composition at the new england conser- vatory, then at tufts university (ma, composition), and currently at new york university where he also studies with davidovsky. recordings of three of his works will be released on two brazilian projects, quatro visões con- temporãneas na música paulista and jovens compositores brasileiros, funded respectively by the state of são paulo and petrobras cultural. the composers’ cross-cultural competence—a criterion of vernacular cosmopolitanism—developed not only through their transnational mo- bility, but within the specifi c metropolises where they studied composi- tion. even though most of the áltavoz composers have moved around the americas and europe, they tend to single out boston, more than miami or são paulo, as their fi rst exposure to people, culture, ideas, music, and composers from around the world. the relative paucity of people of latin american descent in boston and its universities surely contributed to the novelty of their experiences. some noticed that their infl uences and ap- proaches to composition changed in boston, refl ecting their new experi- ences and new teachers. grossmann believes that as the composers remain in the united states and are aff ected by their new surroundings and teach- ers, their composition styles will sound less similar to each other and per- haps less latin american. he pointed out a review of their concert at the juilliard school in which david cleary described hurtado’s music as “north-atlantic” (cleary). “that’s what’s happening,” said grossmann. “we get infl uenced from everywhere and i’m sure that josé luis’s style will change. i have no doubt about that.” since arriving in the united states, hurtado, has tried to “stretch,” as he says, the compositional techniques he learned from more conserva- tive teachers in mexican conservatories, one of whom coincidently stud- ied composition at harvard. hurtado has been developing a new technical _gidal_ - _lamr- - _ _gidal_ - _lamr- - _ / / : : pm / / : : pm ■ m a r c g i da l approach that uses timbre in a more “personal way” than the approaches he used in mexico and while studying with davidovsky during his fi rst two years at harvard. when composing his trio, “de relieve doble” ( ), he utilized a new approach to timbre by intertwining two compositions si- multaneously: each uses a diff erent set of pitches, one loud and assertive, and the other quiet and gentle. although each composition would sound cohesive on its own, according to hurtado, they fuse into a single sonic texture and narrative. hurtado’s approach has changed enough since leav- ing mexico that, “if i played this to my composition teacher in mexico, he wouldn’t like it.” rather than interpreting his new approach as breaking old rules of composition, hurtado understands the changes in his music as indicative of his new experiences. in his words, “music i see as a refl ection of your self. so if you’re changing in the good sense of the word, then your music is changing.” living abroad and traveling internationally for concerts and workshops relates to the upward socioeconomic mobility that the composers expect to achieve when they become professional composers and university profes- sors. álta voz composers have received the patronage of some of the most prestigious music schools in the united states and their credentials will help them gain employment in academies in the united states or in their countries of origin, should they decide to return. however, until then the ways that these composers struggle fi nancially during their training and early careers, like when león fi rst arrived in new york city, illustrate the temporary sacrifi ces they must endure before they can achieve long-term stability. even though all members have received some fi nancial assistance from their families (they were economically middle or upper-middle class in their own countries), they have relied on tuition waivers, scholarships, grants, and commissions. student visas in the united states do not permit part-time employment, whereas they do in europe, which benefi ts pauly. so they have lived with extended family and working partners, and found odd jobs as musicians and music teachers to help make ends meet. although áltavoz members depend on their universities for venues and production support, they themselves must pay for performers and concert publicity. it should be recognized that classically-trained musicians and composers rarely occupy the same economic class as their patrons and that employ- ment opportunities diff er from country to country. despite the fi nancial challenges of pursuing a career in composition in the united states, it is also not surprising that malpica and grossmann are skeptical about the prospect of returning permanently to peru, as is pauly regarding costa rica. forming a composer collective to co-present their work was, in part, a professional survival strategy as it has been for young composers in the united states since the modernists of the s (oja : – ). their friendship developed into a collaboration that improved their ability to have _gidal_ - _lamr- - _ _gidal_ - _lamr- - _ / / : : pm / / : : pm contemporary “latin american” composers of art music in the u.s. ■ their music performed. they began producing concerts together in mas- sachusetts and new york in , and established the organization with a nominal advisory board consisting of their composition teachers and a few latin american composers already established in the united states. the board includes tania león, theodore antoniou, mario davidovsky, lukas foss, carlos sánchez gutiérrez, and john mcdonald. their concert pro- grams have included compositions by other latin americans living in the united states such as ricardo romaneiro, ricardo zohn-muldoon, and da- vidovsky. when discussing áltavoz with me, davidovsky himself, originally from argentina, opined that regardless of whether the group develops into a national organization, it is fundamentally a group of composers banding together to concertize their music, a common activity for young compos- ers as well as the young chamber musicians they tend to hire. mcdonald described the collective similarly, adding that except for notable exceptions most student composer collaborations disband when they outlive their use- fulness or when the composers move to other locations. why “latin american”? the composers in áltavoz chose to identify the collective as “latin ameri- can” for three primary reasons: to refl ect a common bond they felt after meeting in the united states, to promote international education through music, and to attract larger audiences. these sentiments and strategies are not evenly shared within the group. despite branding the collective as “latin american,” only one of the composers self-identifi ed as “latin american” before moving to the united states. the members who are less interested in leveraging a latin american identity also wish to expand the group to include non-latin american composers. all the composers have strong personal connections with their countries of birth and intend to participate in the music scenes there, whether or not they return permanently. for hurtado, who considers himself mexican more than latin american, participating in áltavoz is a patriotic activity. to be in this group is to be linked to my country, being in another coun- try . . . reminds me that i have a role in the cultural life of my country, not in the cultural life in this country. . . . i think that’s the fi rst thing and the most important thing, besides giving concerts, besides having a weekly beer [with the other composers]. . . . it is not just that i feel more comfortable speaking spanish. it’s that it reminds me of something— my roots, my origins. that’s the biggest diff erence. malpica identifi es as a peruvian and south american more than with the latin american culture he experienced in and associates with puerto rico, _gidal_ - _lamr- - _ _gidal_ - _lamr- - _ / / : : pm / / : : pm ■ m a r c g i da l where he also lived. malpica’s main goal is to teach music in peru, but he is uncertain whether he will be able to maintain a career as a cutting-edge composer living in peru since a professor’s salary will not support frequent travel to what he considers the centers of new-music—europe and the united states. he fears that his knowledge and approaches will be obsolete within a decade of living in peru. unlike the other composers, grossmann defends “latin american” as inclusive of all cultures of hispanic-iberian origin. he identifi es less ada- mantly as peruvian or south american than malpica does, perhaps due to his dual peruvian and brazilian backgrounds. on the other hand, once he relocated to boston, grossmann began to draw inspiration from peru for his compositions, “probably because i was thinking of traveling back to peru,” he explained. “i started thinking it had been such a long time since i left, that i really need to go back. so my peruvian identity probably started to come up.” grossmann, inspired by his recent professional trip to peru, the fi rst time he returned after leaving seventeen years ago, now wants to visit frequently in order to support the burgeoning scene of “new music.” at the same time, he intends to settle in the united states, not peru, for the same reasons as malpica. by promoting a latin american identity, and thereby off ering something new and unusual to audiences, some members hope to distinguish the group from the myriad composer collectives in the united states. the au- dience surveys i conducted verifi ed the viability of this marketing strategy, despite signifi cant diff erences between their concert audiences at harvard university and the juilliard school in may . a third to half of the audience members who completed surveys knew neither the composers nor the performers. this unaffi liated segment of the audience at the har- vard concert largely consisted of latinos/as and south americans (mostly peruvians), and were either college students or college-educated parents of a college student. a curiosity to hear music either from latin america in general or from specifi c countries motivated this segment to go to the con- cert, yet few attend classical music concerts on a regular basis. by contrast, those who came to the concert at juilliard who did not know a performer or composer were older and not of latin american descent. many attendees who completed surveys frequently attend classical concerts and specifi cally those free of charge at juilliard, likely due to both the school’s location at lincoln center and its international reputation for music. two other audi- ence members were tourists who specifi cally wanted to visit juilliard. one respondent learned about the concert in the weekly magazine time out and was intrigued by the name áltavoz. six respondents likewise indi- cated that hearing latin american music was an important factor in de- termining whether to attend. while those audience members unaffi liated with the composers or performers at the juilliard concert were closer in _gidal_ - _lamr- - _ _gidal_ - _lamr- - _ / / : : pm / / : : pm contemporary “latin american” composers of art music in the u.s. ■ demographic make-up to typical audiences of classical music in the united states than the unaffi liated attendees of the harvard concert, both audi- ences compared to typical classical audiences similarly in terms of educa- tion levels (college educated) and dissimilarly in terms of gender balance (more men than usual). although the audience survey results at both concerts support áltavoz’s claim that marketing its latin american identity has indeed attracted a niche audience, there is a fl ip side: the discourse of aesthetic universal- ism shuns particularist affi liations. encapsulating this dilemma, hurtado describes the group’s intentions as “paradoxical”: they want to promote latin america and advertise themselves as latin american composers, yet he does not want audiences to think about latin america while listening to the music. they distinguish themselves based on their cultural-linguistic and regional backgrounds within a music scene that tends to value the uni- versal appeal of “truly great music” and celebrates the genius of individuals over their social categorization, as was explained earlier. the universalist attitude toward art music manifested itself at their juil- liard concert with objections to the inclusion of the pre-concert talk that they asked me to present. áltavoz hoped that introductory remarks would both contextualize their music and encourage cross-cultural education, one of their stated goals. one attendee, composer david salvage, reviewed the concert for sequenza , an online magazine about contemporary art mu- sic. he reprimanded áltavoz for including the pre-concert talk, describing the move as “a self-aggrandizing, pompous gesture which the collective should never repeat” (salvage ). another attendee tore up my survey and privately told me in response to my talk that “the music should speak for itself.” although grossmann dismissed these two incidents as personal grievances, i believe they refl ect the confl ict between aesthetic universal- ism and american multiculturalism within art-music culture in the united states. when i asked león about the age-old saying, “the music should speak for itself,” she denied that a universal aesthetic judgment exists and could be applied without understanding musical references, whether they are cultural, national, or stylistic: “well, music should speak for itself, well that is very nice but if you understand what you are hearing. you see, i think music is a language. . . . if you don’t understand the language or if you don’t have any reference that will press your buttons in terms of what you heard, i have no idea if the person will enjoy the piece or not.” the emphasis áltavoz places on a latin american identity strikes a nerve with some inside conservatory circles who imagine all art music as a unifi ed genre and wish to use uniform criteria for aesthetic evaluation. meanwhile, latin american identity strikes a positive chord with other con- certgoers, mainly those new to the art-music scene and curious to hear something novel or with which they expect to identify personally. _gidal_ - _lamr- - _ _gidal_ - _lamr- - _ / / : : pm / / : : pm ■ m a r c g i da l sounding latin american? sounding cosmopolitan? clearly the latin american identity of áltavoz refl ects their interpersonal affi nities and their strategies for self-promotion and cross-cultural educa- tion. but what about their music sounds “latin american” if their unmis- takably abstract styles lack explicit references to latin american popular and folk music? musicologists continue to debate whether contemporary composers from latin america actually sound latin american. at one ex- treme, coriún aharonián has identifi ed thirteen “observable trends . . . that can be considered characteristic of [contemporary] latin america.” at the other, nicholas collins, asked sarcastically with regards to electronic music composition, “does a hand in the south rotate knobs diff erently from a hand in the north, á la coriolis eff ect?” (collins ). orrego-salas, when discussing aleatory music, emphasized the subjectivity of any such interpretation. he proposes that whether or not local distinctiveness can theoretically exist in aleatory music, in reality “composers have often verbal- ized their intentions or at least their hopes of opening paths of vernacular signifi cance through means allied to improvisatory methods of avant-garde composition” (orrego-salas : ). in between these extreme opinions are those who embrace the nebu- lous but popular concept of a musical “accent” that reveals regional aesthet- ics—an opinion that most composers in the present study share. béhague concluded his book-length study of art music by extending chilean com- poser gustavo becerra-schmidt’s notion of the brazilian sotaque—a local, regional accent—to describe all of latin american art music, asserting that he could detect a latin american aesthetic in even the most experimen- tal compositions by latin american composers: “admittedly, it is diffi cult to point out accurately where and how the sotaque manifests itself in the considerable music production since , but its existence can hardly be questioned. given the uniqueness of the cultural context in which his mu- sic is created, the latin american composer cannot escape revealing some aspects of that context” (béhague : ). león, while resisting labels that depict her music as exotic, employs the accent metaphor to describe a subtle latin american aesthetic in her music: “i speak with an accent, so my music might have an accent, which might not be understood by many people. and if the accent has to happen to be roots or folklore or whatever you want to call it at some point, fi ne. that’s okay” (raymond ). “ac- cent” may be what the áltavoz composers meant when describing their music as “fi ne art with a latin american fl avor.” despite their stylistic diff erences, all of them told me that they can detect a similarity in their mu- sic—a latin american quality, accent, or fl avor—however diffi cult it may be to identify or describe. _gidal_ - _lamr- - _ _gidal_ - _lamr- - _ / / : : pm / / : : pm contemporary “latin american” composers of art music in the u.s. ■ out of the fi ve composers, jorge grossmann is most comfortable iden- tifying a latin american aesthetic in all their music and wants to keep álta- voz an organization open only to composers considered latin american. he suggested that a sense of drama is present in their compositions and is typical of latin american art in general. the fi rst concert we did at bu was all compositions to latin ameri- can poems. i sat in the audience and listened. we are all from diff er- ent places, we’re of diff erent ages, studied with diff erent teachers, but i could pick out many similarities in our music and that made me re- ally happy because at least there’s one more reason why we’re part of a group. all of the songs had a really strong, dramatic content that is very much present in the art of latin america for centuries. refuting my speculation that the drama he sensed may have come more from the poetic texts than the music, grossmann noted that he has felt similarly about their concerts of instrumental music. he also illustrated this drama using two works he composed in boston which most explic- itly reference peru, titled “away” ( ) and “siray” ( ), respectively meaning “to sow” and “to weave” in quechua. tapestries of the pre-incan paracan people inspired his general compositional approach in that the crisscrossing musical lines symbolically represent both colorful threads and the dialogues between mythological characters depicted on the tap- estries. although the analogies stop at this basic level, to him these pieces exemplify the drama in latin american art. the way grossmann negotiates universalism and multiculturalism de- pends on where he is and with whom he is speaking. although it may seem that grossmann wears his peruvian identity on his sleeve, so to speak, he said he would never present himself in brazil as composing brazilian or peruvian music, because the current universalistic climate in the conserva- tory culture there avoids throwbacks to overtly nationalistic music. “i would be labeled as a conservative, démodé composer who tries to continue the long-gone tradition of s nationalism” (personal communication, janu- ary , ). what serves as an asset in united states identity politics is a liability in brazil. composers also vary in their interpretations of latin american refer- ences or infl uences in each other’s works. hurtado told me that malpica’s works “exabruptos” (outbursts) and “mi selva” (my jungle) remind him of the peruvian jungle. according to malpica, however, “mi selva” refers as much to the metaphorical jungle of emotional turmoil as it does imagi- nary jungles in nature, be they inspired by the peruvian amazon he visited in his youth or the jungles he has seen in television documentaries. he _gidal_ - _lamr- - _ _gidal_ - _lamr- - _ / / : : pm / / : : pm ■ m a r c g i da l had been developing an emotionally self-expressive approach in all his re- cent compositions. nonetheless, memories of peru did infl ect these works: “nothing specifi c to the peruvian rainforest, but it has some freely inter- preted rhythms from peru. i think more about the sierra than the jungle.” malpica strives to express an emotional quality that is both personal and universally appreciated. at the same time, calling himself, on his website, a “peruvian composer” front and center and referencing peru in titles and liner notes allows concert reviewers (e.g., salvage ), and even his col- league hurtado, to interpret his work as explicitly peruvian. while clari- fying this matter, malpica underscored the coexistence of personal and cultural/national qualities in the work of every composer (personal com- munication, december , ). the composers diff er in the degree to which their compositions inten- tionally reference the local cultures of their native countries and to what ex- tent they want audiences to perceive these references. whereas grossmann and malpica exhibit infl uences in their works or descriptions, hurtado, lara, and pauly do not make such connections obvious. “i just choose, and this a personal aesthetic choice, to leave these references where they be- long: in the ambiguous weave of each given piece,” pauly told me. “in this sense it is not that i express the least [‘personal connections with costa rica’],” refuting a statement i had made during our correspondence. “it is all, always expressed, and it will all somehow get to the listener, but i choose to leave it to the listener to think and feel what he/she chooses” (personal communication, february , ). it seems that pauly would prefer that the “music speak for itself” in a relative sense; in other words every listener draws upon their own aesthetics and inevitably appreciates the music dif- ferently. some listeners will inevitably perceive cultural references in their works, whether or not the composer does, as was the case with hurtado’s and salvage’s interpretations of malpica’s work. performances can further confuse attempts to identify cultural aesthet- ics in art music and distinguish them from the composer’s idiosyncrasies. for example, two musicians active in new york’s scene of experimental new music, clarinetist jean kopperud and pianist stephen gosling, com- missioned a virtuosic showcase from lara, who delivered a piece requir- ing extended techniques and extreme dynamics. his peer composers, teachers, and the performers all described the resulting duet, “livro dos sonhos” ( ), as dramatic, but they off ered diff erent explanations rang- ing from the personal to the cultural to the circumstantial. when i dis- cussed the work with lara and hurtado, after watching a video-recording of their concert at juilliard, our conversation turned from matters of music analysis to performance techniques. they compared two perfor- mances of kopperud and gosling to four previous performances by clari- netist michael norsworthy and pianist john mcdonald, lara’s composition _gidal_ - _lamr- - _ _gidal_ - _lamr- - _ / / : : pm / / : : pm contemporary “latin american” composers of art music in the u.s. ■ teacher at tufts university and an áltavoz adviser. lara felt that kopperud and gosling played the score more precisely in terms of note-wise accuracy, while mcdonald’s heightened expressivity caught their attention. he exag- gerated gestures and produced a more “raw or rough” character unlike the “purity” of kopperud and gosling’s performances. hurtado “heard more of felipe [lara]” in mcdonald and norsworthy’s performances, a statement that lara found paradoxical. “but how?” he asked, laughing. “felipe writes the piece as accurately as he can, and the less accurate [rendition] is more felipe?” after lara’s wife roberta crelier lara joined the conversation, the three of them concluded that although kopperud and gosling played the score more accurately, mcdonald was able to express more of lara’s per- sonality because he knew lara’s intentions. mcdonald generally agreed with this assessment. aside from providing insight into the complex relationships among a composer, a teacher, a score and a performer, and the diffi culties locating a musical work between a score and its performance, this anecdote illus- trates how the so-called “dramatic” quality of lara’s work can be diversely interpreted, even amongst those closest to the composer. the commission- ers of “livro dos sonhos” asked for a highly virtuosic piece, which techni- cally created dramatic music. davidovsky briefl y considered that the drama in lara’s work may reveal his brazilian upbringing, thereby also assum- ing that drama is a brazilian aesthetic. mcdonald dismissed the idea that lara’s work sounded brazilian, but that he performed it more dramatically than had gossling. hurtado heard more of lara in the rawness and drama of mcdonald’s performance. malpica thought that the “wonderful aggres- siveness” of “livro dos sonhos” exemplifi ed lara’s personality, though did not remember any diff erences among the performances. everyone heard drama in lara’s piece, but it remains unclear the extent to which it refl ects a brazilian aesthetic, lara’s personality or tastes, the executions of the per- formers, expectations of various listeners, or the circumstances of the com- mission. it appears that any claim that lara’s work sounds “brazilian” or “latin american” is impossible to justify, and may merely refl ect a specifi c agenda or unconscious bias. regarding the composers of áltavoz, davidovsky highlighted the com- plexities of their backgrounds, their idiosyncrasies, and the subtle level at which these references may operate, which have less to do with the com- poser’s culture than his personal motives. as he told me, “i don’t want to diminish the defi nitive character of the culture, but at the high end of high music, really, those diff erence[s] are there, but much, much more subtle. it’s not the quotation of the tune. it’s the quotation of something that is much more abstract.” listening to their music we may agree with the universalistic interpretation that davidovsky off ers. but language such as “the high end of high music” reminds us of the elitism and aesthetic _gidal_ - _lamr- - _ _gidal_ - _lamr- - _ / / : : pm / / : : pm ■ m a r c g i da l universalism in art-music culture that ignores cultural diff erences among composers—whether or not they are explicitly or intentionally presented in compositions. davidovsky, like the other composers, seeks a balance be- tween the roles of individuals and cultures in shaping compositions, a goal shared by cosmopolitanism. it is one thing to argue that cosmopolitanism provides a suitable frame- work for interpreting the experiences and opinions of these composers, especially in terms of their transnational mobility, intercultural compe- tency, socioeconomic class mobility, and attempts to balance universalist and particularist self-identities. it would be another to claim that their mu- sical compositions are cosmopolitan, that is, exhibit or refl ect these same characteristics. if, for example, a cosmopolitan composition is defi ned as one that balances so-called “universal” compositional techniques and local musical references, then works of musical nationalism from the fi rst half of the twentieth century would sound far more cosmopolitan than the ab- stract music of hurtado, lara, and pauly. the latin american references in the works by these composers, if they exist at all, are so subtle that they re- main largely undetectable or are misunderstood even by each other. since malpica and grossmann explicitly integrate peruvian rhythms and mytho- logical themes into some compositions, should their works be considered more cosmopolitan than those of their colleagues? does golijov’s music sound more cosmopolitan than león’s for its explicit genre references? an- other challenge in constructing a cosmopolitan musical analysis would be deciphering how an empathy with and competency in multiple cultures manifest musically. some of león’s compositions, and most of golijov’s, evince intercultural empathy, in that they outright integrate several musical traditions. still, answering any of these questions quickly becomes a search for easily identifi able references to culturally specifi c music genres in com- positions and performances, be they from parts of latin america, europe, the united states, or elsewhere. i remain skeptical that the working defi ni- tions of cosmopolitanism, which were created to describe the experiences and politics of individuals and communities, are applicable to an analysis or interpretation of music. conclusion three decades ago, de la vega wrote that the “european egocentrism and superiority that totally dominated the international panorama of art music for centuries” had gradually been replaced, especially since the s, with a “global melting pot of music” in which latin american composers in the united states have contributed to a “hemispheric american music” (de la vega a: ). as the united states became a viable destination for com- posers from latin america seeking training and employment, immigrant _gidal_ - _lamr- - _ _gidal_ - _lamr- - _ / / : : pm / / : : pm contemporary “latin american” composers of art music in the u.s. ■ composers would still have to navigate identity politics in the united states that had inevitably infl uenced its art-music scene. based on the experiences, strategies, and critical reception of the seven contemporary composers, this article highlights a tension between an american version of multicultural- ism that strengthened in the s and an older aesthetic universalism. the discourse of multiculturalism justifi es labeling the composers and their music as “latin american” (or by national origin) no matter how the composers self-identify and regardless of how “latin american” their mu- sic sounds. meanwhile, the competing discourse of aesthetic universalism, in its zeal to evaluate all art music on presumably equal terms, ignores the specifi c backgrounds of composers as well as its inherent eurocentrism. the relative abstractness of each composer’s works illustrates some of the resulting frictions and ironies of these identity politics. it is under- standably diffi cult for audiences to notice cultural infl uences in abstract art music that typically lacks overt references to musical genres other than itself. although some of león’s compositions utilize music and topical themes from her childhood in cuba, she often incorporates these resources in subtle ways, as was discussed with regards to her piece “batá.” regard- less of her music’s relatively abstract quality, producers of recordings and concerts, critics, and music historians often identify her based on social categories including “latin american,” “cuban,” “african american,” and “woman composer.” meanwhile, the composers of áltavoz actively promote the collective and its music as “latin american” (internal disagreements notwithstanding), despite the highly abstract nature of their music and their desires to be evaluated on equal footing with other composers. by contrast, golijov explicitly rejects the more abstract styles and atonality of modernist and contemporary art music, which he feels alienate audiences (eichler ). because musical references to traditions from latin amer- ica, the iberian peninsula, and elsewhere are explicit in his works, some of golijov’s critics label him “multicultural” and some leverage a universalist stance to question his compositional creativity. the more abstract styles of león and the composers of áltavoz have spared them from as many such indictments. still, áltavoz composers sense subtle qualities of each other’s music that each has variously identifi ed as latin american, brazilian, and peruvian, although complications related to the intentions of composers, idiosyncrasies of performers, and the subjectivity of reception hinder their abilities to pinpoint such aesthetics. the seven composers use diff erent tactics when wrestling a critical es- tablishment in the united states that is fl uent in multiculturalism, while stalwart in aesthetic universalism. león protests the reductionist, essen- tialist, and exoticist tendencies of multiculturalism. though universalism has off ered león some refuge from cultural pigeonholing, she also came to reject the related myth of autonomous, de-contextualized composers _gidal_ - _lamr- - _ _gidal_ - _lamr- - _ / / : : pm / / : : pm ■ m a r c g i da l and consciously attempts to express her personal cuban heritage through modernist art-music. golijov rejects multiculturalist labels arguing that his works refl ect his own family background much less than they draw on mu- sic circulating within global networks to which he was exposed. witness his use in la pasión según san marcos of brazilian capoeira and samba, spanish fl amenco, and afro-cuban religious percussion, popular genres he heard outside their countries of origin. the composers of áltavoz utilize multicultural agendas in the u.s. art-music scene by labeling their collec- tive as “latin american” because it distinguishes their collective from the myriad of composers consortia as well as refl ects their mutual feelings of cultural-linguistic camaraderie while abroad. yet each wants his music to be evaluated using universalistic criteria. the framework of cosmopolitanism seeks to mitigate both universalist and particularist ideologies, global and local affi nities, and thereby accounts for the diverse ways that composers navigate these competing discourses. none of the composers reviewed here is satisfi ed being grouped according to u.s. social categories, including “latin american,” instead preferring to highlight his or her specifi c relationships with individuals and communi- ties, formative experiences that continue to infl uence their music. at the same time, each feels an affi nity with multiple collectivities, be they known as cubans, mexicans, musicians, composers, conductors, and, occasion- ally, when in the united states, latin americans. cosmopolitanism also ad- dresses other key aspects of the composers’ experiences and perspectives, such as mobility, both in terms of an international occupational class and transnational migration. all of them have relocated at least once within the americas and continually travel to attend performances of their works and to teach in workshops. while studying music and living abroad they make economic sacrifi ces with the hope of gaining upward mobility as they be- come professionals and respected artists in the eyes of elite culture. lastly, cosmopolitanism speaks to their deeper engagement, or cultural competen- cies, with the local communities in which they work and reside, including their native communities, the art-music conservatory cultures, and cul- turally diverse metropolises such as new york city and boston. although perhaps inapplicable to musical analysis, cosmopolitanism addresses the experiences and perspectives of these composers as they navigate multicul- turalist and universalist discourses in the united states. notes i presented part of this research at the ilassa annual conference at the uni- versity of texas–austin. most of the featured composers generously off ered me in- valuable cooperation (see list of interviews). carol oja, christopher washburne, and the anonymous reviewers of this journal provided me constructive critiques. _gidal_ - _lamr- - _ _gidal_ - _lamr- - _ / / : : pm / / : : pm contemporary “latin american” composers of art music in the u.s. ■ this research also benefi ted from the advice and/or assistance of emily abrams ansari, william bares, crystal fleming, erin graff -zivin, sheryl kaskowitz, ari kelman, marc lavine, drew massey, and mark pachuki. . interview with author, july , . . “lo que yo hago es más extremo porque mi trayectoria fue más zigzagueante todavía y porque el mundo está más globalizado. no es porque yo dije ‘vamos a combinar latino con esto otro.’” (“el platense que cautiva al mundo de la música”, el día, la plata, argentina, june , , available at osvaldo golijov’s website, http://www.osvaldogolijov.com/npd .htm, accessed october , . translated by the author.) although golijov made this comment in argentina, it expresses a sentiment discussed in this article. . interview with author, march , . . original research for this article includes interviews and conversations with composers, their advisors and performers of their music (see list of interviews). all quotations are from these interviews unless otherwise stated. i also conducted two audience surveys during concerts of áltavoz at paine hall, harvard univer- sity (may , , p.m.) and at paul hall, the juilliard school (may , , p.m.). . de la vega’s review included the three best-known latin american compos- ers (chávez, villa-lobos, and ginastera), four composers who studied in the united states early in their careers and later returned permanently (cordero, serebrier, orbón, and lizaso), and three composers who migrated to the united states after they had established themselves (orrego-salas, davidovsky, and de la vega him- self ) (de la vega a). . due to the eff orts of musicologists charles seeger and gilbert chase, colom- bian conductor guillermo espinosa and argentine musician efraín paesky, the di- vision published pamphlets on latin american “folk music,” catalogues and scores by latin american composers, and a spanish-language volume describing music in the united states to latin american audiences (chase [ ] : , ). as the presence of latin american art music in the united states grew, so did its study among historical musicologists in the united states, though not extensively. musi- cologists have largely left the subject to robert stevenson, gilbert chase, and a few immigrant composers/scholars/advocates—de la vega, gerard béhague, and or- rego-salas—who have bemoaned how long it had taken for comprehensive studies to be undertaken in english (e.g., piza ; de la vega b). . latin american music center website, http://www.music.indiana.edu/som/ lamc/ [december , ] . sonidos de las américas’ website, http://www.americancomposers.org/ sonidos.htm [december , ]; ben-dor music discovery project website, http://www.tangofestival.net/bendor.htm, accessed december , ; symphony of the americas’ website, http://www.symphonyoftheamericas.org, accessed de- cember , . philharmonic orchestra of the americas’ website, http://www .poamericas.org, accessed may , . . garcía canclini contrasts multiculturalism in the united states with cultural pluralism in latin america (garcía canclini : ), and amy gutmann distin- guishes three types of multiculturalism in canada and the subsequent version in the united states (gutmann ). _gidal_ - _lamr- - _ _gidal_ - _lamr- - _ / / : : pm / / : : pm ■ m a r c g i da l . as bruce robbins observes, “defenses of universalism, like attacks on it, are increasingly a trivial pursuit, for it is no longer clear whether there is anyone home on either end” ( : ). . in his survey of music and nationalism in latin american art-music, for ex- ample, turino writes: “cultural nationalists typically express that a new national culture will be forged from the best of local ‘traditional’ culture combined with the best of foreign and ‘modern’, that is, cosmopolitan, culture. the localist elements (e.g., gauchos, ‘folk’ music) in the reformist mix are for emblematic distinction and also function as signs of unity or inclusion; the cosmopolitan features (e.g., national anthems and ‘folk’ music) create iconicity with other nation-states, and are also due to the fact that the designers of state-cultural nationalism are cosmopolitans them- selves (turino )” (turino : – ). . donna jean reiner thoughtfully discusses the problems with labeling león and her music along u.s.-based notions of race, ethnicity, national origin, and gender. she interprets león’s situation using canclini’s rubric of transculturation (reiner : chapter ; see also, spinazzola : ff .). . for more information about león’s professional activities and accomplish- ments, see her online biography (http://www.tanialeon.com, accessed september , ). . león also notes that her close associations with the european composers louis andriessen, luciano berio, and hans werner henze, as mentors and friends, have helped her visibility in europe (ibid.). . osvaldo golijov website, “biography,” http://www.osvaldogolijov.com/bio .htm, revised in april, . . other examples include the following: “a few dissenters wondered about the passion’s originality as a concert work, given its heavy reliance on existing idioms” (eichler ); “it might legitimately be asked whether golijov is still writing clas- sical music or whether, as one harvard professor complained, he is merely tran- scribing sounds that can be heard in any marketplace in mexico” (ross ). . the ideal of the composer as autonomous genius began dominating music criticism only in the late th century, before which time explicit musical borrow- ings were commonplace (burkholder ). a resurgence in musical quotations occurred during the twentieth century, as in the works of charles ives and duke ellington (metzer ). (thanks to sean gallagher for introducing me to this material.) . ross repeated this point in his radio interview with tom ashbrook (“listen- ing to the th century,” national public radio, aired on wbur radio, boston, friday, october , ). . each maintains a website with a biography, news, works lists, recordings, and music samples: grossmann (http://www.shadowofthevoices.com), hurtado (http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~hurtado/), lara (http://www.felipelara.com), malpica (http://www.pedromalpica.com), and pauly (http://www.ranchonotorious .org, http://mauriciopauly.com). . john walker’s study of contemporary ecuadorian composers reveals that al- though “a career in music represents a way up the socioeconomic ladder,” musi- cians there occupy economic levels just above the poverty line (walker : , ). because of a lack of arts support in chile, luis merino describes a “chilean _gidal_ - _lamr- - _ _gidal_ - _lamr- - _ / / : : pm / / : : pm contemporary “latin american” composers of art music in the u.s. ■ diasporic interculture” of art music composers who are economically unable to return, resulting in linkages across national boundaries (merino ). . davidovsky, on the other hand, observed that the internet has allowed com- posers in latin america to remain aware of innovations. . approximately people attended the concert at harvard and at juilliard. a majority of both audiences returned surveys: percent at harvard and per- cent at juilliard. ten out of survey respondents at harvard and thirteen out of respondents at juilliard did not know a composer or performer on the program. . in the concert’s advertisement in the weekly entertainment guide time out, the word “free,” in red bold type, distinguished it from the other two classical con- certs listed that evening. . for demographic information on classical concert audiences, see dimaggio and mukhtar ( ). . i agree with most of salvage’s critique regarding the length and content of my talk. . aharonián’s thirteen trends are: “ . the latin american sense of time . . . . non-discursive process of music pieces . . . . expressive blocks . . . . reitera- tive elements . . . . austerity . . . . violence and a liking for the ‘little things’ . . . . silence . . . as a cultural symbol . . . . presence of the ‘primitive’ . . . . an at- tempt to make new technologies one’s own . . . . breaking through the borders . . . . ideological awareness . . . . magic . . . . identity” (aharonián : – ). . composers have often leveraged aleatory music to prove the universalism of contemporary music, a strategy that some critics say ignores contextual issues of race, class, and gender (e.g., lewis [ ] ). . concert program, áltavoz concierto v, the juilliard school, new york, april, , . . drama is not one of aharonián’s thirteen trends of contemporary latin american aesthetics. . orrego-salas might classify grossmann’s goal to root his music in peru- vian history and values, rather than experimentation for experimentation’s sake, in the introspective trend of “reconciliation with the past” that emerged in the s (orrego-salas : ). the same could be said of león’s music after her transfor- mative visit to cuba in . list of interviews mario davidovsky, telephone interview, december , jorge villavicencio grossmann, telephone interview, december , felipe lara, in person interview, february , tania león, telephone interview, july , josé luis hurtado, in person interview, march , josé luis hurtado and felipe lara, in person feedback interview, october , pedro malpica, telephone interview, december , john mcdonald, in person interview, november , mauricio pauly, email interview, december , and january , note: ongoing correspondences have followed all of the initial interviews except with davidovsky. _gidal_ - _lamr- - _ _gidal_ - _lamr- - _ / / : : pm / / : : pm ■ m a r c g i da l discography golijov, osvaldo. . la pasión según san marcos. germany: hänssler-verlag; universal edition wien. león, tania. . indígena. new york: composers recordings, inc. ———. . singin’ sepia. new york: bridge records. snell, david, and foundation philharmonic orchestra. . women write music orchestral music by th century women composers. outremont, québec, canada: atma. solomon, nanette kaplan. . character sketches solo piano works by american women. new york: leonardo. thamyris. . a city called heaven. atlanta: aca digital recording. upshaw, dawn, david zinman, and orchestra of st. luke’s. . the world so wide. new york: nonesuch. voices of change, and james rives-jones. . voces americanas: music of rob- ert xavier rodriguez, mario lavista, roberto sierra, mario davidovsky, tania león. new york: cri. walwyn, karen. . dark fi res: th century music for piano. new york: albany records. references aharonián, coriún. . “an approach to compositional trends in latin amer- ica.” leonardo music journal : – . appiah, anthony. . cosmopolitanism: ethics in a world of strangers. new york: w.w. norton & co. barth, fredrik. . introduction. in ethnic groups and boundaries: the social organi- zation of culture diff erence, ed. f. barth. boston: little, brown and company. béhague, gerard. . music in latin america: an introduction. englewood cliff s, nj: prentice-hall. bhabha, homi. . “unsatisfi ed: notes on vernacular cosmopolitanism.” in text and nation, ed. l. garcia-morena and p. c. pfeifer. london: camden house. bilby, kenneth m. . “‘roots explosion’: indigenization and cosmopolitanism in contemporary surinamese popular music.” ethnomusicology , no. : – . bohlman, philip v. . “becoming ethnomusicologists: on cosmopolitanism— our journeys with others.” sem newsletter , no. : . bourdieu, pierre. 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_lamr- - _ _gidal_ - _lamr- - _ / / : : pm / / : : pm ■ m a r c g i da l tsioulcas, anastasia. . “golijov’s opera a hit.” billboard ( ). turino, thomas r. . nationalists, cosmopolitans, and popular music in zimba- bwe. chicago: university of chicago press. ———. . “nationalism and latin american music: selected case studies and theoretical considerations.” latin american music review , no. : – . tusa, michael c. . “cosmopolitanism and the national opera: weber’s der freischutz.” the journal of interdisciplinary history. , no. , opera and society. i: – . walker, john l. . “the younger generation of ecuadorian composers.” latin american music review , no. : – . werbner, pnina, ed. . anthropology and the new cosmopolitanism: rooted, femi- nist and vernacular perspectives. oxford; new york: berg. yúdice, george. . “we are not the world.” social text , no. : – . _gidal_ - _lamr- - _ _gidal_ - _lamr- - _ / / : : pm / / : : pm ©the author(s) . published by research in film and history. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons by–nc–nd . license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/ . /). archiveology: walter benjamin and archival film practices catherine russell published: november , figure . la fÉe aux pigeons, the pigeon fairy, segundo de chomón/gaston velle, f method of this project: literary montage. i needn’t say anything. merely show. i shall purloin no valuables, appropriate no ingenious formulations. but the rags, the refuse—these i will not inventory but allow, in the only way possible, to come into their own: by making use of them. walter benjamin the term ‘archiveology’ is a neologism that can help us understand a mode of film language in which authorship is transformed into practices of research, appropriation, borrowing and recycling. my book, with the same name as this paper, is an inquiry into the stakes of this new language, what can it say, and how can we read it critically and productively. archiveology is a critical method research in film and history ‣ issue . this essay is comprised of selections from chapters , , and , in the newly published title archiveology, by catherine russell. copyright, , duke university press. all rights reserved. republished by permission of the copyright holder. www.dukeupress.edu . walter benjamin, the arcades project, trans. howard eiland and kevin mclaughlin, (cambridge, ma: harvard university press, ), . . catherine russell, archiveology: walter benjamin and archival film practices , forthcoming from duke university press, . this article is a translation of portions of that book. http://www.dukeupress.edu/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/ . / derived from walter benjamin’s cultural theory that i believe provides valuable tools for grasping the implications of the practice of remixing and reconfiguring the image bank of film and media histories. as the status of the archive has been transformed in digital culture from the closed institution to open access, so too have its aesthetics and politics. in my book experimental ethnography, i wrote about found footage filmmaking in terms of apocalypse culture. in it seemed as if this mode of film practice was preoccupied with ‘the end of history’ and the promise that benjamin held out for cinema had failed to be realized. seventeen years later, as archival film practices have become more prevalent in mainstream culture, and in experimental media, i am more optimistic about the cultural role of audio-visual appropriation. one key change has been a shift in theory and practice to the recognition of the research function implicit in archival film practices. ‘found footage’ links the mode to surrealist practices of accident and recontextualization, but negates the extensive searching that sustains the practice. recognition of the search function in archiveology highlights the role of the moving-image archive, and its transformation in digital culture. the filmmaker is not unlike the archaeologist who ‘finds’ things and is able to recognize their cultural value. whether their search is conducted by algorithm, or through files or film cans, every find for the filmmaker is a lucky find when it can be recombined with other images to create a new experience and even knew knowledge. figure . from the pole to the equator, angela ricci-lucchi/yervant gianikian, i/d the term ‘archiveology’ was originally coined by joel katz in , partly in response to the release of from the pole to the equator (i/d ) by angela ricci-lucchi and yervant gianikian, one of the first experimental films to explicitly work with material from a film archive. katz used the term to refer to the ways that filmmakers were making the archive research in film and history ‣ catherine russell ‣ archiveology . catherine russell, experimental ethnography: the work of film in the age of video, (durham, nc: duke university press, ). . joel katz, “from archive to archiveology,” cinematograph ( ): - . i also attempted to “define” the term in a “lexicon for the th century a.d.” public ( ) eds. christine davis, ken allan and lang baker, . research in film and history ‣ catherine russell ‣ archiveology useful, and engaging with it on its own terms. by the early s rick prelinger’s archive of ephemeral film was already pointing to the way that audio- visual kitsch provided a rich resource for rethinking and remaking american cultural history. both the italian team and prelinger have continued to expand their archival film practices, along with a plenitude of other film and video artists, exploring the potential of audio-visual fragments to construct new ways of accessing and framing histories that might otherwise have been forgotten and neglected—and to make these histories relevant to contemporary concerns. etymologically, archiveology might mean the study of archives, but the greek suffix -‘ology’ actually refers to someone who speaks in a certain manner. when applied to film practice, it refers to the use of the image archive as a language. moreover, the connotations of archaeology point to the cultural history that is inevitably inscribed in resurrected film fragments. film and media artists are transforming cinema into an archival language, helping us to rethink film history as a source of rich insight into historical experience. the technologies of film stocks, video grain and other signs of media history are often inscribed within the imagery of archival film practices, inscribing a materiality into this practice; just as often, though, digital effects can alter the image and obfuscate both the original ‘support’ material as well as the referential indexicality. as thomas elsaesser notes, when post-production becomes “the default value” it “changes cinema’s inner logic and ontology”. he compares the new mode of image-making to “the extraction of natural resources,” among other things. his caveat that “the ethics of appropriation will take on a whole other dimension” is a theme for which walter benjamin’s cultural politics provides valuable guidance—and one of the many reasons why i have turned to his ideosyncratic cultural theory for a better grasp of archiveology. figure . world mirror cinema/welt spiegel kino, gustav deutsch, aut . thomas elsaesser, “the ethics of appropriation: found footage between archive and internet,” in found footage magazine issue (october ): – . . a german anthology was published in of articles by a range of theorists including derrida and foucault, plus numerous other literary and art theorists such as boris groys, benjamin buchloh and paul ricoeur. ebeling, knut, and stephan günzel, archivologie: theorien des archivs in philosophie, medien und künsten (berlin: kulturverlag kadmos, ). . lynne huffer, mad for foucault: rethinking the foundations of queer theory, (new york: columbia university press, ), . . rick prelinger, “points of origin: discovering ourselves through access,” moving image , no. ( ): – . . sven spieker, the big archive: art from bureaucracy, (cambridge, ma: mit press, ), xiii. the term archiveology has been used to refer to the work of derrida and foucault, who have of course contributed immensely to our understanding of the archive as a social practice. derrida’s „archive fever” is manifest in the way that archival film practices work against the archive itself by fragmenting, destroying and ruining the narrativity of the source material. the death drive is always at work in films that are built on the ruins of historical pleasures and experiences, subjecting them to the repetitions of remediation. the term archiveology surfaces occasionally in discussions of foucault, for whom the archive functions as an archaeology of knowledge and is the basis of all discursive practice. his sense of the archive as constitu ting a “border of time” is key to the effects of media archiveology and its d iscontinuous effects of historicity. in the early th century, the architecture, social role, a nd politics of the archive have been radically changed from their origins in insti tutional ‘domiciliation’. film and media archivists are tasked with making film history accessible and transmissible; in ‘restoring’ and preserving film, they are frequently transforming film into new media by using digit al techniques, thereby challenging norms of authenticity, media specificity and origins that have traditionally been attached to the archive. the gate- keeping function of the traditional ‘archon’ no doubt persists, and has taken on new personas such as that of the copyright holder and the pay-wall; but many gates are easily breached with the aid of digital tools. with the new challenges, platforms, and activities of film and media archives, the practice of archiving is changing rapidly, and has in many cases blended into creative art practices. i f we are all archiving all the time in an effort to manage our own computer files, then the public/private distinction between archive and collection may also be a rguably dissolving. the digital turn is, however, only one more phase of a pr ocess that sven spieker claims to be endemic to modernity. from the perspe ctive of the avant-garde, the archive is a transformational process, with the power of turning garbage into culture. however, the flip side of this claim is also true —that “when an archive has to collect everything, because every object may become useful in the future, it will soon succumb to entropy and chaos.” spieker’s analysis of the multiple art practices that h ave pitched themselves against the institutions and codes of bureaucracy is e choed in paula amad’s account of the counter-archive, which makes similar a rguments in connection to the film archive as it emerged in the early th century. the dream of complete knowledge in the totalizing capacity of the ph otographic record, and the incorporation of ‘the everyday’ into the histor ical record (the trash) constituted a real challenge to historiographic meth od. with the cinema, archives are no longer about origins. documents are re presentations that have their own networks of secrets, which will always be in e xcess of their ostensible meaning as evidence. as foucault has taught us, the archive should not be taken as knowledge itself, but should be recognized as a key site of the power and social relations that provide the conditions for knowledge. the archive as a construction site was at the basis of benjamin’s understanding of it. in keeping with bergson and kracauer, the archive for benjamin is always about memory and the condition of forgetting. the camera fundamentally altered the function of human memory, precisely by transforming it into a kind research in film and history ‣ catherine russell ‣ archiveology http://www.artandresearch.org.uk/v n /verwoert.html of archive. benjamin himself never uses a neologism such as archiveology but he certainly evokes it in a fragment of writing from called excavation and memory. in this fragment, benjamin suggests that memory might itself be a medium. he compares memory to an archaeological process in which the “richest prize” is the correspondence between present and past. “a good archaeological report,” he argues, “gives an account of the strata which first had to be broken through.” he also says that the “matter itself,” which “yields its long-lost secrets,” produces images that “severed from all earlier associations, reside as treasures in the sober rooms of our later insights.” memory, for benjamin, is only a “medium” insofar as it is experienced; and it is precisely this reawakening of experience that the moving image is able to evoke. figure . film ist, gustav deutsche, aus - the living archive benjamin’s theory of the allegorical image has been widely understood in terms of a modern baroque, but it is evident from contemporary archival film practices that the language of appropriated images is not a dead language. while the archive certainly lends itself frequently to a melancholic sensibility, works such as film ist (gustav deutsche, aut - ) and the maelstrom (peter forgács, nl ) awaken us to new meanings and new histories that can be produced from the ruins of the past. jan verwoert argues that since the s there has been a momentum in critical discourse “away from the arbitrary and constructed character of the linguistic sign towards a desire to understand the performativity of language.” verwoert argues that the appropriated object or language can and will speak back, resisting the desire of the collector seeking to repossess it. the unresolved histories and modernities lingering in the image bank are, in this sense, awaiting practitioners to bring them to life and allow them to speak. research in film and history ‣ catherine russell ‣ archiveology . walter benjamin, “excavation and memory,” selected writings. vol. , – , ed. michael j. jennings, howard eiland, and gary smith, trans. jonathan livingstone et al. (cambridge, ma: harvard university press, ), . . verwoert, jan. “apropos appropriation: why stealing images today feels different.” art and research , no. ( ). http:// www.artandresearch.org.uk/ v n /verwoert.html http://www.artandresearch.org.uk/v n /verwoert.html figure . the maelstrom, peter forgács, nl underlying much of the rethinking of archive-based arts after postmodernism is a recognition that images are constitutive of historical experience, and not merely a representation of it. for example, emma cocker argues that archival film practices can produce “empathetic—even resistant or dissenting—forms of memory, a progressive politics.” she describes “ethical possession” as a mode of borrowing from archives for discourses of recuperation and resistance. notwithstanding the vaguaries of copyright law, appropriation needs to be understood as a form of borrowing that can open up new practices of writing history, and conceptualizing the future. cocker describes a “paradigm” shift in the use of archival materials since . for benjamin, quotation and montage are keys to the dialectics of cultural history. the link between excavation and construction is crucial, if the traumas of the past (the history of barbarism) can be the foundation of historical thought. benjamin describes his method in the arcades project as one of “carrying the principle of montage into history… to grasp the construction of history as such.” precisely because images are mediated, “second nature,” they offer unique insights into the past. okwui enwezor introduces the exhibition archive fever as an exhibit that “opens up new pictorial and historiographic experiences against the exactitude of the photographic trace.” in other words, the historical value and implications of appropriation art are not grounded in the indexical authority of the document, but in the life of the document-as-image, and the image-as-document. walter benjamin’s name is frequently cited by theorists of media archaeology wishing to construct a retroactive lineage for a field that has only recently emerged. jussi parikka and erkki huhtamo position him as a key forerunner, alongside foucault, describing the arcades project as an exemplary form of media archaeology, insofar as it is composed of discursive layers of culture, . emma cocker, “ethical possession: borrowing from the archives,” in cultural borrowings: appropriation, reworking, transformation, ed. iain robert smith, a scope e- book. : – . . cocker, . . benjamin, the arcades project, . . okwui enwezor, “archive fever: photography between history and the monument,” in archive fever: uses of the document in contemporary art, (gottingen: steidl, ), - . research in film and history ‣ catherine russell ‣ archiveology research in film and history ‣ catherine russell ‣ archiveology reconstructing paris from its traces in a wide variety of media. benjamin certainly has much to offer this new field, given his recognition of the sensorial effects of new media technologies, and the allegorical status of the ruins of material culture. the filmmakers who i am interested in frequently work with the traces of celluloid degradation, pixilation and other signs of the media from which imagery is borrowed, speaking back to the technologies of production at the same time as they speak back to the image archive. figure . hoax canular, dominic gagnon, can jussi parikka notes that “an archivology [sic] of media does not simply analyze the cultural archive but actively opens new kinds of archival action.” for parikka, following wolfgang ernst, this action seems to be specifically tied to data banks, algorithms and other technical processes. the archive is no longer passive, but is made to generate “new insights” and “unexpected statements and perspectives.” benjamin’s conception of the image, in conjunction with his insights into media, historiography, and the avant- garde provide a means of thinking of archiveology as a creative practice produced by humans, not machines. archiveology in this sense involves the interface of human and machine, or as miriam hansen has argued in her parsing of benjamin, a gamble with technology, with the stakes that of the survival of the human senses within the domain of technology. many filmmakers refer to their work as archaeological, and their films are evidence that media archaeology needs to account for images and sounds, viewers and makers. figure . the clock, christian marclay, uk . jussi parikka, “media archaeology as a transatlantic bridge,” in wolfgang ernst, digital memory and the archive, ed. jussi parikka, (minneapolis: university of minnesota press, ), . . parikka, . . erkki huhtamo and jussi parikka, “introduction: an archaeology of media archaeology,” in media archaeology: approaches, applications, implications, ed. erkki huhtamo and jussi parikka, (berkeley: university of california press, ), . . miriam hansen, cinema and experience : siegfried kracauer, walter benjamin, and theodor adorno (berkeley: university of california press, ), . at the same time as filmmakers are recycling sounds and images in new ways, museums and film archives are also undergoing significant change in the digital era. in the eye museum in amsterdam launched a series of innovative strategies for integrating film practice and production with film restoration and heritage. filmmakers such as gustav deutsche and peter delpeut have been invited to use film fragments from the netherlands film archive for new work; and through online digital platforms, the general public has also been encouraged and enabled to rework material from the film archive. archivists are reaching out to filmmakers to make the film archive accessible, and to bring it to life. meanwhile, media artists such as christian marclay in the clock (uk ) and video quartet (usa ) and raina stephan in les trois disparitions de soad hosni (the three disappearances of soad hosni, lbn/f ) are sampling the archives of popular culture, challenging the conventions of curation and provenance that have historically governed museum practices. these new relationships between filmmakers and museums and galleries point to a new role of the moving image in the refiguration of filmed history and the history of film. figure . the three disappearances of soad hosni, raina stephan, lbn/f found footage, compilation, essay archiveology embraces the full spectrum of image recycling practices, including remix and ‘supercuts’ alongside compilation, essayistic, and avant-garde practices. found-footage filmmaking originated as a genre of experimental film, but in the last years it has evolved into an important type of documentary film and a key component of gallery practice. the film fragments that are recycled are not found in the garbage or the flea-market (or not only found there), but also come from e-bay and from official state-funded archives. sounds and images are collected and recombined in ways that will produce new insights into the past. much of this work is about film history, but that history is revealed to be a rich vein of collective memory, experience, and imagination. . giovanna fossati, “found footage: filmmaking, film archiving and new participatory platforms, in found footage: cinema exposed, (amsterdam: amsterdam university press, ): - . . for a more substantial of the role of archive-based films in the gallery and museum, please see erika balsom, exhibiting cinema in contemporary art (amsterdam: amsterdam university press, ). research in film and history ‣ catherine russell ‣ archiveology for example, bill morrison’s film the great flood (usa ) comprised of footage of the mississippi disaster of is edited without narration, allowing the archival images to come alive with their own effects, augmented by a subtle jazz guitar soundtrack by bill frissell. figure . the great flood, bill morrison, usa compared to the documentary collages of american baseball, jazz, and american national parks authored by ken burns, morrison’s collage is essayistic in its openness and its refusal to pin down meaning. he offers new images, rarely before seen, to create a history of national disaster that is deeply implicated in the racial fabric of the american south. this kind of work may even be described as a form of sensory ethnography, given its lyrical evocation of human behaviour tied to specific places and times. in the author as producer benjamin demanded that writers take up photography. it is not simply to document however. he calls on the activist intellectual to work on “the means of production,” which is to say, the technologies of production, in order to turn spectators into collaborators. in the revolutionary language of a marxist-inflected activism, benjamin describes the writer as an “engineer” who adapts the apparatus, even if it is only a “mediating” role in the revolutionary struggle against capitalism— which in he fully aligns with fascism and its “spiritual” qualities. if benjamin’s rhetoric seems overblown, he nevertheless provides a more engaged model than that of guy debord, even if he shares with debord an insistence on dismantling the society of the spectacle. debord himself was a film essayist of sorts, but unlike debord’s film practice, archiveology is a mode that involves the spectator on a sensual level, appropriating the seductive power of the media for productive purposes. . scott macdonald, “conversations on the avant- doc: scott macdonald interviews.” framework: the journal of cinema and media ( ): - . . walter benjamin, “the author as producer,” selected writings , . . ibid, . research in film and history ‣ catherine russell ‣ archiveology digital cinema is an unreliable cinema, but once we give ourselves up to the performativity of visual language, the falsification of the image can be used in creative ways. for example, kamal aljafari’s recollection (d ) is made from israeli feature films shot in jaffa. using digital effects, aljafari has removed the principle actors from the locations, leaving behind only the streets and buildings, many of them ruined by years of conflict. he lingers on the figures on the periphery, zooming into close-ups of palestinian extras that he finally, at the end of the film, suggests may be relatives and acquaintances. the images are rendered inauthentic due to his magic tricks, but then given a new reality through his retrospective assignation of names and characters. recollection is a film haunted by ghosts, memories, and a history of violence and occupation. the ruined city echoes with an emptiness that the viewer is compelled to fill with imagination, and a recognition that the city is much older than the past century of conflict. aljafari projects himself onto the archival materials in a destructive, poetic, and very personal way. digital tools have only amplified the means by which images can be ‘played’ with and yet a film like recollection points toward the potential even of destroyed and ruined archives to be remade as new ways of knowing the world. figure . recollection, kamal aljafari, d if, for benjamin, eugène atget photographed paris as if it were the scene of a crime, aljafari’s depiction of jaffa renders the entire city a site of a political, historical, and humanitarian crime. his method is precisely a matter of “possessing the object in close-up” and “illuminating the detail” as benjamin describes atget’s practice. the “new way of seeing” that benjamin identifies in atget’s photography of the early th century has been renewed once again by aljafari, whose process starts with refilming the israeli features with a digital camera from the screen; his pans and zooms traverse and examine the cityscapes as media. his exploration of historical displacement is a literal recovery of the city as a space of domiciliation, memory, and imagination. in keeping with these reconsiderations of found footage as historical discourse, i am proposing that archiveology is in fact a language of the audio-visual archive. benjamin saw film as exemplary of a second-order of technology in which an “interplay between human and nature” is prioritized. as miriam hansen has elaborated, one of the key terms in this formulation is “play”. here again, it seems as if the proliferation of archival film practices finally makes benjamin’s theory legible. for benjamin “room-for-play” indicates the extent to which a mediated world contains its own fissures and points of resistance. far from a power structure, the apparatus conceals “productive forces” which can be . walter benjamin, “the work of art in the age of its technological reproducibility (second version),” selected writings. vol. , – , ed. howard eiland and michael w. jennings, trans. edmund jephcott et al. (cambridge, ma: harvard university press, ), . . walter benjamin, “little history of photography,” selected writings, vol : - . research in film and history ‣ catherine russell ‣ archiveology redirected and restaged. this, i would argue, is the space which archival film practices now occupy, and will continue to expand. in other words, insofar as we live in the society of the spectacle with no way out, we need to reuse the remnants of image cultures past in order to better conceptualize the future. archiveology is a mode of film practice that draws on archival material to produce knowledge about how history has been represented; and how representations are more than simply false images, but are actually historical in themselves and have anthropological value. often this process of layering and remediation falls into the category of the essay film. although there is little consensus on what it is exactly, most critics would agree that the essay film involves a conjunction of experimental and documentary practice, and also that it is a mode of address which is often subjective. the essayistic value of archiveology lies in the way that the filmmakers allow the images to speak in their own language. one of the key features of archiveology is that it produces a critical form of recognition. the viewer is able to read the images, even if it is not clear where they come from exactly. the city, the phantasmagoria, and critical cinephilia essay films that draw on archival material have been made about many topics, but a frequent theme of archiveology is the city film. rick prelinger, who is responsible for some of the most extensive moving image archives and some of the richest thinking about moving image archives, has recently turned to the city for a number of ongoing projects of collecting, compilation, and screening. in prelinger’s manifesto on open access, he says that “the public domain is the coolest neighbourhood in town.” indeed the city is traditionally the site of flea markets, garage sales and remainder stores. among the “objects’ in circulation are images of the city itself. prelinger has tapped into such rich resources of city films made by the industry, amateurs and non-theatrical producers that he has been able to make continual re-makes and installments of his film presentations lost landscapes of detroit (usa ), lost landscapes of los angeles (usa ) and lost landscapes of san francisco (usa ). rather than finish these films, prelinger prefers to screen them theatrically, inviting the audience to collectively add the narration live. research in film and history ‣ catherine russell ‣ archiveology . rick prelinger, "on the virtues of preexisting material: a manifesto," [ ] reprinted in contents magazine no. ( ). . timothy corrigan, the essay film: from montaigne, after marker (new york: oxford university press, ); laura rascaroli, the personal camera: subjective cinema and the essay film (london: wallflower press, ). research in film and history ‣ catherine russell ‣ archiveology figure . lost landscapes films, rick prelinger, usa - figure . lost landscapes films, rick prelinger, usa - figure . lost landscapes films, rick prelinger, usa - the city, like the archive, is a living, breathing entity as ‘documents’ are continually added, and more importantly, continually ‘re-discovered’. the surface of the archive is now; its depths are passages to the past. thus, it is always instructive to return to archive-based films, to be able to discover again what was rediscovered in the past. one of the first compilation films made in the postwar period is paris (f ) by nicole védrès. this film has been largely overlooked by film historians, perhaps because its director, nicole védrès, made too few films and was the wrong gender to become recognized as an important french auteur. it may also have been overlooked because in it challenged the usual paradigms of film classification. jay leyda recognized it in his book films beget films , and he situated it within a history of such filmmaking that drew primarily on newsreels. however, védrès takes the compilation format a substantial step forward by combining clips of fiction film footage with photographs, newsreel and actualité footage, and by the scope of her archival research. in addition to film libraries, she repurposed imagery from personal collections, flea markets and other sources including garrets, blockhouses, cellars, garbage bins and even a rabbit hutch. in other words, paris expands the concept of the archive and ‘official’ history to include many other histories that were recorded on film and subsequently abandoned as inconsequential. figure . paris , nicole védrès, f paris consists of excerpts from over films, with original music by guy bernard, to represent the period often known as ‘la belle Époque’, from to , as a mythical period of peace in which social optimism and the arts flourished in france. the film could be described as ‘superficial’ in that it depicts paris as a kind of image culture (and this is precisely how bosley crowther described it in ), and yet there is a lingering undercurrent of impending disaster that is finally realized with the commencement of the great war in . the omnipresent camera underscores the role of technology in research in film and history ‣ catherine russell ‣ archiveology . jay leyda, films beget films, (new york: hill and wang, ), . . nicole védrès, quoted in the toronto film society programme notes for monday february , . the film was scheduled to play in toronto on this date, but the print did not arrive. the screening was rescheduled in may more than thirty years later. védrès provided notes for the film in english for the screening. . crowther, “snows of yesteryear: paris has faults of most album films new york times, october , ; anonymous, “paris , france, ,” monthly film bulletin , no. ( ): . this excitable culture and the archival excess seems indirectly responsible for the impending collapse. as védrès herself puts it, she felt she had completed “a novel that ended tragically—although no one can tell, even now, whether it was by crime, accident or suicide—in august .” despite the light- hearted commentary and the playfulness of parisian fashions, entertainments, and diversions, this post-war city film is significantly less celebratory than the famous pre-war antecedents of vertov and ruttman, which celebrated their own modernity, rather than a former one. paris is less a ‘symphony’ than a kind of sugar-coated eulogy. instead of nostalgia, it exhibits an undercurrent of failure and false promise. at the centre of the film is the spectacular death of the birdman, franz reichelt, leaping to his death from the eiffel tower in . captured by pathé newsreel cameras, this image is emblematic of the vulnerability of the past to teleological narratives of success in which an aviator such as bleriot is a hero and poor old reichelt is forgotten. if védrès manages to redeem the birdman as a hero of an earlier age of the spectacle, her film is arguably consistent with benjamin’s utopian hope for a flash of something transformative to emerge from the ruins of the past. benjamin specifically insists that this spark can only be detected within a “constructed” history that articulates not empty time, but time filled by “jetzeit” or ‘now time’. figure . paris , nicole védrès, f paris provides an instructive point of reference between benjamin’s moment and our own, because védrès was working with an image-bank that was remarkably close to benjamin’s own historical study of nineteenth-century paris. the viewer becomes an historian such as benjamin describes, an historian who “takes up, with regard to [the image], the task of dream interpretation.” the history in this film, like the history in the arcades project, challenges all disciplinary bounds, and respects no scientific laws. moreover, research in film and history ‣ catherine russell ‣ archiveology . védrès, op.cit. . walter benjamin, “on the concept of history,” selected writings. vol. , – , ed. howard eiland and michael w. jennings, trans. edmund jephcott et al. (cambridge, ma: harvard university press, ), . . benjamin, the arcades project, . the techniques of cutting, extracting, and fragmenting evoke the destructive edge of technology that finally brought the city of paris to its knees, just as the absence of an auteur behind the camera evokes the terrifying role of the war machines on the horizon. the film exemplifies benjamin’s observation that: “overcoming the concept of ‘progress’ and overcoming the concept of ‘period of decline’ are two sides of one and the same thing.” another important example of a city film that draws on the archive is los angeles plays itself (thom andersen, usa ), which director thom andersen describes as a “city symphony in reverse.” like védrès, anderson relies on voice-over narration that incorporates a commentary on the image into his compilation. both these films drive home the point that cities are places where films are often made, and thus amongst the waste they create are the ruins of their own self-image. thomas andersen’s film los angeles plays itself is an attempt to separate the virtual city of images from the ‘real’ city of history, an attempt that is ultimately doomed to failure. andersen’s essayistic narration is a critique of hollywood and the ways that the film industry has appropriated los angeles for its various nefarious, fantastic, and duplicitous ends; but it is also a melancholy ode to a city that has had to continually remake its own history in the face of its simulacral servitude to the dream factory. los angeles is a comparatively young city, burdened with its own lack of historicity. the deep irony of los angeles plays itself is that andersen betrays his own obsessive cinephilia with his vast knowledge of film history, displayed in a brilliant montage of excerpts from genre cinema, auteur cinema, art cinema, and independent cinema. figure . los angeles plays itself, thom andersen, usa amid the dozens of clips of hollywood movies, andersen lingers occasionally during the minutes to offer more extended interpretations of a number of key titles, including double indemnity (usa ), chinatown (usa ), l.a. confidential (usa ) and dragnet (usa and usa ). these sections function as video essays embedded in a compilation film. andersen’s commentary is full of insight and analysis. his montage is expertly paced, and the film offers a unique perspective on the relation of film to urban space in general, as well as the specific aspects of the l.a. setting. los angeles plays itself is far from comprehensive— research in film and history ‣ catherine russell ‣ archiveology . benjamin, the arcades project, . . thomas andersen, voice- over commentary in los angeles plays itself . research in film and history ‣ catherine russell ‣ archiveology especially since the focus is almost exclusively on the postwar city—and yet it is an excellent example of film criticism in the form of archiveology. moreover, it has had a direct impact on film history, in its recovery and redemption of the exiles (usa ) that had been more or less ‘lost’ until andersen ‘found’ it and included it in his film. figure . los angeles plays itself, thom andersen, usa andersen’s narration in los angeles plays itself borrows some of the postmodern critique of image culture, but complicates it with a recognition of the untimeliness of historical disjunction and displacement. by organizing his cinematic collection around the use and reuse of specific l.a. locations, andersen evokes a key principle of archival film practices. he says: “if we can appreciate documentaries for their dramatic qualities, perhaps we can appreciate fiction films for their documentary revelations.” extracting a sense of place from the multitude of films set in los angeles, andersen reveals cultural significance precisely by transforming hollywood films into archival fragments. figure . los angeles plays itself, thom andersen, usa . for more on the “discovery” of the exiles as an archival film, please see “the restoration of the exiles: the untimeliness of archival cinema,” screening the past september . http:// www.screeningthepast.com/ issue- / . thomas andersen, voice- over commentary in los angeles plays itself. http://www.screeningthepast.com/issue- / http://www.screeningthepast.com/issue- / http://www.screeningthepast.com/issue- / research in film and history ‣ catherine russell ‣ archiveology we need to ask if andersen’s project is any less cynical, and any less futile, than the star-studded histories of the city that he dismantles, given that his dismantling is also a recycling and reprise of key scenes from the films. his critique remains couched in the language of the dream-world, and he is too much of a cinephile to dismiss the movies altogether. the film ends with a shot from bless their little hearts (usa ) of an african-american man driving past the ruins of the goodyear factory on south central ave. the ruins, photographed in black and white, are the only ruins featured in the film, graphically illustrating the failed project of american modernity. without the cinema, though, would we still be able to see them? andersen’s narration notes that the factory once provided jobs for the black working class; visitors could once take tours “just as today they can take a studio tour and see how movies are made.” in fact, los angeles plays itself cannot penetrate the veil of image culture, but andersen’s “dream interpretation” arguably enacts the mode of allegory that benjamin describes as “a form of expression,” and a form of writing. andersen conforms to the melancholic, for whom the only pleasure is that of allegory. the ruined factory, shot from a moving car, completes the film on a note of movement, pointing to the interminable incompletion of the archival project, and the open-ended future of the city. andersen’s melancholic, allegorical, language is not only an essay, it is transformative, creating a kind of memory that is always on the verge of being forgotten as the industry continues to churn out new variations on the dream of a better urban future. if walter benjamin taught us anything, it’s that social relations have not kept up with changes in technologies. the promise of the new brings only repetition and melancholia. seventy-five years after benjamin’s death, this observation has been confirmed on multiple levels, and it is furthermore evident that nature no longer exists as something before or outside technologies, or that technology can remain separate from nature. maybe we remember when things were otherwise, but we only have other people’s words for this other time, if it ever existed. we may have an image of another way of being, but it is constantly changing, twisting and showing other faces. in the few direct remarks that benjamin made about criticism, he describes the critic as a “strategist,” for whom the artwork is a “shining sword in the battle of minds.” in other words, he advocated a form of critical activism that was not afraid to destroy. in fact, the critic is not unrelated to the “destructive character” as benjamin defined this figure in : the destructive character stands in the front line of traditionalists. some people pass things down to posterity, by making them untouchable and thus conserving them; others pass on situations, by making them practicable and thus liquidating them. the latter are called the destructive…what exists he [the destructive character] reduces to rubble—not for the sake of the rubble, but for that of the way leading through it. . benjamin, the origin of german tragic drama. trans. john osborne. (london: nlb/verso, ), . . ibid., . . benjamin, “one-way street,” selected writings vol. . – , ed. marcus bullock and michael w. jennings, (cambridge, ma: harvard university press, ), . . benjamin, “the destructive character,” selected writings vol. , . research in film and history ‣ catherine russell ‣ archiveology and in yet another variation on the theme of critical practice, benjamin aligns it with the dream work. the “aura” of a book can be sensed by forgetting it, and having it return in a dream. the unconscious turns impressions into “extracts” that are recognizable in dreams. i emphasize the word ‘extracts’ to foreground the implicit link between quotation and destructive memory. los angeles plays itself is an example of film criticism that is at once activist, destructive, and dreamlike. it is a critical practice grounded in the connections between the phantasmagoria and cinephilia as a critical practice. benjamin did not specifically associate the illusionism of narrative cinema with the phantasmagoria, and yet film critics have long taken the opposite to be true: that the avant-garde counter cinema associated with brecht, the surrealists, and the dadaists constitutes a dismantling of the phantasmagoria. benjamin’s name is frequently aligned with the avant-garde, but the concept of counter-cinema does not go far enough in postmodern digital culture. what happens when the avant-garde cozies up to the mainstream cinema? what happens when the avant-garde appropriates its affective properties along with its images? joseph cornell did this as early as with rose hobart (usa ) and many film and media artists besides andersen have revived that practice, which has had a remarkable resurgence in the digital era. figure . kristall, christoph girardet / matthias müller, d . benjamin, “the task of the critic,” selected writings , . figure . phoenix tapes, christoph girardet / matthias müller, d works such as the clock (uk ), kristall (christoph girardet / matthias müller, d ) and phoenix tapes (christoph girardet / matthias müller, d ) are examples of a mode of archiveology that is dedicated to the lure of the film image and the desires embedded in mainstream narrative cinema. these are works that are borne of a certain kind of cinephilia, or love of cinema that involves not only ‘love’, but a recognition of the social relations embedded in the cinema experience. by aligning that cinephilia with benjamin’s phantasmagoria, i believe that cinephilia can be considered a form of critical cultural anthropology. archiveology involves the conception of images as things in the world. torn out of their narrative homelands, they become cultural documents, allegories of their own production, and potentially ‘resurrected’ to speak on their own terms. while these images retain an autonomy that leads out of the phantasmagoria, images of movie stars, and scenes from familiar movies—the moments that attract the cinephile—lead back into the phantasmagoria, and appropriate not only the image-thing, but its sensory memory. benjamin’s theory of the phantasmagoria is based on the magic lantern shows of etienne-gaspard robertson, and developed as a conjunction of marxist ideology and freudian dreamscapes. the phantasmagoria became the general term for an array of visual devices, because it best describes the way that ideological experience is expressed. it is not reflective, but an expression that is “mediated through imaginative subjective processes.” benjamin privileges the term in the arcades project because it is taken from the “time and place” of his study, th century paris. ideological transposition, or the process by which the subject is caught up in ideology, is a demonic process, for which the iconography and procession of ghosts and the living dead is most appropriate. margaret cohen describes the phantasmagoria as the demonic doppelganger of allegory. cohen is led to inquire how allegory fits into this schema, and concludes that because it describes the commodity form, “it cannot grasp the palpable way in which the commodity form ‘appears’.” the critical method that benjamin assigns to profane illumination and the dialectical image could not yet be performed from within the phantasmagoria itself during his lifetime. if the th century phantasmagoria is an important predecessor of narrative illusionism (and jean baudrillard’s simulacra in turn), then critical cinephilia may be the archiveological method of demystification that neither cohen nor benjamin were able to recognize. . margaret cohen, profane illumination, walter benjamin and the paris of surrealist revolution (berkeley: university of california press, ), . . cohen, . . cohen, . figure . histoire(s) du cinÉma, jean-luc godard, f – research in film and history ‣ catherine russell ‣ archiveology the conventional view of cinephilia points toward a love of cinema that is somehow beyond reason, somewhat involuntary and deeply subjective. and yet, despite its affinities with the collector and the trivia-hound, the fetishist and the helplessly addicted, i believe that it might provide the tools for the production of knowledge. cinephilia need not be associated simply with the subjective state of the critic, his or her personal affinities with the text, the passion of writing about film, or the conversations between cinephiles. it might also lead to a greater understanding of cultural history and the sensory, emotive, and affective worlds of the past. in his essay on cinephilia, thomas elsaesser suggests that cinema might be thought of as “one of the great fairy-tale machines or ‘mythologies’ that the late th century bequeathed to the th, and that america, originally inheriting it from europe, has in turn passed to the rest of the world.” the genre-system of popular cinema, overlaid with the sensuality of modern experience, is arguably crystallized in cinephilia, which in turn becomes a kind of prism of the dream-life of global modernity. . see girish shambu, the new cinephilia, (montreal: caboose, ) for a recent discussion of the practice of cinephilia as experiential and social, but not necessarily critical or activist, or able to produce cultural knowledge. . elsaesser, “cinephilia, or the uses of disenchantment,” in cinephilia: movies, love and memory, ed. marijke de valck and malte hagener, (amsterdam: amsterdam university press, ), – . . willemen, looks and frictions: essays in cultural studies and film theory, essays in cultural studies and film theory (london: british film institute, ), – . figure . () parentheses, morgan fisher, usa the potential of cinephilia as a mode of cultural anthropology is implicit in the destructive practice of film criticism in which the cinematic phantasmagoria is dismantled into its documentary fragments. the cinematic phantasmagoria is a good term for the duality of the cinematic spectacle, as on one hand a closed world of artifice and fantasy; and on the other, a document of social practices, rituals and audio-visual culture. by examining more closely the role of “things” in the films, and the role of the bodies of actors as people (rather than characters), the “cinematic” can also be thought of as a mode of cultural knowledge. paul willemen suggests that “we are talking about the articulation between representation and history in cinema. the concrete, local, historical detail shines through…” critical cinephilia, as practiced in writing, through the video essay, or archiveology, would thus be able to reveal these details in such a way that cultural history is experienced rather than simply described. research in film and history ‣ catherine russell ‣ archiveology . benjamin, “one way street,” . critical cinephilia, in other words, should theoretically enable us to restore the dimensions of affect, enchantment, pleasure and emotional investment to film studies, without abandoning the theoretical goals of cultural critique that informed the critique of narrative pleasure. instead of a deterministic, mechanical model of pleasure, perhaps we can find a more selective and subjective means of connecting with narrative cinema. figure . rose hobart, joseph cornell, usa conclusion: the document by rethinking found footage as archiveology, i hope to emphasize the documentary value of collecting and compiling fragments of previously filmed material, but at the same time, the very concept of documentary becomes more complicated. how and when does an image become a document? i would argue that it does so as soon as it is excised from its narrative origins, or from its original “documentary” form, if that is where it comes from. in one-way street benjamin distinguished between the artwork and the document in a section called theses against snobs . among his pithy pronouncements on the document, he says: —the more one loses oneself in a document, the denser the subject matter grows. —a document overpowers only through surprise. —the document’s innocence gives it cover. digital tools have made archiveology accessible and available as a critical practice to amateurs and artists alike. we need to distinguish between those practices that push back against historical transparency and those that access the archive to construct seamless histories of linear causality. benjamin’s historiography is based on a non-linear conception of correspondences between past and future, and on the shock or crystallization of the moment research in film and history ‣ catherine russell ‣ archiveology produced through juxtaposition and montage. his aesthetics of awakening and recognition are techniques of interruption of the ‘flow’ of images that conventional historicism relies upon. the death of ‘film’ and the rise of digital media has effectively enabled and produced a new critical language that we are only really learning to speak. as video essays begin to proliferate as a mode of critical discourse, we need to retain the techniques of collage within compilation modes, and this depends in part on a recognition of detail and density; it depends on surprise, and it depends on the kind of inversion of background and foreground that archiveology can produce. if fragments of fiction film become documents of fashion and architecture, fragments of documentary become recognizable as performances. list of figures fig. . la fÉe aux pigeons, pathé frères © original copyright holders. fig. . from the pole to the equator, dvd bfi video © original copyright holders. fig. . world mirror cinema, dvd sixpackfilm © original copyright holders. fig. . film ist, dvd arge index © original copyright holders. fig. . the maelstrom, lumen film © original copyright holders. fig. . hoax canular, film © original copyright holders. fig. . the clock, christian marclay © original copyright holders. fig. . the three disappearances of soad hosni, joun films © original copyright holders. fig. . the great flood, dvd icarus films © original copyright holders. fig. . recollection, kamal aljafari © original copyright holders. fig. – . lost landscapes films, dvd san simeon films © original copyright holders. fig. – . paris , dvd grapevine video © original copyright holders. fig. – . los angeles plays itself, dvd cinema guild © original copyright holders. fig. . kristall, dvd sixpackfilm © original copyright holders. fig. . phoenix tapes, dvd sixpackfilm © original copyright holders. fig. . histoire(s) du cinÉma, dvd suhrkamp verlag © original copyright holders. fig. . parentheses, morgan fisher © original copyright holders. fig. . rose hobart, u.s.a. national film preservation foundation © original copyright holders. research in film and history ‣ catherine russell ‣ archiveology 	archiveology: walter benjamin and archival film practices t r a c i n g t h e d y n a b o o k : a s t u d y o f t e c h n o c u l t u r a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n s by john w . m a x w e l l m p u b , s i m o n fraser university, b . a . (honours), university o f british c o l u m b i a , a t h e s i s s u b m i t t e d i n p a r t i a l f u l f i l l m e n t o f t h e r e q u i r e m e n t s f o r t h e d e g r e e o f d o c t o r o f p h i l o s o p h y i n t h e faculty of graduate studies ( c u r r i c u l u m a n d instruction) u n i v e r s i t y o f b r i t i s h c o l u m b i a n o v e m b e r , © john w . m a x w e l l , abstract the origins of the personal computer are found in an educational vision. desktop computing and multimedia were not first conceived as tools for office workers or media professionals— they were prototyped as "personal dynamic media" for children. alan kay, then at xerox' palo alto research center, saw in the emerging digital world the possibility of a communications revolution and argued that this revolution should be in the hands of children. focusing on the development of the "dynabook," kay's research group established a wide-ranging conception of personal and educational computing, based on the ideal of a new systems literacy, of which computing is an integral part. j kay's research led to two dominant computing paradigms: the graphical user interface for personal computers, and object-oriented programming. by contrast, kay's educational vision has been largely forgotten, overwhelmed by the sheer volume of discourse on e-learning and the web. however, an historical analysis of kay's educational project and its many contributions reveals a conception of educational computing that is in many ways more compelling than anything we have today, as it is based on a solid foundation of educational theory, one that substantially anticipates and addresses some of the biggest civil/political issues of our time, those of the openness and ownership of cultural expression. the dynabook is a candidate for what st-century literacy might look like in a liberal, individualist, decentralized, and demo- cratic key. this dissertation is a historical treatment of the dynabook vision and its implementations in changing contexts over years. it is an attempt to trace the development of a technocultural artifact: the dynabook, itself partly an idealized vision and partly a series of actual technologies. it is thus a work of cultural history. but it is more than simply a looking back; the effective- history of the dynabook, its various incarnations, and its continuing re-emergence and re-artic- ulation mean that the relevance of this story is an ongoing question which needs to be recognized and addressed by educators, technologists, and learners today. this dissertation represents an introduction to this case. table of contents abstract • • '• table of contents list of figures v ' acknowledgements vii dedication v i i i chapter : introduction the story so far—a conventional mythology • • a critique of the popular mythology impoverished perspectives • the division of tabour in modern technology how education is complicit alan kay and the dynabook vision from arpa to xerox parc toward the dynabook . . . elements of the dynabook vision the fate of the dynabook what follows chapter : positions and approaches introducing myselves roots • • • • my encounter(s) with objects why this study? why this approach? reflecting on my history — "computer criticism" multiple perspectives, blurred genres — methodology and the problematic of distance introducing genre theory history as politics — the dynabook as/in history how do we know a good idea when we see one? personal computing/educational technology as a site of struggle — chapter : framing technology technology as media mccullough's framing of media latour's mediation: articulations and translations technology as translation , standardization and the tower of babel the mechanics of text - on'abstraction' digital translations software the semiotics of standardization simulation as interpretation • the ethics of translation back to the tower of babel - our responsibility to technology ' chapter : alan kay's educational vision computers, children, and powerful ideas "late binding" and systems design s m a l l t a l k — " a new medium for communications" : objects and messages the design of smalltalk late binding in smalltalk the smalltalk environment "doing with images makes symbols" ways of knowing: narrative, argumentation, systems thinking what is literacy? , vision: necessary but not sufficient chapter : translating smalltalk origins: smalltalk at parc in the early years educational limitations • technological limitations smalltalk's initial transformation at xerox parc a personal computer for children of all ages becomes smalltalk- from educational research platform to software development tool from "designers" to "end-users" the microcomputer revolution of the late s from a software research tradition to a "gadget" focus from a research focus to a market focus the dynabook after xerox parc the vivarium project vivarium research • hypercard and the fate of end-user programming — from media environment to "multimedia applications" from epistemological tools to "logo-as-latin" chapter : personal computing in the age of the web what is a "powerful idea," anyway? the , s: the arrival of the web , from stand-alone pcs to information applicances — from closed to open systems the web as an educational medium from learning experiences to an economy of learning objects the dynabook today: how far have we come? , vendorcentrism " n e w m e d i a " vs.""cyberculture" in the st century lessons from the open-source movement of unix and other it cultures authoring in the age of the web ; . iv web authoring and computer literacy why not smalltalk? why not the dynabook? the dynabook: existence and essence chapter : squeak's small but mighty roar squeak: a renaissance smalltalk "back to the future" • • • squeak as an educational platform etoys: doing with images makes symbols squeak vs. squeakland squeak in school the squeak community and its trajectories. — the blue plane and the pink plane squeak communities today squeak in print? where is that dynabook, anyway? squeak and croquet at oopsla' squeak: mouse that roared? chapter : drawing things together where we've been dynabook: artifact or idea? cultural history is not biography back from the future who cares about the dynabook? kay's relevance to education education and powerful ideas the politics of software revisited : bibliography appendix a: ubc research ethics board certificate of approval list of figures figure . : jimmy a n d beth w i t h t h e i r d y n a b o o k s figure . : c a r d b o a r d m o c k u p circa - figure . : c a r t o o n by t e d k a e h l e r figure . : kids in f r o n t of a l t o c o m p u t e r figure . : o r i g i n a l o v e r l a p p i n g - w i n d o w interfaces figure . : a d e l e g o l d b e r g ' s joe box in a c t i o n figure . : m a r i o n ' s p a i n t i n g system figure . : a smalltalk " b r o w s e r " figure . : p l a y g r o u n d e n v i r o n m e n t , circa figure . : from " p r o g r a m m i n g y o u r o w n c o m p u t e r " figure . : p l a y g r o u n d ii " s c r i p t o r " figure . : etoys " v i e w e r " in squeak . figure . : etoys tile r e p r e s e n t a t i o n a n d e q u i v a l e n t smalltalk code figure . : the h a l l m a r k " d r i v e a c a r " etoy ... figure . : kay's sche ma f r o m t h e t u r i n g lecture acknowledgements a g o o d m a n y people contributed i n a variety of ways to m y being able to take this project o n a n d to complete it. m y sincere and lasting thanks go to them. t o r i c k i g o l d m a n for m a k i n g m y path clear; m a r y b r y s o n for her insistence o n critical vision, and for her unshakable support; g a a l e n e r i c k s o n for kindness, w i s d o m , a n d unflagging interest. t o prescott klassen for the sense of history and the encouragement to think big; d a v i d porter for giving me creative opportunity a n d encouragement for m y explorations; rowly l o r i m e r for the space to think, to work, a n d to engage; m a r t i n l ' h e u r e u x for reliable intellectual foiling, a n d for sharing m u c h o f the path; a v i bryant for being an exemplar. t o w a r d c u n n i n g h a m for w i k i s , especially c a n d for the incredible repository of software w i s d o m collected there; s i m o n m i c h a e l for z w i k i , w h i c h served as m y writing environment; w i k i p e d i a for m o r e breadth than i have any right to. t o pavel c u r t i s a n d a m y b r u c k m a n for objects; matthias m u l l e r - p r o v e for blazing a path t h r o u g h the literature. t o k i m rose for the direct line to the sources and for unfailing paitience; t e d kaehler a n d a n n m a r i o n for generosity of time a n d help far beyond what i asked for; bj a l l e n - c o n n , b o b b y blatt, a n d d a n ingalls for their help i n putting the pieces together; john d o u g a n for his help with the images. t o a l a n k a y for a w o r l d to grow up in, and m y d a d for seeing it. t o m y wife, kelly, for constant intellectual stimulation, for historiography, for patience, for superb copyediting, a n d for a h o m e for me a n d m y ideas; n o r m for seeing what i was o n about before i even d i d . t o m y m o m for the solidest of foundations. t o james a n d a y l a for the future. vii dedication f o r james, a y l a , a n j a , c a r a , m a i a , a d r i e n n e , julien, ben, joelle, b r a m , a n d natalia joy. chapter : introduction this is a story about educational computing—that is, computers i n education. w h a t does that mean, exactly? h o w we come to an answer to that question is a good deal of what the next pages are about. that is to say, the question of what "computers i n education" means isn't a simple one. it is not the k i n d of question we can answer i n a sentence or two and then get on to the business of plugging i n cords and training users. rather, the meaning of computers i n education is something that is contested, and has been contested for about forty years already. over that time, the answer to the question has not become particularly clearer; o n the contrary; i w i l l take pains to argue here that it has looked substantially clearer at points i n the relatively distant past than it does now. the story i am about to tell is that of a l a n c . kay and his work o n a possible vision of personal and educational computing; a research program w h i c h began i n the early s at x e r o x ' research labs i n palo a l t o , california and w h i c h has gone through a variety of institu- tional contexts since then, even continuing today. a l a n kay's work is romantically described in a vision he articulated some thirty-five years ago under the rubric of the dyna- book, w h i c h continues today to act as a sort of touchstone and reference point for the ongoing development and evolution of a particular rendering of what personal and educa- tional computing might mean. kay's story isn't well known, compared, for instance, w i t h the story of steve jobs and steve w o z n i a k inventing the a p p l e computer i n their garage i n the late s, or of b i l l gates' founding of microsoft corporation i n that same decade. but despite its relative obscurity, i w i l l argue that a l a n kay's story is one of the root texts i n the construction of personal and educational computing. in delving into this history, and i n evaluating our contemporary aporias i n the light of it, i w i l l argue that the cultural trajectory of personal and educational computing can be made better sense of—and that opportunities for personal agency, critical understanding, and political action appear—in the light of such a historical study. chapter : introduction a starting point for this research is the constructedness of personal and educational computing. n o w , the constructedness of the w o r l d is a popular topic i n recent social and cultural theory, but what is often missed is the element of ongoing political situatedness and the active and generative space opened up by critical engagement w i t h these constructions. the world is not given, but is i n large part created by participants i n particular social, cultural, historic, and practical contexts. moreover, the constructedness of the world does not have to be something over/against regular folks. a good part of my agenda here is to show that the construction of personal and educational computing is not something done to users, learners, teachers, or even critics. personal computing is not given; it has been constructed through particular historical contingencies, and, more important, it is continu- ally and ongoingly constructed. what is a computer? what good is it? what is it for? how does it fit into our lives? it is important to remember that these questions remain open. the work of defining this ground is still going on; the game is still up for grabs. i hope to show how a l a n kay's work—beginning i n the s—was the first major, sustained entree into this realm: that is, the work of opening up the possibility of personal agency i n the struggle for the construction of meaning and effective action in personal and educational computing. the considerable influence i n this area weilded by large market- driven corporations like a p p l e computer and microsoft corporation is altogether more recent. furthermore, despite the apparent dominance of corporate market logic i n defining the meaning and significance of personal and educational computing, i intend to show how attention to the history of this field can reveal opportunity for individual 'users'—however circumscribed their agency may appear i n the face of corporate domination or the threaten- ing chaos of the internet. the apparent disempowerment of individual learners, teachers, and other front-line 'users' i n the face of a rapidly growing and complexifying w o r l d of computing and digital media is the target of this work. in my studies of educational computing, i am repeatedly faced w i t h the challenge of making sense of a field w h i c h basically does not make sense—that is, it is without a guiding rationale or set of c o m m o n principles w h i c h might guide action or chapter : introduction even critique. educational computing seems a multi-headed and often self-contradictory beast, almost wilfully ignorant of its own history, and as a result often at the mercy of what- ever fashions or—in the post- / world—terrors may carry the day. the result is that whether the current obsession is to be upgrading our software, updating our blogs, or fend- ing off network-borne viruses, the extent of most users' understanding and feelings of control over what they are doing is, to say the least, compromised. t h e s t o r y s o f a r — a c o n v e n t i o n a l m y t h o l o g y y o u may ask yourself, how did we get here? h o w do we find ourselves in a w o r l d dominated by an often overwhelming technological infrastructure, i n w h i c h fear and insecurity have become such driving forces? in order to answer this question, we can begin by examining the conventionial history of personal computing, that w h i c h serves as the origin myth and working model of this w o r l d . in the beginning—so the popular story goes—there were mainframes; computers were enormous, air-conditioned beasts tended by teams of white-coated priests (or, alternatively, by teams of p o s t - w a c gals carrying reels of tape and patch cables). in these early days, the story goes, computers were put to large, institutionalized purposes: taxes, billing, artificial intelligence, and world domination: somehow these increasingly large and powerful machines would surely break their chains and devour humanity, or at least enslave us. but the promethean leap apparently came i n the late s, when a ragtag army of hobbyists i n southern california—working i n pairs i n garages—invented the personal computer out of spare parts and baling wire. these early computers were tiny and inexpen- sive, tended by greasy adolescents i n dirty t-shirts. it wasn't long, however, before the smell of money mingled w i t h the the odor of solder and the whiff of burning components. a cadre of early computer entrepreneurs—steve jobs, b i l l gates, et al.—set up shop to battle the established computer industry (ibm), who peered down from its mainframes and wondered what to do now that the secrets were out. chapter : introduction i. this 'new w o r l d ' of computers is romantically captured in a new genre of computer magazines—like byte—that appeared i n the late s and early ' s: half inch-thick glossy publications stuffed full of opinionated editorials, recipes for homebrew computer projects, and full-page colour advertisements for the new software "titles" which were appearing to tap this new market. software appeared i n three major categories: office productivity soft- ware like spreadsheets and w o r d processors—the personal computer had terrible, unresolved issues w i t h legitimacy and desperately desired to be accepted by real business- people; computer games—probably the most lucrative market of the three; and educational software—which often looked quite a bit like the games, for marketing reasons at least. educational software tended to be drill-and-practice exercises, tarted up w i t h as m u c h colour and sound as the makers (and the existing hardware) would allow. a n d there was also logo, an educational programming language developed for children and undoubtedly good for developing young minds, though it seemed no one was quite sure how. in any case, regardless of the intellectual depth (or lack thereof) of these works, it was enough to estab- lish educational software as a persistent genre in the minds of the computer-buying public: one of the things that these machines were "good for," a reason for buying—or at least for justifying the purchase. a c c o r d i n g to the popular story, three key events i n the early s rescued personal computing from its greasy hobbyist image (with a vaguely countercultural air about it) and made it into an economic powerhouse. the first was i b m ' s hugely successful introduction of the " i b m p c , " w h i c h set the paradigm for what a personal computer was, almost completely eliminating all others (other players in the p c market made " p c clones" after this). i b m brought the respectability of established business, and poured marketing money into making the " p c " an indispensable part of small business operations. the second—much more i n keeping with the promethean mythology of personal computing—was a p p l e computer's introduction of the macintosh, branded "the computer for the rest of us." apple's early marketing of the m a c lives on i n popular history. w i t h it, they simultaneously defined a legitimate alternative market for personal comput- chapter : introduction ers—easily reduced to "creative" types—and cemented i b m ' s mainstream business market. in caricaturing i b m ' s "big brother" image, a p p l e undoubtedly helped reinforce i b m as the market leader for serious computing. the paradigm—or genre—that i b m established was shored up by apple's circumscription of the margins. this division lives on i n the popular imagination to this day. the third event was not so m u c h a single event as a clear trend: video games' growth into an enormous, lucrative market. a t a r i was the market leader here i n the early s, dabbling i n sales of both personal computers and dedicated video-games machines, but more importantly w i t h the design and distribution of the games themselves, to whatever platform. if there was a question—what are they for?—surrounding personal computers, there was no such worry about video games. regardless of the ambiguity of what personal computers might be good for, the market and industry surrounding it grew w i t h phenomenal energy through the s and into the s; a new breed of computer millionaire emerged i n silicon valley, around boston's "route ," and i n several other centers i n n o r t h a m e r i c a (notably seattle, i n microsoft's case). there was money to be made, and between the innovating potential of digital tech- nology and the gradually growing demand for it i n the marketplace, personal computing flourished. m o r e and more businesses, schools, and individuals bought personal computers; the industry steamed ahead w i t h new and innovative uses for them: productivity software, educational software, games, and now interactive multimedia, graphics, audio and video tools. the " m u l t i m e d i a p c " of the early s, centered around its c d - r o m drive, pushed the market ahead again, and the growth of a content-based c d publishing industry seemed certain. the key innovation to emerge i n the s, of course, was the w o r l d - w i d e w e b , w h i c h first reached public consciousness i n and . a l m o s t overnight, the personal computer's identity shifted from that of productivity tool to information appliance, tapping a world-wide ocean of information; pundits waxed rhapsodic. for educational and personal users (that is, apart from the established office productivity market), the "web" became the chapter : introduction single most important reason to o w n a computer, and the w e b browsing software netscape navigator was proclaimed the new "killer app." netscape communications c o . raised . billion dollars i n its now-famous initial public offering (ipo) i n , sparking a flood of investment reminiscent of the california gold rush of , or at least the d u t c h tulip market of the s. through the late s this new gold rush ran w i l d , w i t h billions of dollars invested i n driving innovation online. w h e n the "tech bubble" finally began to subside (it would be an overstatement to say it burst) i n it left i n its wake a landscape littered w i t h new technologies; some useful, many not, some significant, many soon forgot- ten. w h a t had become clear was that the paradigm of personal computing had been firmly established throughout western society: a report, for instance, states that % of cana- dians have a computer at home; % are internet users. m o r e than % get their daily news online (canadian internet project ). a statistics canada report states that % of canadian schools were internet connected, w i t h an average of . students per connected computer (statistics canada ). one more important statistic is this one: the number of people online—that is, capable of communicating on the internet—is one billion, as of late , according to m a r y meeker of m o r g a n stanley research. a b i l l i o n people makes for a large-scale, complex society by any measure. a n d yet, our primary means for interacting w i t h this complex environment is the personal computer, a bastard, haywired-together technology born a scant two-and-a- half decades ago by greasy youths i n garages i n california, sold mostly by consumer-elec- tronics hucksters i n the intervening years, and developed largely via gold-rush hysteria. w h a t we've inherited is the pc as generalized interface to a big, scary w o r l d out there. but it is significantly underpowered i n comparison to the task; i do not mean here that the processing power, the m h z , or the r a m is insufficient—what i mean is that what has become a significant communications medium—a major established genre or paradigm of human expression, communication, and commerce—is built on extremely shaky founda- . interestingly the study reports that % of those users are located in the asia-pacific region; while only % are in north america. see meeker ( ). chapter : introduction tions, and patched up and reinforced over the years w i t h little more than glossy magazine advertisements. a hundred years ago, the exigencies of the book publishing w o r l d led print- ers increasingly to use cheap pulp paper, despite the fact that pulp paper disintegrates into dust w i t h i n about a century under most conditions. but this is vastly more robust than the state of the personal computer, w h i c h threatens to burst asunder for many "users" on almost a daily basis, i n the face of quotidian bugs, virulent viruses, overwhelming spam, software piracy, invasion of privacy, pop-up pornography, chat-room pedophilia, and general information overload. n o w , fear and loathing have never been serious impediments to commerce or progress; indeed, they are often powerful drivers. the personal computing market is certainly driven by such forces, and educational computing is no different. far from "personal" computer users—a collective which, at numbers like those quoted above, is roughly equivalent to " c i t i - zens"—being i n any k i n d of control of the digital world, the real battle to control the discourse is fought by large and mighty corporations. microsoft, for one (and they are certainly not alone i n this), has established itself as an immense, indispensable part of the environment by offering to manage the interface between 'users' and the vast, ambiguous, frightening, and complex w o r l d of technology and the internet. that they have been accused on many occasions of being more part of the problem than the solution matters little; microsoft's marketing genius—a paradigm-defining one—is i n understanding and managing just how m u c h or how little consumers want to know, or understand, about what goes on beyond their monitor screens. it is not a stretch to say that all successful technology companies today succeed because they play this particular game well; consider google's enormously successful management of online content (and the dearth of attendant critique). in education, w e b c t , one of the most influential companies i n educational tech- nology today, succeeds precisely because of their successful control of the ambiguities and complexities of the environment i n w h i c h their customers need to work. this is the d o m i - nant dynamic of the first decade of the st century. chapter : introduction a c r i t i q u e o f t h e p o p u l a r m y t h o l o g y such is the conventional story of personal computing. this is the mythology of this moment i n time, the history w h i c h makes sense of the w o r l d we live i n . it is, of course, only one story, and it is inadequate and indeed obfuscating o n several levels. it is helpful to look at the story of personal computing as one emergent w i t h i n a context of contemporary journalism, advertising, and marketing, for these are the main arenas i n w h i c h the conventional story has played itself out so far. t o the extent that popular journal- ism and advertising constitute public discourse, this is i n fact and practice our story. but it is not difficult to problematize this. a simple tactic is to simply look for what is absent. in the first place, there is practically nothing about "computer science" i n the story; it plays out as though the formal, academic study of computing (half a century old) d i d not exist, or perhaps as if this realm were some dusty, antiquated pursuit that we were better to have left behind i n the promethean moment of the late s. the second major absence is that of software. the conventional story, as reported and advertised i n newspapers and magazines, and played out i n catalogues and showrooms is overwhelmingly concerned w i t h computer hardware. software, when it is considered at all, remains i n its standard-sized, shrinkwrapped boxes. personal computing has largely been about personal computers, as artifacts, commodities, toys, gadgets. there is very little about what actually goes o n inside these computers, even i n the face of the obvious and oft- repeated fact that the wealthiest man i n the world, b i l l gates, headed a company that ' doesn't deal i n hardware at all. somehow, the fetish is entirely physical, and we have come to accept that software is a necessary evil that allows the hardware to work, and w h i c h some- how slouches toward its slow improvement. presumably, it is easier to talk and write about hardware than software. the finer points of chip design are buried deep w i t h i n the black box—or rather, the shiny exterior (or at least the beige plastic cases) of the machine; the details of software are actually i n our faces more than we like to admit, but besides a few trite discourses (guis vs command line; m a c o s vs windows), this fails to get the attention that chapter : introduction hardware does. w h e n c d - r o m s appeared i n the early s, and afterward the internet, we began to talk about "content" w i t h respect to computers, despite the fact that we rarely speak of digital content i n ways that are any different from the content that appears i n books or on television. but our conception of "content" is nowhere near sufficient to grasp the significance of software today. the third conspicuous absence i n the conventional story is history itself. the sheer volume of discarded computer hardware suggests an alarming tale w h i c h appears now and then amid reports of sending old pcs to africa, like eyeglasses i n the second sight project. but nothing is ever said of the volume of discarded effort spent designing, developing, learn- ing, and using the software of years past. w i t h the exception of a persistent genre of o l d - timers' reminiscing their old beloved version of w o r d (or wordperfect, of star w r i t e r , or whatever—always writers talking about w o r d processors) long past, we give close to zero thought to the decades of evolution of software. the mythology seems to prescribe that the newer is always a straightforward improvement on the older (usually along the lines of more betterfaster cheaper), and wholesale innovations (the web browser, for instance) accepted as being born fully formed from the foreheads of their developers. this obsession w i t h the march of the new masks not only the person-years of toil and thought, but also the myriad missed steps and missteps along the way. it masks, fundamentally, the constructivist's cry, "it could have been otherwise." impoverished perspectives the conventional story of personal computing is caught between the twin horns of two popular caricatures of technology: instrumentalism and determinism. instrumentalism is the simple and c o m m o n belief that we create technologies to achieve particular ends, to solve particular problems. the assumption in instrumentalism is that these ends or problems are clearly defined i n advance, such that technological solutions can straightforwardly be specified and developed. instrumentalism further carries w i t h it chapter : introduction the assumption that technology is value-neutral, a mere tool i n the hands of a purposeful designer or user. technological determinism is i n some ways the mirror-image of instrumentalism; the determinist perspective holds that technology has a logic of its own: most fundamentally, that progress is inevitable, towards better and better ends (this the enlightenment's posi- tion) or toward more sinister and oppressive ends (the position of m u c h critical theory and a good deal of latter-day science fiction). it is easy to pose these two stances against one another, and view the w o r l d of technol- ogy as a struggle between the two or as a playing-out of a middle ground or compromise. i think it better to see instrumentalism and determinism as commonplace perceptual facets of technological systems; w h i c h appear 'naturally' to us i n differing circumstances, but w h i c h fail i n most cases to really focus our attention or provide a useful analytical frame- work: we look at advertisements for new cell phones that can record movies and download coupons and we muse, "what next?" i n a happily determinist frame of m i n d . w e purchase the next iteration of the cheap disposable inkjet printer i n a spendthifty instrumentalist mode. a n d then we wade through mountains of spam i n our e-mail in-boxes and curse that the internet is out of control. w h a t to do? a n d how could we know anyway, given that our thinking about technology is so circumscribed? w e need to remember—despite the constant temptation not to—that how we confront problems and issues today is historically conditioned; we got to this point by way of a specific unfolding of circumstance. but historical awareness is limited; things haven't always been as they are, and they might have been otherwise, but it certainly does not follow that we can simply choose otherwise: to consciously adopt a different position. technology is political. it is not a neutral, external realm of human activity separate from political and ethical concerns. neither is it an 'influence' on the ethical and political, nor are these facets of our lives mere 'influences' on technology. rather, technology is p o l i - tics and ethics—beginning right w i t h our difficulty i n remembering so. t h i s is a stance w h i c h i w i l l elaborate i n some detail i n the pages that follow. in particular, i want to spot- chapter : introduction light this notion w i t h particular attention to computer software, a subset of technology w h i c h is more and more shot through our private and public lives. software has always been political, but today, i n the early st century, the politics of software have become acute. a n d while there is an emerging discourse and literature addressing this (e.g., see lessig ; b; m o g l e n ; ; stallman ; ), it has not reached widespread public attention. i see this as a crisis facing western societies (and by extension, everybody else, given the agendas of globalization). the reason for the lack of focus on the politics of soft- ware, despite the technological messes that accumulate around us, has to do w i t h the basic ahistoricity i n our thinking about technology. m y method here is to lead w i t h historicity, so that this moment i n time can be framed, and so that the idea of software as politics has some concrete meaning. t h e d i v i s i o n . o f l a b o u r i n m o d e r n t e c h n o l o g y let us begin w i t h a particular question about technology, computers, and software: whose problem is this, anyway? alternatively, we can ask: who's responsible for this mess? the c o m m o n and superficial response, w h i c h often bills itself as the humanist perspec- tive, is that the designers and marketers of computing technology are responsible for the technological systems surrounding us. this argument casts our technological dysfunction i n either a technological determinist light (menzies ; bowers ) or an instrumental- ist one w i t h a determined overclass: the military-industrial complex (edwards ). w h i l e these treatments both correctly identify a nastily asymmetrical power dynamic surrounding technology, they run into trouble when they attempt to isolate the problem as external to the lifeworld of ordinary people—that technology is a system put over against 'us.' the char- acterization of computer technology as having been imposed upon society by an engineer/capitalist elite neatly divides up the responsibility for our ills: someone (industry, salesmen, zealous technologists, etc.) is to blame, and the analysis ends there. the resulting responses tend to impotence: whether we should enact laws (limiting corporate power; protecting individual privacy; protecting consumer's rights; regulating the internet; etc.), or chapter : introduction 'resist' technology (don't carry a cellphone; chop up your credit card; refuse to upgrade your w o r d processor; computers out of the classroom), or write critiques and stern warnings about the fate of the world. these are all commonplace ideas; we all engage i n many of these tactics—i certainly do. there is an underlying and foundational trope lurking herein, though, and it hamstrings everything we might like to do about our technological predicament. the assumption is, broadly framed, that technology is an external force on our lives, driven by someone else's agenda. m o r e specifically put, the assumption is of a division i n society: a division of labour between experts and end-users (or producers and consumers). w e w i l l - ingly and unproblematically learn this division, choose it, take it on, and reproduce it. w e reify it i n our buying habits, i n our curriculum plans, i n our legislation, i n our discourses. i w o u l d not claim that these power imbalances aren't very real, but we are doomed to live by their terms when we take o n the roles assigned to us. but, of course, we're also stuck w i t h them, and changing the world is not just a matter of changing one's shirt. n o w , it is not my intent to go into a lengthy discussion of hegemony or domination here. m y purpose is rather to do the history of how we got to this particular place. in the hermeneutics of the historical process are—i optimistically believe—the generative possi- bilities. w h a t can we know about the division of labour i n information technology, between experts and end-users . c p . snow's famous "two cultures" of the sciences and the humanities only begins to frame the division as it presents itself here; the computer age brings w i t h it an economic and political apparatus that institutionalizes the producer/consumer divide on top of the expert/end-user division. the tension between expert knowledge and public dialogue is age-old. latour identifies the origins of it w i t h socrates i n plato's gorgias, i n w h i c h politics is (mis)represented as one of right vs. might (latour , p. ff). latour uses this as an analogy for our popular conception of the relationship of science to politics. instead of call- ing for a science free of political influences, latour wants a "politics freed from science"— that is, freed from the k i n d of political shortcutting it is often called upon to do: "a substitute chapter : introduction for public discussion" (p. ). l o n g has "science" (latour uses the capital "s" in this rhetor- ical characterization) been called upon to end the messiness of actual political discussion: the introduction of the "impersonal laws" of nature as an antidote to the irrationalism and ambiguity of human judgement, and thus opposed to politics as such. latour presents an alternative "science" (without the capital) w h i c h involves the proliferation and extension of complex collectives of reason, argumentation, and agency w h i c h are political discourse. latour's capital-s science (or reason) is thus a conventional tool for silencing one's oppo- nents, but he reminds us that this version of science is not the whole story, and that there is no analytically convenient "inside" and "outside" of science ( , p. ff). latour is concerned too with the division of labour. complicating this account, however, is the work of technology theorist a r n o l d pacey, who wrote o n the "culture of expertise:" pacey offers an argument for a specially situated kind of technological determinism or "technological imperative" at work w i t h i n groups of engineers and technologists, that an airplane such as the french/british concorde w o u l d never have emerged apart from a drive for engineering excellence i n itself. pacey cites free- man dyson on nuclear weapons: that their existence is i n part due to the telosoi the culture of expertise, that they are "technically sweet" projects that appeal to physicists, as opposed to the hard, hacked out engineering of conventional weapons (pacey , p. ). w h a t is amiss i n this k i n d of a world, pacey suggests, is the compartmentalization of our values w i t h i n various spheres of activity (public, private, men's, women's, educational, profes- sional, etc.), and that a solution might be a broad-based effort to break down these compartmentalized traditions and virtues. w h a t this means to me is that the divide between inside and outside, or between expert and everyman, is not one that can merely be undone or unbelieved in; rather, it is a cultural phenomenon that we are dealt. latour's two characterizations of s/science are, historically speaking, both actual, and actively in tension. pacey's observations point to the fact that we continue to reify the poles of the division. the more we believe i n them, the more real they become. the longer we believe i n end-users, the more distant we become from the expert chapter : introduction v pole. the result is a disastrous commonplace sensibility about technology's place i n society. w i t h i n education, computational-literacy advocate a n d r e a disessa described what he calls the "culture gap," characterized by an "anti-learning bias" on the part of technologists, an insistence o n superficial transparency of computing artifacts, and a deep-seated expecta- tion that only some individuals can assume (professional) positions of knowledge and authority—a notion w h i c h brings w i t h it distrust of broad-based competence (disessa , p. ff, ). this is but one particular articulation. similarly, m u c h of the literature on computing that falls roughly w i t h i n the science, technology, and society (sts) rubric (e.g., turkle and others i n shields' volume) is unfortunately inscribed i n the stereotypical humanist vs engineer division. the result is analysis that says 'the engineers only thought of things from the engineering perspective, and have imposed solutions o n us that fail to take into consideration what we humanists need.' w h i l e there is undoubtedly a grain of truth expressed i n this, it is but vanity to construct this as a story of oppression from above. t o make it into such a moral position does considerable violence to the discourses coritextualizing the engineers' work—as if they were working i n isolation. turkle's analysis is a case i n point: she reports on the m i t ' s project athena, an enormous effort to computerize an entire campus i n the s. turkle cites project athena's ban o n the progamming language b a s i c , followed by a reversal under considerable pressure, but w i t h the condition that b a s i c w o u l d remain officially unsupported. h e r account points this out as an example of the arrogance of the systems and administrative people i n the face of'real w o r l d ' needs of users. the critique, however, is predicated on the assumption of an insider/outside split: engineers vs. humanists; develop- ers vs. end-users; experts vs. regular folks. but such divisions, no matter how commonplace or self-evident they may appear (reifi- cation works thusly), are caricatures; they fold into non-existence the untold hours of labour that go into the design and maintainance of systems, the extensive and complex networks of discourse and practice that must be created and sustained i n order for such chapter : introduction systems to ever exist, and the deep points of connection that actually b i n d together the people and machines and systems o n both sides of the apparent divide. there are, luckily, alternative conceptions. t w o of the strongest, from the science stud- ies literature, and w h i c h serve as touchstones for me, are the writings of bruno latour and donna haraway. both thinkers are bloodhounds on the trail of taken-for-granted bounda- ries. latour's boundaries are those that separate science from politics, society from nature, human from nonhuman; these are mythological artifacts of the 'modern' age, latour argues ( ; ). latour counters that there is no inside or outside of science, only a prolifera- tion of hybrids. donna haraway's target boundaries similarly are those w h i c h purportedly guarantee purity of a privileged conception of humanity. h e r powerful contention ( ) is that the cyborg is us, we are always already compromised and impure, hybrids political and natural, material and semiotic, technical and moral. the situated stance taken by haraway is significant: we are not i n a position to re-invent the w o r l d wholesale, but rather to fight for a fairer distribution of power, one not so over- whelmingly dominated by entrenched institutional power bases. this is not an all-or- nothing struggle, but rather a tactical strategy to spread the fruits of technoculture around more evenly. technology, especially i n its digital form, need not only be the instrument of established power to maintain and extend itself. that's what i mean by technology—and especially software—being political: it is an active politics that works bidirectionally; it is generative, as the foucauldians have pointed out. there is actually a strong tradition of this sort of work and thinking i n computing, i n the academy, i n education. a n d indeed, it is my contention that a l a n kay's body of work of speaks very clearly to this issue. h o w e d u c a t i o n is c o m p l i c i t the conceptual rift between 'experts' and 'end-users' is thriving i n our educational institu- tions. the whole field of educational technology is based on a confused discourse about ends and means; it reifies experts and end-users, technological means and pedagogical ends, as i f these were pre-existing categories. a n d i n a sense they are, as the academic world is chapter : introduction similarly predicated o n this division of labour: researcher vs. researched, subject vs. object. the technological aspect then is symptomatic of a larger unquestioned division between experts and non-experts, making it a structural or systemic issue. the sheer volume of history—of tradition and culture—underlying this division of labour issue is immense: it goes right to the core of modernism and capitalism and science and our very way of being i n the world. it has everything to do w i t h how we inscribe the boundaries of technoscience— the structure of the economy, our construction of gender and class, our expectations about freedom and choice, our acquiescence and resistance to globalization and corporatization, our expectations about public vs. private vs. c o m m o n . w i t h i n educational technology, the division of labour manifests itself along a number of different axes. in the first and most obvious case, educational institutions' uncritical acceptance of industry-originated 'solutions' and large-scale buy-in to marketing campaigns contribute substantially to the establishment of the subject positions w h i c h disempower pretty much everybody involved: students, teachers, and the schools them- selves. i w i l l not go into this at length here, as the general phenomenon of the corporatization of schools has been dealt w i t h elsewhere (e.g., bromley & apple's volume, education/technology/power). the superficial appeal of industry-based solutions is easy enough to see: the difficult initial design and implementation work are taken on by an industry 'partner,' thereby freeing the school or college to concentrate on their core busi- ness: education. o f course, what's missing from this particular division of labour is any developed sense that the one may have an impact on the other: the 'problem' to w h i c h the 'solution' is an answer is one pre-defined by the vendor. a recent example is a p p l e c o m p u - ter's offering sets of wireless laptops to educational institutions; it is not at all clear what problem this solution actually addresses. the superficial answer was that learners w o u l d be freed from computer labs, but apple's wireless-laptop scheme looked remarkably like computer labs o n wheels: access to machines still had to be booked, hardware locked down to prevent theft, and, most importantly, the machines were still (ironically) 'time-shared,' as computer labs have been for thirty or forty years. chapter : introduction a second manifestation of the expert/end-user divide is perhaps best articulated w i t h reference to the "miracle-worker" discourse: this apparent and longstanding lack of success in reaching implementation goals w i t h respect to uses of digital tools i n schools has created a specific niche for the working of miracles—the provision of digitally mediated environments w i t h i n w h i c h to re-mediate the production of knowledge i n educational contexts... w i t h i n such a context, the miracle worker's effectiveness is measured by their capacity to spin narratives of success against all odds by providing tools, but more often discourses, that appear to transform students' engagements w i t h information, (de castell, bryson, & jenson ) the "miracle worker" discourse reinforces the machinery of desire that is central to the marketing efforts of high-tech vendors. seen on this level, that the individual 'miracle worker' is predictably non-duplicatable—or at least 'unscalable'—is unfortunately almost the point. w h i l e we love to love those who take the initiative to make a real difference i n their schools and who personally drive innovation, the t o o - c o m m o n reality is that when these few individuals burn out, retire, or take advantage of their technical expertise and get a higher-paying job, what is left is a reminder of how wide the gap really is, setting the stage for the next round of marketing campaigns. in a third manifestation, the trend toward online distance education, "distributed learn- ing," "learning objects," and so forth establishes an even more cynical (or at least 'closed') position, quite comparable to the textbook publisher, in w h i c h all knowledge and authority is vested w i t h the publisher/information source and the model is a simple instructionist one of transferring this information to the user. a s w i t h the solution-provider discourses, the information-provider discourse makes plenty of sense i n terms of business models, but not so much for learning. the "distance-ed" variety of this discourse is the centralized version, while the "learning objects" version is a distributed market economy; either way, the educa- tional process is one way, and reliant on an 'impoverished' recipient. chapter : introduction a fourth manifestation of the expert/end-user divide w i t h i n the educational environ- ment may be more damaging than any of the above: i n this case, the critical faculties of the educational establishment, w h i c h we might at least hope to have some agency i n the face of large-scale corporate movement, tend to actually disengage w i t h the critical questions (e.g., what are we trying to do here?) and retreat to a reactionary 'humanist' stance i n w h i c h a shallow l u d d i s m becomes a point of pride. enter the twin bogeymen of instrumentalism and technological determinism: the instrumentalist critique runs along the lines of "the technology must be i n the service of the educational objectives and not the other way around." the determinist critique, i n turn, says, 'the use of computers encourages a mecha- nistic way of thinking that is a danger to natural/human/traditional ways of life' (for variations, see, davy ; sloan ; oppenheimer ; bowers ). m i s s i n g from either version of this critique is any idea that digital information technol- ogy might present something worth actually engaging with. de castell, bryson & jenson write: like an endlessly rehearsed mantra, we hear that what is essential for the implementation and integration of technology i n the classroom is that teachers should become "comfortable" using it. [...] w e have a master code capable of utilizing in one platform what have for the entire history of our species thus far been irreducibly different kinds of things—writing and speech, images and sound-^every conceivable form of information can now be combined w i t h every other k i n d to create a different form of communication, and what we seek is comfort and familiarity? ( ) surely the power of education is transformation. a n d yet, given a potentially transformative situation, we seek to constrain the process, managerially, structurally, pedagogically, and philosophically, so that no transformation is possible. t o be sure, this makes marketing so m u c h easier. a n d so we preserve the divide between 'expert' and 'end-user;' for the 'end- user' is profoundly she who is unchanged, uninitiated, unempowered. the result is well documented: scores of studies show how educational technology has no measurable effect on student performance. the best articulation of this is surely larry chapter : introduction cuban's ( ) narration of the repeated flirtation w i t h educational technology; the best one-liner the title of his article, "computers m e e t classroom: classroom w i n s " ( ). w h a t is left is best described as aporia. o u r efforts to describe an instrumental approach to educational technology leave us w i t h nothing of substance. a seemingly endless literature describes study after study, project after project, trying to identify what really 'works' or what the critical intercepts are or what the necessary combination of ingredients might be (support, training, mentoring, instructional design, and so on); what remains is at least as strong a body of literature w h i c h suggests that this is all a waste of time. but what is really at issue is not implementation or training or support or any of the myriad factors arising i n discussions of why computers i n schools don't amount to much. w h a t is really wrong w i t h computers i n education is that for the most part, we lack any clear sense of what to do w i t h them, or what they might be good for. this may seem like an extreme claim, given the amount of energy and time expended, but the record to date seems to support it. if all we had are empirical studies that report on success rates and student performance, we w o u l d all be compelled to throw the computers out the window and get o n w i t h other things. but clearly, it would be inane to try to claim that computing technology—one of the most influential defining forces i n western culture of our day, and w h i c h shows no signs of slowing down—has no place i n education. w e are left w i t h a dilemma that i am sure every intellectually honest researcher i n the field has had to consider: we know this stuff is impor- tant, but we don't really understand how. a n d so what shall we do, right now? it is not that there haven't been (numerous) answers to this question. but we have tended to leave them behind w i t h each surge of forward momentum, each innovative push, each new educational technology "paradigm," as t i m o t h y koschmann put i t . i hereby suggest that the solution—not to the larger question of what should we do, right now, but at least to the narrower issue of how we can stop being so blinded by the shiny . koschmann's ( ) article, "paradigm shifts and instructional technology" suggested that there had in fact been a series of incommensurable paradigms (in kuhn's sense) governing the field; koschmann was setting up "computer-supported collabora- tive learning" as the new paradigm. chapter : introduction exterior of educational technology that we lose all critical sensibilities—is to address the questions of history and historicism. information technology, i n education as elsewhere, has a 'problematic' relationship w i t h its o w n history; i n short, we actively seek to deny its past, putting the emphasis always on the now and the new and the future. the new is what is important; what happened yesterday is to be forgotten, downplayed, ignored. this active destruction of history and tradition—a symptom of the "culture of no culture" (traweek , p. ) that pervades m u c h of technoscience—makes it difficult, if not impossible, to make sense of the role of technology i n education, i n society, and i n politics. w e are faced w i t h a tangle of hobbles—instrumentalism, ahistoricism, fear of transformation, snow's "two cultures," and a consumerist subjectivity. seymour papert, i n the midst of the backlash against logo i n schools i n the m i d s, wrote an impassioned essay that called for a "computer criticism," i n the same sense and spirit as "literacy criticism." in that article, papert wrote of ...a tendency to think of "computers" and "logo" as agents that act directly on thinking and learning; they betray a tendency to reduce what are really the most important components of educational situtations—people and cultures—to a secondary, facilitating role. the context for human develop- ment is always a culture, never an isolated technology. (papert , p. ) a n examination of the history of educational technology—and educational computing i n particular—reveals riches that have been quite forgotten. there is, for instance, far more richness and depth i n papert's philosophy and his more than two decades of practical work on logo than is commonly remembered. a n d papert is not the only one. a l a n kay's story, roughly contemporaneous and i n many respects paralleling papert's, is what follows. since this story is not widely known, let me begin w i t h a brief and admittedly rough sketch of the origins, general direction, and some of the outcomes of kay's work. . we as a society are ignorant of these issues because, in a sense, they can not be made sense of. maclntyre ( ) makes the much larger case that morality and ethics cannot be made sense of in the modern world, because our post-enlightenment inheritance is but the fragments of a tradition within which these could be rationalized. chapter : introduction a l a n k a y a n d t h e d y n a b o o k v i s i o n a l a n curtis kay is a man whose story is almost entirely dominated by a single vision. the vision is that of personal computing, a concept kay began to devise i n the late s while a graduate student at the university of utah. it is not an overstatement to say that kay's vision has almost single-handedly defined personal computing as we know it today. neither is it an overstatement to say that what he had i n m i n d and what we've ended up w i t h are very differ- ent. the story of that vision—how it has managed to manifest itself on all our desks (and laps) and also how far this manifestation remains from its original power and scope—is the story i mean to tell here. it is a story that deviates from the popular or conventional story of computing i n a number of interesting ways. a n d , while this story is well known, it is rarely told outside of the computer science community, where kay's contributions are founda- tional. w h a t is less remembered is that kay's contributions to computer science were driven largely by an educational vision for young children. a l a n kay was born in the early s in n e w england, and grew up as something of a child prodigy; he proudly reports being a precocious—difficult, even—child in school, argu- ing w i t h his elementary school teachers. he studied biology and mathematics in university, but dropped out and played jazz guitar i n colorado for a few years i n the early s; then, o n the strength of an aptitude test, joined the u s a i r force and became a junior program- mer. having then discovered computers, he decided to finish his undergraduate degree and go to grad school i n . h e chose the university of utah, where computer graphics pioneer dave c . evans had set up one of america's first computer science programs. a t utah, kay's career took off like a rocket; the timely meeting of a wildly creative m i n d w i t h the fledgling a m e r i c a n computing research program—kay was only the seventh graduate student i n computing at u t a h (hiltzik , p. ff). t o appreciate the difference between computing as most people encounter it today— personal laptop computers w i t h graphical user interfaces, connected wirelessly to a global internet, using the computer as an access and production environment to media—and what chapter : introduction computing was i n the m i d s—expensive and delicate mainframe computers staffed by scientists, with little that we w o u l d recognize as "user interface" (even time-sharing systems were a radical innovation at that time)—is to roughly frame kay's contribution to the field. o f course, he did not accomplish this alone, but his vision—dating back to his m s c . and p h d theses at u t a h (see kay ) and strongly driving the research of the s—is so central, and so consistent, that it is arguable that without kay, the face of our everyday involvement w i t h digital technology would be immeasurably different today. kay is i n one sense an easy study, i n that he has remained consistently on point for thirty-five years, over w h i c h time he has contributed a large collection of reports, articles, chapters, and postings to online fora, as well as a large number of lectures and presenta- tions, many of w h i c h have been recorded and made widely available. in particular, kay's writings and talks in recent years provide valuable reflection on his work and writings from the s and s; i n all, a r i c h archive for the historian. w h a t i find most important about kay's oeuvre is, i believe, summarizable in a few brief (though rather expansive) points. these set the stage for the story i w i l l attempt to tell here: • kay's vision (circa ) that i n the near future, computers w o u l d be the c o m m o n - place devices of millions of non-professional users; • kay's realization that this k i n d of mass techological/cultural shift w o u l d require a new literacy, on the scale of the print revolution of the th and th centuries; • his belief that children w o u l d be the key actors i n this cultural revolution; , • his fundamental approach to the design challenge presented by this shift being one of humility, and thus that the cardinal virtues would be simplicity and malleability, such that these "millions of users" could be empowered to shape their o w n techno- logical tools i n accordance w i t h the needs that they encountered; • kay's insistence on a set of architectural principles inspired by the cell m i c r o b i o l - ogy and complex systems theory of the post-war period: how the complexity of life arises from the relatively simple and c o m m o n physics of the cell. chapter : introduction there are many ways i n w h i c h a l a n kay's vision of personal computing has indeed come to pass. in reading his manifesto from ("a personal computer for c h i l d r e n of a l l ages"), there is little that sounds either dated or far-fetched. m o s t of the implementation details alluded to i n his writings have i n fact become commonplace—kay was unable to predict the dynamics of the marketplace on personal computing, and so his timelines and pricepoints are both underestimated. it is indeed clear that his vision of a new "literacy" far exceeds the reality o n the ground today. m y contention is that this is the piece of his vision w h i c h is the most critical; the need for a digitally mediated literacy is greater now than ever, and for reasons w h i c h kay could hardly have foreseen i n the early s. from arpa to xerox parc a l a n kay's story begins with the a r p a project—the u s department of defense's advanced research projects agency, a pentagon funding programme i n part inspired by the c o l d w a r and the perceived threat to a m e r i c a n technological superiority that was raised w i t h the launch of the soviet satellite, sputnik, i n . in a r p a is the root of the popular concep- tion that computers have sprung from the military; the vast majority of computing research i n the formative decade of the s was funded by a r p a ' s information processing t e c h - niques office (ipto). it is easy to take the significance of this funding formula too far, however, and conclude that computers were devised as weapons and digital technology is born of insitutionalized violence and domination. the story is quite a bit more subtle than that: the adminstrators of a r p a - i p t o research funds were not military men, but civilians; not generals but professors ( n r c ; w a l d r o p ). it is perhaps better to think of a r p a as a c o l d w a r instrument of a m e r i c a n techno-cultural superiority, rather than a military programme. the funds flowed through the pentagon, but the research was aston- ishingly open-ended, w i t h the majority of the funding flowing to universities rather than defense contractors, often i n the absence of formal peer-review processes ( n r c , pp. - ). in fact, to look deeply at a r p a and its projects is to see a ironic case—rare, but certainly not unique ( a t & t and, as we shall see, x e r o x corporation, played host to similar chapter : introduction development communities)—of large-scale public works being committed i n the name of capitalist, individualistic, a m e r i c a n ideology. the public funding that went into a r p a projects in the s no doubt vastly outstripped their soviet counterparts; who, then, had the greater public infrastructure? the men who directed the a r p a - i p t o have come to be known by their reputation as great thinkers w i t h expansive ideals for the c o m m o n good, and their open-ended funding policies that focused o n people rather than specific goals. the first, and most celebrated director, jcr licklider, oriented the i p t o to the pursuit of interactive computing and inter- networking, concepts w h i c h were nearly science fiction in , but w h i c h today are foundational to our dealings w i t h digital media. after licklider came ivan sutherland, k n o w n as the "father of computer graphics;" robert taylor, who w o u l d go o n to help r u n x e r o x ' research lab i n ; and lawrence roberts, who i n the late s oversaw the implementation of the a r p a n e t , the prototype and direct ancestor of today's internet. in , the advent of the mansfield amendment, w h i c h required pentagon-funded research to be more responsible to military ends, is seen by many (kay a, p. ; "waldrop' , p. ) as the end of an era—an era i n w h i c h the basic shape of today's digital technological landscape was being laid out. o f the spirit of the a r p a project i n the s, kay reflected: it is no exaggeration to say that [ a r p a ] had "visions rather than goals" and "funded people, not projects." the vision was "interactive computing as a complementary intellectual partner for people pervasively networked w o r l d - wide." by not trying to derive specific goals from this at the funding side, [ a r p a ] was able to fund rather different and sometimes opposing points of view. (kay a) the legacy left by the s' a r p a project is rich, and includes the internet, time-sharing systems, computer graphics (both d and d), hypertext and hypermedia, and networked . licklider wrote an early research manifesto called "man-computer symbiosis" which laid out a blue-sky vision of what com- puting could become, one in marked contrast to the then-dominant trend to artificial intelligence research. see licklider ; wardrip-fruin & montfort ). chapter : introduction collaboration. m o r e important to the story at hand is the establishment of a community of computing researchers i n the u n i t e d states, from universities like utah, u c l a , stanford, m i t , and carnegie-mellon. a t these universities, fledgling computing departments and programs had received early and substantial research funding, and the a r p a - i p t o direc- tors made substantial efforts to bring these researchers together at conferences and retreats. the result was, by the late s, a tightly knit community of a m e r i c a n computer science research. a l a n kay, who had his first encounter w i t h computer programming while on a stint i n the u s a i r force's a i r t r a i n i n g c o m m a n d i n , went to the university of u t a h to pursue a masters degree. there he met and studied w i t h dave evans and ivan sutherland, who were pioneering research i n computer graphics. kay spent the years - at utah, working on and around a r p a - f u n d e d projects. it was here, i n his m s c and p h d work, that he began to formulate a vision for a personal computer. kay has referred to sutherland's work o n computer graphics as "the first personal computer" because sutherland's project— sketchpad—was the first interactive graphics program as we would recognize it today; a user sat i n front of a display and manipulated the images o n a screen by means of a pointing device (in his instance, a pen) and keystrokes (sutherland ). this required that a single user monopolize the entire computer—in the s an enormously extravagant thing to do. the inspirational impact of work like this should not be understated, especially where a l a n kay is concerned. kay's account of the a r p a years is of one mind-blowing innovation after another—from sutherland's elegant drafting program to d o u g engelbart's famous demo to the fall joint computer conference i n san francisco w h i c h showed the w o r l d a working model of hypertext, video conferencing, workgroup collaboration, and graphical user interfaces, literally decades before these concepts became embedded i n the public imagination (engelbart & english / ; w a l d r o p , pp. - ). kay's research at u t a h focused on the design of a computing system called the flex machine, w h i c h combined the interactive graphics ideas of sutherland's sketchpad w i t h leading program- ming language concepts of the day and put them i n a package that could sit o n a desk. but chapter : introduction kay's work at u t a h was very m u c h coloured by interaction and collaboration w i t h the community of a r p a researchers. one of the greatest works of art from that fruitful period of a r p a / p a r c research i n the ' s and s was the almost invisible context and community that catalysed so many researchers to be incredibly better dreamers and think- ers. that it was a great work of art is confirmed by the world-changing results that appeared so swiftly, and almost easily. that it was almost invisible, in spite of its tremendous success, is revealed by the disheartening fact today that, as far as i'm aware, no governments and no companies do edge-of-the-art research using these principles. (kay a) w h e n a r p a ' s funding priorities shifted to military applications i n , this community saw a crisis of sorts; where could they continue their work i n the manner to w h i c h they had become accustomed? a s the story goes, by historical accident, x e r o x corporation, as part of a shift i n upper management, wanted to establish a research lab to ensure their continued domination (hiltzik ; w a l d r o p , p. ff). a s it turned out, former a r p a - i p t o director robert taylor was hired on at x e r o x to establish the lab and hire its researchers. taylor knew who he wanted, by virtue of the community of researchers he had known from his a r p a work. a n d , due to the circumstances of the funding landscape of the day, he had his pick of the leading researchers of the s. the result, x e r o x ' palo a l t o research center ( p a r c ) , was staffed by a "dream team" of talent. former p a r c researcher bruce' h o r n reflected, " p a r c was the m e c c a of computer science; we often said (only half- jokingly) that of the best computer scientists i n the w o r l d were i n residence at p a r c " (horn, n.d.). a l a n kay was one of the researchers that taylor courted to be part of the x e r o x p a r c team, and i n line w i t h the open-ended a r p a policy of the s, kay's agenda at x e r o x was also open-ended. he took the opportunity to use his new position to advance the work he had begun at u t a h on the development of a personal computer. . young computer scientists in the s were as attentive as any to the cultural movements of the day; see john markoff's ( ) what the dormouse said: how the s counterculture shaped the personal computer industry, for this treatment. chapter : introduction' it was i n fact impossible to produce something like kay's desktop-oriented flex machine given the hardware technology of the late s, and as such kay's early work was realized i n various forms on the rather larger computers of the day. but to reduce the flex machine concept to simply that of a graphics-capable system that could sit on a desk (or even, ultimately a lap) is to miss much of kay's point. m o r e fundamental to kay's vision was a novel and far-reaching conception of computing architecture, and the flex machine research is better positioned as an early attempt to articulate this. t o explain this, let me delve into sutherland's sketchpad, a system w h i c h i n kay's view has not been equalled i n the nearly four decades since. the overt concept—an interactive computing system for drawing and manipulating images—of course has been built upon, and today designers, illustrators, draftspeople, and indeed anyone who creates images with a computer uses a system w h i c h borrows from the general tradition established by sketchpad. but integral to sutherland's original system was an architecture based on "master" drawings could be used to create "instance" drawings, and that the parent-child relationship between such entities is preserved, so that changes made to the master (or prototype) would be reflected i n any instances made from it. it is difficult to express the importance of this i n so many w o r d s , but this concept is representative of a way of thinking about the relationship between the part and the whole w h i c h underlies all of kay's work and contributions. a t the same time that kay was introduced to sutherland's work, he was also introduced to a programming language called simula, the work of a pair of norwegian researchers. kay recognized that the "master" and "instance" relationship i n sketchpad was very similar to the way the simula language was arranged. this was the big hit, and i have not been the same since. i think the reasons the hit had such impact was that i had seen the idea enough times i n enough differ- ent forms that the final recognition was in such general terms to have the quality of an epiphany. m y math major had centered on abstract algebras w i t h their few operations applying to many structures. m y biology major had . there is, luckily, video available of sutherland using the sketchpad system. see wardrip-fruin & montfort ( ). chapter : introduction focused on both cell metabolism and larger scale morphogenesis w i t h its notions of simple mechanisms controlling complex processes and one k i n d of building block being able to differentiate into all needed building blocks. the file system, the b , sketchpad, and finally simula, all used the same idea for different purposes. bob barton, the main designer of the b and a professor at utah, had said i n one of his talks a few days earlier, "the basic p r i n - ciple of recursive design is to make the parts have the same power as the whole." (kay a, p. ) this is the first of the "big ideas" that comprise a l a n kay's work; we shall encounter several more. toward the dynabook kay reports that his personal trajectory was significantly altered by a visit to see seymour papert's research group at m i t i n . a t that time, papert, w a l l y feurzig, and cynthia solomon were conducting the initial research on exposing schoolchildren to computers and programming w i t h the logo language, w h i c h feurzig had designed. papert's research involved the now-famous "turtle geometry" approach w h i c h suggested that children could more effectively bridge the divide between concrete and formal cognitive stages (from jean piaget's developmental schema) via a computational medium (logo) w h i c h allowed them to manipulate mathematical and geometric constructs concretely (papert a; &). w h a t impressed kay was not so m u c h this insight about cognitive styles, but that children using logo could reach farther w i t h mathematics than they could otherwise. kay wrote: one of the ways papert used piaget's ideas was to realize that young children are not well equipped to do "standard" symbolic mathematics until the age of or , but that even very young children can do other kinds of math, even advanced math such as topology and differential geometry, when it is presented i n a form that is well matched to their current thinking processes. the logo turtle w i t h its local coordinate system (like the child, it is always at . the burroughs b and b were early computers kay had encountered in while working as a programmer in the us air force in the early s. chapter : introduction the center of its universe) became a highly successful "microworld" for explor- ing ideas in differential geometry. (kay , p. ) in what w o u l d be the beginning of a collegial relationship w i t h papert w h i c h is still ongoing, papert's insights about children and computers, i n combination w i t h kay's insight that computers w o u l d likely be m u c h more numerous and commonplace by the s, led to the crystallization of his thinking: this encounter finally hit me with what the destiny of personal computing really was going to be. n o t a personal dynamic vehicle, as i n englebart's meta- phor opposed to the i b m "railroads," but something m u c h more profound: a personal dynamic medium. w i t h a vehicle one could wait u n t i l high school and give "drivers ed," but if it was a medium, it had to extend to the w o r l d of c h i l d - hood. ( a, p. ) kay was immediately seized by this idea, and on the plane back from boston he drew up the basis for the vision of personal computing he would pursue thereafter. kay called it the dynabook, and the name suggests what it w o u l d be: a dynamic book. that is, a medium like a book, but one w h i c h was interactive and controlled by the reader. it would provide cogni- tive scaffolding i n the same way books and print media have done i n recent centuries, but as papert's work w i t h children and logo had begun to show, it w o u l d take advantage of the new medium of computation and provide the means for new kinds of exploration and expression. kay, now at x e r o x p a r c , began to sketch out what the dynabook would look and act like. early models (in cardboard) suggest devices not unlike the desktop and laptop comput- ers we know today. kay noted that he was directly inspired by (microchip manufacturer intel's founder gordon) moore's law, w h i c h states that, due to predictable advances i n the miniaturization of chip manufacturing, available computing power doubles roughly every months. g i v e n this k i n d of development timeframe, kay foresaw that by the s, the sorts of things he was able to accomplish i n his work o n the flex machine would indeed be possible on small, even portable devices. chapter : introduction again, however, it is important to sidestep the temptation to reduce kay's vision to a particular conception of a hardware device or set of features. the deep levels of his research were aimed at coming up w i t h ways i n w h i c h people—not computer scientists, but school- children/after papert's examples—could interact meaningfully w i t h digital technology. in the s, computers were still monolithic, vastly expensive machines; leading research of the day was aimed at the development of "time-sharing" systems w h i c h w o u l d allow m u l t i - ple users to simultaneously use a large computer by connecting via a terminal—this was profoundly not "personal" computing. despite the economic and logistical obstacles, kay and his newly established learning research group at x e r o x p a r c wrestled to come up w i t h a new model of how people could interact w i t h computing technology. kay's reflec- tions on the challenge give some sense of the scope of the task they set themselves: for example, one w o u l d compute w i t h a handheld "dynabook" i n a way that w o u l d not be possible on a shared main-frame; millions of potential users meant that the user interface would have to become a learning environment along the lines of montessori and bruner; and needs for large scope, reduction i n complexity, and end-user literacy w o u l d require that data and control struc- tures be done away w i t h i n favor of a more biological scheme of protected universal cells interacting only through messages that could m i m i c any desired behaviour. (kay a, p. ) this was research without precedent i n the early s—no existing models of computing or user interface or media were extant that kay and his group could follow. in a sense, it is interesting to think of the work done in the s and s as being groundbreaking because of the the lack of existing models. kay recalls the number of innovative conceptual leaps that ivan sutherland's sketchpad project made, and that when asked how this was possible i n , sutherland later reflected that he "didn't know it was hard." w h a t kay and his colleagues seem to have been aware of is the sense i n w h i c h they were i n fact constructing whole new ways of working: ...we were actually trying for a qualitative shift i n belief structures—a new k u h n i a n paradigm i n the same spirit as the invention of the printing press— chapter : introduction and thus took highly extreme positions that almost forced these new styles to be invented. ( a, p ) the analogy of the printing press is one that bears more examination, i f for no other reason than that kay himself has extended the analogy. if the invention of the digital computer can be compared w i t h the invention of the printing press, then it follows that there is an anala- gous period following its initial invention i n which its role, function, and nature have not yet been worked out. in the history of printing, this period was the late th century, commonly called the incunabula, when early printers experimented w i t h ways of conducting their craft and their trade. the earliest printers, like johannes gutenberg, created printed.works that closely m i m i c k e d the work of medieval scribes in design, content, and audience. a s m a r s h a l l m c l u h a n ( ) noted, the content of the new media is the old media. but i n the s, the venetian printer a l d u s manutius set up a printing business which, i n its exploration of the possibilities of finding a sustainable business model, pioneered and established m u c h of the form of the book as we know it today, i n terms of layout, typogra- phy, size and form (aldus is generally credited w i t h the popularization of the octavo format, w h i c h w o u l d fit conveniently i n a pocket or saddlebag), and, i n doing so, defined a new audi- ence and market for printed books (lowry ). a l d u s ' innovations established the nature of the printed book as we know it today, and innovations i n book printing since then have been refinements of a l d u s ' model, rather than deviations from it. a l a n kay alludes to the example of a l d u s i n several places i n his writings, and it seems clear that even if kay doesn't necessarily consider his work to be parallel, then at least this is its goal. that we are i n an incunabula period i n the early evolution of digital computing—as evidenced by the general confusion the topic evinces—is an idea i am completely comforta- ble with; that a l a n kay's vision of personal computing is analogous to a l d u s ' pocket-sized books is at least worth consideration. whether we can say one way or another, at this moment i n time, is in part the subject of this dissertation. chapter : introduction elements of the dynabook vision in a paper presented i n , " a personal computer for c h i l d r e n of a l l ages," a l a n kay spoke of the general qualities of a personal computer: w h a t then is a personal computer? one would hope that it would be both a medium for containing and expressing arbitrary symbolic notations, and also a collection of useful tools for manipulating these structures, w i t h ways to add new tools to the repertoire. (kay , p. ) papert's influence is very clear here, especially his famous admonition that children should program the computer rather than the computer programming the children. but we should also pay attention here to kay's emphasis on the multiple levels of media: that they should represent not just the content, but the tools to act upon the content, and even the means for creating new tools. this sheds some light on the dynabook metaphor, for books represent not only content w h i c h can be extracted (as a shallow definition of literacy might suggest), but are also the means to participating richly i n a literate culture. "one of the primary effects of learning to read is enabling students to read to learn" ( m i l l e r , p. ). literacy is indeed what kay and his team were after. "i felt that because the content of personal computing was interactive tools, the content of this new authoring literacy should be the creation of interactive tools by the children" (kay a, p. , italics mine). kay's paper included a scenario i n w h i c h two nine-year olds, jimmy and beth, are playing a video game, "lying on the grass of a park near their home." y o u n g beth, bored of repeatedly trouncing her classmate, muses about adding gravitational forces to the game i n order to make it more challenging. the rest of the story has the two children seeking out their teacher to help them develop their model of how the gravitational pull of the sun should be integrated w i t h the spaceship controls i n the game. together, "earnestly trying to discover the notion of a coordinate system," they use something m u c h like the internet to look up some specifics, and then beth makes the changes to the physical model coded i n the game. beth later uses her dynabook to work o n a poem she is composing, and her father, on . the game is the prototypical spacewar!, which has a.special place in the history of computing. chapter : introduction an airplane on a business trip, uses his own dynabook to make voice annotations to a file, and even to download (and neglect to pay for) an e-book he sees advertised i n the airport. kay was writing science fiction; it was . but the vision is clear enough that we can easily recognize almost all of these elements i n our quotidian computing environment. it is now w i t h i n the reach of current technology to give all the beths and their dads a "dynabook" to use anytime, anywhere as they may wish. a l t h o u g h it can be used to communicate w i t h others through the "knowledge utilities" of the future such as a school "library" (or business information system), we think that a large fraction of its use w i l l involve reflexive communication of the owner w i t h himself through this personal medium, m u c h as paper and note- books are currently used. ( , p. ) m o s t importantly, kay was close enough to the cutting edge of computer research to be able to judge just how "within reach" this vision really was. kay's oft-quoted catchphrase," the best way to predict the future is to invent it," meant that his science-fiction writing was nigh on to a plan for implementation. h i s work at x e r o x through the s was nothing short of the realization of as m u c h of the dynabook plan as possible at the time. kay foresaw that, given moore's law, that the hardware part of his vision should be feasible w i t h i n a decade or so: the s. the unknown part was the software. so, while m u c h of the famous research at x e r o x p a r c was in producing the first "personal computers" (these were hardly laptops; they were however small enough to squeeze under a desk); kay's core focus was o n the soft- ware vision; how w o u l d beth and jimmy actually interact w i t h their dynabooks? h o w would millions of users make effective use of digital information technology? w h a t emerged after a few design iterations i n and was a programming language called smalltalk, as i n "programming should be a matter of..." and "children should program in..." the name was also a reaction against the "indoeuropean god theory" where systems were named zeus, o d i n , and thor, and hardly did anything. i figured that "smalltalk" was so innocuous a label that if it ever did anything nice people would be pleasantly surprised. ( a, p. ) chapter : introduction smalltalk was (and is) a programming language; the original version—implemented the following year and therefore designated smalltalk- —owed m u c h to p a p e r ' s logo i n terms of syntax and aesthetics. but its aspirations were considerably greater—in many ways, it was a generalization of the sort of thing papert was after. kay went so far as to eschew the "programming language" description, instead calling smalltalk "a new medium for c o m m u - nication" (kay & goldberg ). kay's research—and smalltalk itself—got a boost i n when researchers i n p a r c ' s computer science lab developed the first iterations of the alto workstation, w h i c h is commonly hailed as the first personal computer. kay and his team called the a l t o an "interim dynabook"—not m u c h like kay's dynabook vision at all, really—these were about the size of a bar-fridge—but the a l t o is the direct precursor of the kinds of personal computers we have today (as opposed, that is, to the personal computers of the late s and early s): it had a bitmapped, graphical display, a pointing device, and, w i t h small- talk running on it, the k i n d of "desktop" environment we now take for granted. in - , these "interim dynabooks" were capable of logo-like turtle graphics, but also featured a mouse-and-overlapping-windows interface, animated graphics, and music—in short, "multimedia." a t the same time that the a l t o was being created, and that kay's team was working on smalltalk, other researchers at x e r o x p a r c were developing ethernet local-area networks ing, colour graphics software, w o r d processing and desktop publishing, and the laser printer—all commonplace components of "personal computing" today, and all fitting neatly into kay's dynabook vision—what k a y would much later call the " p a r c genre" of comput- ing ( a). the researchers at x e r o x p a r c created hundreds of a l t o s and wired them all up w i t h ethernet, installed precursors to office software, and had, by the m i d s, an internal prototype of the k i n d of computer-based office environment that is so c o m m o n - place today. none of this w o u l d be commercialized or marketed u n t i l the following decade, but it was all running at p a r c , and there it was allowed to mature into an established . reportedly, over of these machines were constructed and used by individuals at xerox in the s (hiltzik ). chapter : introduction pattern of information technology. a n d , of course, many of the researchers at p a r c i n the s subsequently left to start or join the companies that now dominate the computing w o r l d ( com, adobe, microsoft, apple, etc.). t o end the story here is to uncritically accept a l a n kay's popular designation as "father of the personal computer." but what is missing from contemporary tellings of this heroic tale is the seed that started it: the vision of children and a new literacy. notably, the three best available histories of this period (smith & alexander ; h i l t z i k ; w a l d r o p ) significantly downplay or pass over the educational vision w h i c h provided the focus for kay's work. it is easy enough to see ourselves as adult, even professional users of desktop computing systems like those pioneered at x e r o x p a r c , but where are beth and jimmy today, "earnestly trying to discover the concept of a coordinate system?" thefate of the dynabook the personal computer did indeed come to be, very m u c h as kay anticipated. indeed, i have written the present work on a notebook computer strikingly similar to the one kay described i n . h i s vision of millions of users of computers is very much the reality today. but, i argue, the dynabook vision has not been realized; the distinction i am making here is between the idea of portable, networked personal computing devices o n the one hand, and the vision of a new literacy and attendant educational imperative on the other. between the surface features o f a personal computer and kay's deeper insights about what that personal computing should entail is a vast gulf. the difference is significantly not one of technological innovation; all the individual components of kay's vision are extant, even mature technologies today, from the lightweight, wirelessly connected notebook computers equipped w i t h multimedia authoring tools to the k i n d of simple, modular software models he pioneered (indeed, this part of the vision has been picked up by computer programmers and turned into a whole paradigm of software development). rather, the difference is a cultural one, wherein what personal and educational computing means to us is vastly differ- ent from the vision kay and his colleagues began to elaborate i n the early s. w e have chapter : introduction inherited all the components, but the cultural framework w h i c h ties them together relies o n older ideas, and the new computer-mediated literacy that kay articulated continues to elude us. the ramifications of this cultural difference are, i argue, vast, and they specifically underlie the problematic relation we have w i t h digital technology i outlined i n the early pages of this chapter. the case i w i l l make i n the pages w h i c h follow is that our contempo- rary condition of fear and loathing of digital technology, our narrow and ahistorical perspective on computing, our unquestioned acceptance and reification of the roles of 'expert' and 'end-user', and, most importantly, the compounded manifestation of all of these features i n the confused w o r l d of educational technology can all be critically addressed—and i n some cases remedied—by attention to this particular yet foundational thread i n the history of computing. m o s t of us are, unfortunately, starting from a place of unfamiliarity with this tradition (or, for that matter, any such substantial historical perspec- tive); it is my intent w i t h the present study to at least shed some light on a specific cultural tradition which, i believe, has m u c h to say to our current predicaments. w h a t f o l l o w s . . . the chapters and pages to follow comprise a historical treatment of a l a n kay's vision and research, of the dynabook vision and its various (and partial) implementations i n changing contexts over three or more decades. i intend here to draw attention to the features of the . original vision which have changed through diverse times and contexts, those features w h i c h have remained constant, and those w h i c h have grown even more critical. despite a l a n kay's centrality to this story, and his predominant role i n its articulation, this is not a biographical treatment; rather, this is an attempt to trace the threads of a technocultural system over time and place. it is thus a work of cultural history. in the chapter that follows this one, i frame my positionality and approach to the inter- pretation and historiography of this subject. i begin w i t h my o w n story, and how by degrees i have come to appreciate the importance and centrality of a l a n kay's contributions, and i chapter : introduction elaborate the many forces w h i c h have led to my adoption of a particular attitude to and stance toward digital technology and its place in education. this treatment of my 'method- ology' is more a disclosure of my personal biases and theoretical inclinations than an analysis of social scientific method, for reasons i w i l l elaborate i n due course. in the third chapter, i provide a broad-strokes theoretical approach to the study of tech- nology w h i c h serves to ground the k i n d of analytical moves which come later i n this account. here, i address the main motifs of technological mediation, the sociology of trans- lation (after c a l l o n and latour), a semiotics of digital 'machines,' and finally an introduction to the notion oi simulation, w h i c h i take as the paradigmatic modality of digital media. these treatments set the stage for the history that follows. m y account of the history of kay's project and the dynabook vision begins i n chapter , i n w h i c h i conduct a high-level review of the conceptual content of a l a n kay's numerous writings and talks. this review breaks down into six primary themes w h i c h i believe reason- ably represent the core of kay's vision of personal and educational computing. in chapter , cover i n narrative form the key moments of the dynabook's develop- ment through the s and s. this begins w i t h an exploration of the ways i n w h i c h the smalltalk language and environment was translated from an educational platform to a profound and influential innovation i n professional computer programming and software engineering. second, i discuss the emergence of a personal computer industry and market i n the late s and s and the intersection of this trend with the foundational research work done at x e r o x p a r c . t h i r d , i trace a l a n kay's research beyond x e r o x p a r c to its home at a p p l e computer in the s, where very different economic, technical, and cultural forces were at play. chapter considers what personal computing—and; by extension, educational computing—came to mean i n the s, w i t h the popular advent of the internet and w o r l d - w i d e w e b . in many ways, this period represents the mainstreaming of a particular version of personal computing and a m u c h more substantial cultural tradition against w h i c h the dynabook vision must now be considered. the history of computing in the s chapter : introduction is one of global-scale market developments (i.e., the computing industry as a m u l t i - b i l l i o n dollar phenemenon), as well as the emergence of unprecedented forms of cultural expres- sion and digitally mediated social organization (and especially, the rise of the free and o p e n source software movement, arising out of marginal computing cultures from the s); these two large-scale trends are i n considerable tension w i t h one another. in chapter , trace the actual re-emergence of a substantial chunk of a l a n kay's work and indeed the dynabook vision against the backdrop of late s computing culture and the trends introduced i n chapter . the squeak environment, emerging from kay's team at a p p l e computer i n , lays technical and mythological claim to the dynabook tradition of the s. here, i examine the development of squeak, its development and user communities, and i attempt to evaluate its contemporary trajectories. because squeak provides an artifact so unambiguously connected to the idealistic work emerging from x e r o x p a r c i n the s, it is possible to interrogate the relative health and coherence of the cultural traditions which it simultaneously draws upon and, arguably, creates anew. in the final chapter, i attempt to draw things together, bringing the focus back to the macro level and examining the dynabook ideal in the large: is it better considered as a tech- nocultural artifact or as a touchstone idea connecting otherwise disparate embodiments? this question leads to a broader methodological question, regarding how 'ideas' are to be treated alongside more concrete material objects like artifacts and texts. finally, i return to the higher level political and social questions of the ultimate relevance of this story to education and to the popular culture of technology. chapter : introduction chapter : positions and approaches i n t r o d u c i n g m y s e l v e s in a number of respects i am a c h i l d of a l a n kay's vision. i've grown up i n a w o r l d i n w h i c h kay's vision has always to some extent existed, though it was not until recently that i had any sense of this. m y own lifetime is almost synchronous w i t h kay's project; i was born at just about the time that kay was working o n his initial design for a "personal" computer, the f l e x machine, while at the university of utah. w h e n kay went to x e r o x i n and began to work on a model of personal computing for children, i was just coming to the age at w h i c h my education, and my relationship to media, was beginning. speaking strictly tempo- rally, my generation was the one that kay was looking at as the target for his notion of personal computing, though it has taken me thirty years to recognize it. that i have grown up i n a world i n part defined by kay's work, and that i have been at least somewhat aware of this fact is key to the present study. the significance of kay's project, i n its educational and political aspects, is something apparent to me perhaps because of the particularities of my o w n history. in attempting to present my treatment and interpretation of this project and its importance to the world, i am i n a position of needing to examine and establish just what it is about my o w n perspective that makes these issues meaningful for me. the perspective(s) i present here is not that of a schooled computer scientist or tech- nologist; neither is it as a 'humanist' approaching the history of computing from without. rather, i claim partial roots on both sides of this seeming divide, and as a result the story i w i l l tell is not likely to be generic i n either mode. . the evocation of distinct genres of technology historiography and critique is deliberate. among writers who have attempted to interpret digital technologies to a wide audience, the 'distanced humanist' stance is well exemplified in edwards ( ); cuban ( ); bowers ( ); menzies ( ); rose ( ), while the schooled technologist perspective is found in papert ( a); winograd & flores ( ); harveyfl ); stallman ( ); disessa ( ). chapter : positions and approaches roots a s a child, i had some early exposure to computers and computing. m y father had long been an electronics hobbyist, one of a generation of early radar technicians i n the second w o r l d w a r and a "ham" radio operator since the late ' s or early ' s. i grew up watching h i m wield a soldering iron, delighting i n home-brewing his radio gear. in the s, when micro- processors and integrated circuits ("chips") became widely available, d a d began experimenting with building computers. i remember h i m working for years o n a teletype project—it must have gone through several versions—to be able to type text o n a little t v screen; certainly not impressive to our st-century eyes, but he was building it almost from scratch, out of parts ordered from the back pages of hobbyist magazines, and he reveled i n the pure challenge of figuring out how to make the thing work. h a d he really wanted a tele- type for his radio gear, he could have bought or wired up a kit in short order, but instead, he worked for some number of years on designing and creating his own. i remember h i m bringing assembly code written out i n pencil on envelopes and notepads to the table w i t h his morning coffee, and also his experimentation w i t h several different modes of creating circuitry: wires on pegboards, and later "etching" his own printed circuit boards. despite any or all of this, i was not an electronics "whiz" as a child; i was not at all inter- ested i n radios or computers, and while i casually shared i n my dad's intellectual journeys on occasion, i myself was barely competent w i t h a soldering iron, and never learned the workings of the computers he created or how to program them. w h e n i was , d a d encouraged me to study up on basic electronics and the m o r s e code and to take the tests to get my own ham radio license. i accepted the challenge i n good spirit, but when the time came i failed the tests—it simply was not compelling to me. i wasn't particularly disap- pointed, and i remember d a d praising me for being a good sport about it; he never pushed me i n that direction again. comfortable w i t h this arrangement, i continued to watch over his shoulder and be his sounding board as he talked out his design ideas and railed against . dad joined up with the canadian services in and was shipped to the uk, where he worked with the british raf radar corps until the end of the war. chapter : positions and approaches the numerous conceptual obstacles he encountered. i recall h i m explaining the basics of assembly code programming—learning to work with hexadecimal numbers, add this byte to the register, jump to this location, and so on—but it retained for me the character of an introductory lecture: heard and even appreciated at the time, but quickly filed away and largely forgotten. still, the "spirit of the quest" made an impression o n me, and the exposure to the conceptual underpinnings—if not the details—of computing has surely stayed w i t h me. in junior high school i n the early s, when the new apple ii computers came out, my friends and i played at programming simple things in b a s i c , and i talked dad into getting a "real" computer at home (a tiny sinclair z x ) . i got reasonably good at programming i n b a s i c , and wrote endless variations on an obstacle course game, littering my programs w i t h clever details, elaborate introductory sequences, and the like—this kind of adornment was what was missing for me from dad's earlier projects, i suppose. i even became some- thing of a "whiz" among my friends at school, owing to the extra time i had to explore at , home. w h e n , i n grade , was finally able to take a "computer science" course, i was well ahead of my classmates. o r at least, most of my classmates, for there were a couple of boys, w h o m i didn't know (i honestly wondered where they'd come from) who were clearly years ahead of me i n understanding and proficiency. w h i l e i could write programs i n b a s i c , these kids were far beyond that, programming the assembly code my d a d had worked i n , devouring acres of information from books and magazines. a n d i was intrigued, and got to know these kids a little, and learned from them. but shortly something interesting happened: whether it had to do w i t h high school and my nascent awareness of social status, or whether it was a subconsious reaction to not being the head of the class anymore, i decided quite clearly and purposefully that i didn't want to be part of that group; that the obsession that these couple of boys displayed did not strike me as healthy in some sense. a r o u n d the end of my grade year, i quite sharply turned away from computers and everything to do w i t h them. the next winter i started playing the bass guitar and i effec- chapter : positions and approaches tively forgot that computers existed. d a d continued with his projects, and my relationship w i t h h i m had more to do w i t h fishing trips and playing music. i had nothing to do w i t h computers until my th year at university, studying cultural anthropology. i was writing an undergraduate thesis, and i had by now seen enough of my friends writing w i t h a w o r d processor to know that this was clearly the way to go about it. i talked my parents into subsidizing the purchase of an a t a r i st machine—billed as a poor- man's macintosh, as it had a mouse and a graphical interface, and cost about half what a m a c did. the a t a r i did its job with my undergrad thesis (i am still loathe to throw out the floppy disks containing it), but it did other things as well: the one that made the biggest impression on me was the inclusion—in the bundle of software and toys that came w i t h the a t a r i — o f a version of logo, the language that seymour papert had designed for kids i n the late s. i didn't know what logo was, particularly, but there was a one-page printed reference guide to the language primitives, so i was able to poke away at it and draw pictures on the screen with 'turtle' commands. i remember very clearly my series of discoveries w i t h logo; i quickly learned that you could draw stars with it, if you had the turtle move forward a standard distance, then turn some divisor of , and repeat this the right number of times. i quickly learned that you could generalize it: draw a line, then turn /n degrees, and do it n times. gee, i discovered, / w o u l d draw a pentagon, while / would draw a star—how about that! i have to admit i was amazed (and i still am); here i had learned something 'real' about geometry that years of school hadn't really made me understand. obviously, after years of math class i could have told you that the angles of a polygon have some relationship to , but the fact didn't really mean anything to me until i started playing w i t h logo. m u c h , much later i discovered that this was exactly the sort of experience that papert was shooting for—only he had hoped that elementary-school kids would be making this discov- ery, not undergraduates i n their final year. w e l l , better late than never. i have to give credit to papert and his team—and this foreshadows an important theme of a l a n kay's w h i c h i w i l l return to at length—for they had managed to embed the potential for a very particular chapter : positions and approaches kind of experience i n their software (twenty-five years earlier, for heaven's sake) so that i could pick it up, sight unseen, almost completely by accident, and immediately have that very experience. i finished the thesis, graduated, and went off to be a young pseudso-intellectual, spend- ing a lot of idle time talking w i t h my friends about ideas. o n e of the topics we talked about at length was computers and the idea that people would soon—perhaps already were—inhabit a computer-mediated environment. w e all read w i l l i a m gibson's prophetic novels about cyberspace and were enthralled by this notion, almost entirely fictional at the time. in , after a few years of not particularly making a living as a musician, i started looking around for a graduate program that w o u l d allow me to explore some of the ideas we had been talk- ing about: cyberspace, hypertext, and so on. i didn't find a graduate program perse, but i stumbled upon a one-year diploma program i n " a p p l i e d information technology" at a local community college. i quit my band, bought a macintosh, and enrolled. w h a t i had little sense of just then was how many of my peers were doing the same thing—quitting their indie rock bands and getting into new media. a few years later i recognized this as a major shift for my generation. my encounter(s) with objects m y return to school i n was the beginning of a series of encounters w i t h a l a n kay's intellectual legacy, encounters w h i c h have fundamentally shaped my way of looking at tech- nology and the w o r l d i live i n . m y decision to enroll in the program at capilano college was mostly serendipitous; i had no defined goals, but i saw a direction to go i n . m y classmates and i learned about—and produced—educational multimedia game/environments. the dominant software paradigm for us was a p p l e computer's hypercard, which, despite its superficial limitations—unmodified, it was only capable of black-and-white presentation— it seemed almost infinitely flexible, at least to my novice understanding. h y p e r c a r d was indeed an extraordinarily powerful media production tool, far more so than the bulk of what we have seen on the w e b i n the past decade. w h i l e building and programming m u l t i - chapter : positions and approaches m e d i a p r o d u c t i o n s i n h y p e r c a r d , m y f r i e n d s a n d i e n j o y e d ' d i s c o v e r i n g ' a n a e s t h e t i c o f m o d u l a r i t y i n d e s i g n — o r , p e r h a p s m o r e a c c u r a t e l y , h y p e r c a r d ' t a u g h t ' t h i s t o u s , b y w a y o f i t s e l e g a n t c o n c e p t u a l m o d e l . a t c a p i l a n o c o l l e g e i a l s o f i r s t e n c o u n t e r e d t h e i n t e r n e t a n d t h e . t h e n - t i n y w o r l d - w i d e w e b . t h e c a p i l a n o c o l l e g e p r o g r a m r e q u i r e d a l l s t u d e n t s t o p a r t i c i p a t e i n a n e a r l y c o m p u t e r c o n f e r e n c i n g s y s t e m , a n d t h i s h a d a m i n i m a l i n t e r n e t c o n n e c t i o n . w e w e r e p o s i - t i o n e d p e r f e c t l y t o b e a b l e t o w a t c h t h e i n t e r n e t ' s t r a n s f o r m a t i o n f r o m s o m e t h i n g ' b e h i n d t h e c u r t a i n ' t o a m a s s i v e s o c i a l f o r c e o v e r t h e s p a c e o f a f e w y e a r s . i n , w h e n i g r a d u a t e d f r o m t h e i n f o t e c h p r o g r a m , i p r i n t e d u p a s e t o f b u s i n e s s c a r d s t h a t s a i d , " j o h n m a x w e l l - h y p e r m e d i a a r c h i t e c t . " p a y i n g w o r k d i d n ' t r e a l l y a r r i v e f o r s o m e t i m e , a n d i s p e n t a v e r y l e a n f e w y e a r s i n t h e m i d s , b u o y e d u p b y m y r a w e n t h u s i - a s m , w i t h l o t s o f t i m e o n m y h a n d s t o i m m e r s e m y s e l f i n t h e d e v e l o p i n g i n t e r n e t c u l t u r e , l e a r n n e w t h i n g s , a n d t a l k a t l e n g t h w i t h m y s m a l l c i r c l e o f f r i e n d s . w e w e r e h o p e l e s s l y i d e a l i s t i c , a n d f o r m e d a c o - o p e r a t i v e t o s h a r e w o r k a n d f o r w a r d t h e i d e a l s o f a n o n - c o m m e r c i a l , a r t s - o r i e n t e d d i g i t a l w o r l d , r e j o i c i n g i n a n e a r l y v e r s i o n o f o n l i n e c u l t u r e i n w h i c h b u s i n e s s m o t i v e s w e r e s c o r n e d i n f a v o u r o f a k i n d o f t e c h n o - r o m a n t i c i s m . i n t h o s e y e a r s , w h i l e t h e i n t e r n e t a n d t h e w o r l d - w i d e w e b w e r e s t i l l l a r g e l y f l u i d , u n d e f i n e d s p a c e s ( r a t h e r l i k e m y c a r e e r ) , i s p e n t a g o o d d e a l o f t i m e m u c k i n g a b o u t w i t h s o m e w h a t m a r g i n a l t e c h n o c u l t u r a l o d d i t i e s c a l l e d muds—multi-user dungeons. a m u d i s a r e a l - t i m e , n e t w o r k e d , m u l t i p l e - p a r t i c i p a n t , t e x t - b a s e d v i r t u a l r e a l i t y ( c u r t i s ) . t h e b e g i n n i n g s o f t h e m u d p h e n o m e n o n w e r e i n t h e e a r l y d u n g e o n s a n d d r a g o n s - i n s p i r e d " a d v e n t u r e " c o m p u t e r g a m e s . a m u d i s , a t i t s s i m p l e s t , a t e x t - a d v e n t u r e g a m e w h i c h c a n a c c o m o d a t e m o r e t h a n o n e p l a y e r ; t w o o r m o r e p e o p l e c a n t h u s g a n g u p o n t h e d r a g o n , o r w h a t h a v e y o u . m y i n t e r e s t i n m u d s w a s n ' t t h e g a m e a s p e c t — i h a v e n e v e r b e e n a c o m p u t e r - g a m e p l a y e r — r a t h e r , i h a d b e e n i n t r o d u c e d t o a p a r t i c u l a r i n t e r n e t m u d c a l l e d lambdamoo b y a f r i e n d w h o w a s v e r y i m m e r s e d i n i n t e r n e t c u l t u r e . l a m b d a m o o w a s a n i m m e n s e , f r e e - f l o w i n g s o c i a l e n v i r o n m e n t , l i k e a s p r a w l i n g t e x t - b a s e d h o u s e p a r t y . t h e c r i t i c a l i n n o v a - chapter : positions and approaches tion of lambdamoo was that the virtual environment was entirely constructed from within, by its players, rather than by a specially empowered designer/programmer. lambda- m o o when i first encountered it was only a year or two old, but its 'topography' was already immense and complex, simply because some thousands of users from all over the internet had been constructing and programming it. lambdamoo was, i learned* the pet project of a computer scientist at xerox p a r c (which i had never heard of); its language and internal architecture were "object-oriented"—a term i had heard but which had little meaning for me—hence " m o o , " for mud, object-oriented. in practical terms, what this meant was that you could create new things and define their behaviour in the virtual world by basing them on already existing virtual objects and then specializing them by writing simple scripts. this meant that individual players could very easily create complex, interactive objects within this virtual world. one could easily recognize a kind of aesthetic of creation in m o o worlds. the artfulness of it was a particu- lar kind of illusionism: for instance, considering the best way to create a green grassy space in the virtual environment brought into sharp relief heady issues of platonism, simulacra, and phenomenology. though i have never done any theatre, its connection and relevance to m o o i n g was obvious. thought m o o was fabulous! at the time, i honestly felt that this was—in spite of its completely text-based interface—a vastly more important and promis- ing technology than the world-wide web: here were people, presenting themselves and their environment virtually, in time. how much more interesting than static web pages! fed up with my impoverished experience as a reluctant internet entrepreneur, i went back to school again to take a new graduate program in publishing. part of the program was a -month applied internship, and i set up a project working with a distance education program at bc's open learning agency (ola). the project was to create a moo-based . lambdamoo is still running—at lambda.moo.mud.org: —more than fifteen years after it opened, which must make it one of the longest-running persistent object stores in existence. the original virtual space has been added on to tens of thousands of times by tens of thousands of 'players,' but the living room into which you emerge from the darkened 'coat closet' remains the same, as does the inanity of the conversation one can find there, any time of the day or night, any time in the last decade and a half. . i later learned that juli burk ( ) explored this theme in some detail. c h a p t e r : p o s i t i o n s a n d a p p r o a c h e s environment for high school distance learners. here was an opportunity to do what i really wanted: to immerse myself i n a project, technically and culturally, and to do some high-level reflection. the result was my masters project (maxwell ), one of the most rewarding things i have ever done. the o p e n learning agency was a good fit for me, and i stayed on after my internship. ironically, i was soon involved i n a project w h i c h would have been a m u c h better fit for a publishing internship than my m o o project had been: the o l a ' s schools program was interested i n offering their high-school distance education courses online as well as in print. the challenge of how to do both without having to do it twice was paramount, but a friend of mine there, prescott klassen, had an answer that set the direction for the next three years of my life. the answer to the problem of publishing in two formats from a single editorial process was a document management technology dating from the s and s called standard generalized m a r k u p language ( s g m l ) . klassen and i embarked on an ambitious project to design and implement an s g m l system and workflow to completely overhaul the o l a ' s courseware production. the s g m l project was, i n retrospect, a descent into the abyss, but many good things came out of it. the project was technically a success, but organizationally doomed, and i gained a wealth of insight into the cultural dynamics of technology integration. i also learned a lot i n those three years—easily more than i n any other period of my life—about computing, document management, and publishing technology. n o t surprisingly, klassen and i, having been given more or less free rein to do what we wanted, were able to move m u c h faster than the organization (a working group of or so) we were attempting to change (klassen, m a x w e l l , & n o r m a n ). a t the end of three years, our proof-of- concept complete, we both left the o l a burnt out (along w i t h a handful of other people close to the project, including our director). prescott went to work on similar publishing projects at microsoft press, and i went back to school. . sgml is an iso standard for document management (see goldfarb & rubinsky ). a somewhat bastardized application of sgml is found in the web's html technology. chapter : positions and approaches . the lasting pieces of the s g m l project at o l a that i took w i t h me are these: my grad- ual appreciation of the history of computing; that i n many, many cases, the solutions to today's challenges are to be found i n technology developed i n the s or s, and that these solutions are very often the work of individuals or small teams of thinkers—that as a result, they are wholly graspable by an individual, given a commitment to explore not just the details, but the historical contexts of their development. the larger theme lurking i n this issue is that there exists a tradition of "powerful ideas" i n computing, ideas w h i c h are unfor- tunately often ignored or bypassed i n favour of the superficial, partially understood implementations, w h i c h constitute another, larger tradition of discourse and practice. t o see through the partial, ahistorical implementations to the clearer thinking and powerful ideas lurking behind them gives one, first, a more solid place from w h i c h to withstand the constant churn and instability of the market-driven w o r l d of it, and second, an apprecia- tion that many of the big ideas i n the history of computing are about people and cultures first, and the details of technical application second. i began to believe that most of this "isn't rocket science" after all. the possibility of demystification was enormously empowering. a particular case of this comes to mind; at a document-technologies conference i n , witnessed two of the leading minds i n the field of s g m l and x m l — t i m bray and eliot kimber—engage i n a debate about the role of abstraction i n information representa- tion. kimber, a proponent of an abstract tree-based information architecture called "groves," argued for independence from and priority to particular representational strate- gies (like s g m l or x m l — s e e k i m b e r ). h i s admonition: "transcendsyntax.''bray, o n the other hand countered by appealling to the u n i x tradition and way of doing things, claiming that by agreement o n a simple representational format (e.g., simple structured text files), a great arsenal of software tools could be combined i n ways not foreseeable by the original architect. this debate, i realized, was one of cultural difference rather than of tech- nical merit. that realization led me to understand that at the core of technological systems lay people and practices, and that it was an understanding of these that was important. this chapter : positions and approaches does not—emphatically does not—mean that the technical components of a system are irrelevant, or interchangable, or governed by social factors; following latour, it means that the technical facets can only be understood well by seeing their embeddedness and partici- pation i n historical/cultural traditions of thought and practice. i was, however, sufficiently well steeped to appreciate both kimber's and bray's arguments in this light, rather than getting lost in the 'technical' details. the aforementioned "groves" concept o n its own made a huge impression on me, as well, though i am convinced now that i only scratched the surface of it. in simple practical terms, it means the representation of a document or any document-like information as a tree structure, w h i c h can then be topologically treated i n software. that such a structure can be simultaneously and reciprocally abstracted and concretized was another encounter w i t h object orientation; that by abstraction, we gain an alternate realization. this is difficult to describe i n so many words, but my seeing this concept meant that i would never see a 'document' the same way again. for instance, it immediately led to a further realization that my object-oriented grassy field i n l a m b d a m o o and the semantic structure of a term paper were made of the same kinds of things, and were, i n some fascinating ways interoperable. note that i am not talking here about the level of bits—of the ones and zeros that make up computation at the lowest level—rather, i mean this i n terms of high-level structure, at the highest semantic levels rather than the lowest. this was my intellectual journey, at least. a t the same time i was discouraged and fed up w i t h 'distance learning' and its institutional evolution —which was core to our work at o l a and w h i c h was just beginning to become a major area of interest i n the late s. in went back to school, (for good this time) and began a p h d program i n education. but i wanted to avoid the "educational technology" i had been w o r k i n g at o l a . instead, i pref- ered to spend time reading and thinking curriculum theory, continental philosophy, and . one must bear in mind while reading my pained attempts to render my own experience of this into words that i am not a math- ematician, that i have always had a very strained and compromised relationship with mathematics. i dearly wish that my math- ematical education had been better, for i have travelled this far in my life almost despite it. . david noble's " digital diploma mills" is singularly instructive on this point. chapter : positions and approaches decentered ethnography (while studying with r i c k i goldman). m y techie side, all the while, was paying the bills by means of a few sizable technical contracts for the o l a , creating a couple of different iterations of a learning environment w h i c h w o u l d provide personalized access to "learning objects" (since our s g m l project had left the o l a w i t h a large store of curriculum content easily broken up into such modular components). i had, at a deeper level, ceased caring seriously about "learning objects," but since o l a (and every other educational institution i n the networked world) was interested, these were the raw material for our efforts. o f more practical and intellectual importance to me was adopting an object- oriented platform for our development w o r k . m o r e importantly, however, this work brought me incrementally closer to figuring out what object-oriented programming and systems were all about, and where this tradition had come from. by degrees, i began to real- ize that there was a c o m m o n intellectual thread underlying almost every significant idea i had become aquainted w i t h i n the past decade: from hypercard's elegant authoring envi- ronment to m o o ' s build-from-within model, document "groves," the contextualization and re-contextualization of learning objects, and the abstractions we were able to make designing online information spaces. the catalyst to my conceptualizing all of this as a c o m m o n thread was my discovery of a paper written by a l a n kay for the history of programming languages ii conference in (kay a) o n "the early history of smalltalk." this paper, positioned amid a collection of highly technical reports on computer science history, stood out at once for me. in the first place, kay was talking about an educational project for children, rather than the design of systems for professional programmers. second, the sheer conceptual scope of the article— ranging from historical treatments of printing and print literacy to the evolution of compu- ter graphics and interface design; from the a r p a community i n the s to the design of . for the most part, "learning objects" are related to object-oriented design in name only. the very idea of "learning objects" as portable, recombinable curriculum components is, i think, highly suspect. friesen ( ) is as good a 'last word' on this topic as i have seen. . that platform was zope, an open-source object-oriented web publishing application, and i was much pleased by how easily it allowed us to think abstractly about information relationships. zope provides a simple object model for web publishing; in •> effect, it transforms web publishing from a process of retrieving files or producing database queries to one of publishing objects—a shift to a considerably more sophisticated level. see http://www.zope.org chapter : positions and approaches http://www.zope.org modern notebook computers—impressed me immensely. kay's history outlines the practical emergence of the "object paradigm" amid his research project to develop personal computing for generations of children to come. it is, i n a sense, a post-hoc manifesto for an educational and technological vision. i was coming, by degrees, to appreciate this vision and its many connecting points to pieces of my own history. o n the strength of this encounter, i then began to recognize the various themes that had made an impression on me—hyper- card, m o o , groves, learning objects, zope—as variations on and deviations from this core tradition; that here was the original source of this tradition of thinking about computing, media, and information design. w h a t impressed me most was that this tradition began with an educational vision: the original beneficiaries of this thinking were children, and it was only considerably later that personal computing and object-oriented programming became wrapped up with business needs and office productivity. the more i began to look at the history of computing over the past three decades, the more i realized that the tradition represented here—centering o n a l a n kay's multi-decade project—had enormous impor- tance to the study of computing i n education, far more importance than is commonly appreciated. i had found my thesis topic. w h y t h i s s t u d y ? w h y t h i s a p p r o a c h ? reflecting on my history w h e n i returned to school i n w i t h an agenda to study technology from an educational perspective, it was w i t h a particular set of contraints that i began to set the scope of my work. • i saw a real need for any work i was to undertake—be it development or analysis— to have some sense of historical embeddedness. i had learned this during my work on the s g m l project at o p e n learning agency, and i felt that for my work at the doctoral level, it was essential that awareness, if not respect, for what had gone before had to be a foundational piece. chapter : positions and approaches • i had developed a jaded attitude toward ambitious projects and bold, 'new' ideas; having personally been through the belly of a few of these, i had the sense that a good proportion of the energy that drives innovative projects comes from the promise of proving something (or oneself) to naysayers. every successful endeav- our is a rally against cynicism, but where this itself becomes the driver, healthy enthusiasm gives way to hubris. • i had come to recognize the "microclimate" surrounding most educational technol- ogy projects, w i t h i n w h i c h all things are possible and kids do "wonderful" things. beyond the fragile boundaries of the sphere of energy provided by a few inspired individuals (often teachers), duplication or scaling-up of such projects is impossi- ble. i later ran into this concept better articulated as the "miracle-worker discourse" (de castell, bryson, & jenson ) . • i had the sense that the division of labour between experts and end-users was path- ologically implicated i n most educational technology projects, and that somehow this reification needed to be resisted. • i was wary of—if not positively hostile to—baldly technocentric thinking; there was no way i was about to uncritically engage i n any actual development projects; i returned to school determined to not be anyone's "webmaster," nor to work on any "e-learning" projects, despite numerous opportunities to do so. part of my intent i n returning to school was to claw my way back from my position on the 'techie' side of the division of labour. for, lest we ascribe too m u c h power to the (vaguely defined) 'technocrat,' we should remember that technical work is still work—that it is labour, carried out according to the same kinds of logic that governs labour i n more traditional contexts. technical work carried out in a naive technocentric mode is i n the worst cases straightforwardly exploitative, i n the best cases still narcissistic. chapter : positions and approaches "computer criticism" in a article i n educational researcher, seymour papert proposed a genre of writing he called "computer criticism." i felt that my work should take this to heart. but what would "criticism" mean, exactly, i n the context of educational technology? contrary to the wealth of disengaged condemnation that bills itself as critique, criticism i n the larger sense prop- erly demands a certain k i n d of engagement to be meaningful. a s papert pointed out: the name does not imply that such writing w o u l d condemn computers any more than literary criticism condemns literature or social criticism condemns society. the purpose of computer criticism is not to condemn but to under- stand, to explicate, to place i n perspective. o f course, understanding does not exclude harsh (perhaps even captious) judgement. the result of understanding may well be to debunk. but critical judgment may also open our eyes to previ- ously unnoticed virtue. (papert , p. ) i have seen very little writing o n educational technology that lives up to what papert proposed here. c r i t i c i s m i n the sense described here requires not just a.familiarity but a fluidity and fluency w i t h the issues, the discourses, and the practices of computing. it requires a sense of and appreciation of where these discourses and practices come from, historically and topologically—that is, beyond the disciplinary boundaries i n w h i c h they may immediately be seen. in a very important sense, papert's computer criticism requires the breaking down of or at least resistance to the division of labour w h i c h sets technology and human aims apart. rather, i n order to make sense, we have to be able to see how these positions relate to and give rise to one another. multiple perspectives, blurred genres this, then, has been my starting place: my highest-order goal in this process is to attack or subvert the taken-for-granted division of labour that inscribes the boundaries of technology and which makes papert's "computer criticism" next to impossible. whatever potential for empowerment and democracy may come w i t h information technology is repeatedly under- . papert's own students are, perhaps predictably, exemplary: e.g., bruckman ; goldman-segall ; disessa . chapter : positions and approaches mined by the reification of these positions: experts and engineers vs. end-users and consumers. that alternatives are possible—and indeed extant—is the case w h i c h i seek to make here. t o this task i bring my own background; as a student of education and culture, and also as a designer, creator, and teacher on the technical side. in what follows, i am trying to deliberately blur the lines between computing, social science, cultural criticism, and education. i am, to use latour's ( ) vocabulary, interested i n actively proliferating the hybrids. o f course, this isn't a matter of so much conscious choice o n my part. m y personal exploration and growth i n understanding of all sides of these issues is itself varied and begins from multiple perspectives. because of this i cannot choose sides or loyalties in the division of labour; i stand w i t h feet on both sides. a n d because of this, because of my posi- tionalities, i am faced w i t h real methodological constraints: i cannot honestly bracket out the issue of expertise, hide i n the inscription of an "outsider" analyst, nor pretend to naivete, as some have attempted i n the sociology of science. i have come to a place where i can inhabit neither the "miracle worker" role nor that of the "humanist" critic—for these are caricatures w h i c h are products of the very division i seek to break down. a n d so i have undertaken to do this research, and to write this work, from multiple active perspectives: from the standpoint of educational research and cultural criticism and also, simultaneously, from a standpoint of some technical sophistication, to walk the in-between space between the romantic and the ironic: to be more, and to write more, than caricatures. m y challenge, then, is twofold: i n the first place, my task here is not one of building— nor singing the praises of (that is, instructing)—another tool or toolset. i must aspire to a 'higher' analytic frame, as the literary critic does compared w i t h that of the author. in the second place, however, intellectual honesty demands that i not restrict my stance to that of observer; i n order to meaningfully reflect on what i am studying, i must bring to bear my full faculties, including my experience and positionality—my own history—as a designer and builder of systems. a t a theoretical level, this double role is of course the case i n literary crit- icism; a critic is of course also an author—of criticism if not of'literature' perse; how could it chapter : positions and approaches ) be otherwise? in a practical sense, though, this doubling is problematic i n the case of tech- nology—of "computer criticism"—because most of us do find ourselves on one side of the divide or other: designer or user? d o these two exclusives represent our full realm of possibility? in order to do effective criticism, i n papert's sense, i have to transcend that divide—to strike a balance between criticism and advocacy. i have to find a line (or invent one, or at least spend some time mapping one out) between philosophizing about educational it "from , ft"—that is, from a disengaged, 'outsider' perspective—and uncritically evan- gelizing a particular technology or technological vision from the inside. m e t h o d o l o g y a n d t h e p r o b l e m o f . d i s t a n c e the study presented here is a historical one. m y intent is to present the story of the d y n a - book project and to trace its historical trajectories. m y challenge, thus, is to write history effectively, and to write effective history; as this is a cultural historical account, my method- ological concerns must also bear upon traditions of making sense of culture. a s a former student of anthropology, my unsurprising point of departure for the "inter- pretation of cultures" is the work of clifford geertz, who had ethnography i n m i n d when he wrote his groundbreaking essays o n the turn to a interpretive—hermeneutic—approach to the study of culture. geertz' admonition that the analysis of culture is "not an experimental science in search of law but an interpretive one in search of meaning" ( , p. ) is as appli- cable to the business of historiography as it is to ethnography, as a body of work emphasizing cultural history shows. it is worthwhile tracing the "interpretive turn" back- wards from geertz to french philosopher paul ricoeur, whose article "the m o d e l of the - text" ( / a) set the stage for the adoption of interpretive 'method' in the social sciences—particularly i n the english-speaking world—in the s. tracing back further from ricoeur takes us to the major source of modern philosophical hermeneutics i n the work of german philosopher hans-georg gadamer. chapter : positions and approaches gadamer's argument i n his magnum opus, truth and method ( / ), is that it is only through participatory knowledge and interpretation that we are able to come to any kind of an appreciation or critique of what we study. this is significantly at odds w i t h the more traditional methodological quest for objectivity, and the tension here has been a central issue i n social sciences for the past half-century; it puts i n question the very idea of social "science" and is the crux of gadamer's questioning of "method." the task of research- ing human life and meaning cannot possibly proceed according to the objectivist ideals of natural science, since the question of meaning can only be approached by engaging w i t h the subject at hand, intersubjectively, participatory, performatively. gadamer wrote, "the concept of the life-world is the antithesis of all objectivism. it is an essentially historical concept, w h i c h does not refer to a universe of being, to an 'existent w o r l d ' " ( / , p. ). jiirgen habermas is perhaps most succinct i n his explication of this concept: meanings—whether embodied i n actions, institutions, products of labor, words, networks of cooperation, or documents—can be made accessible only from the inside. symbolically prestructured reality forms a universe that is hermetically sealed to the view of observers incapable of communicating; that is, it would have to remain incomprehensible to them. the lifeworld is open only to subjects who make use of their competence to speak and act. (haber- mas , p. ) that the lifeworld is essentially historical makes a particular demand o n the inquirer. the challenge is not to make sense of social or cultural phenomena qua phenomena; that is, awash i n a vast and complex present tense, i n some vain effort to discern the structures there. rather, it is to make sense—make meaning—by engaging w i t h the historicity of the things and ideas and patterns we seek to understand. it makes the writing of history—no less than the writing of ethnography—necessarily and inescapably reflexive. gadamer's powerful vision of this process is centered around the concept of tradition ( / p. ff) which, following heidegger's philosophy, makes the temporal unfolding of experi- ence paramount. richard bernstein summarizes: chapter : positions and approaches a s gadamer sees it, we belong to a tradition before it belongs to us: tradition, through its sedimentations, has a power w h i c h is constantly determining what we are i n the process of becoming. w e are always already "thrown" into a tradition. w e can see how far gadamer is from any naive form of relativism that fails to appreciate how we are shaped by effective history (wirkungsge- chichte). it is not just that works of art, text, and traditions have effects and leave traces. rather, what we are, whether we are explicitly aware of it or not, is always being influenced by tradition, even when we think we are most free of it. a g a i n , it is important to reiterate that a tradition is not something "naturelike," something "given" that stands over against us. it is always "part of us" and works through its effective-history. (bernstein , p. ) the notion of effective history—and, as gadamer extends it i n truth and method, "histori- cally effected consciousness"—implies the kind of engagedness that binds me as a researcher, and i n w h i c h i eschew methdological distancing. in fact, the opposite seems to be the rule: "understanding is to be thought of less as a subjective act than as participating i n an event of tradition, a process of transmission i n w h i c h past and present are constantly mediated" (gadamer / , p. ). engagement w i t h and participation i n historically embedded situations—that is, w i t h i n traditions—implies making judgments about what is good, what is valid, what is just. this constructive engagement is used i n goldman-segall ( ) as a methodological tenet i n her strategically decentered ethnography. it is the basis of rudolf makreel's ( ) notion of "ethically responsive" history. philosopher alasdair m a c l n t y r e ( ) takes this thread from a history of philosophy into a theory of ethics. jiirgen habermas ( ) takes it to a theory of communication. in all of these variations, there is no appeal to external authority or source of rationality but the tradition itself, in w h i c h the researcher is necessarily—partially at least—embedded. habermas writes: the interpreter would not have understood what a "reason" is if he did not reconstruct it with its claim to provide grounds; that is, if he did not give it a rational interpretation i n m a x weber's sense. the description of reasons demands eo ipso an evaluation, even when the one providing the description feels that he is not at the moment i n a position to judge their soundness. one chapter : positions and approaches can understand reasons only to the extent that one understands why they are or are not sound, or why i n a given case a decision as to whether reasons are good or bad is not (yet) possible. a n interpreter cannot, therefore, interpret expres- sions connected through criticizable validity claims w i t h a potential of reasons (and thus represent knowledge) without taking a position on them. a n d he cannot take a position without applying his own standards of judgment, at any rate standards that he has made his own. (habermas , p. ) i see the basic question, or problematic, i n historiography to be the distance between the storying of the historical subject and the storying of the historian; the distinction between primary and secondary sources is necessarily blurred. i do not take this to be a problem of validity—nor of endless layers of relativism—rather, i n line with the hermeneutical approach, i see this straightforwardly as the space of interpretation. o n the question of the relationship between lived experience and narrated story, i do not see a "discontinuity" between these, as hayden w h i t e ( ) has famously claimed; rather, i believe, w i t h gada- mer and his followers—notably alisdair m a c l n t y r e ( ), david carr ( ), and a n d r e w n o r m a n ( )—that lives are lived and made sense of, i n the first person, narratively. the conception of the unfolding of experience, and the hermeneutic circle of its ongoing inter- pretation i n time is grounded i n the heideggerian phenomenological tradition, and i take as a basic methodological principle the treatment of experience, and action, as text (ricoeur / « ) . the historiographical challenge, then, is not one of gaining privileged access to or an unadulterated representation of what has gone before, but rather one of entering into a meaningful engagement w i t h the myriad layers of effective history w h i c h themselves produce the possibility of such an engagement. this is why the details of my personal history w i t h respect to computing and computing cultures are important to this account, as is my process of assembly and immersion i n the sources i bring to bear here. it is worth noting i n passing that nothing i n this framing would be out of place i n a contemporary exposition on ethnographic method, but the present study is not ethnography. rather, i present here an analysis of a body of historical documents—to discern and document the chapter : positions and approaches traditions, genres, and apparent structures of discourse and practice. i w i l l attempt to outline the details of this approach presently.. introducing genre theory drawing on the historiography of m a r k salber phillips, and contrary to hayden white's somewhat monolithic and ahistorical notion of emplotment, it makes sense to speak of historically contingent genres of lived narrative. phillips argues that history is best seen as a family of historically contingent and often overlapping genres. this approach—building on white's opening of historiography to literary theory and concepts—points to a r i c h interde-. pendence of text, context, readers, and writers (phillips , p. ). "genre, of course, is not a self-contained system. it is a way of ordering and mediating experience, literary and extraliterary" (p. ). genre theory—as it appears i n historiography (phillips ), i n literary theory (jauss ; c o h e n ; m i l l e r a; b), i n linguistics and cognitive science (swales ; scollon ; bazerman ; lemke )—opens up the possibility of considering the material i n question directly i n the context of the communities (scholars, audiences, markets) of people for w h o m the material is relevant. swales is perhaps the most direct: "genres are the properties of discourse communities" (swales , p. ). this works b i - directionally i n a sense; genres are defined by the communicative acts of discourse c o m m u - nities, who are, i n turn, constituted by communicative acts understandable w i t h i n certain genres. for this to work, we must ensure that we do not reify genres as sets of analytic char- acteristics or properties (cohen , p. ). bazerman puts it most eloquently: by genre i do not just mean the formal characteristics that one must observe to be formally recognized as correctly following the visible rules and expectations. genre more fundamentally is a k i n d of activity to be carried out i n a recogniza- ble textual space. [...] thus genre presents an opportunity space for realising certain kinds of activities, meanings, and relations. genre exists only i n the recognition and deployment of typicality by readers and writers—it is the recognizable shape by w h i c h participation is enacted and understood. (bazer- man , p. ) chapter : positions and approaches in putting the emphasis on genres as structures of activity and participation—rather than just of literary forms or bloodless "discourse communities"—bazerman returns us to the continuity of narrative as lived and narrative as written: that the modes of interpretation of one's life and experience "typically" fall into various historically and culturally contingent patterns or categories (cf. a very similar framing i n m a c l n t y r e , p. ). thus there is no essential difference between the treatment and interpretation of one's lived narrative and that of the subsequent "historical" narrative; both are literary/interpretive acts, both oper- ate according to conventional, historically conditioned genres and modes. genres, then, are "perspectivity technologies" (goldman & m a x w e l l ) that mediate between individual meaning and social practice. w h a t this means for the present study is that genres are among the fundamental units of analysis, and, following phillips ( ), my intent is to focus on the rise and fall of particular genres i n historical context. in this sense, the subject of this study is the emergence, translation, and relative survival of a set of genres of computing and tech- nocultural discourse. history as politics the historian's task is "not merely a reproductive but always a productive activity as well" (gadamer / , p. ). w h a t makes the writing (and reading) of history interesting and useful is the dynamic between these interpretive locations. the writing of history is thus not an attempt to nail down what happened i n the past, nor to explain the present by the past, but rather an attempt to "shape and re-shape our collective understanding" (norman , p. ) of the past, the present, and, more importantly, the future. the writ- ing of history is therefore a generative, engaged, political process that is itself historically embedded. this very embeddedness, and not any methodological measure, is what keeps us from hopeless relativism. i am not—nor is any writer—in the business of telling a story i n the sense of one story among many; l e a n only write the story according to me, from my particular perspective. w h a t i must strive to do—and here is the role of methodology, disci- pline, and rigour—is increase where possible the number and variety of perspectives chapter : positions and approaches considered and repeatedly test the story against existing frameworks; that is to say, to maxi- mize the connectedness of my account. lather's ( ) discussion of triangulation, construct-, face-, and catalytic-validity guidelines are directly instructive here, and serve the same overall end of connectedness. it is only possible for me, as an embedded subject, to tell one story—the story i am given, shaped by my historical and hermeneutical horizons—the story w h i c h emerges for me in the process of my investigation. i can speak of "a story" among many possible stories, but i can only honestly mean this plurality as a reference to the possibility of or invitation to other stories, w h i c h can only be evoked or juxtaposed, and never directly represented—to do so w o u l d require that i actually have some means of getting outside the stories, to live outside the lifeworld, outside of narrative. the story, then, is necessarily incomplete, its only hope for greater completeness is to be futher embedded. the dynabook as/in history studying a technological project isn't any harder than doing literary criticism. - bruno latour, aramis t o frame my process and thus the scope of the story i w i l l tell, a brief overview of sources and my engagement w i t h them is i n order. m y starting point for this research is a r i c h reflec- tive document by a l a n kay dating from the early s, "the early history of smalltalk," prepared as a conference presentation i n for the a c m ' s history of programming languages ii and subsequently published ( pages worth) by the a c m i n a large volume compiling formal articles on the sessions w i t h appendices, presentation transcripts and discussants' remarks (kay a). kay's piece serves as a bird's-eye view of the first decade or so of his work, as well as a hub document for subsequent research. "the early history of smalltalk" is still referenced and recommended w i t h i n the development community as probably the single best articulation of kay's vision and work, especially i n the s. . the acm—association for computing machinery—is computing's pre-eminent professional association. it operates a press and an enormous library (digital and otherwise) of published material, proceedings, and literally dozens of periodical publica- tions running the gamut from newsletters to scholarly journals. in the world of scholarly communication, the acm is an exem- plar, and is certainly a terrific resource to the historian. chapter : positions and approaches m o v i n g out from this point, i located two main bodies of literature which, though grouped chronologically, i distinguish contexually rather than as primary vs. secondary sources. the first, dating mostly from the s, are conference papers and research reports from x e r o x p a r c , outlining the dynabook vision, the details of the early smalltalk imple- mentations', and a smaller amount of material o n educational research. in this literature, there are a small number of documents from the early s, and then nothing until , apparently due to a x e r o x crackdown on publicity i n the wake of a revealing article by stew- art brand i n rolling stone magazine i n —an article w h i c h portrayed the p a r c researchers as long-haired "hot-rodders" (brand ) and about w h i c h x e r o x executives were somewhat embarrassed (kay a, p. ). after there is a wealth of material documenting research and development; this literature culminates i n the early s w i t h the end of the original x e r o x p a r c teams and the release of the smalltalk technology to the w o r l d beyond xerox. a second body of literature i have identified follows on kay's / publication, and comprises a large number of journalistic articles and interviews w i t h kay as well as a substantial number of lectures and presentations by kay (many of which, thanks to the internet, are available online as digital video, audio, or text transcripts). this second body of literature roughly coincides w i t h the public release of the squeak technology by kay's team at a p p l e computer and, later, disney corporation i n the s. the squeak technology was positioned as the re-realization of portions of the original dynabook vision, and not surpris- ingly, the literature appearing i n the late s and early s is concerned largely w i t h the re-articulation of that vision and its key principles, often in m u c h more detail than the works from the s, but certainly i n line w i t h them conceptually. g i v e n these two groupings—material from the x e r o x p a r c period ( - ) and then from the m i d s onward—there is clearly about a decade i n w h i c h very little published material appeared. d u r i n g most of this time, a l a n kay was at a p p l e computer and working on educational research w i t h a very low public profile; i have had to do some digging to turn up a number of unpublished reports from this period —a phase i think is chapter : positions and approaches critical to an appreciation of the project's re-emergence (with squeak) i n the late s, ostensibly a continuation of the original s vision, but now appearing i n a very different world. a third "body of literature" i encountered is the archived internet communications of the project teams and worldwide community surrounding the squeak project since the s; this comprises several mailing lists, a dozen or so websites, and the archive of the various versions of the software released o n the internet since then. a number of instruc- tional and/or reference books on squeak have been published since the late s as well, and i include these i n this latter category. having oriented myself to these three major document groups, it then became possible to interpret a large body of surrounding literature through the lenses of the dynabook vision and its various research projects; this surrounding literature includes the documen- tation for the smalltalk language (aimed at software developers rather than children or educators) from the s; a wide variety of educational research and development work spanning three decades or more from m i t ' s m e d i a lab, w i t h w h i c h kay has been loosely associated over the years and w h i c h offers something of a parallel research agenda, particu- larly i n the work of seymour papert and his successors; and, more widely, a large body of literature on educational computing, computer science, and internet culture over the past two or three decades. m y trajectory took me through much of this documentary material, and having absorbed and made sense of a good deal of it, at least o n a superficial level, i made personal contact w i t h several of the key individuals i n this story. in the spring of travelled to glendale, california, to spend two days at the viewpoints research institute w i t h a l a n kay and k i m rose, during w h i c h time serendipity allowed me to meet and talk to both seymour papert and smalltalk developer d a n ingalls. in the fall of that year, the oopsla ' confer- . alan kay and kim rose at the viewpoints research institute are to thank here for opening their substantial archives to me; ann marion, project manager with kay while at apple computer, similarly deserves thanks for sharing her own archives. but while my research of this period serves to capture the main currents of research arid thinking, i make no claim to have exhaustively covered this period; there remain mountains of primary documents from the s that i did not cover, including hundreds or thousands of hours of video. chapter : positions and approaches ence happened to be i n vancouver, w h i c h brough kay and a good number of the squeak community to my own hometown, and w h i c h provided an excellent opportunity to talk w i t h many of these people—in particular, i had opportunity to interview t e d kaehler, who had been part of kay's team since the early s, and whose exceedingly detailed and organized memory of the past thirty-five years proved invaluable i n answering myriad detail questions i n my construction of this narrative. in a similar vein, conversations w i t h k i m rose and a n n marion—both of whose relationships with the project date to the m i d s—filled i n many gaps i n my understanding. i want to point out, though, that i do not consider this to have been an interview-driven research project; my primary thread has been the consideration and interpretation of writ- ten texts, and i see these many valuable conversations as supporting that primary documentary work. i spent the better part of two days talking w i t h a l a n kay while i was i n glendale, but there was very little of that wide-ranging and sublimely tangential conversa- tion that w o u l d be recognizable as 'interview'—a judgment kay notably approved of. in retrospect at least, i feel there is something of the spirit of jerome bruner's "spiral curriculum" in my research method—a 'developmental' re-framing of the hermeneutic circle. i have gone around and around the literature, reading, re-reading, and adding to the collection as i have gone along; at each re-consideration and re-interpretation of my sources, and certainly through the process of writing and re-writing this account, i have achieved what i hope are both deeper and more broadly connected interpretations and framings of the various facets of the story. i consider this to be an example of how herme- neutically informed historical inquiry ought to move: an iterative process of the "fusing of, horizons," of achieving a particular instantiation of the "unity" (as gadamer w o u l d have it) of self and other. in the depth of time and interest i have engaged w i t h it, it is hopefully r i c h and at least defensible i n terms of its "validity." it is also entirely incomplete, inexhaustive, and open to debate. whether this study succeeds i believe should be judged i n terms of the value and appeal of such debates. chapter : positions and approaches h o w do w e k n o w a g o o d i d e a w h e n w e s e e o n e ? o n e of donna haraway's great themes is that none of us is innocent i n the realm of techno- science. it is only by virtue of our involvement and investment w i t h these issues that we are able to make any sense, or make any difference. a n d so we can only attempt to own and own up to our position(s). haraway writes: the point is to make a difference in the world, to cast our lot for some ways of life and not others. t o do that, one must be i n the action, be finite and dirty, not transcendent and clean. knowledge-making technologies, including crafting subject positions and ways of inhabiting such positions, must be made relent- lessly visible and open to critical intervention. ( , p. ) i bring this point to the foreground in order to add one more layer of context to the present study: to forswear the objective of critical distance. t o write an "agnostic" study of a case like the one i an writing here—the historical trajectory of a l a n kay's dynabook vision— w o u l d be to l i m i t the significance of the study to the 'conclusion' that a particular techno- logical project failed, or succeeded, or enjoyed market success, or withered away. it w o u l d not, on the contrary, be able to speak to the ethical dimension of such a trajectory and to suggest why we might care. this is to say, given the ambitions of this study as i have framed it for myself, it w o u l d not be possible to do the present inquiry while holding to an ideal of objectivity or agnosticism. fpr the overarching aim of this study—and i take "aims" to be foundational in deciding methodological issues—is to break down the division of labour that we take for granted, to subvert the reified discourses of'experts,' 'engineers,' 'designers,' 'end-users,' 'miracle workers,' 'plain folks' and so on, an aim i think is possible at least by making the different threads and voices herein aware of one another: by building bridges, or at least by drawing attention to the always-already constructed boundaries inscribing our various relations to technoculture. i want the readers of my work to be able to read these discourses, evaluate these practices, w i t h a richer, more critical eye than the usual rhetoric surrounding technology (especially i n education) affords. this is precisely the goal of c r i t i - chapter : positions and approaches cism i n the large; it provides us with improved means for making practical judgements, for identifying the right thing, or the good thing—or at least the "better" thing. in order to answer the question, "how do we recognize a good idea when we see one?" we have to first recognize a good idea. this cannot be done while maintaining a stance of agnosticism or methodological distance. it can onlybe accomplished by engagement and then elaboration of the layers and spheres of meaning w h i c h can be generated w i t h i n that space of engagement—it demands, as haraway says, being "finite and dirty." personal computing/educational technology as a site of struggle thus what essentialism conceives as an ontological split between technology and meaning, i conceive as a terrain of struggle between different actors differently engaged with technology and meaning. - andrew feenberg, questioning technology philosopher of technology a n d r e w feenberg's conception is a response to the burden of essentialism, inherited from centuries of european philosophy. feenberg's stance— technol- ogy as site of struggle—is a starting point for me. i conceive of technology, information technology, educational technology, not as a thing or a discourse or a set of practices to be analyzed or judged, but as a contested ground, over w h i c h w i l l be fought the battles concerning democracy, education, and capitalism i n this century. personal computing is "socially constructed"—it is facile to point this out. in its construction is found the site of a struggle for meaning and significance. the substructure of this struggle is i n the competing genres of understanding and articulation of what personal computing—and educational computing—are about. m y starting assertion is then that the dynabook is a volley thrown into the midst of that struggle. it is not purely an 'historical' artifact whose day was i n the s; rather, the thrust of the dynabook project is at least as relevant today i n the st century as it was three decades ago. this is a battle for meaning, a battle to define what computing is and shall be, and it is far from decided. the stakes of this battle are, i believe, higher than we tend to admit, as our default instrumental- ist stance leads us to downplay the significance of this struggle. h o w computing is defined chapter : positions and approaches i n these early years (in its incunabula, kay would tell us) w i l l have enormous consequence for how we live and work and learn and conduct our communities i n the future. i mean this i n the most concrete sense, but i am not interested here in evaluating any particular educa- tional technology i n terms of instructional efficacy. rather, my interest is at a broader level of citizenship and democracy, i n the sense that john dewey established: a democracy is more than a form of government; it is primarily a mode of asso- ciated living, of conjoint communicated experience, the extension in space of the number of invididuals who participate in an interest so that each has to refer his own action to that of others, and to consider the action of others to give point arid direction to his own... (dewey , p. ) this may sound like an unabashedly romantic framing of the issue—kay has acknowledged as m u c h on numerous occasions, and so should . am not neutral; i am not here to play the disengaged observer. i am interested i n casting my lot for some genres and not others: genres w h i c h define and structure practice, interpretation, understanding as political and ethical patterns. historian m a r k salber phillip's studied the rise and fall of genres of histori- cal writing/understanding i n th-century england. i see the present project as doing something related for the technocultural genres of the past three decades. m y task, then, is to demonstrate how and why technology is political—more specifi- cally, software as politics by other means. there is a superficial interpretation of this identification w h i c h concerns the way i n w h i c h software is designed, released, and licensed i n ways w h i c h to a greater or lesser extent constrain and direct a "user's" actions and poten- tial (lessig ; rose ); this is an arena of ongoing battles i n copyright law, emerging trends like free and open-source software, the reach of open standards, and the market dynamics of dominant corporations such as microsoft, adobe, apple, and others. but a second and somewhat deeper interpretation of technology and software as p o l i - tics has to do w i t h a gradual (but by no means consistent nor even particularly widespread) democratization of computing over the past four decades. in this interpretation, it becomes possible to identify and map out the interplay of power and resistance w i t h i n a technical chapter : positions and approaches sphere like the internet or even your desktop. this is the arena i n w h i c h much of a l a n kay' project can be considered. this is the level at w h i c h the educational implications of computing are most acute, and, indeed, most accessible, if we take the time to look. a third, more systemic interpretation requires a foray into philosophical theories of technology, locating the political aspects of technology at their lowest and most general level. it is to this topic that i turn next. chapter : positions and approaches chapter : framing technology in order to do justice to a treatment of technological development, i want to first establish a philosophical position w i t h respect to technology. in doing so, my aim is to set up a theoret- ical scaffolding upon w h i c h i can hang particular reflections i n my examination of a l a n kay's vision of personal computing. m y intent here is not to provide a broad-strokes "theory of technology"—neither by means of reviewing a hundred years' worth of philosophizing o n the topic nor by attempting to construct a water-tight model. w h a t i w i l l try to present here is a provisional framing that draws attention to a number of particularly interesting charac- teristics of technology. ' the framing i have i n m i n d rests o n a foundational concept of technology as media and as mediation; building on this, i w i l l introduce the "sociology of translation" as advanced i n the work of bruno latour and m i c h e l c a l l o n , and i w i l l elaborate the implications of trans- lation as a principal metaphor for the dynamics of technocultural systems. this semiotic aspect of technology leads to a discussion of what i have called the "mechanics of text," and here i wish to present a latter-day framing of the k i n d of media ecology m a r s h a l l m c l u h a n outlined i n the gutenberg galaxy, but w i t h digital software given the central role, rather than print. the emphasis o n software itself leads to a consideration of simulation as the paradigmatic practice of dynamic digital media, and i w i l l argue that this is an essentially hermeneutic process, something w h i c h should focus our critical attention on its situated- ness. finally, i w i l l discuss some methodological implications raised by this framing of technology, and put the spotlight on the ethical and political considerations of a cultural treatment of technology. t e c h n o l o g y a s m e d i a m y starting point is to treat technology as mediation—or as media, this w o r d bringing w i t h it a particular set of connotations and references (largely set i n their current form by m c l u - han i n the s). t o treat technology as media is to establish a perspective probably . chapter : framing technology distinct to the "information age." w h e n the artifacts provoking discussion are the internet and computing devices, a decidedly different tone is set than w i t h industrial technology such as steel mills and power stations. this distinction immediately brings forth the herme- neutic aspect of technology (feenberg ; ), by w h i c h i mean the complex of forces and processes w h i c h govern the significance of particular technologies to particular people i n particular times and places. a n d it is the hermeneutic question that i mean to foreground here, rather than any suggestion of an essence of technology. in sum, differences i n the way social groups interpret and use technical objects are not merely extrinsic but also make a difference i n the nature of the objects themselves. what the object is for the groups that ultimately decide its fate determines what it becomes as it is redesigned and improved oyer time. if this is true, then we can only understand technological development by studying the sociopolitical situation of the various groups involved i n it. (feenberg , p. ) a treatment of technology as media or mediation lends itself also to the exploration of a media ecology. n o w , by ecology i do not mean anything green (at least not directly). rather, what i mean by ecology is, after postman ( ), a dynamic, evolving system i n w h i c h actor and environment are inseparable and mutually constitutive, i n w h i c h both people and cultural artifacts are considered, and in w h i c h responsibilities and ethics are emergent and situated, in w h i c h the content-context distinction itself is problematic and should probably be avoided, for everything is the context for everything else. but, lest i risk characterising the whole issue as a sea of aporia, let me appeal back to mediation and hermeneutics—which provides a vocabulary for dealing precisely w i t h this sort of contextualism. f r o m a hermeneutic perspective, we are our mediations; mediation is primary, and not something that happens to already-existing entities. w h a t this implies is that, as i n m c l u - han's famous aphorism, the medium is the message (and that practically speaking, it is an error to attempt to distill one from the other), we human beings are effectively inseparable from our technology/material culture. is this so radical a stance? it would not be terribly controversial to claim that human beings are inseparable from our language(s). i mean to chapter : framing technology claim for technological mediation this same primacy, to position technology as language, or at least to suggest that it be treated similarly. i make this claim not as part of a characteriza- tion of modernity, but as a fundamental part of what being human is about. putting mediation first dissolves the debate between the idea that language expresses pre-existing thoughts and the notion that we are trapped within the limits of our language; or, similarly, whether culture is something internal or external to individuals. michael cole's influential book, cultural psychology: a once and future discipline ( ) draws upon the russian cultural-historical school (after vygotsky) to elaborate a theory of medi- ated, contextualized action which "asserts the primal unity of the material and the symbolic in human cognition" (p. ). in cole's version of mediated action, artifacts are simultaneously ideal (conceptual) and material. they are ideal in that their material form has been shaped by their participation in the interac- tions of which they were previously a part and which they mediate in the present.... defined in this manner, the properties of artifacts apply with equal force whether one is considering language or the more usually noted forms of artifacts such as tables and knives which constitute material culture, (p. ) if we are our mediations, then certainly we cannot posit that ideas precede expression or mediation; nor can we accept that we can only think what our language of expression makes possible, for we can invent languages (and indeed do). so with our technologies: we do not exist in some essential way prior to technological mediation, nor are we subsumed within a technological trajectory. we invent tools, as we do languages, and subsequently our experi- ence and agency is shaped by them. but to say this is merely to ape mcluhan; it is the historicity of these 'inventions' that is the particularly interesting story. precisely in the dynamics of this relationship and how 'we' (i will put that in qualifying quotes this time) see it—in terms of historicity, class, gender, politics, and so on—are found the interesting and important stories; that which is most worthy of study and the invest- ment that leads to deeper understanding. far from seeing technology as something that augments or diminishes—or indeed qualifies—the human, my starting place is that human- chapter : framing technology ity is itself technologically defined, and in myriad ways. donna haraway's cyborg trope is a particularly eloquent and evocative address to this notion: there are several consquences to taking the imagery of cyborgs as other than our enemies. [...] the machine is not an it to be animated, worshipped, and dominated. the machine is us, our processes, an aspect of our embodiment. we can be responsible for machines; they do not dominate or threaten us. (haraway , p. ) there is a decidedly historical character to such framings and perspectives. how this rela- tion presents itself to us today in the age of the "cyborg" is not what it would have been in the "machine age" of steam and steel; nor would it have the same character in the th century, with its 'machinery' of iconography, horsecraft, and emerging bureaucracy. but what is the same in all these cases is the central role of technological mediation. what is mediation, then, or media? i want to spend some time teasing out the implica- tions of these concepts by going down two different—but complementary—routes. the first route is the work of architect malcolm mccullough; the second is by way of the sociol- ogy of technoscience of bruno latour and michel callon. mccullough's framing of media to turn to the more specific formulation, then, what is a medium . to my mind, nobody answers this better—and in a definitively active, constructive, and contextualist mode— than harvard architecture professor malcolm mccullough, in his book abstracting craft. mccullough writes: tools are means for working a medium. a particular tool may indeed be the only way to work a particular medium, and it may only be for working that medium. thus a medium is likely to distinquish a particular class of tools. [...] sometimes a medium implies such a unique set of tools that the whole is referred to without differentiation. painting is a medium, but it is also the use of specific tools and the resulting artifact: a painting. the artifact, more than . bruno latour's pandora's hope ( , pp. - ) traces a possible history of technocultural mediation which begins even before the primordial "tool kit" of stones and sticks: with the very idea of social organization—as technology. chapter : framing technology the medium in w h i c h or tools by w h i c h it is produced, becomes the object of our work. [...] artifact, tool, and medium are just different ways of focusing our attention on the process of giving form... in many refined practices, the perception of a medium surpasses any perception of tools. if a medium is a realm of possibilities for a set of tools, then any immediate awareness of the tools may become subsidiary to a more abstract awareness of the medium. ( m c c u l l o u g h , pp. - ) m c c u l l o u g h positions media i n the midst of the "process of giving form"—that is, practice. h i s framing integrates material and conceptual resources equally, suggesting that these become distinct as we focus our attention differently. m c c u l l o u g h clearly echoes heidegger's famous ontology of the hammer as ready-to-hand. he also, as we w i l l see, paral- lels latour's vocabulary of articulation and network; the hand and tool and medium become a network, aligned i n the articulation of the work. m c c u l l o u g h ' s exploration of the subtle- ties of craft—and particularly handcraft—moves from tool to medium to artifact seamlessly, drawing his attention to the spaces of tension and grain w i t h i n each, letting his attention fall away where it is not needed, according to the dynamics of actual, situated practice. note the emphasis i n m c c u l l o u g h ' s account o n work, and i n particular form-giving work. this is a participatory stance, not a spectatorial one; it bases the ontology of media i n the actor, and not i n the spectator or consumer. compare m c c u l l o u g h ' s framing w i t h that of peter lyman, writing on the computerization of academia: [m]ost fundamentally, most people only want to 'use' tools and not to think about them; to'nonexperts, thinking about tools is a distraction from the prob- lem presented by the content of the work [...] whereas a machine has a purpose built into its mechanism, and a tool requires the novice to acquire skill to real- ize this purpose, a computer is a field of play only to an expert. (lyman , p. ) lyman's analysis makes 'tools' into rather ahistorical black boxes while appealing to higher- order goals—which may prove to be something of a false economy. h o w a particular tool comes to be neatly integrated i n a particular practice—to the point where it becomes subsumed into the practice—is a profoundly historical and political process (franklin chapter : framing technology ). this notion is often troublesome, but there exists a case i n w h i c h nearly everyone recognizes the historicity of'practice': the relationship between a musician and her instru- ment. both m c c u l l o u g h and l y m a n touch o n musicianship, but treat it rather differently. l y m a n goes to far as to give special status to this case, claiming that the musician/instru- ment connection transcends tool use: "in performance, the musical instrument and player interact i n a manner that cannot accurately be described as a human-tool relation" (lyman , p. ). m c c u l l o u g h ' s treatment is m u c h more involved: "acute knowledge of a medium's structure comes not by theory but through involvement" ( m c c u l l o u g h , p. ). this awareness or knowledge has two faces: one is the familiar falling away of intermediaries to allow consciousness of the medium or practice itself. in the other are the traces of culture, knowledge, and history that become wrapped up i n our tools, media, and artifacts. the guitar may disappear from the consciousness of the musician, such that she becomes aware only of the music, but over time, the instrument w i l l bear the marks of her playing, w i l l show wear from her hands, be stained by the moisture from her skin; conversely, her hands and her musicianship i n general w i l l bear the complementary wear patterns. o u r tools, media, and artifacts are no less situated than we are, and they share the temporality of our exist- ence. they have history, or historicity, or horizons that we merge w i t h our own. the social structure of this shared historicity is something akin to literacy, a topic i w i l l return to at length. chapter : framing technology latour's mediation: articulations and translations bruno latour entered the consciousness of english-language social science w i t h his book w i t h steve woolgar, laboratory life, w h i c h has some claim to .being the first real ethnography of a scientific laboratory. latour and woolgar were interested in explicating the process of scientific investigation, and the tack they took was one w h i c h w o u l d largely define latour's career: science as inscription—that is, the turning of things into signs, and, therein, the application of semiotics (in the mode of a . j. greimas) to science and technology theory. latour is now more famous for his association w i t h colleague m i c h e l c a l l o n and the so-called "paris school" of science and technology studies, and w i t h a school of thought about science and technology called "actor-network theory" (later reified simply as a n t ) . actor-network theory has been notoriously controversial (see, for example, c o l l i n s & yearly ; bloor ) and, i think, broadly misunderstood—in part simply because the wrong elements are emphasized in the moniker "actor-network theory." latour's repeated call has been for symmetry in how we treat human and nonhuman agency, the social and technical, and his attempts at making this clear have required constant re-iteration and chapter : framing technology j a m e s ' c h o o - c h o o s (december, ) at months, my son lames is "enthralled with trains. he has a • small wooden train set", andjie i's fascinated • by it, by the way, the cars go. together, the way they' go' around the, track, the way the track goes together. he looks for trains out in the world and in books. he sees things, like fences, and says, "choo rlioo," presumably seeing them as if they're tracks trains are,educational mediator james. here's how: we cannot assume that a train or trainset is for.him what it is.fdr us'.'a train cannot be said,to simply, be"; a train is the product of heavily layered interpretation, . tradition, enculturation. but for james, j encountering the world for the first time, a ' ; train is something new; he has no idea what a 'real', train : is or. what it is about—how could he? .what' a train:, is; i s ' so ^under- determined, i n ; his c a s e - t h a t - h i s under- standirigiqf .the; significance of what a train is must be completely .different from', say, mine. we can talk to him about it, because ; there is a common referent, but its significancejn his world is—must be—so very different from mine. james at, months is just beginning to •' develop' an overall; sense of the .world; as opposed, to*- knbwihgr fragmentary- things here and there!-,the episode's of immediate experience. now he is beginning to i systematize, t h e trainset— and his railroad i trope more' generally—is one of the first systems of things that he's really engaged with. the train and its microworld is a whole, system:, if.has,'a grammar, a'set of rules,' ., constraints,'and'possibilities: james use's the train set as a model, or a frame, to look at the rest of the world. the trainset is a language, a symbolic system, and in the way he uses, it as lenses with which to see the rest: o f ; t h e - ; world, it is ' almost" entirely-'; , metaphoric._of> course, trains are meta- phors for adults too, but in a much different,: and perhaps jess dynamic way. "•:-. as he grows,up " ther things will come to' take the place of the trainset as his lens. he . learns systems of classifications (animals, , colours,, weather, etc.) and media like pictures, and text. books and print are'- : already iri.jirie to become powerful symbolic' tools for.his.^understanding'the world, but .• not yet; a b*qok is still: merely a container of stories- fof^him; rather than a'"personal dynamic medium" like the choo-choo train. \ clarification over the past two decades. h i s first theoretical book i n english, science in action, ( ) made the first broad strokes of a general picture of his ideas. the book was influential but its bold constructivist claims were seen by many as dangerously out on a limb (e.g., bricmont & sokal ), such that latour has published substantial reworkings and reframings, notably the excellent essay, "where are the m i s s i n g masses? the sociology of some mundane artifacts" ( ), we have never been modern ( ), and pandora's hope: essays on the reality of science studies ( ). there is a general trend i n these works from the initial semiotic approach latour and woolgar took towards a m u c h more all-encompassing ontological stance, one that bears some resemblance to phenomenological theory. since the early s, latour's works have been characterized by his use of a special vocabulary aimed at getting around semantic ambiguities raised by his theorizing, and influenced by a . n . whitehead's event-oriented process philosophy? in pandora's hope ( ) latour provides a comprehensive treatment of technical mediation, presenting the vocabulary of paris-school science studies—associations, delega- tion, detours, goal translation, interference, intermediaries, programs of action, shifting in and shifting out—all of w h i c h elaborate latour's theme of the alliance and alignment of resources, both human and nonhuman, and the ongoing construction of technosocial systems—or networks—thereby. technical artifacts are as far from the status of efficiency as scientific facts are from the noble pedestal of objectivity. real artifacts are always parts of institu- tions, trembling i n their mixed status as mediators, mobilizing faraway lands and people, ready to become people or things, not knowing if they are composed of one or of many, of a black box counting for one or of a labyrinth concealing multitudes. boeing s do not fly, airlines fly. (latour , p. ) a key motif i n latour's recent writing is that of crossing the boundary between signs and things. t w o entire chapters of pandora's hope are devoted to working through this process . a.n. whitehead's book, process and reality is the touchstone here; one seemingly picked up by alan kay in his early writ- ings as well (see kay ). chapter : framing technology i n the natural sciences—how, by degrees, raw soil samples become quantified, comparable, publishable inscriptions. a n d conversely, latour also attends to the ways i n w h i c h signs are articulated as things: he draws attention to the lowly speed bump, w h i c h the french call a "sleeping policeman." the speed bump's original admonition, "slow down so as not to endanger pedestrians," becomes by stages translated into, "slow down so as not to damage your car's suspension," and beyond, the message being articulated not i n words but in asphalt topography: the translation from reckless to disciplined drivers has been effected through yet another detour. instead of signs and warning, the campus engineers have used concrete and pavement. in this context the notion of detour, of transla- tion, should be modified to absorb, not only... a shift i n the definition of goals and functions, but also a change in the very matter of expression. (p. ) but, latour notes, i n anticipation of the 'humanist' critique, w e have not abandoned meaningful human relations and abruptly entered a world of brute material relations—although this might be the impression of drivers, used to dealing w i t h negotiable signs but now confronted by nonnego- tiable speed bumps. the shift is not from discourse to matter because, for the engineers, the speed bump is one meaningful articulation w i t h i n a gamut of propositions [which have unique historicity]. thus we remain in meaning but no longer in discourse; yet we do not reside among mere objects. where are we? (p. ) latour's foregrounding of articulation and translation as key movements i n the relation- ships between us and our material realities makes mediation foundational, and, as w i t h m c c u l l o u g h ' s practice-oriented framing, it reminds us that mediation is something ongo- ing, rather than a discrete step or a qualifier of otherwise stable entities. stability i n latour's writings is an effect, not a starting point; i n pandora's hope he is careful to distinguish between the idea of "intermediaries," w h i c h look like objects, and "mediations," w h i c h produce them. by working out a vocabulary capable of making such distinctions, latour chapter : framing technology goes m u c h farther than most i n giving us a comprehensive philosophical framework for understanding mediation. t e c h n o l o g y a s t r a n s l a t i o n it is in the detours that we recognize a technological act; this has been true since the dawn of time.... and it is in the number of detours that we recognize a project's complexity. - bruno latour, aram is m i c h e l callon's article "techno-economic networks and irreversibility" ( ) is probably the most lucid single articulation of the position that has come to be called "actor-network theory," w h i c h problematizes the individual actor by embedding it i n a network and a temporal flow. the network comes to be articulated by means of what c a l l o n calls "displacements"—that is, the re-arrangement and re-definition of various actors' goals, plans, and sub-plans such that these various elements come to be "aligned," forming a network or chain of articulations, and thereby allowing interactions of greater extent, power, and durability. the dynamics of this process are what c a l l o n and latour spend most of their time explicating; it is a time-consuming business, because each such displacement and alignment depends upon a packaging of complexity into an apparent "black box" of relative stability and dependability. the paris school locates the methodology of science studies i n the unpacking of these boxes, and hence, i n the analysis of these networks. a n d yet, to focus solely on the nouns here—actors, resources, intermediaries, networks—is to miss m u c h of the point. callon's writings also provide a better slogan, one w h i c h better focuses o n the process of articulation and alignment: the sociology of translation (callon ; ; c a l l o n & latour ). in taking a complex articulation (it could be the reading of data, the negotiation of fund- ing, the assembly of particular material apparatus or group of people) and rendering it as a resource to be used i n a larger assembly (with larger/different goals), that particular articula- tion is translated into something more o r less different. it has been re-framed and thus re- contextualized, embedded i n a different practical or discursive context; i n doing so, its chapter : framing technology meaning or significance and the work it does changes. this is what is meant by translation. latour explains: in addition to its linguistic meaning (relating versions in one language to versions i n another one) [translation] has also a geometric meaning (moving from one place to another). translating interests means at once offering new interpretations of these interests and channelling people i n different direc- tions. 'take your revenge' is made to mean 'write a letter'; 'build a new car' is made to really mean 'study one pore of an electrode'. the results of such rendering are a slow movement from one place to another. the main advan- tage of such a slow mobilization is that particular issues (like that of the science budget or of the one-pore model) are now solidly tied to m u c h larger ones (the survival of the country, the future of cars), so well tied indeed that threatening the former is tantamount to threatening the latter. (latour , p. ) the extent to w h i c h these ties are "solid," or, for that matter, "irreversible" is the matter of some discussion w i t h i n the literature. callon's article suggests that successful network alignments (and thus translations) are indeed irreversible, and some of latour's early writ- ings seem to support this (his use of the term chreod—greek for 'necessary path'—taken from biologist waddington, confirms this reading. see latour , p. ). later, however, latour seems to turn from this view, arguing that irreversibility is only the product of continual energy and organization (see latour for a full, treatment of this theme), that systems or networks may undergo crises at any point which tend to misalign these same resources, turning tidy black boxes (the building blocks of more complex assemblies) back into complexities themselves. translation is thus more a process than a product; it is "the mechanism by w h i c h the social and natural worlds progressively take form" (callon , p. ). the framing of technology as mediation i offered earlier means, to use latour and callon's r i c h keyword, technology as translation: the (re-)articulation of the w o r l d i n new forms and contexts, thereby effecting transformations of its 'being'. n o w , if technology is translation, isn't something always "lost i n translation"? o f course it is. m y appropriation of . latour and callon credit french philosopher michel serres with this usage of "translation." chapter : framing technology the term in the service of this exposition is intended to do a particular k i n d of work; it fore- grounds some aspects of a theory of technology and deprecates others. a quote from c a l l o n and latour shows this i n all its political and metaphorical richness. by translation we understand all the negotations, intrigues, calculations, acts of persuasion and violence, thanks to which an actor or force takes, or causes to be conferred on itself, authority to speak or act on behalf of another actor or force. (callon & latour , p. ) let me leave this particular line suspended for a moment, however, while we return to a mundane example i n order to work through some of the ways i n w h i c h technology as trans- lation can be articulated. let us take the old shopworn example of the hammer. a translation-oriented way of looking at the hammer is that it is the technology that translates a nail into a fastener. this lands us mise-en-scene i n a network of other articulations: a pointy stick of steel is translated into a nail; a nail becomes a fastener of wood; it translates two pieces of wood into a construction. n o w that we have those pieces, the hammer can translate the arm into a nail-driver; the hammer-wielder is translated into a carpenter; a stack of lumber is translated into a house-frame; and so on. a whole concert of temporal displacements and ontological shifts occurs i n the rendering of a hammer and a nail into 'functional' pieces. some of these translations are more permanent than others: the house frame hopefully has some stability; the carpenter's professionalism and income are likely dependent on that translation haying some extent i n time. the hammer variously translates us into builders, the things it hits into fasteners, and the things we hit nails into into arti- facts. heidegger's point about a different ontology being revealed when we hit our thumbs is true, but what the hammer does when we hit nails is much more important. a s latour takes pains to point out, what is at stake are longer and more durable chains of associations. n o w , as we have all heard, when all one has is a hammer, everything looks like a nail, and this is nowhere so true as when musing about technologies. lest we treat all technology as a . heidegger's famous rendering makes the hammer "ready-to-hand" in the practice of hammering. mcluhan's framing makes a similar move, making the hammer an extension of the arm (or fist, depending which political nail one is trying to strike).. chapter : framing technology hammer, remember that the hammer and nail example is but one set of articulations; long pants and thatched roofs and texts and numbers are all technologies, too, as are personal computers and nuclear reactors. each is a particular articulation of networks of varying degree. in each case, different translations are effected. the c o m m o n thing among these is not the k i n d or scope of changes w h i c h are brought about, but that the fundamental dynamic is one of translations, and chains of translations. latour goes so far as to decon- struct the divide between so-called 'modern' and 'pre-modern' societies along these lines; what we see, rather than some k i n d of quantum difference, is a difference i n degree, largely expressed i n the scope and scale of translations w h i c h can be effected, and thus the relative length of the networks that can be sustained (latour , ). latour offers the example of the french explorer laperouse, who visited the east a s i a n island of sakhalin briefly i n , ascertained from the people living there that it was i n fact an island (and not a penin- sula extending from siberia, as the french suspected), and was able to record this knowledge i n descriptions sent back to france (latour , pp. - ). there is no qual- itative divide between the thinking of laperouse and the people of sakhalin (who, latcw notes, drew maps in the sand for the french), but there is a considerable difference i n their relative ability to translate knowledge into "immutable, combinable, mobile" forms (p. ) w h i c h in turn facilitate longer and longer-lasting chains of resources. w r i t i n g , cartography, and celestial navigation made up part of the technology of trans- lation for th-century french explorers; so too d i d muskets, cannons, and square-rigged ships. latour's account of'modernity'—though he explicitly forswears the very notion—is one of proliferations of translating technologies, and the longer and longer networks that result. if there is an essence of'modern' technology, it surely has this characteristic: that it is more deeply intertangled and has more components than seen before. but, latour insists, this is a difference of degree, not of kind. translations have been the business of human culture from the tower of babel o n forward, and the proliferation of them i n the modern w o r l d is nothing new, i n essence. chapter : framing technology this is a point upon w h i c h latour departs from many technology theorists who hold that modern technology is oppressive, totalizing, or one-dimensional. the intersection of these ideas yields interesting questions; i n particular, heidegger's classic examination of the essence of technology, "the question concerning technology" ( / ), could be seen as a translation-oriented approach, w i t h heidegger's concept of "enframing" as the master translation, i n w h i c h human agency is itself translated into a means-and-ends rationality. but latour rejects heidegger's conclusions on anti-essentialist grounds (latour , p. ), claiming that heidegger grants far too m u c h power to "pure" instrumental rationality (which latour characterizes as a myth of modernity), and that actual practice is far more complex than essentialist philosophy admits. let alone an essence of technology to w h i c h we have succumbed, he writes, the depth of our ignorance about techniques is unfathomable. w e are not even able to count their number, nor can we tell whether they exist as objects or assemblies or as so many sequences of skilled actions. ( , p. ) the alignment of networks and the maintenance of translations is difficult work, latour argues, but it applies across all facets of culture and society: "...it is no more and no less diffi- cult to interest a group i n the fabrication of a vaccine than to interest the w i n d i n the fabrication of bread" ( , p. ). in his extended narrative on the aborted development of aramis, an ambitious new rapid-transit system i n paris, latour waxes eloquent about the difference between the actual and the potential: the enormous hundred-year-old technological monsters [of the paris metro] are not more real than the four-year-old a r a m i s is unreal: they all need allies, friends, long chains of translators. there's no inertia, no irreversibility; there's no autonomy to keep them alive. behind these three words from the philoso- phy of technologies, words inspired by sheer cowardice, there is the ongoing work of coupling and uncoupling engines and cars, the work of local officials and engineers, strikes and customers. ( , p. ) ongoing work is what sustains technosocial systems over time, what makes them necessarily collectives of both human and non-human actors, and what makes them complex (if not chapter : framing technology genuinely chaotic), and thereby eluding essentialist reduction. this is what makes "transla- tion" a better watchword than "actor-network." but remember that translation is fraught w i t h power dynamics; the business of arranging the world into longer chains of mobilized (and therefore transformed) actors exacts a price. standardization and the tower of babel in the sociology of translation, the key dynamic i n the extension and sustenance of techno- social networks/systems is the translation of heterogenous and complex processes and articulations into seemingly simple "black boxes" w h i c h can be effectively treated as single, stable components. c a l l o n wrote that "the process of punctualisation thus converts an entire network into a single point or node in another network" (callon , p. ). it remains possible to open these black boxes and reveal the complex details within, but what makes for durable (or, by extension, "irreversible") associations is the extent to w h i c h we gloss over their internals and treat a whole sub-process or sub-assembly as a single object. latour expresses it by making a distinction i n his vocabulary between "intermediaries" and "mediations" (latour , p. ; , p. ). intermediaries, w h i c h appear as actors, are neat black boxes; mediations, which appear as processes, are open, complex, and irreducible to a particular role or function. the two terms are different aspects of the overall process of articulation, viewable as if from above and from below. the process of making complex details conform to stable black boxes w h i c h can then be combined and exchanged is precisely that of standardization—a janus-faced concept that has been the travelling companion of translation since the prototypical technological project, the tower of babel. the double loop of translation into black boxes, standardiza- tion, and subsequent translations has a particularly interesting implication for technology: it introduces (or reveals) a semiotic character to the technical. a l l technology—on this view— is information technology, or, to put it i n the converse, information technology is the paradigm for all consideration of technology. . see bowker & star's sorting things out: classification and its consequences, for a treatment of this dynamic. chapter : framing technology this view of technology puts it firmly i n a linguistic frame, rather than, say, an 'economic' one concerned w i t h commodification, or a 'political' one concerned w i t h d o m i - nation. it is a view very much influenced by latour's explication of the "circulating reference" of signs and things. it is (or should be) recognizably mcluhanesque, insofar as it once again puts mediation first. it is a view w h i c h puts the history of technology i n a partic- ular light: the material rendering and transformation of any artifact is inseparable from its symbolic renderings and transformations. technology is, i n this light, a language of things. this is but one way to look at technology, but it is one w h i c h i think has m u c h to offer to the present study. technology is fundamentally and essentially about translation: the symbolic and mate- rial rendering of something into something else. note that the symbolic is the primary term here, the material is secondary; this makes me an idealist and not a materialist, i suppose, but i mean it this way: technologies are symbolic means of re-ordering the world; i n this sense they are just like language. t h e m e c h a n i c s o f t e x t lewis mumford has suggested that the clock preceded the printing press in order of influence on the mechanization of society. but mumford takes no account of phonetic alphabet as the technology that had made possible the visual and uniformfragmentation of time. - marshall mcluhan, understanding media the view of technology i am elaborating here puts the development of the phonetic alpha- bet as the defining technology—at least the defining technology of the western cultural tradition i can claim to inherit. language, writing, and standardization of print are all advances i n terms of greater and greater translatability; the phonetic alphabet is itself the longest-lived and farthest-reaching of all such technologies. since its original development by the phoenicians i n the third millennium b c , it predates most living languages, has spanned the lifetimes of any number of particular writing systems, and is by far the most influential standardizing principle in western history. the alphabet underlies all our most chapter : framing technology important machines: from books and clocks to computers and networks ( m c l u h a n ; ). a theory of technology that locates its essence i n translation—that translatability is the telos of all technology—is i n principle alphabetic, i n the various senses that m c l u h a n outlined: the alphabetic paradigm leads to systematization, organization, ordering schemes. the alphabet is the prototype for standardization: for interchangeable parts and mass production. the alphabet anticipates not just literacy and printing and empire, but mathe- matics, algebra, mechanization, the industrial revolution, the scientific revolution, and, par excellence, the information revolution. o n l y alphabetic cultures have ever mastered lineal sequences as pervasive forms of psychic and social organization. the breaking up of every k i n d of experience into uniform units i n order to produce faster action and change of form (applied knowledge) has been the secret of western power over man and nature alike.... c i v i l i z a t i o n is built on literacy because literacy is a uniform processing of a culture by a visual sense extended in space and time by the alphabet. ( m c l u h a n , pp. - ) w h a t m c l u h a n realized so very early o n was that all technology is information technology; by extension, digital technology is the epitome of technology, because digital technology makes the relationship between texts and machines real i n real time. i would like to take a moment to explain what that means. the equation of texts and machines is more than just a convenient metaphor. i hope to show that it is (has always been) 'literally' true, and that this becomes clearer and clearer w i t h the development of digital technology. i have argued that technologies are essentially about translation—about the symbolic and material rendering of something into something else. this is true of hammers and pillowcases and tea cozies; but it is especially true (or, more accurately, it is especially apparent) of technologies of representation. in late alpha- betic culture, we have developed an enormously powerful toolkit of representational technologies: from narrative, we have expanded the repertoire to include accounts, algo- rithms, arguments, articles, equations, mappings, proofs, tables, theorums, theories, chapter : framing technology transactions, and so forth. a l l of these technologies are representational, obviously, but to put it more forcefully, they are all technologies of translation; they are all machines for capturing and changing the rendition of the world i n some measure. w e don't think of them as machines because they operate relatively 'quietly'; i n our post-industrial imagination, steam power is still our paradigmatic case of mechanization, desite this particular technol- ogy's relatively brief lifespan! but perhaps the old trope of the "mechanistic universe" is giving way to one of a textual universe. in the latter part of the th century, biologists began to recognize technologies for translation i n the mechanisms of cells, and the field of b i o i n - formatics has sprung up around this. here is another order of information-rendering machines, built of proteins instead of ink or silicon, but recognizable if not yet/quite interpretable. language, writing, and standardization (and therefore mechanization) of print are all advances i n terms of greater and greater translatability. numbers, mathematics, and espe-. cially algebra are enormously powerful technologies of translation. for example, trigonometry is the translation of the idea of a circle into a number of relationships between parts of triangles such that both the circle and the triangle can be seen and related i n new ways—facilitating the extension of technosocial networks of greater extent (quite literally to the m o o n and back). on 'abstraction' i want to take a moment here to address the popular notion that information technologies lead to (or are achieved by) greater and greater abstraction. jean lave ( , p ff; lave & wenger , p. ) and bruno latour have gone to lengths to directly warn against this simplistic concept. rather, the concept of translation renders abstract and concrete as different languages; it does not set these up i n an absolute hierarchy; to do so is to revert to . the qualifier here is not intended to soft-pedal a technological determinism, nor to problematize our relative proximity to instrumental power over the genome. interpretation is always not yet/quite possible. genomics and bioinformatics have shifted this dynamic to new terrain, but i am not at all sure that the core challenge is so different from interpreting written literature. haraways' extensive ( ) critique of "gene fetishism" makes the same kind of contextualist argument against literalism that literary critics have mounted against determinate formalism. see e.g. fish . chapter : framing technology the old vertical structuralist logic of signifier/signified that i want specifically to avoid. abstraction is a dangerous metaphor, as latour notes: the concrete work of making abstractions is fully studiable; however, if it becomes some mysterious feature going on in the mind then forget it, no one will ever have access to it. this confusion between the refined product and the concrete refining work is easy to clarify by using the substantive "abstraction" and never the adjective or the adverb. (latour , p. ) technologies like the alphabet and the computer don't work because of abstraction; if anything, they are effective because of their greater concreteness. it can be argued that the turning point in the development of the digital computer, bringing together the thinking of alan turing and george boole, was when claude shannon finally achieved a sufficiently concrete means of representing logical relationships. that there exists a pervasive fetishism of abstraction, especially in technoscience, is not to be forgotten, however—to the point where turkle & papert ( ) were led to argue for a "revaluation of the concrete." the concrete was of course there all along, despite the mythology of'abstraction.' the point i want to underscore here is that the dynamics of translation in alphabetic culture are not between brute concreteness and fluid abstractions, but rather between different forms of concreteness, lending themselves to different kinds of practices. chapter : framing technology digital translations different media are variously translatable; different genres are variable i n their affordances too. w r i t t e n text has been the very fount of translatability (in all senses of the word); image less so, and performance less still (hence the oft-quoted^and as oft-misat- tributed—"talking about art is like dancing about architecture"). the alphabet lends itself to transla- tion by reducing the material of representation to a couple of dozen glyphs that can be assembled and reassembled i n a famously infinite number of ways. digital computing extends this reduction by limit- ing the material of representation to just two states. the result is that 'everything' is renderable digitally (hence, in a crude sense, "multimedia"): a step beyond what could be accomplished w i t h writing, w h i c h can only practically render what could be spoken or counted. but the extent to w h i c h text, image, and performance can be "digitized" is dependent upon the facility w i t h w h i c h we can interpret (that is, translate) these as digital patterns: arithmetic systems were the first to be digitized, back i n the s; text-based media came next, and has been so successful as to suggest a revolution i n reading, writing, and publishing. still images are now i n widespread digital form; music (both as digital recording and as digital notations like m i d i ) has presented few challenges—the digital representation of music is by now the default format. m o v i n g image (video) has been tech- nically difficult (owing largely to the sheer volume of bits that it requires), and the digitization of performative genres like dance has been the least widespread digital form, though certainly not untried. w h a t is digital? •:"digital" simply refers to digits,, and what • aredigitsbutfingers? digitalliterally«means , counting on your fingers, assigning a.finger to each, thing counted. in the sense of a "computer, this is exactly true, except the computer has only one finger, so it counts in i s and os. a commonly encountered criticism of computers and digital technology is that everything is • reduced to an either-or .distinction. this is as vacuous asrsayingthat everything in english literature is:reduced to • letters. but this simplistic critique is based on a misplaced correspondence theory .of meaning. if we remember that meaning is in the interpretation, ratherthan , the ̂ representation, we quickly get beyond this-into more interesting terrain. but even mechanically, we make up more complexirepresentations than one/zero or yes/no by collecting bits 'into? larger patterns, or in establishing prior context— exactly as we do with words and sentences. as the layerings proliferate, we.gain more and more expressive power, and more demands are made on the interpretive system—just like with written literature. and, as we will see in the concept of "late binding," interpretation can be postponed almost indefinitely—just like, in post- structuralism! chapter : framing technology w h a t is not so obvious here is whether a particular medium lends itself to digital repre- sentation as a result of the material affordances of that medium versus our ways of thinking about particular genres. for instance, i n the past few years, academic journal articles have been largely re-realized in digital rendition and distributed via digital networks, to the point of near ubiquity today. but the relative acceptance of such a shift i n this particular genre is i n marked contrast to the well-hyped 'e-book' idea, w h i c h has promised to move novels and other popular literature into digital formats. that the latter has failed to appear on any significant scale has nothing to do w i t h the material aspects of the medium—novels are composed of the same stuff as journal articles—the difference is cultural: of genres and practices. genres, of course, do not operate only i n the space of literature; they also form the substructure of technological practice. w h a t is interesting is the examination of how both literary genres and technical ones wax, wane, transform, and persist variously i n response to the dynamics of media ecology. but despite the endless (and endlessly interesting) vicissitudes of genre, digital repre- sentation implies that everything is translatable into everything else, since the underlying representational mechanisms of all kinds of digital media are c o m m o n and as simple as possible. the poststructuralist credo that there is nothing outside the text becomes true i n a very literal sense: everything becomes a 'text' because everything is, i n a literal sense, a text; the genome is but one famous example. the translation of phenomena to textual renderings (which can then be further translated) is the core of what we call science, says latour; his detailed description of the life sciences show a complex but systematic process of move- ment along the continuum "between signs and things" (latour ). by this reading, science is a particular form of reading and writing. indeed, to anyone's eye, science has certainly spawned particular forms of reading and writing; most 'modern' document genres, whether they pertain to matters of biochemistry or to journalism, owe their existence to the kinds of translation processes that have been developed i n the sciences. conversely, docu- ments themselves are a very interesting k i n d of technology, and they do a very particular k i n d of work (see john seely b r o w n & paul duguid's "the social life of documents"). chapter : framing technology documents operate at a different level than texts per se, i n that they are technologies that operate on audiences, rather than on individual readers and writers. a n d yet, i n every docu- ment is a text doing its own work. the very idea that there can be numerous layerings of text and document (a complex w h i c h we commonly call "discourse") underscores the notion that there are large-scale networks of meaning-making at work. the semiotic analogy is doubled and returned: not only do we have tools operating as signs, we have signs that act like tools as the machinery of text meets the semiotics of publication. software thanks to computers we now know that there are only differences of degree between matter and texts. - bruno latour, aramis in their book, the machine at work: technology, work, and organization, k e i t h g r i n t and steve woolgar make the first explicit equation of texts and machines that i have been able to find i n the sociological literature (though the idea has older roots i n literary criticism; see landow; aarseth; etc.). w h a t falls out of this equation is that the analogy of reading and writing becomes possible w i t h reference to machines, rendering machines "hermeutically indeterminate" (grint & woolgar , p. ). this is all very well, and no doubt lends some valuable light to the study of various technologies. but g r i n t and woolgar decline to take the next step: they persist i n talking (as do most technology theorists) of machines i n the "steam-engine" sense: as physical mechanisms, made out of hard stuff and powered by shovelling coal or at least plugging i n the power cord. a l t h o u g h computing technology figures i n g r i n t and woolgar's analysis, their attention sticks w i t h the plastic-and-metal object on the desk. it does not venture inside, to software. even while making a case for the absolute blurriness of the line between texts and actions, latour too holds tight to the conventional divide between steel and words: w e knew perfectly well that a black box is never really obscure but that it is always covered over w i t h signs. w e knew that the engineers had to organize their tasks and learn to manage the division of their labour by means of millions chapter : framing technology of dossiers, contracts, and plans, so that things wouldn't all be done i n a slap- dash manner. n o t h i n g has a bigger appetite for paper than a technology of steel and motor o i l . . . . every machine is scarified, as it were, by a library of traces and schemas. (latour , p. ) if there's anything that's been shown i n a half century of computing, it is that machines are not reliant on steam and steel. machines are pattern-processors. that one particular pattern is i n steel and another i n fabric and another i n bits is inessential. where latour and g r i n t & woolgar neglect to go is precisely where i do want to go: the machine is text—and this is not just an analogy that makes literary techniques applicable. machines are literature, and soft- ware makes this clear. this may not be yet/quite apparent i n the public imagination, owing largely to our collective hardware, or gadget, fetishism. but the argument for placing the focus of our technological inquiries at the software level rather than at the hardware level is very strong. pioneering computer scientist edsger dykstra wrote, i n : w h a t is a program? several answers are possible. w e can view the program as what turns the general-purpose computer into a special-purpose symbol manipulator, and it does so without the need to change a single wire... i prefer to describe it the other way round. the program is an abstract symbol manipu- lator w h i c h can be turned into a concrete one by supplying a computer to it. (dijkstra , p. [italics added]) the efficacy of this perspective has been apparent w i t h i n computer science since the late s, and i n particular, since the advent of john m c c a r t h y ' s computer language lisp ( m c c a r t h y ), hailed as doing "for programming something like what e u c l i d did for geometry" (graham ). the significance of lisp and the ways of thinking lisp ushered i n have been obscured by the popular rendering of lisp as "an a i language" and therefore subsumed w i t h i n the quest for artificial intelligence. but lisp's connection w i t h a i is an "accident of history" (graham ), one w h i c h i w i l l not dwell on here. w h a t i do want to foreground here is the idea of textual constructions—programs and programming languages—acting as machines i n their own right. o f course it is possible to quibble w i t h . alan kay called mccarthy's contribution the "maxwell's equations of software" (kay & feldman ) chapter : framing technology dijkstra's formulation and strike a hard materialist stance, insisting that the electronic circuitry is the machine and that programs are "superstructure." w h a t m c c a r t h y ' s lisp provides is a solid example i n w h i c h it clearly makes more sense to view it the other way around: that the real machine is the symbolic machinery of the language and the texts composed i n that language, and the details of the underlying hardware are just that: details. a half-century of l i s p provides considerable evidence that the details steadily decrease i n importance. in , when the first implementation was made, it was of course a matter of enormous resourcefulness and innovation on the part of the m i t a r t i f i c i a l intelligence lab, and so it remained, i n rarified academic circles well into the s, when implementations began to profilerate o n various hardware and as lisp became core computer science curric- u l u m at m i t and other institutions (see steele & gabriel ; abelson & sussman ). today, downloading and installing a lisp implementation for a personal computer is a matter of a few moment's work. but more importantly, as paul graham's ( ) paper "the roots of lisp" demonstrates for modern readers (as it is a reworking of m c c a r t h y ' s original exegesis), lisp's core simplicity means it doesn't require a 'machine' at all. graham's paper (it is important to dwell for a moment on the w o r d "paper" here) explains how, i n the definition of a dozen or so simple functions—about a page of code—it is possible to create a system w h i c h is a formal, functional implementation of itself. the machinery of lisp works as well i n the act of reading as it does i n digital circuitry. . friedrich kittler famously made this move in his ( ) essay, "there is no software,"—ignorant of both dijkstra and mccar- thy, as far as i can tell—in which he argues that everything is indeed reducible to voltage changes in the circuitry. kittler's argu- ment is clever, but i don't find that it actually sheds any light on anything. it is rather reductio adabsurdum, leaving us with no better grasp of the significance of software—or any means of critically engaging with it—than a study of letterforms offers to the study of english literature. . that lisp has been around for half a century provides us with a near-unique perspective on the evolution of computing cultures; hence my argument for cultural history of computing. chapter : framing technology t h e j s i m p l i o t y o f l i s p has to d o w i t h its s t r a i g h t f o r w a r d a l p h a b e t c nature l isp w a s preatorstwere; mathematicians, but, lisp ] sfabout symbol manipulation rather than aiithmetic«calculation.* mccarthy used" mathematical tormalisms*as languages and i r p ^ s e n t - d a y « i j s p % ' ' ^wr tet? scll t- s>, not ?someth ng./^ | ^ n u ^ ^ s ^ ) m e ^ ^ g « • : intrinsicallytfpav" * o u f t , " l f o ^ < you .r> o the significance of digital computing—that w h i c h systems such as m c c a r t h y ' s lisp make so clear—is not how computers have been brought to bear o n various complex information processing applica- tions (calculating taxes, computing ballistics trajectories, etc.). n o r am i about to claim that the digital revolution brought forth a i and electronic autopoeisis, nor w i l l i allude to any other such frankensteinian/promethean narrative. the far greater significance of digital computing is i n the use of alphabetic language as a k i n d of "bifurcation point" (to borrow the language of systems theory), at w h i c h a different level of order emerges from the existing substrate. the advent of digital computa- tion marks the point at w h i c h the text/machine equation becomes literally and manifestly real. invoking systems theory i n this way implies that the elements of this shift are largely internal to the system; it was not the advent o f the semiconductor, or the pocket protector, or any such isolable, exter- nal factor that led to this shift. rather it has more to do w i t h the ongoing configuration, reconfiguration, and 'refactoring' of alphabetic language. m c c a r t h y ' s original innovation is described i n a conference paper ( ) of thirty-odd pages. in it, there are no circuit diagrams or instructions for constructing electronic devices. rather, it is a concise work of symbolic logic, describing the elements of a formal notation for describing recursive systems w h i c h are, interestingly, capable of describing themselves. m c c a r t h y ' s work on the language i n the late s largely preceded any working implemen- not> in (•arthy, g u a m ; othe%tasj| !rllill£ a x i o m i z e c o m p or r a r n m i i n s ^ g u a ^ ' s t i in u?e**kxjay; ' the o l d l ^ ^ q r j r a n y i b m ' s l a n g u a g e fo. n u m e r i c a l c a l c u l a t i o n * s t i l l u s e d in s c i e n t i f i c c o m p u t i n g a o g l i c a i i o n s he - 'str u o u r e w a n d y s ' y n t " a x » ' o f * " lis pin uiuv;rdirjbii^deceptiwly:.simple: everything.!, ^^^^^l^^^o^^r^r^l^vproce'^si^^,'j> w f e n ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ w r t ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ n theses f u n c ^ ^ s j l e c j | s f c *p/b\, d e s a m c c h a n . s m f o r i ^ m t i n b k ^ j l f i i s t i t e m f i o m - j list cct»isilvet^fprjyjng'sii<.hi a f u n c t i o n a l l o w s o n e x t ^ » t j ? t e r s a e ? s ' l s * (and lists o f lists. ' u r v n m ^ ^ ^ i n a e f i n i t t d e p t h s o f n e s t i n g ) o t n e m ^ r s & u ^ ^ o n s ; * p r o v i d e m e a n s o f j c o m s n n g j n t e ' ^ e ^ a t u a t i o n s of terns a n d for ma'kmgegpnditional s ' i t e m e n t s a n d t h e n , i i a l m o s t ^ t e r a l l y x e v c ' r y t h i i i i ' e k e is c i e a t e d f r o r ^ p h e s e v p r i m i t i v e b u i l d i n i ; b l o c k s , b> l a y j e r m g l l a n d p l a y r t i n g larger a n d larger e v a l u a t i o n s t r u c t u r e s chapter : framing technology tation: "i decided to write a paper describing lisp both as a programming language and as a formalism for doing recursive function theory" ( ). m c c a r t h y was after a realization of a l a n turing's formal theory of computability, and lisp was a success i n this regard; it was a practical implementation of the use of recursive functions as an equivalent to the t u r i n g machine (which, although logically complete, is not a practical system—see graham , ns). lisp's legacy is thus not i n electronics so m u c h as i n logic and formal systems—in language. the semiotics of standardization it would be trite to say that this innovation had been i n the works for some time. i have mentioned a l a n turing, but other significant contributions—such as those of logician george boole and the famous team of charles babbage and augusta ada—were required i n order for the story to unfold. these three are key to this telling of the story precisely because their contributions predate any workable physical instantiation of the machine/text that their names would come to symbolize. babbage is particularly interesting i n this respect, precisely because his works were not practically realized despite his best efforts. one of the most intriguing subplots i n the history of computing is that it was indeed practically impossible^in babbage's day, to create a calculating machine of the complexity he required, owing to the relative lack of manufac- turing sophistication. specifically, it was not yet possible, i n the m i d th century, to manufacture the thousands of gears required for babbage's "difference" and "analytical" engines w i t h sufficient precision—that is, to sufficiently close tolerances—that such a machine could actually run. w h a t was required was the advent of standardization of gear cutting and manufacturing apparatus, a fact not lost on babbage, who published significant works i n this area. interestingly, the standardization of gear cutting (and also screw threads) was largely pioneered by joseph w h i t w o r t h , an engineer who had worked w i t h babbage, but the required precision was ultimately achieved i n the th century, not the th. it has thus become possible—even relatively economical—to create working instances of babbage's chapter : framing technology machines (indeed the science m u s e u m i n l o n d o n , england has done so), given modern-day manufacturing (doyle ). in considering this side-story, i want to draw the focus again to the symbolic rather than the material. the difference between gear cutting i n the th century and in the th isn't merely that the tolerances are finer; rather, the key is standardization, mass production, and the translation of the artifact from individual incarnation to its status as a commodity. w h a t happens when you standardize production is that you shift the artifact semiotically. it stops being a isolated signifier of its own, and starts being a neutral component—that is, a "black box"—that can be assembled into larger systems, just like the letters of the alphabet. the glyph itself, like the gear, stops being a thing-in-itself and starts being part of a larger semiotic apparatus. this, according to havelock ( ), is precisely what happened when the greeks began to distinguish between consonants and vowels i n written language, thereby making a more analytically complete mapping of morphemes to glyphs. the result was that the individual letters became unimportant i n comparison to the words, sentences, and paragraphs that were built out of them—this is evident i n constrast with, for instance, the letter-oriented focus of the kabbalistic tradition, i n w h i c h significant meaning is vested w i t h the individual letters themselves (drucker , p. ). this is also, arguably, paral- leled i n the evolutionary shift from single-celled to multi-celled organisms, i n w h i c h the activities and identitiy of individual cells becomes subsumed i n the structure of the larger organism. standardization of alphabets, of currencies, of machinery, even of living struc- tures, all effect this k i n d of shift towards a (analytically) higher-level assemblages of order and agency. there is clearly a moral question w h i c h emerges here, since we are not merely speaking of dumb objects, but conscious subjects too. bowker & star problematize standardization thusly: w e know from a long and gory history of attempts to standardize information systems that standards do not remain standard for very long, and that one person's standards is another's confusion and mess [...] w e need a richer chapter : framing technology vocabulary than that of standardization or formalization w i t h w h i c h to charac- terize the heterogeneity and the procedural nature of information ecologies. (bowker & star , p. ) bowker & star's plea, however, comes at the end of their excellent book on "categorization and its consequences" and not at the beginning, and so we are left with no more than an opening made toward the study of process, articulation, negotiation, and translation. these dymanics are invoked i n a clearly political mode, for these are the dynamics of standardiza- tion and classification themselves. compare d o n n a haraway's description of the digitization of the genome and the subsequent emergence of the field of bioinformatics: yet, something peculiar happened to the stable, family-loving, m e n d e l i a n gene when it passed into a database, where it has more i n c o m m o n w i t h l a n d s a t photographs, geographical information systems, international seed banks, and the w o r l d bank than w i t h t . h . morgan's fruitflies at c o l u m b i a university i n the s or u n e s c o ' s populations of the s. banking and mapping seems to be the name of the genetic game at an accelerating pace since the s, i n the corporatization of biology to make it fit for the n e w w o r l d order, inc. (haraway , p. ) w h a t is at issue, it seems to me, is not whether standardization is good or bad (or any s i m i - larly framed substantivist argument), but, as haraway points out: what counts?for whom? at what cost? s i m u l a t i o n a s i n t e r p r e t a t i o n "to know the world, one must contract it." - cesare pavese, quoted by alan kay the preceding discussion of technology and translation, machine and text, is intended to create a frame for a topic which i w i l l introduce here, but w h i c h i want to revisit a number of times i n the pages that follow: simulation. simulation is a paradigmatic application of information technology, something often hidden by our tendency to instrumental reason, but w h i c h the sociology of translation helps chapter : framing technology to illuminate. i mean this i n the sense that simulation can be used as a general motif for viewing and understanding a wide variety of computing applications, from mundane 'productivity applications' to the more stereotypical systems simulations (weather, fluid dynamics, etc.). a l a n kay and adele goldberg put it generally and eloquently: every message is, i n one sense or another, a simulation of some idea. it may be representational or abstract, isolated or i n context, static or dynamic. the essence of a medium is very m u c h dependent on the way messages are embed- ded, changed, and viewed. a l t h o u g h digital computers were originally designed to do arithmetic computation, the ability to simulate the details of any descriptive model means that the computer, viewed as a medium itself, can be all other media if the embedding and viewing methods are sufficiently well provided. (kay & goldberg ) what's interesting and compelling about computing is not the extent to w h i c h models, simulations, representations are true, real, accurate, etc., but the extent to w h i c h they fit— this is'the lesson of weizenbaum's infamous e l i z a , the uncomfortable thesis of b a u d r i l - lard's precession of simulacra, and the conclusion of a growing body of literature on virtual reality. it is also, to step back a bit, one of the central dynamics of narrative, especially i n the novel and myriad other literary forms. "simulation is the hermeneutic other of narratives; the alternative mode of discourse," writes espen aarseth ( ). if effect is the important point, then this is by definition an anti-formalist argument. but simulation is not merely reducible to surface and appearances at the expense of the deeper 'reality'—it reflects rather the deeper aspect of baudrillard's "simulacra"—precisely where we live i n today's world. but where baudrillard's take is bitter and ironic, i have always been fond of paul ricoeur's hermeneutic version: ultimately, what i appropriate is a proposed w o r l d . the latter is not behind the text, as a hidden intention w o u l d be, but in front of'it, as that w h i c h the work unfolds, discovers, reveals. henceforth, to understand is to understand oneself in front of the text. (ricoeur &, p. ) chapter : framing technology madeleine grumet similarly works w i t h ricoeur's framing i n her discussion of theatre, the "enactment of possible worlds;" ...performed i n a middle space that is owned by neither author nor reader. constructed from their experience and dreams, this l i m i n a l space cannot be reduced to the specifications of either the author's or the reader's w o r l d . [...] - performance simultaneously confirms and undermines the text. [...] m i m e s i s tumbles into transformation, and meaning, taken from the text, rescued from the underworld of negotiation, becomes the very ground of action. (grumet , p. ) rather than some sinister command-and-control reductivism, this is the space of simula- tion. if we go further, and look at simulation—model building—as a hallmark of science and the modern w o r l d , ricoeur's stance presents itself as a refreshing alternative to the two horns of objectivism and relativism (bernstein ). w e needn't get ourselves tied i n knots about our access to 'reality,' since our business—in science, technology, literature, politics— is fundamentally about invention and not discovery, and we can avoid the spectre of relativ- ism, because it is the world w h i c h we are building, not just arbitrary constructions. "the point is to cast our lot for some ways of life and not others," haraway admonishes. thus, it matters greatly which constructions we choose; the process of creating them and deciding upon whether or not to embrace them is fundamentally political (latour ). it is not so m u c h dominated by issues of power but the very crucible wherein power is exercised and contested. simulation—that is, model building—is essentially hermeneutic. its process is that of the hermeneutic circle, the merging of the horizons of modeller and world, the part and the whole, and is determined by r . g . collingwood's "logic of question and answer" (gadamer / , p. ff). the model—which is constructed, and therefore concrete—poses the questions to w h i c h the 'world'—ultimately inaccessible and therefore uncomfortably . latour's "the promises of constructivism" ( ) makes a similarly positive argument. chapter : framing technology 'abstract'—is the answer. it is not, thus, analytic or reductive, nor is it definitive; rather it is, ideally at least, dialogic. ' w r i t i n g of the dynamic between simulation and narrative i n games, espen aarseth says, if you want to understand a phenomenon, it is not enough to be a good story- teller, you need to understand how the parts work together, and the best way to do that is to build a simulation. through the hermeneutic circle of simula- tion/construction, testing, modification, more testing, and so forth, the model is moved closer to the simulated phenomenon. (aarseth ) this is decidedly not to say that the model is ever actually complete, but that our "forecori- ception of completeness" (gadamer / , p. ) is a necessary precondition of participation and engagement. once again, i want to avoid the vertical correspondence logic of classical structuralism (signifier/signified; model/reality) and instead pursue a vision wherein the elaboration of the model is its own end; it succeeds or fails not by being more or less faithful to 'reality', but by being better connected (to invoke latour and callon's network model once again). there is undoubtedly enormous danger lurking i n the seduc- tion of the model, and we undoubtedly forget again and again that the map is not the terrain, becoming literalists once again. that this is a danger does not imply that we should avoid making models, though, just that we must strive to avoid taking our fetishes and "factishes" (latour ) too literally. w r i t i n g on the mapping of the genome, haraway notes: geographical maps can, but need not, be fetishes i n the sense of appearing to be nontropic, metaphor-free representations, more or less accurate, of p r e v i - . ously existing, "real" properties of a w o r l d that are waiting patiently to be plotted. instead, maps are models of worlds crafted through and for specific practices of intervening and particular ways of life.... fetishized maps appear to be about things-in-themselves; nonfetishized maps index cartographies of struggle or, more broadly, cartographies of noninnocent practice, where every- thing does not have to be a struggle. (haraway , pp. - ) chapter : framing technology it is important to remember that haraway's argument is not against cartography—it is against the temptation to think that we and our constructions are somehow pure or inno- cent. there is no shortage of literature warning of the dangers of simulation; kay himself wrote that "as w i t h language, the computer user has a strong motivation to emphasize the similarity between simulation and experience and to ignore the great distances that symbols impose between models and the real w o r l d " (kay , p. ). but to contrast simulation with something like "local knowledge," as bowers ( ) does, is to badly miss the point and to essentialize (and caricature) both simulation and local knowledge. l o c a l knowledge is mediated knowledge too. "situated" knowledge is nothing if not mediated. w e w i l l return to simulation, at length, later. t h e e t h i c s o f t r a n s l a t i o n we are responsible for boundaries; we are they. - haraway, cyborgs, simians, and women the new media and technologies by which we amplify and extend ourselves constitute huge collective surgery carried out on the social body with complete disregard for antiseptics. - mcluhan, understanding media the foundation of my argument is that human culture is fundamentally and essentially technological—that is, technologically mediated. it makes no sense to attempt to isolate what is 'human' from what is 'technical'. a s latour has taken great pains to point out (esp. ), the attempt to isolate and purify these—that is, to come up w i t h a society sans tech- nology or a technology sans society—has been at best fruitless. a n d yet it is a powerful temptation, as we have inherited a weighty intellectual tradition devoted to just such a proc- ess of purification. the words we use readily betray it: culture, society, technique. i begin to think that it rarely makes sense to talk of culture—or society—at all; latour's refocus o n the "collective" of humans and nonhumans is really the only sane construction. chapter : framing technology back to the tower of babel given the core notion of technology as translation—as delegation, as i n one of latour's r i c h metaphorical turns—the means of translating or transforming the w o r l d is, i n a trivial sense, about power. but if the fundamental transformation is o n the symbolic level rather than the physical, then this is even more important, for we are speaking of the power to shape people's reality, and not just their physical landscape. technology is thus the medium of power/knowledge par excellence, for it simultaneously establishes and enforces power/knowledge structures (by very definition) and also provides the means for their subversion. this is politics. haraway, again, has said it most eloquently: in short, technoscience is about worldly, materialized, signifiying, and signifi- cant power. that power is more, less, and other than reduction, commidification, resourcing, determinism, or any other of the scolding worlds that m u c h critical theory would force on the practitioners of science studies, including cyborg anthropologists. (haraway , p. ) a g a i n , the admonition is to stop worrying about purification of essences, about what the world w o u l d be like without the polluting effects of technology, pining for an unmediated reality i n some nostalgic reminiscence of a simpler age. asymmetry i n theory and practice is the order of the day—asymmetry of ways of seeing and drawing the world, asymmetry of access to ways and means, asymmetry of expression. but this isn't to be avoided or solved or redeemed i n gordian-knot fashion. rather, it is to be confronted. something is "lost i n translation" because translation is always interpretation. the only remedy is further inter- pretation, the ongoingness of the dialogue. so it is w i t h all things political. chapter : framing technology our responsibility to technology located in the belly of the monster, i find the discourses of natural harmony, the nonalien, and purity unsalvageablefor understanding our genealogy in the new world order, inc. like it or not, i was born kin to pu[ j and to transgenic, transspecific, and transported creatures of all kinds; that is the family for which and to whom my people are accountable. - donna haraway, modest_ witness when everything looks like a nail t h e d a n g e r o f t r a n s l a t i o n s c a n be s i m p l y r e c o g n i z e d in the o l d c h e s t n u t : w h e n all y o u have is a h a m m e r , e v e r y t h i n g l o o k s like a , n a i l . m c l u h a n ' . s j s a y i n g , " w e s h a p e o u r t o o l s a n d thereafter, o u r t o o l s s h a p e u s " is a m o r e f o r m a l a r t i c u l a t i o n o f t h i s b a s i c p o i n t , w h i c h is interestingly a b s e n t f r o m h e i d e g g e r , even t h o u g h it is a c o m m o n - p l a c e for u s . h e i d e g g e r s e e m s g e n u i n e l y w o r r i e d that e v e r y t h i n g in the w o r l d ( i n c l u d i n g h u m a n b e i n g s ) has b e g u n t o look like n a i l s , but he d o w n p l a y s — t o the peril- o f his a r g u m e n t — t h e h a m m e r ' s generative role in t h i s . larry w a l l , d e v e l o p e r o f the i m m e n s e l y p o p u l a r o p e n - s o u r c e p r o g r a m m i n g l a n - g u a g e perl (called the " d u c t t a p e o f the internet"), m a d e the f o l l o w i n g i n s i g h t f u l c o m m e n t : - you've all heard the saying: if all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. that's actually a modernistic saying. the postmodern version is: if all you have is duct tape, . everything starts to look like a duct. right. when'sthe last time you used duct tape on a duct? (wall ) the challenge, with respect to our fundamental relationship to technology and technological change, and the asymmetries w h i c h result, is one of literacies. by "literacy" i do not trivially mean the ability to read and write, but rather the ability to enter into and participate actively i n ongoing discourse. if, as i have argued, technology is about the symbolic realm at least as much as the physical, then the importance of literacy is not confined to the written word. it is the matter of partic- ipating i n the discourses w h i c h surround us; discourses of power. technologies—things— are as much a part of discourse as are words. the task before us, i n the early decades of a digitally mediated society, is to sort out the significance of a digitally mediated discourse, and what the implications are for actual practice. consider the stakes. w i t h o u t print literacy—in the sense i n w h i c h we readily acknowl- edge it today as being fundamental to democracy and empowerment and social change— print technology would be nothing but an instrument of oppression. the written w o r d itself, without the concept of a widespread (if not mass) print literacy, represents a terribly asymetrical technology of domination over the w o r l d . but it is this literacy, i n the broad, distributed, bottom-up sense of the word, that saves the written w o r d from being a truly oppressive development for humanity. further, that print literacy is instead taken as the chapter : framing technology instrument—and the symbol—of liberation speaks to a dynamic not accessible from an examination of the material or cognitive features of reading; rather, literacy as an agent of emancipation—which then translates the written w o r d into an agent of e m a n c i p a t i o n - operates on the larger socio-cultural level. but at this point i n the western world, "techno- logical literacies" are nowhere near as widely spread i n practice as their print-oriented conterparts, nor are they held up symbolically as agents of emancipation and democratic participation. fullan and hargreaves ( ), writing of school reform, say, "teaching is not just a technical business. it is a moral one too" (p. ). technology is not just a technical business either, and the longer we collectively pretend that it is, as we are wont to do as long as we remain inside our instrumentalist frame, the less we are able to grapple w i t h it, politically and morally. but as instrumental logic blinds us to the political and moral implications of our medi- ated practices, so too the rhetoric of technological determinism provides a crippling apparatus w i t h w h i c h to reach a critical awareness of technology. in the shadow of our yearning for a pure, unmediated past is the parallel idea that technological mediation is leading us down a tragic path 'no longer' of our own choosing. o f late, the tendency is to see digital media as the handmaiden of globalization (e.g., menzies ). here the argument is that the rendering (commodification) of all human activity into an easily translatable digital currency is at the expense of "local" culture, of the less privileged, and i n the interests only of the corporate sector. it is an easy argument to make, and the argument borrows much from the connection between literacy and colonialism (e.g. w i l l i n s k y ). however, where the latter argument succeeds is i n a far more sophisticated appreciation of the detail: literacy is certainly an agent of homogenization and indeed domination, but it is also, i n countless cases, an agent of differentiation and emancipation (e.g., n e w l o n d o n g r o u p ). note that this is not the same thing as resistance i n the sense of resisting the onslaught of print media or computerization. "resistance" is a troublesome term, because it suggests an "either-or," a one-dimensional problem (as i n g . w . bush's " y o u are either w i t h us, or you chapter : framing technology are against us"). re-shaping, re-direction, and re-figuration, as i n haraway's r i c h repertoire, are more apt. i suggest that print or alphabetic literacy is not inherently an instrument of domination precisely because the alphabet is open; i n contrast, where state power has controlled who has access to reading and writing, it is not open, and for this very reason, modern democracies enshrine the institutions of mass literacy: public education, freedom of the press, and so on—lest you think my argument is for the perfection of these institutions, i mean here to point to these as shared ideals. but even the curious logic of liberal capitalism seems to real- ize (on odd days, at least) that i n order to be effective, languages and communications must be open—private languages cannot thrive. a n d i n openness is the possibility of refiguration. a student of mine, bob mercer, made this point about the unreflexive conceit of the "end of history:" if consumption i n an industrial society is of industrial goods—cars, refrigera- tors, televisions, computers—what then is consumed in an information society? information, surely, and some of that information takes the form of ideas. a n d some of those ideas i n turn challenge the consumer society. (bob mercer, , "blogging at the end of history") technology, like language, is not the instrument of power; it is the crucible of power/the very setting where the contest for one way of life or another takes place. feenberg's framing of technology as a site of struggle means that the debate is ongoing; it is not an argument to be w o n or lost, but to be continually engaged. in putting the emphasis on technology as translation—of representations, of agency, of apparent worlds—i hope to open up this theoretical arena to what follows, which is an examination of a very particular and very ambitious project to develop a technological infrastructure capable of engagement w i t h high-level philosophical, educational, and political themes. chapter : framing technology chapter : alan kay's educational vision a l a n kay's project rests upon a number of substantial philosophical and theoretical founda- tions. a n examination of these w i l l be helpful i n the analysis of the trajectory of the dynabook project over the past three decades. the following treatment draws less from the 'primary' documents of the early s as from kay's o w n reflection and exegesis—espe- cially that of recent years, w h i c h is substantial and w h i c h reveals a definite historical self- awareness i n kay's work. kay's own sense of his place i n history is a theme w h i c h emerges repeatedly i n his writ- ings, from early grand ambitions of "paradigm shifts" to his more studied reflections o n a fledgling digital age i n comparison w i t h the advent of print i n europe four or five centuries before. throughout, kay establishes his subject position i n a decidely romantic mode—to briefly invoke hayden white's schema ( ) of historical emplotment—but i n the first person and of the first order. i would like here to present an overview of each of the major themes elaborated i n kay's writings and talks. these are, i n brief: . t h e vision of computers for children, and the early and foundational influence of seymour papert's innovative research w i t h the logo programming language; . systems design philosophy, drawing on insights borrowed from cell biology and a m e r i c a n political history; . the smalltalk language and the object-oriented paradigm i n computer science, kay's most important and lasting technical contribution; . the notion that doing with images makes symbols, a phrase w h i c h embodies an application of the developmental psychology of jerome bruner; . narrative, argumentation, and systems thinking; different modalities for expressing truths about the world; chapter : alan kay's educational vision . a particular conception of literacy that broadly includes technological mediation as a cultural and historical force. c o m p u t e r s , c h i l d r e n , a n d p o w e r f u l i d e a s : t h e f o u n d a t i o n a l i n f l u e n c e o f p a p e r t the image of children's meaningful interaction with computers in the first place evokes the image of m i t mathematician and computer scientist seymour papert, his work w i t h the logo programming language for children, and his influential writings o i l the role of comput- ing i n education. papert's research began i n the late s w i t h w a l l y fuerzig, danny bobrow, and cynthia solomon at the massachussetts institute of technology and private contractor b b n (chakraborty et al. ). papert was one of the founders of the a r t i f i c i a l intelligence lab at m i t , but had previously studied children's epistemology w i t h jean piaget in geneva—though his pedagogy drew heavily on john dewey and m a r i a montessori as well. papert's idea that computers could be used to help children gain an embodied or concrete understanding of what is more commonly taken as a symbolic, formal mode of thought—mathematics—draws directly from piaget's developmental psychology. this basic idea was a major current—perhaps the major current—in educational computing by the early s, and papert's logo programming language embodied this particular philos- ophy and method. papert and a l a n kay had an early influence o n one another, and their ideas have been entwined for over three decades, though papert is clearly the more famous of the pair. since the papert side of the story has been interpreted and reinterpreted by generations of scholars already, w i l l approach the story from kay's perspective. a l a n kay visited to see seymour papert and his team i n ; the meeting was report- edly a life-changing one for h i m . papert, cynthia solomon, and w a l l y feurzig had begun . cambridge, ma-based bbn (bolt, beranek, & newman) is wrapped up intimately in the history of computing. most famously, the company managed the implementation of the original arpanet in . . papert's own writings ( a; / b; ; ; ) are the core texts of the logo philosophy, a literature fleshed out extensively by his colleagues and graduate students (e.g., turkle ; solomon ; harel & papert ; and many oth- ers). a mid- s "logo backlash" appeared, summarized in the edited collections by sloan ( ) and pea & sheingold ( ), though substantially re-addressed in noss & hoyles , as well as papert's own later writings. latter day reflection and criticism can be found in chakraborty et al. ; disessa ; and aglianos . chapter : alan kay's educational vision working w i t h children i n schools i n lexington, m a w i t h the logo language. a t the time, logo was used to control a robotic "turtle"—a half-metre plexiglass dome on three wheels that drew lines as it crawled around big pieces of butcher paper. papert's concern was w i t h "teaching children thinking" ( / b)—that is, "really thinking about what they do" (p. ). papert's project was to make mathematics real for children, instead of a difficult formalism. in , he wrote: mathematics is the most extreme example. m o s t children never see the point of the formal use of language. they certainly never had the experience of making their own formalism adapted to a particular task. yet anyone who works w i t h a computer does this all the time. (p. ) the process of working systematically w i t h logo to make the turtle draw geometric patterns, said papert, had the effect of getting children to "think mathematically." they were thus able to get inside—to physically embody, as it were—the mathematical and geometric constructs. a l a n kay was impressed: "here were children doing real program- ming," he remembered, and this "finally hit me w i t h the destiny of what personal computing really was going to be" (kay a, p. [italics added]). the insight that struck kay was that children would be the critical users of personal computers when they ultimately became available; therefore children were who they should be designing for. . papert specifically wrote of "the development of an ego-syntonic mathematics, indeed, of a 'body-syntonic' mathematics" ( a, p. ). "like the child, it is always at the center of its universe," wrote kay ( , p. ) of the logo turtle's local co- ordinate system (as opposed to a cartesian one). chapter : alan kay's educational vision in his lecture, the computer revolution hasn't happened yet, kay noted: papert had kids doing math—real math that you use in science, for ten-year-olds, via play- ing, montessori-style this was just the best idea anybody had ever had for computing. papert's thing had real zen behind it. n o t just math and science, but the zen of math and science y o u don't automatically get zen by learning how to program in logo, but papert correctly saw that one of the greatest vehicles anybody ever came up w i t h for getting enlightened was the computer. (kay a) kay's work i n the late s had been dominated by his graduate research project o n the reactive engine (kay ), an embryonic personal compu- ter called the " f l e x machine," w h i c h attempted to generalize the master and instance architecture of ivan sutherland's computer graphics research from the early s, and to elaborate a vision of what might be the successor to the dominant computing paradigm of the day: time-sharing terminals connected to a central, large mainframe computer. some logo examples h e r e is s o m e l o g o c o d e for d r a w i n g stars w i t h the turtle, a n d the trail o f a d i s c o v e r y . r e p e a t [ f o r w a r d r i g h t ] r e p e a t [ f o r w a r d r i g h t ] r e p e a t [ f o r w a r d r i g h t ] r e p e a t ; [ f o r w a r d r i g h t / ] ' t o " f i v e p o i n t s t a r r e p e a t ! [ f o r w a r d .* r i g h t / e n d f i v e p o i n t s t a r . ivan sutherland was kay's graduate supervisor at the university of utah in the s. sutherland was famous for his work on sketchpad, the original interactive graphics application (sutherland ). a major feature of sketchpad was its capability to treat a complex diagram as a "master," from which "instances" or copies could be instantly created, each one bearing all the features of the original; a change made to the master drawing would be immediately reflected in all instances of it; this is the prototype for the "class-and-instance" architectural model of most object-oriented systems'from kay's smalltalk forward. chapter : alan kay's educational vision but the f l e x machine's intended users were adult professionals, and kay later called its user interface "repellent" (kay ). w h e n kay was recruited to x e r o x p a r c by ex- a r p a director robert taylor, his first project was the design of a computer he called kiddikomp, a prototype desktop-based machine based around a " sony t r i n i t o n screen. w i t h his newfound sense of the "real audience" for personal computing, k i d d i k o m p drew not only on kay's work on the f l e x machine, but also o n papert's logo. logo's influence on kay's software designs i n the early s is considerable; there have been turtle graph- ics i n nearly every kay-designed software i n the past years (goldberg & kay ; gillespie ). but kay's version of computers for kids goes beyond turtle geometry (as does papert's, despite popular conceptions). in , kay spoke of the breadth of his vision: this new medium w i l l not "save the world" from disaster. just as w i t h the book, it brings a new set of horizons and a new set of problems. the book did, however, allow centuries of human knowledge to be encapsulated and transmitted to everybody; perhaps an active g e n e r a l i z i n g by a d d i n g a v a r i a b l e n: t o s t a r n • r e p e a t n [ "• ,; id . " • . - ' r t /n iiijsiiiikf' end s l a r ' s t a r s t a r s t a r s t a r h m m . . . why»not a n - s i d e d star? . time-sharing systems formed much of the context for computing research in the late s,especially within the arpa project. this notion of several interactive terminals (teletype units;later keyboards and screens) connected to a single, powerful main- frame computer was an enormous shift from the batch-processing model which preceded it; in time-sharing, the computer shared its users simultaneously rather than one-at-a-time as in batch processing. time-sharing systems (and their recognizable terminals) are still very much with us today, especially in point-of-sale systems. chapter : alan kay's educational vision medium can also convey some of the excitement of thought and creation! ( , p. ) where some people measure progress i n answers-right/test or tests-passed/ year, we are more interested i n "sistine-chapel-ceilings/lifetime." (p. ) this paper, entitled " a personal computer for c h i l d r e n of a l l ages" is kay's original manifesto for computers in education. it is the first published work outlining his newly oriented project and the ideas underlying it. it begins with a discussion of schools and school reform, but switches quickly to a scenario involving two young kids, jimmy and beth, who embody the kind of exploratory, constructivist learning he saw as ideal for the coming century. jimmy and beth, working with their "dynabooks"—lightweight portable comput- ing devices—stumble upon a question about gravity while playing a video game. this i m a g e has b e e n r e m o v e d because of c o p y r i g h t restrictions. figure . : j i m m y and beth with their d y n a b o o k s . (from kay ) jimmy and beth proceed to consult their teachers, a networked library of documents, and their o w n simulation models in the pursuit of understanding. the article invokes the psychology of piaget and bruner and the educational models of montessori and suzuki while also laying out the technical details of how such a device could be constructed, and what w o u l d make it ideal for kids. chapter : alan kay's educational vision this i m a g e has b e e n r e m o v e d because of c o p y r i g h t restrictions. figure . : c a r d b o a r d m o c k u p circa - (from kay & g o l d b e r g ) m u c h of kay's work i n the early s was devoted to creating the machine described i n the article. by , software prototypes had been i n use w i t h groups of children "of all ages" from the palo a l t o area for three or four years. in a report called personal dynamic media, kay and p a r c colleague adele goldberg wrote: aside from the potential future for education implied by getting kids to program, we realized that many of the problems involved i n the design of a metamedium for creative thought, particularly those having to do w i t h expres- sive communication, were brought strongly into focus when children down to the age of six were seriously considered as users. w e felt then that the next time we tried to design a personal metamedium it should be done w i t h children strongly i n m i n d . w e decided to expand our horizons to include studies into the nature of the learning and creative proc- esses, visual and auditory perception, how to teach thinking, and how to show children the challenges and excitement of doing art and science. (kay & g o l d - berg , p. ) the scope implied by putting children at the centre of this "metamedium" drove the team's thinking to both enormous generalities and minute detail. in the early s, kay reflected on their evolving vision of personal computing: chapter : alan kay's educational vision n o t a personal dynamic vehicle, as i n englebart's metaphor opposed to the i b m "railroads," but something m u c h more profound: a personal dynamic medium. w i t h a vehicle one could wait until high school and give "drivers ed," but if it was a medium, it had to extend to the world of childhood. (kay a, p. ) kay's focus on children, once established, has never wavered; despite numerous changes i n direction—both w i t h i n the learning research group at x e r o x p a r c and i n subsequent research and corporate contexts for his work—kay has continued to design for children. but, unlike the cliches of children's software we have come to know—bright primary colours and cutesy icons—kay's team took this task seriously enough to question first . principles: early on, this led to a -degree rotation of the purpose of the user interface from "access to functionality" to "environment i n w h i c h users learn by doing." this new stance could now respond to the echos of montessori and dewey, particularly the former, and got me, on rereading jerome bruner, to think beyond the children's curriculum to a "curriculum of user interface." the particular aim of l r g was to find the equivalent of writing—that is, learning and thinking by doing i n a medium—our new "pocket universe." ( , p. ) kay's ambition evidently ran o n a pretty grand scale: not content simply to find educational applications for computers, kay and his team self-consciously set out to redefine computing itself i n educational terms. a c h i l d prodigy turned computer visionary, kay was i n his element; and if any environment were to prove fertile for such a wide-ranging undertaking it was the generously funded x e r o x p a r c of the s, a research centre hosting the cream of a m e r i c a n computer science and w i t h little or no clear corporate mandate from x e r o x itself. kay's ego and passion had opportunity to stretch out i n an unparalleled way. "[w]e were actually trying for a qualitative shift in belief structures," he wrote i n , "—a new k u h n i a n paradigm i n the same spirit as the invention of the printing press—and thus took highly extreme positions w h i c h almost forced these new styles to be invented" (p. ). kay's enthusiasm and unbridled romanticism is captured i n his best-known quotation: "the chapter : alan kay's educational vision best way to predict the future is to invent it." kay's future included children, personal computers, and a new k i n d of literacy. " l a t e b i n d i n g " a n d s y s t e m s d e s i g n but how would you do it? h o w would you set about to "invent" personal computing, almost from scratch, w i t h very scant pre-existing w o r k to draw on i n terms of working models or even research? a couple of possible strategies come to mind: • y o u could survey your potential audience of 'users' to gather specific information about their needs, and then build a system so as to meet these needs most closely. • alternatively, you could develop a comprehensive vision of what personal comput- ing 'should' be, develop a system according to these guidelines, and then work hard to train people to use it. neither of these approaches is foreign to us today; the first is k n o w n as "user-centred design," taking pains to compile lists of requirements and following up w i t h extensive test- ing that the system indeed works the way the users want it to. the second, more hubristic method is unfortunately all too common, w i t h the boundary between designers and users inscribed deeper w i t h every painful training session. both approaches assume that it is possible to know in advance what the system w i l l be like; either by drawing from users or by innate knowledge. there are no doubt elements of both of these i n the early dynabook project, but the more profound—and influential—note kay struck i n his early approach to inventing personal computing was one of humility. if the target audience for personal computing was adults—business people, for instance, as it was w i t h the f l e x machine—then a user- centered design approach or even brute-force training might have been plausible; kay has a . i am, of course, stretching this for rhetorical purposes; kay repeatedly points to the important precursors to his work: mccar- * thy's lisp; sutherland's sketchpad; the joss system, logo, rand's grail tablet interface; englebart's augmentation project. but while these examples all contribute importantly to the idea of "personal" computing, none can claim to be a total personal computing environment in the sense that kay's project aspired to be. chapter : alan kay's educational vision l o t t o s a y a b o u t p r i o r e x a m p l e s o f s y s t e m s d e s i g n e d f o r p a r t i c u l a r u s e r c o m m u n i t i e s i n h i s p a p e r . b u t s i n c e h i s v i s i o n o f p e r s o n a l c o m p u t i n g p u t c h i l d r e n a t t h e c e n t r e , a n d b e c a u s e i t w a s t o b e f u n d a m e n t a l l y transformative—in t h e s a m e s e n s e t h a t t h e p r i n t i n g r e v o l u t i o n w a s t r a n s f o r m a t i v e i n e a r l y m o d e r n e u r o p e ( k a y a , p . ; & ) — t h e s t a r t i n g p o i n t h a d t o b e o n e o f a c k n o w l e d g e d ignorance. h o w d o e s o n e b u i l d a s y s t e m t h a t c a n g r o w i n t o s o m e t h i n g y e t u n f o r e s e e n b y e i t h e r i t s u s e r s o r i t s d e s i g n e r s ? k a y t o o k t h r e e e x a m p l e s , o r m e t a p h o r s , f o r g u i d a n c e . t h e f i r s t m e t a p h o r w a s c e l l b i o l o g y , w h i c h k a y h a d s t u d i e d a s a n u n d e r g r a d u a t e i n t h e e a r l y s ( o n t h e h e e l s o f s o m e o f t h e m o s t s i g n i f i c a n t a d v a n c e s i n t h e f i e l d a n d t h e i d e n t i - f i c a t i o n o f d n a i n t h e s ) . m y b i o l o g y m a j o r h a d f o c u s e d o n b o t h c e l l m e t a b o l i s m a n d l a r g e r s c a l e m o r p h o g e n e s i s w i t h i t s n o t i o n s o f s i m p l e m e c h a n i s m s c o n t r o l l i n g c o m p l e x p r o c e s s e s a n d o n e k i n d o f b u i l d i n g b l o c k b e i n g a b l e t o d i f f e r e n t i a t e i n t o a l l n e e d e d b u i l d i n g b l o c k s . ( a , p . ) i n s t e a d o f t r y i n g t o b u i l d t h e c o m p l e x a r t i f a c t s f r o m s c r a t c h — l i k e t r y i n g t o b u i l d l i v i n g t h i n g s c e l l b y c e l l — m a n y o f t h e m o s t i m p o r t a n t p r o j e c t s b u i l t a k e r n e l t h a t c o u l d grow t h e a r t i f a c t a s n e w k n o w l e d g e w a s g a i n e d — t h a t i s : g e t o n e c e l l ' s d n a i n g o o d s h a p e a n d l e t i t h e l p g r o w t h e w h o l e s y s t e m . ( a ) k a y s a w t h a t i n b i o l o g i c a l s y s t e m s , t h e r e i s a d i f f e r e n t o r d e r o f m e c h a n i s m a t w o r k t h a n i n t h e n e w t o n i a n m o d e l o f t h e u n i v e r s e . " t h e r e ' s a n o t h e r k i n d o f m a c h i n e r y t h a t ' s v e r y v e r y d i f f e r e n t t h a n t h e c l o c k w o r k k i n d , " h e r e f l e c t e d ( & ) . t h i s i n s i g h t i s n o d o u b t p a r t o f a l a r g e s c a l e i n t e l l e c t u a l s h i f t e v i d e n t i n t h e t h c e n t u r y ( a n d o n g o i n g ) t o w a r d a " s y s t e m s v i e w o f t h e w o r l d " ( l a z s l o ; p r i g o g i n e & s t e n g e r s ) . k a y p o i n t s o u t s e v e r a l f a c t s : t h e l o n g e s t a n y a t o m r e s i d e s i n y o u r b o d y i s y e a r s ; b l o o d c e l l s l i v e l e s s t h a n d a y s ; m o s t o f y o u r b o d y i s l e s s t h a n t w o w e e k s o l d . w e a r e c o m p o s e d o f t r i l l i o n c e l l s , b i l l i o n l a r g e i n f o r m a t i o n m o l e c u l e s , i n c o n s t a n t m o t i o n , w i t h p a t t e r n m a t c h e s o c c u r i n g e v e r y m i c r o s e c o n d o r s o . w e a r e n o t m a t e r i a l s o m u c h a s patterns: w e s t a y a l i v e b y r e b u i l d i n g t h e p a t t e r n , d i s c a r d i n g t h e d i s a r r a y e d s t u f f ( a ) . t h i s i s a k i n d o f m e c h a n i s m t h a t i s q u a l i t i a - chapter : alan kay's educational vision tively different from any technology humankind has come up with, one capable of amazing things: a baby is able to get six inches longer about ten times i n its life and you don't have to take it down for maintenance. [...] imagine trying to make a six inches longer! ( ) kay's second guiding example is 'man-made': the u n i t e d states constitution, ...because the people who designed it realized that it w o u l d be very difficult to write laws for how people should live years from their time and place, so they wisely made most of the constitution a way of dealing w i t h error situa- tions and a way of keeping bad things from propagating. (kay ) the constitution itself is a set of principles for building a very complex dynamic structure that should last for centuries whose "parts" (that is, us!) come and go and are only somewhat intercooperative. (kay ) in his address to the history of programming languages ii conference ( a), kay told his audience of computer scientists that the "best book on complex systems design" is h a m i l - ton, m a d i s o n , and jay's the federalist papers, w h i c h comprise the extended arguments supporting the (surprisingly concise) u s constitution's form and method, and w h i c h elabo- rate the whole idea of checks and balances, divisions and mixtures of powers, and mechanisms for amendment that are arguably the u s constitution's most important contributions (hamilton et al. / ). nowhere is the spirit of liberal humanism more clearly evident i n the history of personal computing than here. the third example is something m u c h nearer to kay's own experience: the develop- ment of the early a r p a n e t , foundation of today's internet. kay witnessed first-hand, as a graduate student at u t a h i n the s, the design and decision making processes behind it. today, the internet's status as a unique technological accomplishment is overshadowed by its immediate and more practical impacts i n most of our lives, but, as kay points out, the internet has recycled all of its atoms and all of its bits probably twice now without being stopped—it's the only human artifact that has done that. ( a) chapter : alan kay's educational vision w h a t all this has to do w i t h creating personal computing i n the s is this: one can't possibly anticipate i n advance what the system is going to evolve into. therefore, one's responsibility at the outset is to build i n an open-ended fashion, to not commit oneself prematurely or to foreclose on possibilities by driving to a predefined end-goal; rather, to build for growth and for evolution. note how close this is to the a r p a management strat- egy, to fund directions, not goals. kay and goldberg make the practical case thusly: the total range of possible users is so great that any attempt to specifically anticipate their needs in the design of the dynabook w o u l d end in a disastrous feature-laden hodgepodge w h i c h would not be really suitable for anyone. w e have taken an entirely different approach to this problem, one w h i c h involves the notion of providing many degrees of freedom and a way for any user to communicate his or her own wishes for a specific ability. some mass items, such as cars and television sets, attempt to anticipate and provide for a variety of applications in a fairly inflexible way; those who wish to do something different w i l l have to put i n considerable effort. other items, such as paper and clay, offer many dimensions of possibility and high resolution; these can be used i n an unanticipated way by many, though tools need to be made or obtained to stir some of the medium's possibilities w h i l e . constraining others. w e w o u l d like the dynabook to have the flexibility and generality of this second k i n d of item, combined w i t h tools w h i c h have the power of the first kind. thus a great deal of effort has been put into providing both endless possi- bilities and easy tool-making through a new medium for communication called smalltalk. (kay & goldberg , pp. - [italics added]) in computer science, there is a term w h i c h refers to this general idea, and it has become one of kay's watchwords: late binding. late binding, i n the strict sense, means delaying the asso- ciation of named entities i n a program w i t h actual computations (that is, w i t h runtime objects) until the last minute for the sake of the dynamic interpretation of the program and its environment. taken to extremes, the opposite concept w o u l d be "hard wired," i n w h i c h there is no scope for timely interpretation of contexts. note that most popular bogeyman images of computers correspond to the latter. kay's usage of "late binding" is m u c h broader, extending to the very architecture of the system being fluid: chapter : alan kay's educational vision [late binding] has some deeper and more profound properties that include abil- ities to actually change both the structure and metastructure of the language itself. thus an important new idea can be assimilated into the constantly evolv- ing process that is the system. another aspect of late-binding is the ability to change one's m i n d about already instantiated structures that are already doing work. these can be changed automatically o n the fly without harming the work they are already doing. (kay a) this i m a g e has b e e n r e m o v e d because o f c o p y r i g h t restrictions. f i g u r e . : c a r t o o n b y t e d k a e h l e r , f r o m g o l d b e r g & r o b s o n ( ) h o w different is this from the world we've come to inhabit? o u r systems are a source of frustration, specifically because they are not fluid. yet this fluidity was the cornerstone of kay's strategy for building a personal computing paradigm for children. implicated i n this issue is the dynamic of means and ends and the rhetoric of instrumental rationality. kay notes that adults, and businesses i n particular, are especially prone to instrumental ration- ality—with, the "judgement of any tool or idea solely in terms of the current goal structure of that person." the antidote, then, "the way to get ahead is to think about kids, not business. [...] adults have way too m u c h context—the enemy of real qualitative improvement" (kay, a). chapter : alan kay's educational vision by thinking of children as the target audience, and setting out to create a system with growth and evolution as its primary feature, a l a n kay and the learning research g r o u p at x e r o x p a r c began to build their vision of personal computing. s m a l l t a l k — " a n e w m e d i u m f o r c o m m u n i c a t i o n s " smalltalk is without a doubt the most lasting of all of a l a n kay's technical contributions. considering that a great number of now-ubiquitous features are attributed to him—from overlapping windows and pull-down menus to laptop and notebook comput- ers—this is no small statement. smalltalk can be seen as the still-evolving evolving embodiment of a deep vision of computing, a vision w h i c h has only partly been realized. smalltalk is at once the core of kay's educational vision and the core of his contri- bution to 'serious' computer science. it is also the research notes from viewpoints research institute f r o m m y trip to v i e w p o i n t s r o s e a u h • l n s : i t u t e (vpri) in ( j l e n d j l c ( a n a p r i l v p r i , d n o n p r o f i t o ' r ' s j j n i z j t i o n ' is the c u n e n t home for a l a n kjv s t e j m a n d . . • ' kim rose tt scftwart. enfant fling hat, art you'' - and soys' no i nit an that as a. pi rsonalitv unit vri^inaj^mqllfalk'. jt s i g r u dan infills s f f s b p i t i > w \ . is a "lu'tt'binding ' guy^^^^^oming to visit to'monow, something wc just fcundtout today atabwrnrki. alan late bindin" in bnth thi traditional havn'g'sptnt sive/al hours sifting talk about my ust of thtst >'' doc umi nts • manv.,- of. ivhn h ' 'an • ''[t' r it cturt sand talks alan has aivt no • . tht 'yfuis kim difrs to alan, whd" wt loin't s nu to takt t onit s of whaltvtt i likt but asks that i not d'rfctly quott- anything marked draft . rut tvtrything, s marktd . ft ' " ? obstrvt-'that the 'draft • ijin'a alan acknowifd^t s as much crucible w i t h i n w h i c h all the other inventions that make up personal computing came to their earliest fruition. just what smalltalk is is difficult to capture i n just a few words. it is, strictly speaking, a computer programming language. but more importantly, it is the embodiment of a self- consciously defined paradigm of computing (kay repeatedly called it a "communications medium" rather than a programming language), one w i t h profound historical implications for computer science and current software engineering practices, and one w i t h even more profound—as yet largely unrealized—implications for literacy i n a w o r l d interconnected by digital networks. smalltalk has a substantial claim to being the original language for "object- chapter : alan kay's educational vision oriented programming" ( o o p ) , w h i c h is arguably the dominant professional program- m i n g paradigm today. smalltalk's significance to personal computing, however, went right over most people's heads; when apple computer's steve jobs paid his famous visit to x e r o x p a r c i n , according to the unofficial "origin myth" of the macintosh, he was shown three things: the graphical, overlapping-window interface; networked personal computers; and smalltalk. a n d they showed me really three things. but i was so blinded by the first one i didn't even really see the other two. (from cringley : " t r i u m p h of the nerds, part ," pbs) in the m i d s, apple began to sell computers w i t h graphical user interfaces. by the m i d s, networked personal computers were becoming commonplace. but smalltalk and the paradigm it represents remains a behind-the-scenes component of modern computing, despite kay's ambitions for the dynabook. far from just a software engineering tool, small- talk was to be "the exemplar of the new computing, i n part, because we were actually trying for a qualitative shift i n belief structures—a new k u h n i a n paradigm i n the same spirit as the invention of the printing press" (kay a, p. ). objects and messages the smalltalk language more or less defined the "object-oriented paradigm," as it was the first language system to fully embrace the idea of message-passing objects as the basis for software. n e w ideas go through stages of acceptance, both from w i t h i n and without. f r o m within, the sequence moves from "barely seeing" a pattern several times, then noting it but not perceiving its "cosmic" significance, then using it opera- tionally i n several areas; then comes a "grand rotation" in w h i c h the pattern becomes the center of a new way of thinking, and finally, it turns into the same k i n d of inflexible religion that it originally broke away from. (kay a, p. ) . purists insist that ole-johan dahl and kristin nygaard's simula language, dating from the mid s, is the original oop lan- guage. however, simula was an attempt to add object-oriented ideas to an existing procedural language (algol), while small- talk was designed from the ground up around the idea of objects and message-passing. ' chapter : alan kay's educational vision a s a new graduate student at the university of u t a h i n , kay was exposed to two systems that carried the seeds of object-oriented thinking: the first was ivan sutherland's sketchpad, the first interactive drawing system; the second was simula, a norwegian adap- tation of the a l g o l programming language for creating simulations. both systems had employed a "master" and "instance" architecture, w i t h instance-objects inheriting both attributes and behaviour from the master-objects they are derived from. for kay, this idea resonated with a number of other ideas he had encountered: this was the big hit, and i have not been the same since. i think the reasons the hit had such impact was that i had seen the idea enough times i n enough differ- ent forms that the final recognition was in such general terms to have the quality of an epiphany. m y math major had centered on abstract algebras w i t h their few operations applying to many structures. m y biology major had focused on both cell metabolism and larger scale morphogenesis w i t h its notions of simple mechanisms controlling complex processes and one k i n d of building block being able to differentiate into all needed building blocks. the file system, the b , sketchpad, and finally simula, all used the same idea for different purposes. bob barton, the main designer of the b and a professor at utah, had said i n one of his talks a few days earlier, "the basic p r i n - ciple of recursive design is to make the parts have the same power as the whole." for the first time i thought of the whole as the entire computer and wondered why anyone w o u l d want to divide it up into weaker things called data structures and procedures. w h y not divide it up into little computers, as time sharing was starting to? but not i n dozens. w h y not thousands of them, each simulating a useful structure? (p. ) kay's graduate work was an exercise in fleshing out this idea—which ultimately came to be known as object orientation—in a workable system. following his meeting w i t h seymour papert and seeing a possible future w i t h millions of personal computers run by children— kay's work at the new x e r o x p a r c focused on the design of an extensible, late-binding system based on objects and message-passing. smalltalk grew out of kay's early work on the f l e x machine, and began to be fleshed out i n the "dynabook" vision. a s a language and computing environment, smalltalk would share much w i t h logo: it would be straighttfor- chapter : alan kay's educational vision ward and simple and allow a user to define her own language structures. but smalltalk was founded on a different set of founding principles than logo (which was, historically, "lisp for kids"). smalltalk's promise was that objects would make computing "child's play". the design of smalltalk kay and the learning research g r o u p at p a r c set about trying to identify just what smalltalk's found- ing priciples properly were, "during this state of grace (before any workable implementation)... trying to understand what 'beautiful' might mean w i t h reference to object-oriented design" ( a, p. ). smalltalk went from pencil-and-paper to working implementation by , by w h i c h time kay had distilled his idea into six foundational premises: • everything is an object. • objects communicate by sending and receiving messages (in terms of objects) • objects have their own memory (in terms of objects) smalltalk's lisp legacy * logo was a direct derivative of-lisp. while the syntax of the two languages differs— logo was designed to be simple for young children to pick up quickly—the fundamental functional architecture is the same. kay had enormous: admiration for lisp, which he got to know intimately during a brief stint at the stanford al* lab (sail) in - , where john mccarthy had been based. kay "could hardly believe how beautiful and wonderful the idea of lisp was," but h a d ' serious criticisms of the* actual language, which he felt compromised the fundamental idea at the language's core (kay a , p. ). this critique was part of kay's inspiration with smalltalk. . ...this started a line of thought that* said "take the hardest and most , profound thing you need to do, make it great, and then build every easier thing out of it" [...] needed' was a • . i better "hardest and most profound" thing. objects should be it. (p. j kay's claim that the "most powerful . language in the world" could be written in "a page of code" was directly inspired by lisp, which could be described/implemented in itself in about a page. kay took this as design goal foi early smalltalk. • every object is an instance of a class (which must be an object) • the class holds the shared behaviour for its instances (in the form of objects i n a program list) • t o evaluate a program list, control is passed to the first object and the remainder is treated as its message. (kay a, p. ; see also schoch , p. ) . the idea of classes and instances derived from them has very definite platonic roots. john schoch, one of the lrg team, wrote of the relationship of classes and platonic forms in his paper on smalltalk- (schoch , p. - ). chapter : alan kay's educational vision these six main ideas are the result of kay's attempt to find the underlying factors that make a system both simple and capable of great complexity: a fertilized egg that can transform itself into the myriad of specifications needed to make a complex organism has parsimony, generality, enlighten- ment, and finesse—in short, beauty, and a beauty m u c h more i n line w i t h my own esthetics. i mean by this that nature is wonderful at both elegance and practicality—the cell membrane is partly there to allow useful evolutionary kludges to do their necessary work and still be able to act as components by presenting a uniform interface to the world. ( a, p. ) the cell and cell membrane are key metaphors—analogous to the "black boxes" of a c t o r - network theory—in understanding what kay means by object-orientation, but they are also somewhat misleading. o u r temptation i n looking at systems of almost any sort is to focus on the entities that we see, rather than on the relationships, interactions, and transfor- mations that occur among them. so it is w i t h the noun-centric a c t o r - n e t w o r k theory, as opposed to the more process-oriented "sociology of translation." kay has repeatedly expressed his regret that he chose the term "object-oriented" instead of the more relational concept of "message-oriented." w h a t is important about biological cells i n kay's systems- theory rendering of them isn't what they're made of, but rather their modes of interacting. the cell membrane is here read as a black-boxing mechanism i n precisely latour's sense; it means we can ignore the inner workings of the cell and focus our attention instead on the interface that the cell presents as a means of creating larger structures (like tissues and organs). kay's point is that the building blocks can be—should be—transcended i n a sense, putting the emphasis rather on the messages and interactions that i n turn generate the many layerings of structure of complex systems. this shift of emphasis is, to my m i n d , akin to the semiotic shift described in chapter above: when the components of a s y s t e m - alphabetic glyphs, gears, bits—reach a level of simplicity and standardization, the produc- tion of meaning no longer accrues to the individual component, but to their larger arrangement; we do not interpret the individual letters of the roman alphabet as the egyp- tians did w i t h their hieroglyphics; we look instead for meaning i n the larger literary chapter : alan kay's educational vision structures of which they are built. t h i s same theme is apparent in kay's systems design exemplars: it is not the cell itself but its interrelations which gives rise to complex biological systems; the u s constitution does not itself dictate anything about how an individual should behave, but rather sets up a process for how individuals can organize their interrela- tions; the a r p a n e t , like the internet, dictates nothing about the characterisitics of connected systems; it only provides a means for their intercommunication. late binding in smalltalk the smalltalk 'origin myth' involves a bet kay made w i t h l r g colleagues d a n ingalls and t e d kaehler that "the most powerful language i n the w o r l d " could be described i n "a page of code" ( a, p. ). ingalls and kaehler reportedly called his bluff and so kay spent the next several weeks working between and a m each day o n the bet. the result was the design for smalltalk- , the first working implementation of the language. in order to fit the entire design for a powerful programming language i n less than one page (mccarthy's lisp was describ- able in less), kay's challenge was to define only the absolute foundational structures from w h i c h every- thing else can be grown. such a language design has no 'features' as such; it is an exercise i n the utmost parsimony and abstraction. t o go from a single page description of the foundations of smalltalk to a working implementation and then to the first prototypes of a graphical user interface (such as we all now use on our personal computers), the first paint program, structured document editing, music capture and editing, animation, and the chapter : alan kay's educational vision l r g ' s research with children as end-users—all of w h i c h emerged w i t h the smalltalk- system—is testament to the power of a late-binding system. a l l of these 'features' were created i n the smalltalk- environment once it was up and running (after d a n ingalls had - implemented the basic design, kay wrote, "there was nothing to do but keep going.") the core of the research conducted w i t h kids was towards playing w i t h and extending the tools and 'features' i n the environment. kay's team at p a r c worked for more years o n the smalltalk- environment, o n x e r o x ' alto minicomputers—which kay's team called "interim dynabooks." smalltalk- was ultimately overhauled for a variety of reasons. one of w h i c h was that it was i n a sense too late-binding. the original design had each object i n charge of defining the syntax of messages passed to it. for instance, a number object would specify how arith- metic operations should be called, and a text-string object w o u l d define how its operations would be called, and there was no necessary parallel or congruity between these. a s users defined a larger and larger superstructure of tools and applications over time, the ways i n w h i c h the smalltalk system worked grew more varied and complex. this fit well w i t h the ideal of an individual user gradually building the system to her own liking, but it made collaborative projects difficult—the way one user had constructed something might not make sense to another user (goldberg & ross ), and it was difficult to grow programs to large scale and complexity. the substantial result is that dan ingalls re-built smalltalk again to create smalltalk- , w h i c h featured a m u c h more consistent approach to the design; everything i n smalltalk- adhered very closely to the six main ideas outlined above: everything was an object, and the notion of objects being instances of classes w h i c h defined their behaviour led to a class hier- archy—which has become one of the fundamentals of object-oriented programming. the classic example (from ingalls ) is this: . the alto, designed and constructed by parc's computer science lab, is often described as the first "personal computer."far from the portable laptops of kay's imagination, the altos were the size of bar fridges, and sat under a desk, generating a lot of heat. nevertheless, they were constructed in the thousands in the s and were used as personal workstations by staff at parc. (hlltzik ) chapter : alan kay's educational vision d p ' p l l m l l _rctc w i n c h t r u c t u r o d m 't ( b o t t o m i . a rectangle object knows how to display itself onscreen, i n response to messages specifying its size and position; . a window object is a k i n d of rectangle that acts as a frame for interac- tions and content. it receives messages generated by the movement of the mouse and its button clicks, if the pointer is w i t h i n the window's boundaries; . a document window object is a k i n d of window w h i c h is designed to hold some text. it can respond to mouse-click messages as positioning the insertion point or selecting text. this k i n d of hierarchical structure led to what , reflections o n a , " e p i s t e m o l o g i c n l p l u r a l i s m ' adele goldberg called "incremental design" ( ): kj'y ind g o l d b e r g ' s n'ot.on o f k d e s m o r s is j n i n t r i g u i n g dlterna that a user can create tools and media objects by two t r u , o r ' c o g n i t i v e s a l e s ' ide i tuikle a n d .•• p j p e t r ' s ( ^ ) taking pre-existing building blocks and then creat- , c p i s t e n ing new versions of them that have added h a r d ' ( fclneeriing): functionality or features (by "subclassing"—that is, ; i o ' j ' o i v i r c n d i ' r . n i specializing the behaviour of object classes i n new ' ' ' ushmp^ classes derived from them). the message-sending ., whi syntax i n smalltalk- was made more consistent, j • .' ait w h i c h led to more readable programs (one "learns to write by reading, and to read by writing," wrote goldberg i n ), which, i n turn, led to a greater • mu emphasis on learners as designers, rather than just tinkerers—they were able to create more complex t ™ and multi-layered constructions. • smalltalk went through at least one more substantial revision, culminating i n the smalltalk- that was released to the world beyond x e r o x • .' ^ ^ ^ ^ p a r c i n the early s (a series of articles in nonxi'i txn'orawrv i m c i s l,n-ordci to stt what thfv - 'wv»". - it the frnmru. • . r - < 'ewclassi • noise byte, august ; goldberg & robson ). but it is important to bear i n m i n d kay's chapter : alan kay's educational vision repeated admonition that, true to its very design, smalltalk isn't ever finished but continues to be a vehicle for getting to the next place—a new dynamic media environment for c h i l - dren. by this treatment, smalltalk isn't thus a better language to teach programming qua programming; it is a comprehensive model for late binding and for complete end-user control. thus, smalltalk's ultimate and ongoing goal, kay suggests, is to transcend itself. the smalltalk environment a s smalltalk evolved, especially after the design, the smalltalk environment seems to have become more important than the language perse. this was, i n a sense, what kay was after; the language itself was to merely be a vehicle for getting to a place where one could build one's own tools and media to suit the task at hand, a "language for building languages." adele goldberg described smalltalk- as "a basis for implementing and studying various user-interface concepts" (goldberg & ross ). smalltalk's contributions to user-inter- face concepts are undoubtedly its most widely-known facet—this is what steve jobs saw when he visited x e r o x p a r c i n (goldberg , p. - ). but smalltalk's intent was not merely to make computers "user-friendly." kay wrote: i felt that because the content of personal computing was interactive tools, the content of this new authoring literacy should be the creation of interactive tools by the children. ( a, p. ) the creation of interactive tools positions the computer as a media device. kay's a r p a background significantly framed the notion of computers as communications media rather than calculating machines, but smalltalk's orientation meant that "objects mean multime- dia documents; you almost get them for free. early on we realized than in such a document, each component object should handle its o w n editing chores" (p. ). y o u get them "for free" because there isn't a foundational divide between data structures and procedures, as i n conventional programming models; once this conceptual limitation has been escaped, it is as straightforward to define objects that manipulate audio samples as the ones that manipu- late text. a s early as smalltalk- , the l r g team were experimenting w i t h bitmap painting chapter : alan kay's educational vision programs and animation, music sequencing and editing, and w y s i w y g document editing. the now-commonplace i d i o m of "authoring" and the toolbar motif that we find i n our w o r d processors and graphics applications were pioneered here. kay was struck by the computer's power to represent any other media, be it textual, graphical, or aural. kay and goldberg wrote, every message is, i n one sense or another, a simulation of some idea. it may be representational or abstract, isolated or i n context, static or dynamic. the essence of a medium is very much dependent on the way messages are embed- ded, changed, and viewed. a l t h o u g h digital computers were originally designed to do arithmetic computation, the ability to simulate the details of any descriptive model means that the computer, viewed as a medium itself, can be all other media if the embedding and viewing methods are sufficiently well provided. moreover, this new "metamedium" is active—it can respond to queries and experiments—so that the messages may involve the learner i n a two-way conversation. this property has never been available before except through the medium of an individual teacher. w e think the implications are vast and compelling. ( , p. ) these foundational principles, and their realization i n the evolving forms of smalltalk that emerged during the s, begin to define what kay has called ( a) the " p a r c genre" of personal computing, from w h i c h we have inherited certain elements today: authoring tools, direct manipulation interfaces, exploratory systems, and so on. w h a t we have not inherited is the ethic of mutability, wherein we would assume that every component of a system is open to be explored, investigated, modified, or built upon. the smalltalk systems "crystal- lized a style of programming" (kay ) i n w h i c h the entire system, top to bottom, was open to the user's exploration and interaction, i n which the line between tool and medium was deliberately blurred. " d o i n g w i t h i m a g e s m a k e s s y m b o l s " seymour papert's research w i t h children had drawn heavily on the theories of developmen- tal psychologist jean piaget, w i t h w h o m he worked i n the late s and early s. piaget's chapter : alan kay's educational vision developmental theory—which holds that children's cognition passes through four normal stages—sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational—has two important features w i t h special relevance to papert's work. the first is piaget's concep- tion of the child as epistemologist, actively building an understanding of the w o r l d and then reflecting upon that understanding (and, ultimately, on the process of building it). in his rememberance of piaget i n time's issue o n "the century's greatest m i n d s , " papert wrote: c h i l d r e n have real understanding only of that w h i c h they invent themselves, and each time that we try to teach them something too quickly, we keep them from reinventing it themselves. (papert ) there is more here than a simple rendering of constructivism; it speaks instead to piaget's (and papert's) concern that the business of 'teaching' children about the w o r l d may run counter to their ability to make sense of it for themselves, if i n teaching we attempt to over- lay a way of seeing the w o r l d more appropriate to adults. piaget's insistence was to take seriously the idea that through the various developmental stages, children's ways of think- ing (or "ways of knowing") may be very different from adults'—not wrong or lacking, but different. piaget thus saw children's thinking, children's epistemology, as intellectually interesting i n itself. the second feature of piaget's theory of importance to papert's work is the distinction between concrete and formal thinking w h i c h underlies piaget's third and fourth stages. that there is a well-documented phenomenon wherein children cannot perform certain sorting and combining tasks (and which'piaget's research uses to differentiate these stages) does not necessarily imply that young children cannot approach this k i n d of thinking. rather, papert argued, with the right kind of representational apparatus, they may; hence logo. this is an application of the epistemological insight above, and perhaps the best way to express it is to note, as a l a n kay did: chapter : alan kay's educational vision ...that young children are not well equipped to do "standard" symbolic mathe- matics u n t i l the age of or , but that even very young children can do other kinds of math, even advanced math such as topology and differential geometry, when it is presented i n a form that is well matched to their current thinking processes. the logo turtle w i t h its local coordinate system (like the child, it is always at the center of its universe) became a highly successful "microworld" for exploring ideas i n differential geometry. ( , p. ) the computer, i n papert's conception, isn't a bridge to the formal operational stage so m u c h as it is a means to approach the ideas inherent in mathematics while still remaining w i t h i n the cognitive repertoire of the concrete stage—through the computer-mediated introduc- tion of a "body-syntonic mathematics" (papert, a, p. ). this is what computers are good for, according to papert. in a computer-rich culture, papert wrote, "children may learn to be systematic before they learn to be quantitative!" kay worked forward from papert's conception, but moved i n a slightly different direc- tion. the key idea for kay was that children could use computing to gain a different sort of handle on the world. kay, following m c l u h a n , felt that new media come w i t h new ways of thinking about the world. the relationship to piaget perse was downplayed i n favour of the a n g l o - a m e r i c a n developmental psychologist jerome bruner, who i n the s postulated three mentalities: enactive, iconic, and symbolic, and, rather than being strictly developmen- tal (i.e., stage-ordered), these mentalities developed i n response to environmental factors (bruner , p. loff). the work of papert convinced me that whatever interface design might be, it was solidly intertwined w i t h learning. bruner convinced me that learning takes place best environmentally and roughly i n stage order—it is best to learn some- thing kinesthetically, then iconically, and finally the intuitive knowledge w i l l be i n place to allow the more powerful but less vivid symbolic processes to work at their strongest. this led me over the years to the pioneers of environmental learning: montessori m e t h o d , suzuki v i o l i n , and t i m gallwey's inner game of tennis, to name just a few. (kay , p. ) chapter : alan kay's educational vision the w o r d "interface" here is the key one; prior to the s, "user interface" had a different meaning. kay's breakthrough idea—though he would no doubt say that he was drawing on precursors from the s (sketchpad, g r a i l , and logo)—was that 'computing' could and should be operating o n more than just the symbolic, abstract level; that it can and should have enactive (kinesthetic) and iconic (image-based) modalities, since computers were media, and not just tools. but the importance of enabling the enactive and iconic mentalities i n computing is not merely to allow computers to be accessible to children i n one or another cognitive 'stage,' but because, kay said, "no single mentality offers a complete answer to the entire range of thinking and problem solving. user interface design should integrate them at least as well as bruner did i n his spiral c u r r i c u l u m ideas" (kay , p. ). the goal was not to make computers available to children, but "to find the equiva- lent of writing—that is, learning and thinking by doing i n a medium—our new 'pocket universe'" ( a, p. ). the important thing about language and reading and writing, kay noted, is that very young children use the same english language as poets, scientists, and scholars; what differs isn't the language, but the context and the sophistication of the user. but as piaget's and bruner's work underscores, the relative sophistication of these users is not simply a matter of degree, but of style. kay read a study by the french mathematician jacques hadamard ( ) o n the personal reflections of over leading mathematicians and scientists; hadamard found that very few of them reported thinking about mathematics i n a "symbolic" way (i.e. the way it is written, and the way it is taught i n school); most reported thinking i n terms of imagery, and a significant number (including a l b e r t einstein) reported that their sensibilities about mathematics had a kinesthetic basis. kay wrote that hadamard's study indicates "strongly that creativity i n these areas is not at all linked to the symbolic mentality (as most theories of learning suppose), but that the important work i n creative areas is done i n the initial two mentalities—most i n the iconic (or figurative) and quite a bit i n the enactive" ( , p. ). o f course mathematics as a . grail was an early but sophisticated pen-and-tablet graphics system developed at the rand corporation in the late s. chapter : alan kay's educational vision • 'language' is the very model of abstract, symbolic representation, and undoubtedly this is essential to the communication of its ideas; but this does not imply that mathematicians themselves necessarily think this way. bruner's enactive, iconic, and symbolic are to be thought of as mentalities rather than hierarchical stages; they may develop i n sequence, but we do not move 'out' of the earlier stages. that is to say, what is 'developmental' about the three mentalities may be developmental only by virtue of the contexts of exposure and use. kay sums this up nicely: the w o r l d of the symbolic can be dealt w i t h effectively only when the repeti- tious aggregation of concrete instances becomes boring enough to motivate exchanging them for a single abstract insight. ( , p. ) the implication for kay's evolving notion of user interface is that "no single mentality offers a complete answer to the entire range of thinking and problem solving" (kay , p. ). the smalltalk environment, thus, had to be a system w h i c h could support interaction i n all three modes, and its development over three decades can be seen as a progression towards a greater embodiment of this thinking. the guidelight for this development was kay's neat synthesis of bruner's schema: "doing with images makes symbols." user of computer media, therefore, should be doing something, be it pointing, moving, or manipulating objects on screen; those objects should have a visual, or iconic representation. this has an obvious developmental application: users can begin by manipulating concrete representations (cf. montessori's use of manipulatives) and gradually build the familiarity w h i c h allows more abstract, symbolic modalities. . goldman-segall's "epistemological attitudes" ( , p. ff) is a related thought, itself in reaction to papert & turkle's 'hard' and 'soft' styles. that epistemological attitudes are conceived as "frames" puts a more contextual and dialogical light on it, rather than innate (or even learned, but stable) qualities. chapter : alan kay's educational vision w a y s o f k n o w i n g : n a r r a t i v e , a r g u m e n t a t i o n , s y s t e m s t h i n k i n g kay's insight at the end of the s was that a new age of personal computing was on the horizon, i n w h i c h ...millions of potential users meant that the user interface would have to become a learning environment along the lines of montessori and bruner [...] early on, this led to a -degree rotation of the purpose of the user interface from "access to functionality" to "environment i n w h i c h users learn by doing." this new stance could now respond to the echos of montessori and dewey, particularly the former, and got me, on rereading jerome bruner, to think beyond the children's curriculum to a "curriculum of user interface." ( a, p. ) w h a t is a curriculum of user interface? perhaps the best way to answer this is to look to another taken-for-granted medium—the printed book—and try to draw an analogy. a s m a r s h a l l m c l u h a n has eloquently shown—and scholars such as jack goody, walter o n g , and elizabeth eisenstein have elaborated—alphabetic literacy of the k i n d nurtured by the printing revolution of the early m o d e r n period has conditioned our thinking so deeply that we can barely imagine what it might have been otherwise. m c l u h a n ' s insights into alpha- betic culture underscore the notion of an alphabetic curriculum that has been keystone of western education i n modern times to be sure, and really since the greeks developed the alphabet i n the modern sense: we do not merely read by way of alphabetic constructs, we organize our very being according to the kinds of logic prescribed by alphabetic literacy. alphabetic literacy as pioneered by the classical greeks and especially print literacy as it appeared i n the early th century has had profound implications for how we know the world; how we represent it, and the kinds of assumptions we make about it. one of the most profound implications is the development of alternatives to narrative expression. kay pays special attention to this dynamic i n the development of modernity. o f narrative and narra- tive-based ways of understanding the world, kay writes: chapter : alan kay's educational vision w h e n one proverb contradicts another, it doesn't matter—just as it doesn't matter that the movie you liked last night contradicts the movie you liked last week. the important thing about stories is how good they are right now. stories happen i n the here and now; they create their own environment. even when they purport to be about general knowledge, what really matters is how well they satisfy the listener. (kay , p. ) but we do not represent everything i n narrative form. since the early th century, kay argues, more and more of the most influential cultural expressions i n western society have taken non-narrative forms: if we look back over the last years to ponder what ideas have caused the greatest changes in human society and have ushered in our modern era of democracy, science, technology and health care, it may come as a bit of a shock to realize that none of these is i n story form! newton's treatise o n the laws of motion, the force of gravity, and the behaviour of the planets is set up as a sequence of arguments that imitate euclid's books on geometry. (kay ) the most important ideas i n modern western culture i n the past few hundred years, kay claims, are the ones driven by argumentation, by chains of logical assertions that have not been and cannot be straightforwardly represented i n narrative. historians hobart & schiff- man identify the th-century french thinker francois viete, the developer of generalized algebra and geometry, as the turning point to modern analytic thought—the more famous rene descartes having built substantially on viete's foundations (hobart & schiffman , p. ff). chapter : alan kay's educational vision but more recent still are forms of argumenta- t i o n that defy linear representation at all: 'complex' systems, dynamic models, ecological relationships of interacting parts. these can be hinted at w i t h logical or mathematical representations, but i n order to flesh them out effectively, they need to be dynamically modeled. this k i n d of modelling is i n many cases only possible once we have computa- tional systems at our disposal, and i n fact w i t h the advent of computational media, complex systems modeling has been an area of growing research, precisely because it allows for the representation (and thus conception) of knowledge beyond what was previously possible. in her discussion of the "regime of computation" inherent i n the work of thinkers like stephen wolfram, edward fredkin, and h a r o l d m o r o w i t z , n . katherine hayles explains: whatever their limitations, these researchers fully understand that linear causal explanations are limited in scope and that multicausal complex systems require other modes of modeling and explanation. this seems to me a seminal insight that, despite three decades of work i n chaos theory, complex systems, and simulation modeling, remains underappreciated and undertheorized in the physical sciences, and even more so i n the social sciences and humanities. (hayles , p. ) kay's lament too is that though these non-narrative forms of communication and under- standing—both in the linear and complex varieties—are key to our modern world, a tiny fraction of people i n western society are actually fluent i n them. john c o n w a y a n d a-life i n . , martin ' g a r d n e r published :ai~ famous column in, .scientific american celebrating a simple.isolitaire game o f . population dynamics created by british mathematician john conway. the game was - called life. it is, very simply, a set of very simple-algorithms that- produce'complex behaviour in cellular automata. the study of cellular automata pre-exists conway's simulation, and has developed into a rapidly growing and complex .branch of mathematics (stephen wolfram's - page a new kind of science was a popular bestseller in ) . but life was simple enough to be implemented in a variety of simple forms: the small number of algorithms meant that the simulation could;, be run by hand on a checkerboard; novice programmers could easily produce life as software in a few lines of code (i recall- j writing one in basic' when i was an undergraduate). the important thing about life is that it demonstrates powerfully how very simple systems can produce complex behaviour, and that the business of modelling them, '. mathematically, computationally, is trivially.--, easy. . • . • • ••• i. chapter : alan kay's educational vision , in order to be be completely enfranchised in the st century, it w i l l be very important for children to become fluent i n all three of the central forms of thinking that are now i n use. [...] the question is: h o w can we get children to explore ways of thinking beyond the one they're "wired for" (storytelling) and venture out into intellectual territory that needs to be discovered anew by every thinking person: logic and systems "eco-logic?" ( c) w e can learn many things as children i n a village culture. w e can learn how to live our lives successfully. w e can learn what the culture believes. w e can learn how to hunt and fish and farm. w e can learn a lot of things simply by watching others. but school was invented so people could learn the hard things, the things we don't learn naturally. school was invented so we could learn the created things that actually require us to change what's inside our heads, to learn what seymour papert calls powerful ideas. (kay , p. ) in this we get kay's argument for 'what computers are good for' (not to mention a particular notion of what schools might be good for). it does not contradict papert's vision of c h i l - dren's access to mathematical thinking; rather, it generalizes the principle, by applying kay's vision of the computer as medium, and even metamedium, capable of "simulating the details of any descriptive model." the computer was already revolutionizing how science is done, but not general ways of thinking. kay saw this as the promise of personal computing, w i t h millions of users and millions of machines. the thing that jumped into my head was that simulation would be the basis for this new argument. [...] if you're going to talk about something really complex, a simulation is a more effective way of making your claim than, say, just a math- ematical equation. if, for example, you're talking about an epidemic, you can make claims i n an essay, and you can put mathematical equations i n there. still, it is really difficult for your reader to understand what you're actually talking about and to work out the ramifications. but it is very different if you can supply a model of your claim i n the form of a working simulation, something that can be examined, and also can be changed. ( &) the computer is thus to be seen as a modelling tool. the models might be relatively i mundane—our familiar w o r d processors and painting programs define one end of the . kay is presumably drawing on bruner's notion of a foundational" narrative construal of reality" (bruner ; ) chapter : alan kay's educational vision scale—or they might be considerably more complex. it is important to keep i n m i n d that this conception of computing is i n the first instance personal—"personal dynamic media"— so that the ideal isn't simulation and modelling on some institutional or centralized basis, but rather the k i n d of thing that individuals would engage i n , i n the same way i n which i n d i - viduals read and write for their own edification and practical reasons. this is what defines kay's vision of a literacy that encompasses logic and systems thinking as well as narrative. a n d , as w i t h papert's enactive mathematics, this vision seeks to make the understand- ing of complex systems something to w h i c h young children could realistically aspire, or that school curricula could incorporate. note how different this is from having a 'computer- science' or an 'information technology' curriculum; what kay is describing is more like a systems-science curriculum that happens to use computers as core tools: so, i think giving children a way of attacking complexity, even though for them complexity may be having a hundred simultaneously executing objects—which i think is enough complexity for anybody—gets them into that space i n think- ing about things that i think is more interesting than just simple input/output mechanisms. ( a, p. ) w h a t i s l i t e r a c y ? the music is not in the piano. - alan kay the past three or four decades are littered w i t h attempts to define "computer literacy" or something like it. i think that, i n the best cases, at least, most of these have been attempts to establish some sort of conceptual clarity on what is good and worthwhile about computing. but none of them have w o n large numbers of supporters across the board. kay's appeal to the historical evolution of what literacy has meant over the past few hundred years is, i think, a m u c h more fruitful framing. h i s argument is thus not for computer literacy perse, but for systems literacy, of w h i c h computing is a key part. in a ( a) lecture, kay said, "every idea, no matter how revolutionary it may appear, is built on previous ideas.... w h a t interests me ... is adding something more to literacy. a n d this is a chapter : alan kay's educational vision grand tradition." drawing a profound example from the history of literacy i n europe, kay wrote i n that ...we'll know if we have the first dynabook if we can make the end-user experi- ence one of "reading and writing" about "powerful ideas" i n a dynamic form, and to do this i n such a way that large percentages of the bell-curve can learn how to do this. w h e n m a r t i n luther was i n jail and contemplating how to get the bible directly to the "end-users" he first thought about what it would take to teach latin to most germans. t h e n he thought about the problems of translat- ing the bible to german. both were difficult prospects: the latter because germany was a collection of provinces w i t h regional dialects, and the dialects were mostly set up for village transactions and court intrigues. interestingly, luther chose to "fix up" german by restructuring it to be able to handle philo- sophical and religious discourse. he reasoned that it w o u l d be easier to start w i t h something that was somewhat familiar to germans who could then be elevated, as opposed to starting with the very different and unfamiliar form of latin. (not the least consideration here is that latin was seen as the language of those i n power and w i t h education, and w o u l d partly seem unattainable to many e.g. farmers, etc.) (kay a) that this is a massive undertaking is clear i n the luther example, and the size of the chal- lenge is not lost o n kay. reflecting on the difficulties they faced i n trying to teach programming to children at p a r c i n the s, he wrote that the connection to literacy was painfully clear. it is not just enough to learn to read and write. there is also a literature that renders ideas. language is used to read and write about them, but at some point the organization of ideas starts to dominate the mere language abilities. a n d it helps greatly to have some power- ful ideas under one's belt to better acquire more powerful ideas (kay a, p. • ). because literacy is about ideas, kay connects the notion of literacy firmly to literature: w h a t is literature about? literature is a conversation i n writing about impor- tant ideas. that's why euclid's elements and newton's principia mathematica are as m u c h a part of the western world's tradition of great books as plato's chapter : alan kay's educational vision dialogues. but somehow we've come to think of science and mathematics as being apart from literature. ( ) there are echoes here of papert's lament about "mathophobia"—not fear of math but the fear of learning (papert , pp. - ) that underlies c p . snow's "two cultures," and w h i c h surely underlies our society's love-hate relationship w i t h computing. kay's warning that too few of us are truly fluent w i t h the ways of thinking that have shaped the modern world—logical argument and systems dynamics—finds an anchor here. h o w is it that e u c l i d and newton, to take kay's favourite examples, are not part of the canon, unless one's very particular scholarly path leads there? w e might argue that we all inherit euclid's and newton's ideas, but i n distilled form. but this misses something important, and i know i've missed something important i n my understanding of math and science. kay makes this point w i t h respect to papert's experiences with logo i n classrooms: despite many compelling presentations and demonstrations of logo, elemen- tary school teachers had little or no idea what calculus was or how to go about teaching real mathematics to children i n a way that illuminates how we think about mathematics and how mathematics relates to the real world. ( , p. ) the problem, i n kay's portrayal, isn't "computer literacy," it's a larger one of familiarity and fluency w i t h the deeper intellectual content; not just that w h i c h is specific to math and science curriculum. kay's diagnosis runs very close to n e i l postman's critiques of television and mass media (postman was a member of the advisory board for the viewpoints research institute until his death i n ); that we as a society have become incapable of dealing w i t h complex issues. postman charges that public argument on the scale of that published i n and around the u s constitution w o u l d be impossible today, because the length and depth of the argumentation simply w o u l d not fit i n a television format, newspapers w o u l d not print it, and too few people would buy it i n book format (postman ). being able to read a warning on a p i l l bottle or write about a summer vacation is not literacy and our society should not treat it so. literacy, for example, is being chapter : alan kay's educational vision able to fluently read and follow the -page argument i n paine's common sense and being able (and happy) to fluently write a critique or defense of it. (kay p. ) another example of "literacy" that kay repeatedly mentions is the ability to hear of a disease like a i d s and to recognize that a "disastrous exponential relationship" holds: m a n y adults, especially politicians, have no sense of exponential progressions such as population growth, epidemics like a i d s , or even compound interest on their credit cards. in contrast, a -year-old child i n a few lines of logo [...] can easily describe and graphically simulate the interaction of any number of bodies, or create and experience first-hand the swift exponential progressions of an epidemic. speculations about weighty matters that w o u l d ordinarily be consigned to c o m m o n sense (the worst of all reasoning methods), can now be tried out w i t h a modest amount of effort. (kay ) surely this is far-fetched; but why does this seem so beyond our reach? is this not precisely the point of traditional science education? w e have enough trouble coping w i t h arguments presented i n print, let alone simulations and modeling. postman's argument implicates tele- vision, but television is not a techno-deterministic anomaly w i t h i n an otherwisesensible cultural milieu; rather it is a manifestation of a larger pattern. w h a t is 'wrong' here has as m u c h to do w i t h our relationship with print and other media as it does w i t h television. kay noted that "in a m e r i c a , printing has failed as a carrier of important ideas for most a m e r i - cans" ( ). t o think of computers and new media as extensions of print media is a dangerous intellectual move to make; books, for all their obvious virtues (stability, econ- omy, simplicity) make a real difference i n the lives of only a small number of individuals, even i n the western w o r l d . kay put it eloquently thus: "the computer really is the next great thing after the book. but as was also true w i t h the book, most [people] are being left behind" ( ). this is a sobering thought for those who advocate public access to digital resources and lament a "digital divide" along traditional socioeconomic lines. kay notes, a s my wife once remarked to v i c e president a l gore, the "haves and have- nots" of the future w i l l not be caused so m u c h by being connected or not to the chapter : alan kay's educational vision internet, since most important content is already available i n public libraries, free and open to all. the real haves and have-nots are those who have or have not acquired the discernment to search for and make use of high content wher- ever it may be found. (kay a, p. ) w h a t is to be done, then? this sort of critique puts the education system i n the u n i t e d states (and most western countries, by obvious extension) i n such bad light that many are tempted to depair. kay's project is relentless, though: w i t h or without the school system, the attempt to reach children w i t h powerful ideas and the means to working with them is always worthwhile. part of the key to seeing a way through this is to remember that educa- tion does not equal school, nor does television (or any other medium) represent an essential obstacle to education. "television," says kay, again recalling postman's argument, "is the greatest 'teaching machine' ever created. unfortunately, what it is best at teaching are not the most important things that need to be learned" ( ). but i n this are also the seeds of an alternative; how could different media be harnessed in such a way as to lead i n a more productive direction? h o w can children have any "embedded cultural experience" that encourages learning logic and systems thinking?'the answer isn't i n the design of any particular curriculum. rather, m a r i a montessori's vision inspires kay: putting the emphasis o n children's "absorbent minds" and the freedom to play and explore. the objects in our system are instead a help to the child himself, he chooses what he wants for his o w n use, and works w i t h it according to his o w n needs,' tendencies and special interests. in this way, the objects become a means of growth. (montessori , p. ) note that this entire conception only makes sense if we include objects—that is, artifacts, technologies, things—as bearers of practice, discourse, and culture, and ensure that we don't abstract away from the things themselves. chapter : alan kay's educational vision v i s i o n : n e c e s s a r y b u t n o t s u f f i c i e n t w e have here the elements of the thinking that produced the dynabook vision and led to its prototypes at x e r o x p a r c w i t h smalltalk and the "interim dynabook" a l t o computers. the dynabook was not, by anyone's measure, a modest project. the fascinating thing is that while kay did not succeed i n establishing a new educational model based on a new k i n d of systems literacy, his project did, i n a different sense, succeed: kay's sense of a future popu- lated by millions of personal computers has indeed come true, and the accuracy w i t h w h i c h he predicted the shape of our computing experience is uncanny. the easily portable laptop computer, w i t h its graphic interface, connected via wireless network to a global information resource, and capable of storing and manipulating all sorts of media—as kay described i n —is precisely what i am using to compose this text. but this is not the dynabook. for all its capabilities, the machine i am sitting in front of as i write this—and, more impor- tantly, the set of genres governing my practices with it—rests upon a far more staid conventional understanding of literacy (and media) than kay had i n m i n d . similarly, professional programming is today heavily influenced by the object-oriented paradigm—largely defined by kay's team. a n d yet, i n terms of actual practice, m u c h of it is still "a better old thing" rather than the "almost new thing" kay had i n m i n d . a n d so despite his numerous important contributions, little of today's computing, personal or otherwise, comes close to the revolutionary thinking that formed the core of kay's work, especially his sense of computing as "child's play." contrary to kay's method, children today are taught computing by way of systems first designed for adults. a n d , true to his insights, there is little that is transformative as a result. it is c o m m o n for fans of kay's project to simply claim that he was "ahead of his time"— but surely this is a simplistic and superficial analysis. the question at hand, for me as an historian, is what happened? w h a t happened to kay's vision over the next three decades . in all seriousness, there is nothing prophetic about it; there are straightforward lines of influence (running largely through apple computer in the s) leading directly from kay's work in the s to the machine i use today. . kay's contributions are well recongized and indeed celebrated among computer scientists; among countless awards and dis- tinctions, kay received the acm's "a.m. turing award" in , one of the field's highest honours. chapter : alan kay's educational vision that led certain elements to take hold and indeed revolutionize the w o r l d of computing, and other elements—perhaps those most important—to remain i n obscurity? chapter : alan kay's educational vision chapter : translating smalltalk the vision has been clear all along but vision is hard to critique effectively. the various implementations we have done, on the other hand, are complete earthly artifacts, and thus admit of criticism both by ourselves and others, and this has helped to move us forward, both on the earth and in our vision. - dan ingalls, ingalls' quote speaks to an important distinction i n this study: between the dynabook and smalltalk itself, between the vision and what ingalls has called the image} the dynabook vision emerged powerfully and clearly in kay's writings i n the early s, and he was able to coalesce a team of colleagues around h i m — p a r c ' s learning research g r o u p ( l r g ) — o n the strength of that vision. but we cannot follow the trajectory of the vision itself. if we are to follow the actors, i n latour's phrase, we have to look for tangible or visible manifestations. fortunately, i n the case of the dynabook story, the tangible and visible is provided by small- talk, the programming language kay designed i n and w h i c h was soon after made real by ingalls. smalltalk is not merely an effect of or a spin-off of the dynabook idea; it is i n many ways the embodiment of a major portion of the dynabook—enormously conveniently so for this story. but, of course, smalltalk itself is not the dynabook: it is the software w i t h - out the hardware, the vehicle without the driver, the language without the literature. nevertheless, smalltalk and its well-documented evolution provide an enormously valuable vector for the telling of the dynabook story. f r o m the very beginning, there seems to have been an essential tension w i t h i n smalltalk and w i t h i n its community. the tension concerns smalltalk as the articulation of an educa- tional vision—that is, its u t o p i a n idealism—vs. smalltalk as a powerful innovation in computer programming and software engineering—that is, its sheer technical sweetness. that being said, among the key characters i n smalltalk's history—alan kay, d a n ingalls, . interestingly—and almost undoubtedly coincidentally—a smalltalk environment saves its data, state, programs, and entire memory in a file called an "image." . arnold pacey, in the culture of technology, wrote of the notion of technical sweetness, "the fact remains that research, inven- tion, and design, like poetry and painting and other creative activities, tend to become compulsive. they take on purposes of their own, separate from economic or military goals" ( , p. ). chapter : translating smalltalk adele goldberg, ted kaehler, and a host of others—it is difficult to label anyone clearly on one side or the other of this seeming divide. w h i l e a l a n kay has remained overtly focused on the educational vision for years now, there can be no denying his role as a computer scientist, both i n smalltalk's early design and in any number of evolutionary moves since. adele goldberg, hired o n at x e r o x p a r c i n the early s as an educational specialist, ironically became the chief steward of smalltalk's trajectory into industry a decade later. even d a n ingalls, the programmer who actually built all the major versions of smalltalk over the years, has written perhaps more eloquently than anyone about smalltalk's purpose to "serve the creative spirit i n everyone" (ingalls ). but at several key moments i n the project's history, the appeal of the educational or the technical ideal has pulled it i n one direction or another. w i t h each movement, smalltalk has been translated somewhat, into a slightly new thing. t o trace these movements is to watch the expansion of smalltalk's 'network' i n a wide variety of directions, but also to watch the translation of elements of the vision into more durable but decidedly different things. arguably, the sheer variety of these translations and alignments—and the absence of any one clearly dominant thrust—has led to smalltalk's marginality i n any of its realms. arguably too, this variety is what keeps it alive. i w o u l d like to note and trace here a few key translations, and to take the opportunity w i t h each to point out the resulting conceptual "black boxes" that result and w h i c h go o n to set the conditions for subsequent shifts. each translation represents the ecological shifting of aspects of the project—adding new allies; allowing for new inputs and influences; conforming or reacting to constraints and threats—and each of these shifts results i n a notable difference i n what smalltalk is. a s smalltalk changes, so subtly does the dynabook vision. w e w i l l begin at x e r o x p a r c i n the m i d s. o r i g i n s : s m a l l t a l k a t p a r c i n t h e e a r l y y e a r s by , the learning research g r o u p at x e r o x p a r c had an "interim dynabook" to serve as the basis of their research efforts. the alto minicomputer—arguably the first "personal chapter : translating smalltalk computer"—had begun to be manufactured i n small quantities and distributed w i t h i n x e r o x p a r c . kay remembered, "it had a - , pixel ( x ) bitmap display, its microcode instruction rate was about m i p s , it had a grand total of k, and the entire machine (exclusive of the memory) was rendered i n m s i chips distributed o n two cards. it was beautiful" ( , p. ). d a n ingalls ported the smalltalk- system to the a l t o (they had been developing it previously on a minicomputer), thereby establishing a basic platform for the next six years' work. kay's team originally had a l t o computers, and they i m m e d i - ately put children in front of them, though this was difficult, owing to tensions between x e r o x corporate and the relatively chaotic atmosphere at p a r c . kay writes: i gave a paper to the national c o u n c i l of teachers of english o n the dynabook and its potential as a learning and thinking amplifier—the paper was an exten- sive rotogravure of " things to do w i t h a dynabook" by the time i got back from minnesota, stewart brand's rolling stone article about p a r c (brand ) and the surrounding hacker community had hit the stands. t o our enor- mous surprise it caused a major furor at x e r o x headquarters i n stamford, connecticut. though it was a wonderful article that really caught the spirit of the whole culture, x e r o x went berserk, forced us to wear badges (over the years many were printed on f-shirts), and severely restricted the kinds of publica- tions that could be made. this was particularly disastrous for l r g , since we were the "lunatic fringe" (so-called by the other computer scientists), were planning to go out to the schools, and needed to share our ideas (and programs) w i t h our colleagues such as seymour papert and d o n n o r m a n . (kay a, p. ) . t o compensate the l r g team smuggled a l t o computers out of p a r c (strictly against corporate regulations) and into a palo a l t o school, and also brought local kids i n to work w i t h the machines (p. ). . compare the alto's specs with apple computer's first-generation macintosh, designed a decade later. according to parc lore, the alto was conceived—like smalltalk—as a result of a bet, and the bravado of its creators. with money diverted from the lrg budget, chuck thacker from the parc's computer-science lab intiated the project while the executive in charge of the lab was away, having boasted that they could create a whole machine in three months (kay , p. ). chapter : translating smalltalk f this i m a g e has b e e n r e m o v e d because o f c o p y r i g h t restrictions. figure . : kids in front o f alto c o m p u t e r (from g o l d b e r g ) adele goldberg writes: ' - - m o s t of the educational experimentation was done w i t h specially conducted classes of students ages - . these classes were held i n cooperation w i t h a local high school's mentally gifted minors program. the students were driven to p a r c during the school day. saturday classes were held for the children of p a r c employees. (goldberg , p. ) smalltalk- running o n the a l t o machines proved good enough for the first round of research. kay and l r g colleague diana m e r r y first worked o n implementing an overlap- ping-window mouse-driven screen interface, w i t h text i n proportional fonts. l r g team member steve purcell implemented the first animation system, and t e d kaehler built a version of turtle graphics for smalltalk. larry tesler created the first w y s i w y g page- layout programs. m u s i c synthesis had already been implemented before the a l t o , and so this was moved over and substantially developed on this first generation platform. chapter : translating smalltalk this i m a g e has b e e n r e m o v e d because of c o p y r i g h t restrictions. figure . : o r i g i n a l o v e r l a p p i n g - w i n d o w interfaces (from kay & g o l d b e r g , p. ). a l l of this work was considerably enhanced when ingalls, along w i t h dave robson, steve weyer, and diana m e r r y , re-implemented smalltalk w i t h various architectural improve- ments (a version unofficially referred to as smalltalk- ), w h i c h brought enormous speed improvements to the system (kay a, pp. - ; t e d kaehler, personal communica- tion, n o v ). w i t h the smalltalk- system, adele goldberg worked substantially o n a scheme merging turtle graphics and the new object-oriented style, using the simple idea of an animated box on screen (named "joe"). the box could be treated like a logo turtle—that is, given procedural commands to move around the screen, grow and shrink, and so on; but it could also act as a 'class' from w h i c h specialized kinds of boxes could be derived. chapter : translating smalltalk figure . : a d e l e g o l d b e r g ' s joe box in action (kay & g o l d b e r g i , p. ) kay later reflected, w h a t was so wonderful about this idea were the myriad of children's projects that could spring off the humble boxes. a n d some of the earliest were tools! this was when we got really excited. for example, m a r i o n goldeen's ( yrs old) painting system was a full-fledged tool. a few years later, so was susan hamet's ( yrs old) o o p illustration system (with a design that was like the m a c d r a w to come). t w o more were bruce horn's ( yrs old) music score capture system and steve putz's ( yrs old) circuit design system. (kay , p. ) chapter : translating smalltalk this i m a g e has b e e n r e m o v e d because of c o p y r i g h t restrictions. figure . : m a r i o n ' s p a i n t i n g system (from kay & g o l d b e r g , p. ) a s exciting as these early successes must have been (and frankly, as impressive as they still sound today), the limitations of this early work—appear- ing along two fundamentally different axes—would significantly shape further development and point it i n divergent directions. educational limitations a serious problem kay's team encountered was the extent to w h i c h children and novice users hit a "wall" or critical threshold i n the complexity of their designs and constructions. kay reflects: the successes were real, but they weren't as general as we thought. they wouldn't extend into the future as strongly as we hoped. the children were chosen from the palo a l t o schools (hardly an average background) and we tended to be much more excited about the successes than the difficulties.... w e could definitely see that learning the mechanics of .rress *»stone«maeazine,- (dec -'-'-ewaril " ^ ^ ^ j t u r l l i k f ' i c i / cdlismislifa^ecp'* xj-^ox ..paf^^ji^y^and jiis*colleagues are ' g-<_nie v iddffilfmmcally embodies the n tefactive^n^worsrg&als^ftfe'ar pa the h b h h p one has ie it yet*alan kay is convinced a modest icewarl could be built cheapri followed by t.^ methln l̂ik^th'a'tfiff prsvjdfaf s s l t o r t ^ program listing, tor/spoceivor.'lbŷ kay-f-in d§ifiallt-ggf.;- ttfltf "l with i t ssproc i a ma t i n c o r a i n a ctranc sfnrfeolwemnll iphibtoric al documents on 'he whole arpa ««parc endeavour xerox responded with a ' five year publu at'on ban on the tesearchers chapter : translating smalltalk the system was not a major problem. the children could get most of it themsleves by swarming over the altos w i t h adele's joe book. the problem seemed more to be that of design. (kay a, p. ) kay agonized over the difficulty of teaching a group of "nonprogrammer adults" from p a r c to construct a simple rolodex-like information manager application i n smalltalk. kay noted how they moved more quickly than the children, but this critical threshold still appeared earlier than he had anticipated: they couldn't even come close to programming it. i was very surprised because i "knew" that such a project was well below the mythical "two pages" for end- users we were working w i t h i n . later, i sat i n the room pondering the board from my talk. finally, i counted the number of nonobvious ideas in this little program. they came to . a n d some of them were like the concept of the arch i n building design: very hard to discover, if you don't already know them. the connection to literacy was painfully clear. it isn't enough to just learn to read and write. there is also a literature that renders ideas. language is used to read and write about them, but at some point the organization of ideas starts to dominate mere language abilities. a n d it helps greatly to have some power- ful ideas under one's belt to better acquire more powerful ideas, (p. ) despite the intractibility of this problem, even three-and-a-half decades later, kay puts the focus i n the proper place: the issue is a cultural one, rather that a technical problem that can be fixed i n the next version. this is an issue that still hasn't been significantly addressed i n educational technology community, despite any number of attempts to create computing environments for children or 'novices.' goldberg's emphasis on design, as i n the "joe box" example, seemed to kay to be the right approach. but it was clear that the specifics of just how to approach the issue of design eluded them, and that they had a very long way to go. technological limitations a s innovative and successful as smalltalk- had proved, its weaknesses soon showed through: weaknesses inherent i n kay's original parsimonious design. in smalltalk- , the . ted kaehler more dramatically called it "the cliff" (kaehler, personal communication, july , ). chapter : translating smalltalk actual syntax of the language i n any particular instance was defined by the code methods attached to the particular object receiving the message. "this design came out of our assumption that the system user should have total flexibility i n making the system be, or appear to be, anything that the user might choose" (goldberg & ross , p. ). the trouble w i t h this approach is that the flexibility of the system tends to preclude consistency. the team agreed that the flexibility of smalltalk- was beyond what was desirable (kay a, p. ). adele goldberg and joan ross explained: o u r experience i n teaching smalltalk- convinced us that overly flexible syntax was not only unneccesary, but a problem. in general, communication in classroom interaction breaks down when the students type expressions not easily readable by other students or teachers. by this we mean that if the partic- ipants i n a classroom cannot read each other's code, then they cannot easily talk about it.-(goldberg & ross , p. ) a new smalltalk seemed to be the next step. but the team were not i n total agreement about how exactly this should be accomplished. s m a l l t a l k ' s i n i t i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n a t x e r o x p a r c translation # : a personal computerfor children of all ages becomes smalltalk- in early , a l a n kay worried that his project was getting off track, and concerns w i t h the design and implementation of the system were leading the l r g farther away from research w i t h kids. he wanted to refocus, and so he took his team o n a three-day retreat under the title "let's b u r n o u r disk packs"—in other words, let's scrap what we have now, return to first principles, and begin again (kay a, p. ). he explained his feeling w i t h reference to m a r s h a l l m c l u h a n ' s chestnut, "man shapes his tools, but thereafter his tools shape him," and wrote, "strong paradigms like lisp and smalltalk are so compelling that they eat their young: when you look at an application i n either of these two systems, they resemble the systems themselves, not a new idea" (p. ). chapter : translating smalltalk n o t surprisingly, the people who had spent the past four years building smalltalk were not keen on throwing it all away and starting from scratch. d a n ingalls, especially, felt that a new smalltalk was indeed the right direction, and by now he had some well-developed ideas about how to do it better. ingalls thus began the design of a major new version, called small- talk- . this proved to be a turning point, as ingalls' new thrust with smalltalk would generate enormous momentum, cementing the technical foundations of a whole paradigm of computer programming. a response to the technical limitations the l r g had found i n their work w i t h smalltalk- , smalltalk- clearly identified and established itself as the paradigm for object-oriented programming. the smalltalk- language and environment was based on a cleaner and more consistent architecture than i n smalltalk- : here, everything i n the system was an object; objects communicate by passing messages; objects respond to messages sent to them via the code i n methods. furthermore, every object is an instance of a class; "the class holds the detailed representation of its instances, the messages to w h i c h they can respond, and methods for computing the appropriate responses" (ingalls , p. ). these classes are arranged i n a single, uniform hierarchy of greater and greater specialization. m u c h of the actual practice of programming i n such a system is the definition of new (lower) levels of this hierarchy: "subclassing," that is, taking a class w h i c h provides some functionality and extending it by defining a new class w h i c h inherits the old functionality plus some speciali- zation. goldberg and ross wrote: the smalltalk- system was created primarily as a basis for implementing and studying various user-interface concepts. it gave the users, mostly adult researchers, further ability i n refining existing classes through the use of subclassing. this meant that the programmer could now modify a running model without creating a change to already existing examples of that model. programming-by-refinement, then, became a key idea i n our ability to motivate our users. (goldberg & ross , p. ) ingalls and his colleagues made the system into more and more of a working environment for themselves; more and more of the development of the system was done w i t h i n the chapter : translating smalltalk smalltalk- system itself. a key point w h i c h is often overlooked i n glosses of smalltalk's capabilities is that the system was completely live or "reactive" (ingalls ), and so such changes to the system could be made on-the-fly, i n real time (imagine changing how m i c r o - soft w o r d works in the middle of writing a paragraph). in fact, parts of current smalltalk environments were developed i n the smalltalk- environment at x e r o x p a r c . there emerged a unique community of practice w i t h i n x e r o x p a r c surrounding the smalltalk- environment. even kay was "bowled over i n spite of my wanting to start over. it was fast, lively, could handle big problems, and was great fun." the m o m e n t u m of this community of practice firmly established some of smalltalk's enduring and influential features: a multi-paned class "browser" w h i c h allowed one to quickly and easily traverse all the classes and methods i n the system; an integrated, window-based debugging environ- ment, i n w h i c h errors in the system pointed the user directly to the methods requiring fixes; and the first consistent, system-wide windowing user interface, the prototype for the ones we all use today. . the significance of this is easy to miss, but the claim about lineage is not a trivial thing. nearly all programming environments distinguish between a program—normally treated as a static text—and its execution. smalltalk, like lisp before it, can be writ- ten while the program is running, which means that software can be modified from within. since smalltalk is a live computing environment in which code dynamically co-exists with transient objects like state information and user input, later versions of smalltalk were created within a smalltalk- environment, and more recent versions constructed within these. in a sense, the smalltalk- environment has upgraded itself a number of times in the past thirty years. see ingalls , pp. - . chapter : translating smalltalk 'kk. fei-examples-xll eei-kernel eei-plugin elexiblevocabularies-info| eramework-dovnload graphics-display objects graphics-eiles graphics-primitives-tests graphics-text graphics-text-tests graphics-transformation; bitblt bitmap color colormap pen penpointrecorder point quadrangle reciangle. translucentcolor instance class all accessing comparing rectangle functions testing truncation and round of! printing private emp *nebraska-morphic-remo| *morphic-postscript canvj alignivnh: centeredbeneath: flipbyicenterat: newrectbuttonpresseddo: ne^rectfrom: rotateby:centerat: scaleby: scalefromito: squishedvithin: translateby: translatedandsquishedtos centeredbeneath: e.re>:tangle "move the reciever so that its top center point coincides with the bottom center point of e.rectangle. .v / sw:" * self align: self topcenter with: arectangle bottomcenter figure . : a smalltalk " b r o w s e r , " s h o w i n g classes and m e t h o d s arranged in arbitrary categories. this browser is a direct d e s c e n d a n t o f the o n e s developed by larry tesler in smalltalk- . by the late s, smalltalk's generic qualities had begun to be evident: the consistency of the system and the design methodologies it encouraged had an effect on the practices of its users. i deliberately mean to treat smalltalk as an actor i n this sense; here is an example of a tool which, once shaped, turns and shapes its users—or "eats its young," as kay put it. this is the system w h i c h excited computer scientists about object-oriented programming, and the user-interface genre established by smalltalk- was adhered to i n a p p l e and microsoft's later systems. a broad set of practices and approaches coalesced around ingalls' new design: w h e n programmers started writing class definitions i n these browsers, a new era of design began. the average size of a method tended to correspond to the screen space available for typing the method text (which consisted of around seven message expressions i n addition to the method header information). software evolved (actually it felt like software was molded like clay). the programmer could write a partial class description, create an instance to try out its partial capabilities, add more messages or modify existing methods, and try these changes out on that same instance. the programmer could change chapter : translating smalltalk the behavior of software describing an instance while that instance continued to exist. (goldberg , p. ) the educational research that followed on the development of smalltalk- , however, was not aimed at children, but at adult end-user program- ming. in , adele goldberg led the l r g team through a watershed experience: they brought i n x e r o x upper management and taught them to construct a business simulation using smalltalk. a key departure here was that these end-users were not exposed to the entire smalltalk- environ- ment, but to a special simulation framework designed for the exercise (kay a, p. ff; goldberg , pp. - ). m u c h of the research i n the late s seems to have taken the form of such domain-specific environments and focusing on design, rather than teaching the programming environment itself (goldberg ; goldberg & ross, ). parallel to the smalltalk- development was kay's work on a machine called the notetaker. this was the first "portable" computer i n the sense i n w h i c h we understand it today; it was a lot bigger than a laptop, but kay writes that he did use it on w h a t ' s different a b o u t smalltalk a few key features distinguish smalltalk from almost all other software development environments. in smalltalk;, "everything is- an. object" • capable of sending and; receiving messages; there are no other conceptual constructs. other object-oriented languages, such as c++ and java use'objects along witr/other constructs like functions or specific data types drawn from mainstream pro- gramming traditions. smalltalk's archite- cture and syntax are very simple, since everything in the system behaves in the same way. smalltalk' is not a "compiled" language (like pascal, c, and c++), in'whicksource code',' files'- a r e / batch-translated into machine-readable executables. nor is it an "interpreted" language (like basic, perl, python, in which source code files are "run" by an platform-specific interpreter; instead, smalltalk '(like; java)." runs'-in. a.: "virtual machine," "bit-identically" on a wide variety of platforms. java's virtual-machine archi- tecture was drawn from smalltalk. smalltalk is also its own development and runtime environment. rather-than exec- uting'programs on top of an underlying operating system layer which maintains file input-output and a filesystem, smalltalk runs in an "image"—a single, live "file" that manages its own memory use, reads and writes"' itself t o , disk transparently' when required, and which permanently maintains* the entire state of the environment. it'is this 'live', and persistent image which allows smalltalk to be changeable "on the • . other languages require that one make changes to source code files and then re- compile or re-ruh the files in order to make a change. smalltalk images from the days of smalltalk- o (and even smalltalk- ) are still in use, having been bootstrapped into modern versions; an airplane ( a, p. ). this isn't just a foot- note; the important point about the notetaker, from the standpoint of smalltalk's trajectory is that for the first time since the alto's introduction, smalltalk was made to run on a non-xerox processor. ingalls and colleague bruce h o r n ported the smalltalk- chapter : translating smalltalk system over to the notetaker (making smalltalk- ), w h i c h was built w i t h the new, inex- pensive microprocessor chips (such as w o u l d appear i n the first microcomputers). so, despite the notetaker project being officially cancelled by x e r o x management i n , smalltalk had taken its first steps toward portability—that is, independence from x e r o x ' own hardware. goldberg reports that further work toward making smalltalk run on other vendors' hardware was key to its continued evolution ( , p. ff), convincing the team that ...smalltalk would run well on standard microprocessors. w e no longer needed to rely on microcoding x e r o x ' proprietary machines, so we decided it was time to expand the audience for smalltalk. w e decided to create a smalltalk that the rest of the world could use. [...] in we asked x e r o x for the right to publish smalltalk, the language and its implementation and the applications we had built to test the smalltalk model of computing. x e r o x officially gave this permission, remarking that no one inside x e r o x wanted smalltalk. (goldberg , p. ) outside xerox, there was interest, and the popular history of computing records the occa- sion of a p p l e computer's steve jobs and his team visiting x e r o x i n , and coming away w i t h substantial inspiration for their m a c i n t o s h project. interestingly, what jobs and his team really took away from their visit was the look of what kay's team had designed and not so m u c h of how it worked; jobs was so bowled over by the windows-and-menus interface that he ignored the dynamic object-oriented development environment and the local-area network connecting the x e r o x workstations. the symbolic importance of this event relates to these ideas 'escaping' from xerox. the distillation of the smalltalk- environment over the following three years into smalltalk- made this motif central. in preparing smalltalk- for release, what was required was to abstract the language from any hardware assumptions i n order to allow implementations on any number of target platforms (goldberg , p ). chapter : translating smalltalk significantly, kay was not a part of this devel- opment. in , kay took a sabbatical from xerox, and did not return. adele goldberg led the group toward the definition of smalltalk- and the publi- cation of a series of books (goldberg & robson ; krasner ; goldberg ) and a special issue of byte magazine (aug ) with a cover illustration showing a colourful hot-air balloon ascending from a tiny island w i t h an ivory tower. but smalltalk was escaping to where? certainly not to schools and schoolchildren; rather, smalltalk- was headed for professional systems programming—electronics, banking, shipping—and academic computer science research. the flexibility and elegance of smalltalk's develop- ment environment w o n it a small but dedicated following of systems programmers; this w o u l d be what smalltalk was k n o w n for i n programming circles. the resulting "black box" (in latour's sense) was smalltalk as an interesting dynamic programming environment for research and systems modelling, but far from the mainstream of either professional soft- ware development or personal computing. translation # : from educational research platform to software development tool x e r o x licensed smalltalk i n to four hardware companies who had their own software divisions and could therefore participate i n the documentation of its implementation i n different contexts: hewlett packard (hp), d e c , apple, and tektronix. o f these, electronic instrument manufacturer tektronix (an electronic equipment manufacturer rather than a computer company per se) did the most w i t h smalltalk, offering it w i t h a short-lived line of research workstations, and also embedding i n the hardware of its popular line of oscilli- scopes (thomas n.d.). significantly, smalltalk got a bigger boost i n the late s w i t h the formation of a spinoff from x e r o x called parcplace systems, i n w h i c h goldberg and xerox p a r c in the press - ii ' , after stewart brand's article appeared, there were no publications from-anyone in kay's team until , when kay and goldberg's paper, "personal dynamic media," and kay's scientific american article, "microelectronics and,the personal computer," finally revealed a glimpse of their research to the outside world. but there would be no real details about smalltalk until the s . a byte magazine cover from made oblique reference to the "magical kingdom of smalltalk," isolated on a rugged island, an image that would reappear on a cover, now showing smalltalk escaping from the island via hot-air balloon (an image inspired by jules verne's the mysterious island, according to dan ingalls). • chapter : translating smalltalk colleagues commercialized smalltalk, selling licenses to more companies and maintaining a portable base system w h i c h w o u l d hedge against the language's fate being tied to any one hardware platform (goldberg , p. ff). ultimately, two smalltalk licensees came to dominate: i b m and digitalk—the latter was a spinoff from italian business products company olivetti, w h i c h ultimately merged w i t h goldberg's parcplace systems; the company was acquired i n by c i n c o m , a major software consulting house. if this historical detail sounds somewhat arcane and far removed from the trajectory of the dynabook vision, it should. this later history of smalltalk, from the early s on, has a decidedly different character from that which preceded it. the focus had shifted entirely away from education (with a handful of minor exceptions ) and toward leading-edge computer science research and development. m u c h of the activity i n the smalltalk c o m m u - nity was academic, centered around teams at the x e r o x p a r c of the s as well as research at universities of massachussetts, washington, carleton, tokyo, d o r t m u n d , and others worldwide (ibid.). ironically, far from its origins i n personal computing, smalltalk i n use is found i n the realm of big systems development: banking and finance, import- ing/exporting and shipping, health care, insurance, and so o n . the website for c i n c o m smalltalk boasts, "how the french fries you get at m c d o n a l d s are sorted by c i n c o m smalltalk." smalltalk's greatest impact on the computing world, however, was its role i n the estab- lishment of object-oriented programming and design, w h i c h by now has become one of the major genres of contemporary information technology. smalltalk may have been the tech- nology at the core of this movement i n the s, but it was quickly overtaken by m u c h larger populations of developers working i n the c++ language (which, strictly speaking was derived from the earlier simula language rather than smalltalk, and w h i c h added object and class constructs to the popular c programming language). c++ was a m u c h smaller concep- . adele goldberg and joan ross wrote an article.in the byte special issue on smalltalk entitled " is the smalltalk- system for children?"—the answer was a qualified yes, but it would appear that this article serves mostly to establish smalltalk- 's intellectual tradition rather than to introduce new material. smalltalk found favour as a teaching language in a few academic computer science departments, but remained very far from the mainstream. . see http://www.whysmalltalk.com chapter : translating smalltalk http://www.whysmalltalk.com tual and practical leap for mainstream programmers used to working i n static, procedural languages like c or pascal; though the consequence of that 'shorter leap' also means that c++ has been called the worst of both worlds. despite this, c++ grew i n the s to be the dominant object-oriented language, and its popularity was such that object-oriented programming became the new mainstream. consider, as a measure of this, the fact that the u.s. "advanced placement" curriculum i n computer science shifted to c++ from pascal i n . in , sun microsystems released the java language and development platform, an attempt to re-invent software development w i t h the internet i n m i n d . java is an object- oriented language much closer i n spirit to smalltalk, at least i n that it was designed from the ground up w i t h objects i n m i n d (unlike c++, w h i c h was an adaptation of an older language and conceptual model), and w i t h a virtual-machine architecture like smalltalk's to ensure portability across a wide variety of platforms. a c c o r d i n g to programmer mythology, sun microsystems wanted "an industrial strength smalltalk, written i n c++." they got neither, but what java did represent after its late-' s release was an enormous shift of programming practice—and, perhaps more importantly, discourse—away from c++ (the u s advanced placement curriculum abandoned c++ for java i n ). sun microsystems spent the better part of the next decade fighting w i t h microsoft over this shift and who would be i n control of it. meanwhile, the smalltalk community—consultants and developers at i b m , digitalk, and a few others—continued on i n the shadows of these enormous efforts. it is worth noting that while millions of people work in c++ and java and microsoft's related . n e t on a daily basis, the almost ubiquitous characterization of these environments is that they are overly complex, badly designed and implemented, and a general curse on their users. the way smalltalk developers talk of their chosen environment couldn't be more different. . my source for this 'mythology' is the collected wisdom and commentary on contemporary programming practice at the original wikiwikiweb (http://c .com/cgi/wiki). the wikiwikiweb was begun in the mid s by ward cunningham, a smalltalk pro- grammer at tektronix who wanted to host a collaboratively authored and maintained collection of software "design pat- terns"—a methodology inspired by architect christopher alexander's a pattern language ( ). cunningham and various colleagues (none of whom are still attektronix) became key figures in the oop community, associated with the "design pat- terns" movement (see gamma et al. ), and are also key figures in the newer "extreme programming" movement (see, eg. beck ). the wikiwikiweb remains a central repository of commentary on these topics, boasting over , 'pages' of col- . lected information. chapter : translating smalltalk http://c .com/cgi/wiki the second major translation of smalltalk, then, is from a research project—at its origin an educational research project—to its marginal place w i t h i n a m u c h larger current of industrial practice i n object-oriented programming. smalltalk's status w i t h i n this larger current sometimes reads like an origin myth {"in the beginning, there was smalltalk..."). the related black-boxing of smalltalk i n the context of this historical shift relegates it to an intel- lectually interesting but ultimately 'academic' system, too far from evolving mainstream concerns to make m u c h practical difference. far from being the revolutionary step kay had hoped, smalltalk was merely subsumed w i t h i n the emerging object-oriented paradigm. translation # : from "designers"to "end-users" it is against these large-scale, corporate systems trends that the dynabook's trajectory through the s and s must be evaluated. after , smalltalk almost completely shed its educational connections; very little of smalltalk- was ever seen by children. iron- ically, it was adele goldberg, who came to x e r o x p a r c as an educational specialist and who led the research with children there for years, who now led smalltalk's move into the wider w o r l d of professional programming. it is important to reflect on just how far small- talk had travelled from the dynabook vision, and it would have been a reasonable observation i n the m i d s that the two ideas had finally parted. benedict dugan's commentary on this shift invokes frankfurt-school theories of "technical rationalization": clearly, at some point, the original, idealistic goals of kay and company became commercialized. by commercialized, i mean that the design focus shifted away from social and political concerns, to an interest i n efficiency. by exploiting the ability of class hierarchies to organize knowledge and share code, the designers created a language w h i c h was promoted for its ability to facilitate extremely efficient software engineering. lost was the powerful notion of a programming system w h i c h w o u l d amplify the human reach and make it possible for novices to express their creative spirit through the medium of the computer. (dugan ). . in , adele goldberg became president of the association for computing machinery, computing's largest professional asso- ciation. goldberg did remain connected to education, however; her work in the s with neometron employed smalltalk in the design of learning management systems (goldberg et al. ). chapter : translating smalltalk despite the finality of dugan's statement, smalltalk was far from finished; the contributions to computer science embodied i n smalltalk are still being realized and reconsidered today. i w i l l not go into detail here on the long-term impact of smalltalk on software engineering. instead, i want to focus specifically on the rise of user-interface development. conventionally, the graphical user-interface as we know it today descends more or less from the smalltalk environments at x e r o x i n the s, via steve jobs' visit to x e r o x p a r c and subsequent design of apple's m a c i n t o s h computers; what x e r o x couldn't bring to market, apple could, and i n a big way. the actual story is a little more complicated than this, not surprisingly. in the first place, x e r o x did attempt to commercialize some of the personal computing research that came out of p a r c . in the late s, a machine called the x e r o x star was developed and it was sold i n the early s. the star was an attempt to market what kay calls the " p a r c genre" of computing: a pointer-driven graphical user interface, r i c h docu- ment-production tools ("desktop publishing"), peer-to-peer networking, and shared resources like a laser printer. the star's failure commercially has probably more to do w i t h its selling price—close to $ , each, and they were sold i n clusters of three along w i t h a laser printer—in an era when the "personal computer" was being defined by a p p l e and i b m ' s machines costing around $ . nevertheless, the star is the machine w h i c h first brought the modern graphical desktop environment to market; while overlapping windows and menu-driven interaction were pioneered i n smalltalk, the process of turning these ideas into a packaged product and sold to an audience happened w i t h the development of the star. interestingly, the use of icons—not a feature of the smalltalk interface—was pioneered i n the star interface as a means of giving a direct-manipulation interface to mundane, hard- ware-defined things like disks and printers and files. i do not mean to give the impression that the x e r o x star was completely distinct from the smalltalk project—there was some significant overlap i n the personnel of the two . the xerox star was sold in reasonably large quantity for the day; the wikipedia entry on the star states that about , of the machines made it to market—as corporate office technology. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/xerox_star (retrievedsept , . ). . , chapter : translating smalltalk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/xerox_star projects—but rather to point out yet another considerable translation w h i c h occured i n the packaging and marketing of the star. in kay's dynabook concept, end-users were seen as designers and developers; system tools were accessible from top to bottom, and the "late binding" philosophy led to an expectation that the details of how a user actually worked w i t h a system would be defined ongoingly by that user. this clearly presents difficulties from a business perspective; how o n earth does one market such a concept to a potential audience? it is far too vague. the x e r o x star, then, was a distillation of one possible scenario of how typical office-based end-users w o u l d work. the star operating system was not smalltalk-based, so it would not be possible to easily change the configuration; instead, the star's developers worked according to a now-commonplace model: usability research. they were able to draw upon several years of internal x e r o x use of the a l t o computers, w i t h and without smalltalk—there were over of them i n use at x e r o x i n the s—and they developed a detailed model of tasks and use cases: what w o u l d end-users want to do w i t h the star, how w o u l d they go about it, how should the user interface be structured to enable this? the shift here is from a notion of participatory designers (in kay's conception) to end- users as we understand the term now. for thierry bardini and august horvath, i n their arti- cle, "the social construction of the personal computer user" ( ), this is the point where the end-user role is formally established. employing the language of actor-network theory, they write, the first wave of researchers from sri to p a r c helped i n opening the concept of design by the reflexive user, and the second wave got r i d of the reflexive user to create a methodology of interface design based on a user model and task analysis. in this last translation, the very utility of the reflexive user... was questioned. the result was a new set of principles for the design of the user interface and its new look and feel: icons and menus. the first step of this new methodol- ogy is also the last that we consider for this part of the history. here begins the . note that in this formulation, "user" refers to an actual individual, as opposed to an hypothetical "user" for whom the system has been designed. chapter : translating smalltalk negotiation w i t h real users over the script of personal computing. (bardini & horvath [italics added]) there are two substantial black boxes emerging here: first is bardini & horvath's notion of "real users;" second, and at least as influential, is the trope of "user friendliness," w h i c h is the target of user-centered design and possibly the key selling point of the microcomputer revo- lution, especially since the m a c i n t o s h . but this is all too pat, both as history and as pedagogy. bardini and horvath seem content to close the box and write the history as done at this point—what follows is the unfortunate popular history of personal computing w i t h its monolithic end-users and engi- neers. i am not prepared to close the box here, and neither are the community of people surrounding kay and the dynabook idea, as we shall see. in my reading of this history, it is imperative that we question whether the "realization" (in bardini and horvath's language) of the user and the attendant reification of the qualities of user-friendliness (ease of use, ease of learning, not demanding too m u c h of the user) is something w h i c h we are prepared to accept. it seems to me that the "reflexive users" of the early p a r c research are in fact more real than the hypothetical one(s) inscribed i n user-centered design—which performs a substitution not unlike what focus groups do for markets or audiences. the earlier reflex- ive users at least had agency i n their scenarios, as they actively shaped their computing media. the later users, though i n vastly greater numbers, must be satisified w i t h being folded into a pre-shaped role. it is, of course, indisputable that this latter version has become the dominant one. but one of the consequences of this closure is the rise of a genre of computing literature (especially w i t h i n education) w h i c h diagnoses the problems stem- m i n g from the cultural disconnect between "engineers" and "end users" (e.g., see shields ; rose ). this diagnostic tendency is rarely constructive (see papert's defense of computer cultures); rather, it more effectively serves to further reify these oppositional roles. it is significant, i think, that kay's original (and ongoing) conception of personal computing (especially i n education) is an alternative to the now-commonplace notion of chapter : translating smalltalk e n d - u s e r s . b a r d i n i a n d h o r v a t h s u g g e s t t h a t k a y ' s " r e f l e x i v e u s e r s " a r e a n a r t i f a c t o f h i s t o r y — b a c k w h e n c o m p u t e r s w e r e o n l y f o r ' c o m p u t e r p e o p l e ' — b u t i a m n o t y e t / q u i t e c o n v i n c e d . n o r a r e t h e p r o p o n e n t s o f a m o v e m e n t i n t e c h n o l o g y d e s i g n a n d p o l i c y w h i c h e m e r g e d i n s c a n d i n a v i a i n t h e l a t e s a n d e a r l y s c a l l e d participatory design ( e h n ) , w h i c h s a w a s p e c i f i c a l l y p o l i t i c a l d i m e n s i o n i n t h e d i v i s i o n o f l a b o u r — a n d p o w e r — b e t w e e n w o r k e r s ( i n c r e a s i n g l y s e e n a s e n d - u s e r s ) a n d t h e d e s i g n e r s a n d e n g i n e e r s r e p r e - s e n t i n g t h e i n t e r e s t s o f c o r p o r a t e p o w e r . t h e p a r t i c i p a t o r y d e s i g n m o v e m e n t s o u g h t t o a d d r e s s t h i s h e a d - o n , w i t h d i r e c t i n v o l v e m e n t f r o m l a b o u r u n i o n s . i t i s , i t h i n k , i n s t r u c t i v e t h a t a m o v e m e n t w h i c h s i g n i f i c a n t l y a d d r e s s e s i s s u e s o f p o w e r i n c o m p u t i n g e n v i r o n m e n t s s h o u l d s e e k t o r e - i n s c r i b e t h e u s e r . t h e m i c r o c o m p u t e r r e v o l u t i o n o f t h e l a t e s . j t h e h i s t o r y o f t h e a d v e n t o f t h e " p c " — t h e p e r s o n a l m i c r o c o m p u t e r a s w e h a v e c o m e t o k n o w i t — h a s b e e n c o p i o u s l y d o c u m e n t e d a n d i s n o t a t o p i c i w i l l d e v o t e m u c h t i m e t o h e r e ; t h e r e a r e s e v e r a l s t a n d a r d h i s t o r i e s , t h e p b s d o c u m e n t a r y s e r i e s triumph of the nerds ( c r i n g e l y ) i s p r o b a b l y s u f f i c i e n t a s a t o u c h s t o n e . t h e s t o r y l i n e h a s b e c o m e m o s t l y c o n v e n t i o n a l : u n k e m p t h a c k e r s i n t h e i r ( p a r e n t s ' ) n o r t h e r n c a l i f o r n i a g a r a g e s d i s c o v e r e d w h a t i b m — t h e m a r k e t l e a d e r i n c o m p u t i n g — h a d m i s s e d , a n d , a s a r e s u l t , t i n y s t a r t u p c o m p a n i e s l i k e a p p l e a n d m i c r o s o f t h a d t h e o p p o r t u n i t y t o m a k e h a y f o r t h e m s e l v e s , e v e n - t u a l l y e c l i p s i n g i b m . s i g n i f i c a n t l y , t h e s e c o m p a n i e s — a i d e d i n n o s m a l l p a r t b y i b m i t s e l f — s u c c e e d e d i n m a k i n g t h e p e r s o n a l c o m p u t e r a n e c e s s a r y p a r t o f m o d e r n l i f e : w e s o o n b e c a m e c o n v i n c e d t h a t w e n e e d e d t h e m i n e v e r y o f f i c e , e v e r y h o m e , e v e r y c l a s s r o o m . . interestingly, one of the leading figures in the early s scandinavian "experiment" was kristin nygaard, who had co- designed the original object-oriented simula programming language a decade before. . i will use the term "microcomputer" hereto distinguish between alan kay's conceptualization, of a "personal" computer and the small, inexpensive hobby- and home-targeted microcomputers which emerged in the late s and early s. the latter came to be known as "personal computers" especially after ibm branded their microcomputer offering as such in . c h a p t e r : t r a n s l a t i n g s m a l l t a l k translation # : from a software research tradition to a "gadget"focus the interesting thing about the conventional story of the microcomputer vanguard is that what had been accomplished at x e r o x p a r c i n the s is almost entirely absent; their creators (that is, proto-billionaires like steve jobs and b i l l gates) operated i n a w o r l d nearly perfectly isolated from the k i n d of thinking a l a n kay was engaging i n . a p p l e computer's promethean role is mostly as a hardware manufacturer: they created devices—boxes—that a computer hobbyist could afford. microsoft's part was to market a rudimentary operating system for i b m ' s entry into the p c market. both of these contributions—significant as they were i n hindsight—were astonishingly unsophisticated by p a r c ' s standards. kay report- edly "hated" the new microcomputers that were coming out: "there was no hint that anyone who had ever designed software was involved" ( a, p. ). but this is not simply a matter of economics: the difference is not explained by the size of the budgets that separated, for instance, x e r o x from a p p l e i n or . it is rather a cultural difference; kay's work—and that of his colleagues at p a r c — d r e w upon a lengthy academic tradition of computing: these were all people w i t h phds (and not necessarily i n computer science, as kay points out, but i n "established" disciplines like mathematics, phys- ics, engineering, and so forth). a p p l e founders jobs and w o z n i a k were hobbyists w i t h soldering irons, more in the tradition of hot rodding than systems engineering. b i l l gates was a harvard dropout, a self-taught programmer who saw the business potential i n the new microcomputers. n o t that these self-styled pioneers were positioned to draw on p a r c ' s research; x e r o x publications were few and far between, and while the dynabook and smalltalk work was not secretive, what was published broadly was not the sort of thing that a self-taught, garage- based hacker could work with, despite kay's best intentions. even today, w i t h the accumu- lated layers of three decades of computing history at our fingertips, m u c h of the p a r c research comes across as slightly obscure, m u c h of it is still very marginal to mainstream computing traditions. the microcomputer revolution was primarily about hardware, and there is no doubt that much of its early energy was based i n a k i n d of gadget fetishism. a s chapter : translating smalltalk this early enthusiasm matured into a market, the resulting conceptual black box was the p c as a thing on your desk, a commodity. w h o could conceive of how software might become a marketable item? it must have seemed more of a necessary evil than something important i n and of itself, at least until the hardware market was sufficiently established for tools like visicalc—the first "killer app"—to be appreciated. translation # : from a research focus to a marketfocus the pioneers of the microcomputer succeeded most importantly as marketers, turning the hobbyist's toy into something that 'everybody' needed. in this respect their place i n history is secured. the scaling-up of the w o r l d of computing from what it looked like i n — according to p a r c lore, of the best computer scientists i n the world, of them were working at p a r c — t o its size even a decade later, is difficult to encapsulate, and i won't try. suffice it to say that it complicated kay's vision enormously. but wouldn't, one might argue, the appearance of a personal computer on every desk be right i n line w i t h what kay was driving at? here, seemingly, was the prophecy fulfilled; what's more, right from the begin- ning of the microcomputer age, advocates from both sides of the table—at schools and at technology companies—were trying to get them i n front of kids. necessary, perhaps, but not sufficient. t o look at it a little more closely, the m i c r o c o m - puter revolution of the late ' s and early ' s represents more of a cusp than a progression. a s for the details—frankly, the early microcomputers were pretty useless: their hobby- ist/tinkerer heritage made them more like gadgets than the personal media tools kay had envisaged. market pressures kept them woefully underpowered, and the lack of continuity with the academic tradition meant the software for the early microcomputers was unin- spired^ to say the least. the process of turning the microcomputer into an essential part of modern life was a m u c h bumpier and more drawn-out process than the popular mythology . although kay's team in the s foresaw a $ personal computer, what they were actually working with cost vastly more; the transition to mass-produced (and therefore inexpensive) machines was not well thought out at xerox. what was possible to create and bring to market for a few thousand dollars in the early s was still a far cry from the altos. . this reference to inspiration refers to software traditions beyond parc too; it was not until the early s (and publicly-acces- sible internet) before unix-based operating systems—another software tradition with roots in the s—made any real impact on the pc market. chapter : translating smalltalk suggests. the question, "what are these things good for?" was not convincingly answered for a good many years. yet the hype and promise dealt by the early advocates was enough to drive things forward. eventually, enough black boxes were closed, the answers were repeated often enough to begin to seem right ("yes, i do need microsoft w o r d " ) , and the new application genres (spreadsheets—desktop publishing—video games—multimedia— etc.) were layered thickly enough that it all began to seem quite 'natural.' by the time the internet broke through to public consciousness i n the early s, the personal computer was all but completely established as an indispensable part of daily life, and the rhetoric of determinism solidly w o n out: you really can't function without one of these things; you really w i l l be left behind without one; your children w i l l be disadvantaged unless you get o n board. the resulting black box from this translation was the identification of the computer and computer industry as the "engine of the economy," w i t h the various elements of computing firmly established as market commodities. but what had happened to the dynabook? t h e d y n a b o o k a f t e r x e r o x p a r c a l a n kay went on sabbatical from p a r c in and never came back. the period from to w o u l d witness a mass exodus from x e r o x p a r c (hiltzik describes at length the complex dynamics leading to this). w h i l e kay's former colleagues, under adele goldberg's leadership, worked to prepare smalltalk for an audience beyond p a r c , kay took the opportunity to become chief scientist at a t a r i , w h i c h i n the early s was the rising star i n the nascent video game industry. kay spent four years at a t a r i , setting up research projects w i t h long-range ( - year) mandates, but has described his role there as a "trojan horse." inside each video game machine is a computer, and therein lies the potential to go beyond the video game. this period at a t a r i is represented i n the literature more as a collection of war stories and anec- dotes (see rheingold ; stone ) than of significant contributions from kay himself. chapter : translating smalltalk a few important characters emerged out of kay's team at a t a r i : notably brenda laurel, who went on to be a leading user-interface design theorist (laurel & m o u n t f o r d ; laurel ) and later head of purple m o o n , a software company that targeted adolescent girls; and a n n m a r i o n , whose " a q u a r i u m " simulation project at a t a r i became the prototype for the research project w h i c h w o u l d define kay's next phase. ultimately, though, nothing of educational significance came out of kay's term at a t a r i , and i n , corporate troubles ended his time there. in late kay took a research fellowship at a p p l e computer that—along w i t h the patronage of new c e o john scully—seems to have given h i m a great deal of personal free- dom to pursue his educational ideas. kay stayed at a p p l e for a decade, firmly establishing a link between h i m and the popular company. a p p l e had become known for its emphasis o n educational markets, w h i c h included large-scale donations of equipment to schools and research programs like "apple classrooms of t o m o r r o w " (apple computer ). apple's presence in the education sector was key to their branding i n the s (as it remains today). w h e n kay arrived, a p p l e had just released the first-generation m a c i n t o s h computer, the culmination of the work that had been inspired by the famous visit to x e r o x p a r c i n . the m a c was positioned as the alternative to the paradigm of personal computing defined by i b m ' s p c ; the m a c was branded as "the computer for the rest of us." it was certainly the closest thing to the p a r c genre of computing that the general public had seen. that the m a c was indeed different needs no re-telling here; the cultural and marketing battle between m a c s and p c s (originally inscribed as a p p l e vs. i b m , later a p p l e vs. m i c r o - soft) was the dominant metanarrative of s computing. but despite the m a c ' s mouse- and-windows direct manipulation interface, it remained a long way from the k i n d of personal computing kay's team had i n m i n d (and had been literally working with) i n the m i d s. the "look and feel" was similar, but there was no facility for the user shaping her own tools; nor was the m a c intended to be part of a network of users, as i n the p a r c vision. nevertheless, kay's oft-quoted pronouncement was that the m a c was the first personal computer "good enough to critique." a n d , as evidenced by the number of kay's colleagues chapter : translating smalltalk who came to work at a p p l e i n the s, it must have seemed that the company was headed i n the right direction. kay's first year at a p p l e seems to have been spent writing, furthering his thinking about educa- tion and computing and projects. a n article kay had published i n scientific american (kay ) gives a sense of where his thinking was. o n e of the key innovations of the microcomputer revolu- tion—and the first really important answer to the "what are they good for" question—was a software application called visicalc, the first dynamic spreadsheet program, introduced i n the late s by d a n b r i c k l i n and bob franston. the spreadsheet is an interesting example of a computing applica- tion that was born on microcomputers; it is significantly absent from the lengthy collection of innovations from x e r o x p a r c , and p a r c designers were very impressed when they saw it (hiltzik , p. ). the spreadsheet concept clearly impressed kay, too, and he framed it as a key piece of end-user empowerment: the dynamic spreadsheets a good example of such a tissuelike superobject. it is a simulation kit, and it provides a remarkable degree of direct leverage. spreadsheets at their best combine the genres established i n the s (objects, windows, what-you-see-is-what-you-get editing and goal-seeking retrieval) into a "better old thing" that is likely to be one of the "almost new things" for the mainstream designs of the next few years. (kay , p. ) . core members of alan kay's team—larry tesler, ted kaehler, and dan ingalls—went to apple computer in the early s. kay himself moved to atari in and then apple in . other ex-xerox personalities spread to other key it companies: word- processing pioneers charles simonyi and gary starkweather went to microsoft, as did alto designers chuck thacker and butler lampson. john warnock and charles geschke, who worked on laser printing arid the foundations of desktop publishing founded adobe systems. bob metcalf, who invented ethernet, founded com. chapter : translating smalltalk o n s p r e a d s h e e t s : the spreadsheet program remains one of the most powerful—and flexible—tools on • a personal computer; the original visicalc r was eclipsed by lotus - - ' n t n e e a r ' y : s , a program which made its developers into some o f the first software multi-millionaires. in- , microsoft-., released excel, as a spreadsheet for the macintosh, blending - the spreadsheet concept with a g u i . . excel today is: ubiquitous and has no serious competition'. however, the range of tasks to which excel i s , put—rfar beyond general ledger acc- ounting—is vast, including lots of s m a l b , . scale end-user programming and personal data management. a spreadsheet program like excel is far. more flexible and adaptable to a user's needs than a word processor. interestingly, though, the basic way a spreadsheet program works hasn't'really changed much ; in -years;.the new versions have'a lot of j features, but the basic concept of a j scriptable, two-dimensional grid of dynamically updated values remains. kay and his colleagues had come to recognize that the microcomputer was a serious force i n the development of personal computing and not just a hobbyist's niche. the extent of kay's engagement w i t h the spreadsheet idea shows, if nothing else, that a current of new ideas from outside sources were a welcome addition, after a decade of research w i t h i n p a r c . the vivarium project a l a n kay's work at a p p l e was characterized by a single-minded return to the problem of how to bring scientific literacy to children via computing. h i s work o n smalltalk was over, and the corporate politics of x e r o x were long gone. kay took up his research fellowship at a p p l e by dedicating himself to working w i t h kids again, something w h i c h had practically eluded h i m since the m i d s at x e r o x p a r c . the project w h i c h most defined kay's tenure at a p p l e through the m i d and late s and into the early s was the vivarium: a holistic experiment i n technology integration that is possibly unparalleled i n its scope. kay's team moved i n to the los angeles o p e n school for individualization—la's first "magnet school"—and stayed there for seven years. the scale of apple's investment of time and resources i n the school, and the o p e n school's contributions to kay's research, make the v i v a r i u m a very special educational technology project. though little has been written about the vivarium—compared, say, w i t h the a p p l e classrooms of t o m o r r o w ( a c o t ) program, w h i c h had a m u c h higher public profile—it has had a lasting impact on kay's work, educational computing research, and, of course, the l a o p e n school. a n n m a r i o n was the project's manager, and the basic idea for the project had come from her masters thesis, written while working w i t h kay's team at a t a r i : to build a game from semi-autonomous cartoon characters. she wrote extensively about the project in a summative report for a p p l e entitled playground paper ( m a r i o n ). m a r i o n decided on an ecological setting, w i t h fish interacting w i t h (e.g., eating) one another, and this became the core storyline behind the ambitious educational program at the los angeles o p e n chapter : translating smalltalk school. w i t h i n an explicitly progressivist and flexible educational setting at the o p e n school, v i v a r i u m put the design and development of a complex ecological simulation i n primary-school children's hands. the challenge for the kids was to create more realistic interactions among the fish while learning about ecological models along the way; the chal- lenge for kay's team was to extend computing technology to the children so that they could effectively carry this out. larry yaeger, one of the team members, later wrote: the literal definition of a " v i v a r i u m " is an enclosure or reserve for keeping plants and animals alive i n their natural habitat i n order to observe and study them. the apple v i v a r i u m program is a long-range research program w i t h the goal of improving the use of computers. by researching and building the many tools necessary to implement a functioning computer vivarium, an ecology-in- the-computer, we hope to shed light on many aspects of both the computer's user interface and the underlying computational metaphor. w e are exploring new possibilities in computer graphics, user interfaces, operating systems, programming languages, and artificial intelligence. by working closely w i t h young children, and learning from their intuitive responses to our system's interface and behavior, we hope to evolve a system whose simplicity and ease of use w i l l enable more people to tailor their computer's behavior to meet their own needs and desires. w e would like untrained elementary school children and octogenarians to be able to make specific demands of their computer systems on a par w i t h what today requires a well trained computer program- mer to implement. (yaeger ) the project was as broad-based as it was ambitious; it boasted an advisory board composed of various luminaries from the w o r l d of cognitive science, hitchiker's guide to the galaxy author douglas adams, and even k o k o , the famous gorilla (at one point, the team was engaged i n creating a computer interface for koko). the computer-based work was enmeshed i n a m u c h larger, exploratory learning environment (the school featured exten- sive outdoor gardens that the children tended) at the o p e n school. yaeger wrote: the main research test site of the v i v a r i u m program is a los angeles "magnet" school known as the o p e n school. a l a n chose this primary school, grades through (ages through ), because of their educational philosophy, chapter : translating smalltalk founded on the basic premise that children are natural learners and that growth is developmental. based on piaget's stages of cognitive development and bruner's educational tenets, the o p e n school was seen not as an institu- tion i n need of saving, but as an already strong educational resource whose fundamental philosophies aligned w i t h our own. w i t h the support of the o p e n school's staff, some culturally and racially mixed children, and our p r i n c i - pal liaison with the school, dave m i n t z , we have developed an evolving v i v a r i u m program that is included i n their los angeles unified public schools curriculum. (yaeger, ) the l a o p e n school had been established i n , "by a group of parents and teachers who wanted an alternative to the 'back-to-basics' approach that dominated the district at that time. the group wanted to start a school based on the principles of jerome bruner and the practices of the british infant schools" (sri international ). it was the l a unified school district's ( l a u s d ) first magnet school, mandated to pursue a highly progressive agenda, w i t h few of the restrictions that district schools worked within. the school held students ( k - ) and teachers, arranged i n -year multigraded "clusters," team-taught by two teachers with kids i n each (bj a l l e n - c o n n , personal communication, n o v ). a n n m a r i o n characterized the school setting: the l . a . school we chose to work w i t h we believed had no need of "saving." the o p e n school for individualization, a public magnet school i n los angeles, emphasizes theme-based projects around w h i c h children learn by bringing all the classroom subjects together i n service of the theme. construction projects evoke a whole person approach to learning w h i c h engages many different mentalitites. in this regard we share the c o m m o n influence of jerome bruner w h i c h is evident throughout these different activities. w e find models of group work. variety and effectiveness of working groups are to be seen of different sizes, abilities and ages, i n w h i c h children collaborate and confront each other. ( m a r i o n , ch , p. ) by —before apple's involvement—the school had apparently already begun to inte- grate microcomputers, and the teachers had used logo. a t that time there was already a strong notion of how computers should be used: i n the classroom, not i n labs, and for crea- chapter : translating smalltalk tive work, as opposed to drill-and-practice work or games ( a l l e n - c o n n , personal communication). in that year, a l a n kay had contacted the board of education looking for a school to serve as a research bed; he had also inquired at the m u s e u m of science and indus- try, and made a list of possible schools. after visiting several, kay felt that the o p e n school was philosophically closest to what he had i n m i n d , that the school was indeed the right k i n d of environment for his research. originally, kay and m a r i o n planned to run the v i v a r i u m i n one classroom, but principal bobby (roberta) blatt insisted that any resources be used for the entire school; that it w o u l d disrupt the democratic and consensual nature of the school to have one class w i t h an inordinate amount of technology. kay's research could focus on one classroom (it largely did), but the resources had to be managed across the whole school (bobby blatt, personal communication, n o v ). blatt, the teachers, and the parents at the o p e n school negotiated extensively w i t h kay to establish the terms of the relationship; while they were open and excited by the possibili- ties of using technology intensively, they were concerned that apple's involvement would change the "tenor" of the school (blatt, personal communication); instead, they wanted the technology to be "invisible" and fully integrated into the constructivist curriculum they were creating. the focus had to be on the children and their creations. for instance, the school had a policy against video games on the school's computers—unless the children themselves created the games. blatt reports that this spawned a culture of creating and shar- ing games, mostly developed i n apple's hypercard authoring software. in january , when the v i v a r i u m project was launched, a p p l e computer installed one computer per two c h i l d r e n , began training the teachers and staff and provided a technical support staffper- son at the school. the o p e n school also negotiated an investment by a p p l e into maintaining the school's arts, music, and physical education curriculum—since arts c u r r i c u l u m funding was under the axe i n california. kay was more than happy to comply w i t h this, and so an investment . the computers at the la open school were installed inside the desks, and the desktops replaced with a piece of plexiglass. this allowed the computers to be installed in regular classrooms without making the classroom desks useless for any other use. (see kay ) chapter : translating smalltalk o n the order of $ , was made annually to the o p e n school for curriculum and activi- ties that had nothing directly to do with computing, but served to keep academics, arts, and technology i n balance—and w h i c h also provided time for the core teaching staff at the o p e n school to dp group planning. both blatt and long-term teacher bj a l l e n - c o n n (personal communication, n o v ) reported that once everyone got to know kay, their fears of being overwhelmed by the technological agenda quickly abated, owing to kay's "respectful attitude." ongoing collaboration between kay's group and the o p e n school teachers took place at monthly "brown bag" lunches and teas. by the late s, the twelve teachers at the o p e n school were working part-time w i t h kay's team— hours per week plus - weeks per summer, as well as conferences and . other professional-development events through the year ( m a r i o n , ch. , p. )—and being paid consulting fees to help develop curriculum for themes at the o p e n school. k i m rose claims that some of the teachers bowed out after a few years of this, simply because they wanted to have regular summer vacation for a change (rose, personal communication, o c t ), but this general pattern continued right into the early s. w h a t is obvious here, but w h i c h bears dwelling upon for a moment, is that the relation- ship between kay's team at apple and the l a o p e n school was an unprecedented and unparalleled situation of support, funding, and devotion to pursuing the ends of technology integration. it is hard to imagine any other school situation even comparable to this. but rather than thinking of the v i v a r i u m project at the o p e n school as any sort of model for technology integration, we should consider the o p e n school part of kay's research lab. a t x e r o x p a r c , it had been a challenge to sustain access to children and school settings, or conversely to sustain children's access to x e r o x labs. a t a p p l e , kay's agenda seems to have been to set up a r i c h and ongoing relationship w i t h a school as a foundational element of the project, and then to move forward w i t h the technological research—somewhat the reverse of the arrangement at x e r o x p a r c . the v i v a r i u m project itself had a broad and holistic vision; it modelled both an explora- tory educational vision and a way of integrating technology w i t h education. a p p l e i chapter : translating smalltalk management seems to have given kay the r o o m to pursue a pure research agenda, but this statement needs qualification: the o p e n school was i n every way a 'real' and applied setting. rather, kay colleagues' research there seems to have had little impact on apple's products or its ostensible presence in the marketplace and the 'purity' of the research should be seen' on this corporate level rather than the decidely messy pedagogical level. a n n m a r i o n ' s summative report on the project goes into some detail about the practical difficulty of attempting to keep the technology subservient to curriculum ends. but v i v a r i u m was a low- profile 'skunkworks' research project, interested in furthering blue-sky research into a wide variety of computing themes—simulation environments, animation systems, user-interface techniques (both hardware and software)—in comparison w i t h the m u c h higher-profile "apple classrooms of t o m o r r o w " program, w h i c h sought to deploy existing a p p l e technol- ogies to schools and to be focused on "technology transfer" ( a n n m a r i o n , personal communication, n o v ). the v i v a r i u m project had run out of steam by , when a p p l e fell o n hard times economically and organizationally (kay's patron, john sculley, was ousted as c e o i n ). bobby blatt reports that apple's pullout from the l a o p e n school was conducted w i t h lots of advance warning, and that the parents were motivated to keep the same level of computer integration at the school, having "tasted the wine" (blatt, personal communication), a chal- lenge w h i c h they have appearently succeeded at. in , principal blatt, looking at retirement and anticipating apple's withdrawal from the school, pursued charter school status for the l a o p e n school, w h i c h w o u l d ensure its continued autonomy; she succeeded, and it became the o p e n charter school i n , continuing along the same lines today. apple computer's investment of people and research has not been duplicated. however, kay's own team has maintained some level of involvement w i t h the o p e n school (and i n particular, with teacher bj a l l e n - c o n n ) ever since. in fact, the foundation of a research group that w o u l d provide kay's working context for the next decade was by this point estab- lished. k i m rose, for instance, was hired on to the v i v a r i u m project i n , and remains kay's closest working partner today. chapter : translating smalltalk vivarium research the research conducted through the v i v a r i u m years seems to have two facets: the first, with the o p e n school i n m i n d , was the creation of a simulation environment (of an underwater ecology) in w h i c h primary-school kids could act as designers and systems modellers as they developed their understanding of ecosystem dynamics. the second, w h i c h potentially had more application to apple's o w n agenda, was an investigation of end-user programming, with a definition of "end-user" beyond the children at the l a o p e n school. the simulation research drew largely on the work kay's team had done w i t h smalltalk while at xerox; the essential challenge is to figure out what sort of basic scaffolding w i l l allow children to work at the level of design and problem-solving rather than wrestling w i t h the syntax and mechanics of the environment (kay & goldberg ; goldberg ; g o l d - berg & ross ; m a r i o n ). the v i v a r i u m project engaged several teams of developers (often drawn from the m i t m e d i a lab) to try out various approaches to this challenge. m i k e travers' m s thesis from m i t , entitled "agar: a n a n i m a l construction k i t " ( ) was the result of one early project. agar provided a customizable, agent/rules-based envi- ronment for setting up autonomous virtual actors and scripting their prototypical reactions to one another. another example is jamie fenton and kent beck's first-generation "play- ground: a n object oriented simulation system w i t h agent rules for c h i l d r e n of a l l ages" ( ); playground—in the fenton and beck version and i n subsequent versions developed by scott wallace—was a more abitious agent/rules system w h i c h prototyped a scripting language and environment designed for children to describe interrelationships between actors. there were numerous other prototypes, including icon-based graphical program- ming environments and a variety of other ideas. the playground system eventually emerged as the dominant platform for the simulation projects at the o p e n school. a n n m a r i o n char- acterized it thus: the playground was chosen as our metaphor for a computer programming environment... the playground is a place where rule-governed activities have a natural place, involving play, invention, and simulation. o n the playground, chapter : translating smalltalk children assume roles w h i c h l i m i t their behavior to that of defined and shared characters. rules and relationships are endlessly debated and changed. the nature and structure of playground play resembles some of the strategy c h i l - dren might exercise on the computer, to set up computer instructions i n construction and play w i t h simulations of multiple players. ( m a r i o n , pref- ace, p. .) one way to think about playground is as having a spreadsheet view, a hyper- c a r d view, and a textual programming view, all simultaneously available, where the user can make changes i n whatever view seems easiest to work with, and have all views updated appropriately, (ch . p. ) a point w h i c h is easy to overlook from the vantage point of the st century is the sheer challenge of making systems of this sophistication workable on the computers of the m i d s. the later versions of the playground software were developed using a version of smalltalk for the macintosh. this might seem like a straightforward thing to do, given the -historical sequence, but performance limitations of s-era m a c i n t o s h computers meant that this must have been a constant headache for the team; what had been possible on expensive, custom-designed hardware at x e r o x was not nearly as practical on relatively inexpensive macs, even a decade later. a t one point, a special smalltalk accelerator circuit- board had to be installed i n the m a c s at the o p e n school to get an acceptable level of performance i n playground. in a sense, the v i v a r i u m project can be seen as a massive logis- tical challenge for kay: how to move from a context i n w h i c h all the technical facets are (reasonably speaking) w i t h i n his team's control to one where one's ideas are constantly running up against basic implementation obstacles. a t the same time, of course, the engage- ment w i t h the o p e n school and the children there was far deeper and longer-term than anything kay had experienced at xerox. chapter : translating smalltalk t h i s i m a g e h a s b e e n r e m o v e d b e c a u s e o f c o p y r i g h t r e s t r i c t i o n s . f i g u r e . : p l a y g r o u n d e n v i r o n m e n t , c i r c a ( f r o m m a r i o n ) the other research avenue, into end-user programming as a general topic, is an example of kay's body of well thought-out ideas coming i n contact w i t h a wealth of related ideas from others and other contexts. clearly, after a decade of work w i t h smalltalk, and having had the opportunity to define much of the problem space (of how personal computing w o u l d be done) from scratch, kay and his colleagues from p a r c had done a huge amount of thinking already. w i t h i n apple computer, though, were a number of people who had come at the topic of end-user programming from different perspectives. a n a p p l e "advanced technol- ogy research note" from the early s (chesley et al. ) reveals a rich and fecund discourse going on w i t h i n a p p l e , despite a relative dearth of results being released to the p c marketplace and computer-buying public. apart from the already-mentioned spreadsheet model, the standout example was h y p ercard . kay and his team had the opportunity to engage with and learn from some substantial development efforts, and to watch how real end-users—both children and adults (teachers among them)—reacted to various systems. chapter : translating smalltalk w h a t must be underscored i n this discussion about a l a n kay's tenure at a p p l e computer is that despite the low profile of the v i v a r i u m project and the dearth of overt outcomes (software, publi- cations, further research programs), kay must be credited w i t h sticking tightly to his agenda, resist- ing the translation of the project into other trajectories, be they corporate or technical, as had happened at xerox. in short, kay appears to have fought to keep the black boxes open at all costs ( a n n m a r i o n ' s report supports this). ultimately, though, by the m i d s, w i t h the v i v a r i u m project w o u n d up and a p p l e i n corporate trouble, kay found himself w i t h rather less social capital than he w o u l d have liked; without over-dramatiz- ing too much, we might conclude that kay's efforts to keep his research project "pure" risked its ongo- ing support at apple—and perhaps beyond. the ultimate outcomes of the v i v a r i u m project had impacts on the persons involved, and we shall see how this affects kay's subsequent work, but it is hard to see the broader educational (or even tech- nical) results—to say nothing of the influence—of v i v a r i u m . this observation is, i believe, in line w i t h the general sense of latour and callon's network theory: it is i n being translated that a project or message-passing vs. value-pulling t h e playground e n v i r o n m e n t ( d e v e l o p e d t w i c e : ' i n t h e late s by jay f e n t o n a n d " , kent beck, a n d in the early s by scott w a l l a c e ) i r o n i c a l l y r e p r e s e n t s a c o n c e p t u a l reversal' o f the c o m p u t i n g m o d e l kay h a d p i o n e e r e d in the s. ' kay's f u n d a m e n t a l c o n t r i b u t i o n to c o m p u t e r s c i e n c e (via s m a l l t a l k ) is the centrajity:.of m e s s a g e - p a s s i n g objects. t h e term*if' s'o.bject o r i e n t a t i o n , " but kay has n o t e d that the m o r e i m p o r t a n t c o n c e p t is that of message passing. in a mailings list p o s t i n g , kay c l a r i f i e d : the japanese have a small word— ma—for "that which is in .between"—perhaps the' nearest english equivalent is "interstitial the key in making great and growable systems is much more to - design how its modules communicate . rather [than '-tyhaijj^xheir internal properties and' benayiors"should be. (kay b) p l a y g r o u n d , h o w e v e r , c o m p l e t e l y e s c h e w e d m e s s a g e - p a s s i n g . i n s p i r e d by the s p r e a d - sheet m o d e l , playg m a d e up o f " o b j e c t s w h i c h h a d v a r i o u s p a r a m e t e r s . t h e v a l u e s o f t h e s e p a r a m e t e r s c o u l d t h e n be looked up, a n d c h a i n s o f effect c o u l d be built o u t o f s u c h retrievals (just like in a c o m p l e x s p r e a d s h e e t ) . instead o f , a n o b j e c t actively s e n d i n g a m e s a g e t o a n o t h e r object, o b j e c t s c o n t i n u a l l y watched for c h a n g e s in o t h e r o b j e c t s / j u s t as a d y n a m i c f o r m u l a cell in a s p r e a d s h e e t w a t c h e s for c h a n g e s in the d a t a cells it takes as i n p u t . w h e n the data cells c h a n g e , the d y n a m i c f o r m u l a u p d a t e s its o w n v a l u e . t h e a r c h i t e c t u r e w a s p e r h a p s a p t — p l a y g r o u n d w a s d e s i g n e d for a m a r i n e e c o s y s t e m s i m u l a t i o n , a n d , arguably, plants a n d a n i m a l s d o m o r e o b s e r v a t i o n - ^ " n o t i c i n g " — o f e a c h o t h e r ' s states t h a n s e n d i n g m e s s a g e s (ted kaehler, p e r s o n a l c o m m u n i c a t i o n , o c t ) . p l a y g r o u n d p r o v i d e d a w e a l t h o f i n s i g h t s , but p r o v e d difficult t o p r o g r a m c o m p l e x b e h a v i o u r . later software p r o j e c t s * r e t u r n e d t o the m e s s a g e - p a s s i n g m o d e l , c o m b i n e d w i t h pieces of,the d y n a m i c - r e t r i e v a l m o d e l . system gains greater currency and interconnectedness. a project w h i c h remains tightly defined perhaps does so at the expense of its larger reach. chapter : translating smalltalk h y p e r c a r d a n d t h e f a t e o f e n d - u s e r p r o g r a m m i n g in assessing the fate of kay's projects and ideas while at apple, it is instructive to consider the contemporaneous example of hypercard, a piece of personal media software similar i n spirit to parts of the dynabook vision. h y p e r c a r d was relatively successful i n comparison, but had a decidedly different history and aesthetic. like the dynamic spreadsheet, hyper- c a r d forced kay and his team to take notice, and to look very closely at its success. hypercard's ultimate fate, however, points to larger cultural-historical trends w h i c h signif- icantly affected kay's projects. translation # : from media environment to "multimedia applications" h y p e r c a r d was a pet project of b i l l a t k i n s o n , who was perhaps the key software architect of the original m a c i n t o s h and its graphic interface (he had been part of the team from a p p l e that went to x e r o x p a r c to see smalltalk i n ). atkinson's place in m a c i n t o s h history was further cemented w i t h his release of macpaint, the original m a c i n t o s h graphics appli- cation and the ancestor of software like adobe photoshop. after macpaint, a t k i n s o n began playing w i t h the notion of an interactive presentation tool called wildcard. w i l d c a r d — rebranded hypercard in —was based on the metaphor of a stack of index cards w h i c h could contain any combination of graphic elements, text, and interactive buttons. the main function of such interactive buttons was to flip from one 'card' view to another, thereby making h y p e r c a r d a simple hypermedia authoring tool. hypercard put together an unprecedented set of features—graphics tools like macpaint, a simple text editor, support for audio, and, w i t h the addition of a scripting language called hypertalk i n , a simple and elegant end-user programming environment. despite what the historical sequence might suggest, and despite some similarities w h i c h appear i n h y p e r c a r d (a rough object model, message passing, and the "hypertalk" . the published literature on the vivarium is very thin, given that the project ran for almost a decade. notable is an article kay wrote for scientific americanin , "computers, networks and education," which is heavy on kay's educational philosophy and light on project details. the project gets a brief mention in stewart brand's popular book, the media lab: inventing the future at mit(] ), due to the involvement of several media lab researchers. chapter : translating smalltalk scripting language), smalltalk was not a direct influence on hypercard; rather, it apparently came more-or-less fully formed from b i l l atkinson's imagination. a t k i n s o n had of course seen smalltalk, and there were notable e x - p a r c people including a l a n kay and t e d kaeh- ler at a p p l e (and even involved i n hypercard's development), but h y p e r c a r d and its workings were atkinson's o w n (ted kaehler, personal communication, july ). • hypercard's great innovation was that it brought the concept of hypermedia authoring down to earth; it was the first system for designing and creating non-linear presentations that was w i t h i n the reach of the average p c user. a designer could put any combination of media elements on a given card, and then create behaviours w h i c h would allow a user to move between cards. the system was simple to grasp, and i n practice, proved easy for users of all ages to create "stacks," as h y p e r c a r d documents were called. key to hypercard's success was apple's decision to pre-install h y p e r c a r d on all new m a c i n t o s h computers after . the result was a large h y p e r c a r d community that distributed and exchanged thousands of user-created hypercard stacks, many of w h i c h took the form of curriculum resources for classrooms. alternatively, h y p e r c a r d was seen as a multimedia authoring toolkit and was put to use as a writing and design medium (or multimedium, as it were), again, often i n classrooms; the genre of multimedia "authoring" was first established i n this period, indicating the design and construction of hypermedia documents in a tool such as h y p e r c a r d . a m b r o n & hooper's book, learning with interactive multimedia, is a snapshot of the kinds of uses to w h i c h h y p e r c a r d was being put i n the late s. n o t surprisingly, h y p e r c a r d was introduced very early on to the teachers and staff at the o p e n school, and met w i t h considerable zeal; the teachers there could quickly see appli- cations for it, and could quickly figure out how to realize these. the children were able to work w i t h it easliy, too. this experience was i n some contrast with playground and the simulation environments, which, although being m u c h more sophisticated, were barely . hypercard was used early on to control a videodisc player attached to one's macintosh; this gave hypercard the ability to inte- grate large amounts of high-quality multimedia content: colour images and video, for instance. chapter : translating smalltalk usable on the limited hardware of the day. this, i n combination w i t h hypercard's elegant balance of simplicity and flexibility, proved to be a lesson kay took to heart; here was a system that managed to acheive the low threshold of initial complexity that kay had been shooting for over a decade or more. still, hypercard's limitations frustrated kay. a s elegant i n conception and usability as it was, h y p e r c a r d was nowhere near the holistic media environment that smalltalk had been. a n d while kay praised h y p e r c a r d for its style and its obvious appeal to users, he railed against its limited conceptual structures: "that wonderful system, h y p e r c a r d , i n spite of its great ideas, has some 'metaphors' that set my teeth on edge. four of them are 'stack,' 'card,' 'field,' and 'button'" (kay , p. )—the entirety of hypercard's object model! this is not mere griping or sour grapes on kay's part; the object paradigm that smalltalk pioneered meant that objects were fundamental building blocks for an unlimited range of conceptual structures; to restrict a system to four pre-defined objects misses the entire point. that said, that h y p e r c a r d i n its conceptual simplicity was an immediate success—not just at the o p e n school, but w i t h users around the world—was not lost o n anyone, least of all kay, and its influence w o u l d be felt i n his later work. hypercard's limitations were felt by others, too. it became clear that, though hyper- c a r d could do animation, a dedicated tool like video w o r k s (the prototype for m a c r o m e d i a ' s "director" software) was a better animation tool. similarly, m a c p a i n t and like graphics programs were more flexible than h y p e r c a r d (which, despite its decade-long life, never went beyond black-and-white graphics). the very idea of an all-encompassing media environment like smalltalk, and, to a lesser extent, h y p e r c a r d , was doomed to buck the trend toward a genre of discrete application programs: individual w o r d processors, spreadsheets, paint programs, and so on. if nothing else, a dedicated tool like a paint program was easier to market than an open-ended authoring environment. the "what are they good for" question is directly the point here. this drawing program is excellent for making diagrams; this w o r d processor is excellent for writing letters; but what was hyper- c a r d good for, exactly? its hundreds of thousands of users all had an idea, but it is important chapter : translating smalltalk to remember that none of these early users had to make a purchasing decision for hyper- card, since it had been given away w i t h new m a c s . even h y p e r c a r d ultimately had to justify its existence at claris, the software company spun off from apple i n the early s, by claiming to be a "multimedia" toolkit, and was branded by apple as a "viewer" application for h y p e r c a r d stacks; the authoring functionality was sold separately. h y p e r c a r d was u l t i - mately abandoned i n the s. hypercard's relative success i n the personal computing world underscores two points, which, seen through the lenses of latour's translations and subsequent black boxes, appear thus: first is the shift from media environment to "application toolkit," w i t h the attendant metaphors: standardized palettes, toolbars, and the establishment of the commodity "appli- cation" as the fundamental unit of personal computing. the second shift is from a generalized media environment to that of " m u l t i m e d i a " applications, reifying " m u l t i m e d i a " as an industry buzzword. a s these concepts become commoditized and reified i n the marketplace, the interesting work of defining them shifts elsewhere. translation # : from epistemological tools to "logo-as-latin" seymour papert's work w i t h the logo programming language had begun as early as , but despite its significant impact on a l a n kay's personal mission and despite a good number of published articles from the early s, logo made very little impact on the public imagi- nation until , with the publication of papert's signature work, mindstorms: children, computers, and powerful ideas. the appearance of this book set the stage for a significant commercialization and marketing effort aimed at getting logo onto the new personal microcomputers. programming i n logo grew into a popular computing genre through the early s. a look at library holdings i n the lb . range reveals a huge surge of output surrounding logo in the classroom i n the m i d s. papert and logo had become practi- cally synonymous w i t h educational technology in these years. but of course any substantial movement of an idea—let alone a technological system—into very different and (and vastly . lb . is listed in the library of congress classification as "computer assisted instruction. programmed instruction"— ironic, given papert's comments on children programmming computers and vice-versa. chapter : translating smalltalk larger) contexts brings w i t h it necessary translations. in the case of logo, this shift was i n the form of branding. what was logo, that it could be rapidly picked up and spread across school systems i n n o r t h a m e r i c a and europe i n just a few short years (aglianos, noss, & w h i t t y )? chakraborty et al. ( ) suggest that the effort to make logo into a market- able commodity effectively split the logo community into "revolutionists" like papert, interested in a radical redefinition of mathematics pedagogy, and more moderate "reform- ers," who were more interested i n spreading logo as widely as possible. this means that what logo became i n the marketplace (in the broad sense of the word) was a particular black box: turtle geometry; the notion that computer programming encourages a particular k i n d of thinking; that programming i n logo somehow symbolizes "computer literacy." these notions are all very dubious—logo is capable of vastly more than turtle graphics; the 'thinking skills' strategy was never part of papert's vocabulary; and to equate a particular activity like logo programming with computer literacy is the equiva- lent of saying that (english) literacy can be reduced to reading newspaper articles—but these are the terms by w h i c h logo became a mass phenomenon. papert, for better or worse, stuck by logo all the while, fighting something of a rear-guard action to maintain the complex and challenging intellectual foundation w h i c h he had attempted to lay. it was perhaps inevitable, as papert himself notes ( ), that after such unrestrained enthusiasm, there would come a backlash. it was also perhaps inevitable given the weight that was put on it: logo had come, w i t h i n educational circles, to represent computer programming i n the large, despite papert's frequent and eloquent statements about logo's role as an epistemo- logical resource for thinking about mathematics. in the spirit of the larger project of cultural history that i am attempting here, i want to keep the emphasis on what logo represented to various constituencies, rather than appealing to a body of literature that reported how logo 'didn't work as promised,' as many have done (e.g., sloan ; pea & sheingold ). the latter, i believe, can only be evaluated i n terms of this cultural history. papert indeed found himself searching for higher ground, as he accused logo's growing numbers of critics of technocentrism: chapter : translating smalltalk egocentrism for piaget does not mean "selfishness"—it means that the child has difficulty understanding anything independently of the self. technocen- trism refers to the tendency to give a similar centrality to a technical object— for example computers or logo. this tendency shows up i n questions like "what is t h e effect of t h e computer on cognitive development?" or "does logo work?"... such turns of phrase often betray a tendency to think of "computers" and "logo" as agents that act directly on thinking and learning; they betray a tendency to reduce what are really the most important compo- nents of educational situtations—people and cultures—to a secondary, faciltiating role. the context for human development is always a culture, never an isolated technology. (papert , p. ) but by , the damage was done: logo's image became that of a has-been technology, and its black boxes closed: i n a framing of the field of educational technology, t i m o t h y koschmann named "logo-as-latin" a past paradigm of educational computing. the blunt idea that "programming" was an activity w h i c h could lead to "higher order thinking skills" (or not, as it were) had obviated papert's rich and subtle vision of an ego-syntonic mathematics. by the early s, the literature on educational technology had shifted; new titles i n the lb . section were scarce, as new call numbers (and thus new genres) were i n vogue: instructional design (lb . ); topics i n the use of office productivity software (lb . ) and multimedia i n the classroom (lb . ). logo—and w i t h it, program- ming—had faded. this had obvious effects for other systems—like h y p e r c a r d (ted kaehler, personal communciation). in fact, hypercard's rise to relative popularity i n this same period (and i n similar call numbers) is probably despite its having a "programming" component; its multimedia strengths carried it through the contemporary trend. t o my knowledge, there is no scholarship tracing the details of hypercard's educational use historically, but one piece of evidence is a popular competitor (perhaps it w o u l d be better to say "successor") to h y p e r c a r d called hyperstudio. hyperstudio featured roughly the same stack-and-cards metaphor, and added colour graphics, but dropped hypercard's elegant scripting language. in fact, and somewhat ironically, later releases of hyperstudio incorpo- chapter : translating smalltalk rated a language called "hyperlogo" (perhaps to flesh out the program's feature list), though it was not particularly well integrated, and there is little evidence that it made m u c h of an impact on hyperstudio's use. similarly, a new genre of simulation environments for teaching systems concepts (e.g., simcalc) eschewed the notion of'whole' environments, prefering instead to provide neatly contained microworlds w i t h a m i n i m u m of dynamic scope; these are obviously quicker to pick up and easier to integrate into existing curriculum and existing systems. the message—or black box—resulting from the rise and fall of logo seems to have been the notion that "programming" is over-rated and esoteric, more properly relegated to the ash-heap of ed-tech history, just as i n the analogy w i t h latin. moreover, w i t h the coming of "multimedia" as the big news i n early- s educational computing, the conclusion had seemingly been drawn that programming is antithetical to 'user-friendliness' or transpar- ency. h o w far we had come from the dynabook vision, or any kind of r i c h notion of computational literacy, as disessa called it: the hidden metaphor behind transparency—that seeing is understanding—is at loggerheads w i t h literacy. it is the opposite of how media make us smarter. m e d i a don't present an unadulterated "picture" of the problem we want to solve, but have their fundamental advantage i n providing a different represen- tation, w i t h different emphases and different operational possibilities than "seeing and directly manipulating." (disessa , p. ) the dynabook vision seemed further away than ever! smalltalk, no matter what you may call it, is a programming language. or is it? t o answer that question, we first need a more comprehensive assessment of what personal computing means to us today. . had the opportunity to write high-school information technology curriculum materials for distance education in the late s. hyperstudio was a popular resource and i was encouraged to write it into my materials. however, the hyperlogo imple- mentation so underwhelmed me that i rejected it in favour of a plain and simple logo implementation (ucblogo) for a module on introductory programming. . interestingly, jeremy roschelle and colleagues on the simcalc project argue persuasively for a "component architecture" approach as an alternative to all-encompassing systems (roschelle et al. ), but this must be read in historical context, appearing in a time when networking technology was re-appearing as a fundamental component of personal computing and monolithic application software was being challenged. • chapter : translating smalltalk chapter : personal computing in the age of the web w h a t is a " p o w e r f u l i d e a , " a n y w a y ? there was a time in educational computing—the time we have been speaking of so far— when talk of "powerful ideas" was the order of the day. but today, there is no mention of powerful ideas—or ideas at all, for that matter—in discussions of learning management systems, interoperability standards, or test banks. t o what can we attribute this shift? is it merely that the early exuberance of pioneers like kay and papert has given way to a more sober, mature perspective o n the daily business of education? is it that we have now seen through the "technohype," realizing, after all, that we were the dupes of salespeople and other evangelists? was all that talk of powerful ideas just marketing? just what is a powerful idea, anyway? powerful ideas don't come out of thin air; they have histories, and politics. papert pointed out—in what is no doubt something of a reponse to the logo-as-latin eulogy—that latin was not so long ago equated w i t h "powerful ideas;" that it was c o m m o n l y felt that learning latin made students think more logically, or, i n today's parlance, that it "fosters higher-order thinking skills." but we think such ideas quaint today. the alternative to "latinesque" curriculum, papert says, is "driveresque"— that is, oriented to clear practicali- ties. n o t quaint, to be sure. but where do we place math curriculum along this continuum? solving quadratic equa- tions hardly counts as "driveresque" for the vast majority of us. does this mean that the teaching of such concepts as algebra is quaint? o r do we still believe there is some more general value i n mathematics? algebra is—in our time—taken as a powerful idea, and this justifies its general inclusion beyond what is merely practical i n the context of graduates' day-to-day life skills. it is not so hard to point to other such powerful ideas lurking i n school . papert made these comments is a guest lecture in an undergraduate computing course taught by alan kay at ucla, april , . papert's presentation that day was partially a reprise of his talk at the aera conference a few days earlier. chapter : personal computing in the age of the web curriculum: liberal democracy, the atomic theory of matter, supply-and-demand econom- ics, cell biology, reading and writing, or maxwell's equations regarding electromagnetic fields. in the u n i t e d states currently, there is substantial debate over just how powerful an idea evolution is. the latter example points to an important consideration: what counts as a powerful idea is something that is constructed, not given. w h a t makes an idea "powerful" is what it allows you to do; i n the vocabulary of the sociology of translation, powerful ideas are related to the lengthening of sociotechnical networks. once you have a powerful idea established w i t h i n the discourse, you now have access to the range of ideas—of articulations— connected to it. powerful ideas are those that are richly or deeply connected to other ideas; these connections make it possible to make further connections and tell stories of greater richness and extent. algebra is a powerful idea because of what it leads to: science, engineer- ing, analysis, generalization of quantifyable patterns; without it, one is profoundly limited i n access to these realms of understanding and agency. but algebra is not a powerful idea on its own. n o r was latin during the renaissance; rather, the teaching of latin represented a powerful idea because of what classical literacy led to: a whole universe of discourse. following on this, the relevance of these ideas to education is a matter of considerable importance, historically contingent and entirely political. a n educational system that places central value o n algebra or evolution or latin is taking a particular political stance with respect to the accessibility of those networks of human activity. such curriculum decisions are not made by appeal to their direct relevance to students' lives; there is very little i m m e d i - ate practical applicability for high-school students of, say, maxwell's equations, but the connections this particular powerful idea leads to are of enormous scope. the extent to w h i c h educators present such ideas has significant political importance: who should be . the teaching of latin is easy to dismiss as an idea whose relevance has simply faded; other 'powerful' ideas with great currency in the past have been criticized for more acute reasons: intelligence quotients and racial hierarchy are two prominent th- century examples. we will no doubt in the future reject a number of 'powerful' ideas on grounds of either their quaintness or our moral indignation. chapter : personal computing in the age of the web taught something like maxwell's equations? o n l y students planning to study science or engineering in university? everyone? just the boys? just the girls? clearly, such a decision requires the weighing of many competing priorities: a model of electromagnetic waves is only one of many important concepts vying for limited curriculum time; curriculum must also address issues of available resources, teaching time, learner context, and a host of other practicalities. but my point here is not to argue for the impor- tance of one or other concept, but to demonstrate that "powerful ideas"—though we might disagree about which ideas qualify—are of core importance i n everyone's understanding of curriculum: officials, administrators, educators, parents, and students themselves. "power- ful ideas" do not operate i n any mysterious way, for they are (merely) key pieces of contemporary worldviews. the issue of w h i c h particular ideas count as powerful i n any particular context is enormously complex; but save the chronically cynical among us, i do not think anyone—however materialist, pragmatist, or, for that matter, postmodern they might be—would seriously claim to have outgrown or rejected powerful ideas i n general and their role i n shaping our worldviews. so why have powerful ideas been evacuated from educational computing i n the past decade or so? i do not mean just the particular "powerful ideas" espoused by papert or kay; there has i n recent years been no discussion or, apparently, concern, with what the powerful ideas i n computing and information technology might really be—save perhaps a vague and overgeneral regard of the internet's enormous scale. w e have instead apparently abdicated the task of thinking deeply about the importance—technically, politically, and ultimately morally (any truly powerful idea has a moral dimension)—of computing. is this not the responsibility of education, of schooling? t o investigate this issue, and to perhaps come to a cultural/historical appreciation of the current malaise, we w i l l need to take stock of the world of computing today, i n the age of the w e b . . chapter : personal computing in the age of the web t h e s: t h e a r r i v a l o f t h e w e b i lead my analysis of the 'current' state of personal computing with a discussion of the w o r l d - w i d e w e b , for it is surely the defining point of (personal) computing today. the w e b is, interestingly, based o n technologies and ideas w h i c h pre-date personal computing. it is, i n many ways, the realization of a r p a director jcr licklider's vision ( ) of a global public information utility. it is the a r p a dream, finally writ large, w i t h public access to time-shared computing resources all over the world; the computing paradigm of the m i d and late s finally come to fruition twenty-five years after the fact. this little anachro- nism was perhaps the first and original compression of time and space that the "cyberculture" era would experience. nonetheless, the explosion of internet access to a wider public i n the s was a very exciting thing, and there came w i t h it a great wave of creative energy. w i t h a critical mass of online users, the dynamics of popular it began to shift. software, for the first time for p c users, began to flow like a fluid, rather than being distributed (and purchased) i n boxes. i recall new versions of internet programs appearing every couple of weeks, w i t h each one doing so m u c h more than its predecessors that i had to re-adjust my conceptual goggles repeatedly. in , it was not at all obvious that the w e b w o u l d be the next big thing. it was certainly not the only contender. a t the time, the fledgling w e b competed for attention with a variety of other comers: there emerged at roughly the same time a similar document retrieval application called gopher, w h i c h allowed a browser to traverse hierarchical menus leading to information resources around the world. there was a growing collection of search and indexing tools for organizing and traversing a world of ftp-based resources. a t the same time, there was a flurry of activity around online games and chat—the m u d s and m o o spaces i referred to earlier—which i believed to be more interesting than web pages. . the asymmetrical, client-server architecture of the web is essentially that of a time-sharing application, despite the existence of sophisticated computers at the client end. the server side of a web application slices its computing resources in time for a vari- ety of roughly concurrent distributed users. chapter : personal computing in the age of the web there were also the already venerable electronic mail and u s e n e t discussion forums, w h i c h consumed the majority of internet traffic (and probably user attention). but it would be the web—invented i n switzerland i n and propelled to popular appeal by the release of the university of illinois' mosaic web browser i n —that w o u l d see exponential growth through the s. the w e b quickly obliterated gopher and the ftp-based way of distributing information and became the key internet application: the "killer app" as t i m o'reilly pointed out (o'reilly )—that is, the reason people wanted to get on the inter- net, more important than e-mail, or discussion groups, or any of the novel ideas w h i c h were popping up. the w e b gave the internet a familar face—the 'page'—which new users could easily see and recognize. i recall talking w i t h a friend—a fellow enthusiast—in early , remarking that websites were really remarkably like magazines. i was not the only one to see that analogy. translation # : from stand-alone pcs to information applicances the resulting dynamic is pretty clear to anyone who has not been asleep for the past decade; the w e b expanded exponentially, spawned an industry, and became such a dominant para- digm that it ended up stifling a good deal of the creative outflowing of the early s. the industrialization of the w e b has been nearly all-encompassing. the w e b has been such a "killer app" that it is undoubtedly one of the key factors i n the eventual realization of one of the missing pieces of the " p a r c genre:" the networked p c . before the advent of the w e b , most pcs weren't networked at all; those that were interconnected lived i n offices where the network allowed access to a particular resource: a shared printer, a file server, a database. after the w e b , a network interface became an integral part of every p c manufactured. what good is a pc without a network connection, we can now legitimately ask? hence, the personal computer as communications medium has finally been realized. the black boxes resulting from this shift are those of the networked p c as commodity and the maga- zine/brochure metaphor for the w e b and (by extension) the internet. chapter : personal computing in the age of the web despite the web's obvious virtues as a mass medium, two large-scale trends have shad- owed its growth as an actor i n our daily information lives. the first is that user interface has been largely reduced to the lowest c o m m o n denominator provided by w e b browsers. instead of a thriving, pluralistic ecology of interface designs (as was apparent in the early s, especially as multimedia became a hot topic), there is today just one interface, that provided by the w e b (even further: that provided by a single browser: microsoft's internet explorer). that the user interface is now standardized, allowing people to negotiate new information spaces without having to concern themselves w i t h the mechanics of the soft- ware, is of course not a bad thing, not i n itself. the trouble is that we have settled for a w e b interface that is, frankly, quite crude compared w i t h the visions of personal computing, information access, and networked computing that preceded it. the w e b offers nothing but a simple, stateless query-and-response file delivery service, and the page-description language h t m l is, at its best, a numbingly simplistic, static way to represent a 'page' of information, let alone a hypertext system. a t its worst, it is a nightmarish wrong turn, given the sheer amount of h t m l - b a s e d information online today. this is all detail, though. the more significant impact of the w e b as all-encompassing information technology paradigm is that it has drowned out all comers. the enormous promise of new media has been realized—for the time being, anyway—as the business of making w e b pages, of gathering w e b audiences, holding them by hook or by crook, and the stultifying instrumentalism of marketing logic. the black box of new media has been closed, for now. translation # : from closed to open systems if there is an antidote to the unquickening of new media it is the mass growth of open systems: that the architecture of new media is based on openly published specifications and . html's historical antecedents—engelbart's nls system (circa ); kay's dynabook vision from the s, van dam's inter- media system from the s, to name a few—all go significantly beyond the web's capabilities. despite current efforts such as the "semantic web" (berners-lee etal. ) and discussions around a "web . " which emphasize two-way communica- tions and something closer to a direct-manipulation interface for the web, the vast majority of the ten billion or so pages that google currently claims to index are static, unstructured html files; a truly unfortunate circumstance, given engelbart and con- temporaries' research on information structure, kay's work on distributed message-passing objects, and so on. chapter : personal computing in the age of the web standards. this is i n fact the heritage of the internet going back to a r p a days, and to a very real extent, it underlies the continued success of the internet. the creation of the internet as an open architecture, and the fact that this "end-to-end" architecture was conceived as and remains application-neutral (saltzer et al. ) is an immense and far-reaching achieve- ment, possibly on a par w i t h the greatest public works projects of history. the w e b itself, for all its faults, has at least proceeded according to similar processes; the architectures and standards that make up the w e b are open; no one owns them (despite a few attempts), and the w e b has come to be a k i n d of de facto mass publishing medium. the jewel i n this crown, i n my eyes at least, is the distribution of free and open source software; that is, software w h i c h is developed, distributed, and used without significant financial or marketing infra- structure i n place. free and o p e n source software (foss) represents a movement that could only have happened w i t h an internet, and probably couldn't have flourished without something as ubiquitous as the w e b . the open and widely available communications (and organiza- tional) medium of the w e b seems to have allowed the widespread distribution not just of software but of software development across thousands of geographically distributed i n d i - viduals; what previously could only have been done by people working i n close proximity (and therefore requiring something like a capital base) was now possible o n a distributed, and i n a sense casual, basis. a n d , while the content of this movement is, self-reinforcingly, the very software that underlies the internet and w e b , the amazing thing is that out of this matrix has come a large-scale, non-commercial model for software development and dissemination. developer-cwm-'ethnographer' eric s. raymond wrote inffuentially of the "cathedral and the bazaar" as two approaches to software development. the former is the model used i n industry and academic research, i n w h i c h an elite class labours i n isolation, periodically handing down the fruits of its efforts. the latter, w h i c h characterizes the open source software community, resembles "a great babbling bazaar of differing agendas and . the "information superhighway" metaphor directly recollects the american interstate highway projects of the post-war period, a public infrastructure program which clearly shaped an entire nation. chapter : personal computing in the age of the web approaches," (raymond a) where a great deal can be accomplished by many hands working more or less together. ironically enough (or perhaps not quite enough), the resulting "black boxes" here are rather "open boxes" i n that the ideals of the free and open-source software movement exalt the ability to go to any piece of software and dig into it, to look under the hood, and to modify it as required. o f course, as a cultural movement, the f o s s movement has its own share of black boxes; its sacred cows are no less sacred for being "open." but i n this ethic of free sharing, participatory development, and emphasis on personal empowerment we are witnessing something very different from the commodity p c industry of the past two or three decades. t h e w e b a s a n e d u c a t i o n a l m e d i u m translation # : from learning experiences to an economy of learning objects w i t h the advent of cheaply available internet and the growth of the w e b as a publishing medium i n the m i d s, educators got very excited. for the reasons outlined above, the w e b presented a sort of universal multimedia platform, and the ability to access an enor- mous variety of resources very inexpensively. the obvious result was its widespread adoption i n educational settings. in a sense, the w e b as information resource was the anti- dote to the packaged curriculum ( c d - r o m ) trend of the early s. since the software for browsing the w e b is essentially free and the technology and skills required to use it are widespread, the costs of using the w e b are limited to the costs of hardware and connectiv- ity, making it an appealling choice for teachers and administrators w i t h limited technology funds. the popular reputation of the w e b as a universal library or as access to the world's knowledge has led to the romantic rhetoric of children reaching 'beyond the classroom walls' to tap directly into rich information sources, to communicate directly w i t h scientists and experts, and to expand their horizons to a global perspective. chapter : personal computing in the age of the web in this model, access is the prime mover; technology equals access. w e use technology to get to information, or we're busy making information available to others. under the rubric of access, "breaking down the walls of the classroom" (hiltz and turoff ), increasing choice for students or parents, "any time, any place learning" (harasim ), content repurposing, the promise of integrated learning environments—part cai-style drill-and-practice, part surveillance system (boshier and w i l s o n )—media conver- gence, and good old novelty, we have i n recent years witnessed the blossoming of a substantial "e-learning" industry. e-learning is largely about the logistics and management infrastructure of education: about vendors, service providers, standards and standards bodies, accountability. the instructional management systems global learning consor-. hum, a vast alliance of publishers, technology companies, and educational institutions, aims to provide a set of standards for the exchange and integration of all sorts of e-learning components and services (ims project, n.d.). w i l l i a m h . graves of eduprise.com writes of the "ultimate goal of facilitating the acquisition of component parts from a range of suppli- ers i n the educational value chain of nonprofit and commercial interests" (graves ). the language here alone speaks volumes. m e d i a historian david noble, i n his "digital d i p l o m a m i l l s " ( ) lays bare the under- lying structure and logic of the e-learning industry, m u c h to the chagrin of its participants and boosters (e.g., w h i t e ). noble points out that the boom of correspondence schools i n the s is being reprised today, with similar implications: a blurring of private and public institutions and offerings, a shift toward the commodification of learning materials, and economic implications such as the trend toward increasing enrollment (as opposed to completion and accreditation) as an end i n itself. popular e-learning buzzwords reveal aspects of the industrial and commodity- oriented nature of online education: course management systems ( c m s ) ; learning management systems ( l m s ) ; managed learning environments ( m l e ) . w i t h o u t even stop- ping to unpack these taylor-esque names, we learn that such systems typically do two things: first, they provide an environment i n w h i c h a 'course author'—sometimes this is a chapter : personal computing in the age of the web http://eduprise.com teacher or professor, but not necessarily —can assemble various pieces of'content' into a curriculum and add various online tools and resources: discussion spaces, shared filespace, quiz 'engines,' and the like (see w e b c t , the industry leader). courseware as such blurs the author/publisher role somewhat, i n that it aspires to make a universe of "learning objects" (henderson ) available to a "course author" for orchestration and presentation i n a given e-learning context. the second thing that an l m s commonly does is provide tools for an instructor or administrator—in better cases, an individual learner—to 'manage' i n d i - vidual learning experiences w i t h the courseware: by keeping track of w h i c h "learning objects" have been accessed, w h i c h tests and quizzes are appropriate when, and what grades are at any given point. a c o m m o n ideal here is to allow the learner to 'personalize' her learn- ing environment, or at least to customize the visual interface to it. w h a t is seriously at issue, however, is the extent to w h i c h the learner is i n fact 'managing' her o w n learning vs. the l m s 'managing' the learner. a n l m s trades i n standardized educational components—the "learning objects"—and clearly, the ideal for l m s e s is to be able to participate i n the free trade of learning objects from a wide variety of sources (ims project); a sort of n a f t a for lesson plans. a p p l e computer's initial (late s) foray into this arena was un-ironically named the "educational object economy"—a standards-based clearinghouse for educa- tional java applets. so, the resulting black boxes of this translation are commoditized educational resources, educational standards, and the attendant level shift: away from any individual's experience to the semiosis of networked components. how far we have come from the dynabook! kay's words indeed seem quaint now: the particular aim of l r g was to find the equivalent of writing—that is, learn- ing and thinking by doing i n a medium—our new "pocket universe." ( a) the personal computer has been enlisted as the means to access the managed and packaged w o r l d of the learning object economy. the only thing personal, about it is the ability to set preferences, change 'skins,' set bookmarks, post comments. kay's "curriculum of user inter- . see bryson for a case study of some of the implications for traditional policies of academic freedom in the face of com- moditization of learning experiences. chapter : personal computing in the age of the web face" i n w h i c h one's interactions w i t h the computer were to follow a personal, exploratory, constructive path has been reduced to a stock and standardized menu of choices, in w h i c h the only exploratory and constructive options concern w h i c h link one clicks on next. even from the 'authoring' side, those of us involved i n the design and creation of online resources and environments (educational or otherwise) are hemmed i n by all-encompassing u i stand- ards and the imperative to make things 'googleable' by composing appropriate metadata and—most importantly—branding things with unique camelbackedneologisms to ensure that they survive the sea of search results. learning has indeed become "enterprised up" (haraway , p. ). t h e d y n a b o o k t o d a y : h o w f a r h a v e w e c o m e ? what, then, is personal computing in the early years of the st century? w h a t is its relation- ship to education, defined broadly? i take myself and my o w n practices as illustrative (if not typical) here. i sit, working through the daily management of texts and tasks and ideas and responsibilities, i n front of a laptop computer. this machine is mine; i do not share it w i t h anyone else; its hard drive is full of the accumulated debris of several years' worth of material—documents of one k i n d or another—that i have collected and/or produced. the machine is connected to the inter- net most of the time, though i carry it around to various physical locations, and as such it acts as my o w n personal interface to the global network. it is, i n this sense, a typical "personal computer" of this day and age. m y day-to-day practices i n this laptop-mediated environment bear the traces of the past three decades of computing. the operating system on my circa- powerbook is a merging of s u n i x and s m a c i n t o s h metaphors and systems; its software tools too . that our current computing landscape is dominated by "documents" is ironic given xerox's ("the document company") ambiv- alent involvement. the docu-centric division between applications and files can be traced to the unix software culture in ascen- dancy in the s and which had a impact on the early microcomputer market of thel s. it is actually in sharp contrast with kay's dynabook vision, in which media objects featured both contents and computing intelligence. the "file" metaphor, when combined with the "authoring" software of the early s—word processors, spreadsheets, paint programs—becomes trans- lated to the arguably friendlier "document" metaphor, still ontologically distinct from "applications." chapter : personal computing in the age of the web are a blend of unix-derived command-line programs; graphical, single-user mac-style "authoring" programs; and internet clients (electronic mail, web browser, file-sharing tools). these three realms of software rarely overlap, and to fully use a system such as this is to shift between the cultural traditions these tools represent; i am i n significantly different cultural space when i am using e-mail (largely defined circa ), writing i n a word-proces- sor (circa ), manipulating a photograph i n photoshop (circa ), or searching the w e b via google (circa ). in terms of day-to-day productivity (defined as m u c h by the shape and practices of the contemporary workplace as by software), internet-based personal communications and reference-browsing makes up the bulk of my actual computing practice. after this comes document creation; i n my case, this is almost entirely about writing and the production of papers and reports for various purposes and audiences, for w h i c h i employ a small arsenal of writing and publishing tools, perhaps somewhat atypically, since i eschew the ubiquitous microsoft w o r d on political grounds (more about that later). the practices w h i c h make up this work (drafting, revising, opening, saving, cutting, pasting, printing) are essentially those established twenty-five years ago when w o r d processing became a black box closely equated w i t h personal computing. the third major aspect of my actual personal computing is one i share w i t h an increasingly large population, and especially those younger than me: listening to music. i have, for a few years now, been listening to recorded music primarily via the computer rather than c d player or cassette-tape player, and my collection of digital music files (which take up nearly half'my laptop's hard disk) is w i t h me wherever i am. w i t h "rings on my fingers and bells on my toes," as the nursery rhyme goes, i w i l l have music wherever i go. digital files—mp s being the ubiquitous format at this point in history—are such an improvement i n convenience over physical formats like discs or cassettes that one might think that this is another "killer app" — one that the recording industry is notoriously having a hard time dealing with. a similar trend to keeping and playing music as digital files . as evidenced by the ipod personal music players this trend is not lost on apple computer, though it is yet unclear what the rela- tionship between ipods and personal computing is. chapter : personal computing in the age of the web is digital photography, and, ever since my kids were born, my laptop has become my photo album as well. a number of observations on this little portrait of personal computing are i n order. first, and notably, there is very little "computation" going on i n any of what i have just described; the operative model is m u c h more one of a small set of data formats (e-mail, web pages, written documents, m p s , photos) and a software toolset for managing and sharing them. second, the ubiquity of the internet makes my personal computing an extension of— or perhaps a replacement for—public and private communications systems like the tele- phone, television, and print publishing. t h i r d , w i t h the exception of writing and taking photos—practices at least theoretically independent of the computer—there is almost no "authoring" or creative expression going on here at all; rather, these tasks are either formally communicative (i.e., the production of highly generic forms like documents) or relatively passive. i am inscribed as either a commentator or a consumer of digital media; despite the powerful tools at my fingertips, very little of my day-to-day computing involves creativity or even exploration. it is instructive to examine this portrait i n the light of the dynabook vision. some of what kay had i n m i n d i n the early s is clearly present: the basic form factor and hard- ware capabilites of todays laptops are very close to what kay foresaw: a truly portable device, connected wirelessly to the global information utility, and capable of presenting and inte- grating a variety of different media (text, image, audio, video). but, seen a slightly different way, the personal computer of is more akin to a t v set than a computational medium. in , kay wrote: w h a t then is a personal computer? one would hope that it would be both a medium for containing and expressing arbitrary symbolic notations, and also a collection of useful tools for manipulating these structures, w i t h ways to add new tools to the repertoire, (p. ) i have to admit that the ways i n w h i c h i "manipulate arbitrary symbolic notations" o n my personal computer are few andfar between. w o r d processing is the one notable exception; chapter : personal computing in the age of the web almost every other operation o n digital information is one of presentation or filing (sorting, archiving, searching). a d d i n g "new tools to the repertoire" is also underwhelming; this can only refer to purchasing or downloading new application software. have o n my hard drive software tools for creating and manipulating images, composing and arranging electronic music, editing video—each application living i n its own narrowly constrained domain, poorly (if at all) integrated w i t h other applications, even the dominant ones of e-mail, web browsing, w o r d processing. further, there is something troubling about the "arbitrariness" of these "symbolic notations;" i n practice, they are not very arbitrary at all. rather, they are established, standardized notations: one for text documents, another for bitmapped graph- ics, another for electronic music, and so on. in a data-centric world, standards for data representation (file formats, etc) are essential to make content exchange possible. note that this is i n contrast to kay's vision of a world of message-passing objects w i t h dynamic and negotiated context and semantics. if our symbolic notations had the k i n d of "arbitrary" character kay had i n m i n d , we (users) would perhaps come up w i t h new ones now and then, even on a personal level; we might blend them, modify them, experiment w i t h them. but to even muse on such possibilities i n our workaday w o r l d puts us i n the land of either idle spec- ulation or marginalized geekdom. if my personal portrait of personal computing is underwhelming, the mainstream real- ity of educational computing is even more so. educational computing must at this point be taken as a subset of personal computing—the application or recontextualization of the sorts of application and communication software i have been describing to classroom and curric- u l u m use—and, unfortunately, often with the "personal" qualities removed or limited for adminstrative reasons: shared computer labs w h i c h necessarily prohibit even the sort of messy habitation of a personal computer that i have described here; top-down adminstra- tion w h i c h puts severe restrictions on the use of programs and the storing of personal files; . despite my relative comfort with a half-dozen programming languages and even some substantial experience with software development, this does not fall within the realm of my "personal computing." nearly all the software i have written myself has been for someone else, and within the client-server model of the web. the one exception is a personal bibliography-manage- ment tool i created and still use—an anomaly in the model i have been describing. chapter : personal computing in the age of the web pre-packaged and pre-defined possibilities. remember that i n kay's vision, personal computing began w i t h the educational context, and out of this would come the day-to-day personal computing of adult professionals. educational computing w o u l d have been the superset, the productivity tools used by adults a specialized subset of the possibilities explored by kids. w e have instead got the reverse. vendorcentrism one major factor kay may not have imagined is the role that key software and hardware companies play i n mediating our personal computing experiences. if we believe the c o m m o n statistic that only about % of desktop computers use the open-source l i n u x oper- ating system, we can surmise that for % of us, personal computing is something we do via a toolkit created and sold by a large a m e r i c a n corporation, and i n the vast majority of cases, it is microsoft. it is not my intent here to analyze the dynamics of a market-driven computing land- scape; such a study would constitute a separate project, one at least as large as this one. but it is not much of a stretch to suggest that a truly malleable personal computing environment of the sort kay envisioned might be very difficult for a commercial operation to market; a far safer and more established model is to offer consumers a relatively small palette of choices, and to carefully and proactively manage their expectations. mergers of it companies w i t h media and entertainment firms (e.g., a o l / t i m e - w a r n e r ) seem to strengthen this general trend. even without speculating o n the details of corporate motives and strategies, it is clear that personal computing has since its very beginning been dominated by a very small number of companies weilding enormous power. the. market dominance enjoyed by microsoft is i n practice a single point of interpretation, or i n latour's language, an obligatory passage point; a single entity positioned so as to exercise unparalled control over what personal computing means, what it includes, and what is possible w i t h i n its horizons. o u r practices w i t h respect to it are necessarily defined by this agency. that there exist other large computer companies does little to offset this: the contributions of the 'second string' chapter : personal computing in the age of the web of corporations—apple computer, sun microsystems, i b m , a o l / t i m e - w a r n e r — a r e i n most cases merely lesser versions of the microsoft model. "new media " vs. "cyberculture " in the st century the opposition between "new media" and "cyberculture," proposed by lev m a n o v i c h i n his introduction to m i t press' the new media reader ( ), is part of manovich's effort to define "new media" by elaborating a historical perspective (informed largely by art history) on digital technology and its relationship to culture and cultural production. m a n o v i c h offers eight partial definitions of new media, but the first one—that it is distinct from what he calls "cyberculture"—is especially food for thought: in my view, [new media and cyberculture] represent two distinct fields of research. i w o u l d define cyberculture as the study of various social phenomena associated with the internet and other new forms of network communication. examples of what falls under cyberculture are online communities, online multi-player gaming, the issue of online identity, the sociology and the ethnog- raphy of e-mail usage, cellphone usage i n various communities, the issues of gender and ethnicity i n internet usage, and so on. notice that the emphasis is on the social phenomena; cyberculture does not directly deal w i t h the cultural objects enabled by network communications technologies. the study of these objects is the domain of new media. in addition, new media is concerned w i t h cultural objects and paradigms enabled by all forms of computing and not just by networking. t o summarize: cyberculture is focused on the social and o n networking; new media is focused on the cultural and computing, (p. ) in reflecting on this distinction, it occurs to me that the vast majority of academic and popu- lar/journalistic discourse around computing (personal or otherwise) in the past decade has not been i n the "new media" space, but i n the sociological realm of manovich's "cybercul- ture." furthermore, it is largely the attitude toward the division of labour between experts and end-users that leads me to this identification; we talk of the "effects" of computeriza- tion, of "social impacts," of "user friendliness," of "no programming experience required," or of "making the technology serve pedagogical ends first"—cliches w h i c h inscribe i n the first place to a divide between technology and society (cf. latour ), and i n the second place chapter : personal computing in the age of the web further reify the division of labour between experts and users; assumed is a class of quasi- magical designer/engineer types, who are somehow not quite human, (yet) who wield enor- mous power, handing technologies down to the rest of us ('hand-me-downs from the military industrial complex,' according to one popular notion), who then are forced to use these inhuman and dehumanizing tools which never quite meet our predefined aims and goals. inscribed here too are the circumscribed possibilities of a so-called resistance i n w h i c h the content of cyberculture is the impotent critique of its own form—impotent because it is b l i n d to and thus further reifies its own political-economic conditions; that is, the market as the inescapable model for all discourse. this characterization is of course the market's own self-perpetuating reality; generated and sustained because it makes good business sense to do so, as has been proven time and time again i n examples such as microsoft's and b i l l gates' surreal fortunes. n o w , this situa- tion would be servicable if it ended there, and the now almost traditional themes of resistance and culture-jamming and the romantic ideal of the arts could be called upon to prevail over the forces of oppression. the frightening part, however, is that as digital tech- nology becomes more ubiquitous, our collective implication in this divide seems to become deeper. a s the w o r l d - w i d e w e b became a daily tool and information source for larger and larger segments of the western w o r l d i n the late s, the sense of collective helplessness seemed to be even more entrenched, despite the early talk of democratization that accom- panied it (e.g. landow ). this notion of democratization may have been simplistic, but it was not without merit; i recall, i n , after being paid to create web pages for the first time, remarking that no one w o u l d ever make any money this way, that it was so simple that trained monkeys would soon be doing it; and yet, by the time the dot-com boom was i n full effect i n the late s, budgets for websites reached to hundreds of thousands and even millions of dollars, and a new 'professionalism' turned the internet—potentially the most participatory institution i n history—into something beyond the curtain, more and more like television i n most people's lives. chapter : personal computing in the age of the web t o ride manovich's framing a little longer, it indeed appears that "cyberculture" has been i n ascendance for the past decade or so, and "new media" has remained marginal; this parallels the difference apparent between my portrait of contemporary personal computing and what a l a n kay might have had i n m i n d . the implications of such a cultural trend for education are profound: given its status as a spectatorial, market-dominated discursive space, what does "cyberculture" offer education, exactly? h o w do we ensure that it does not' become the it equivalent of "music appreciation?" this critique is, i believe, a microcosm of the much larger criticism made by h o m i bhabha of the language of "cultural diversity"— that, i n the liberal tradition, although there is entertainment and encouragement of cultural diversity, there is always also a corresponding containment of it. a transparent n o r m is consti- tuted, a n o r m given by the host society or dominant culture w h i c h says that 'these other cultures are fine, but we must be able to locate them w i t h i n our own grid' (bhabha ). in the case of cyberculture, the "transparent n o r m " is provided by the market logic of the industrialized internet, w h i c h easily accommodates critique, diversity, even radicalism, while maintaining and reproducing the 'means of production': hence, cultural diversity and even resistance are articulated w i t h i n the familiar bounds of microsoft w o r d . this little example is facile, trivial, i n comparison to the analysis of discourse and truth effects that foucault mounted three decades ago. d o we see anyone calling this out, or working on alternative channels? in techie circles, yes; but i n academia and education, no. l e s s o n s f r o m t h e o p e n - s o u r c e m o v e m e n t unix, or linux, is the stone-soup operating system, where everybody has brought their own contribution to the common pot. - tim o'reilly, there is, thankfully, an alternative to the pervasive corporate-dominated computer indus- try, a growing force in the past decade. the truly interesting developments i n computing i n chapter : personal computing in the age of the web the last decade have almost entirely taken the form of radical innovations from the fringes w h i c h is then transformed by some large existing corporation or other mass of capital (more fluid i n the dot-com b o o m of the late s) into marketable form; much of the internet's translation into a so-called 'public sphere' has been a shift on this level. but that a marginal realm even exists from w h i c h innovations can emerge and where interpretations remain somewhat more fluid is an encouraging thing. the relative importance of this margin has been shored up i n recent years, as well, i n the reification and institutionalization of the free/open-source movement. the free and o p e n source software ( f o s s ) movement came to popular attention i n when the rhetorical implications of the words "free" vs "open" were problematized, bringing a long-standing but increasingly marginalized tradition to a point of encounter w i t h the corporate w o r l d . this is a tradition of software developers sharing their creations freely w i t h one another, a practice which, in certain sectors of the it w o r l d pre-dates any corporate or market involvement, and w h i c h became formalized i n the mid- s by r i c h - ard stallman ( ; ), founder of the free software foundation, i n response to what he saw as an erosion of the collaborative community of programmers he had come to know i n the s and s. . stallman's articulation of the rationale and ethics of sharing software put a formal face on a practice that had been widespread, though informal, for decades. the a r p a c o m m u - nity in the s widely shared the fruits of their efforts, seeing their work as an extension of the scientific/academic tradition of publishing research so that other researchers could build upon it. the underlying technologies of the internet and most of the computing archi- tecture surrounding it were developed and disseminated according to these ideals. the unix operating system and the community and tradition surrounding it (since the early s) most clearly embodied this model of development, since it meant that the develop- ment community was distributed, consisting of programmers and researchers from a . the rather awkward moniker "free and open source software" attempts to be inclusive of both and the business-friendly "open" term. chapter : personal computing in the age of the web number of different sites and institutions, some corporate and some academic. u n i x argua- bly became the dominant computing platform of the s—and ultimately the key platform for the internet—because of this development and distribution ethic. but what stallman saw i n the early s was a "stark moral choice" (stallman ) presented by corporations increasingly interested i n protecting their 'intellectual prop- erty'—stallman believed that he must either take action to counter the trend toward corporatization of software, of find another career. h i s efforts, as rationalized i n the gnu manifesto ( ), culminated i n two important contributions: the beginnings of a g n u operating system—a formally free version of u n i x , unencumbered by typical corporate licenses —and the g n u general public license ( g p l ) , w h i c h is written so as to do the opposite of what most software licenses do. instead of focusing o n the owner's control of the software and granting rights of use to licensees, the g p l ensures that the software's source code (that w h i c h a programmer writes or modifies) remains open and freely available, no matter who (or what corporate entity) contributes to it. it is a copyright document—as stallman put it, a copyleft document—that subverts the traditional copyright concept, ensuring the freedom of users rather than restricting use. the g p l ' s secret weapon is not that it merely says you can do whatever you want w i t h this software, but that it stipulates that anything you create based on gpl-licensed software also falls w i t h i n the license—that is, the source code must always remain open. this has the effect of preserving and propagat- ing the idea far beyond its original application. the g p l establishes a specially formulated commons; software licensed under the g p l cannot be restricted, in use or distribution; it guarantees that the source code remain free for anyone to access, use, or modify for their own ends. . on the unix tradition, see eric raymond's the art of unix programming ( )—a work of cultural ethnography at least as much as a guide to software development, which proceeds by tracing the virtues and values emergent within this now venera- ble culture of computing. . gnu is a recursive acronym for gnu's not unix. the project was to produce 'copyleft'-licensed components making up an entire, usable operating system based on unix. unix had roots in academic and sharing-friendly environments, but was actually owned by at&t and licensed to various various competitive vendors. stallman's gnu project made steady progress through the late s, but the real breakthrough came in , when finnish programmer linus torvalds released a free unix-like system kernel under the gpl license.torvalds' "linux" kernel effectively completed stallman's gnu project, making it possible to download and install a completely free unix-like operating system for (by then ubiquitous) intel-based pcs. . the gnu general public license (gpl) can be found at http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html chapter : personal computing in the age of the web http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html through the late s, as the internet was growing i n size and profile, the g p l was applied to a number of key internet infrastructure components, the result being that the internet was largely constructed out of free software, and the tradition of free software was firmly established w i t h i n the early internet community. by , gpl-licensed internet software—and the g n u v l i n u x operating system—had risen to sufficient popularity that microsoft began to comment on the threat that this developm'ent movement presented to its market dominance. eric raymond's strategic rebranding of the free software movement as the "open source" movement capitalized on this popularity. raymond felt that stallman's rhetoric, w i t h its stark moral terms and talk of "free software" might alienate corporate a m e r i c a and therefore undermine the popularity of software written and released under such terms ( ). raymond's efforts seem to have been a success, at least i n terms of rais- ing the public profile of l i n u x and other "open source" projects. • historical details aside, the importance of the foss movement—which remains largely centered around the l i n u x operating system—isn't i n the details of the license terms, or i n the specific vocabulary used when pitching it to corporate audiences. rather, it is i n the strength and coherence of the community w h i c h has emerged around it. the foss move- ment now commands enormous "mindshare" if not marketshare (we might alternatively say that it has great discursive influence). w h i l e remaining a very small player i n the desktop- based personal computing environment (accounting for somewhere between . % and %, if we believe statistics as reported i n the economist, a p r i l , ), l i n u x and f o s s ' share of the institutional and web server market is much greater: l i n u x accounting for between / and / , according to most sources, w i t h particular open-source applications (e.g., the apache webserver) boasting even higher marketshare. moreover, the community surrounding these projects and their deployment have come to self-identify and rally around a few key ideas: . the promethean ideal of a viable alternative to microsoft's near-monopoly; . my point here is not that the economist should be distrusted on this issue, but rather that it is very difficult to gain meaningful statistics on how many copies of a particular free software system are running. how would one count them? there are various strategies, but compared, say, to counting how many windows licenses are sold, it remains very inexact. chapter : personal computing in the age of the web . the ideological stance about corporate ownership vs freedom ("as i n speech, not as i n beer") as proposed by the g n u project's richard stallman; . the notion that "open-source" development strategies lead to higher-quality sofware, as promoted by eric raymond; . the do-it-yourself example (and success) of community leaders like linus torvalds; . the economic fact that f o s s systems of very high quality can be downloaded, installed, and used for 'free.' the fact that some of these ideas and ideals may be i n tension or conflict has been analyzed extensively i n foss-oriented online fora and i n scholarly journals (especially first monday), but the coherence of the open-source community is readily apparent: in what might be characterized as one of the central organs of the l i n u x community, the slashdot news forum, the self-righteousness of the foss model is so often proclaimed, and devia- tions from the party line so roundly denounced, that the overall effect is sometimes something like a political rally. furthermore, the amount of ongoing attention that foss receives in such mainstream magazines as forbes and the economist serves to show the impact it has on it culture. of unix and other it cultures t o speak of it culture at all is to step out on a limb; there has been little if any ethnography to document the rituals, kinship structures, and worldviews of various computing-centric communities. but if, as postcolonial critic h o m i bhabha suggests ( , p. ) culture is knowable only i n the experience of difference, then the moment of encounter w i t h some- thing like l i n u x puts it i n sharp relief: something very different is going on here than i n the mainstream p c market. alternatively, i f we treat—as i am wont to do—culture as history, then it is fair to say that l i n u x and the foss projects surrounding it are extensions of the m u c h more venerable u n i x tradition. u n i x was originally developed by hackers at a t & t bell labs i n the early s and spread almost despite any formal efforts through the s chapter : personal computing in the age of the web and early s by individual sharing; a t & t had been judged a monopoly by the u s justice department i n the s, and the regulations w h i c h followed this ruling effectively prevented a t & t from bringing software to market directly. the popularity of u n i x in the s led to its being controlled by a number of licensees who marketed and protected it aggressively; this i n part was the situation stallman felt he must react to. u n i x ' role i n the development of internet standards, as well as the emergence of alternative u n i x software under the g n u project and then linux, set the stage for something of a renaissance i n the s. t o know u n i x (and/or linux) well is to come to appreciate its history; this is m u c h more important than i n any other computer system i n widespread use. though most u n i x and u n i x - l i k e systems today have familiar-looking windows-and menus graphical inter- faces, the " u n i x way" is to type interactively in a c o m m a n d shell (the s time-sharing paradigm lives on); the commands one issues are i n many cases only understandable by reference to the historical contexts that produces them (see raymond for a full exposi- tion of this theme). w h e n one encounters the u n i x command tar—useful when packaging up files for backup or distribution—it is only when one realizes that was originally short- hand for "tape archive" that it begins to make real sense, despite its continued existence and daily use on systems with no tapes anywhere near them. novelist n e a l stephenson wrote that " u n i x is not so m u c h a product as it is a painstak- ingly compiled oral history of the hacker subculture" (stephenson ). a better characterization—and one that avoids the cliched, pith-helmet anthropologist trope— comes from software philosopher w a r d cunningham, who observed that " u n i x is the latin of computer science," to w h i c h some wag replied, "except it ain't dead yet." ( w i k i w i k i w e b : unixculture). n o t dead by a long shot. unix-as-latin is a pretty good analogy (far more apt than koschmann's "logo-as-latin"). w e must bear in mind, though, that this would be latin . i am, for simplicity's sake, completely ignoring the role of the berkeley standard distribution (bsd) of unix, and its three main open-source versions. bsd unix is technically closer to the pure unix tradition than linux, but the more popular linux has become symbolic of the foss movement. chapter : personal computing in the age of the web circa or so, not latin as it exists today, for the simple reason that a large proportion of the 'scholarly' class still speak it (unix), and one cannot truly enter that class without know- ing at least a little of it. it is difficult, obscurantist, and exclusive. it is also brilliant, elegant, and—judging from l i n u x and foss—currently i n its renaissance. its impact is huge and wide ranging. w h e n one stops to consider that u n i x and its direct descendants (like linux) are the fruits of licklider's a r p a vision (almost literally kept alive through the dark ages by monks) and that they serve as the foundation stones of the internet and the w e b ; that the f o s s movement has made such important waves i n the it industry (even microsoft talks about it); and that every contemporary operating system inherits something from it (apple's 'new' o s x is a g u i o n top of a u n i x foundation layer, and even microsoft's w i n d o w s draws from u n i x on several counts); one begins to appreciate its pervasiveness, and—more importantly—its resilience i n the face of wave after commercial wave o f ' i n n o - vation' designed to make it obsolete. n i k o l a i bezroukov, noted for his cutting critiques of eric raymond's open-source anthropology i n firstmonday, noted that " u n i x renaissance oss proved to be the most important democratic movement i n software development i n the th century" (bezroukov ). latin it may be, but herein lies the problem w i t h the u n i x / l i n u x / o s s tradition as a would-be educational model: the analogy with latin is a little too apt. the u n i x tradition, like that of latin in the renaissance, is frankly stubborn, dogmatic, obscurantist, sexist, and exclusive. it rewards those who can, whether by sheer dint of w i l l or by having access to the resources to struggle their way to the inside of the citadel. u n i x culture has little patience w i t h those who cannot or have not, chiding them instead w i t h rtfm—read the fucking manual—the scathing words of the u n i x culture-hero, the "bastard operator from hell." in the f o s s world, the admonition is the politer-sounding but ultimately more daunting "read the source code." the gathering places of u n i x and foss culture, like the slashdot forum ("news for nerds"), are rife w i t h arrogance, conceit, and condescension; these can be unfriendly places for the uninitiated. chapter : personal computing in the age of the web that said, there is no doubt that the tradition which comprised u n i x and the bulk of the foss movement is a curriculum par excellence, that it constitutes a literacy i n the richest sense of the word. it is a vast and multi-layered community of practice, precisely as lave and wenger ( ) would have it (for this angle, see t u o m i ; hemetsberger & reinhardt ), and it is arguably a more efficient learning environment than many schools provide, judging by the sheer scale and growth of the movement. but it is not, i argue, the k i n d of learning environment anyone would purposefully design, nor choose, if not for the simple . dearth of technological alternatives. w h a t is the lesson in that gap? despite the growth i n popularity of open-source tools as educational environments, and a semi-organized community of "open-source i n education" advocates o n the internet, these advocates' approach seems to be practical and incremental rather than visionary. u n i x culture is, ironically, a highly effective curriculum built on absolutely perverse pedagogical principles— chaotic at best, and positively hostile i n many cases. w h a t lessons can we draw from that? m y intent here is not to pass judgement on u n i x or foss as they stand today, given my general admiration of them and hope for their possibilities, and given the likelihood that this tradition w i l l continue to flourish and evolve. rather, i mean to position the u n i x / f o s s tradition as a major historical actor (or actor-network), and to point out some of the enor- mously generative spaces it has opened up i n the past decade: a real democratization of software development, a non-commercial development and distribution model, a huge community of practice operating w i t h virtually no formal institutional support, and an evolving ideological frame (exemplified by stallman's copyleft) that is being energetically adapted to other realms: publishing, file sharing, and so on. a n d finally, i mean to point out, as a l a n kay has, that there seems to be an interesting -year lag between the time a power- ful idea is first worked out and when it reaches the mainstream. . to be up front about my positionality here, i make no claim to being "uninitiated" in this culture. i have been running linux- and unix-based systems at home and at work since about and have participated in a number of small-scale open-source development projects. that said, the exclusive atmosphere of the community is still readily apparent to me, despite its demo- cratic rhetoric. . see "moodle" (http://moodle.org/), an open-source course management system that is gaining widespread popularity among educational institutions. see also the "open source in education foundation" (http://www.osef.org/) chapter : personal computing in the age of the web http://moodle.org/ http://www.osef.org/ t o bring us back to the dynabook theme, recall that u n i x ' s initial incarnation precedes the first smalltalk by only a few years, that these two technological threads are close histori- cal siblings. what if we were presented with an equally venerable model of computing that featured many of the good ideas inherent in the unix/foss culture—openness and sharing simplicity and modularity of design, collaborative and network-based architecture—but one which was designed with pedagogical ends in mind? a u t h o r i n g i n t h e a g e o f t h e w e b the great, visible, and lasting legacy of u n i x culture is, more-or-less, the internet and the w o r l d - w i d e w e b . since some time i n the m i d s, the w e b has dominated personal computing to such an extent that it has in some ways become invisible: t i m o'reilly ( ) noted that the w e b itself wasn't the "killer app" that made people want to buy a computer i n the , amazon.com was. the ubiquity of the w e b , both i n terms of its physical manifes- tation and its sociocultural embeddedness have made it a background field, the invisible infrastructure (star ) that provides the ground upon w h i c h our more focused delibera- tions appear. that bedrock sensibility points to some tightly shut black boxes, and it is here that i want to draw our attention. because the internet, the w e b , and the foss movement all draw on u n i x culture, the conceptual motifs—genres—of the internet and w e b of the s and early s draw heavily o n the u n i x worldview; the architecture of m u c h of the existing internet and w e b , as a result, is u n i x - l i k e . it is not surprising, given this, that u n i x has experienced a renais- sance i n the age of the w e b . conversely, the community dynamics that surround projects like l i n u x are dependent on the existence of an internet and on technologies like the w e b . indeed it is unlikely that projects of the scale of l i n u x could have flourished without the k i n d of sociotechnical foundations provided by the internet and w e b : mailing list c o m m u - . john unsworth ( ) notes the apparent paradox in the 'open,' 'public,' even 'democratic' technologies springing from the "pure research" contexts of american monopoly capital—the arpa project, at&t, xerox—and that their relative insulation from quarterly results and other "real world" economic pressures that such collossal institutions could uniquely provide gave rise to technologies of unparalleled scope, while enshrining at a deep level the structures and assumptions of liberal capital: individualism, property, labour, and power. chapter : personal computing in the age of the web http://amazon.com nities; networked hypertext documentation and file repositories, internet-based version- control systems, and the k i n d of free-flow of information that u n i x culture has always relied upon. the flip side of this, w h i c h is most relevant to our consideration of the dynabook, is that the internet—as a vast network of u n i x and unix-derived systems—is significantly not a vast network of message-passing smalltalk objects. a n d though u n i x and smalltalk projects are both products of the early s, and although they share many virtues i n common—openness, modularity, simplicity, to name a few—they are distinct 'paradigms.' w h e r e u n i x is firmly grounded i n the terminals-and-mainframe timesharing model of the a r p a project, and its programming paradigm (enshrined i n the language c, a co-develop- ment of the u n i x project) is one of algorithms operating on structured data residing i n files (this model so dominant and ubiquitous today that it escapes analysis for the most part—see lanier ), a l a n kay's vision of smalltalk thirty-five years ago was a reaction to and turn- ing away from this very model, away from the data-vs.-procedures distinction w h i c h underlies it. kay had in m i n d personal computing objects w h i c h interacted i n a peer-to-peer fashion; instead of distributed access to centralized computing resources (the a r p a vision, w h i c h u n i x implements), the smalltalk vision is one of a radically decentralized network, i n w h i c h each personal node is as powerful as any other, and where computing can occur i n any combination, local or distributed). . i use the word 'paradigms' here advisedly, and in kuhn's ( ) sense, i mean that beyond a superficial level, the virtues of unix culture seem distant from a strong oop/smalltalk perspective, and conversely, that the virtues of object-orientation seem for- eign to a 'native' unix perspective (e.g. raymond , pp. ff). chapter : personal computing in the age of the web w e have seen fragments of this vision appear in recent years: on the internet, truly peer-to-peer applications have begun to emerge, often rendered marginal by their questionable legal status (in some circles, peer-to-peer has come to be simplistically equated with illegal sharing of music files). a n d the very ubiquity of the w e b and web-based applica- tions has led to a relative downplaying of operating systems perse, at least i n terms of desktop comput- ing environments. by and large, however, the centralized model— i n more contemporary parlance expressed as "client-server" computing—is dominant, despite the considerable amount of computing horsepower i n the average p c . though truly peer-to-peer computing is more feasible now than it ever has been, consider the following commonplaces: web pages are stored and served from a centralized host (e.g., an academic department, a commercial host- ing provider); "web-mail" stores and manages your 'personal' e-mail o n a centralized server (though a look at the corporate politics behind microsoft's hotmail service or google's gmail surely raises the question of just how 'personal' these are); google's search engine indexes the w e b centrally. even apparently distributed applications like blogs are hosted by massive centralized servers. there is absolutely no 'technical' reason why all these activi- o b j e c t s a n d o o p in t h e s • don't mean to suggest that the unix •paradigm is opposed to.the object-oriented paradigm. there are in fact many points where these ideas can be seen to intersect.; while kay's smalltalk represents a distinctly- different vision from the "unix way," o o p itself became merged with unix culture in the s despite skepticism about object- ' orientation amongst unix devotees (raymond , p. ) .oop gained enormous popularity a n d , legitimacy" i n , the early s , as-books, proliferated and languages like c++ began to be integrated in college curriculum. c++ could be integrated into existing unix-based contexts (both "social and computer-wise," writes stroustrup) while offering the advantages of classes and encapsulation. here was an o o p language which existing unix and c programmers could easily adapt to. in the introduction of java was* perhaps an even bigger push for object; oriented programming, and it came from sun .microsystems, a.major unix vendor. c++'s original developer bjarne stroustrup' writes: . • > ]ava burst, upon the.' ' (programming scene with o n - . s unprecedented style of and amount of marketing. this was the first time that the resources of a large corporation had been thrown squarely into a;~ .programming language debate. (stroustrup , p. ) java's release was wrapped in idealistic, if not revolutionary aspirations. java took much from smalltalk, in terms of its virtual- -machine architecture and its brandingrfaili >.l' "i r a. , „ „ „• , ^tigm the language of the internet. java ^has* been a qualified success, especially i n " encouraging the adoption of o o p concepts in the unix and internet world. • but smalltalk still remains apart; its basic: model for interaction-and filing are notably distinct from the unix tradition. in a sense, •smalltalk denigrates the very idea of ah . operating system, " a c o l l e c t i o n of things that • don't fit into a- language. there. shouldn't be one" (ingalls , p. ) . in this sense, smalltalk is better compared not just to languages like c or c++ or java but entire operating systems like unix or windows. chapter : personal computing in the age of the web ties couldn't be carried out on our own 'personal' computers i n a peer-to-peer manner, but the way we have been conditioned to think about computing makes the division of labour between clients and servers seem natural. the very ubiquity of the w e b as a client-server application with its standardized user interface strongly reinforces this, and i n a sense undermines the 'personal' potential of personal computing. in the very simplest rendering, dealing w i t h the w o r l d through a web browser 'dumbs down' our interactions w i t h that world, because it casts every activity into a classical asymmetric relationship: the brains of the operation are at the server, the beauty is at the client end. it is not surprising that this model has worked out well for marketing purposes. heaven forbid we be told that we're the brains of the operation. a n d , ironically, despite the apparent 'democratization' of l i n u x and foss, these tech- nologies are quite conservative on this architectural axis; they maintain the centrality of the client-server model. v e r y few people actually use l i n u x as the client-side of their computing world, and even so, l i n u x as a desktop environment closely emulates the w i n d o w s model and metaphors. web authoring and computer literacy in painting this broad-strokes history, though, it is important to avoid the sense that these stories are smooth and unidirectional. in the case of u n i x , foss, and the w e b , the key point to bear i n m i n d is that this is a story which picks up enormous m o m e n t u m and relative clar- ity i n the early to m i d s. prior to that—that is, prior to the web—the threads of this storyline were m u c h harder to discern. if we go back to about or , we find people working i n h y p e r c a r d o n the macintosh, which, for all the limitations of the existing soft- ware and hardware base of the day, was m u c h more conceptually i n line w i t h kay's vision (significantly, though, it lacked a networking component). here was "authoring" i n an open- ended and personal style, on the personal computer. in a nostalgic piece o h the state of graphic and interactive design in the age of the w e b , compared w i t h the flowering of a chapter : personal computing in the age of the web multitude of design ideas i n the late s and early s, designers groff & steele write of a "creative golden age" so different from today's web-oriented perspective: w h a t strikes us, looking back, is the sheer originality. w o r k from this period is fascinating because artists and programmers were required to work from a blank slate. the territory was mostly unexplored, so by definition every move required originality. (groff & steele ) similarly, from the standpoint of education and especially it curriculum, the advent of the w e b and "web-page authoring" is in most cases a huge step backwards (or downwards) i n comparison w i t h the radical mathematical aspirations of logo or even the open-ended multimedia authoring of hypercard . yet by , both logo and h y p e r c a r d were "history"—despite marginal groups of loyalists, these systems had been all but washed away by the tide of the w e b . in the process, the general thrust of "computer literacy" moved away from authoring and media production and toward information access. n o w the dynamics of information and access to it—who has it, who controls it, who provides it—are certainly of critical importance, and it w o u l d seem that this is an entirely reasonable direction for educational it to move i n . but before we consider that question answered, let us pause and consider the black box w h i c h is being closed here. the shift away from 'media' and toward 'access' makes an assumption about the under- lying infrastructure: that the means and mechanisms are good and sufficient to meet our informational ends, and conversely, that the means and mechanisms are of sufficiently low level and sufficiently uninteresting from an pedagogical perspective that we can safely forget about them, leave them to professionals, and attend to the higher levels of getting to the content. the extent to w h i c h we willfully forget m a r s h a l l m c l u h a n ' s cardinal insight here is noteworthy, but this is, i argue, the deal we struck i n the s, when we adopted the combination of web browser, h t m l , and client-server architecture as our basic means of encounter w i t h the digital world. w h a t we get i n return is a w o r l d packaged as web pages. n o w , considering that google currently claims to index ten b i l l i o n web pages, this might not seem like a bad arrangement. but let us continue: what we gave up i n the bargain is the chapter : personal computing in the age of the web ability to critically engage w i t h the form and structure of that information, w h i c h we have left largely (though not entirely) to packagers from microsoft to a o l / t i m e w a r n e r . black boxes, of course, are all about such bargains; i contend, however, that from the educational perspective at least, this box has been closed too soon. a n d y disessa writes: t o be direct, information is a shockingly limited form of knowledge. unfortu- nately, our c o m m o n culture seems insensitive to that fact. w e even call the computer's influence the "information revolution." there is an information revolution, but it is not the basis for a revolution in education. a s turbulent and big as the information revolution has been, i think the truly interesting (and maybe bloody) part of the revolution as regards computational literacy has yet to begin, and society is less well prepared for it. (disessa , p. ) admittedly, there is more to the w e b than web pages per se, and beyond that, there is certainly more to the internet than the w e b . a n d of course the w e b i n its monotonous webbiness is also a thing of amazing scope and quality and variety. the point i am trying to make is that the culture of the internet has its centre of mass i n a spectatorial/consumer- . oriented milieu, and that most thinking about it in education has bought into this whole- sale. a key example of this is the online "economy" of "learning objects"—this refers to a large scale educational technology trend, i n w h i c h a set of interoperability standards (e.g., the i m s project) have been established w h i c h enable and encourage the development and exchange of reusable, modular, multimedia educational content? the ideal for such learn- ing objects seems to be interactive java applets (that is, small, java-based programs that run w i t h i n a web page) which simulate some complex system or model and allow learners to explore its behaviour. there is no doubt that many such educational applets have been created, exchanged, and indeed re-used i n various contexts. but some professional programmer (or, better but far rarer, a teacher) somewhere "authors" such content, while the learner's engagement w i t h the content is restricted to her viewing or playing w i t h it. this is a traditional one-to-many publishing model; despite the formidable superstructure . norm friesen's excellent article, "what are educational objects?" ( ) puts in sharp relief the relationship between interop- erability and decontextualization in the learning object economy. chapter : personal computing in the age of the web of technologies, traditions, standards, and frameworks w h i c h provide the learner w i t h these opportunities, it amounts to little more than 'interactive textbooks'—with the control remaining w i t h the publishers and the audience left as an undifferentiated mass. the economics of the publishing (or broadcasting) model are too powerful to ignore: one gener- ates an audience i n order to sell access, not to the information, but to the audience. one cannot deny that the w e b is indeed a distributed authoring environment, i n that anyone anywhere can put up a web page on their local server. furthermore, no single agency is truly i n control of what content appears. a s a result, we have a proliferation of what might be termed "artistic" or "expressive" uses of the web: h t m l - b a s e d web pages, extensive graphic design work, javascript (scriptable web pages) programming, and visually intense flash animations and games. it would be dishonest and unfair for me to dismiss the wealth of this k i n d of online expression out of hand; i w i l l instead merely point out that the genres of web-based authoring are very conservative, after more than a decade of the w e b , and the forces leading toward the one-button publishing model (which basically limits user-level w e b authoring to forms like blogging) are strongly i n ascendance. is this just nostalgia for a golden age? before standardized platforms, so m u c h more was possible—this is of course a truism. n o doubt there is an element of nostalgia i n my analysis, but let us remain focused on the black boxes, and which ones we might benefit from keeping open. • w h y n o t s m a l l t a l k ? w h y n o t t h e d y n a b o o k ? w e are today the heirs of two dominant traditions of computing. first, the u n i x tradition is manifest i n our internet technologies and i n much of the programming/development culture—especially that of the foss movement. the second is a "personal computing" tradition w h i c h can be traced academically back to x e r o x p a r c , but w h i c h bears more the stamps of the industrial and marketing forces that shaped the personal computer as a commodity i n the s and s. these two traditions are i n significant tension with one another; the u n i x tradition prizes depth of knowledge, inner workings, and almost delights chapter : personal computing in the age of the web i n its arcana. in this tradition, software is more important than hardware. its practitioners, especially i n the foss movement, value a do-it-yourself ethic and the free sharing of the fruits of their efforts, w h i c h become the scaffolding for others' work. the personal comput- ing tradition, on the other hand, has become a consumer-oriented tradition; here, (buying) hardware is more important than software. it is i n many ways a discourse of anxiety: how to deal w i t h complexity, inundation, threats, spam, viruses? the answer is to buy the next version, the latest offering. these two traditions are at this point entirely intertwined: the u n i x tradition relies on the ubiquity of cheap hardware and network access provided by a personal computing market; the latter relies on the former for the network itself, the means of using it, and, in a broader sense, innovation. the web browser is the canonical interface between these two worlds. there is, as i have attempted to demonstrate, a third tradition—or at least the seeds of one—nascent, latent, possible. this is the tradition of the dynabook. it differs markedly from the two dominant traditions today, and as such it offers antidotes to the major failings of each. w h a t the dynabook offers to the u n i x tradition—with which it is contemporane- ous and shares many key virtues—is a superior vision of the user. a l a n kay's key insight i n the late s was that computing would become the practice of millions of people, and that they w o u l d engage with computing to perform myriad tasks; the role of software w o u l d be to provide a flexible medium w i t h w h i c h people could approach those myriad tasks. u n i x , i n constrast, has always been a system for systems people; despite the democratic rhetoric of the f o s s movement, u n i x has no serious potential to become the computing environment of the masses; it is not difficult to see the cultural/historical dynamics working directly against this. relatedly, what the dynabook offers to the "personal computing" tradition is also a superior vision of the user, but i n this instance, the difference is that the dynabook's user is an engaged participantrather than a passive, spectatorial consumer—the dynabook's user was supposed to be the creator of her own tools, a smarter, more capable user than the . to be fair, smalltalk- has also been primarily a system for systems people. chapter : personal computing in the age of the web market discourse of the personal computing industry seems capable of inscribing—or at least has so far, ever since the construction of the "end-user" as documented by bardini & horvath ( ). this is all simple enough. w h y has the dynabook vision not prevailed? o r , prevailing aside, why is it so very marginalized? the short answer is elaborated i n the "sociology of knowledge" literature. it is fatalistic i n a historically contingent way: the circumstances surrounding the emergence of these computing traditions, w i t h their associated virtues and vices, led to a particular historical unfolding; once cemented in their extensive networks (marketing, manufacturing, popular discourse, journalistic coverage, and the pedagogical process of initiating new project participants), the 'ecological niche' possibilities for other options diminished. this process is nicely described i n the "social shaping of technology" literature (e.g., bijker & law ), i n w h i c h the manifold possibilities of a new technology are completed and subsequently reified by social factors. this also works well w i t h the notion of "irreversibility" of techno-economic networks raised by m i c h e l c a l l o n ( ). personal computing has thus become "a network whose interfaces have all been standard- ized," and therefore w h i c h "transforms its actors into docile agents and its intermediaries into stimuli w h i c h automatically evoke certain kinds of responses" (p. ). is that enough? perhaps not. t o end the story—and the analysis—here is to miss much of the r i c h and interesting detail; it is to revert to the agnostic stance, i n w h i c h technocultural phenomena are judged 'behaviourally' by their empirical historical impact or by the extent of their propagation. it is to miss—or willfully ignore—the questions of what makes a good idea good, a powerful idea powerful. w h a t makes us able to recognize a good or powerful idea, and conversely what prevents us from that recognition? w h y should we want to sidestep those issues? w e have to go deeper, into the specifics of the thing. the technocentric answer to the question of why the dynabook vision has not prevailed is one of implementation engineering: the u n i x (and by extension the programming language c) tradition makes a virtue of prying computing efficiencies—and therefore chapter : personal computing in the age of the web speed—out of language abstraction. c strikes an extremely different bargain w i t h a . programmer than smalltalk does. c (and like languages: pascal, c++, etc.) allows a trained programmer to achieve computing efficiencies not too far off writing i n assembly language (i.e. very low level, close to the machine) while giving that programmer a reasonably expres- sive language. in contrast, smalltalk (and lisp before it) are languages w h i c h begin w i t h abstraction; they are mathematically derived, and the implementation details follow; more important is the conceptual flexibility and scaffolding opportunities afforded the program- mer. the result is that though they allow vastly greater and more flexible abstraction and open-endedness, dynamic languages like smalltalk and lisp simply produce slower- running software than languages like c, all other things being equal. this issue, and the debate over whether it is preferable to conserve processor time or programmer time has existed since the early days of lisp. but, more practically, where this issue has hit the marketplace, especially i n the early days of microcomputers, the need for low-level performance has dominated. a more interesting and culturally situated treatment of this cultural divide is explored from w i t h i n the lisp community in richard gabriel's ( ) article, "the rise o f ' w o r s e is better,'" w h i c h suggests that the virtues of simplicity, correctness, consistency, and complete- ness are i n different proportion i n different systems design communities, and, by extension, that the definitition of these qualities changes somewhat according to their interrelation- ship. gabriel identifies the lisp school of design (the " m i t approach") as the right thing with a particular formalist rendering of these four qualities, putting correctness and consistency foremost. the "worse-is-better" school of design, however, places a higher prority on the virtue of simplicity, w h i c h brings about a refiguration of the other three: early u n i x and c are examples of the use of this school of design, and i w i l l call the use of this design strategy the new jersey approach. i have intentionally . recall that while alan kay was at apple computer, it was all they could do to wring barely usable performance levels out of s-era macintoshes running smalltalk. their experience hardly inspired anyone to adopt such technology, and they contin- ued to use it—even to the point of developing a specially optimized version (smalltalk-v) for the vivarium project;—despite the practical issues of performance. chapter : personal computing in the age of the web caricatured the worse-is-better philosophy to convince you that it is obviously a bad philosophy and that the n e w jersey approach is a bad approach. however, i believe that worse-is-better, even i n its strawman form, has better survival characteristics than the-right-thing, and that the n e w jersey approach when used for software is a better approach than the m i t approach. (gabriel ) w i t h o u t getting into the details of gabriel's analysis, and to say nothing of the generations of rebuttals and counter-rebuttals he and others have written, it is informative to see that the issue can be quite effectively addressed from the inside of a particular cultural context, and that such expositions tell us something quite different from an external analysis. that morally charged vocabulary like "right thing" and "correct" can be used unproblematically (or at least constructively) i n a consideration of why technological systems tend toward one or other historical trajectory is key: this is a long way from the "social shaping" approach, i n that it allows for the virtues of the ideas themselves—or at the very least their incarnation i n systems—to speak alongside more straightforward social and cultural factors. it speaks to significance and meaning-making that is emergent from technocultural systems and their attendant virtues. that said, there is nothing here to suggest that there is only one "insider" perspective; perspectives are emergent; they rise and fall, as discursive patterns come and go, are rein- forced and reiterated or wither and fade away. gabriel's discussion is not an argument for c and u n i x , but rather an assessment of the fate of lisp i n a c / u n i x - d o m i n a t e d world. this assessment has a particular character today w h i c h is decidely different from what it looked like i n or . this is an ecological shift, though, as opposed to an argument being w o n or lost on objective merits. note that even a technocentric analysis, taken to sufficient depth, necessarily becomes one of ecology. the dynabook: existence and essence the dynabook—like smalltalk itself—is no more or less marginal an idea today than it ever was, despite there being better supports—technological and cultural—for it than there ever chapter : personal computing in the age of the web have been before: computer hardware is inexpensive and ubiquitous; the internet is wide^- spread and more or less faithful to its original concept; there exists now a set of norms and institutions governing the widespread sharing of software; and, though this way of express- ing it has fallen out of favour, "computer literacy" is a matter of practical concern to millions of people, young and old alike. the extension of networks—in both the literal sense and i n latour's sociotechnical sense—is far greater and more powerful. if there was ever a time for the dynabook to succeed i n the world, surely it is now. but the cultural milieu—about ideas and meanings and the relative significance of things—are far from favourable to the dynabook today. w h a t is recognizable as a powerful idea has shifted significantly. w h a t counts as a virtue or a vice i n this cultural milieu has shifted since the m i d s. o n some level that is not at all technical—nor even technocul- tural—the dynabook seems very far apart from the values and concerns and practicalities of today's world, today's schools, today's students. i can argue here that this is an unfortunate thing, but there is little i can do to bridge the gap conceptually. in his evocative and stylish case study, aramis: for the love of technology, latour goes so far to as to raise the question of whether or not a r a m i s , the ill-fated rapid transit system, exists: chase away the people and i return to an inert state. brin g the people back and i am aroused again, but my life belongs to the engineers who are pushing me, pulling me, repairing me, deciding about me, cursing me, steering me. n o , a r a m i s is not yet among the powers that be. the prototype circulates i n bits and pieces between the hands of humans; humans do not circulate between my sides. i am a great human anthill, a huge body i n the process of composition and decomposition, depending. if men stop being interested i n me, i don't even talk anymore. the thing lies dismembered, i n countless pieces dispersed among laboratories and workshops. aramis, i, we, hesitate to exist. the thing hasn't become irreversible. the thing doesn't impose itself on anyone. the thing hasn't broken its ties to its creators. (latour , p. ) . disessa articulates a similar theme with reference to the difficulty of obtaining funding for computational media projects in a world in which so many of these black boxes are closed. "the self-evident state of the art blinds people to other possibilities" ( , p. ). chapter : personal computing in the age of the web surely the ontological status of the dynabook is no different. a r a m i s too comprised many powerful ideas, but powerful ideas alone didn't make it real. despite three decades of almost constant attention by kay and his circle of devotees and developers, the dynabook exists only tenuously: implied i n the marginal survival of smalltalk, echoed in our wireless laptops, remembered by a small cadre of developers, but surely i n danger of total collapse as soon as guiding hands fall away. o r is it? does latour's parable of the irrevocable, tragic reversibility (pace callon) of technosocial systems totally apply? a t some point, the dynabook's continued play for exist- ence (if not actual existence) over thirty-five years puts it in a different class than the m u c h shorter-lived aramis project. does this make the dynabook more alive—or just more undead, a better candidate for the b-movie horror genre? a n d what of the myriad facets of the dynabook w h i c h have been realized and even reified i n any number of successful forms, from the various smalltaiks to powerbooks, photoshop, and peer-to-peer networks? bits of the dynabook surely live on—though mostly far removed from educational concerns. but if these surviving elements are no longer connected to an educational project, let alone an educational vision, then we have to ask whether the dynabook has been translated into unrecognizable form, into non-existence. the bigger question w h i c h emerges here is perhaps not i n what ways does the dyna- book experience resemble or not resemble latour's account of a r a m i s . the bigger question, it seems to me, is whether latour's technosocial ontology has everything it needs to account for a phenomena like the dynabook. latour, for one, seems to have no time for anything resembling a "powerful idea"—such things, when they appear at all in a story like a r a m i s ' seem to come and go, are either engineers' fantasies or mere epiphenomena of latour's concrete, materialist philosophy. such materialism makes for tidy technosociologies. i am not convinced, however, whether it does justice to the experience of technosocial actualities. where this story needs to go next is on to the dynabook's latter-day resurgence, i n a project called squeak, w h i c h arose i n kay's final days at a p p l e computer i n the s, and chapter : personal computing in the age of the web w h i c h has carried his project along ever since. whether the dynabook is real—in any mean- ingful sense—surely has something to do w i t h the reality of squeak. chapter : personal computing in the age of the web chapter : squeaks small but mighty roar in the back of our minds, we allfelt that we werefinally doing what we hadfailed to do in . - dan ingalls, the story related so far is unremarkable i n so far as it tells of the rise and fall of a cultural object—an idea whose time has come and gone; a technology w h i c h has become obsolete; an ideological or philosophical stance no longer relevant i n a changed w o r l d . if the story were to end there, this finality w o u l d be an easy conclusion, and we w o u l d be i n a position, like latour i n aramis, to ask—in the past tense—who or what killed the dynabook? w h a t makes this story more complicated and ultimately more important to present- day concerns of educational technology, the political landscape of the digital sphere, and even approaches to the sociology of knowledge is the significant re-emergence of the d y n a - book project from a l a n kay's team i n the late s: a new smalltalk environment called squeak. n o t merely a re-release of "classic" smalltalk, squeak represented a re-contextuali- zation of smalltalk i n the age of the w e b , multimedia, and the free/open-source software movement. squeak symbolizes at least the persistence of the dynabook vision and exists as a k i n d of proof of concept for the applicability of kay's s-era research i n a later age. the squeak project and the communities surrounding it provide interesting fodder for an actor- network approach to technocultural history; on the one hand, squeak's trajectory and the challenges of establishing networks of support and currency make for straightforward actor-network exposition; on the other hand, the extent to w h i c h squeak embodies ideas w h i c h have been lurking, latent, without supporting networks, for close to two decades, presents challenges for this mode of sociology; it is difficult to account for squeak and its relative success from a purely materialist frame. chapter : squeak's small but mighty roar s q u e a k : a r e n a i s s a n c e s m a l l t a l k by , a l a n kay's momentum had slowed considerably. the v i v a r i u m project, which had provided a development and research focus through the s, had "run down" by , and the software research that followed it amounted to little. the patronage of apple c e o john sculley ended in . after a decade of struggling to regain the energy of the s, the m i d s must have been a frustrating time. i saw kay deliver a keynote speech at the third w o r l d - w i d e w e b conference at darmstadt i n ; wielding his videotape of douglas engelbart's demo i n w h i c h the software pioneer showed a mouse-driven, networked hypermedia system, he chided delegates not to be so proud of the w e b , and made an appeal for a network of message-passing objects instead. after his talk, he was set upon by dozens of young developers dying to know what he thought about java, sun microsystems' brand new o o p language, positioned very much as a w e b technology. kay remained guarded. the same year, d a n ingalls, who had been the chief architect of smalltalk at x e r o x p a r c , returned to kay's team. ingalls had come to a p p l e computer i n the m i d s to do research work on smalltalk at apple, but this lasted only a short time. ingalls left apple, and the it industry entirely for almost a decade. in the early s, he took a job at interval research working on a smalltalk-based home-media project. in late , t e d kaehler began coaxing ingalls to come back to the team at a p p l e . ingalls' work at interval required h i m to come up w i t h a smalltalk implementation, w h i c h he did using the relatively open- licensed a p p l e smalltalk and the program listings published i n adele goldberg and dave robson's book smalltalk- : the language and its implementation—the book w h i c h hadbeen the culmination of x e r o x p a r c ' s release of smalltalk into the wider world. m u s i n g over a reunion with kay and kaehler at apple, ingalls felt that he would need to re- create a smalltalk version again, and, i n a flash of insight, he realized that what he had done at interval could be accomplished mechanically. ingalls joined kay's team at apple i n late , and immediately began this work. chapter : squeak's small but mighty roar "back to the future" in a conference paper by ingalls and a few of his long-time associates, he wrote: in december of , the authors found themselves wanting a development environment i n w h i c h to b u i l d educational software that could be used—and even programmed—by non-technical people, and by children. w e wanted our software to be effective i n mass-access media such as p d a s and the internet, where download times and power considerations make compactness essential, and where hardware is diverse, and operating systems may change or be completely absent. therefore our ideal system would be a small, portable kernel of simple and uniform design that could be adapted rapidly to new deliv- ery vehicles. w e considered using java but, despite its promise, java was not yet mature: its libraries were i n a state of flux, few commercial implementations were available, and those that were available lacked the hooks required to create the k i n d of dynamic change that we envisioned. w h i l e smalltalk met the technical desiderata, none of the available imple- mentations gave us. the k i n d of control we wanted over graphics, sound, and the smalltalk engine itself, nor the freedom to port and distribute the resulting work, including its host environment, freely over the internet. moreover, we felt that we were not alone, that many others i n the research community shared our desire for an open, portable, malleable, and yet practical object-oriented programming environment. it became clear that the best way to get what we all wanted was to build a new smalltalk w i t h these goals and to share it with this wider community. ("back to the future." ingalls et al. ) this "new smalltalk" was squeak, released (from a p p l e computer's research labs) i n october as d a n ingalls made a short announcement o n the comp.lang.smalltalk usenet newsgroup: "squeak—a usable smalltalk written i n i t s e l f (ingalls ). the "back to the future" phrase was particularly apt; not only had a l a n kay managed to regain his core xerox-era technical team i n ingalls and kaehler, but they were able to pick up where they'd left off, nearly two decades before. the squeak project is notably not a necrophilic dredging of the glory days; its prime motivation was a profound dissatisfaction w i t h the tools availa- . ingalls later reflected on the split (between an educational focus and systems programming focus) that seems to have emerged at xerox parc after smalltalk- was created. according to ingalls, kay had suggested at the time that the more child-friendly smalltalk- could be implemented within smalltalk- , and ingalls agreed." but the thing is, i didn't do it." with squeak, first priority was given to educational and personal media tools like animation, sound, and child-friendly programming. chapter : squeak's small but mighty roar ble, as well as the knowledge that what they had had i n the late s had not been equalled. kay had spent, by this point, over a decade trying to wrestle apple's systems into service for his educational projects, using various s-vintage smalltalk implementations, simula- tion environments like agar and playground, and apple's own tools (like hypercard), without much success. in , sun microsystems' java appeared, drawing i n large part on smalltalk's vision: a network-aware, object-oriented system that could serve as an interac- tive multimedia platform for the w e b . but java failed to capture kay's imagination; it was far too inelegant for h i m : "java is the most distressing thing to hit computing since m s - d o s , " he reportedly said at a conference (guzdial ). w h a t kay's team at a p p l e wanted was clear enough: something as elegant as the small- talks they had worked w i t h at xerox, but brought up to date, w i t h the modern internet and modern multimedia i n m i n d (colour, sound, video). they needed something like java, but not the huge, byzantine system that java was emerging as. java was distressing because it delivered on some of the promise—a network-aware object-oriented system—but without the tidy conceptual elegance (e.g., the kernel expressible i n "half a page of code") w h i c h could make it usable (and extensible) by people other than professional software engineers. o f course, java's popularity soared, and with it its complexity. ingalls' aesthetic addressed this, too; he wanted to write a smalltalk entirely i n smalltalk, to make the system completely self-contained. this w o u l d accomplish two very important things: it w o u l d allow the system to be capable of evolution: if the base implementation needed to change, this could be accomplished 'from within.' ingalls wrote squeak in apple smalltalk- , and as a result, future versions can be written within squeak. but second, having a self-contained smalltalk implementation would mean that it was vastly more "portable": squeak could be imple- mented o n a m a c , on a p c , on a u n i x workstation, or what have y o u . ingalls' goal was to create a bootstrappable smalltalk that would free it from dependency on any other plat- form—or vendor. j . ingalls' paper," back to the future" details exactly how this "smalltalk written in itself" was accomplished. the practical results are impressive: the team at apple had squeak working in a mere weeks, (ingalls et al. ). when the code was released onto the internet, ports to unix and windows appeared within and weeks, respectively (ingalls ). chapter : squeak's small but mighty roar the larger context for this development was the fate of a p p l e computer, w h i c h i n could not have looked darker. after long-time c e o john sculley's departure from the company i n , apple's corporate health was i n crisis. by , frequent senior management changes, big layoffs, and mismanagement had pushed apple's stock price lower than it had been i n years, descending into a trough that it w o u l d not recover from until . w h i l e it has been fashionable for computer industry pundits to predict apple's imminent demise ever since the company's founding, at no time did it look more likely than the m i d s. microsoft had just released its enormously popular windows operating system and was in a period of unprecedented growth. m a n y people—including apple insiders—believed that apple's days were numbered. by throwing i n their lot w i t h apple, a l a n kay the p r e c t r i g s g n ^ ^ f ^ l l t a l g i b n q q e ' j .:ipiliiji..n,pwi!' # • ' wnether.apple computer,would collapse or not kay;s research funding was in jeopardy, and i h e ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ s ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ a k r i r s f r " ^ ' c m i , p ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ g ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ i f . ' t h e ! i n d u s t r y ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ w a ' p ' p i c like a r i s k ) p ^ r a e ^ p q u ^ ^ a e ^ l d p e r john moloney recalls working with kay s icam at the t mo • ' ' . v - i*i.- ltrv.. i i vuvs'ilamnd that ilwt wnntid test stun in si nan \ <>ht woula tnaki' a- • wayjci that to happc'ri'tiut witht. lit a i'kir path for wide sink, royalty im want toj tjjort. mto- paui'i ialii}, - ' 'ilntity and his colleagues had i n a sense chosen sides i n the " ' 'computer wars' of the s; it had begun as an apple vs. i b m battle, but by the m i d s, apple's adversary was clearly microsoft. by , this must have looked like a dangerous predicament. the development of squeak—a portable implementation of smalltalk—and kay's work to secure an open source license agreement for it ensured that they had an escape pod. though the development work had been done at apple, and had relied largely on a p p l e resources, squeak w o u l d be i n no way dependent upon apple; if apple were to 'go under' and kay's team to find a new home, at least the fruits of their efforts would escape w i t h them. chapter : squeak's small but mighty roar a s it happened, kay and his research team did indeed jump ship; in october , just as squeak was publicly released on the internet, kay and his colleagues left a p p l e to join w a l t disney imagineering, recruited by the head of r & d there, film and theatre designer bran ferreh. kay and the squeak team w o u l d remain at disney for another years. a p p l e computer, of course, would survive to make blue computers and ipods for a waiting w o r l d . squeak's release to the internet was, i n a sense, the culmination of a project begun i n , when adele goldberg and colleagues set about preparing smalltalk- for release to the w o r l d beyond x e r o x p a r c . but the computing industry of had evolved limited options for the general release of technologies. goldberg's aspiration for smalltalk was for it to be released as widely as possible, and i n fact, a number of the original licenses were sold for $ (goldberg ). however, the entanglements between x e r o x corporation, parc- place systems (the company spun off to license smalltalk- ), and the limited number of interested licensees) meant that smalltalk- remained a marginal technology. in , however, w i t h a widely available internet and a growing movement i n free and open-source software, squeak had the opportunity to have a truly wide reach. the initial results were encouraging. by the end of , external developers had sight- unseen picked up squeak and ported it to w i n d o w s and u n i x platforms, confirming ingalls' belief i n its platform independence (the october release had been a m a c application). today, squeak runs on more varied computing platforms than almost any open source technology (over , according to viewpointsresearch.org). portability and openness were just two of the virtues squeak embodied; also key was the fact that internet and multimedia capabilities were almost immediately available w i t h i n squeak. in , a system was released that allowed squeak to run w i t h i n a web page (by way of a web browser plug-in, just like java, flash, and other multimedia platforms), so squeak-based content could be accessed via the w e b . this makes squeak m u c h easier to access for teachers and others restricted from installing software on lab computers. f r o m the standpoint of the core developers, squeak meant that they were once again i n control of their software. georgia tech's m a r k g u z d i a l notes that, " a l a n kay is most proud chapter : squeak's small but mighty roar http://viewpointsresearch.org that each generation of smalltalk obliterated the version before, until it went commercial. then it became frozen. use squeak as a way to obsolete it"(guzdial ). kay hoped that squeak, though based on smalltalk- , would open up the development of the architectures and concepts underlying the language itself. in his introduction to guzdial's book, squeak: object oriented design with multimedia applications, kay wrote: in squeak, you have i n your hands one of the most late bound, yet practical, programming systems ever created. it is also an artifact w h i c h is wide, broad, and deep enough to permit real scientific study, creation of new theories, new mathematics, and new engineering constructions. in fact, squeak is primed to be the engine of its own replacement. since every mechanism that squeak uses i n its own construction is i n plain view and is changeable by any programmer, it can be understood and played with. "extreme play" could very easily result in the creation of a system better than squeak, very different from squeak, or both. w e not only give permission for you to do this, we urge you to try! w h y ? because our field is still a long way from a reasonable state, and we cannot allow bad defacto standards (mostly controlled by vendors) to hold back progress. (kay b, p. xii) this very idea that squeak might be the instrument of its o w n obsolescence speaks to an important tension w i t h i n the squeak community. s q u e a k a s a n e d u c a t i o n a l p l a t f o r m squeak is an idea processor for children of all ages! - alan kay, www.squeakland.org w i t h i n the squeak community that has emerged since is a tension w h i c h dates back to the s at x e r o x p a r c : a system of sufficient flexibility, concision, and conceptual elegance to be useful as an educational media platform is also a powerful draw for systems developers and professional programmers. this tension was manifest in the translation of smalltalk- into the more robust smalltalk- , and it is manifest i n squeak, w h i c h presented itself first as a personal media toolkit along the lines of kay's dynabook vision (in chapter : squeak's small but mighty roar http://www.squeakland.org kay's terminology, an "almost new thing"), but w h i c h was quickly picked up by members of the smalltalk development community as an open-source smalltalk implementation ("a better old thing"). today, these two communities are clearly distinct, w i t h different websites and mailing lists serving as the touchstones and meeting places of these groups. for instance, the website at squeak.org and the squeak-dev mailing list primarily serve the devel- opment community; a different website at squeakland.org (and the squeakland mailing list) address the concerns of educators and learners (there are also a large number of other distinct subcommunities online—more about that below). this unresolved tension has existed since the s at xerox: certainly since kay's "burn the disk packs" turning point w i t h smalltalk- , and probably long before that (ted kaehler, personal communication); what is different today, however, is that both the systems focus and the educational focus draw on three decades of prior work. in practical terms, this means that squeak as an educa- tional platform is certainly not starting from scratch. etoys: doing with images makes symbols etoys emerged in the early years of squeak, and is practically synonymous w i t h squeak for many people who encounter it. etoys is a tile-based scripting environment for children that lets them orchestrate sophisticated behaviour for onscreen objects—without having to compose programming code i n the traditional way (i.e., typing syntactically perfect code and then watching what breaks). etoys, thus, is a latter-day iteration of kay's evolving ideas about kids as novice programmers, building on a three-decade heritage of research i n this area. this work began i n smalltalk- at xerox, w i t h the learning research g r o u p investi- gating what kinds of scaffolding are required i n order for kids and novices to achieve meaningful results. adele goldberg's "joe box" work is the hallmark of this research, gener- alized to the idea that a set of well thought-out superclasses as building blocks then allows users to specialize them i n interesting ways. the original smalltalk- , drawing on the logo language, attempted to offer a very simple syntax and keep the referents concrete, but the chapter : squeak's small but mighty roar http://squeak.org http://squeakland.org mode of user interaction was still primarily textual—one typed i n program code one line at a time. smalltalk- furthered the idea of a system architecture based on a hierarchy of object classes and provided a host of graphical tools for accessing those components, but this was arguably of more use to systems developers than children or novices. kay wrote a chapter for world book encyclopedia's science yearbook entitled "programming y o u r o w n computer." this chapter laid out a schematic for a programming interface re-oriented to novice users (indeed, high-school students were the audience for this book). in the world book chapter, a "player" object could be inspected via a very simple window displaying the current values of various parameters, and these values could be directly manipulated or scripted. the importance of such a feature is that it brings the "direct manipulation" interface (laurel & m o u n t f o r d ) to the realm of programming; by clicking on an onscreen object, one can reveal properties and behaviours, w h i c h can then be directly modified. chapter : squeak's small but mighty roar this i m a g e has b e e n r e m o v e d because o f c o p y r i g h t restrictions. figure . : from "programming your own computer" (kay ) chapter : squeak's small but mighty roar the programming interface i n the world book chapter was idealized, but kay's projects i n later years w o u l d realize this ideal. the playground system from the v i v a r i u m project at a p p l e was based on "player" objects that could be inspected i n just this way. "one way to think about playground is as having a spreadsheet view, a h y p e r c a r d view, and a textual programming view, all simultaneously," wrote a n n m a r i o n ( , ch . p. ). but playground, w i t h its "observer" model inspired by the dynamic spreadsheet (as opposed to the smalltalk message-passing model) proved a bit too rigid. playground "players" were not message-sending objects, but observers, watching other objects' parameters i n the same way a formula cell i n a spreadsheet watches the values of the cells it depends on. for exam- ple, i n the playground environment, a simulated 'shark' object is continually watching the parameter values on a 'prey' object; a message-sending version of the same thing could have the 'shark' object specifically querying the 'prey' object for its co-ordinates or direction, or, alternatively, the 'prey' object sending out various parameter values, w h i c h may or may not be received by the 'shark' object. the "observer" model produces an arguably simpler, cleaner programming environment, but provides a single, limited model for inter-object communication. kay recollected: playground was k i n d of a generalized event-driven system that had objects which were kind of like a collection of generalized spreadsheet cells, this i m a g e has b e e n r e m o v e d because o f c o p y r i g h t restrictions. figure . : playground ii " s c r i p t o r " (from m a r i o n , c h . l p. ) chapter : squeak's small but mighty roar completely concurrent, etc. this gave the kids the state of objects to look at, but not call/return. every value was a thread. i loved to program in it, but i thought that, i n the end, it was a little too pristine for year olds—it was a little too m u c h like pure lisp functional programming i n how clever you needed to be. the cleverness was rewarded by beautiful, simple, and powerful programs, however. (kay ) etoys i n squeak built upon this player-and-viewer model, merging parts of the "observer" idea w i t h smalltalk's message-passing model. it also drew substantially from a tradition of iconic programming research at a p p l e and elsewhere. iconic programming—that is, composing program-like structures by manipulating graphical elements on screen—dates back to ivan sutherland's sketchpad and the r a n d corporation's early pen-based grail system, and has been sought after ever since. kay mentions having iconic programming i n m i n d i n the first dynabook concepts (kay a, p. ). david smith's pygmalion system ("an executable electronic blackboard"), w h i c h dates from the m i d s at xerox, is an early and celebrated iconic programming environment (smith ). smith and a l l e n cypher later worked on an iconic programming system called cocoa while at a p p l e computer (cocoa was commercialized i n as stagecase creator). a n d , during his brief stay at a p p l e i n the m i d s, d a n ingalls (along w i t h scott wallace and others who w o u l d later create squeak) created a smalltalk-based iconic programming environment called fabrik. a n a p p l e "advanced technology g r o u p research note" (chesley et al. ) enti- tled end user programming: discussion of fifteen ideals illustrates the k i n d of thinking that was active i n the m i d s: throughout, direct manipulation and visual concreteness are key virtues. kay's touchstone was his reading of jerome bruner's model of three distinctive modes of thinking: concrete, iconic, and symbolic (bruner , p. l l f f ; kay , p. ff)—that these are not developmental stages we pass through so m u c h as styles of thinking w h i c h we use i n different combinations i n different contexts. the way forward, according to this thinking, was not simply to replace the symbolic w i t h the iconic—that is, to replace program code w i t h iconic representations—but to recognize and nurture the interplay chapter : squeak's small but mighty roar a m o n g a l l t h r e e . a k e y r e m i n d e r o f t h i s w a s t h e s t r a i g h t f o r w a r d s u c c e s s o f b i l l a t k i n s o n ' s h y p e r c a r d , w h i c h , w h i l e b e i n g m u c h s i m p l e r ( a n d m o r e r e s t r i c t i v e ) c o n c e p t u a l l y t h a n a n y o f t h e s m a l l t a l k s , f a c i l i t a t e d s i m p l e s c r i p t i n g b y a t t a c h i n g m e s s a g e s t o b u t t o n s o r t e x t f i e l d s o n t h e s c r e e n . a u s e r c o u l d u s e g r a p h i c s t o o l s t o c r e a t e a n o n s c r e e n o b j e c t , t h e r e b y m a k i n g s o m e t h i n g c o n c r e t e t o w o r k a n d t h i n k w i t h — a n d then a t t a c h s o m e s c r i p t i n g o r m e s s a g e - s e n d i n g t o i t . t h i s s i m p l e i n s i g h t w a s t a k e n u p b y k a y ' s t e a m f o r e t o y s ( t e d k a e h l e r , p e r s o n a l c o m m u n i c a t i o n , o c t o b e r ) : a l l o w i n g d i r e c t m a n i p u l a t i o n o f o b j e c t s ( t h a t i s , o n s c r e e n w i t h t h e m o u s e ) t o l e a d t o s c a f f o l d e d s c r i p t s , o n e l i n e a t a t i m e , a n d t h e n t o f u r t h e r g e n e r a l i z e d p r o g r a m m i n g a t t h e p o i n t w h e n i t s e e m s e a s i e r t o m o v e t o t h e m o r e a b s t r a c t f o r m . w h a t e t o y s p r o v i d e s i s a v i s u a l p r o g r a m m i n g e n v i r o n m e n t t h a t i s a b l e n d o f t h e d i r e c t - m a n i p u l a t i o n i c o n i c s t y l e a n d t h e t e x t u a l / s y m b o l i c a p p r o a c h . a n y g r a p h i c a l o b j e c t ( e t o y s e n c o u r a g e s o n e t o b e g i n w i t h a g r a p h i c o b j e c t ) c a n b e s c r i p t e d b y o p e n i n g a " v i e w e r " v e r y m u c h l i k e t h e o n e s k e t c h e d o u t i n t h e world book c h a p t e r ; t h i s p r e s e n t s a n u m b e r o f t h e o b j e c t ' s a t t r i b u t e s ( p o s i t i o n , h e a d i n g , e t c . ) t o b e s h o w n i n a l i s t o f d i r e c t - m a n i p u l a t i o n w i n d o w s . o i v i s k e t c h o search | mou-e j f| s k e t c h ' s i s l l n d e r m o u s e true > < * scripts! f| s k e t c h c i r c l e s paused i f| s k e t c h e m p t y s c r l p t r~ < o i * • c t i o f j i g] s k e t c h f o r w a r d b y j i t ! g s k e t c h t u r n by [j s k e t c h ' s « m % s k e t c h ' s y £j @ s k e t c h ' s h e a d i n g [jj i q s k e t c h a l i g n a f t e r d o t i h s k e t c h b o u n c e | s i l e n c e f g s k e t c h f o l l o w p a t h i f| s k e t c h m o v e t o w a r d d o t g s k e t c h ' s o b t r u d e s false i f| s k e t c h t u r n t o w a r d d o t i f| s k e t c h w r a p ! o • s k e t c h ] c i r c l e s paused [^] x s k e t c h f o r w a r d b y • a- s k e t c h t u r n b y £ |» figure . : etoys " v i e w e r " in squeak . c h a p t e r : squeak's s m a l l b u t m i g h t y r o a r at the most immediate, the values of the various parameters can be changed, either by typing or by choosing possible values from a menu. some of the parameters are animation oriented: for each "tick" of a system clock, any parameters concerned with changes—position, heading, etc.—will update by the specified amount. the result is that simply by clicking and typing in the viewer window, the object can be made to change and move immedi- ately. the second step is to drag a "script" window out from the viewer. once this has been done, "tile-based" programming is available. parameters from the viewer can be drag-and-dropped into the script; here is where the tradition of iconic programming intersects with etoys. with a script constructed, running the "ticker" system clock causes the script.to be executed (looping is the usual behaviour). the script can be modified as it is running by dragging new items from the viewer, or removing them, or by changing the values of object parameters. conditional "tests" can be dragged in as well, again, using the viewer parameters as components. so a good deal of programming functionality can be accomplished simply by dragging and dropping parameters and script components, and by directly manipulating the parameters in real time (this also provides a real-time update of the various parameters). with just what i have described, most of logo-style turtle geome- try can be accomplished via direct manipulation: no "code" needs to be written as such. however, since etoys is merely an interface to squeak smalltalk, there is a traditional smalltalk code representation lurking in each etoys object as well; and it is possible to toggle between the draggable "script" version and a more traditional code editor window. chapter : squeak's small but mighty roar ! o • |engine| script paused ft] x engine f o r w a r d b; ; *• engine "rake soun | splasr test engine's • color see:hcolor englnejturn b; e n g i n e ' s [ p » n d o w t i j 'alse engine t u r n b; | v e n g i n e ' s [ p « " p ° " ' " [ » r " « ! o h :engine|script paused ft] x script self forvardi . self beep: 'splash', (self color: (color r: . g: . b: . ) sees: (color r: . fe: . b: . )) " false iftrue: [self turn: - . self setpendovn: false] iffalse: [self turn: . self setpendovn: truej figure . : etoys tile representation and equivalent smalltalk c o d e the e f f e c t is that kay's bruner-esque "doing with images makes symbols" is embodied most directly in the etoys interface: concrete, direct manipulation is the most immediate kind of interaction made possible here; iconic tiles then can be used as stand-ins for black- boxed functionality (such as the logo-derived "move forward steps", or even, at a higher level of organization, an entire script represented as an icon or tile), and the symbolic level is available as well. the idea is that kids can encounter and explore the etoy environment in any (or any combination) of these styles. squeak vs. squeakland is etoys what squeak is all about? yes and no; it is undoubtedly the central focus of squeak- land.org, the website and community established by alan kay's nonprofit viewpoints research institute in glendale, c a . squeakland is the public face of squeak in educational contexts, and etoys is what it is all about. as we shall see, there are other faces to squeak, but this one forms the core of the present discussion. the squeakland.org website offers about two dozen etoy projects—these are download- able squeak files which can be accessed either via the squeak web browser plugin or from a full squeak installation. a "project" is an encapsulated multimedia artifact, typically consist- chapter : squeak's small but mighty roar http://land.org http://squeakland.org ing of an etoys simulation or tutorial (often as an "active essay"—that is, explanatory text accompanied by a number of active etoy components). these downloadable projects are organized into rough curricular divisions: elementary school, middle school, high school. some have been created by viewpoints staff, but others are showcased works by children or teachers. b. j. a l l e n - c o n n , a teacher at the l a o p e n school, and viewpoints executive director k i m rose have published a book of etoys exercises ( a l l e n - c o n n & rose ) w h i c h perhaps serves as the central text of the squeak educational community. the book walks though—tutorial style—a series of etoys exercises w h i c h deal i n a roundabout fashion w i t h the concept of acceleration. the book begins w i t h the usual etoy starting point: painting a small graphic of a car. the car object is then made to move around the screen by adjusting the parameters i n the viewer. next, we are instructed to paint a steering wheel, and param- eters for the steering wheel are connected to those of the car, so that when we rotate the steering wheel object, the car turns left and right. this basic etoy can be built i n a couple of minutes, and is presented as an introductory etoys exercise. the "montessori game" here is for the children to get most of their pay-off playing i n the hand-eye arena, while gradually and subliminally gaining fluency and appreciation of the power of symbols. ( a l l e n - c o n n & rose , p. ) . the etoys "car" exercise is featured as well in several of alan kay's recent lectures and talks; it serves as the basic etoys demo. chapter : squeak's small but mighty roar ! o • [car] drive paused ^ x car forward by | )• car turn by wheel's heading i- o : f§| v c a r bp ft basic! i ^ car make sound | croak i |g car forward by | ! car turn b y | * f r j | | car's xi car's y g j [ § car's heading' j[j f. * mm * pen usej i [|] car clear all pen trails i car's dotsize i car's pencolor i car's pendown | true i car's pensize i car's trallstyle ; lines figure . : t h e hallmark "drive a car" etoy, with d y n a m i c interaction between two objects, represented by the two square tabs in the u p p e r right; the viewer panel for the c a r tab is o p e n and visible here. tiles such as " w h e e l ' s h e a d i n g " can be s i m p l y d r a g g e d a n d d r o p p e d as b u i l d i n g blocks into a script ( a l l e n - c o n n & rose ) . from this direct-manipulation exercise, we are invited to begin scripting the car to behave semi-autonomously; following an arbitrary track, and speeding up and slowing down. then, two cars can be raced on the screen, and the concept of acceleration is introduced by distin- guishing between speed (distance travelled per 'tick') and change in speed (one parameter affecting another parameter). w i t h a model for visualizing acceleration established, a l l e n - c o n n & rose then turn to a discussion of gravity; we are invited to go outside and drop different kinds of weights from a height, as with galileo's classic experiment. squeak is re- introduced as a multimedia tool at this point, to examine frames of digital video shot of the dropping weights. by measuring the distance travelled by the falling weights from frame to frame, a concrete visualization (an "inscription," i n latour's terminology) of acceleration is re-created; now the earlier simulation model of acceleration can be adapted to a simulation of gravity's pull on falling objects (pp. - ). in a l l e n - c o n n & rose's treatment, etoys seems aimed at teachers and schools; mostly upper elementary and middle school. k i m rose (personal communication, ) reports chapter : squeak's small but mighty roar that she works with a small ( -odd) but growing number of schools on a regular basis, help- ing to support their use of etoys; this represents a good proportion of the traffic o n the squeakland e-mail list. but interestingly, when etoys were first developed, schools were not the target; rather, individual children (and parents) surfing the internet were. a l a n kay explained it this way: i should say a little about the history of etoys. they were originally not aimed at classrooms but as - minute projects supplied on the web for parents and their children to do together. i stripped out as many features as i could and tried to come up with a system that could do " examples" pretty straightfor- wardly. the documentation that was intended here was to have been to teach parents how to do the examples so they and their kids could have a good expe- rience. for several reasons, this plan did not work out at disney. but bj [allen- conn] saw it and wanted to try etoys i n her th grade classroom. i was initially against the idea because i thought that etoys were not complete enough for that venue. but she and k i m rose decided to do it anyway. six weeks later they started to show me some really good results, and i realized that it would be worth doing a year experiment to see how well the etoys—even w i t h some of their lacks—would work out w i t h and year olds. (kay b) squeak in school squeak was not originally aimed at schools; indeed, homeschooling is a theme lurking just under the surface of the squeak philosophy. introducing squeak to educators was not orig- inally a priority. even the etoys user interface, w h i c h represents a significant advance i n terms of kids having some leverage i n a full-featured programming environment, was thought of in its early years as something that curious children would find on the internet and become interested i n . however, once bj a l l e n - c o n n picked up squeak for use at the l a o p e n school, squeak became a school-based technology. a n d , one must admit, if one's goal is to reach children, schools are at least a good place to find them ( k i m rose, personal communication, oct ). . the squeakland website lists "unschooling" advocate john holt as one of its "deep influences on thinking and learning" (along with bruner, piaget, montessori, and others). chapter : squeak's small but mighty roar squeak's open-source license is somewhat telling. by making squeak an open, non- commercial entity, kay and team abandoned m u c h of the traditional w o r l d of vendor- driven educational technology. squeak was aimed at children first, and then perhaps teach- ers. in contrast, 'successful' educational technology projects seem to be aimed at adminstrators and technology co-ordinators first. a s such, squeak has been spreading via word-of-mouth rather than via a marketing campaign as such ( k i m rose, personal c o m m u - nication, o c t ). it is, however, extremely difficult to say anything definitive about the extent of squeak's use by individual learners, parents, or even teachers, i n the same way it is difficult to say how many workstations running l i n u x there are i n the w o r l d . w h a t we can l talk about w i t h some certainty is what particular teachers have been doing w i t h squeak. after the v i v a r i u m project ended at apple computer (around ), bj a l l e n - c o n n maintained close contact w i t h a l a n kay and k i m rose, and continued to be part of their circle for many years. every summer for many years, a l a n kay has hosted a "learning lab" retreat at the a p p l e h i l l centre for chamber m u s i c in rural n e w hampshire (the attendee lists read like a who's who i n educational technology ). a t the retreat, a l l e n - c o n n saw an early version of squeak. a t the time, her technology curriculum at the l a o p e n school relied on an amazingly widely varied suite of tools: logo; apple's cocoa (later stagecast creator, a graphical "programming by demonstration" environment); agentsheets and hypergami (simulation software and d-modelling environment from the university of colorado); and a m y bruckman's moose crossing (a constructionist m o o environment from the m i t m e d i a lab)—all these simultaneously. but after seeing squeak at apple h i l l , she told kay she wanted it for her classroom. despite kay's initial reservations about using squeak i n a classroom setting, kay and rose and colleagues set about getting a version ready. a l l e n - c o n n began to replace the various software tools she was using, one by one, w i t h squeak. the factor that made the difference for her, she says, was the amount of time . for more info about kay's apple hill retreat, see http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/learninglab/ . bj allen-conn's ongoing connection to cutting-edge educational technology research is probably unparalleled among class- room teachers. • • • chapter : squeak's small but mighty roar http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/learninglab/ the children spend problem-solving, compared w i t h wrestling w i t h the software (allen- c o n n , personal communication, n o v ). since that time, a l l e n - c o n n has represented the vanguard of educators using squeak as a curriculum tool, and one of the primary developers of squeak/etoy-based curriculum resources (such as the book she and k i m rose published i n ). similiarly, the l a o p e n school has remained k a y s educational testbed, although not at the scale it enjoyed while apple was funding whole-school, integrated curriculum research i n the s. other nota- ble users of squeak i n school settings include two schools i n toronto, where school district trustee sheine mankovsky is a vocal advocate (don m i l l s m i d d l e school and d o n m i l l s collegiate). beyond n o r t h america, it would appear, squeak has more of a foothold. a s the old saying goes, squeak is "big i n japan." in fact, at a conference i n kyoto, "over teach- ers, students, researchers and developers gathered... to spend a day dedicated to talks and sharing about squeak, curriculum development, best practices and new squeak media." these numbers must be compared to the and squeakfest conferences, held i n chicago, and w h i c h attracted and people respectively. there is also squeak activity i n korea and brazil. the largest numbers may be i n europe; a substantial community of devel- opers is found i n germany. in spain, the regional government of extremadura has undertaken a very large-scale project to install open-source software i n schools. over , computers are running squeak on l i n u x there, though information about actual use of squeak i n classrooms is harder to come by. despite squeak's geographical distribution, though, the number of schools and teach- ers actually using squeak is, frankly, small. there seems to be more 'interest' i n squeak as an educational environment than there is actual practice. the squeakland mailing list, w h i c h is specifically for educational topics, has very little traffic: + subscribers, but only a handful of postings per week. by comparison, the squeak-dev list, w h i c h serves the programmer . information about the japanese squeak conference from http://squeakland.jp/images/news/html/kyotonews.htm—the us- based squeakfest can be found at http://interactive.colum.edu/partners/squeakfest/part.aspx . http://www.small-land.org chapter : squeak's small but mighty roar http://squeakland.jp/images/news/html/kyotonews.htm http://interactive.colum.edu/partners/squeakfest/part.aspx http://www.small-land.org community, has subscriptions as of the fall of , and commonly runs to - messages per day. w h y isn't squeak a bigger deal, given its heritage, its flexibility, its goals, its cost? the reasons are not surprising, but they are worth outlining i n some detail: • technology support in schools: the l a o p e n school is far from typical i n its commitment to technology, for reasons both ideological and financial. bj a l l e n - c o n n is quite skeptical of the idea that squeak could spread significantly via 'viral marketing' in a self-sustaining way. "teachers need support," she insists, i n the form of books and guides and one-on-one support; somebody has to teach the teachers, and make it possible—if not easy—for a teacher to actually pick up and use something like squeak i n their classroom. in order for squeak use to be more widespread, the supporting resources—books, tutorials, installers, etc.—would need to be much more robust. a l l e n - c o n n sees herself as the 'buck-stops-here' element of kay's squeak team: she has to make it meaningful for children: "i can think lofty thoughts, but i also have to make this a viable tool." (personal c o m m u n i - cation, n o v ). so, despite the fact that a l l e n - c o n n herself remains encouraged, squeak's presence simply w i l l not grow of its o w n accord. • the difficulty of sustaining technology once installed: a l l e n - c o n n points out that during the s, the entire teaching staff at the o p e n school was trained to main- tain and repair a p p l e computers. in the years after apple's involvement, the parent-teacher community of the o p e n charter school has taken it upon itself to keep up its committment to the sustainability of its technical investments. h o w many schools can claim this kind of involvement? • technology policies in most schools and school districts are notoriously restrictive: for support and administrative reasons, the typical pattern is that classroom or lab computers are 'locked down' to prevent students from making modifications that may put a burden on the tech support staff. so, installing software other than that chapter : squeak's small but mighty roar officially approved (typically internet explorer, microsoft office, and a small hand- ful of'educational' applications), neither students nor teachers are at liberty to install anything else—like squeak. g o i n g beyond these blanket restrictions would likely entail getting approval at an adminstrative or even board level, something that even companies w i t h substantial marketing budgets struggle to do. a g a i n , this is an instance i n w h i c h the general autonomy of the o p e n charter school provides a very atypical example. • general awareness and mainstream trends: more generally, squeak faces an uphill battle simply by virtue of its distance from the mainstream (i.e. commercial soft- ware and/or unix-derived internet culture). if educational computing is commonly defined as learning to use a particular canonical list of application programs (web browsers for research, 'office' software for document production, domain-specific games or simulations for particular pedagogical ends), what are teachers or co- ordinators to make of an environment that at times presents itself as programming language, operating system, animation tool, simulation environment, or that bills itself grandly as an "idea processor whose music is ideas?" • squeak is probably more complex than it needs to be: allowing a somewhat techno- centric criticism here, it is fair to point out that the squeak environment that one faces after first launching the software is not immediately obvious: this undoubt- edly presents a practical challenge to squeak's wider adoption. first, squeak doesn't look or act quite like a m a c i n t o s h or w i n d o w s application, drawing as it does on both older (and newer) user interface traditions; users must grapple with how to interact w i t h the mouse and onscreen objects before moving on to more interesting things. second, there is substantial clutter i n the squeak environment; much of the thirty-five years' heritage of squeak is actually in there (hundreds of object classes, multiple interface frameworks, components of software no one has actively used i n years, and so on). the shrinking of the downloadable squeak chapter : squeak's small but mighty roar "image" is the subject of ongoing debate on the squeak-dev mailing list. a n d finally, the morphic user interface framework itself, w i t h its complete transparency and direct-manipulation access to everything, has the potential to overwhelm and confuse new users. despite squeak's three-decade heritage, etoys' features, and the educational virtues espoused by kay and his colleagues, squeak still remains an unknown quantity to main- stream educators, even those who are active i n the w o r l d of educational technology. is this likely to change? n o t given the current landscape. there are simply no substantial forces driving squeak toward the educational mainstream, and there are many forces actively resisting it. but we must keep i n m i n d that the educational face of squeak, of w h i c h etoys is emblematic, is not the whole story. t h e s q u e a k c o m m u n i t y a n d i t s t r a j e c t o r i e s w h a t to make of squeak? t o whatever extent it represents an important step forward, or the next iteration of a powerful tradition, it is also in many ways a non-starter, a tiny blip o n the vast landscape of (educational) technology. it seems as though one must grapple w i t h the history and heritage of the dynabook ideal i n order to fully appreciate squeak; that w i t h - out this historical perspective it appears as a bewildering and complex software environment, inordinately difficult to sum up, let alone to treat as an instrument of practical consequence. the hope of many i n the squeak community, presumably, is that squeak should gradually build its own momentum, and thereafter we w i l l have a better appreciation of its intellectual heritage. but what is squeak, exactly? a n y singular answer to this question is partial, simply by virtue of the multi-headedness of the project. i have so far focused mostly on the educa- tional (etoys) face of squeak, but this is not manifest destiny. o n the contrary; o n the . the default downloadable squeak image, as of version . , is about megabytes. there are various opinions about how small an image could be while still being usable by the average person. one of the more extreme projects, called spoon, has an image of less than kilobytes. see http://www.netjam.org/spoon/ chapter : squeak's small but mighty roar http://www.netjam.org/spoon/ internet, an open-source project becomes what its users and developers make of it; there is no ontological directive, apart from the actual practice of the people who choose to make a committment of time and energy to a project. in this sense, the lessons from latour's a r a m i s are most apt: "there is no such thing as the essence of a project. o n l y finished projects have an essence" (latour , p. ). but when is a project ever finished? in squeak's case, the sheer flexibility of the system means that there are various sub-communi- ties making headway i n a number of different directions at once. squeakland and etoys represent only one of these. the blue plane and the pink plane there are two orthogonal forces at work in the squeak team, with which we have been able to make two kinds of progress. these have most recently been articulated in alan kay's allusion, to arthur koestler's metaphor of progress in two planes: the incremental improvement plane (which alan calls the "pink"plane) and the paradigm shift (or "blue") plane. - dan ingalls, the metaphor of planes of progress is drawn from a r t h u r koestler's the act of creation ( ), one of kay's touchstones: koestler's model bears some resemblance to thomas kuhn's dynamics of paradigm shifts, though koestler was concerned with creativity as a psychological process rather than w i t h the workings of institutional science. in any case, these two 'forces' manifest themselves as two distinct but not wholly separate cultures active i n the squeak community. the distinction can be characterized as follows. incremen- tal improvement, or "pink plane" development, is the focus of a group of developers who treat squeak as a "better old thing," as kay might put it—that is, squeak is a new, portable, open-source smalltalk- implementation. the efforts of this group go towards making it a better implementation; improving the speed, cleaning up the codebase, putting i n infra- structure support for the development community (bug-report databases, versioning systems and collaborative tools, etc.), streamlining and enhancing the user interface, and adding various applications. this group, composed largely of smalltalk programmers who have been working w i t h the language for years, behaves m u c h like the development chapter : squeak's small but mighty roar communities surrounding other open-source projects, like l i n u x or apache. there is no central leader of this subcommunity; rather, there are a small number of key developers who communicate largely via the squeak-dev mailing list, co-ordinating the changes w h i c h peri- odically constitute new version releases of the squeak software, w i t h incremental updates appearing roughly twice per year. the more revolutionary, "blue plane" development appears to happen i n a less open environment. this force is represented more by kay's development team and colleagues. prior to the v . release of squeak i n , this "squeak central" team—that is, the group at a p p l e and later disney—made a number of substantial changes to squeak (mostly notably integrating the morphic graphics framework, w h i c h was called a "blue plane" innovation at the time), but since this time they have not been particularly active i n the online squeak development community. rather, they have been working "behind the curtain" on a number of emerging innovations; notably, a new novice programming environment called tweak (which may also include the future of etoys), and an immersive, multiparticipant d environment called croquet. these projects may potentially shift the focus of squeak devel- opment substantially, even to the point of threatening the relevance of some of the "pink plane" development going o n among the open-source community. d a n ingalls notes: t o best understand the "blue" pulls within the squeak group, you need to understand what we're after. o u r number one commitment is to an exquisite personal computing environment. imagine a system as immediate and tactile as a sketch pad, i n w h i c h you can effortlessly mingle writing, drawing, painting, and all of the structured leverage of computer science. moreover imagine that every aspect of that system is described in itself and equally amenable to exam- ination and composition. perhaps this system also extends out over the internet, including and leveraging off the work of others. y o u get the idea—it's the h o l y g r a i l of computer science. a l l and everything. so if some new approach comes along that takes us closer to that ideal, but at the cost of a . there is a complex history of leadership within the squeak community, which i will not go into in detail. in , a group called the squeak foundation, composed of several influential developers from around the world, declared itself the (un)official stew- ard of squeak releases. see http://www.squeak.org chapter : squeak's small but mighty roar http://www.squeak.org break w i t h st- tradition, we w i l l probably take the new approach. (ingalls ) t o put it i n eric raymond's terms, the squeak project is simultaneously the "cathedral" and the "bazaar." kay, ingalls, and their cohort work i n semi-private, releasing sizable new inno- vations only now and then, while the evolutionary group works according to the bazaar model. there is clearly some tension between the two groups, particularly when the "cathe- dral" releases appear, and the evolutionary group must grapple w i t h the changes i n the landscape. / squeak communities today after kay's team left disney i n , there ceased to be a central commercial interest behind squeak. kay and rose established the nonprofit viewpoints research institute to act as the official home for squeak, but while viewpoints has been partially funded i n recent years by hewlett packard, the mainstream of squeak development is no longer centered there. it is rather spread globally, in a wide variety of different projects. the result is, as evidenced by the potpourri of links o n the main squeak.org website, that there are several public faces of squeak currently: . the viewpoints research institute, the non-profit organization w h i c h is officially behind squeak, and w h i c h acts as an institutional focus for some of its develop- ment. viewpoints is the interface between the funding that squeak may receive from a company like h p and the notion of an open-source project owned and beholden to no one. in practice, viewpoints acts as the co-ordinating force behind squeakland.org and "blue-plane" development emerging from kay and his i m m e d i - ate colleagues (e.g. the new tweak authoring system, w h i c h purports to replace portions of the m o r p h i c interface). . this issue comes up periodically on the squeak-dev mailing list. in september , for instance, a discussion of the introduc- tion of a technology called "traits" as an alternative to the nearly -year old hierarchy of object classes spawned much debate. . in july , following a year in which alan kay received no less than three high-profile awards for his contributions to com- puter science and engineering, kay and vpri colleagues (along with , other employees) were 'let go' from hp in a round of corporate restructuring. chapter : squeak's small but mighty roar http://squeak.org http://squeakland.org . squeakland.org, hosted by viewpoints research institute: this is the home (or at least the central meeting place) of etoys and the web-browser plugin version of the , squeak software. o n this website can be found a number of articles by kay and others elaborating the philosophy of squeak, etoys projects and tutorials created by the core team, and links to etoys projects and tutorials contributed by teachers and students. squeakland.org can be thought of as the "teacher-friendly" face of squeak. the accompanying squeakland mailing list is low-volume (a handful of r messages per week), and the topics of discussion are generally user-oriented. . the squeak-dev mailing list, w h i c h is the operating vehicle of squeak's open-source community. squeak-dev is a high-traffic list (hundreds of messages per week) w i t h over subscribers. the topics of discussion on this list are very technical: this is the forum for discussions of squeak's core programming, upgrades, bug reports and fixes. the members of this list think of squeak as first and foremost a smalltalk implementation. this community also finds expression i n a number of web-based forums and blogs such asplanetsqueak.org, squeakpeople.org, and m a r k guzdial's swiki at minnow.cc.gatech.edu. . the croquet project (croquetproject.org) has the potential to radically change the public face of squeak. croquet is an immersive, multiparticipant d environment built o n squeak. the croquet project is maintained by viewpoints research insti- tute, the university of w i s c o n s i n , and the university of minnesota. croquet has an educational profile, but it seems m u c h more relevant to the post-secondary w o r l d than to k - (see l o m b a r d i ). croquet seems content to brand itself distinctly from squeak, and although squeak is the underlying technology, a casual browser could peruse the r i c h and informative croquetproject.org website and miss the reference entirely. . alternative educational applications to etoys, such as stephane ducasse's botslnc. (see ducasse and http://smallwiki.unibe.ch/botsinc/), and the scratch (see chapter : squeak's small but mighty roar http://squeakland.org http://squeakland.org http://planetsqueak.org http://squeakpeople.org http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu http://croquetproject.org http://croquetproject.org http://smallwiki.unibe.ch/botsinc/ maloney et al. and http://weblogs.media.mit.edu/llk/scratch/) project at the m i t m e d i a lab—part of the lab's lifelongkindergarten program, and aimed at the m e d i a lab's after-school computer clubhouses. both bots inc. and scratch are combinations of squeak-based software and curriculum resources. . seaside, a highly sophisticated w e b application framework built i n squeak. seaside breaks significantly from m u c h of the squeak tradition i n that it uses squeak i n service of the u n i x client-server model; the user interface i n this case is provided by your web browser. seaside may be an atypical squeak application, but as w e b development matures (e.g. the "web . " movement currently afoot), seaside's profile is quickly growing outside the squeak community. . beyond these key english-language sites and communities, squeak is actively used and developed i n europe, a s i a , and south a m e r i c a , both as an educational applica- tion (with etoys) and as an open-source smalltalk. the squeak foundation, for instance, is (nominally, at least) based i n germany, as is impara, a company co- founded by core squeak developer andreas raab. there is a also strong japanese school-based effort at squeakland.jp. i do not wish to give the impression that squeak is entirely an a m e r i c a n phenomenon. w h a t ties these varying brands together? n o t much, currently. despite the fact that they all draw from a c o m m o n ancestor, and all embody i n some way some combination of the virtues of the dynabook vision, there is no clear sense that these different themes are j converging or even diverging. a more unified brand would perhaps create a stronger image to present to the w o r l d beyond the initiates, but the proliferation of versions presumably allows squeak to be picked up i n different forms i n different community contexts. o r i g i - nally, etoys was aimed at children surfing the internet, or at least their parents—that is, it . coincidentally, seaside's lead developer is avi bryant, who developed ricki goldman's orion back in (not in seaside, though). in , bryant's company, smallthought, released a web-based data management application called dabbledb that leverages the strengths of smalltalk to seriously push the envelope of web-based applications. for a discussion, see http://www.techcrunch.com/ / / /dabbledb-online-app-building-for-everyone/ chapter : squeak's small but mighty roar http://weblogs.media.mit.edu/llk/scratch/ http://squeakland.jp http://www.techcrunch.com/ / / /dabbledb-online-app-building-for-everyone/ had a deliberately subversive trajectory. but, largely due to bj a l l e n - c o n n ' s success (and the book she and k i m rose published i n ), etoys has become the mainstream educational face of squeak; other efforts now take o n the subversive, viral marketing agenda. the immersive, d croquet environment, with its obvious appeal to video-game players (and lack of an overt 'educational' message), has the potential to take this on, even given its back- ing by major u s universities as a platform. squeak in print? k ironically, the success of squeak i n the wider world depends greatly on the publication of paper-and-ink books. w h a t has made squeak legitimate i n educational contexts is largely the availability i n the early s of a number of books o n squeak; the first significant one was written by georgia tech professor m a r k g u z d i a l ( ); the second was a collection of essays edited by g u z d i a l and k i m rose ( ); the third and perhaps most significant is rose and bj a l l e n - c o n n ' s ( ) powerful ideas in the classroom, a book targeted specifi- cally at teachers—"helping the helpers," as the viewpoints motto goes. similar books have been published i n japan, i n france, and i n spain. stephane ducasse's squeak: learn programming with robots ( ) follows a number of french-language books. having books i n print adds strength to the project in a number of ways: first, the mere existence of a book lends credibility; the open-source movement has known this for years, and with any new project, the emergence of books from the key technical publishers (espe- cially o'reilly or one of the pearson imprints: prentice-hall, addison-wesley, peachpit, que, n e w riders ) is a sign of some maturity. second, though, a book represents a vector for newcomers to be able to pick up the software and make sense of it without having to pick through the maze of often incomplete online documentation that accompanies most open source projects (for that matter, most software, open or not). the need for printed resources presents a challenge for squeak, which has no central body pouring resources into it. neither h p (which until recently employed kay, rose, arid a . note the "obligatory passage point"here in establishing legitimacy even among open-source projects. chapter : squeak's small but mighty roar number of key developers) nor the viewpoints research institute (which is a nonprofit soci- ety, and devoted m u c h more to development than to marketing) is really i n a position to underwrite the writing and publication of books (or to realize any sort of return on them). in , the squeak foundation was established; one of its motivations is to provide an entity through w h i c h development funds could flow. notably, author stephane ducasse was a driving force behind the establishment of the foundation. so far, though, the squeak community produces books slowly, and though everyone seems to recognize books as hallmarks of maturity, it would appear that no one is i n m u c h of a position to strategically address this. a n d perhaps it is also evident that this is a good thing. were an a p p l e computer or disney imagineering to wholly back a project such as squeak, what w o u l d be the cost i n terms of control of the project's direction? there is a very good case to be made for keeping squeak independent of any one corporation's interests, despite the attendant lack of resources. . the variety of foci w i t h i n the squeak community is a factor here as well. o n one hand, this can be interpreted as a sign of maturity, and could give rise to a stronger sense of confi- dence i n the ongoingness of the development. o n the other hand, however, it could be seen as the fragmentation of an already small and marginal project. but suppose a popular book on croquet were to appear. if croquet really took off, w o u l d etoys wither? perhaps not, given its tenacity i n the face of its small user base to date, but this does raise the question of the required "critical mass" for a project to begin to generate its own momentum. where is that dynabook, anyway? g i v e n the growth of the squeak project—perhaps it is even a stretch to characterize it as a single project anymore—are we any closer to the dynabook vision? a recurring theme discussed o n the squeak-dev mailing list is the idea of porting squeak to the latest, smallest handheld or palmtop device on the market. the reasoning here is that squeak, running o n a device w h i c h looks something like kay's cardboard mockups (circa ), must equal the . the technical windfall here is that squeak has been ported to over different hardware and software platforms. chapter : squeak's small but mighty roar dynabook. a n d while, following the letter of the text, putting checkmarks next to all the required elements i n kay's manifesto, this might look like the real thing, it is, like all literalist accounts, depressingly ahistorical, as it ignores what personal computing has come to mean in the intervening years. the sobering counterfact is that no one i have encoun- tered is able to actually conduct all of their daily work i n squeak; i visited viewpoints research institute i n and found the same general clutter of technologies and platforms there as everywhere else—this despite the existence of web, e-mail, and text processing applications in squeak. so despite squeak's ambition to be an "exquisite" personal comput- ing environment, i n practical use it is an application like the rest. does squeak bring us closer to the dynabook vision, then? absolutely, if for no other reason than it has re-animated the virtues inherent i n the original s vision and spread them to a m u c h larger and more varied community of users and developers spread all across the world. squeak itself has not commanded the attention of a mass audience—and certainly not w i t h i n educational circles—but perhaps the various bits and pieces of squeak have an aggregate—possibly subversive—effect. the question w h i c h squeak begs—is it really "back to the future?" o r is it "too little too late?"—cannot quite/yet be answered i n its own terms. o n l y finished projects have an essence, latour tells us. it w o u l d appear, on the whole, that the amount of energy w i t h i n the squeak communit(ies) is increasing, not decreasing. whether or not this ultimately matters is a question for future historians. squeak and croquet at oopsla' in , a l a n kay's star seemed to be on the rise. early i n the year, he (along w i t h p a r c colleagues c h u c k thacker, butler lampson, and robert taylor) was awarded the charles stark draper prize from the u s national academy of engineering. the draper award is given to "those who have contributed to the advancement of engineering and to improve public understanding of the importance of engineering and technology" ( n a e website)—in this case, the award was i n honour of their work on the x e r o x a l t o , "the first networked chapter : squeak's small but mighty roar personal computer." later that spring, two other awards were announced, beginning w i t h the kyoto prize by the japanese inamori foundation, i n honour of "those who have contributed significantly to the scientific, cultural, and spiritual betterment of mankind" (inamori website)—this specifically w i t h respect to kay's educational work. this year's kyoto laureates (alongside kay) were biologist alfred k n u d s o n and philosopher jurgen habermas. the third award was the association of c o m p u t i n g machinery's turing award, given to those who have made "contributions of a technical nature made to the computing community... of lasting and major technical importance to the computer field." the t u r i n g a w a r d is a prize of unparalleled prestige w i t h i n computing circles; it is usually attended by a "turing lecture" given by the recipient at an a c m function. kay chose to deliver his lecture at the a c m ' s object-oriented programming, systems, languages, and applications ( o o p s l a ) conference i n vancouver, i n october . took the opportunity to attend, and brought my notebook. interestingly, the o o p s l a conference was established i n the early s by adele goldberg, who, after leaving x e r o x p a r c , served for a time as the president of the a c m . o o p s l a was, i n the s, the conference for the smalltalk community. in later years, smalltalk became a smaller and smaller part of o o p s l a , w i t h the rise of object-oriented systems based on the languages c++, java, and more recently, microsoft's c# and . n e t architecture. the conference program was dominated by technical papers on profes- sional software engineering concerns, though w i t h a tiny undercurrent of, if not smalltalk itself, at least some of the practices that the smalltalk community had pioneered, such as design patterns and extreme programming. a l a n kay gave two talks at o o p s l a ' : his turing lecture (kay c) plus a keynote address to the "educators' symposium" track of the conference. both talks featured demon- strations of both etoys and the d croquet environment. the etoys demonstrations served . the design patterns movement is an application of architect christopher alexander's "pattern language" (alexander et al. ) concepts to software design, extreme programming is a software development methodology which originated in the early smalltalk community of the s; see beck . chapter : squeak's small but mighty roar to point out to the audience (professional programmers largely paid to manage and construct systems of enormous complexity) how very simple implementations can acheive great power and flexibility. croquet served to demonstrate the range of what could be done w i t h a relatively simple system like squeak. it is difficult to tell what k i n d of impact kay's talks had o n their audiences. perhaps kay's impassioned address on behalf of simplicity and elegance i n the face of (arguably needless) complexity strikes a chord among the listeners. i was aware, sitting i n the audience w i t h members of the squeak illuminati, of a sort of conspiratorial glee over kay's critique of the mainstream, relished by the squeak and small- talk " i n crowd," but, just as likely lost upon or dismissed by the m u c h larger audience of professional software engineers. the following day, i attended an open-mic session billed as "breakout ideas i n c o m p u - ter science." speaker after speaker lined up to address the hundred-odd person crowd o n what he or she (there were relatively few women in attendance, but the proportion was stronger in this particular session than in others i attended) felt was wrong or missing i n their contemporary software development environments and careers. a surprising number of complaints (the session quickly became an airing of grievances against the field) spoke of the need for innovations w h i c h had been i n smalltalk, and i n kay's and ingalls' and others' visions, since the s but of w h i c h even this 'mainstream' remained ignorant. the speakers—computer programmers—complained of inhuman systems for manag- ing complexity, of having to bend their own minds and practices around rigid and inflexible systems. one speaker went so far as to comment that what the w o r l d of programming needed was the equivalent of the m a c i n t o s h , w h i c h had allowed end users to do great things. he wondered "what w o u l d the equivalent be for general-purpose programming?" i hope the reader at this point recognizes the irony of these comments, especially at an event honouring kay's contributions to these very concerns. d u r i n g kay's turing lecture, he presented a rough schema i n w h i c h the general popula- tion is broken down along two axes, as follows: chapter : squeak's small but mighty roar externally focused internally motivated instrumental reasoners lovers of ideas figure . : kay's s c h e m a from the t u r i n g lecture. a c c o r d i n g to kay's model, % of the population are driven by instrumental reason—that is, the application of tools and technologies to pre-existing goals—while the remaining % are motivated by a love of ideas. o n the vertical axis, kay suggested, % of people tend to be internally motivated while % are externally focused. m a p p i n g these two against each other, kay pointed out the % overlap: internally motivated, idea-driven people who occupy the "creative, investigative space." next, there are % of people who are externally focused and idea-driven; these are popular leaders and charismatic figures. o n the other hand, the % who are internally motivated instrumental thinkers are "a dangerous lot" w h o m kay identified w i t h certain corporate executives. finally, kay claimed, are the % of the popula- tion who are externally focused instrumental reasoners, and these are the people who make up the vast majority of the population. these people don't change their thinking easily— unless they begin to perceive that everyone around them is changing, too. it is, at face value, a decidedly pessimistic schema, and one that suggests that real reform—in education, or computer science, or politics, or anywhere—is not something that can be acheived, i n many cases, w i t h i n any project or even one person's lifetime. it is, however, a schema that kay seems to have made peace with; he explicitly acknowledged that the kinds of reform he wanted to see would not likely happen while he is around to ! chapter : squeak's small but mighty roar witness them. this does not apparently dampen his enthusiasm or energy for the task, though. s q u e a k : m o u s e t h a t r o a r e d ? i alluded earlier to the question that squeak's now eight-year existence begs: is it really, as ingalls et al. suggested, back to the future, or—given the sheer inertia of the dominant tradi- tion of personal and corporate computing, and the relatively tiny size of squeak's communities (both developers and educators)—simply too little too late? squeak is many things. it is, undeniably, the resurrection of the smalltalk project from x e r o x p a r c , especially given the personnel behind it. squeak is also, undeniably, a very cool and fun open-source software project. i am tempted to go so far as to call squeak the most powerful piece of educational software ever created, given its scope and its direct connection to some of the most "powerful ideas" i n educational technology. but squeak is not the dynabook. it is no more the dynabook than the smalltalks of the s were. it is better conceived as the culmination of or the wrapping up of these projects. i w o u l d suggest that the "squeak central" team's departure from the core development of squeak i n —in favour of more far-reaching projects like croquet—is evidence of this wrapping-up process. there is nothing particularly ironic or surprising about this; kay has maintained all along that squeak's goal was to be the means of its o w n obsolescence, the vehicle for getting to the next thing. in searching for the dynabook, therefore, we are advised not to spend too m u c h time looking at squeak itself. that squeak—on its o w n i n the world, the public property of a distributed, open-source development community—has not emerged as the "next great thing" tells us something important about the dynamics of technocultural systems. t o take squeak as important i n itself is to attempt to isolate it, to reify it, to prevent its translation into something else. this is something very different from the case of latour's aramis, w h i c h struggled to be, to cross some k i n d of threshold into actual, sustainable existence. t o contexualize latour's admon- ishment that no technosocial assemblage is truly irreversible—not even the " year old chapter : squeak's small but mighty roar monsters" of the paris metro—the objects, of his analysis were intended to be stable, irre- versible instruments; their ultimate and ongoing success would be defined by their unfailing resistance against being translated, yet again, out of existence. by contrast, squeak and the smalltalks which preceded it in a sense succeed by their very mutability. it is not an accident that kay chose to name the original system "small talk." this is not a technology, nor a technocultural assemblage, that aims to resist being trans- lated into something else. rather, this is an entity whose ultimate telos is to be the agent of that translation. it's the very point. it is instructive to recall ingalls' distinction between the vision—which has persisted, and which has attracted and bound individuals to the project over three decades—and the image—that which can be critiqued, challenged, and evolved. the actual and active rela- tionship between these two entities is not well accounted for in a materialist sociology. something more is needed to do justice to the cultural history of these systems. chapter : squeak's small but mighty roar chapter : drawing things together i would like to offer a summing up of the story so far. w h a t is required at this point, after a brief recap of the ground that has been covered, is a refocusing o n the larger issues: of the telos of this framing, and of its relevance to contemporary society and culture and, of course, to education. w h e r e w e ' v e b e e n in chapter , positioned this study as a k i n d of computer criticism, after papert ( ), conducted from a place partly inside and partly outside of the tradition it is considering. i have set this work up as cultural history, w i t h the emphasis on the historically embedded meaning-making that computing (like anything else) comprises. that is, this is not a techni- cal history, tracing the development of technical artifacts like computers or software programs; nor is it a biography or history of the institutions "behind" particular technolo- gies. rather, my intent has been to trace the development of the meaning of a technocultural artifact: the dynabook, itself partly an idealized vision and partly a series of actual technologies. in tracing what the dynabook or personal computing or technology means i n changing historical contexts, i must necessarily begin w i t h what it means to me, and this has required that i reconcile my own history w i t h the history presented here. in chapter , outlined a theoretical framing of technology as translation—both symbolic and material—in order to foreground its constructedness, its contingency, and its essentially political nature. in my discussion of the semiotics of texts and machines, i have attempted to better frame the dynamics of layering and abstraction i n technocultural assemblages, drawing on the actor-network theorizing of latour and c a l l o n , but not, i think confining myself to this framework. finally, i have introduced the theme of simulation i n order to highlight the metaphorical function of information technology and thus position us as actors and interpreters. chapter : drawing things together in chapter , sketched the key components of the vision of personal and educational computing developed by a l a n kay over the past three and a half decades. this vision began w i t h an insight regarding children's use of computers inspired by the early work of seymour papert. kay's exploration of this area led h i m to articulate a novel (and still fairly unique) approach to systems design, culminating i n the development of a new paradigm of software development: object-oriented programming. further, kay and his research team elaborated an application of the developmental psychology of jerome bruner i n such a way that all three of bruner's "mentalities"—enactive, iconic, and symbolic—can be employed i n human-computer interaction; this work laid the foundations for our contemporary graphi- cal user interfaces and metaphor of "direct manipulation." kay's vision of personal computing involves a substantial connection to the history of communications: building on the idea that the printing revolution i n early modern europe saw the rise of a new mode of discourse—structured argumentation. this mode made it possible to articulate ideas not possible i n traditional narrative forms, and this shift i n discursive practices gave rise to modern science. newton's arguments on the laws of motion, for instance, are not easily representable i n narrative, but rather take the form of sequences of logical assertions—bruner ( , p. ) identifies this mode as explanation, . distinct from interpretation. kay's contribution begins w i t h the observation that digital computers provide the means for yet another, newer mode of expression: the simulation and modeling of complex systems. w h a t discursive possibilities does this new modality open up, and/or whom . kay argues that this latter communications revolution should i n the first place be i n the hands of children. w h a t we are left w i t h is a sketch of a possible new literacy; not "computer literacy" as an alternative to book literacy, but systems literacy—the realm of powerful ideas i n a w o r l d i n w h i c h complex systems modelling is possible and indeed commonplace, even among children. kay's fundamental and sustained admonition is that this literacy is the task and responsibility of education i n the st century. the dyna- book vision presents a particular conception of what such a literacy would look like—in a liberal, individualist, decentralized, and democratic key. chapter : drawing things together in chapter , moved from a theoretical treatment of kay's vision to a consideration of the actual unfolding of his research work, loosely i n line w i t h latour's method of "following the actors." here, i traced the development and evolution of the smalltalk environment kay designed i n the early s as the platform for his dynabook vision to the point where it intersects w i t h (a) industrial software engineering practices, and (b) the advent and popu- larization of the microcomputer i n thelate s and early s. i outlined here the various translations of smalltalk from an instrument for researching children's "personal dynamic media" to its derivations and incarnations i n the computer industry. accompany- ing the evolution of this particular artifact (or family of artifacts) are a number of related translations—of the role of "users," of the public perception of computing, and of the role of (mass-) market forces. kay's work in the s, working w i t h i n the paradigm of mass-market microcomput- ers, led h i m to a deeper focus on the specifics of children's interaction w i t h systems modeling tools, via a long-term research programme at a magnet school i n los angeles. but concurrent with this in-depth research, the historical trajectory of the personal computer led increasingly away from kay's ideal of "personal dynamic media" and toward pre-pack- aged, commoditized, black boxes. interestingly, nearly concurrent with kay's behind-the- scenes research in a single los angeles school was seymour papert's endeavour to popular- ize and market the logo system internationally. logo's trajectory through these years could easily be the subject of another book-length treatment; suffice to say that while papert and the logo project enjoyed considerable popularity i n the early years of the microcomputer revolution, by the s, the shift i n popular conceptions of computing and its significance meant that the ideas being advanced by both papert and kay—and thus the dynabook— were farther than ever from the mainstream. in chapter , examined the computing cultures i n ascendance i n the s, when the internet and w o r l d - w i d e w e b were coming to prominence. the "powerful ideas" tradition to w h i c h papert and kay had been central was i n retreat, and i n its place was a growing conception of computers and the internet as a kind of mass medium akin to television or chapter : drawing things together print i n w h i c h a end users, and, by extension, "learners" play a mostly spectatorial or consumer role. however, at the same time, an older tradition—descended from the s u n i x culture—was also gaining momentum, due to the importance of open systems and open standards in the infrastructure of the internet. the tension between these two trajec- tories have defined m u c h of popular computing culture i n the s and early s. "educational" computing i n this period must be evaluated w i t h these currents i n m i n d : both the vendor-centric notion of commodity software and the unix-derived open systems culture are i n play, often i n ironic combinations. but despite the ideological allure and sheer momentum of the free and o p e n source software (foss) movement, i have argued that we should be wary of it as a educational force; for all its overtly democratic rhetoric and anti- corporatist politics, its conceit and stubborn exclusivity (recall the analogy w i t h latin) makes it a questionable ideal, especially when we contrast it with kay's child-centric ideal of "personal dynamic media." t o repeat the question i posed i n chapter , what if we were to be presented w i t h an equally venerable computing tradition, sharing most of the virtues of openness, sharing, simplicity, and modularity inherent i n u n i x / f o s s culture, but one w h i c h was actually designed w i t h children and education i n mind? clearly, the mere existence of a supposedly better alternative does nothing to ensure or even advance its popularity; latour and callon's network model of sociotechnical systems sheds ample light on the dynamics inherent here, and toward the end of chapter have included some analysis of how these dynamics seem to play out w i t h i n computing cultures themselves. this leaves us with the focus for chapter , i n w h i c h i have sketched the general features of the contemporary candidate for such a computing artifact: simple, open, shared, modular, and based on a r i c h and venerable cultural tradition, and yet conceived w i t h c h i l - dren and education i n m i n d from the start. this artifact is squeak, an open-source, internet-era reincarnation of smalltalk, born in a curious "back to the future" topos i n . i use the word topos here in the sense elaborated by media historian erkki huhtamo ( ): cultural-practical assemblages which recur or may be (intentionally or unintentionally) "re-activated" in new technological contexts. chapter : drawing things together w h i c h the core of kay's development team from the s were seemingly able to re-focus on the agenda set i n those early years, but i n a w o r l d now populated by ubiquitous personal computers, widespread internet connectivity, and an established culture of shared software development. o n this face, squeak seems to be the best of all possible worlds. a n d yet, as the details related i n chapter reveal, squeak's now nearly decade-long life has been mostly marked by a struggle to define its existence, i n ways that interestingly paral- lel and yet contrast with the ontologically indeterminate aramis of latour's technocultural whodunnit. this is not to say that squeak's existence as a piece of software available on the internet is i n question; rather, the struggle is over squeak's ambitions. does squeak repre- sent the coming of the dynabook, or is it just an open-source smalltalk implementation, of interest only to a small cadre of programmers? is squeak really an "idea processor for kids of all ages" or is it just another authoring environment? is squeak an important and revolu- tionary contribution to educational computing, or is it, as a recently published taxonomy of novice programming environments (kelleher & pausch ) presents it, merely one of dozens and dozens of kicks at this particular can. o n the face of it, squeak's claim to the loft- ier of each of these alternatives is questionable. bluntly put, squeak's user communities are small and fragmented; its out-of-the-box user interface is baroque; compared w i t h popular computing environments like u n i x and m s w i n d o w s , it comes across as somewhat alien and peculiar; it is decidely not foolproof (as with any serious development environment, squeak offers more than enough "rope to hang yourself with"); and there is little c o m m o n understanding of just what squeak is for (smalltalk development? multimedia presentation? etoys simulations? user-interface research? web application development?) a n d yet, at the same time, i n some very real and overt ways, squeak is a vastly better computing environment than anything anyone has come up with: i n terms of sheer flexibil- ity it is unsurpassed; as an exercise i n software portability and device independence it is probably without peer; it has the facility to enable children and novice users to work with sophisticated systems modelling very quickly and easily; it is a latter day version of one of chapter : drawing things together the simplest and most elegant programming languages ever developed; and it is completely and unrestrictedly open, from top to bottom. despite its virtues, the extent of squeak's network (in latour and callon's sense) is extremely limited—compared w i t h the vast community of developers working i n the u n i x / f o s s tradition, or, alternatively, the staggering market-driven scope of microsoft's version of personal computing. a n d yet, most interestingly, despite the weaknesses and strengths i've listed here, a l a n kay and his team seem almost uninterested i n the fate of squeak i n the marketplace of ideas. kay is explicit about this: squeak is only a vehicle to get to the next place; it is decidedly not the destination, not the end itself. this echoes the trajectory of smalltalk at x e r o x p a r c i n the s, a cycle of re-invention and self-tran- scendance. w i t h smalltalk- and its release to the wider world, kay lamented, smalltalk stopped being reinvented every few years and instead became cemented as a black box, its own "inflexible religion." squeak, i n yet another back-to-the-future move, is seemingly a return to this aesthetic; born as a smalltalk- implementation, its core developers have not shied away from altering nearly every aspect of the software; from its user-interface frame- work i n to a movement toward an architecture called "traits," w h i c h threatens to replace even the class-and-instance model core to smalltalk. so, to watch the contempo- rary trajectory of squeak as it spawns new projects like croquet is not surprising i n this light. w i t h each iteration, new facets of the dynabook vision are prototyped, realized, perfected, evaluated, and sometimes abandoned. squeak, as i pointed out i n chapter , is not the dynabook. t o get an idea of what the dynabook really is, we are required to take a longer view. . as kim rose points out (personal communication, oct ), there is no marketing effort behind squeak, nor are there plans for one. . see the squeak-dev mailing list in for ongoing discussion of this possible development. chapter : drawing things together d y n a b o o k : a r t i f a c t o r i d e a ? w h a t are we to make of such a case? is the dynabook real, or not? smalltalk is real, but it isn't the dynabook. squeak is real, but it isn't the dynabook either. n o r is my laptop computer, which bears more than a subtle resemblance to kay's early mock-ups. like x e r o x ' alto minicomputers circa , these are all "interim dynabooks" or facets thereof. so, when can we drop the "interim" qualifier? surely at some point, a lightwight, network- connected portable computer running some k i n d of open and user-modifiable object- (or perhaps message-) oriented software—in the hands of children—must add up to the real thing. or, alternatively, perhaps this is the tragic story of a failed vision, an artifact who has failed to be, like a r a m i s . the trouble w i t h this sort of framing is a precisely the technocentric thinking that papert warned against i n his call for "computer criticism." the point of casting this as cultural history is that we cannot evaluate the dynabook as one or other assemblage of hardware and software. n o w , here is an obvious parallel w i t h latour's brand of techno-soci- ology; latour would tell us that any technological system must be viewed as an assemblage of social, technical, human, nonhuman, physical, and political actants. latour's treatment of a r a m i s is precisely the elaboration of the multitude of networks w h i c h constitute that i l l - fated project. but here i feel i must depart somewhat from latour's otherwise powerful framework. the fate of aramis, latour tells us, lay i n the unresolved contestation among the many actors: the war of interpretations continues for aramis; there are only perspectives, but these are not brought to bear on anything stable, since no perspective has been able to stabilize the state of things to its o w n profit. (latour , p. ) latour warns us that "there is no such thing as the essence of a project. o n l y finished projects have an essence" (p. ). but perhaps we must make a distinction between techno- logical paradigms. the 'object' of latour's analysis is a large-scale, immensely expensive, chapter : drawing things together technosocial assemblage, composed of vast quanitites of steel, rubber, concrete, workers, passengers, governmental agencies, funding bodies, magnetic couplers, navigational computers, and so on. it is all a r a m i s can do to struggle to come into existence; indeed, the sheer inertia a r a m i s must overcome is enormous and multifaceted: physical, technical, political, budgetary. the chief requirement is co-ordination, the establishment of a c o m m o n frame of reference, and indeed, latour's account is one of the dynamics of the work of establishing (by means of alignment, displacement, translation, and the rest of latour's conceptual repertoire) a c o m m o n trajectory defining a single technosocial artifact. the dynabook, i n contrast, almost begins its life w i t h a c o m m o n frame of reference: a vision shared by many contributors and conceptually linking several instantiations. where a r a m i s ' essence follows (or fails to follow) its existence in implementation—and where the details of implementation (in terms of design, engineering, funding, political w i l l , etc.) are the primary site of struggle i n latour's account, the various implementation(s) of the d y n a - book are almost emergent from the interplay of ideas and technocultural contexts. the implementation itself is, as kay's repeated appeal for smalltalk's self-transcendence points out, relatively unimportant—as it was w i t h m c c a r t h y ' s lisp, w h i c h first saw embodiment on paper, and w h i c h later—perhaps less profoundly—became a family of software programs. but if, as this suggests, the actual implementation is not important, what are we left with? w i t h o u t the concretion of black boxes w h i c h may be closed, objectified, reified, what are techno-social networks to be composed of? if we take away the necessity of actual technical artifacts, are we not left w i t h human beings, w i t h pure society? d o we not find ourselves back w i t h social constructivism—a la bijker, hughes, & pinch's social construction of technological systems ( )—a stance from w h i c h latour spent the better part of two decades attempting to distance himself. i am not prepared to return to a naive social constructivist position—far from it. the sticking point is, i think, the stubborn materialism inherent i n actor-network theory. . i use the term "paradigm" here in its mundane, pre-kuhnian sense of a defining example. . john law ( ) even goes so far as to coin the term "relational materialism" in the context of actor-network theory. chapter : drawing things together refer here not to "materialism" i n the sense of belief or nonbelief i n an "external reality," but rather the materialism w h i c h is shot through contemporary sociology, inherited originally from m a r x and more recently from garfinkel, and which underlies most of contemporary science and technology studies. i am most certainly not prepared here to write an idealist critique of materialism i n social science, but i do want to pose, as a specific challenge, the concept of a "powerful idea" and how we can account for it i n a materialist epistemology. in most sociological accounts ideas must either take the form of embodied representations, like inscriptions (see latour & woolgar ) or documents (see b r o w n & d u g u i d ), or, alternatively, as "discourse effects" as w i t h foucauldian method (within sts, we would say "network effects")—that is, somehow emergent from the materialist base. latour's notion of a "parliament of things" and his emphasis on including the nonhumans w i t h the humans is huge improvement over the social construction of technology, but its materialist underpinnings mean it is still a blunt instrument for considering the broader cultural dynamics of ideas themselves. something like gadamer's phenomenological hermeneutics, w i t h its emphasis on the experience of interpretation and meaning-making, is required to do this work. i do not mean to suggest here some non-mediated essence for ideas; my starting point i n this discussion has been the foundational mediatedness of all human experience. w h a t i am calling for here, then, is a broadening of what counts as mediation. a n idea like the dynabook—like more powerful ideas such as the theory of evolution; general relativity; democracy; or complex systems modelling—exists by way of its currency in "discursive communities" or "communities of practice"—its mediation is by way of artifactual embodi- ment, textual and documentary inscription, individual utterances, and probably some (as yet) elusive cognitive representation as well. m y point here is that this laundry list of media does not do a very good job of shedding light on what "currency" might mean w i t h respect to ideas. let me wrap up this methodological aporia w i t h the following suggestion: theories of technoscience have so far been successful i n explaining the concretion of theories, chapter : drawing things together constructs, and systems—the accounts made i n sts research of the laboratory practice, systems of classification, microbe theories, bicycles, jet planes, and rapid transit systems. but these forms are not the whole of technoscience. they may well be the tip of the iceberg; the visible, empirically studiable % of what actually comprises actual practice. a n d , i n a moment that recalls the fish's difficulty w i t h the concept of water, it maybe that the cultural aspect of technoscience is still woefully underrepresented—the aesthetic dimension; the virtues, values, and vices; the drives and forces that actually move technoscience along; these are mostly absent from most sts accounts. cultural history is not biography having now done uncertain violence to accepted sociological method, cultural materialism, and, for that matter, media studies, i must address a further possible question, one w h i c h w i l l , at this point have no doubt been raised i n my readers' minds: that the dynabook is an idea which exists i n the head of an individual man, that of a l a n kay, and that its social or cultural existence is dependent upon his continual—stubborn, even—reiteration of it. this possibility is also uncomfortably linked w i t h the notion that what i have been writing here is nothing but a "great man" theory of history. admittedly, there is m u c h i n kay's story that lends itself to this k i n d of treatment. i must try to defend against this charge, however. despite kay and his philosophy being the primary narrative vehicle for my account, and despite his inescapable centrality to the dynabook, this story is not his. in the very first place, the dynabook traces itself to seymour papert, whose early ( ) and continued relationship w i t h kay and his work is absolutely key to this story. second, the role of kay's colleagues—dan ingalls, t e d kaehler, adele goldberg, diana m e r r y — i s enormous. it is perhaps a pitfall of this and other accounts that ingalls may appear as the implementor of kay's ideas. in fact, ingalls is no less a conceptual innovator, and the ongoing tension between kay's and ingalls' vision is one of the central . richard dawkin's popular notion of a "meme" as the unit of cultural transmission is no doubt raised here, though i find this concept lacking on a number of counts; suffice it to say that "transmission" is a poor way to talk about the performative prac- tice of culture. that said, at least dawkins' notion at least attempts to account for the spread and currency of ideas within com- ' munities. chapter : drawing things together dynamics here. ingalls' article, "design principles behind smalltalk" is every bit a manifesto on the order of kay's and goldberg's writings; here is a text w h i c h has as m u c h or more to say to the question of why we should care about digital technology as it does to the particular architecture of object-oriented systems. but beyond merely pointing out that the dynabook story involves a larger group of people than kay, the truly compelling point of the story is how this vision is shared by vari- ous participants, in the absence of any extant, concrete instantiation. o f the team at x e r o x p a r c , kay recalled, i needed a group because i had finally realized that i did not have all of the temperaments required to completely finish an idea. i called it the learning research group (lrg) to be as vague as possible about our charter. i only hired people that got stars i n their eyes when they heard about the notebook compu- ter idea. i didn't like meetings: didn't believe brainstorming could substitute for cool sustained thought. w h e n anyone asked me what to do, and i didn't have a strong idea, i would point at the notebook model and say, "advance that." l r g members developed a very close relationship w i t h each other—as d a n ingalls was to say later: "... the rest has enfolded through the love and energy of the whole learning research group." a lot of daytime was spent outside of p a r c , playing tennis, bike riding, drinking beer, eating chinese food, and constantly talking about the dynabook and its potential to amplify human reach and bring new ways of thinking to a faltering civilization that desperately needed it (that k i n d of goal was c o m m o n i n california i n the aftermath of the sixties). (kay a, p, ) this is a story of a cultural phenomenon, not a personal agenda. it crystallized i n kay's m i n d , or perhaps i n his lab, i n the late s and early s (and, as i have noted, this makes the job of the historian much easier) but since that time it has been the site of the practice and participation of scores of people. interestingly, despite the myriad transla- tions—some of w h i c h i have traced i n the preceding chapters—the core vision remains today, quite recognizable, still a centre of gravity for those who share it. this is, again, an aspect poorly accounted for i n actor-network theory or the sociology of translation, w h i c h states that for a technosocial system to be successful and achieve currency, it must necce- chapter : drawing things together sarily undergo various translations w h i c h move it from an isolated, perhaps "pure" conception to a strongly reinforced, network of aligned forces. this k i n d of account serves well to explain the trajectory of smalltalk over three decades, and even the relative frailty of squeak, but it speaks nothing to the cohesion of the idea, of the vision, over thirty-plus years. backfrom the future yet another accounting i must address here is a m u c h bleaker version of the story: simply that the dynabook does not exist, nor is it likely to. in this version, i need to go to no pains to account for the coherence of the vision over time, nor the respective translations and survivals of facets of the dynabook, because there aren't any. in this version, kay's early vision was quickly turned into other things—object-oriented programming, the mass- market p c — a n d any latter day reminiscence o n the romantic vision driving the story is but the nostalgia of those whose day is, frankly, past. it is not difficult to find commentaries w h i c h take this basic stance (e.g. dugan ; bardini & horvath ). i do not, however, find these analyses comprehensive or convincing, mostly because i reject the assumed 'irre- versibility' and complacency i n such accounts. let me engage i n a brief thought experiment: suppose the year is ; by this point, i n canada, what used to the called the internet is now taken for granted to the point of being almost invisible; similarly, computing devices have been miniaturized and proliferated to the point where people do not even talk about "computers" anymore. w i t h i n such a fine- grained digitally mediated environment, software programs have ceased to be distinct things unto themselves; rather, software is a vast conversation of distributed message-pass- ing objects; application software has given way to network-hosted services. schoolkids commonly use computing technology i n their classes—usually i n the construction and modification of virtual reality models of processes and systems, some taken from the natural w o r l d (as i n life sciences) but many more from the digital sphere. in this future, an episode like the one i n kay's paper—children sitting on a grassy lawn collaboratively playing chapter : drawing things together w i t h the workings of a video game—is commonplace; the difference is that instead of each child holding a personal computer, children tote around small notepad-like devices w h i c h serve as user interface gadgets, connecting them to a global computing grid. this scenario, as far as i can see, and barring some k i n d of global catastrophe, is an entirely reasonable one given current trends i n digital technology. if such a scenario were indeed to come to pass, historians w o u l d be i n a position to trace the roots of such techno- social assemblages. a n d i n doing so, some of that historiography w o u l d no doubt intersect w i t h m u c h of what i have written i n the present document. the very real possibility of such histories being written i n the future makes any present claim that the dynabook is simply a failed vision (as of ) untenable. if i n , , we witness a very different k i n d of digital world, we w i l l then perhaps be able to say that the dynabook was a failed vision w h i c h never existed. but for now, i n , such a scenario is still as likely as not, and as such, it w o u l d not be legitimate nor even reasonable to foreclose on its historical potential. this raises an interesting question—or nest of questions—about the future of the d y n a - book vision. the simplest question is whether, as time goes on, and the partial and contingent implementations of various facets of the dynabook multiply, the dynabook vision becomes diluted; that, by extension, i n ten years time w i l l this historical thread even be identifyable i n the face of its sheer plurality? a second simple question—a less interesting one, i believe—is whether the dynabook 'project' w i l l simply run out of steam or be substantially translated i n ways far more serious than what we have seen to date. w h a t if a l a n kay himself—already i n his s—simply retires to his pipe organ and chamber music, and leaves a younger generation to maintain the vision? is there enough coherence i n the dynabook idea (and its manifestations) that it would survive the absenting of the original cast—kay, ingalls, kaehler, for instance? it is difficult to mount answers to these questions that go beyond mere speculation. a few comments about future directions are warranted, however: . while not "utopian," i would say this scenario is wholeheartedly optimistic. i can easily come up with equally feasible versions featuring nasty corporate domination—more on that later. chapter : drawing things together • core squeak developers, led by andreas raab, are currently working o n a successor user-interface framework called tweak. tweak is aimed at what kay has called the "omniuser"—that is, novice and nonprofessional users i n general, as opposed to just children. however, the entire etoys system appears to be being re-imple- mented i n tweak. this may have the effect of expanding the immediate applicability and user-base of squeak beyond the etoys-oriented school c o m m u - nity and the programmer-oriented smalltalk community to include a "middle" tier. • the croquet environment, a networked, multiparticipant, d environment is pick- ing up momentum well beyond kay's own team, at a number of u s universities interested i n it as a higher-educational platform. its appeal to a generation raised on first-person d video games is clear, as well. a s an internet application, croquet is forward-looking to the extent that it not only substantially leapfrogs squeak's existing desktop-client environment but perhaps the w o r l d - w i d e w e b itself. indeed, the croquet project received attention i n the blogosphere i n n o v , , billed as a "web . " application—a tongue-in-cheek reference to current hype about an emerging "web . " paradigm. • mainstream computing—and, by extension, the kinds of systems ultimately found in schools and other educational contexts—shows evidence of a gradual, i f frag- mented, trend toward more smalltalk-like systems: newer programming languages like p y t h o n and ruby have established better compromises between the u n i x tradition and the smalltalk aesthetic, and i n recent years there is substantial discus- sion of the merits of "dynamic languages" over java (tate ). it may be that elements of the dynabook vision may gain currency despite squeak's or smalltalk's relative success. . the python community has a dedicated educational thread within it, embodied on the edu-sig@python.org mailing list. in spring , a "summit" of sorts was hosted by the south african shuttleworth foundation, bringing together representatives from the python community as well as alan kay, kim rose, and other squeak people. the possibility of a python-based etoys- like environment was discussed on mailing lists on both sides of this cultural divide. see http://wiki.tsf.org.za/shuttleworthfoun- dationwiki/day_one chapter : drawing things together mailto:edu-sig@python.org http://wiki.tsf.org.za/shuttleworthfoun- • a recent development i find myself at a loss to quite/yet evaluate, pro or con: i n november , at the w o r l d summit on the information society i n tunisia, u n secretary-general k o f i a n n a n presided over the unveiling of the prototype for m i t ' s "one laptop per c h i l d " project, an endeavour of astonishing ambitions led by m i t m e d i a lab director nicholas negroponte. the plan is to produce a $ , handcrank-powered notebook computer i n the tens of millions and distribute them to schoolchildren i n developing nations. the laptops run open-source soft- ware (based on linux), feature wireless connectivity and software for creating (decentralized) mesh networks. the laptops w i l l reportedly have squeak installed; a l a n kay and seymour papert are among the principals behind the project. whatever we make of these individual items, it does seem clear that there is plenty of energy and even momentum at work here, despite the fact that it is hard to tell exactly i n what direction it is going. w h o c a r e s a b o u t t h e d y n a b o o k ? theoretical issues and speculation aside, there remains the question of the relevance of this story to education and educators. i have, i believe, outlined a story of a particular innova- tion's gradual movement away from the mainstream; however brilliant kay's ideas may have been i n the s, there is no denying that i n terms of actual practice, they must appear marginal and perhaps even quaint i n the face of large scale institutional e-learning, distance education, virtual schooling, computer-mediated communications, standardized assess- ment, classroom podcasting, and what-have-you. here, as elsewhere i n this analysis, the . as of early , dan ingalls is employed at sun microsystems and has been working on a java-based implementation of the squeak virtual machine. . a press release dated dec , states, "the one laptop per child (olpc) board of directors today announced that quanta computer inc. of taiwan was chosen as the original design manufacturer (odm) for the $ laptop project. [...] in announcing the selection of quanta, olpc chairman nicholas negroponte said, 'any previous doubt that a very-low-cost laptop could be made for education in the developing world has just gone away' quanta has agreed to devote significant engineering resources from the quanta research institute (qri) in q and q , , with a target of bringing the product to market in q . the launch of - million units will be both in large-scale pilot projects in seven culturally diverse countries (china, india, bra- zil, argentina, egypt, nigeria, and thailand), with one million units in each of these countries." see http://lap- top.media.mit.edu/news.html chapter : drawing things together http://lap- http://top.media.mit.edu/news.html contemporary meaning of educational computing is wrapped up tightly w i t h that of personal computing. w h a t the latter has come to represent has everything to do with the former. kay's three decades of work remain i n ambiguous relation to both. kay's relevance to education i w i l l begin w i t h a frank observation: almost no one i have talked to i n the educational estab- lishment—teachers, administrators, professors, graduate students—has any clue who a l a n kay is. m o s t have heard of seymour papert, and can even give a basic outline of papert's project. but kay and his work remain almost entirely unknown. t h i s we must contrast w i t h kay's profile w i t h i n computer science, where he is most certainly known—in kay was the recipient of the t u r i n g a w a r d association of c o m p u t i n g machinery's highest honour— and his influence (and critique) widely felt. o f course this is not surprising; kay's profes- sional career has been spent among computer scientists, and his practical association w i t h schools and education limited to a handful of schools. papert, i n contrast, was something of a public celebrity i n the s, and the author of an enormously popular book (papert ). nevertheless, and without wanting to diminish papert's contributions at all, it must be pointed out that kay's actual influence on personal and educational computing is vastly greater. the dominant desktop paradigm and our contemporary understanding of "author- ing" software had their origins i n kay's lab. if we consider the small but significant impact of the object-oriented paradigm in information technology and computer science curriculum, one could say that kay's influence is felt i n a third area as well. the first point that the present study seeks to establish is that all these now-commonplace motifs had their origins i n the pursuit of an educational platform, one seriously informed by the educational psychology of piaget, bruner, and montessori. desktop computing and multimedia author- ing were not conceived as tools for office workers or even media professionals—they were i n the first place tools for children and elements of a vision of literacy for the st century. that this emphasis is lost o n us now is perhaps easily attributed to historical distance; the world is a different place than it was in —and even the w o r l d of was not well chapter : drawing things together represented by the san francisco bay a r e a of the day. this has not been a study of the emergence of the personal computer; that topic is m u c h larger than any of the several books already published on the topic, and w h i c h generally give short shrift to the role played by kay's group at xerox. rather, i have tried here to stay focused on the educational vision, and, for simplicity's sake to treat the emergence of personal computing as a function of the that. complicating this is the serious divergence and disconnect between the discourse of computer science and that of education, even educational technology. those who are capa- ble of speaking fluently i n both realms are few and far between, a fact easily and often underestimated by both the readers and authors of educational technology texts. t o under- score this, consider that in the s, a number of the leading thinkers i n the field of computer science (at places like x e r o x p a r c , m i t , and stanford) had turned their atten- tions to the needs and concerns of education. h o w different this is today! that the t u r i n g lecture was delivered by someone w h o m i w o u l d i n all seriousness consider—and i hope i have made this apparent in the preceding pages—an educational theorist is a complete anomaly. w h y should we care about this? w h y should it be important that computer scientists have their minds—god forbid their hands—on education? there are several possible answers to this question. one possible answer is that the education system—in the u n i t e d states, for i n s t a n c e - is seen to be badly i n need of reform, and the introduction of computers is seen as a possible vector for reform. papert has suggested as m u c h i n several of his writings (though i would not go so far as to say this has been his primary motivation), as has kay ( , p. ). a second possible answer has to do w i t h improving the administrative and logistical efficiency of educational systems: this is clearly the'aim of learning management systems, computer-driven assessment systems, and a host to drives toward standardization. but little of this area can be of serious interest to computer science as an intellectual discipline. . john markoff's ( ) what the dormouse said: the untold story of how the sixties counterculture shaped the personal computer industry sheds much light on the cultural zeitgeist at labs like xerox parc in the early s. chapter : drawing things together a third, and more interesting answer has to do w i t h the now half century-old tradition of cognitive science. this is the realm i n w h i c h the early researchers i n artificial intelligence were operating (including john m c c a r t h y and seymour papert). in this framing, research into the modeling of the m i n d and research into how learning takes place are seen as facets of a single, larger pursuit. a simple example of this concept is the now well-known concept of "multiple intelligences" advanced by h o w a r d gardner ( ), and its application to the design of multimedia curriculum resources. but there is another possible answer to the question of why computer science is impor- tant to education, and that is the one having to do w i t h "powerful ideas"—this is clearly the primary driver for both papert's and kay's projects. in this framing, computer science itself is not the important thing, but what it makes possible: the study and engagement w i t h complex or dynamic systems—and it is this latter issue w h i c h is of key importance to educa- tion. indeed, kay has aggressively questioned the very existence of a "computer science" as a discipline unto itself (attacking the notion of "software engineering" i n the same breath— see kay ). but a "systems science," of w h i c h computing is legitimately a part, in the same way that print literacy is an integral part of modern science, is surely of real impor- tance to education. note that this is not the same knee-jerk, means-ends argument that has been repeated over and over again in critiques of computers i n education; that is, this is not the same as saying that educational ends must take precedence over technological means. kay has read his m a r s h a l l m c l u h a n , and we would do well to recall h i m here, and not suppose that the "message" is somehow independent of the medium. but it does not mean either that the medium is the important thing i n and of itself. kay says it best: the reason, therefore, that many of us want children to understand computing deeply and fluently is that like literature, mathematics, science, music, and art, it carries special ways of thinking about situations that i n contrast w i t h other knowledge and other ways of thinking critically boost our ability to understand our world. (kay a, p. ) chapter : drawing things together this is the point of the dynabook, and the k i n d of literacy it suggests: like the printed book before it, the computer has the possibility to "carry special ways of thinking" that provide access to the most powerful ideas of our age. the underlying political question here is who w i l l have access to those ideas and their application? education and powerful ideas w h a t are "powerful ideas"? bj a l l e n - c o n n and k i m rose, following papert, say they are "intellectual tools" ( , p. v). w h a t makes an idea powerful? its connectedness to other ideas, and how far they can take you; using latour's vocabulary, we w o u l d say that "power- ful" ideas are those w i t h extensive networks. kay's repeated critique of education and schooling is that most powerful ideas have been either deliberately or inadvertently evacu- ated from curriculum. m u c h of "school math" is not mathematics at all but attempts to train children , i n various kinds of calculation using patterns and recipes. mathematics is actu- ally about representing and thinking clearly about ideas. science goes further: to try to come up w i t h plausible ideas about the universe that are worthwhile thinking clearly about. (kay ) it is not, in this day and age, terribly difficult to come up w i t h examples of how the school system is failing, and it is not my agenda to do so here. rather, i want to underscore a simple idea or principle: that powerful ideas of the k i n d described here—whether they be the geometry of triangles, the theory of evolution, the idea of liberal democracy, or the dynamic modelling of population dynamics—are precisely the responsibility of education. powerful ideas so defined imply particular ideas of literacy. t o be fluent w i t h trigonometry, one must be literate with respect to diagrams, lines, points, angles, algebra, arid so on—to read them and to construct them oneself. t o fully grasp the idea of liberal democracy, one must be able to read, analyse, and critique a number of document forms, and to be able to construct such arguments oneself. the kinds of powerful ideas emergent i n the digital age—simulations, systems dynamics, multimedia, collaborative works, and so on—mean one must become conversant w i t h the genres and methods of elaborating such constructs, and to be able to chapter : drawing things together create and manipulate them oneself (see lemke ). a r e these not the special province of education? is not the ideal of public education, mass education, that these ideas be accessi- ble to all, and that the very structure and health of democratic society depends upon their reasonably widespread fluency (dewey ; kellner )? a n d furthermore, as my emphasis on the ability of the literate to themselves construct and actively participate in each of these forms hopefully suggests, is it not the responsibility of education to nurture not the givenness of these ideas, but our own role i n their ongoing construction and defini- tion. is this not what democractic citizenship—as framed by dewey—is all about? the politics of software revisited a l a n kay's conception of powerful ideas is focused primarily on science and math. but it important to not limit the scope of the argument to particular curricular areas. indeed, kay has argued that education in the u n i t e d states has not done justice to m u c h of the print culture of the past three or four centuries. mathematics and science are but emblematic of this larger interest in what literacy really means. m o s t of the important ideas i n our civilization are not on the internet yet, but they are already available in free public libraries. the haves and have-nots during these coming years w i l l not be the people who do or do not have access to the internet. the real gap w i l l be between those who are discerning about the information they access and those who are not—between those who use technology to help them understand powerful ideas and those who do not. (kay , p. ) i wish at this point to move this discussion beyond kay's o w n framing, and to take a page from richard stallman, who in the s founded the free software foundation and who arguably remains the most important thinker of the free and o p e n source software (foss) movement. in an interview given i n , stallman commented, . stallman would balk at being identified with "open source"software, since he has remained vehement that the issue is one of "freedom." however, i use the more inclusive term here to refer to the cultural movement as a whole. chapter : drawing things together i've dedicated years of my life to working on free software and allied issues. i didn't do this because i think it's the most important political issue i n the world. i did it because it was the area where i saw i had to use my skills to do a lot of good. but what's happened is that the general issues of politics have evolved,and the biggest political issue i n the w o r l d today is resisting the tendency to give business power over the public and governments. i see free software and the allied questions for other kinds of information that i've been discussing today as one part of that major issue. (stallman ) stallman's focus here is very different from kay's. h e is not talking about education, and he is not concerned w i t h the status of mathematics or science perse. w h a t stallman is alluding to is the issue of ownership of knowledge, and from where he stands, this issue is not an academic or philosophical one, but a very real, concrete problem. a s our daily work and lives are increasingly conducted and mediated via digital media—and i don't think anyone who has not been asleep for the past decade would downplay this—software is more and more the 'material' substrate of our culture. stallman led a charge, beginning i n a very marginal way in the s and growing to enormous importance i n the late s, about the relationship between software (both development and distribution) and market capitalism. stallman was appalled at the extent to w h i c h his work as a programmer came to be at the behest of and w i t h i n the strictures of corporate capitalism. h i s response to what he defined as a "stark moral choice" was to found the free software foundation and establish the g n u project in order to construct a computing platform on terms not governed by the increas- ingly mainstream terms of copyright exploitation and restrictive licensing. a t the time, the only people who cared about this were u n i x programmers. but, w i t h the popular rise of the internet and w o r l d - w i d e w e b i n the s—and the translation of stallman's g n u project into the g n u / l i n u x project and the wider foss movement, stallman's concerns and his response have intersected w i t h mainstream thinking about information technology. but, to date, most thinking about free and o p e n source software has focused o n the mechanical aspects: that it is possible to develop and distribute software without demand- ing payment for it; that the quality of the software developed under such conditions is i n chapter : drawing things together some cases of higher quality due to the operation of something like peer review i n the devel- opment community; the existence of a commonwealth of software code increases the benefit for all. w h a t has so far been downplayed—indeed the emergence of the "open source" branding is precisely such amove—is the political element of stallman's argument; that the important thing is not the price of software, nor the formula for quality, nor the effi- ciency of the development community. w h a t is truly important, stallman argues, is the freedom we enjoy i n being able to develop, use, share, distribute, and build upon the fruits of one another's efforts. stallman's is a political argument first, not an engineering or a marketing argument. h o w do we as a society ensure freedom? the mechanical conception of f o s s places the emphasis on a particular application of copyright law; the g n u general public license, among others, seeks to ensure that software released under its terms remain free i n all the above mentioned ways. but the license is not the end of the argument; the license—and the laws it draws upon—are expressions of a particular culture. so the deeper and more difficult question is how do we as a culture ensure freedom? legal scholar lawrence lessig has perhaps tackled this aspect of the question more comprehensively than most. in perhaps his best-known work, a lecture entitled "free culture" ( ), lessig characterizes the current fight over copyright laws—that w h i c h stallman calls "the biggest political issue i n the world today"—as the struggle for who owns and controls creative expression i n our society. in his lecture, lessig repeats this "refrain": • creativity and innovation always builds on the past. • the past always tries to control the creativity that builds upon it. • free societies enable the future by l i m i t i n g this power of the past. • ours is less and less a free society. (lessig a) h o w does a society ensure freedom? by valuing it, in the first place—and i n the second place, by knowing what it means to be free. in a technologically mediated society—and all societies are technologically mediated—this means attending to the dynamics of expres- sion, and the modes of mediation. in the era of print, liberal modernity enshrined the idea of chapter : drawing things together a "free press" and the extent to w h i c h our nations and societies have taken this idea seriously (vs. paying lip service to it) has been an ongoing debate of crucial importance. in the era of print, we are fortunate that we have at least been aware of this debate; even when we are most cynical about the reality of a free press. it is at the very least an open political question, and thus a cultural touchstone or reference point to w h i c h most "educated" people can allude. but we are today rapidly altering our media landscape. a n d as we do so, as we move into unknown waters, we cling to our existing constructs and ideals as though they were lifejack- ets. w e know deep down, however, that the political constructs of a prior age are not likely to be quite apt i n a new era, i n w h i c h our culture operates by different means, i n w h i c h our thoughts and expressions and interactions are mediated by different systems. the current controversy over copyright law and copyright reform should at least highlight this issue. if, as i suggested above, i n this new digital age, software is more and more the substrate of our culture, the material of its expression, and thus the site of political articulation and struggle, then software freedom is indeed the issue of our time, as both stallman and lessig would say. t o this i must add; it is not going to be sufficient to ensure freedom i n software merely by releasing it under a particular license, written according to the terms of copyright l a w . w h a t is going to be required is a change i n culture: how we understand software, and how we understand freedom. in chapter , made a case for why i believe that the foss movement itself is inade- quate for bringing about such changes at a society-wide level. the f o s s movement has succeeded i n changing the cultural context of software for those already i n the know, or those who for other reasons are prepared to take the time and effort to understand the issues it addresses. but, by virtue of the intellectual and cultural heritage foss draws from, it is unlikely to make headway more generally in our society. t o the contrary; in its exclusiv- ity, it actively works against its own mainstreaming. a n d , at the end of that chapter, i . as lessig and numerous others point out, copyright law is an artifact of the advent of print; aimed specifically at circumscribing the political power of those who controlled the presses. chapter : drawing things together suggested that the tradition represented by kay's work was perhaps a better candidate, on the grounds that here was a paradigm of software development equally free and open, yet m u c h more pedagogically sound, having its roots and first principles firmly rooted i n a vision of personal computing, articulated i n a peer-to-peer, do-it-yourself, learner-centric, less-is-more aesthetic. note that these latter are not 'features' of a software product; they are virtues of a computing culture. software is political. this is obvious i n the mundane sense, as anyone who has ever had to warp their personal practices and expressions into a pre-conceived digital framework can attest. it is also obvious at the level of high-level poltical-economic analyses of the comput- ing industry or the military industrial complex (e.g. edwards ). but it is also true, more importantly, at a more profound and subtle level: at the level of culture—of the construction and co-construction of meaning and significance. w h a t should we as individuals expect from digital media? should we learn to expect it to be malleable, manipulable, combinable, and understandable? o r w i l l we be content to accept pre-packaged, shrinkwrapped capabil- ities, defined by corporations and marketers? a n d where w i l l we learn such things? in school, w i l l our children learn the logic and dynamics of digital media, in the sense i outlined in chapter ? w i l l our children learn that they are born into a mediated w o r l d more malleable, recombinable, and translatable than any other age has even dreamt of? o r w i l l they learn i n school that sharing is a crime, that microsoft office defines the set of possibilities for document communication, and that the limits of cultural expression are basically those set forth by hollywood? the fact that our education system is woefully underequipped to even begin to answer these questions is nothing new; a generation of critical educators have already elaborated school's impotence and even complicity with structured dominance (e.g. m c l a r e n ; kincheloe & steinberg ; torres ; apple ). i am not about to suggest that the adoption of a technolog- ical platform w i l l do anything to address such a large-scale systemic issue, nor to throw my lot i n w i t h those who have seen the computer as the "trojan horse" for school reform (greenberg ). i rather appeal to the notion that education is reflective of the culture it chapter : drawing things together serves, and as such see more promise i n the evolution of computing and media cultures online. even the foss movement, for all that i have said i n critique of it, at least carries a. certain weight, and the political messages emanating from it at least point i n a constructive direction. a s for the furtherance of the dynabook ideal, i hope that by now i have made a case for this being a rather diffuse process, rather than a singular trajectory. i w i l l end w i t h a state- ment of optimism: that there is enough constructive chaos i n the digital w o r l d today, enough energetic searching for wisdom and meaning on the part of millions of disorganized (at least by conventional definitions of organization) people and enough potential for the discovery—or better, the construction—of powerful ideas that the virtues embodied i n the computing culture of the dynabook vision are as likely to prevail as the opposite, corporatist alternative, w h i c h also boasts formidable resources and momentum. o u r challenge, then, as educators, practitioners, and philosophers, is to attend to the business of recognizing, appreciating, criticizing, and articulating the good. m y sincere hope is that the preceding work is a contribution to that effort. chapter : drawing things together bibliography aarseth, e. 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( ). vivarium history. retrieved oct , , from http://homepage.mac.com/larryy/larryy/vivhist.html bibliography http://c .com/cgi/wiki http://www.december.com/ http://homepage.mac.com/larryy/larryy/vivhist.html appendix a : u b c research ethics certificate of approval appendix a: ubc research ethics certificate of approval combining visual recognition and computational linguistics learning from limited labeled data zero-shot and few-shot learning a dissertation submitted towards the degree doctor of engineering of the faculty of mathematics and computer science of saarland university by yongqin xian saarbrücken ii day of colloquium th of july, dean of the faculty prof. dr. thomas schuster saarland university, germany examination committee chair prof. dr. antonio krüger reviewer, advisor prof. dr. zeynep akata reviewer, advisor prof. dr. bernt schiele reviewer prof. trevor darrell, ph.d. reviewer prof. barbara caputo, ph.d. academic assistant dr. paul swoboda abstract human beings have the remarkable ability to recognize novel visual concepts after observing only few or zero examples of them. deep learning, however, often requires a large amount of labeled data to achieve a good performance. labeled instances are expensive, difficult and even infeasible to obtain because the distribution of training instances among labels naturally exhibits a long tail. therefore, it is of great interest to investigate how to learn efficiently from limited labeled data. this thesis concerns an important subfield of learning from limited labeled data, namely, low-shot learning. the setting assumes the availability of many labeled examples from known classes and the goal is to learn novel classes from only a few (few-shot learning) or zero (zero-shot learning) training examples of them. to this end, we have developed a series of multi-modal learning approaches to facilitate the knowledge transfer from known classes to novel classes for a wide range of visual recognition tasks including image classification, semantic image segmentation and video action recognition.more specifically, this thesis mainly makes the following contributions. first, as there is no agreed upon zero-shot image classification benchmark, we define a new benchmark by unifying both the evaluation protocols and data splits of publicly available datasets. second, in order to tackle the labeled data scarcity, we propose feature generation frameworks that synthesize data in the visual feature space for novel classes. third, we extend zero-shot learning and few-shot learning to the semantic segmentation task and propose a challenging benchmark for it. we show that incorporating semantic information into a semantic segmentation network is effective in segmenting novel classes. finally, we develop better video representation for the few-shot video classification task and leverage weakly-labeled videos by an efficient retrieval method. iii zusammenfassung menschen haben die bemerkenswerte fähigkeit, neuartige visuelle konzepte zu erkennen, nachdem sie nur wenige oder gar keine beispiele davon beobachtet haben. tiefes lernen erfordert jedoch oft eine große menge an beschrifteten daten, um eine gute leistung zu erzielen. etikettierte instanzen sind teuer, schwierig und sogar undurchführbar, weil die verteilung der trainingsinstanzen auf die etiketten naturgemäß einen langen schwanz aufweist. daher ist es von großem interesse zu untersuchen, wie man effizient aus begrenzten gelabelten daten lernen kann. diese these betrifft einen wichtigen teilbereich des lernens aus begrenzt gela- belten daten, nämlich das low-shot-lernen. das setting setzt die verfügbarkeit vieler gelabelter beispiele aus bekannten klassen voraus, und das ziel ist es, neuar- tige klassen aus nur wenigen (few-shot learning) oder null (zero-shot learning) trainingsbeispielen davon zu lernen. zu diesem zweck haben wir eine reihe von multimodalen lernansätzen entwickelt, um den wissenstransfer von bekannten klassen zu neuartigen klassen für ein breites spektrum von visuellen erkennungsauf- gaben zu erleichtern, darunter bildklassifizierung, semantische bildsegmentierung und videoaktionserkennung. genauer gesagt, leistet diese arbeit hauptsächlich die folgenden beiträge. da es keinen vereinbarten benchmark für die zero-shot- bildklassifikation gibt, definieren wir zunächst einen neuen benchmark, indem wir sowohl die evaluierungsprotokolle als auch die datensplits öffentlich zugänglicher datensätze vereinheitlichen. zweitens schlagen wir zur bewältigung der etiket- tierten datenknappheit einen rahmen für die generierung von merkmalen vor, der daten im visuellen merkmalsraum für neuartige klassen synthetisiert. drittens dehnen wir das zero-shot-lernen und das few-shot-lernen auf die semantische segmentierungsaufgabe aus und schlagen dafür einen anspruchsvollen benchmark vor. wir zeigen, dass die einbindung semantischer informationen in ein seman- tisches segmentierungsnetz bei der segmentierung neuartiger klassen effektiv ist. schließlich entwickeln wir eine bessere videodarstellung für die klassifizierungsauf- gabe ”few-shot video” und nutzen schwach markierte videos durch eine effiziente abrufmethode. v acknowledgements first and foremost, i would like to express my sincere gratitude to prof. bernt schiele and prof. zeynep akata for supervising my phd thesis. both of them have been great advisors. i am grateful to bernt for his constant supports and inspiration throughout the time. he has not only provided me invaluable advices in computer vision research, but also taught me how to be a good scientist as well as a good father by setting a role model himself. likewise, i would like to thank zeynep for guiding me to the wonderful journey of computer vision research. she has been extremely helpful because she gave me a lot of critical hands-on supervision and encouragement. none of my research presented in the thesis would be possible without her. i am fortunate and thankful for having both of them as my advisors. i am also truly thankful to the other members in my dissertation committee. thanks prof. trevor darrell and prof. barbara caputo for serving as external reviewers and attending my defense at those difficult times caused by the covid- virus. thanks prof. antonio krüger for his quick responses and agreeing to chair the defense. thanks dr. paul swoboda for being the academic assistant. their invaluable feedback and discussion on my thesis have helped and inspired me a lot. i also would like to thank my lovely colleagues at mpii, not only for the inspiring discussion and collaboration concerning research but also for sharing a lot of happy moments outside of the work: connie balzert, apratim bhattacharyya, rakshith shetty, philipp müller, eldar insafutdinov, anna kukleva, dr. mykhaylo andriluka, dr. gerard pons-moll, prof. wei-chen chiu, dr. anna khoreva, dr. jan-hendrik lange, dr. wenbin li, prof. siyu tang, prof. shanshan zhang, and dr. xucong zhang. i owe particular thanks to connie for helping me to handle a lot of difficult matters regarding my life in germany. thanks jan-hendrik and philipp for helping me to translate many german letters into english. i also shared an office with rakshith and we had many fruitful discussions about research. thank you, rakshith! it was a great pleasure to work with these talented people. furthermore, i would like to thank my collaborators, without whom i would have no chance to complete the thesis: saurabh sharma, dr. gaurav sharma, dr. yang he, prof. matthias hein, dr. quynh nguyen ngoc, prof. christoph h. lampert, prof. lorenzo torresani, bruno korbar and dr. matthijs douze. i am particularly grateful to lorenzo for supervising my internship at facebook ai in boston. similarly, my thanks go to the students that i had the chance to supervise or work with: yue fan, subhabrata choudhury, tobias lorenz, wenjia xu and miaoran zhang. last but not the least, i am deeply thankful to my family and friends who have been constantly loving and supporting me. i would like to especially thank my wife dr. yijuan qiao for her encouragement and sacrifice. my deepest gratitude also goes to my parents and brother who always love me without any condition. this thesis is dedicated to my beloved daughter odelia who was born in the end of my phd. vii c o n t e n t s introduction . challenges of learning from limited labeled data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . zero-shot image classification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . few-shot image classification. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . zero-shot and few-shot learning tasks beyond image classification . contributions of the thesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . contributions to zero-shot image classification . . . . . . . . . . . . contributions to few-shot image classification . . . . . . . . . . . . contributions to zero-shot and few-shot tasks beyond image classification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . outline of the thesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . related work . zero-shot image classification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . problem definition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . evaluation protocol . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . a literature review of zero-shot approaches . . . . . . . . . . . . . relations to our work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . few-shot image classification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . problem definition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . evaluation protocols . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . a literature review of few-shot approaches . . . . . . . . . . . . . relations to our work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . zero-shot and few-shot tasks beyond image classification . . . . . . . . . . semantic image segmentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . video action recognition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . relations to our work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . latent embedding for zero-shot image classification . introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . background: bilinear joint embeddings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . latent embeddings model (latem) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . objective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . optimization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . model selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . experiments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . zero-shot learning experiments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . generalized zero-shot learning setting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix x contents zero-shot learning: the good, the bad and the ugly . introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . related work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . evaluated methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . learning linear compatibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . learning nonlinear compatibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . learning intermediate attribute classifiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . hybrid models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . transductive zero-shot learning setting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . datasets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . attribute datasets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . large-scale imagenet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . evaluation protocol . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . image and class embedding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . dataset splits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . evaluation criteria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . experiments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . zero-shot learning experiments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . generalized zero-shot learning results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . transductive (generalized) zero-shot learning . . . . . . . . . . conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . feature generating networks for zero-shot image classification . introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . related work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . feature generation & classification in zsl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . feature generation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . classification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . experiments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . comparing with state-of-the-art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . analyzing f-xgan under different conditions . . . . . . . . . . . large-scale experiments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . feature vs image generation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . enhanced feature generation frameworks for low-shot learning . introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . related work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . f-vaegan-d model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . baseline feature generating models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . our f-vaegan-d model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . experiments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (generalized) zero-shot learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (generalized) few-shot learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . interpreting synthesized features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . contents xi . conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . zero-label and few-label semantic segmentation . introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . related works . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . semantic projection network (spnet) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . baseline: hinge visual-semantic loss (hvsl) . . . . . . . . . . . experiment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . zero-label semantic segmentation task . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . few-label semantic segmentation task . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . qualitative results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . generalized many-way few-shot video classification . introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . related work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . r- dfsv approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . d cnn for fsv ( dfsv) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . retrieval-enhanced dfsv (r- dfsv) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . experiments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . experimental settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . comparing with the state-of-the-art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . increasing the number of classes in fsv . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . evaluating base and novel classes in gfsv . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ablation study and retrieved clips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . qualitative results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . conclusions and future perspectives . discussion of contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . future perspectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . zero-shot image classification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . few-shot image classification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . zero-shot and few-shot learning beyond image classification . . . a broader view on the topic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . list of figures list of tables bibliography i n t r o d u c t i o n contents . challenges of learning from limited labeled data . . . . . . . . . . . . . zero-shot image classification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . few-shot image classification. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . zero-shot and few-shot learning tasks beyond image classi- fication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . contributions of the thesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . contributions to zero-shot image classification . . . . . . . . . . contributions to few-shot image classification . . . . . . . . . . contributions to zero-shot and few-shot tasks beyond image classification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . outline of the thesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . t he demand for automated understanding of visual data (videos and images) has became more urgent than ever. billions of images and videos uploaded on the internet demand autonomous analysis and understanding. self-driving vehicles need a visual perception system to detect pedestrians, traffic signs and other obstacles. hospitals need automated analysis of medical imaging data to improve the clinical efficiency. robotics need to understand complex visual scenes for interacting with the environment. in general, solving a computer vision task consists of two necessary steps: en- coding and decoding. given an image or video as input, the encoding step extracts features from the input and represents them as a compact vector. a lot of previous computer vision studies focus on designing hand-crafted features to encode an image or video. the decoding step extracts “patterns” from the feature vector and produces a decision depending on what the end task is. machine learning is often applied in this step to learn the patterns in a principled way. recent advances in computer vision are mainly due to the success of deep learning, which proposes to learn encoding and decoding simultaneously by a deep neural network optimized with task-specific losses. despite the substantial progress, current computer vision algorithms still fail to generalize to the variety of visual environments in real-world applications. a limitation of deep learning is that it requires massive amounts of labeled data to achieve high performance. however, labeled instances are expensive, difficult and even infeasible to obtain. as shown in figure . , in almost all scenarios, there is an exponential decay in terms of number of samples per class i.e., only a few classes contain a large number of samples whereas most classes are sparsely chapter . introduction n um be r of d at a category“car” “goose fish”“play guitar” semantic segmentation image classification video classification “cardinal” “busking” figure . : in almost all real-wold settings, the number of samples per category follows a skewed distribution i.e. a few categories have a large number of samples while most of categories have only a small number of samples (as shown in the left figure). the scarcity of samples results in poor generalization performance of the powerful deep learning methods which often require a huge number of labeled data to train. in this thesis, we address the challenges when learning with limited labeled data in the scenarios of image classification (e.g. he et al., ), semantic segmentation (e.g. long et al., ) and video classification (e.g. tran et al., ). populated. it becomes almost impossible to collect enough training examples for every class, leading to the inferior performance of deep neural networks. consider a real-world example in the autonomous driving field. in order to train a reliable visual perception system for self-driving cars, current algorithms need to collect a vast amount of labeled examples that cover all the road condition, weather condition, time of driving, and obstacles. this is obviously infeasible because there are many circumstances that rarely occur e.g., big rocks on the snowy roads. as a consequence, the self-driving car is very likely to make wrong decisions when it encounters the rare circumstances. on the contrary, humans naturally possess the ability of learning novel concepts from a small number of examples. this is not only attributed to the computational power of the human brain, but also to its ability of re-using previous learned knowledge. attaining such ability of rapid learning is particularly appealing for artificial intelligence (ai) and will push ai one step further towards human-level intelligence. the goal of this thesis is thus to address the labeled data scarcity by developing machine learning methods that can be trained with limited labeled data. our key idea is to re-use information from related tasks, transfer knowledge across different modalities , and leverage unlabeled data to minimize the human supervision on . challenges of learning from limited labeled data novel tasks. more specifically, we aim to enable deep neural networks to generalize to novel concepts with as few labeled examples as possible. in order to mimic the way that human learns new concepts i.e., by re-using previous gained knowledge, we divide classes of interests into disjoint base and novel classes. each of the base classes has enough training examples and plays a role as previous learned knowledge. on the contrary, the novel classes have only limited training examples and the task is to develop methods that generalize well to unseen examples from those novel classes. this thesis concerns both few-shot learning where each novel class possesses a few examples (up to examples per class), and zero-shot learning where novel class has no labeled example at all. in this section, we will discuss the challenges in zero-shot image classification, few-shot image classification, and their applications in other computer vision tasks e.g., semantic segmentation and video action recognition. finally, we summarize how this thesis contributes to the fields of zero-shot and few-shot learning. . challenges of learning from limited labeled data machine learning methods, typically deep neural networks, rely on a large labeled dataset for achieving a good performance, which makes it difficult to apply ai into real-world settings because collecting labeled data is not always possible (e.g., the skewed distribution for number of available samples in figure . ). it is thus of great importance to develop machine learning methods that can learn from limited labeled data. a fundamental problem of learning from a small dataset is the risk of overfitting i.e., a model fits too closely to the limited training examples and fails to generalize to unseen test samples. when the training data is limited, smart sampling of training data, regularization and data augmentation are three classical ways to improve the generalization performance according to the statistical learning theory (bishop, ). while conventional machine learning methods draw training examples uniformly, smart sampling aims to select the “best” instances to reduce the amount of required training data. an example of smart sampling is active learning where the learning algorithms select the most uncertain samples to annotate given a fixed budget of labeling cost. recent advancements in active learning show that deep learning models can be built with limited labeled data if training examples are smartly selected. however, active learning still requires a huge pool of data to select training examples. another principled way to reduce overfitting is regularization, which refers to technics that prevent learning algorithms from fitting too closely to the training examples. typical regularization techniques achieve this by reducing the model complexity e.g., l regularizer. for deep neural networks, popular regularizers include dropout that averages multiple models, pretraining on imagenet that provides good initialization and early stopping of optimization that avoids fitting the noise in the dataset. in addition, data augmentation addresses the labeled data scarcity by automatically generating more training data without manually collecting chapter . introduction them. for visual understanding tasks of images, it has been shown that simple horizontal flipping and cropping of images can successfully increase the diversity of the training data and significantly improve the performance. unfortunately, those simple techniques are still insufficient to obtain a good performance in the extreme case of lacking labeled data e.g., there is only example per class. in addition to those classical approaches, emerging directions for learning with limited labeled data include weakly supervised learning and self-supervised learning. those directions do not directly tackle the overfitting issue on the small training set like the classical approaches. instead, they aim to learn from a big dataset that is weakly annotated or not annotated such that human supervision is reduced. for example, (oquab et al., ) proposes an object detection approach with image- level labels, avoiding the expensive bounding box annotation. self-supervised learning (chen et al., ) completely eliminate human supervision by learning from an unlabeled dataset. in this thesis, we are mainly focusing on data augmentation and regulariza- tion approaches. weakly supervised and self-supervised learning are promising directions to explore in the future but not the scope of this thesis. in the following subsections we identify the specific challenges of the tasks we want to solve and also discuss how we tackle those challenges in this thesis. . . zero-shot image classification zero-shot learning refers to the ability to predict novel classes without accessing any of their training examples. in the context of image classification, the task is to predict the class label of a given image from one of the novel classes. for simplicity, this thesis will only study the case where each image consists of only one object class. this problem can be highly valuable in the fine-grained classification where annotating labeled data requires expert knowledge. here are a few challenges we aim to address in the thesis. multi-modal learning. in order to associate novel classes with base classes, we assume every class has some semantic information available e.g., attributes and textual description. therefore, zero-shot learning is naturally a multi-modal learning problem. how to learn the correlation between two or even more modalities becomes a challenging research topic. previous works (akata et al., b, ) often learn a bilinear compatibility function which is limited to capture the complex correlation between vision and language modalities. the zero-shot learning performance will rely on the efficiency of knowledge transfer via multi-modal learning methods. limitation of current zero-shot benchmarks. although the number of publi- cation in zero-shot learning is steadily increasing, there is no agreed evaluation protocol, leading to incomparable results. in addition, novel classes in existing benchmarks are present in imagenet which is used for feature pretraining, violat- ing the principle of zero-shot learning. finally, current benchmark only evaluates on novel classes and ignores base classes at the testing time, which is unrealistic. real-world applications require the models to perform well on both base and novel . challenges of learning from limited labeled data classes. there is an urgent demand for a better zero-shot learning benchmark. domain shift. zero-shot learning models are trained on the examples of base classes and evaluated on novel classes without any training examples. therefore, there is no generalization guarantee on novel classes because their distribution is totally unknown. zero-shot learning can be particularly challenging if there is a domain gap between distributions of novel and base classes. how to solve the domain shift issue becomes an important challenge in zero-shot learning. extreme class imbalance zero-shot learning suffers from the extreme case of data imbalance i.e., base classes have a lot of training examples and novel classes have no training data at all. existing zero-shot methods essentially fail when evaluated on both base and novel classes because classifiers have a strong tendency to predict seen classes. one way to address this class imbalance problem is to employ a cost-sensitive loss (chawla et al., ) or over-sampling (chawla et al., ) the minority classes. however, these prior solutions are fundamentally not in line with deep learning and zero-shot learning methods. . . few-shot image classification. in zero-shot learning, there is no training example for novel classes, which might be too extreme. in real-world scenarios, it is often more realistic to consider few-shot learning where a few labeled examples are available for novel classes. despite those additional training data, few-shot learning remains to be a difficult task because the number of training examples is still far from enough to learn a deep neural network. in addition to the classical regularization techniques, how can we encourage the models to share knowledge across related tasks? risk of overfitting. due to the small number of training examples from novel classes, directly fine-tuning a deep neural network will result in overfitting i.e., the model fits exactly to the small training set of novel classes and fails to generalize to unseen examples of novel classes. techniques that work well in supervised learning will probably fail in the few-shot learning setting because of the overfitting. how to regularize the networks to avoid overfitting when fine-tuning the deep neural networks remains an open problem. imbalanced classes. in few-shot learning, the number of training examples from base classes is much larger than that of novel classes, resulting in an imbalanced learning problem. many few-shot learning papers avoid this issue by ignoring the base classes at the evaluation time. however, we argue that such evaluation setting is unrealistic and consider the imbalanced issue as one of the challenges we would like to tackle. representation learning for few-shot learning. in the supervised learning set- ting, the goal is to learn a model that generalizes well to unseen examples from the same training task. the underlying assumption is that the distribution of test data follows that of training data. its generalization error is guaranteed theoretically. however, few-shot learning aims for a model that generalizes well to novel tasks with a few training examples. although conventional representation learning framework chapter . introduction works well for the known tasks, it might not generalize well to novel tasks. how to develop efficient representation for few-shot learning remains unknown. what principles make the representation generalize better to novel tasks? . . zero-shot and few-shot learning tasks beyond image classification the long-tail issue does not only occur in the image classification tasks but also in other computer vision tasks. in this thesis, we additionally study the semantic segmentation and video classification tasks in the context of zero-shot and few-shot learning. semantic segmentation. the image semantic segmentation task aims to predict a class label for every pixel in the image. this is a challenging structural output learning problem and requires expensive pixel-level labeling. ordinary semantic segmentation methods fail to handle the images which contain novel classes. in order to tackle the long-tail issue, this thesis is interested in a semantic segmentation frame that can make zero-shot prediction on novel classes and few-shot learning on novel classes with limited labeled data. since this is a new task, we face the challenge of how to formally define the problem. in addition, how to transfer knowledge from known classes to novel classes is another challenge as well. video classification. the task of the video classification is to assign an action class label to a trimmed video. the few-shot learning setting becomes practical in the video domain because annotating videos is more time-consuming and the class distribution is also skewed. in addition to learn the spatial information, we have to model temporal information which is particularly critical for some video applications. a common challenge in few-shot video learning as well as in ordinary video learning is how to learn representation that encodes both temporal and spatial information. in addition, the overfitting risk becomes higher comparing to the few- shot image classification task because the video models often have larger capacity than the image models. . contributions of the thesis in this section, we summarize the contributions of this thesis in three different fields. . . contributions to zero-shot image classification to tackle the multi-modal learning challenges of zero-shot learning, we propose a novel compatibility learning framework by incorporating latent variables in the compatibility function. instead of learning a single bilinear function like previous works, we propose to learn a collection of bilinear models while allowing each image-class pair to choose from them. this effectively makes our model non-linear, as in different local regions of the space the decision boundary, while being linear, is different. in addition, we propose a fast and effective method for model selection by . contributions of the thesis successive pruning of an over-complete initialization. we show that such a strategy is competitive compared to standard cross-validation based model selection, while being much faster to train. we extensively evaluate our novel piece-wise linear model for zero-shot and generalized zero-shot learning settings on various aspects such as stability, interpretability, generalizability to seen and unseen classes. we define a new benchmark by unifying both the evaluation protocols and data splits of publicly available datasets used for this task. this is an important contribution as published results are often not comparable and sometimes even flawed due to, e.g. pre-training on zero-shot test classes. our evaluation protocol emphasizes the necessity of tuning hyperparameters of the methods on a validation class split that is disjoint from training classes as improving zero-shot learning performance via tuning parameters on test classes violates the zero-shot assumption. we point out that extracting image features via a pre-trained deep neural network (dnn) on a large dataset that contains zero-shot test classes also violates the zero- shot learning idea as image feature extraction is a part of the training procedure. we recommend to abstract away from the restricted nature of zero-shot evaluation and make the task more practical by including training classes in the search space, i.e. generalized zero-shot learning setting. moreover, we propose a new zero-shot learning dataset, the animals with attributes (awa ) dataset which we make publicly available both in terms of image features and the images themselves. we systematically evaluate zero-shot learning across a significant number of datasets and methods. the crux of the matter for all zero-shot learning methods is to associate observed and non observed classes through some form of auxiliary information which encodes visually distinguishing properties of objects. we thoroughly evaluate zero-shot learning approaches, by using multiple splits of several small, medium and large-scale datasets (patterson and hays, ; welinder et al., ; lampert et al., ; farhadi et al., ; deng et al., ). therefore, we argue that our work plays an important role in advancing the zero-shot learning field by analyzing the good and bad aspects of the zero-shot learning task as well as proposing ways to eliminate the ugly ones. our benchmark paper demonstrates that almost all the zero-shot methods fail in the generalized zero-shot learning setting where the model has to predict both base and novel classes. in order to tackle the imbalance challenge in this setting, we propose a novel conditional generative model f-clswgan that synthesizes cnn features of novel classes from their semantic embeddings. once trained, the feature generator will be able to synthesize arbitrarily many features for any class which lacks training examples. we show that data generation in the feature space works much better than in the image space because generating realistic images from semantic embeddings is a much harder task. across five datasets with varying granularity and sizes, we consistently improve upon the state of the art in both the zsl and gzsl settings. we demonstrate a practical application for adversarial training and propose gzsl as a proxy task to evaluate the performance of generative models. our model is generalizable to different deep cnn features, e.g., extracted from googlenet or resnet, and may use different class-level auxiliary information, chapter . introduction e.g., sentence, attribute, and word vec embeddings. . . contributions to few-shot image classification the success of our feature generation approach encourages us to extend it to the few-shot learning setting, which also suffers from the imbalance issue. to this end, we propose the f-vaegan-d model that consists of a conditional encoder, a shared conditional decoder/generator, a conditional discriminator and a non-conditional discriminator. the first three networks aim to learn the conditional distribution of cnn image features given class embeddings optimizing vae and wgan losses on labeled data of seen classes. the last network learns the marginal distribution of cnn image features on the unlabeled features of novel classes. once trained, our model synthesizes discriminative image features that can be used to augment softmax classifier training. our empirical analysis on cub, awa , sun, flo, and large-scale imagenet shows that our generated features improve the state-of-the-art in low-shot regimes, i.e., (generalized) zero- and few shot learning in both the inductive and transductive settings. we demonstrate that our generated features are interpretable by inverting them back to the raw pixel space and by generating visual explanations. . . contributions to zero-shot and few-shot tasks beyond image classification we introduce novel (generalized) zero-label and few-label semantic image segmenta- tion tasks in a realistic settings inspired by zero-shot learning for image classification. in zero-label semantic segmentation (zlss), our aim is to segment previously unseen, i.e. novel, classes, in few-label semantic segmentation (flss) these novel classes have a small number of labeled training examples. in this work, we also aim for learning without forgetting the previously seen classes, i.e. generalized zlss and flss. to this end, we propose semantic projection network (spnet), an end-to-end semantic segmentation model which maps each image pixel to a semantic word embedding space where it is projected with a fixed word embedding to class proba- bilities optimizing the cross-entropy loss. we create a benchmark for (generalized) zero- and few-label semantic image segmentation with two challenging datasets, i.e. coco-stuff and pascal-voc. our analysis shows that the spnet model achieves impressive results both quantitatively and qualitatively in (generalized) zero-label and few-label tasks. furthermore, as a side-product, our model improves the state of the art in zero-shot image classification demonstrating that it successfully generalizes to other tasks. we push the progress of few-shot video classification in three aspects: ) to learn the temporal information, we revisit spatiotemporal cnns in the few-shot video clas- sification regime. we develop a d cnn baseline that maintains significant temporal information within short clips; ) we propose to retrieve relevant tag-labeled videos from a large video dataset, i.e. yfcc m, to circumvent the need for class-labeled . outline of the thesis videos of novel classes; ) we extend current few-shot video classification evaluation by introducing two challenging experimental settings. in generalized few-shot video classification task, the search space has no restriction in terms of classes. in few-shot video classification with more ways, the search space goes beyond five towards all classes. our extensive experimental results demonstrate that on existing settings spatiotemporal cnns outperform the state-of-the-art by a large margin, and on our proposed settings weakly-labeled videos retrieved using tags successfully tackles both of our new few-shot video classification tasks. . outline of the thesis in this section, we provide an overview of the thesis by briefly summarizing each chapter and draw a connection between them. we also note the respective publica- tions and collaborations with other researchers. chapter : related work. this chapter surveys related work which tackles chal- lenges of learning with limited labeled data with a focus on the three directions of the thesis i.e., zero-shot image classification, few-shot image classification and zero- and few-shot tasks beyond image classification. we discuss how these works relate to the approaches and contributions presented in this thesis. a discussion of related work specific to the following chapters is provided within each chapter. chapter : latent embedding for zero-shot image classification. in this chapter, we tackle the zero-shot image classification problem by developing a novel compatibility function that learns non-linear relationship between the image and semantic class embedding spaces. the content of this chapter is an extension of yongqin xian’s master thesis, which was published in cvpr with the title latent embedding for zero- shot image classification (xian et al., ). the following significant changes have been made in our extension: comparing with four other sota methods, evaluating in generalized zero-shot and few-shot settings, and combining multiple class embeddings for better performance. yongqin xian was the lead author of this paper. it is a collaboration with gaurav sharma, and the machine learning group of saarland university. chapter : zero-shot learning: the good, the bad and the ugly. in this chapter, we show that existing zero-shot learning evaluation protocols adopted by chapter and other works are limited. therefore, we introduce a new zero- shot learning benchmark which resolves the issues of previous protocols. our new benchmark involves datasets and includes both zero-shot learning set- ting that only predicts novel classes and generalized zero-shot learning which predicts both base and novel classes. we provide a better summarization of existing approaches by classifying them into groups and evaluating them under the unified evaluation protocol. chapter . introduction the content of this chapter was published in tpami with the title zero- shot learning - a comprehensive evaluation of the good the bad and the ugly (xian et al., b), which is an extension of our cvpr publication zero-shot learning-the good, the bad and the ugly (xian et al., ). yongqin xian was the lead author of both papers. it is also a collaboration with christoph lampert from ist austria. chapter : feature generating networks for zero-shot image classification. in this chapter, we tackle the issues we observe in chapter . more specifically, we found that almost all the zero-shot learning approaches fail to achieve good performance on novel classes in the generalized zero-shot learning setting due to the extreme imbalanced dataset. to this end, we propose a novel generative model that synthesizes visual features for novel classes from their semantic class embeddings. the generative model is learned on base class data and can be used to synthesize arbitrarily many visual features for novel classes, alleviating the data imbalance issue. the content of this chapter corresponds to the cvpr publication feature generating networks for zero-shot learning (xian et al., ). yongqin xian was the lead author of this paper, while tobias lorenz contributed the image generation part. tobias lorenz’s bachelor thesis at mpi informatics was co- supervised by yongqin xian and bernt schiele. chapter : enhanced feature generation frameworks for low-shot learning. based on the success of feature generation technique described in chapter on zero- shot learning tasks, we improve the generative model in chapter in two aspects. first, we combine gans and vae to obtain a stronger generative model that attains the strength of adversarial and non-adversarial learning. second, we additionally add a discriminator that learns the marginal distribu- tion of novel classes when their unlabeled data is available. we also propose to interpret generated features by inverting them back into the image pixel space. the content of this chapter corresponds to the cvpr publication f- vaegan-d : a feature generating framework for any-shot learning (xian et al., c). yongqin xian was the lead author of this paper while saurab sharma contributed the feature explanation part. chapter : zero-label and few-label semantic segmentation. previous chapters are all about image classification. in this chapter, we introduce a novel image semantic segmentation task that aims to segment novel classes that have zero or very few training examples. we propose an approach called spnet that projects each pixel into a semantic embedding space such that knowledge can be transferred from base classes to novel classes. we show that our method can tackle both zero-label and few-label semantic segmentation tasks. the content of this chapter corresponds to the cvpr publication sematic projection network for zero-label and few-label semantic segmentation (xian et al., . outline of the thesis a). yongqin and subhabrata choudhury were the first co-authors of this paper. yongqin xian contributed to the main ideas, zero-shot image classification experiments, and writting of the paper. subhabrata choudhury implemented the approach and conducted most of the experiments. it is also a collaboration with yang he. chapter : generalized many-way few-shot video classification. in this chapter, we shift from image classification tasks to the video classification task which predict the action label of each video in the context of few-shot learning. we show that a simple linear classifier baseline with d cnns as the backbone sur- passes existing few-shot video classification benchmark. therefore we propose a more realistic and challenging evaluation setting called generalized few-shot video classification involving more classes. we develop an efficient retrieval- based few-shot learning approach that leverages weakly-labeled videos from a large-scale video dataset. the content of this chapter is still under review for a conference by the time of submitting this thesis. the lead author of this project was yongqin xian. this is his internship project done at facebook ai together with lorenzo torresani, bruno korbar and matthijs douze chapter : conclusions and future perspectives. this chapter concludes the thesis by summarizing the contributions and highlighting their current limitations and possible directions to overcome them. we provide an outlook on our ongoing and future work and discuss future directions for the field. r e l a t e d w o r k contents . zero-shot image classification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . problem definition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . evaluation protocol . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . a literature review of zero-shot approaches . . . . . . . . . . . relations to our work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . few-shot image classification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . problem definition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . evaluation protocols . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . a literature review of few-shot approaches . . . . . . . . . . . . relations to our work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . zero-shot and few-shot tasks beyond image classification . . . . . . . . semantic image segmentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . video action recognition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . relations to our work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . t he field of learning with limited labeled data covers a wide range of topics including semi-supervised learning, unsupervised learning, self-supervised learning, weakly-supervised learning, few-shot learning and zero-shot learn- ing. this thesis will mainly focus on few-shot and zero-shot learning tasks. in this chapter, we formally define the research problems chosen in this thesis. we present the most relevant and recent developments in the fields and relate them to the contri- butions of this thesis in the conclusion of each section. the following chapters also discuss related work, but targeted to the respective topic of the respective chapter. . zero-shot image classification the ability of predicting previously unseen classes, called zero-shot learning, is an extreme case of learning with limited labeled data. in object recognition or image classification, the task of zero-shot learning is to predict the label of an image belonging to one of novel object classes that do not appear during training time. the only available information on novel classes is the semantic information that describes those classes. humans are able to predict unseen objects by combining their prior knowledge and textual description of novel classes. for instance, given an image of scarlet tanager (we probably have never seen before), we will have a high chance to make a correct prediction after reading the textual description of scarlet tanager. inspired by the human brains, zero-shot object recognition can be addressed by chapter . related work performing multi-modal learning from both image and semantic information. in the following, we will first formally define zero-shot learning. different modalities of data and evaluation protocols will be discussed next. then we will try to give an overview of existing zero-shot learning approaches by grouping them. finally, the relationship between this thesis and existing works will be discussed. . . problem definition let t = {(x, y)|x, y ∈ s} be the training set where x denotes an image instance and y is its class label belonging to one of seen classes s. we are interested in predicting a disjoint set of classes u (s∩u = ∅), called unseen classes, without any observed examples. clearly, this task can not be solved without any information of unseen classes. so additionally, we assume some auxiliary information, e.g., textual description, about each class i.e. seen and unseen classes, is provided to allow knowledge transfer from the seen classes to unseen classes. . . . image embedding for a visual recognition task, one of the most important components is to extract features from images. the image feature is in the form of a vector in some arbitrary feature space and should ideally capture discriminative characteristics of an image i.e., shape, color, texture etc. the features are then fed into machine learning algorithms to learn classifiers that distinguish between different objects. in this thesis, we call the image features as image embedding. formally, we define the image embedding of a given image x as φ(x) where φ(•) is a function that maps an image x to a dx-dimensional feature space. before the success of deep learning, image features are often manually designed by computer vision researchers. there have been a lot of studies on how to build robust image features or descriptors manually. deep learning takes a brave new perspective to learn image representation together with the end task from a big amount of training data. deep image representation quickly revolutionized the fields and become the standard way to extract image feature. next, i will briefly review this two groups of image features. hand-crafted image representation. typical hand-crafted image features aggre- gate some image descriptors extracted from local image regions, which is obtained by interest region detection algorithms e.g., harris-affine detector(mikolajczyk and schmid, ). a simple image descriptor is the histogram of pixel intensities. in or- der to achieve the illumination invariant, (zabih and woodfill, ) have proposed to use histograms of ordering and reciprocal relations between pixel intensities. a more widely used image descriptor is the scale invariant feature transform (sift)(lowe, ), which computes a gradient histogram over local regions obtained by a scale invariant region detector. (bay et al., ) further proposes the speeded up robust features (surf) which is stronger and faster than the sift. a comprehensive review of image descriptors can be found in (mikolajczyk and schmid, ). a popular way . zero-shot image classification to aggregate image descriptors extracted from local image regions is bag-of-visual- words (bov) which assigns each descriptor to the closest visual vocabulary obtained by k-means clustering (arandjelovic and zisserman, ). (sánchez et al., ) proposes fisher vector that extends bov to use a gaussian mixture model. bov ignores the spatial relationship between image patches, therefore, spatial pyramid matching (yang et al., ) was proposed to address this issue. deep image representation in contrast to aforementioned hand-crafted image fea- tures that adopt a manually designed extraction pipeline, deep image representation directly learns the image embedding function φ(•) via a deep convolutional neural network (cnn or convnet) (lecun et al., ). a simple example of neural network is the multi-layer perceptron (mlp) which stacks multiple fully connected (fc) layers with a non-linear operation e.g. relu, after each layer. the fc layers connect each neuron in current layer to all the neurons in the next layer with different learnable weights. this is obviously prone to overfit because of such huge number of model parameters. therefore, convnet regularizes the neural network by considering only local connection of neurons and sharing weight parameters across different local neighborhood. such regularizer can be efficiently implemented by the convolution operation. the first convolutional neural network architecture , called lenet(lecun et al., ), was introduced by yann lecun. a -layer lenet architecture follows conv-pool-conv-pool-fc-fc where conv represents the convolutional layer followed by a non-linear function, pool is the max pooling that subsamples the feature maps, and fc is the fully connected layer. alexnet (krizhevsky et al., ) improves lenet by stacking more conv layers without pooling and won the ima- genet ilsvrc challenge in . googlenet (szegedy et al., ) introduces the inception module and replaces fc layers with the global average pooling, dramati- cally reducing the number of parameters compared to alexnet. vgg (simonyan and zisserman, b) shows that depth of the network plays an important role for good performance. current popular cnn architecture is resnet which introduces skip-connection and makes the network as deep as layers. there are also a few extensions of resnet proposed like densenet (huang et al., ), resnext, etc. recently, neural architecture search(zoph and le, ), which aims to learn the network architecture automatically, has obtained increasing attention. the cnn networks are often learned with the backpropagation algorithm with a task specific loss such as the cross-entropy loss for multi-class image classification. the object function of learning cnn is non-convex because of its highly non-linear structure. but empirically, sgd-based algorithms are sufficient for a good performance. the- oretical studies about the optimization of cnn can be found in (nguyen et al., ). . . . class embedding zero-shot image classification is a multi-modal learning problem where image examples of unseen classes are not available and learning of unseen classes relies chapter . related work on another modality of data. this modality often comes from some high-level semantic information such as human annotated attributes or text descriptions. the semantic information is usually assumed to be in the class level. therefore, we call it class embedding. one can consider the class embedding as the prototype that represents the abstract of a class. the class embedding plays an important role in the zero-shot learning image classification. good class embeddings should capture visual similarities between classes. one can refer to (akata et al., b) for a comprehensive evaluation of different class embeddings in zero-shot learning. in this section, we discuss four different class embeddings that are widely used in zero-shot learning. attribute attributes describe the visual properties of an object, such as “red” , “spotted” or “striped”. the appearance of an object class can often be represented by combinations of different colors, shapes, and patterns. therefore, they are useful cues to recognize objects. most importantly, attributes are shared among objects such that knowledge learned from seen classes can be transferred to unseen classes. in order to annotate attributes, we have to first define attribute vocabularies that are discriminative enough to distinguish the object classes of our interests. for instance, on the caltech-ucsd birds- - dataset (cub), a vocabulary of binary attributes e.g., eye color yellow, beak shape sharp, was selected based on an online tool for bird species identification . then each bird image is annotated with those binary attributes i.e., check if this attribute appear in the image or not, with mechanical turk. such annotation provides image-level attributes, while class embedding is defined for each class. class embeddings are often produced by averaging image-level attributes of the images belonging to each class. word embedding attribute provides accurate visual properties of objects, but it requires expensive manual annotation. an alternative to avoid annotation is the word embedding, which is a technique that maps each word from a vocabulary to a vector of real numbers. this mapping can be learned with a neural network in an unsupervised way on large text corpus e.g., wikipedia. popular word embeddings include word vec(mikolov et al., a), glove(pennington et al., ), fasttext(joulin et al., a), etc. word vec is a language model parameterized with a neural network. in its continuous bag-of-words architecture, the model predicts the current word from a window of surrounding context words. by learning the word co- occurrence, the resulting word embedding captures semantic similarities between different words i.e., word embeddings of semantically related words are close in the embedding space. for zero-shot learning, we employ the word embeddings of class names as their class embeddings. such strategy is inexpensive, but word embeddings often lead to poor zero-shot learning results because they often do not reflect visual similarities between classes. therefore, there are some works that try to inject visual information into word embeddings. moreover, one word could represent multiple meanings such that its word embedding is ambiguous. bert provides a solution for https://www.whatbird.com/ . zero-shot image classification that by incorporating context to word embeddings. class hierarchy object categories are naturally in a hierarchical structure. for instance, “albatross” and “crow” are subordinate of “bird” which is again subordi- nate of “animal”. such class hierarchy provides relatedness between object classes as well. wordnet is a database of english words and it defines such a hierarchy where words are linked together by their semantic relationships in a tree structure. standard neural network cannot be directly applied to the class hierarchy as the tree structure is not euclidean data. in order to use the class hierarchy for zero-shot learning, we could either derive word embedding for each node or directly apply graph convolution on top of the class hierarchy. text description the word embeddings of class names are often insufficient to describe a class category because they are trained on noisy text corpus. as we discussed before, we prefer class embeddings that could capture visual similarities between classes. this motivates us to consider annotating text description for images. more specifically, for each image, we could write several sentences to describe the visual content in the image. the class embedding can then be learned via a language model i.e., lstm. . . evaluation protocol in contrast to the supervised image classification where the model is trained and evaluated on the same label space, zero-shot learning methods should be trained and evaluated on different label spaces. therefore we have to first define disjoint class sets for training and testing respectively. the data split is usually generated within one dataset i.e., classes of a dataset are divided into two disjoint sets i.e., seen classes for training and unseen classes for testing. next we produce a training set including images of all the seen classes and a test set including hold-out images of the unseen classes. if we are interested in seen classes at the test time, the test set should also include hold-out images of the seen classes. in this section, we will only discuss several existing zero-shot learning evaluation protocol in a high-level. details of the protocols will be introduced in section . lampert et al. ( ) introduce the first evaluation protocol for zero-shot image classification. the authors propose a dataset called awa consisting of classes in total. those classes are randomly split into seen and unseen classes. a model is trained on the images of seen class and evaluated on unseen classes with the top- classification accuracy. rohrbach et al. ( ) define another zero-shot data split on the imagenet where they split classes into seen and unseen classes. elhoseiny et al. introduce zero-shot splits on cub (welinder et al., ) and oxford flowers (nilsback and zisserman, ) datasets. classes of cub are randomly split into seen and unseen classes on cub, while oxford flowers are divided into seen and unseen classes. akata et al. ( ) introduce another data split on cub with seen and unseen classes. besides, socher et al. ( ) generate a chapter . related work zero-shot split on cifar . finally, lampert et al. ( ) extends their work into a journal by extending their evaluation on sun (xiao et al., ) and apy (farhadi et al., ). . . a literature review of zero-shot approaches zero-shot learning has attracted increasing attention since the first paper published by (lampert et al., ). given such a big number of zero-shot learning publications, it is difficult to discuss all of them. instead, we summarize popular zero-shot learning approaches published in top conferences or journals by grouping them into five categories i.e., attribute-based methods, compatibility learning, generative models, direct classifier prediction, transductive zero-shot learning. chapter of this thesis describes our survey paper about zero-shot learning where we discuss many zero-shot learning works. this section is complementary to that by introducing additional reference and more recent papers. attribute-based methods early works tackle zero-shot learning by first solving the attribute prediction problem. attribute predictions are then aggregated to make a prediction on unseen classes. to this end, lampert et al. ( ) proposes direct attribute prediction and indirect attribute prediction methods. jayaraman and grauman ( ) argue that annotated attributes are not always and adopt a random forest to address this issue. al-halah et al. ( ) propose to predict the attribute class embedding of unseen classes without manual annotation. compatibility learning instead of learning attribute classifiers, compatibility learning frameworks directly learn a compatibility function that measures the simi- larity between two modalities i.e., image embedding and class embedding. because of its efficiency and flexibility, many recent works follow this direction. ale (akata et al., ) and conse (norouzi et al., ) learn linear compatibility function with the ranking loss. similarly, sje (akata et al., b) adopts the multi-class max-margin loss. eszsl (romera-paredes et al., ) proposes a loss that has a closed-form solution. semantic autoencoder (kodirov et al., ) for zero-shot learning regularizes the model by auto-encoder loss. zhang et al. ( b) argue that semantic embedding space has hubness problem and propose to learn a non-linear embedding function that maps the semantic embedding into the image embedding space. recently, ji et al. ( b) propose to learn feature representation with attention conditioned on the semantic embedding. similarly, xie et al. ( ) propose to learn attention on local regions for more generalized representation. generative models the aforementioned methods are discriminative approaches where they directly model the posterior probability distribution of labels given the input i.e., p(y|x). generative approaches instead model the joit distribution of input and output i.e., p(x, y). an advantage of generative model is that arbitrarily many samples can be synthesizing for unseen classes, addressing the issues of lacking data. . zero-shot image classification verma and rai ( ) assume p(x|y) to be gaussian distribution. kumar verma et al. ( a) learn to synthesize features of unseen classes via a vae. similarly, zhu et al. ( a) proposes a gan framework to generate features from noisy text descriptions. both schonfeld et al. ( ) and mishra et al. ( ) learn a vae to generate features. felix et al. ( b) use cycle-consistency loss to regularize the gans. direct classifier prediction instead of synthesizing samples, sync (changpinyo et al., ) proposes to directly synthesize the classifier weights of unseen classes. elhoseiny et al. ( ) take a similar approach with textual description as the class embedding. changpinyo et al. ( ) apply kernel methods to synthesize the visual prototype of unseen classes. lei ba et al. ( ) apply a neural network to predict the classifier weights of unseen classes. wang et al. ( a) leverage the class hierarchy and learn to regress classifier weights of unseen classes with a graph convolutional neural network. kampffmeyer et al. ( ) extend wang et al. ( a) by constructing a better graph. transductive zero-shot learning conventional zero-shot learning setting is often inductive i.e., images of unseen classes are not available during training. in the real-world scenario, it is possible that unlabeled images from unseen classes are available and we aim to label them. this motivates us to study the transductive learning setting where labeled images from seen classes and unlabeled images from unseen classes are available. fu et al. ( ) construct a graph with both labeled and unlabeled images and performs label propagation. kodirov et al. ( ) leverage the unlabeled data to reduce the domain gap between seen and unseen classes. in order to address the biased prediction towards seen classes, song et al. ( ) propose to minimize the probability of predicting unseen class images as seen classes. liu et al. ( ) introduce a neural network that calibrates the predicted probabilities with unlabeled images from unseen classes. . . relations to our work in chapter , we introduce a novel compatibility learning framework for zero-shot learning. in contrast to previous works that learn a linear compatibility function, we propose to learn a non-linear function by learning multiple linear transformations with the selection of which transformation to use being a latent variable. in chapter , we take a step back and analyze the status quo of the area. we find that there exist inconsistent evaluation protocols for zero-shot learning and some of them are even flawed, leading to incomparable or incorrect results. therefore, the main purpose of our work is to define an unified evaluation protocol for zero-shot learning and re-evaluate existing approaches under the same protocol to show the true progress of the field. our benchmark is built on (lampert et al., ), but we extend its evaluation protocol to cover more datasets and the more realistic generalized zero-shot learning setting where the model has to predict both seen and unseen classes. our work is also inspired by ?. where they empirically show the chapter . related work challenges of generalized zero-shot learning. but the main contribution of our work is not only to advocate the generalized zero-shot learning, but also to introduce a unified zero-shot learning benchmark for future research. in chapter , in order to tackle generalized zero-shot learning, we propose to generate visual features of unseen classes conditioned on class embeddings. there are two concurrent works that share similar ideas with us. bucher et al. ( ) adopt a gmmn (li et al., ) to generate feature and mishra et al. ( ) apply a vae (kingma and welling, ). our paper takes the powerful gans (e.g. goodfellow et al., ; arjovsky and bottou, ; arjovsky et al., ) and improve it by including a classification loss that enforces generated features can be better suited for the classification task. in addition, our work shows that our generated feature can be applied to improve many popular zero-shot methods, which is more generalizable. there have been a group of papers which follows our ideas and improve the feature generation process by regularizing the generators, proposing more complicated generative networks, and using different class embeddings. in chapter , we extend our feature generating networks in chapter to any-shot and transductive learning settings. we improves our f-clswgan by combining vae (e.g. kingma and welling, ) and gans (e.g. goodfellow et al., ; ar- jovsky and bottou, ; arjovsky et al., ), leveraging the strength of adversarial and non-adversarial generative models. in order to learn from unlabeled data, we propose to add an additional discriminator for learning the marginal probability distribution of unseen classes. previous transductive zero-shot learning (e.g. fu et al., ; kodirov et al., ) is often solved by the label propagation technique. our approach improves the feature generator by modeling the marginal distribution of unlabeled images. besides, comparing to other feature generating papers (e.g. kumar verma et al., a; zhu et al., a; schonfeld et al., ; felix et al., b), our proposed framework is more flexible and can be applied to solve inductive zero- shot learning where there is no image from unseen classes, transductive zero-shot learning where unlabeled images from unseen classes are available, and few-shot learning where there are a few images per unseen classes. . few-shot image classification in general, few-shot learning aims to learn a model e.g., deep neural network, with limited labeled data. learning a deep neural network from scratch with a small amount of data is not possible because of its massive number of model parameters. therefore, few-shot learning setting assumes the availability of some base classes which have enough labeled data. the task becomes how we learn a model from those base classes such that it generalizes well to novel classes with only few labeled data. this is an important problem to solve because the numbers of labeled data per category follow a long-tail distribution i.e., there are a small number of classes with a lot of data while most of classes have limited training data. in this section, we first formally define the few-shot image classification problem and introduce the existing . few-shot image classification evaluation protocols. then we discuss popular few-shot approaches in section . . and the relations between those and our proposed approaches. . . problem definition let tb = {(x, y)|x ∈ x , y ∈ cb} be a labeled training set for base classes where x denotes an image instance in the rgb image space x and y is its class label belonging to one of base classes cb. each base class has enough training data (typically larger than images). we are interested in a disjoint set of classes cn (cn ∩ cb = ∅), called novel classes. similarly, we define its training set as tn = {(x, y)|x ∈x , y ∈ cn}. in contrast to base classes, we assume each novel class consists of only few training data (usually less than images). therefore, the size of the training set of base classes is much larger than that of the novel classes i.e., |tb|� |tn|. given training sets tb and tn, the task of few-shot learning is to learn a model that generalizes well to the hold-out test set of novel classes cn. . . evaluation protocols in order to evaluate few-shot learning approaches, the first step is to produce a data split that consists of a training set tb of base classes and a training set tn of novel classes. however, there exist multiple different protocols that define how to evaluate few-shot learning approaches on the novel classes. most of papers focus on the constrained meta-learning setting, while some papers also follows the low-shot setting which is relatively more realistic. here we will mainly discuss the most popular three protocols i.e., low-shot learning setting, meta-learning setting and improved meta-learning setting. low-shot learning setting. in this setting, all the novel classes and base classes are evaluated simultaneously. qi et al. ( ) introduce a data split on cub where classes are base and the rest classes are novel. for a k-shot learning problem, they randomly draw k samples per novel class to form the training set tn where k ∈ { , , , , }. the performance is then evaluated on the hold-out test set of the novel classes. to make it more realistic, they also evaluate on all classes including both base and novel classes. in this case, there will be a hold-out test set for base and novel classes respectively. the top- image classification accuracy will be reported. cub is a relatively small-scale and fine-grained dataset with only k images. to evaluate few-shot approaches in a large-scale setting, hariharan and girshick ( ) propose a low-shot data split on the imagenet. the imgenet classes are divided into base categories and novel categories. for the purpose of cross-validation, they further construct two disjoint sets of classes by dividing the base categories into two subsets c b ( classes) and c b ( classes) and the novel categories into c n ( classes) and c n ( classes). while c b and c n are used for tuning hyperparameters, the final results are reported on c b and c n for k-shot problems where k ∈{ , , , , }. finally, our f-vaegan-d extends the chapter . related work zero-shot splits into few-shot splits by randomly drawing k examples from each unseen class to form the training set tn. meta-learning setting. the meta-learning setting (e.g. vinyals et al., ; snell et al., ; finn et al., ) has gained increasing attention recently. instead of treating all the novel classes as a big task, this setting generates many small tasks by randomly sampling subsets from the novel classes. more specifically, the evaluation is conducted in the episodic manner where each episode constructs a k-shot, n-way classification task with a training set tn and a test set. the final results are obtained by averaging the test accuracy over multiple episodes. existing papers mainly consider the following four tasks: -shot -way, -shot -way, -shot -way, and -shot -way. matching networks (vinyals et al., ) introduce the meta-learning setting and propose data splits on the omniglot and the miniimagenet datasets. improved meta-learning setting. triantafillou et al. ( ) argues that current meta- learning benchmarks (e.g. vinyals et al., ; snell et al., ; finn et al., ) do not have sufficient complexity to access the few-shot learning process. therefore, they propose the meta-dataset, a new large-scale, benchmark that is more realistic. meta-dataset improves current meta-learning setting in three aspects: ) evaluate the cross-dataset generalization performance with different datasets ) vary the number of classes and examples per class ) consider the relationships between classes when forming episodes. . . a literature review of few-shot approaches few-shot learning is challenging because novel classes have limited labeled data. directly fine-tuning a deep cnn on the novel classes will inevitably lead to over- fitting. on the other hand, due to the domain gap between base and novel classes, directly applying the pretrained model would suffer from domain shift issues. a group of papers investigate ways that efficiently adapt a model pretrained on base classes to novel classes with only a few training examples. in this case, few-shot learning problem is treated as a transfer learning problem. this direction is usually evaluated in the low-shot learning setting. in addition, there are also a significant number of papers that propose novel training strategies that learn fast from few labeled examples. in this senario, the meta-learning setting is adopted to evaluate the performance. . . . low-shot learning. low-shot learning approaches mainly focus on how to adapt a pretrained model to novel classes without finetuning the whole deep neural network. qi et al. ( ) propose to normalize the classifier weights and directly produce the weights of novel classes by averaging the image their image embeddings. qiao et al. ( ) learn a mlp that regresses classifier weights from its training samples. wang et al. ( a) rely on class embedding to generate task-aware feature embedding. chen et al. ( ) . few-shot image classification aim to reduce intra-class variations by adopting cosine distance on learned classifier weights. on the other hand, synthesizing data has been a classical way to address the small data problem. in the scenario of few-shot learning, it is natural to investigate how we generate synthetic data for novel classes. therefore hariharan and girshick ( ) propose to generate features from a data point and predefined transformation. wang et al. ( c) extend this idea by meta-learning the feature generator. . . . meta-learning approaches. this field is also called learning to learn. the main idea is to learn a “learning algorithm” that can learn from few examples. one can think the “learning algorithm” as a function that takes input as a training set and outputs the classifiers. they (e.g. vinyals et al., ; snell et al., ) argue that it is beneficial to mimic the few-shot learning scenario on base classes. therefore, the episode learning scheme is applied on the base class training as well. more specifically, in every training episode, a support set of k-shot, n-way classification problem and a query set including test samples of n classes are sampled. multi-class classifiers are constructed from the support set (by a “learning algorithm” ) and then evaluated on the query set to compute the loss. matching networks (vinyals et al., ) meta-learns weighted neareast neighbor classifiers. prototypical networks (snell et al., ) meta-learns the class prototype and adopt the nearest neighbor classifier as well. ravi and larochelle ( ) parameterize the optimization algorithm (sgd) as a lstm and meta-learns how to optimize the objective function. maml (finn et al., ) proposes to learn how to initialize the network such that the optimization only takes few steps. sung et al. ( ) meta-learn a siameses network that predict similarities of two images. triantafillou et al. ( ) define a training objective that optimizes over all relative orderings of the batch points simultaneously. . . relations to our work in chapter , we propose a unified feature generation framework that works both for zero-shot and few-shot learning. although our method shares similar idea with other feature generation papers (e.g. hariharan and girshick, ; wang et al., c), our feature generator is quite different from existing papers. while hallucinate paper (e.g. hariharan and girshick, ; wang et al., c) only generate features from image data, our approaches learns a multi-modal feature generator that synthesizes features from semantic embeddings, which allows better knowledge transfer. in addition, our framework can be applied to the transductive learning setting when the unlabeled examples from novel classes are available. therefore, our method is more versatile. chapter . related work . zero-shot and few-shot tasks beyond image classifica- tion most of zero-shot and few-shot learning papers focus on the image classification problem. however, the limitation of labeled data arises in almost all the computer vision tasks, e.g. semantic segmention (e.g. long et al., ; zhang et al., a; caesar et al., ), obeject detection (e.g. girshick, ; he et al., ; redmon et al., ), video action recognition (e.g. karpathy et al., ; feichtenhofer et al., b), d vision (e.g. riegler et al., ; qi et al., ), etc. although those tasks are as important as the image classification, they are relatively unexplored. while the image classification task is a good starting point to study the zero-shot and few-shot learning problems, it is not always true that few-shot or zero-shot technics for image classification can be directly applied to other vision tasks, for instance, semantic segmentation and video classification. d reconstruction is naturally a few-shot problem because it is difficult to acquire d data. wallace and hariharan ( ) propose a novel method that leverages category- specific priors for few-shot single-image d reconstruction problem. for object detection tasks, bansal et al. ( ) introduce an approach that can localises novel categories in an image. kang et al. ( ) proposes a feature reweighting technic to address the few-shot object detection task. this section will mainly discuss the applications of zero-shot and few-shot learning in the context of semantic image segmentation and video action recognition. . . semantic image segmentation in contrast to the image classification task which predicts a single label for an entire image, the goal of semantic image segmentation is to assign a class label for each pixel in an image. popular semantic segmentation methods include fcn (long et al., ), deeplab (chen et al., ), and u-net (ronneberger et al., ). learning those models often requires pixel-wise annotations which are expensive and hard to obtain. in order to reduce the annotation efforts, weakly supervised learning with bounding box annotation (khoreva et al., ) has been proposed. we are interested in an orthogonal direction that learns from only a few examples, avoiding collecting and annotating data. the main idea behind that is few-shot learning that aims to achieve generalization on novel classes with only a few examples. the extreme case of few-shot learning is zero-shot learning where novel classes have no example at all. in this section, we will introduce some papers that tackle few-shot and zero-shot semantic segmentation problems. rakelly et al. ( ) proposes a novel conditional fcn (fully convolutional net- work) learned by the end-to-end optimization. the network takes an annotated support set of images as conditions and performs inference on an unannotated query image. dong and xing ( ) propose to learn class prototypes via metric learning. shaban et al. ( ) introduce a two-branched approach to address the one-shot . zero-shot and few-shot tasks beyond image classification semantic image segmentation. while the first branch generates parameters from an image, the second branch takes both these parameters and a new image as input and produces a segmentation mask of the image for the new class as output. in the extreme zero-shot learning case, there is no training images for novel classes. instead, the models rely on semantic class embedding to transfer knowledge from base to novel classes. zhao et al. ( a) propose to learn a joint embedding function between visual features per pixel and word vec embedding per class. bucher et al. ( ) extend the feature generation idea to image semantic segmentation. . . video action recognition video understanding is another important field in computer vision. it is challenging because the model has to learn the temporal information in addition to the spatial context. typical video understanding tasks include video action recognition (e.g. feichtenhofer et al., b, ), video captioning (e.g. gao et al., ), self-driving cars (e.g. geiger et al., ), robotics (e.g. kemp et al., ) etc. while the resnet (he et al., ) has been the widely used image representation network, there is no such “resnet” in video domain. representation learning for videos is still an open problem. similarly, few-shot learning in the context of video understanding is unexplored. in this thesis, we mainly focus on the video action recognition which predicts a single label for a trimmed video. xu et al. ( ) propose a zero-shot action recognition approach that constructs a mapping from video feature space to the semantic class embedding space. zhu and yang ( ) adopt a memory network that stores multiple prototypes for each class. cao et al. ( ) propose to learn temporal information by solving an video frames alignment problem. . . relations to our work in chapter , we introduce a semantic projection network (spnet) that handles both zero-label and few-label semantic segmentation tasks. while zhao et al. ( a) propose open-vocabulary scene parsing task that segments novel objects by perform- ing hierarchical parsing, we leverage word embeddings to predict the exact unseen classes and address the few-label problem in a unified framework. for few-shot semantic segmentation, previous approaches (e.g. shaban et al., ; dong and xing, ) follow the meta-learning setup (e.g. vinyals et al., ; snell et al., ), which uses a support set to predict an query image. however, those approaches are restricted to output a binary mask and fail to segment an image with multiple classes. in contrast, our approach is operating in the more realistic (generalized) few-label semantic segmentation setting, i.e. pixel-level labeling of an image where labels come from both base and novel classes. in chapter , we propose a strong model based on d cnns for few-shot video action recognition and introduce more challenging evaluation settings for future research. comparing to previous approaches (e.g. zhu and yang, ; cao et al., chapter . related work ) which extract frame-level features, our model extract clip-level features via d cnns such that temporal information is better captured. in addition, our evaluation is more challenging and realistic than previous ones. we observe that our model saturates previous evaluation settings and therefore introduce more challenging many-way few-shot learning and generalized few-shot learning settings for future research. l a t e n t e m b e d d i n g f o r z e r o - s h o t i m a g e c l a s s i f i c a t i o n contents . introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . background: bilinear joint embeddings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . latent embeddings model (latem) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . objective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . optimization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . model selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . experiments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . zero-shot learning experiments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . generalized zero-shot learning setting . . . . . . . . . . . . . conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i n this chapter, we present an approach for learning a compatibility function between image and class embedding spaces for image classification when labeled training data is scarce. the proposed method augments the state-of-the-art bilinear compatibility methods (e.g. akata et al., a,b; frome et al., ) by by incorporating latent variables. instead of learning a single bilinear map, our novel latent embedding model learns a collection of bilinear maps with the selection of which map to use being a latent variable for the current image-class pair. we empirically demonstrate the strength of our model with respect to six state-of-the-art models (e.g. akata et al., b; romera-paredes et al., ; zhang and saligrama, ; socher et al., ; zhang and saligrama, ) on three challenging datasets i.e. awa (lampert et al., ), cub (welinder et al., ) and dogs (khosla et al.) using four different class embeddings. in addition to zero-shot learning experiments, we provide an extensive analysis of our method on few-shots and generalized zero-shot learning settings. this chapter takes the first step towards the few-shot learning and more realistic generalized zero-shot learning setting. in chapter , we evaluate the approaches introduced in this chapter as well as other sota approaches under the same evalua- tion protocol. in chapter , we show that feature generation is an effective way to address generalized zero-shot learning. in chapter , we demonstrate that unlabeled data improves the feature generation, leading to significantly better any-shot learning performance i.e., zero-shot and few-shot learning. chapter . latent embedding for zero-shot image classification . introduction humans are highly capable of recognizing novel object categories using some form of external information, without seeing any actual visual example of that category. enabling computers with this capability has been recently introduced as zero-shot learning task in the intersection of computer vision and machine learning. zero- shot learning (e.g. bart and ullman, ; palatucci et al., ; lampert et al., ; larochelle et al., ; yu and aloimonos, ) has been formally posed as follows: labeled images are provided for certain visual classes during training and the task is to learn a model that can make predictions for novel classes at test time. as training and test class sets are disjoint, namely there are no visual examples are provided for some classes during training, the standard supervised image classification frameworks that use class labels cannot be employed. although object class labels are not available, a list of attributes (e.g. ferrari and zisserman, ; farhadi et al., ; lampert et al., ), a set of easily recognizable properties of objects such as furry, spotted etc. provide a structured relationships between class labels that facilitates the required induction. substantial progress has been made for zero-shot learning task (e.g. duan et al., ; farhadi et al., ; ferrari and zisserman, ; kankuekul et al., ; lampert et al., ; parikh and grauman, ; papadopoulos et al., ; akata et al., c). this progress can be attributed to two recent advances. first, representation learning using deep neural networks (e.g. krizhevsky et al., ; szegedy et al., ) provides image embeddings which perform well across a range of visual classification tasks (e.g. razavian et al., ). second, multi-modal structured embedding frameworks (e.g. akata et al., a,c; frome et al., ; romera-paredes et al., ) provide a means to measure the compatibility between image and class representations. while noting the parallel progress in image representations, i.e. via deep neural networks (he et al., ), in this work, we focus on improving the compatibility learning framework. compatibility learning frameworks (e.g. akata et al., a,c; frome et al., ; hastie et al., ; palatucci et al., ; romera-paredes et al., ; socher et al., ; xian et al., ; fu and sigal, ; qiao et al., ; akata et al., ; bucher et al., ; mensink et al., ; fu et al., b; kodirov et al., ) are generally based on the idea of representing both the images and the classes in (respective) multi- dimensional vector spaces. image embeddings are obtained from state-of-the-art image representations e.g. those from deep convolutional neural networks (e.g. krizhevsky et al., ; szegedy et al., ). class embeddings can be obtained using manually specified side information e.g. attributes (lampert et al., ), extracted automatically from an large but unlabeled large text corpora (e.g. mikolov et al., b; pennington et al., ) etc. a compatibility function is then learned with a discriminative objective that decreases the distance, in the embedded space, between images from the same class while increasing that between images from different classes. once learned, such a compatibility function can be used to predict the class (more precisely, the class embedding) of any given image. the predicted . introduction class embedding f image embedding blue jay curved beak albatross long neck black feet long tail blue back f blue bird with long tail this is a black water bird class embedding image embedding w blue jay albatross class embedding image embedding f blue jayblue black albatross class embedding image embedding large error w large error class embedding f image embedding blue jay curved beak albatross long neck black feet long tail blue back f blue bird with long tail this is a black water bird class embedding image embedding w blue jay albatross class embedding image embedding f blue jayblue black albatross class embedding image embedding large error w₁ w₂ figure . : compatibility learning frameworks that use a linear projection, e.g. sje akata et al. ( c) (figure on the left) may lead to a large projection error, however learning a piece-wise linear model (figure on the right) leads to more precise projections. here, crosses represent image embeddings and their projections on the class embedding space, w are the parameters of the compatibility function, solid circles represent the ground truth class embedding. embedding vector might not correspond to a known class label. therefore in practice, the nearest embedding corresponding to a class label is taken as the class prediction. advantageously, this can then be done for images belonging to both seen and unseen classes, hence enabling zero-shot classification. state-of-the-art compatibility learning frameworks for zero-shot learning (e.g. akata et al., a,c; frome et al., ; romera-paredes et al., ) use a linear compatibility function to learn the model. however, learning a linear compatibility function is not sufficient for the challenging fine-grained classification problem. a model that can automatically group objects with similar properties together and then learn different compatibility models, adapted for different groups, is expected to perform better for fine-grained classification. for instance, two different linear functions that separate blue birds with brown wings and from other blue birds with blue wings can be learned separately. with such motivation, we propose a novel model for zero-shot classification which incorporates latent variables to learn a piecewise linear compatibility function between image and class embeddings. the approach is inspired by many recent advances in visual recognition that utilize latent variable models, e.g. object detection (e.g. felzenszwalb et al., ; hussain and triggs, ), human pose estimation (yang and ramanan, ) and face detection (zhu and ramanan, ). our contributions are as follows. first, we propose a novel method for zero-shot learning. by incorporating latent variables in the compatibility function our method achieves factorization over such (possibly complex combinations of) variations in pose, appearance and other factors. instead of learning a single linear function, we propose to learn a collection of linear models while allowing each image-class pair to choose from them. this effectively makes our model non-linear, as in different local regions of the space the decision boundary, while being linear, is different. we use an efficient stochastic gradient descent (sgd) based learning method. second, we propose a fast and effective method for model selection by successive pruning of an over-complete initialization. we show that such a strategy is competitive compared to standard cross-validation based model selection, while being much chapter . latent embedding for zero-shot image classification faster to train. third, we evaluate our novel piece-wise linear model for zero-shot and generalized zero-shot learning setting with various class embeddings (e.g. mikolov et al., b; pennington et al., ; miller, ) on three challenging datasets, i.e. caltech-ucsd birds - (cub) (welinder et al., ), animals with attributes (awa) (lampert et al., ) and stanford dogs (dogs) (khosla et al.). we compare our method on all these configurations with several related existing embedding methods. we show that incorporating latent variables in the compatibility learning framework consistently improves the state-of-the-art for zero- shot learning setting. fourth, we extensively evaluate our novel piecewise linear model for zero-shot and generalized zero-shot learning settings on various aspects such as stability, interpretability, generalizability to seen and unseen classes. we raise awareness for the challenge of transferring information from zero-shot setting to full multi-class setting and aim to inspire further research in this direction. in section . , we present an extensive discussion of related work. in section . we give details of the bilinear compatibility learning framework that our method is based on. in section . we present our novel latent embedding framework which extends the bilinear compatibility learning framework to nonlinearity through learning several piece-wise linear models that each capture a different latent aspect of the data. in section . we evaluate our latent embedding framework with respect to several criteria both on zero-shot and on generalized zero-shot learning settings. in section . we conclude with a discussion and potential future directions. . background: bilinear joint embeddings in this section, we describe the bilinear joint embedding framework (e.g. akata et al., c,a; weston et al., ), on which we build our latent embedding model that will be detailed in section . . we work in a supervised setting where we are given an annotated training set t = {(x, y)|x ∈x ⊂ rdx , y ∈y ⊂ rdy}, ( . ) where x is the image embedding defined in an image feature space x , e.g. cnn features (krizhevsky et al., ), and y is the class embedding defined in a label space y that models the conceptual relationships between classes, e.g. attributes (e.g. farhadi et al., ; lampert et al., ). the goal is to learn a function f : x →y to predict the correct class for the query images. in previous work (e.g. weston et al., ; akata et al., a,c), this is done via learning a function f : x ×y → r that measures the compatibility between a given input embedding x ∈ x and an output embedding y ∈y. the prediction function then chooses the class with the maximum compatibility, i.e. f (x) = arg max y∈y f(x, y). ( . ) we use the class subset of the stanford dogs dataset as in (akata et al., c) . latent embeddings model (latem) in general, the class embeddings reflect the common and distinguishing properties of different classes using side-information that is extracted independently of images e.g. attributes of classes. using these embeddings, the compatibility can be computed even with those unknown classes which have no corresponding images in the training set. therefore, this framework can be applied to zero-shot learning (e.g. akata et al., a,c; palatucci et al., ; romera-paredes et al., ; socher et al., ). in previous work, the compatibility function takes a simple form, f(x, y) = x>wy ( . ) with the matrix w ∈ rdx×dy being the parameter to be learnt from training data. due to the bilinearity of f in x and y, previous workg (e.g. akata et al., a,c; weston et al., ) refer to this model as a bilinear model, however one can also view it as a linear one since f is linear in the parameter w. in the following, these two terminologies will be used interchangeably depending on the context. . latent embeddings model (latem) in general, the linearity of the compatibility function in equation . is a limitation as the problem of image classification is usually a complex nonlinear decision problem. linear decision functions can be extended to nonlinear ones through the use of piecewise linear decision functions. achieving non-linearity through piece-wise linearity has been used successfully in various models for solving computer vision tasks such as mixture of templates (hussain and triggs, ) and deformable parts- based model (felzenszwalb et al., ) for object detection, mixture of parts for pose estimation (yang and ramanan, ) and face detection (zhu and ramanan, ). the main idea in most of such models, along with modeling parts, is that of incorporating latent variables, e.g. the different templates in the mixture of templates hussain and triggs ( ) and the different ‘components’ in the deformable parts model (felzenszwalb et al., ). therefore, the model becomes a collection of linear models. the test images then pick one of these linear models, with the selection being latent and image specific. intuitively, this factorizes the decision function into components which focus on distinctive ‘clusters’ in the data, e.g. one component may focus on the profile view while another on the frontal view of the object. incorporating nonlinearity in this way has been shown (e.g. felzenszwalb et al., ; hussain and triggs, ; yang and ramanan, ; zhu and ramanan, ) to improve performance. in the following subsections, we will detail our novel latem model that extends bilinear joint embedding model to nonlinearity through a piece-wise linear formu- lation. we discuss our optimization algorithm, model selection and finalize with a discussion. chapter . latent embedding for zero-shot image classification . . objective we propose to construct a nonlinear, albeit piecewise linear, compatibility function. parallel to the latent svm formulation, we propose a non-linear compatibility function as follows. f(x, y) = max ≤i≤k w̃>i (x ⊗ y), ( . ) where i = , . . . , k, with k ≥ , indexes over the latent choices and w̃i ∈ rdx dy are the parameters of the individual linear components of the model. this equation can be reformulated as a mixture of bilinear compatibility functions (equation . ), f(x, y) = max ≤i≤k x>wiy. ( . ) our goal here is to learn the set of parameters {wi} of the above compatibility funtion that minimizes the empirical risk given as n |t | ∑ n= l(xn, yn). ( . ) where l : x ×y → r is the loss function defined for a particular example (xn, yn) as l(xn, yn) = ∑ y∈y [∆(yn, y) + f(xn, y)− f(xn, yn)]+ , ( . ) with ∆(yn, y) being the zero-one loss defined as, ∆(y, yn) = { if y = yn otherwise ( . ) and [a]+ = max( , a) bounds the equation . from above. this ranking-based loss function has been previously used in akata et al. ( a); frome et al. ( ); weston et al. ( ) such that the model is trained to produce a higher compatibility between the matching image and class embedding than the mismatching image and class embedding. note that by setting k = , our latem framework generalizes to bilinear joint embedding framework as each of the wi leads to a bilinear compatibility defined in equation . , while the full compatibility function becomes nonlinear owing to the max operator. . . optimization even though f is convex, we first observe that the ranking loss function l from equation . is not jointly convex in all the wi’s. thus, finding a globally optimal solution, which was practical due to convexity in the previous linear models (e.g. akata et al., a,c), is difficult now. to minimize the empirical risk in equation . , . latent embeddings model (latem) algorithm sgd optimization for latem t = {(x, y)|x ∈ rdx , y ∈ rdy} : for all t = to t do : for all n = to |t | do : draw (xn,yn) ∈t and y ∈y \{yn} : if f(xn, y) + > f(xn, yn) then : i∗ ← argmax ≤k≤k x>n wky : j∗ ← argmax ≤k≤k x>n wkyn : if i∗ = j∗ then : w t+ i∗ ← w t i∗ − ηtxn(y − yn) > : end if : if i∗ = j∗ then : w t+ i∗ ← w t i∗ − ηtxny > : w t+ j∗ ← w t j∗ + ηtxny > n : end if : end if : end for : end for we propose a simple sgd-based method that works in the same fashion as in the convex setting. our latem method, while possibly leading to only local minima, performs well in practice as shown in section . . the details of the sgd optimization of our latem method (algorithm ) are as follows. given a training set t = {(x, y)|x ∈ rdx , y ∈ rdy} of image embeddings, i.e. x and their associated class embeddings, i.e. y, we loop through all our samples for a certain number of epochs t. for each sample (xn, yn) in the training set, we randomly select a y that is different from yn (step of algorithm ). if the randomly selected y violates the margin condition (step in algorithm ), then we update the wi matrices following the steps − in algorithm . in particular, we find the wi that leads to the maximum score for y (step ) and the wj that gives the maximum score for y (step ). if the same matrix gives the maximum score, the condition on step in algorithm has been satisfied so we update that matrix. if two different matrices lead to the maximum score which corresponds to the condition formulated on step in algorithm , we update both matrices, i.e. wi∗ and wj∗ using the sub-gradient based updates formulated on steps and . . . model selection the number of matrices k in the model is a free parameter. we use two strategies to select the number of matrices. as the first method, we use a standard cross-validation strategy, i.e. we split the dataset randomly into disjoint parts (in a zero-shot setup) chapter . latent embedding for zero-shot image classification and choose the k with the best cross-validation performance. we denote this strategy as cv in the following sections. while this is a well established strategy which we find to work well in practice, we also propose a pruning based strategy which is competitive while being faster to train. in pruning based strategy, we start with a relatively large number of matrices and prune them as follows. as the training proceeds, each sampled training examples chooses one of the matrices for scoring – we keep track of this information and build a histogram over the number of matrices counting how many times each matrix was chosen by any training example. in particular, this is done by increasing the counter for wj∗ by after step of algorithm . with this information, after five passes over the training data, we prune out the matrices which were chosen by less than % of the training examples, so far. this is based on the intuition that if a matrix is being chosen only by a very small number of examples, it is probably not critical for performance. with this model pruning approach we have to train only one model which adapts itself, instead of training multiple models for cross-validating k and then training a final model (with full training data) for the chosen k. . . discussion in the zero-shot learning setting, during training, we have a set of seen classes ytr+val = {y , . . . , yn } and a set of unseen classes yts = {yn + , . . . , yn +n } with ytr+val ∩yts = φ. in addition, all the classes have been assumed to be embedded into a multidimensional real space which connects them via some form of semantics. for example, each class may be written as a binary vector indicating the presence of absence of predefined attributes e.g. furry, has tail, can swim. during training we are provided with annotated training images belonging to the classes in ytr+val , while at testing we are required to make predictions for images belonging to the classes in yts. zero-shot learning can be achieved by using any compatibility learning model, such as the bilinear compatibility based model presented in section . , as there is no class specific parameter being learnt (cf. multi-class svm models) but only a global parameter w which maps the image embeddings to class embeddings (and vice-versa). we build upon the sje model presented in section . for the task of zero-shot learning and now discuss the differences between latem and sje to emphasize our technical contributions. latem learns a piecewise linear compatibility function through multiple wi ma- trices whereas sje (akata et al., c) is linear. with multiple wi’s the compatibility function has the freedom to treat different types of images differently. let us consider a fixed class ŷ and two substantially visually different types of images x , x , e.g. the same bird flying and swimming. in sje (akata et al., c) these images will be mapped to the class embedding space with a single mapping w>x , w>x . on the other hand, latem will have learned two different matrices for the mapping i.e. w> x , w > x . in the former case, a single w has to map two visually, and hence numerically, very different vectors (close) to the same point. in the latent case as two . experiments different mappings are factorized separately, therefore the “flying” and “swimming” bird will be mapped to two separate points. such factorization is also expected to be advantageous when two classes that share partial visual similarity are to be discriminated. for instance, while blue birds could be relative easily distinguished from red birds, to do so for different types of blue birds is harder. in such cases, one of the wi’s could focus on color while another one could focus on the beak shape (in section . we show that this effect is visible). the task of discrimination against different bird species would then be handled only by the second one. this way of factorizing enables for a more disctiminative classification model. latem uses the ranking based loss (weston et al., ) in equation . whereas sje (akata et al., c) uses the multiclass loss of crammer and singer (crammer and singer, ) which replaces the ∑ in equation . with max. the sgd algorithm for multiclass loss of crammer and singer (crammer and singer, ) requires at each iteration a full pass over all the classes to search for the maximum violating class. therefore it can happen that some matrices will not be updated frequently. on the other hand, the ranking based loss in equation . used by our latem model ensures that different latent matrices are updated frequently. thus, the ranking based loss in equation . is better suited for our piecewise linear latem model. . experiments in this section, first we detail our experimental setup in our evaluation procedure and finally report experimental results on zero-shot and generalized zero-shot learning settings. datasets. caltech-ucsd birds (cub) (welinder et al., ) and stanford dogs (dogs) (khosla et al.) are fine-grained datasets (e.g. duan et al., ; deng et al., ) and animals with attributes (awa) (lampert et al., ) is a coarse-grained dataset. all the three datasets have been used for zero-shot learning (e.g. akata et al., c; rohrbach et al., ; kankuekul et al., ; yu and aloimonos, ) in the literature. as shown on table . , the set of classes are divided into three disjoint sets of train (ytr), val (yv) and test (yts) classes. for a fair comparison with previous works, we follow the same train, val, test set split used by (akata et al., c). in zero-shot learning, i.e. ytr+v ∩yts = , to get a more stable estimate of our own results, we make four more splits by randomly sampling the same number of classes as before. unless indicated otherwise, e.g. in comparison with previous methods, we average results over five splits. we account for the imbalance in the number of images in awa and dogs datasets and measure per-class averaged top- accuracy, unless stated otherwise. in generalized zero-shot learning setting as shown on table . , the set of images that belong to ytr+v and yts is first divided equally into tr+v and ts sets. namely, following the same seen (ytr+v) and unseen (yts) class split as the zero-shot learning setting, we build tr+v and ts sets of images that belong to seen and unseen classes. this way we can evaluate our model on images that belong to only ts or both tr+v chapter . latent embedding for zero-shot image classification total train+val test img y img ytr yv img yts cub awa dogs table . : the statistics of cub, awa and dogs datasets in zero-shot setting. cub and dogs are fine-grained datasets whereas awa is a more general concept dataset. ytr+v and yts are seen and unseen class embeddings respectively. img cls img cls tr+v ts ytr+v tr+v ts yts cub awa dogs table . : the statistics of cub, awa and dogs datasets in the generalized zero-shot learning setting. and ts classes. image and class embeddings. for direct comparison with the state-of-the-art, we use embeddings provided by (akata et al., c). briefly, as image embed- dings we use the dimensional top-layer pooling units of the pre-trained googlenet (szegedy et al., ) extracted from the whole image. we do not do any task specific pre-processing on images such as cropping foreground objects. as class embeddings we evaluate four different alternatives, i.e. attributes (att) (lampert et al., ), word vec (w v) (mikolov et al., b), glove (glo) (pennington et al., ) and hierarchies (hie) (miller, ). note that, cub contains and awa contains attributes. our att embedding for a class is a vector measuring the strength of each attribute for that class, based on human judgment. on the other hand, w v and glo are dimensional whereas hie is ≈ dimensional. implementation details. our image features are z-score normalized such that each dimension has zero mean and unit variance. all the class embeddings are ` normalized. the matrices wi are initialized at random with zero mean and standard deviation √ dx (akata et al., a). the number of epochs is fixed to be . the learning rates for the cub, awa and dog datasets are chosen as ηt = . , . , . , respectively, and kept constant over iterations. for each dataset, these parameters are tuned on the validation set of the default dataset split and kept constant for all other dataset splits and for all class embeddings. we use two strategies for selecting the number of latent matrices k, i.e either cross-validation or pruning. for cross-validation, k is varied in { , , , , } and the optimal k is chosen based the . experiments cub awa dogs att w v glo hie att w v glo hie w v glo hie eszsl . . . . . . . . . . . eszsl* . . . . . . . . . . . cmt . . . . . . . . . . . sse . . . . . . . . . . . jlse . . . . . . . . . . . sje . . . . . . . . . . . latem (ours) . . . . . . . . . . . table . : average per-class top- accuracy in zero-shot setting on awa, cub and dogs datasets. we compare eszsl (romera-paredes et al., ), eszsl* (romera- paredes et al., ), cmt (socher et al., ), sse (zhang and saligrama, ), jlse (zhang and saligrama, ), sje (akata et al., c) and latent embedding model (k is cross-validated) using the same splits, image and class embeddings as in (akata et al., c). accuracy on a validation set. for pruning, unless stated otherwise, k is initially set to be and then at every fifth epoch during training, we prune all matrices that support less than % of the data points. . . zero-shot learning experiments in this section, we provide results on zero-shot learning setting where ytr ∩yv ∩ yts = . in this setting, at training time, latem has access to labeled images of ytr+v and the search space at test time is yts. we either use the splits provided by (akata et al., c) or report the average performance of five splits to show stability. we specify the splits we used for each experiment in their respective sections. comparison with state-of-the-art. we start our experimental evaluation with an analysis of (lampert et al., ) and quantitative comparisons with eszsl (romera- paredes et al., ), cmt (socher et al., ), sse (zhang and saligrama, ), jlse (zhang and saligrama, ), and sje (akata et al., c) which are among the most relevant related work to ours. note that we fairly re-evaluate all seven state-of-the-art methods using the same four class embeddings, the same image embeddings and the same evaluation criteria on three challenging zero-shot learning datasets. therefore, ours is one of the most comprehensive re-evaluation of zero-shot state-of-the-art. among competing state-of-the-art methods, (lampert et al., ) proposes a two-step method that follows a different principle than ours: ( ) learning attribute classifiers and ( ) combining the scores of these attribute classifiers to make a class prediction. typically, the positive/negative samples used to train the attribute classifiers are obtained by binarizing the class-attribute matrix wrt. a threshold, chapter . latent embedding for zero-shot image classification cub awa dogs pr cv pr cv pr cv att n/a w v glo hie table . : number of matrices selected using pruning (pr) and using cross-validation (cv). pr is obtained by k = . that leads to loss of information. as it is not clear how to extend this idea to unsupervised class embeddings, we compare (lampert et al., ) and latem using attributes on awa where (lampert et al., ) obtains . % whereas latem obtains . % accuracy which is mostly due to binary attributes. on the other hand, we emphasize that we focus on unsupervised class embeddings that do not require human supervision. additionally, we re-implemented (romera-paredes et al., ) following the paper because their method is embarrassingly simple. (romera- paredes et al., ) define a binary matrix y of size m × z to denote the ground-truth labels of m training instances belonging to any of the z classes. the scale of this matrix has been given as y ∈{− , }m×z in (romera-paredes et al., ) which is a parameter to tune. therefore, we also validate our results with y ∈ { , }m×z. we denote the experiment that uses y ∈{ , }m×z as (romera-paredes et al., )*. for our experiments, we got the code from the authors of (socher et al., ), (zhang and saligrama, ), and (zhang and saligrama, ) and we use the publicly available implementation of sje (akata et al., c). we ran the experiments using our image and class embeddings by carefully validating all the parameters of all the methods on the validation set. we present results in table . . our latem consistently outperforms (socher et al., ) and (romera-paredes et al., ) on all three datasets for all four class embeddings. we observe a significant increase in accuracy from eszsl (romera- paredes et al., ) to eszsl* (romera-paredes et al., ) in all cases. however, even with y ∈ { , }m×z, our latem still outperforms eszsl*(romera-paredes et al., ) in out of cases. on the other hand, our latem outperforms (zhang and saligrama, ) in out of cases and (zhang and saligrama, ) in out of cases. for (zhang and saligrama, ) λ , λ , γ are the three regularization parameters, also the number of iterations and number of sample pairs are hyperparameters to tune whereas (zhang and saligrama, ) requires the regularization λs, dictionary size, number of sample pairs and number of iterations to be tuned. note that, apart from doing an extensive parameter validation, we used exactly the same svm solver and quadratic programming solver with (zhang and saligrama, ) and (zhang and saligrama, ) to obtain the results in table . . being a competitive state-of-the-art and the closest work related to ours, we now . experiments cub awa dog att w v glo hie sje latem sje latem sje latem cnc x x x . . . . n/a n/a cmb . . . . n/a n/a cnc x x x . . . . n/a n/a cmb . . . . n/a n/a cnc x x . . . . . . cmb . . . . . . cnc x x . . . . . . cmb . . . . . . table . : class embeddings combined as in (akata et al., c) (cnc: early fusion of class embeddings, cmb: late fusion of scores). provide a detailed comparison with sje (akata et al., c) and our latem. using att, latem improves over sje on awa ( . % vs. . %) significantly. however, as our aim is to reduce the accuracy gap between supervised and unsuper- vised class embeddings, therefore we focus on w v, glo and hie embeddings. here, on all datasets, latem improves the sje (akata et al., c) (section . ) significantly. with w v, latem achieves . % (vs. . %) on cub, . % (vs. . %) on awa and finally . % (vs . %) accuracy on dogs. similarly, using glo, latem achieves . % (vs . %) on cub, . % (vs. . %) on awa and . % (vs. . %) accuracy on dogs. finally, while latem with hie on dogs improves the result to . % from . %, the improvement is more significant on cub ( . % from . %) and on awa ( . % from . %). these results place our latem in the context with most recent and relevant methods as well as establish it as another competitive state-of-the-art method for zero-shot learning on three datasets. the results are encouraging, as they quantitatively show that learning piece-wise linear latent embeddings indeed capture latent semantics on the class embedding space. here, we emphasize two disadvantages of attributes. first, since fine-grained object classes share many common properties we need a large number of attributes which is costly to obtain. second, attribute annotations need to be done on a dataset basis, i.e. the attributes collected for birds do not work with dogs. therefore, we stress the importance of the unsupervised class embeddings i.e. w v, glo, hie. pruning versus cross-validation for model selection. our aim is to determine if our latem selects different number of models through pruning and through cross- validation. pruning (pr) selects matrices based on the data itself, on the other hand, cross-validation (cr) validates the number of matrices necessary to obtain the highest accuracy on the validation set. table . presents the results of this experiment on splits provided by (akata et al., c). we set the initial number of embeddings k to and pruning threshold to /k which assumes that samples are equally distributed to each embedding. in terms chapter . latent embedding for zero-shot image classification of the model size, cross validation seems to have a slight advantage. it selects a smaller model in cases out of which is more space and time efficient. the trend is consistent for all the class embeddings for the awa dataset but is mixed for cub and dogs. the advantage of pruning over cross-validation is that it is much faster to train. while cross validation requires training and testing with multiple models (once each for every possible choice of k), pruning just requires training once. we measure the sensitivity of k and corresponding pruning thresholds by setting k = [ , , , , , , ] and th = / , / , / , . . . , / . mean accuracy with standard deviation with att, w v, glo, hie on cub are . % ( . ), . % ( . ), . % ( . ), . % ( . ) which shows that the results we reported with k = is stable. combination of class embeddings. here, we provide results with direct comparison with (akata et al., c) where class embeddings are combined using two strategies: ( ) through early fusion (cnc), i.e. concatenating class embeddings and ( ) through late fusion (cmb) of compatibility scores, i.e. averaging the scores obtained with different class embeddings. we use the same combination of class embeddings, image features and zero-shot splits as (akata et al., c) for a fair comparison. the results are presented in table . . first, we combine att with w v, glo and hie for awa and cub. latem improves the results over sje significantly on awa ( . % vs . %). on the other hand, latem does not improve over the state-of-the-art ( . % vs . %) on cub. this observation is in line with the results reported in table . where latem does not provide a significant advantage over sje on cub with human-annotated attributes. second, we combine unsupervised class embeddings w v, glo and hie. latem consistently improves over sje in this setting. on cub combining w v, glo and hie achieves . % (vs. . %), on awa it achieves . % (vs. . %) and on dogs it obtains . % (vs. . %). these experiments show that unsupervised class embed- dings contain complimentary information and, therefore, the results tend to improve by combining them. another observation is late fusion of classification scores, i.e. cmb, leads to higher accuracy compared to early fusion of class embeddings, i.e. cnc. in cnc, a single wi, learned with all the class embeddings concatenated together, fails to address the confusion that is introduced by each class embedding. on the other hand, in cmb, each wi prefers to assign a different class label to an image based on the score, i.e. f(x, y). this way, different wis that are learned with different but complimentary class embeddings get weighted accordingly and, hence, class labels are more accurate. finally, on cub and dogs by combining w v and hie we obtain better results than by combining glo and hie. this is due to the fact that glo uses only class-relevant articles while w v uses the entire wikipedia. as a conclusion, wikipedia articles that are not directly related to our classes, i.e. the context, lead to more descriptive class embeddings individually (see w v results in table . ) and in combination as well (see results in table . that include w v). stability of zero-shot learning results. as during training time in zero-shot learning . experiments cub awa dogs sje latem sje latem sje latem att . . . . n/a w v . . . . . . glo . . . . . . hie . . . . . . table . : average per-class top- accuracy on unseen classes (the results are averaged on five folds). sje: (akata et al., c), latem: latent embedding model (k is cross- validated). cub awa dogs pr cv pr cv pr cv att . . . . n/a w v . . . . . . glo . . . . . . hie . . . . . . table . : average per-class top- accuracy on unseen classes (averaged over five zero-shot splits that we used in the stability experiments). pr: proposed model learnt with pruning using k = , cv: with cross validation. neither images nor class relationships of test classes are seen, methods suffer from the difficulty in parameter selection. the standard way is to use disjoint train, val and test classes. in addition to the standard splits, we experimented on four more independently and randomly chosen data splits to get stable estimates of our predictions. both with our latem and the publicly available implementation of sje (akata et al., c) we repeat these experiments five times and report the average. for all datasets table . shows that all the result comparisons between sje and latem hold and therefore conclusions are the same. although sje outperforms latem with supervised attributes on cub, latem outperforms the sje results with supervised attributes on awa and consistently outperforms all the sje results obtained with unsupervised class embeddings. using attributes, on awa latem obtains an impressive . % (vs. . %) and using unsupervised class embeddings the highest accuracy is observed with w v with . % (vs. . %). on cub, latem with w v obtains the highest accuracy with . % (vs. . %) on dogs, latem with hie obtains the highest accuracy, i.e. . % (vs . %). these results insure that our accuracy improvements reported in table . were not due to a bias in the dataset split. by augmenting the datasets with four more splits, our latem obtains a chapter . latent embedding for zero-shot image classification k t o p - a cc . (i n % ) cub w v glo hie k t o p - a cc . (i n % ) awa w v glo hie k t o p - a cc . (i n % ) dogs w v glo hie figure . : effect of latent variable k on cub, awa and dogs datasets. we measure top- accuracy (in %) with the increasing number of latent models, i.e. k, learned with unsupervised class embeddings, i.e. w v, glo, hie. consistent improvement on all the class embeddings on all datasets over the state-of- the-art. on the other hand, these results helped us notice one crucial difference of doing zero-shot learning on fine-grained and on coarse-grained datasets. the results reported on the original split of awa (lampert et al., ) that is being widely used in the literature has been constructed in a way that seen and unseen class splits have visually similar classes e.g. while gorilla is in the seen classes, chimpanzee is in the unseen classes. this insures that by using gorilla images, the methods will generalize to images of the the visually similar chimpanzee class whose images were not seen on training. when we build another split that places both gorilla and chimpanzee classes in the unseen/test set, there is no means of distinguishing these objects, as there is no visually closely similar class left in the seen/train set. we observe a significant drop in accuracy for the weaker unsupervised class embeddings on awa when we randomly select the class splits, as given in table . , in addition to the original split (lampert et al., ). however, this drop effects our latem as well as the state-of-the-art sje method. our conclusion from this observation is that the zero-shot learning setting may be better suited for fine-grained classification task. we also evaluate the accuracy of latem when the number of matrices in the model is obtained with pruning versus when it is obtained with cross-validation. table . presents the performance of latem when the model selection is done by pruning (pr) or by cross-validation (cr) on the three datasets. in terms of performance, both methods are equally competitive. pruning outperforms cross validation on five cases and is outperformed on the remaining six cases. the performance gaps are usually within - % absolute, with the exception of awa dataset with att and w v with . % vs. . % and . % vs. . %, for cv and for pr respectively. hence, neither of the methods has a clear advantage in terms of performance, however cross validation in general performs slightly better and is faster. effect of k. in this section, we investigate the experiments performed using five- folds on the cub, awa and dogs datasets and provide further analysis for a varying number of k. for completeness of the analysis, we also evaluate the single latent embedding case, namely k ∈{ , , , , , } using unsupervised embeddings, i.e. w v, glo and hie for consistency. . experiments small bird with mostly yellow plumage sea bird with red eyes blue plumage with brown wings glove word vec long and pointy beak brown head, light breast, small bird completely black plumage hierarchy small bird with yellow belly pointy beak, spotted and climbing tree trunks sea bird with curved beak attribute black wings pattern on head-eye region black region on the head figure . : top images ranked by the matrices using word vec, glove, hierarchy and attribute class embeddings on cub dataset, each row corresponds to different matrix in the model. qualitative examples support our intuition – each latent variable captures certain visual aspects of the bird. note that, while the images may not belong to the same fine-grained class, they share common visual properties. in figure . we present the performance of the model with a different number of matrices on cub, awa and dogs datasets. for cub, we observe that the performance generally increases with increasing k, initially, and then the patterns differ with different embeddings. with w v the performance keeps increasing until k = and then starts decreasing, probably due to model overfitting. with glo the performance increases until k = where the final accuracy is ≈ % higher than with k = . with the hie embedding the standard errors do not increase significantly in any of the cases, are similar for all values of k and there is no clear trend in the performance. for awa, although glo results decrease with the increasing number of k, for w v and hie the results do not vary significantly but they pick the values and respectively. for dogs, this time w v results decrease slightly with the increasing number of k for k > . in this dataset, k = , , seems to be the best options for w v, hie and glo respectively. interpretability of latent embeddings. as we demonstrated previously, our novel latem model improves the state-of-the-art sje model for zero-shot classification on two fine-grained datasets, i.e. cub and dogs, and one coarse-grained dataset, i.e. awa. in this section, we take a closer look at the results on the challenging cub dataset and investigate if individual wi’s learn visually consistent and interpretable latent relationships between images and classes. figure . shows the top scoring chapter . latent embedding for zero-shot image classification cub awa dogs t t t t t t t t t att . . . . . . n/a w v . . . . . . . . . glo . . . . . . . . . hie . . . . . . . . . table . : average per-class top- , and accuracy, i.e. t , t and t respectively, in generalized zero-shot learning setting when we have no samples from yts during training, however the search space during testing includes all the available labels, i.e. namely y = ytr ∪yv ∪yts. images retrieved by three different wi for w v, glo, hie and att. for w v, the images in the first row are of birds which have long and pointy beaks. note that they belong to different classes; having a long and pointy beak is one of the shared aspect of those different bird species. similarly, for the second row images are of small birds with brown head and light-colored breast and the last row contains large birds with completely black plumage. these results are interesting because they show that, our latem is able to (i) infer hidden common properties of classes and (ii) support them with visual evidence, leading to a clustering which is optimized for classification, and also performs well in retrieval. for glo, similar to the results with w v, the top-scoring images of the same wi consistently show distinguishing visual properties of classes. the first row shows that blue birds from different species are clustered together which indicates that this matrix captures the “blue”ness of the birds. the second row has exclusively aquatic birds, i.e. surrounded by water. finally, the third row shows yellow birds only. similar to w v, for glo our latem is able to bring out the latent information that reflect object attributes and support this with its visual counterpart. for completion, we also include qualitative results with hie and att class embed- dings. the first row with hie shows small yellow birds with yellow belly, the second row shows different species of birds with a pointy beak climbing on tree trunks and the third row shows sea birds with curved beaks. similarly, the first row with att shows different birds with a common property of having “black wings”, the second row shows a distinctive pattern on the head region and the third row shows birds with different amount of blackness on their heads. these results clearly demonstrate that our model factorizes the space with visually interpretable relations between classes, also with hie and att. . . generalized zero-shot learning setting most existing works on zero-shot learning assume that all the images are from unseen classes during the test phase, which simplifies the problem as the classifiers . experiments ch im pa nz ee gi an t+ pa nd a le op ar d pe rs ia n+ ca t pi g hi pp op ot am us hu m pb ac k+ wh al e ra cc oo n ra t se al an te lo pe gr izz ly+ be ar kil le r+ wh al e be av er da lm at ia n ho rs e ge rm an +s he ph er d bl ue +w ha le sia m es e+ ca t sk un k m ol e tig er m oo se sp id er +m on ke y el ep ha nt go ril la ox fo x sh ee p ha m st er sq ui rre l rh in oc er os ra bb it ba t gi ra ffe wo lf ch ih ua hu a we as el ot te r bu ffa lo ze br a de er bo bc at lio n m ou se po la r+ be ar co llie wa lru s co w do lp hi n prediction chimpanzee giant+panda leopard persian+cat pig hippopotamus humpback+whale raccoon rat seal antelope grizzly+bear killer+whale beaver dalmatian horse german+shepherd blue+whale siamese+cat skunk mole tiger moose spider+monkey elephant gorilla ox fox sheep hamster squirrel rhinoceros rabbit bat giraffe wolf chihuahua weasel otter buffalo zebra deer bobcat lion mouse polar+bear collie walrus cow dolphin g ro u n d tr u th chimpanzee giant+panda persian+cat humpback+whale rat seal blue+whale siamese+cat gorilla mouse polar+bear dolphin figure . : left: confusion matrix of all the classes on awa dataset based on the latent factors learned using latem in the general setting (we use glo as class embedding). unseen classes are shown at the top of the confusion matrix. right: t-sne visualization of the confusion matrix with seen and unseen classes marked with blue and red respectively. visually similar classes such as chimpanzee and gorilla are embedded close to each other, hence being confused by the classifier. only need to distinguish between unseen classes. in this section, we evaluate our latem in a more challenging yet realistic setting, here the prediction function is: f (x) = argmax y∈{yu∪ys} f(x, y). ( . ) as shown in equation . , in the generalized zero-shot learning setting (e.g. ?socher et al., ) the search space includes all the class embeddings both at training time and at test time. similar to the zero-shot learning setting, the extreme case of generalized zero-shot learning setting assumes no availability of visual samples from test classes during training. as we do not have access to any images of yts during training, class embeddings of yts do not get coupled with any visual information, hence act only as distractors. in the following sections, we first evaluate the extreme case of generalized zero-shot learning setting, i.e. when we have no visual samples from test classes during training, and then we gradually increase the number of images from yts during training. no samples from yts during training. in this setting, during training although we do not have access to any visual samples from test classes, our scoring function takes a max over all the available class embeddings. as the class embeddings of test classes never get any supervision signal, they act as distractors. we present results obtained in this setting on cub, awa and dogs using all four class embeddings on table . . our observation from table . is that with top- accuracy latem gives poor results even with expert annotated attributes. note that, a similar behavior was observed in (rohrbach et al., , ; socher et al., ). these results show that chapter . latent embedding for zero-shot image classification # training samples per class t o p - a cc . (i n % ) cub att w v glo hie # training samples per class t o p - a cc . (i n % ) awa att w v glo hie # training samples per class t o p - a cc . (i n % ) dogs w v glo hie # training samples per class t o p - a cc . (i n % ) cub att w v glo hie # training samples per class t o p - a cc . (i n % ) awa att w v glo hie # training samples per class t o p - a cc . (i n % ) dogs w v glo hie # training samples per class t o p - a cc . (i n % ) cub att w v glo hie # training samples per class t o p - a cc . (i n % ) awa att w v glo hie # training samples per class t o p - a cc . (i n % ) dogs w v glo hie figure . : generalized zero- and few-shots learning settings evaluated on all for cub, awa and dogs using att (where available), w v, glo and hie embeddings. we show the top- , top- and top- accuracy (in%) with the increasing number of images per unseen class used during training. evaluating the model on both seen and unseen classes is a harder problem and it requires more attention. although solving this problem is out of the scope of this chapter, we provide further analysis on understanding the problem itself. our hypothesis is that the classes that are similar in context, i.e. chimpanzee and gorilla, are separated into different sets in terms of seen and unseen classes. to evaluate this hypothesis, after learning the latem model on awa using glo embedding, we build a confusion matrix of the test images that belong to both seen and unseen classes. figure . plots the confusion matrix and t-sne (van der maaten and hinton, ) visualization of the confusion matrix. we observe that the classifier is indeed able to embed images of chimpanzees close to the chimpanzee and gorilla. however, without having seen sufficient examples of the unseen class chimpanzee, it is not able to distinguish between a chimpanzee and a gorilla. same phenomenon is observed for other visually similar class pairs, e.g. blue-whale and humpback-whale, polar-bear and giant-panda, mouse and rat, which are visually similar . experiments animals belonging to seen and unseen classes respectively. following this analysis, we argue that in the presence of seen and unseen classes for testing, evaluating top- or top- accuracy may be a more suitable way to measure performance. indeed, top- accuracy has been the evaluation criteria of image classification challenge (berg et al.) of imagenet (deng et al., ). we present results with top- accuracy on table . . our immediate observation is that for all datasets the results improve by to % compared to the results with top- accuracy. this shows that − % of the time, the images of unseen classes are incorrectly assigned to the second closest class among the seen classes, e.g. chimpanzee versus gorilla, or vice versa. this outcome follows our intuition that latem confuses two similar classes especially when they belong to disjoint sets of seen and unseen classes. finally, our results with top- accuracy shows a similar tendency to the difference between top- and top- accuracy. we observe another accuracy increase of to % compared to the top- accuracy depending on the dataset and class embedding. moreover, as expected the top- accuracy results are higher than top- and top- accuracy while the relative difference between different class embeddings remain similar in all cases. we also observe from these results that supervised attributes remain important with the lack of training data in the extreme case. in cub and awa, top- accuracy obtained with unsupervised class embeddings extracted from wikipedia, i.e. w v and glo perform similarly to the top- accuracy obtained with attribute class embeddings. on the other hand, the human supervision signal that comes from attributes leads to an accuracy boost of almost % when we measure top- or top- accuracy. finally in dogs, hie class embeddings perform higher than w v and glo that are extracted from wikipedia. it is interesting to note that this observation is unique to this dataset and it is in line with our observations in the classic zero-shot learning setting. this shows that finding the most suitable class embedding is an important aspect of tackling the zero-shot learning task. generalized zero-shot to generalized few-shots setting. as shown in the previous section, the presence of all class embeddings, i.e. generalized zero-shot setting, in its extreme case, i.e. no visual samples from test classes during training, result in a significant loss in accuracy compared to the classic zero-shot learning setting. this is expected since during training the test class embedding act as distractors since they are not coupled with any visual examples. in this section, we investigate the generalized zero-shot and generalized few-shot learning settings, namely the settings with the presence of either no or a few examples from test classes for training, respectively. we present the stability of our latem in this setting by running it on five dataset folds with the error bars in figure . . we report per-class averaged top- , top and top- accuracy results with all four class embeddings, i.e. att (on cub and awa), w v, glo and hie. we show the importance of visual data by increasing the number of images from to , and on cub, awa and dogs respectively. on cub, although att class embedding obtains the highest top- , top- and top- accuracy on both the generalized zero-shot and generalized − -shots settings, it chapter . latent embedding for zero-shot image classification is interesting to observe that glo embedding reaches the same accuracy after the presence of samples on top- and top- accuracies and obtains the highest accuracy in all cases, i.e. top- , and , when all images are used for training. another observation from cub results is that the results are stable in all five folds of the data. on awa, a striking observation is how well glo class embedding performs for top- , top- and top- accuracy on generalized few-shots learning setting. with the presence of images per class, top- accuracy between att and glo embeddings is % for both top- and top- accuracy. also, on awa, the accuracy difference between different class embeddings is quite high. this may be because awa is a coarse-grained dataset as the similar observation does not hold for cub and dogs. on dogs, unlike the classical and generalized zero-shot learning results, hie embedding is not the best performing class embedding in generalized few-shot learning setting. in this dataset, w v is the best performing embedding on all evaluation metrics. i.e. top- , top- and top- accuracy. another observation from dogs results is that with the presence of images per-class during training, all class embeddings converge to the same value, i.e. class embeddings lose their importance. as a conclusion, with the increasing the number of additional training samples from unseen classes the results improve significantly in all cases until the accuracy improvements flatten out gradually. these results show that with the availability of a large number of images from both seen and unseen classes, the importance of the contribution of class embeddings has been reduced. (akata et al., a) has shown that using hand-crafted image features, the one-vs-rest svm strategy becomes more favourable compared to embedding-based methods only with the availability of a large number of annotated images. here, we show that leveraging deep image features with even a few additional samples, i.e. , , , we improve over human annotated attributes and increase zero-shot accuracy by approximately %, demonstrated by the results obtained with awa. . conclusions we presented a novel latent variable model, latent embeddings (latem), for learn- ing a nonlinear (piecewise linear) compatibility function for the task of zero-shot classification. latem is a multi-modal method, it uses images and class-level side- information either obtained through human annotation or in an unsupervised way from a large text corpus. latem incorporates multiple linear compatibility units and allows each image to choose one of them – such choices being the latent variables. we proposed a ranking based objective to learn the model using an efficient and scalable sgd based solver. we empirically validated our model on three challenging benchmark datasets for zero-shot classification of birds, dogs and animals. we improved the state- of-the-art for zero-shot learning using unsupervised class embeddings on awa up to . % (vs. . %) and on two fine-grained datasets, achieving . % (vs. . conclusions . %) on cub as well as achieving . % (vs. . %) on dogs. on awa, we also improve the accuracy obtained with supervised class embeddings, obtaining . % (vs. . %). this demonstrates quantitatively that our method learns a latent structure in the embedding space through multiple compatibility units. we also presented a qualitative analysis of our results and showed that the latent embeddings learned with our method leads to visual consistencies. our stability analysis on five dataset folds for all three benchmark datasets showed that our method can generalize well and does not overfit to the current dataset splits. we proposed a new method for selecting the number of latent variables automatically from the data by pruning. such pruning based method speeds up the training and leads to models with competitive space-time complexities compared to the cross-validation based method. we further extended our application domain to generalized zero-shot and gener- alized few-shot learning setting where at training time we assume the availability of either no or a few labeled samples from unseen classes. on the other hand, both at training and test time the search space includes all the class embeddings from seen and unseen classes. as expected, our evaluation on generalized zero-shot learning setting showed a significant loss of accuracy compared to the standard zero-shot learning setting which we analyzed through visualizations and quantitative results. through these experiments we raised awareness that even state-of-the-art methods confuse two visually similar classes if one of them is an unseen class, i.e. the method has seen no samples from that class. our evaluation on generalized few-shots setting showed that with as few as two to ten samples from unseen classes, unsupervised class embeddings can outperform the supervised attributes. therefore, with increas- ing number of additional training samples, the difference between different class embeddings are reduced. as a future work, we plan to investigate the challenging however realistic generalized zero-shot and generalized few-shots settings further. z e r o - s h o t l e a r n i n g : t h e g o o d , t h e b a d a n d t h e u g ly contents . introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . related work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . evaluated methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . learning linear compatibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . learning nonlinear compatibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . learning intermediate attribute classifiers . . . . . . . . . . . . hybrid models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . transductive zero-shot learning setting . . . . . . . . . . . . datasets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . attribute datasets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . large-scale imagenet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . evaluation protocol . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . image and class embedding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . dataset splits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . evaluation criteria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . experiments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . zero-shot learning experiments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . generalized zero-shot learning results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . transductive (generalized) zero-shot learning . . . . . . . . conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i n the previous chapter, we propose a non-linear embedding function for better zero-shot learning performance. however, we realize that evaluation settings of previous works are inconsistent, leading to incomparable results. therefore, in this chapter, we introduce a better zero-shot image classification benchmark and evaluate sota approaches under the same evaluation protocols. our new evaluation protocol includes the convention zero-shot learning that predicts only novel classes and the realistic generalized zero-shot learning where both base and novel classes should be evaluated. we also propose correct class splits where novel classes are not present in the pretraining dataset e.g. imagenet. in chapter , we adopt the evaluation setting introduced in this chapter and propose an efficient feature generation approach for the challenging generalized zero-shot learning task. in chapter , we follow the same evaluation protocol, introduce a stronger feature generator by combining vae and gans, and show unlabeled data significantly improves quality of generated features. chapter and chapter . zero-shot learning: the good, the bad and the ugly chapter demonstrate our efforts in advancing zero-shot and few-shot learning for the semantic segmentation and video classification tasks. . introduction zero-shot learning aims to recognize objects whose instances may not have been seen during training (e.g. lampert et al., ; larochelle et al., ; rohrbach et al., ; yu and aloimonos, ; xu et al., ; ding et al., ). the number of new zero-shot learning methods proposed every year has been increasing rapidly, i.e. the good aspects as our title suggests. although each new method has been shown to make progress over the previous one, it is difficult to quantify this progress without an established evaluation protocol, i.e. the bad aspects. in fact, the quest for improving numbers has lead to even flawed evaluation protocols, i.e. the ugly aspects. therefore, in this work, we propose to extensively evaluate a significant number of recent zero-shot learning methods in depth on several small to large-scale datasets using the same evaluation protocol both in zero-shot, i.e. training and test classes are disjoint, and the more realistic generalized zero-shot learning settings, i.e. training classes are present at test time. figure . presents an illustration of zero-shot and generalized zero-shot learning tasks. we benchmark and systematically evaluate zero-shot learning w.r.t. three aspects, i.e. methods, datasets and evaluation protocol. the crux of the matter for all zero- shot learning methods is to associate observed and non observed classes through some form of auxiliary information which encodes visually distinguishing properties of objects. different flavors of zero-shot learning methods that we evaluate in this work are linear (e.g. frome et al., ; akata et al., , c; romera-paredes et al., ) and nonlinear (e.g. xian et al., ; socher et al., ) compatibility learning frameworks which have dominated the zero-shot learning literature in the past few years whereas an orthogonal direction is learning independent attribute (lampert et al., ) classifiers and finally others (e.g. zhang and saligrama, ; changpinyo et al., ; norouzi et al., ) propose a hybrid model between independent classifier learning and compatibility learning frameworks which have demonstrated improved results over the compatibility learning frameworks both for zero-shot and generalized zero-shot learning settings. we thoroughly evaluate the second aspect of zero-shot learning, by using multiple splits of several small, medium and large-scale datasets (e.g. patterson and hays, ; welinder et al., ; lampert et al., ; farhadi et al., ; deng et al., ). among these, the animals with attributes (awa ) dataset (lampert et al., ) introduced as a zero-shot learning dataset with per-class attribute annotations, has been one of the most widely used datasets for zero-shot learning. however, as awa images does not have the public copyright license, only some image features, i.e. sift (lowe, ), decaf (donahue et al., ), vgg (simonyan and zisserman, b) of awa dataset is publicly available, rather than the raw images. on the other hand, improving image features is a significant part of the progress both . introduction ytr training time yts yts ∪ ytr zero-shot learning generalized zero-shot learning test time polar bear black: no white : yes brown: yes stripes: no water: yes eats fish:yes zebra black: yes white : yes brown: no stripes: yes water: no eats fish: no otter black: yes white : no brown: yes stripes: no water: yes eats fish: yes tiger black: yes white : yes brown: no stripes: yes water: no eats fish: no otter black: yes white : no brown: yes stripes: no water: yes eats fish: yes tiger black: yes white : yes brown: no stripes: yes water: no eats fish: no polar bear black: no white : yes brown: yes stripes: no water: yes eats fish: yes zebra black: yes white : yes brown: no stripes: yes water: no eats fish: no figure . : zero-shot learning (zsl) vs generalized zero-shot learning (gzsl): at training time, for both cases the images and attributes of the seen classes (ytr) are available. at test time, in the zsl setting, the learned model is evaluated only on unseen classes (yts) whereas in gzsl setting, the search space contains both training and test classes (ytr ∪yts). to facilitate classification without labels, both tasks use some form of side information, e.g. attributes. the attributes are annotated per class, therefore the labeling cost is significantly reduced. for supervised learning and for zero-shot learning. in fact, with the fast pace of deep learning, everyday new deep neural network models improve the imagenet classification performance are being proposed. without access to images, those new dnn models can not be evaluated on awa dataset. therefore, with this work, we introduce the animals with attributes (awa ) dataset that has roughly the same number of images all with public licenses, exactly the same number of classes and attributes as the awa dataset. we will make both resnet (he et al., ) features of awa images and the images themselves publicly available. we propose a unified evaluation protocol to address the third aspect of zero-shot learning which is one of the most important ones. we emphasize the necessity of tuning hyperparameters of the methods on a validation class split that is disjoint from training classes as improving zero-shot learning performance via tuning parameters on test classes violates the zero-shot assumption. we argue that per-class averaged top- accuracy is an important evaluation metric when the dataset is not well balanced with respect to the number of images per class. we point out that extracting image features via a pre-trained deep neural network (dnn) on a large dataset that contains zero-shot test classes also violates the zero-shot learning idea as image feature extraction is a part of the training procedure. moreover, we argue that demonstrating zero-shot performance on small-scale and coarse grained datasets, i.e. apy (farhadi et al., ) is not conclusive. on the other hand, with this work chapter . zero-shot learning: the good, the bad and the ugly we emphasize that it is hard to obtain labeled training data for fine-grained classes of rare objects recognizing which requires expert opinion. therefore, we argue that zero-shot learning methods should be also evaluated on least populated or rare classes. we recommend to abstract away from the restricted nature of zero-shot evaluation and make the task more practical by including training classes in the search space, i.e. generalized zero-shot learning setting. therefore, we argue that our work plays an important role in advancing the zero-shot learning field by analyzing the good and bad aspects of the zero-shot learning task as well as proposing ways to eliminate the ugly ones. . related work a more comprehensive literature review can be found in chapter . here we only discuss the relation of our benchmark to existing zero-shot learning evaluation protocols. zero-shot learning has been criticized for being a restrictive set up as it comes with a strong assumption of the image used at prediction time can only come from unseen classes. therefore, generalized zero-shot learning setting (scheirer et al., ) has been proposed to generalize the zero-shot learning task to the case where both seen and unseen classes are used at test time. (jain et al., ) argues that although imagenet classification challenge performance has reached beyond human performance, we do not observe similar behavior of the methods that compete at the detection challenge which involves rejecting unknown objects while detecting the position and label of a known object. (frome et al., ) uses label embeddings to operate on the generalized zero-shot learning setting whereas (zhang et al., a) proposes to learn latent representations for images and classes through coupled linear regression of factorized joint embeddings. on the other hand, (bendale and boult, ) introduces a new model layer to the deep net which estimates the probability of an input being from an unknown class and (socher et al., ) proposes a novelty detection mechanism. although zero-shot vs generalized zero-shot learning evaluation works ex- ist (rohrbach et al., ; chao et al., ) in the literature, our work stands out in multiple aspects. for instance, (rohrbach et al., ) operates on the imagenet k by using classes for training and for test. one of the most comprehensive works, (chao et al., ) provides a comparison between five methods evaluated on three datasets including imagenet with three standard splits and proposes a metric to evaluate generalized zero-shot learning performance. on the other hand, we evaluate ten zero-shot learning methods on five datasets with several splits both for zero-shot and generalized zero-shot learning settings, provide statistical significance and robustness tests, and present other valuable insights that emerge from our benchmark. in this sense, ours is the most extensive evaluation of zero-shot and generalized zero-shot learning tasks in the literature. . evaluated methods . evaluated methods we start by formalizing the zero-shot learning task and then we describe the zero- shot learning methods that we evaluate in this work. given a training set s = {(xn, yn), n = ...n}, with yn ∈ytr belonging to training classes, the task is to learn f : x →y by minimizing the regularized empirical risk: n n ∑ n= l(yn, f (xn; w)) + Ω(w) ( . ) where l(.) is the loss function and Ω(.) is the regularization term. here, the mapping f : x →y from input to output embeddings is defined as: f (x; w) = argmax y∈y f(x, y; w) ( . ) at test time, in zero-shot learning setting, the aim is to assign a test image to an unseen class label, i.e. yts ⊂ y and in generalized zero-shot learning setting, the test image can be assigned either to seen or unseen classes, i.e. ytr+ts ⊂y with the highest compatibility score. . . learning linear compatibility attribute label embedding (ale) (akata et al., a), deep visual semantic em- bedding (devise) (frome et al., ) and structured joint embedding (sje) (akata et al., c) use bi-linear compatibility function to associate visual and auxiliary information: f(x, y; w) = θ(x)twφ(y) ( . ) where θ(x) and φ(y), i.e. image and class embeddings, both of which are given. f(.) is parameterized by the mapping w, that is to be learned. given an image, compatibility learning frameworks predict the class which attains the maximum compatibility score with the image. among the methods that are detailed below, ale (akata et al., a), de- vise (frome et al., ) and sje (akata et al., c) do early stopping to implicitly regularize stochastic gradient descent (sgd) while eszsl (romera-paredes et al., ) and sae (kodirov et al., ) explicitly regularize the embedding model as detailed below. in the following, we provide a unified formulation of these five zero-shot learning methods. devise (frome et al., ) uses pairwise ranking objective that is inspired from unregularized ranking svm (joachims, ): ∑ y∈ytr [∆(yn, y) + f(xn, y; w)− f(xn, yn; w)]+ ( . ) chapter . zero-shot learning: the good, the bad and the ugly where ∆(yn, y) is equal to if yn = y, otherwise . the objective function is convex and is optimized by stochastic gradient descent. ale (akata et al., a) uses the weighted approximate ranking objective (usunier et al., ) for zero-shot learning in the following way: ∑ y∈ytr lr∆(xn ,yn) r∆(xn,yn) [∆(yn, y) + f(xn, y; w)− f(xn, yn; w)]+ ( . ) where lk = ∑ k i= αi and r∆(xn,yn) is defined as: ∑ y∈ytr (f(xn, y; w) + ∆(yn, y) ≥ f(xn, yn; w)) ( . ) following the heuristic in (weston et al., ), (akata et al., a) selects αi = /i which puts a high emphasis on the top of the rank list. sje (akata et al., c) gives the full weight to the top of the ranked list and is inspired from the structured svm (tsochantaridis et al., ): [max y∈ytr (∆(yn, y) + f(xn, y; w))− f(xn, yn; w)]+ ( . ) the prediction can only be made after computing the score against all the classifiers, i.e. so as to find the maximum violating class, which makes sje less efficient than devise and ale. eszsl (romera-paredes et al., ) applies a square loss to the ranking formula- tion and adds the following implicit regularization term to the unregularized risk minimization formulation: γ‖wφ(y)‖ + λ‖θ(x)tw‖ + β‖w‖ ( . ) where γ, λ, β are regularization parameters. the first two terms bound the euclidean norm of projected attributes in the feature space and projected image feature in the attribute space respectively. the advantage of this approach is that the objective function is convex and has a closed form solution. sae (kodirov et al., ) also learns the linear projection from image embedding space to class embedding space, but it further constrains that the projection must be able to reconstruct the original image embedding. similar to the linear auto-encoder, sae optimizes the following objective: min w ||θ(x)− w t φ(y)|| + λ||wθ(x)− φ(y)|| , ( . ) where λ is a hyperparameter to be tuned. the optimization problem can be trans- formed such that bartels-stewart algorithm (bartels and stewart, ) is able to solve it efficiently. . evaluated methods . . learning nonlinear compatibility latent embeddings (latem) (xian et al., ) and cross modal transfer (cmt) (socher et al., ) encode an additional non-linearity component to linear compatibility learning framework. latem (xian et al., ) constructs a piece-wise linear compatibility: f(x, y; wi) = max ≤i≤k θ(x)twi φ(y) ( . ) where every wi models a different visual characteristic of the data and the selection of which matrix to use to do the mapping is a latent variable and k is a hyperparameter to be tuned. latem uses the ranking loss formulated in equation . and stochastic gradient descent as the optimizer. cmt (socher et al., ) first maps images into a semantic space of words, i.e. class names, where a neural network with tanh nonlinearity learns the mapping: ∑ y∈ytr ∑ x∈xy ‖φ(y)− w tanh(w .θ(x)‖ ( . ) where (w , w ) are weights of the two layer neural network. this is followed by a novelty detection mechanism that assigns images to unseen or seen classes. the novelty is detected either via thresholds learned using the embedded images of the seen classes or the outlier probabilities are obtained in an unsupervised way. as zero-shot learning assumes that test images are only from unseen classes, in our experiments when we refer to cmt, that means we do not use the novelty detection component. on the other hand, we name the cmt with novelty detection as cmt* when we apply it to the generalized zero-shot learning setting. . . learning intermediate attribute classifiers although direct attribute prediction (dap) (lampert et al., ) and indirect attribute prediction (iap) (lampert et al., ) have been shown to perform poorly compared to compatibility learning frameworks (akata et al., a), we include them to our evaluation for being historically the most widely used methods in the literature. dap (lampert et al., ) learns probabilistic attribute classifiers and makes a class prediction by combining scores of the learned attribute classifiers. a novel image is assigned to one of the unknown classes using: f (x) = argmax c m ∏ m= p(acm|x) p(acm) . ( . ) with m being the total number of attributes, acm is the m-th attribute of class c, p(acm|x) is the attribute probability given image x which is obtained from the attribute chapter . zero-shot learning: the good, the bad and the ugly classifiers whereas p(acm) is the attribute prior estimated by the empirical mean of attributes over training classes. we train binary classifiers with logistic regression that gives probability scores of attributes with respect to training classes. iap (lampert et al., ) indirectly estimates attributes probabilities of an image by first predicting the probabilities of each training class, then multiplying the class attribute matrix. once the attributes probabilities are obtained by the following equation: p(am|x) = k ∑ k= p(am|yk)p(yk|x), ( . ) where k is the number of training classes, p(am|yk) is the predefined class attribute and p(yk|x) is training class posterior from multi-class classifier, the equation . is used to predict the class label for which we train a multi-class classifier on training classes with logistic regression. . . hybrid models semantic similarity embedding (sse) (zhang and saligrama, ), convex com- bination of semantic embeddings (conse) (norouzi et al., ) and synthesized classifiers (sync) (changpinyo et al., ) express images and semantic class embeddings as a mixture of seen class proportions, hence we group them as hybrid models. sse (zhang and saligrama, ) leverages similar class relationships both in image and semantic embedding space. an image is labeled with: argmax u∈u π(θ(x))t ψ(φ(yu)) ( . ) where π, ψ are mappings of class and image embeddings into a common space defined by the mixture of seen classes proportions. specifically, ψ is learned by sparse coding and π is by class dependent transformation. conse (norouzi et al., ) learns the probability of a training image belonging to a training class: f (x, t) = argmax y∈ytr ptr(y|x) ( . ) where y denotes the most likely training label (t= ) for image x. combination of semantic embeddings (s) is used to assign an unknown image to an unseen class: z t ∑ i= ptr( f (x, t)|x).s( f (x, t)) ( . ) where z = ∑ti= ptr( f (x, t)|x), f (x, t) denotes the t th most likely label for image x and t controls the maximum number of semantic embedding vectors. . evaluated methods sync (changpinyo et al., ) learns a mapping between the semantic class embedding space and a model space. in the model space, training classes and a set of phantom classes form a weighted bipartite graph. the objective is to minimize distortion error: min wc ‖wc − r ∑ r= scr vr‖ . ( . ) semantic and model spaces are aligned by embedding classifiers of real classes (wc) and classifiers of phantom classes (vr) in the weighted graph (scr). the classifiers for novel classes are constructed by linearly combining classifiers of phantom classes. gfzsl (verm and rai, ) proposes a generative framework for zero-shot learning by modeling each class-conditional distribution as a multi-variate gaussian with mean vector µ and diagonal covariance matrix σ. while the parameters of seen classes can be estimated by mle, that of unseen classes are computed by learning the following two regression functions: µy = fµ(φ(y)) and σy = fσ(φ(y)) ( . ) with an image x, its class is predicted by searching the class with the maximum probability, i.e. argmaxy p(x|σy, µy). . . transductive zero-shot learning setting in zero-shot learning, transductive setting (chapelle et al., ; zhou et al., ) implies that unlabeled images from unseen classes are available during training. using unlabeled images are expected to improve performance as they possibly contain useful latent information of unseen classes. here, we mainly focus on two state-of-the-art transductive approaches(verm and rai, ; ye and guo, ) and show how to extend ale (akata et al., a) into the transductive learning setting. gfzsl-tran (verm and rai, ) uses an expectation-maximization (em) based procedure that alternates between inferring the labels of unlabeled examples of unseen classes and using the inferred labels to update the parameter estimates of unseen class distributions. since the class-conditional distribution is assumed to be gaussian, this procedure is equivalent to repeatedly estimating a gaussian mixture model (gmm) with the unlabeled data from unseen classes and use the inferred class labels to re-estimate the gmm. dsrl (ye and guo, ) proposes to simultaneously learn image features with non-negative matrix factorization and align them with their corresponding class attributes. this step gives us an initial prediction score matrix s in which each row is one instance and indicates the prediction scores for all unseen classes. to improve the prediction score matrix by transductive learning, a graph-based label propagation algorithm is applied. specifically, a knn graph is constructed with the chapter . zero-shot learning: the good, the bad and the ugly projected instances of unseen classes in the class embedding space, mij = { ex p(−d(xi ,xj) σ ) if i ∈ knn(j) or j ∈ knn(i) otherwise ( . ) where knn(i) denotes the k-nearest neighbor of i-th instance and d(xi, xj) measures the euclidean distance between xi and xj. given the affinity matrix m, a normalized laplacian matrix l can be computed as l = q− / mq− / where q is a diagonal matrix with qii = ∑j mij. finally, the standard label propagation (?) gives the closed-form solution: s = (i − αl)− × s ( . ) where α ∈ [ , ] is a regularization trade-off parameter and s is the score matrix. the class label of an instance is predicted by searching the class with the highest score, i.e. argmaxy siy. ale-tran any compatibility learning method that explicitly learns cross-modal mapping from image feature space to class embedding space can be extended to transductive setting following the label propagation procedure of dsrl (ye and guo, ). taking the ale (akata et al., a) as an example, after learning the linear mapping w, instances of unseen classes can be projected into the class embedding space and a score matrix s can be computed similarly. . datasets among the most widely used datasets for zero-shot learning, we select two coarse- grained, one small (apy (farhadi et al., )) and one medium-scale (awa (lampert et al., )), and two fine-grained, both medium-scale, datasets (sun (patterson and hays, ), cub (welinder et al., )) with attributes and one large-scale dataset (imagenet (deng et al., )) without. here, we consider between k and m images, and, between and k classes as medium-scale. details of dataset statistics in terms of the number of images, classes, attributes for the attribute datasets are in table . . furthermore, we introduce our animals with attributes (awa ) dataset and position it with respect to existing datasets. . . attribute datasets attribute pascal and yahoo (apy) (farhadi et al., ) is a small-scale coarse-grained dataset with attributes. among the total number of classes, pascal classes are used for training (we randomly select for validation) and yahoo classes are used for testing. the original animals with attributes (awa ) (lampert et al., ) is a coarse-grained dataset that is medium-scale in terms of the number of images, i.e. , and small-scale in terms of number of classes, i.e. classes. (lampert et al., ) introduces a standard zero-shot split with classes for training (we randomly . datasets figure . : comparing awa (lampert et al., ) and our awa in terms of number of images (left) and t-sne embedding of the image features (the embedding is learned on awa and awa simultaneously, therefore the figures are comparable). awa follows a similar distribution as awa and it contains more examples. select classes for validation) and classes for testing. awa has attributes. caltech-ucsd-birds - (cub) (welinder et al., ) is a fine-grained and medium scale dataset with respect to both number of images and number of classes, i.e. , images from different types of birds annotated with attributes. (akata et al., a) introduces the first zero-shot split of cub with training ( validation classes) and test classes. sun (patterson and hays, ) is a fine-grained and medium-scale dataset with respect to both number of images and number of classes, i.e. sun contains images coming from types of scenes annotated with attributes. following (lampert et al., ) we use classes of sun for training (we randomly select classes for validation) and classes for testing. animals with attributes (awa ) dataset. one disadvantage of awa dataset chapter . zero-shot learning: the good, the bad and the ugly is that the images are not publicly available. as having highly descriptive image features is an important component for zero-shot learning, in order to enable vision research on the objects of the awa dataset, we introduce the animals with at- tributes (awa ) dataset. following (lampert et al., ), we collect , images for the classes of awa dataset from public web sources, i.e. flickr, wikipedia, etc., making sure that all images of awa have free-use and redistribution licenses and they do not overlap with images of the original animal with attributes dataset. the awa dataset uses the same animal classes as awa dataset, similarly the binary and continuous class attributes are common. in total, awa has , images compared to , images of awa . on average, each class includes images where the least populated class, i.e. mole, has and the most populated class, i.e. horse has examples. some example images from polar bear, zebra, otter and tiger classes along with sample attributes from our awa dataset are shown in figure . . in figure . , we provide some statistics on the awa dataset in comparison with the awa dataset in terms of the number of images and also the distribution of the image features. compared to awa , our proposed awa dataset contains more images, e.g. horse and dolphin among the test classes, antelope and cow among the training classes. moreover, the t-sne embedding of these test classes with more training data, e.g. horse, dolphin, seal etc. shows that awa leads to slightly more visible clusters of resnet features. the images, their labels and resnet features of our awa are publicly available in http://cvml.ist.ac.at/awa . . . large-scale imagenet we also evaluate the performance of methods on the large scale imagenet (deng et al., ) which contains a total of million images from k classes, each one labeled with one label, and the classes are hierarchically related as imagenet follows the wordnet (miller, ). imagenet is a natural fit for zero-shot and generalized zero-shot learning as there is a large class imbalance problem. moreover, imagenet is diverse in terms of granularity, i.e. it contains a collection of fine-grained datasets, e.g. different vehicle types, as well as coarse-grained datasets. the highest populated class contains , images whereas there are many classes that contains only a single image. a balanced subset of imagenet with k classes containing about images each is used to train cnns. previous works (rohrbach et al., ) proposed to split the balanced subset of k classes into training and test classes. in this work, from the total of k classes, we use k classes for training (among which we use classes for validation) and the test split is either all the remaining k classes or a subset of it, e.g. we determine these subsets based on the hierarchical distance between classes and the population of classes. the details of these splits are provided in the following section. http://cvml.ist.ac.at/awa . evaluation protocol number of classes number of images at training time at evaluation time ss ps ss ps dataset att y ytr yts total ytr yts ytr yts ytr yts ytr yts sun + cub + awa + awa + apy + table . : statistics for sun (patterson and hays, ), cub (welinder et al., ), awa (lampert et al., ), proposed awa , apy (farhadi et al., ) in terms of size, granularity, number of attributes, number of classes in ytr and yts, number of images at training and test time for standard split (ss) and our proposed splits (ps). . evaluation protocol in this section, we provide several components of previously used and our proposed zsl and gzsl evaluation protocols, e.g. image and class encodings, dataset splits and the evaluation criteria . . . image and class embedding we extract image features, namely image embeddings, from the entire image for sun, cub, awa , our awa and imagenet, with no image pre-processing. for apy, following the original publication in (farhadi et al., ), we crop the images from bounding boxes. our image embeddings are -dim top-layer pooling units of the -layered resnet (he et al., ) as we found that it performs better than , -dim top-layer pooling units of googlenet (szegedy et al., ). we use the original resnet- that is pre-trained on imagenet with k classes, i.e. the balanced subset, and we do not fine-tune it for any of the mentioned datasets. in addition to the resnet features, we re-evaluate all methods with their published image features. in zero-shot learning, class embeddings are as important as image features. as class embeddings, for apy, awa , awa , cub and sun, we use the per-class attributes between values and that are provided with the datasets as binary attributes have been shown (akata et al., a) to be weaker than continuous attributes. for imagenet as attributes of k classes are not available, we use word vec (mikolov et al., b) trained on wikipedia provided by (changpinyo et al., ). note that an evaluation of class embeddings is out of the scope of this chapter. we refer the reader to (akata et al., c) for more details on the topic. our benchmark is in: http://www.mpi-inf.mpg.de/zsl-benchmark http://www.mpi-inf.mpg.de/zsl-benchmark chapter . zero-shot learning: the good, the bad and the ugly . . dataset splits zero-shot learning assumes disjoint training and test classes. hence, as deep neural network (dnn) training for image feature extraction is actually a part of model training, the dataset used to train dnns, e.g. imagenet, should not include any of the test classes. however, we notice from the standard splits (ss) of apy and awa datasets that apy test classes out of (monkey, wolf, zebra, mug, building, bag, carriage), awa test classes out of (chimpanzee, giant panda, leopard, persian cat, pig, hippopotamus), are among the k classes of imagenet, i.e. are used to pre-train resnet. on the other hand, the mostly widely used splits, i.e. we term them as standard splits (ss), for sun from (lampert et al., ) and cub from (akata et al., ) shows us that cub test class out of (indigo bunting), and sun test classes out of (restaurant, supermarket, planetarium, tent, market, bridge), are also among the k classes of imagenet. we noticed that the accuracy for all methods on those overlapping test classes are higher than others. therefore, we propose new dataset splits, i.e. proposed splits (ps), insuring that none of the test classes appear in imagenet k, i.e. used to train the resnet model. we present the differences between the standard splits (ss) and the proposed splits (ps) in table . . while in ss and ps no image from test classes is present at training time, at test time our ps includes images from training classes. we designed the ps this way as evaluating accuracy on both training and test classes is crucial to show the generalization of the methods. for sun, cub, awa , apy, and our proposed awa dataset, for measuring the significance of the results, we propose different splits of , , , and training classes respectively while keeping , , , and test classes the same. it is important to perform hyperparameter search on a disjoint set of validation set of , , , and classes respectively. we keep the number of classes the same for ss and ps, however we choose different classes while making sure that the test classes do not overlap with the k training classes of imagenet. imagenet provides possibilities of constructing several zero-shot evaluation splits. following (changpinyo et al., ), our first two standard splits consider all the classes that are -hops and -hops away from the original k classes according to the imagenet label hierarchy, corresponding to and classes. this split measures the generalization ability of the models with respect to the hierarchical and semantic similarity between classes. as discussed in the previous section, another characteristic of imagenet is the imbalanced sample size. therefore, our proposed split considers , k and k most populated classes among the remaining k classes of imagenet with approximately , and images per class on average. similarly, we consider , k and k least-populated classes in imagenet which correspond to most fine-grained subsets of imagenet with approximately , and images per class on average. we measure the generalization of methods to the entire imagenet data distribution by considering a final split of all the remaining approximately k classes of imagenet with at least image per-class, i.e. approximately images per class on average. . evaluation protocol . . evaluation criteria single label image classification accuracy has been measured with top- accuracy, i.e. the prediction is accurate when the predicted class is the correct one. if the accuracy is averaged for all images, high performance on densely populated classes is encouraged. however, we are interested in having high performance also on sparsely populated classes. therefore, we average the correct predictions independently for each class before dividing their cumulative sum w.r.t the number of classes, i.e. we measure average per-class top- accuracy in the following way: accy = ‖y‖ ‖y‖ ∑ c= # correct predictions in c # samples in c ( . ) in the generalized zero-shot learning setting, the search space at evaluation time is not restricted to only test classes (yts), but includes also the training classes (ytr), hence this setting is more practical. as with our proposed split at test time we have access to some images from training classes, after having computed the average per-class top- accuracy on training and test classes, we compute the harmonic mean of training and test accuracies: h = ∗ accytr ∗ accyts accytr + accyts ( . ) where accytr and accyts represent the accuracy of images from seen (ytr), and images from unseen (yts) classes respectively. we choose harmonic mean as our evaluation criteria and not arithmetic mean because in arithmetic mean if the seen class accuracy is much higher, it effects the overall results significantly. instead, our aim is high accuracy on both seen and unseen classes. chapter . zero-shot learning: the good, the bad and the ugly sun cub awa apy model r o r o r o r o dap . . − − . . . . sse . . . . . . . . latem − − . . . . − − sje − − . . . . − − eszsl . . − − . . . . sync . . . . . . − − sae − − − − . . − − gfzsl . . . . . . − − gfzsl-tran . . . . . . − − dsrl . . . . . . . . table . : reproducing zero-shot results with methods that have a public implemen- tation: o = original results, r = reproduced using provided image features and code. we measure top- accuracy in %. −: image features are not provided in the original paper for this dataset. top: zsl, bottom: transductive zsl. . experiments we first provide zsl results on the attribute datasets sun, cub, awa , awa and apy and then on the large-scale imagenet dataset. finally, we present results for the gzsl setting. . . zero-shot learning experiments on attribute datasets, i.e. sun, cub, awa , awa , and apy, we first reproduce the results of each method using their evaluation protocol, then provide a unified evaluation protocol using the same train/val/test class splits, followed by our proposed train/val/test class splits on sun, cub, awa , apy and awa . we also evaluate the robustness of the methods to parameter tuning and visualize the ranking of different methods. finally, we evaluate the methods on the large-scale imagenet dataset. comparing state-of-the-art models. for sanity-check, we re-evaluate methods (lampert et al., ; zhang and saligrama, ; xian et al., ; akata et al., c; romera-paredes et al., ; changpinyo et al., ) and (kodirov et al., ) using publicly available features and code from the original publication on sun, cub, awa and apy (cmt (socher et al., ) evaluates on cifar dataset.). we observe from the results in table . that our reproduced results of dap(lampert et al., ), sync (changpinyo et al., ), gfzsl (verm and rai, ), gfzsl-tran (verm and rai, ), dsrl (ye and guo, ) and sae (kodirov et al., ) are nearly identical . experiments to the reported number in their original publications. for latem (xian et al., ), we obtain slightly different results which can be explained by the non-convexity and thus the sensibility to initialization. similarly for sje (akata et al., c) random sampling in sgd might lead to slightly different results. eszsl (romera-paredes et al., ) has some variance because its algorithm randomly picks a validation set during each run, which leads to different hyperparameters. notable observations on sse (zhang and saligrama, ) results are as follows. the published code has hard-coded hyperparameters operational on apy, i.e. number of iterations, number of data points to train svm, and one regularizer parameter γ which lead to inferior results than the ones reported here, therefore we set these parameters on validation sets. on sun, sse uses classes (instead of ) and our results with validated parameters got an improvement of . % that may be due to random sampling of training images. on awa , our reproduced result being . % is significantly lower than the reported result ( . %). however, we could not reach the reported result even by tuning parameters on the test set ( . %). in addition to (lampert et al., ; zhang and saligrama, ; xian et al., ; akata et al., c; romera-paredes et al., ; changpinyo et al., ; socher et al., ; kodirov et al., ), we re-implement (norouzi et al., ; frome et al., ; akata et al., a) based on the original publications. we use train, validation, test splits as provided in table . and report results in table . with deep resnet features. dap (lampert et al., ) uses hand-crafted image features and thus reproduced results with those features are significantly lower than the results with deep features ( . % vs . %). when we investigate the results in detail, we noticed two irregularities with reported results on sun. first, sse (zhang and saligrama, ) and eszsl (romera-paredes et al., ) report results on a test split with classes whereas the standard split of sun contains test classes ( . % vs . % with sse (zhang and saligrama, ) and . % vs . % with eszsl (romera- paredes et al., )). second, after careful examination and correspondence with the authors of sync (changpinyo et al., ), we detected that sun features were extracted with a mit places (zhou et al., ) pre-trained model. as the mit places dataset intersects with both training and test classes of sun, it is expected to lead to significantly better results than imagenet pre-trained models ( . % vs . %). in addition, while sae (kodirov et al., ) reported . % on awa , we obtain only . % on the standard split. this could be explained by two differences. first, we measure per-class accuracy but sae (kodirov et al., ) reports per-image accuracy which is typically higher when the dataset is class-imbalanced, e.g. awa . indeed, their reported accuracy decreases to . % if per-class accuracy is applied. second, we confirmed with the authors of sae (kodirov et al., ) that they improved googlenet (szegedy et al., ) by adding batch normalization and averaging randomly cropped images to obtain better image features. therefore, as expected, improving visual features lead to improved results in zero-shot learning. promoting our proposed splits (ps). we propose new dataset splits (see details in section . ) ensuring that test classes of any of the datasets do not overlap with the imagenet k used to pre-train resnet. as training resnet is a part of the training chapter . zero-shot learning: the good, the bad and the ugly sun cub awa awa apy method ss ps ss ps ss ps ss ps ss ps dap . . . . . . . . . . iap . . . . . . . . . . conse . . . . . . . . . . cmt . . . . . . . . . . sse . . . . . . . . . . latem . . . . . . . . . . ale . . . . . . . . . . devise . . . . . . . . . . sje . . . . . . . . . . eszsl . . . . . . . . . . sync . . . . . . . . . . sae . . . . . . . . . . gfzsl . . . . . . . . . . table . : zero-shot learning results on sun, cub, awa , awa and apy using ss = standard split, ps = proposed split with resnet features. the results report top- accuracy in %. procedure, including test classes in the dataset used for pre-training resnet would violate the zero-shot learning conditions. we compare the results obtained with our proposed split (ps) with previously published standard split (ss) results in table . . our first observation is that the results on the ps are significantly lower than the ss for awa and awa . this is expected as most of the test classes of awa and awa in ss overlaps with imagenet k. on the other hand, for fine-grained datasets cub and sun, the results are not significantly effected as the overlap in that case was not as significant. our second observation regarding the method ranking is as follows. on ss, sync (changpinyo et al., ) is the best performing method on sun ( . %) and apy ( . %) datasets whereas sje (akata et al., c) performs the best on cub ( . %) and sae (kodirov et al., ) performs the best on awa ( . %) and awa ( . %) dataset. on ps, ale (akata et al., a) performs the best on sun ( . %) and awa ( . %), sync (changpinyo et al., ) on cub ( . %), sje (akata et al., c) on awa ( . %) and devise (frome et al., ) on apy ( . %). ale, sje and devise all use max-margin bi-linear compatibility learning framework which seem to perform better than others. it is also worth to note that sync and sae perform well on ss, i.e. sync is the best performing model for sun and apy whereas sae is for awa and awa on ss, while they perform significantly lower in ps which indicates that they do not generalize well in zero-shot learning task. evaluating robustness. we evaluate robustness of methods, i.e. (lampert et al., ; zhang and saligrama, ; xian et al., ; akata et al., c; romera- . experiments figure . : robustness of methods evaluated on sun, cub, awa , apy using validation set splits (results are on the same test split). top: original split, bottom: proposed split (image embeddings = resnet). we measure top- accuracy in %. paredes et al., ; changpinyo et al., ; socher et al., ; norouzi et al., ; frome et al., ; akata et al., a; kodirov et al., ; verm and rai, ), to hyperparameters by setting them on different validation splits while keeping the test split intact. we report results on ss (figure . , top) and ps (figure . , bottom) for sun, cub, awa , awa and apy datasets. on sun and cub, the results are stable across methods and across dataset splits. this is expected as these datasets both have a balanced number of images across classes and they are fine-grained datasets. therefore, the validation splits are similar. on the other hand, apy being a small and coarse-grained dataset has several issues. first, many of the test classes of apy are included in imagenet k. second, it is not well balanced, i.e. different validation class splits contain significantly different number of images. third, the class embeddings are far from each other, i.e. objects are semantically different, therefore different validation splits learn a different mapping between images and classes. on awa and awa , on ss, the devise method seems to show the largest variance. this might be due to the fact that awa and awa datasets are also coarse-grained and test classes overlap with imagenet training classes. indeed, awa being slightly more balanced than awa , in the proposed split it does not lead to such a high variance for devise. visualizing method ranking. we first evaluate the methods using three different validation splits as in the previous experiment. we then rank them based on their per-class top- accuracy using the non-parametric friedman test (garcia and herrera, ), which does not assume a distribution on performance but rather uses algorithm ranking. each entry of the rank matrix on figure . indicates the number of times the method is ranked at the first to thirteenth rank. we then compute the mean rank of each method and order them based on the mean rank across datasets. our general observation is that the highest ranked method on both splits is gfzsl, the second highest ranked method on the standard split (ss) is sync while it drops to the seventh rank on the proposed split (ps). on the other hand, ale ranks the second on the ss and the first on the ps. we reinforce our initial observation chapter . zero-shot learning: the good, the bad and the ugly rank gfzsl [ . ] sync [ . ] ale [ . ] devise [ . ] eszsl [ . ] sje [ . ] latem [ . ] sae [ . ] sse [ . ] conse [ . ] dap [ . ] cmt [ . ] iap [ . ] rank gfzsl [ . ] ale [ . ] devise [ . ] sje [ . ] eszsl [ . ] sse [ . ] latem [ . ] sync [ . ] dap [ . ] sae [ . ] cmt [ . ] conse [ . ] iap [ . ] figure . : ranking models by setting parameters on three validation splits on the standard (ss, left) and proposed (ps, right) setting. element (i, j) indicates number of times model i ranks at jth over all × observations. models are ordered by their mean rank (displayed in brackets). from numerical results and conclude that gfzsl and ale seems to be the method that is the most robust in zero-shot learning setting for attribute datasets. these results also indicate the importance of choosing zero-shot splits carefully. on the ps, the two of three highest ranked methods are compatibility learning methods, i.e. ale and devise whereas the three lowest ranked methods are attribute classifier learning or hybrid methods, i.e. iap, cmt and conse. therefore, max-margin compatibility learning methods lead to consistently better results in the zero-shot learning task compared to learning independent classifiers. finally, visualizing the method ranking in this way provides a visually interpretable way of how models compare across datasets. results on our proposed awa . we introduce awa which has the same classes and attributes as awa , but contains different images each coming with a public copyright license. in order to show that awa and awa images are not the same but similar in nature, we compare the zero-shot learning results on awa and awa in table. . . under the standard splits (ss), sae (kodirov et al., ) is the best performing method on both awa ( . %) and awa ( . %). similarly, for most of the methods, the results on awa are close to those on awa , for instance, dap obtains . % on awa and . % on awa , sse obtains . % on awa and . % awa , etc. the results under the proposed splits (ps) are also consistent across awa and awa . for out of methods, the performance difference between awa and awa is within %. on the other hand, the same consistency is not observed for devise (frome et al., ), sje (akata et al., c) and sync (changpinyo et al., ). for instance, sje (akata et al., c) obtains . % on awa and . % on awa . after careful examination, we noticed that sje (akata et al., c) selects different hyperparameters for awa and awa , which results in different performance on those two datasets. in our opinion, this does not indicate a possible dataset artifact, however shows that zero-shot learning . experiments training set : test set method awa :awa awa :awa awa :awa awa :awa dap . . . . iap . . . . conse . . . . cmt . . . . sse . . . . latem . . . . ale . . . . devise . . . . sje . . . . eszsl . . . . sync . . . . sae . . . . table . : cross-dataset evaluation over awa and awa in zero-shot learning setting on the proposed splits: left of the colon indicates the training set and right of the colon indicates the test set, e.g. awa :awa means that the model is trained on the train set of awa and evaluated on the test set of awa . we measure top- accuracy in %. is sensitive to parameter setting. commonly, a model is trained and evaluated on the same dataset. across dataset experiments are not easy as different datasets do not share the same attributes. however, awa and awa share both classes and attributes. in order to verify that awa is a good replacement for awa , we conduct across-dataset evaluation for methods, i.e. (lampert et al., ; zhang and saligrama, ; xian et al., ; akata et al., c; romera-paredes et al., ; changpinyo et al., ; socher et al., ; norouzi et al., ; frome et al., ; akata et al., a; kodirov et al., ). in particular, with our proposed splits (ps), we train one model on the training set of awa and evaluate it on the test set of awa in the zero-shot learning setting, and vice versa. from table. . , we observe that all the models trained on awa generalize well to awa and vice versa. in addition, we notice that the cross-dataset result is dependent on the training set. for instance, for all the methods, if we fix training set to be from awa , the results on the test set of awa and awa are close. to verify this hypothesis, we performed a paired t-test which determines if the mean difference between paired results is significantly higher than zero. to that end, we take the pairs of results whose test sets are the same, i.e. the results obtained with methods on awa :awa and awa :awa ( nd and rd column) as well as the results obtained with methods on awa :awa and awa :awa ( st and th column). the paired t-test rejects the null hypothesis with p-value= . , indicating that the results are significantly different if the test set is the same but the training set is different. as a conclusion, the training set is an important indicator of the final result and the two datasets, i.e. chapter . zero-shot learning: the good, the bad and the ugly hierarchy most populated least populated all method h h k k k k k conse . . . . . . . . . cmt . . . . . . . . . latem . . . . . . . . . ale . . . . . . . . . devise . . . . . . . . . sje . . . . . . . . . eszsl . . . . . . . . . sync . . . . . . . . . sae . . . . . . . . . gfzsl . −− . . −− . . . −− table . : imagenet with different splits: / h = classes with / hops away from the ytr of imagenet k, / k/ k most populated classes, / k/ k least populated classes, all = the remaining k categories of imagenet (yts). we measure top- accuracy in %. awa and awa are sufficiently similar. therefore, our cross-dataset experimental results indicate that awa is a good replacement for awa . zero-shot learning results on imagenet. imagenet scales the methods to a truly large-scale setting, thus these experiments provide further insights on how to tackle the zero-shot learning problem from the practical point of view. here, we evaluate methods, i.e. (xian et al., ; akata et al., c; romera-paredes et al., ; changpinyo et al., ; socher et al., ; norouzi et al., ; frome et al., ; akata et al., a; kodirov et al., ; verm and rai, ). we exclude dap and iap as attributes are not available for all imagenet classes as well as sse (zhang and saligrama, ) due to scalability issues of the public implementation of the method. table . shows that the best performing method is sync (changpinyo et al., ) which may either indicate that it performs well in large-scale setting or it can learn under uncertainty due to usage of word vec instead of attributes. another possibility is word vec may be tuned for sync as it is provided by the same authors. however, we refrain to make a strong claim as this would requires a full evaluation on class embeddings which is out of the scope of this chapter. on the other hand, gfzsl (verm and rai, ) which is the best performing model for attribute datasets perform poorly on imagenet which may indicate that generative models require a strong class embedding space such as attributes to perform well on zsl task. note that due to the computational issues, we were not able to obtain results for gfzsl for h, m k, l k and all k classes. more detailed observations are as follows. the second highest performing method is eszsl (romera-paredes et al., ) which is one of the linear embedding models that have an implicit regularization mechanism, which seems to be more effective than early stopping as an explicit regularizer. a general observation from the results of all the methods is that in the most populated classes, the results are . experiments h h m m k m k l l k l k all t o p - a cc . (i n % ) conse cmt latem ale devise sje eszsl sync sae h h m m k m k l l k l k all t o p - a cc . (i n % ) conse cmt latem ale devise sje eszsl sync sae h h m m k m k l l k l k all t o p - a cc . (i n % ) conse cmt latem ale devise sje eszsl sync sae figure . : zero-shot learning experiments on imagenet, measuring top- , top- and top- accuracy. / h = classes with / hops away from imagenet k training classes (ytr), m /m k/m k denote , k and k most populated classes, l /l k/l k denote , k and k least populated classes, all = the remaining k categories of imagenet. higher than the least populated classes which indicates that zero-shot learning on fine-grained imagenet subsets is a more difficult task. moreover, we conclude that the nature of the test set, e.g. type of the classes being tested, is more important than the number of classes. therefore, the selection of the test set is an important aspect of zero-shot learning on large-scale datasets. furthermore, for all methods we consistently observe a large drop in accuracy between k and k most populated classes which is expected as k contains ≈ . m images, making the problem much more difficult than k (≈ images). it is worth to note that, measuring per-image accuracy in this case would lead to higher results if the labels of the highly populated class samples are predicted correctly. finally, the largest test set, i.e. all k, the results are poor for all methods which indicates the difficulty of this problem where there is a large room for improvement. several models in the literature evaluate top- and top- as well as top- accuracy on imagenet. top- and top- accuracy in this case is reasonable as an image usually contains multiple objects however by construction it is associated with a single label in imagenet. hence, we provide a comparison of the same models according to all these three criteria in figure . . we observe that sync (changpinyo et al., ) performs significantly better than other methods when the number of images is higher, e.g. h, m , m k, whereas the gap reduces when the number of images and the number of classes increase, e.g. h, l k and all. in fact, when for all, all the methods perform similarly and poorly which indicates that there is a large room for improvement in this task. in fact, this observation carries on for all three accuracy measures. for top- (middle) and top- (right) accuracy although the numbers are as expected in general higher, the winning model remains as sync, significantly for h, m and m k whereas the difference is smaller with h, l h, l k. on the other hand, all methods perform similarly when all k classes are tested. chapter . zero-shot learning: the good, the bad and the ugly sun cub awa awa apy method ts tr h ts tr h ts tr h ts tr h ts tr h dap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . conse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . cmt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . cmt* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . sse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . latem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . devise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . sje . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . eszsl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . sync . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . sae . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . gfzsl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . table . : generalized zero-shot learning on proposed split (ps) measuring ts = top- accuracy on yts, tr=top- accuracy on ytr, h = harmonic mean (cmt*: cmt with novelty detection). we measure top- accuracy in %. . . generalized zero-shot learning results in real world applications, image classification systems do not have access to whether a novel image belongs to a seen or unseen class in advance. hence, generalized zero-shot learning is interesting from a practical point of view. here, we use same models trained on zsl setting on our proposed splits (ps). we evaluate performance on both ytr and yts (using held-out images). as shown in table . , generalized zero-shot learning results are significantly lower than zero-shot learning results. this is due to the fact that training classes are included in the search space which act as distractors for the images that come from test classes, e.g. most of the images that are being evaluated. an interesting observation is that compatibility learning frameworks, e.g. ale, devise, sje, perform well on test classes. however, methods that learn independent attribute or object classifiers, e.g. dap and conse, perform well on training classes. due to this discrepancy, we evaluate the harmonic mean which takes a weighted average of training and test class accuracy as shown in equation . . the harmonic mean measure ranks ale as the best performing method on sun, cub and awa datasets whereas on our awa dataset devise performs the best and on apy dataset cmt* performs the best. note that cmt* has an integrated novelty detection phase for which the method receives another supervision signal determining if the image belongs to a training or a test class. similar to the imagenet results, gfzsl (verm and rai, ) performs poorly on gzsl setting. as for the generalized zero-shot learning setting on imagenet, we report results measured on unseen classes as no images are reserved from seen classes on figure . . our first observation is that there is no winner model in all cases, the results diverge for different splits and different accuracy measures. for instance, when the . experiments h h m m k m k l l k l k all . . . t o p - a cc . (i n % ) conse cmt latem ale devise sje eszsl sync sae h h m m k m k l l k l k all t o p - a cc . (i n % ) conse cmt latem ale devise sje eszsl sync sae h h m m k m k l l k l k all t o p - a cc . (i n % ) conse cmt latem ale devise sje eszsl sync sae figure . : gzsl on imagenet, measuring top- , top- and top- accuracy. / h: classes with / hops away from imagenet k ytr, m /m k/m k: / k/ k most populated classes, l /l k/l k: / k/ k least populated classes, all: remaining k classes. performance is measured with top- accuracy, in general the best performing model seems to be devise, ale and sje which are all linear compatibility learning models. on the other hand, for top- accuracy different models take the lead in different splits, e.g. conse works the best for h and m k indicating that it performs better when the number of images that come from unseen classes is larger. whereas sje and eszsl works better for h, m , l h settings. finally, for top- accuracy, the best performing model overall is eszsl which is the model that learns a linear compatibility with an explicit regularization scheme. finally, for top- , top- and top- results we observe the same trend for when all the unseen classes are included in the test set, i.e. the models perform similarly however conse slightly stands out for top- and top- accuracy plots. in summary, generalized zero-shot learning setting provides one more level of detail on the performance of zero-shot learning methods. our take-home message is that the accuracy of training classes is as important as the accuracy of test classes in real world scenarios. therefore, methods should be designed in a way that they are able to predict labels well both in train and test classes. visualizing method ranking. similar to the analysis in the previous section that was conducted for zero-shot learning setting, we rank the methods, i.e. (lampert et al., ; zhang and saligrama, ; xian et al., ; akata et al., c; romera- paredes et al., ; changpinyo et al., ; socher et al., ; norouzi et al., ; frome et al., ; akata et al., a; kodirov et al., ; verm and rai, ), based on their results obtained on sun, cub, awa , awa and apy. the performance is measured on seen classes, unseen classes and the harmonic mean of the two. the rank matrix of test classes, i.e. figure . top left, shows that highest ranked methods,i.e. ale, devise, sje, although overall the absolute accuracy numbers are lower (table . ). note that in figure . gfzsl ranked highest which shows that gfzsl is not as strong for gzsl task. the rank matrix of the harmonic mean shows the same trend. however, the rank matrix of training classes, i.e. figure . top right, shows that models that learn intermediate attribute classifiers perform well for the images that come from training classes. however, these models typically do not lead to a high accuracy for the images that belong to unseen classes as shown chapter . zero-shot learning: the good, the bad and the ugly rank ale [ . ] devise [ . ] sje [ . ] latem [ . ] sae [ . ] eszsl [ . ] sync [ . ] sse [ . ] cmt [ . ] iap [ . ] dap [ . ] conse [ . ] gfzsl [ . ] rank conse [ . ] iap [ . ] cmt [ . ] sync [ . ] dap [ . ] ale [ . ] gfzsl [ . ] sse [ . ] eszsl [ . ] devise [ . ] sae [ . ] latem [ . ] sje [ . ] rank ale [ . ] devise [ . ] sje [ . ] sync [ . ] eszsl [ . ] latem [ . ] sse [ . ] sae [ . ] iap [ . ] cmt [ . ] dap [ . ] conse [ . ] gfzsl [ . ] figure . : ranking models on the proposed split (ps) in generalized zero-shot learning setting. top-left: top- accuracy (t ) is measured on unseen classes (ts), top-right: t is measured on seen classes (tr), bottom: t is measured on harmonic mean (h). in table . . this eventually makes the harmonic mean, i.e. the overall accuracy on both training and test classes, lower. these results clearly suggest that one should not only optimize for test class accuracy but also for training class accuracy while evaluating generalized zero-shot learning. our final observation from figure . is that cmt* is better than cmt in all cases which supports the argument that a simple novelty detection scheme helps to improve results. however, it is important to note that the proposed novelty detection mechanism uses more supervision than classic zero-shot learning models. although the label of test classes is not used, whether the sample comes from a seen or unseen class is an additional supervision. . . transductive (generalized) zero-shot learning in contrast to previous zero-shot learning approaches that learn only with data from training classes, transductive approaches use unlabaled images from test classes. . conclusion figure . : zero-shot (left) and generalized zero-shot learning (right) results in the transductive learning setting on our proposesd split. in this section, we evaluate three state-of-the-art transductive zsl approaches, i.e. dsrl (ye and guo, ), gfzsl-tran (verm and rai, ), and ale-tran (akata et al., a). similar to the previous section, we evaluate those approaches on our proposed splits in both zero-shot learning where test time search space is composed of only unseen classes and generalized zero-shot learning where it contains both seen and unseen classes. the performance is per-class averaged top- accuracy. our transductive learning results are presented in figure . . we observe that in zsl setting, transductive learning leads to accuracy improvement, e.g. ale-tran and gfzsl-tran outperforms ale and gfzsl respectively in almost all cases. in partic- ular, on awa , gfzsl-tran achieves . %, significantly improving gfzsl ( . %). on apy, ale-tran obtains . % and significantly improves ale ( . %) as well. moreover, gfzsl-tran outperforms ale-tran and dsrl on sun, awa and awa . however, ale-tran performs the best on cub and apy. in gzsl setting we observe a different trend, i.e. transductive learning does not improve results for ale in any of the datasets. although, on awa and awa gfzsl results improve significantly for the transductive learning setting, on other datasets gfzsl model performs poorly both in inductive and in transductive settings. . conclusion in this work, we evaluated a significant number of state-of-the-art zero-shot learning methods, i.e. (lampert et al., ; zhang and saligrama, ; xian et al., ; akata et al., c; romera-paredes et al., ; changpinyo et al., ; socher et al., ; norouzi et al., ; frome et al., ; akata et al., a; kodirov et al., ; verm and rai, ; ye and guo, ), on several datasets, i.e. sun, cub, awa , awa , apy and imagenet, within a unified evaluation protocol both in zero-shot and generalized zero-shot settings. our evaluation showed that generative models and compatibility learning frame- chapter . zero-shot learning: the good, the bad and the ugly works have an edge over learning independent object or attribute classifiers and also over other hybrid models for the classic zero-shot learning setting. we observed that unlabeled data of unseen classes can further improve the zero-shot learning results, thus it is not fair to compare transductive learning approaches with inductive ones. we discovered that some standard zero-shot dataset splits may treat feature learning disjoint from the training stage as several test classes are included in the imagenet k dataset that is used to train the deep neural networks that act as feature extractor. therefore, we proposed new dataset splits making sure that none of the test classes in none of the datasets belong to imagenet k. moreover, disjoint training and validation class split is a necessary component of parameter tuning in zero-shot learning setting. in addition, we introduced a new animal with attributes (awa ) dataset. awa inherits the same classes and attributes annotations from the original animal with attributes (awa ) dataset, but consists of different , images with publicly available redistribution license. our experimental results showed that the methods that we evaluated perform similarly on awa and awa . moreover, our statistical consistency test indicated that awa and awa are compatible with each other. finally, including training classes in the search space while evaluating the meth- ods, i.e. generalized zero-shot learning, provides an interesting playground for future research. although the generalized zero-shot learning accuracy obtained with models compared to their zero-shot learning accuracy is significantly lower, the relative performance comparison of different models remain the same. having noticed that some models perform well when the test set is composed only of seen classes, while some others perform well when the test set is composed of only of unseen classes, we proposed the harmonic mean of seen and unseen class accuracy as a unified measure for performance in gzsl setting. the harmonic mean encour- ages the models to perform well on both seen and unseen class samples, which is closer to a real world setting. in summary, our work extensively evaluated the good and bad aspects of zero-shot learning while sanitizing the ugly ones. f e a t u r e g e n e r a t i n g n e t w o r k s f o r z e r o - s h o t i m a g e c l a s s i f i c a t i o n contents . introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . related work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . feature generation & classification in zsl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . feature generation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . classification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . experiments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . comparing with state-of-the-art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . analyzing f-xgan under different conditions . . . . . . . . . large-scale experiments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . feature vs image generation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i n chapter , we observe that almost all zero-shot learning approaches fail to predict novel classes in the realistic generalized zero-shot learning setting. in this chapter, our goal is to develop methods to tackle generalized zero-shot learning under the benchmark proposed in chapter . in a high-level point of view, we propose to learn a feature generator that synthesizes visual features for novel classes. the generated features alleviate the imbalanced issues and consistently improve the zero-shot and generalized zero-shot learning results. in chapter , we extend the approach introduced this chapter by improving the generative model and incorporating unlabeled data. we also show the effectiveness of our approach on few-shot learning tasks. chapter defines and addresses the zero-shot and few-shot learning problems in the scenario of semantic segmentation. chapter tackles few-shot learning challenges arised in video action classification tasks. . introduction deep learning has allowed to push performance considerably across a wide range of computer vision and machine learning tasks. however, almost always, deep learning requires large amounts of training data which we are lacking in many practical scenarios, e.g. it is impractical to annotate all the concepts that surround us, and have enough of those annotated samples to train a deep network. therefore, training data generation has become a hot research topic (e.g. chawla et al., ; chapter . feature generating networks for zero-shot image classification head color: red back color: black crown color: red wing shape: short z ~ n( , ) g(z, a) seen unseen resnet space ? x x g f-clswgan cnn cnn cnn feature space synthetic image real image head color: brown belly color: yellow bill shape: pointy figure . : cnn features can be extracted from: ) real images, however in zero-shot learning we do not have access to any real images of unseen classes, ) synthetic images, however they are not accurate enough to improve image classification performance. we tackle both of these problems and propose a novel attribute conditional feature generating adversarial network formulation, i.e. f-clswgan, to generate cnn features of unseen classes. goodfellow et al., ; chen and koltun, ; reed et al., c; zhang et al., a; salimans et al., ). generative adversarial networks (goodfellow et al., ) are particularly appealing as they allow generating realistic and sharp images conditioned, for instance, on object categories (e.g. reed et al., c; zhang et al., a). however, they do not yet generate images of sufficient quality to train deep learning architectures as demonstrated by our experimental results. in this work, we are focusing on arguably the most extreme case of lacking data, namely zero-shot learning (e.g. lampert et al., ; xian et al., ; chao et al., ), where the task is to learn to classify when no labeled examples of certain classes are available during training. we argue that this scenario is a great testbed for evaluating the robustness and generalization of generative models. in particular, if the generator learns discriminative visual data with enough variation, the generated data should be useful for supervised learning. hence, one contribution of this chapter is a comparison of various existing gan-models and another competing generative model, i.e. gmmn, for visual feature generation. in particular, we look into both zero-shot learning (zsl) where the test time search space is restricted to unseen class labels and generalized zero-shot learning (gzsl) for being a more realistic scenario as at test time the classifier has to decide between both seen and unseen class labels. in this context, we propose a novel gan-method – namely f-clswgan that generates features instead of images and is trained with a novel loss improving over alternative gan-models. we summarize our contributions as follows. ( ) we propose a novel conditional generative model f-clswgan that synthesizes cnn features of unseen classes by optimizing the wasserstein distance regularized by a classification loss. ( ) across . related work five datasets with varying granularity and sizes, we consistently improve upon the state of the art in both the zsl and gzsl settings. we demonstrate a practical application for adversarial training and propose gzsl as a proxy task to evaluate the performance of generative models. ( ) our model is generalizable to different deep cnn features, e.g. extracted from googlenet or resnet, and may use different class-level auxiliary information, e.g. sentence, attribute, and word vec embeddings. . related work in this section we review some recent relevant literature on generative adversarial networks, zero-shot learning (zsl) and generalized zero-shot (gzsl) learning. generative adversarial network. gan (goodfellow et al., ) was originally proposed as a means of learning a generative model which captures an arbitrary data distribution, such as images, from a particular domain. the input to a generator network is a “noise” vector z drawn from a latent distribution, such as a multivariate gaussian. dcgan (radford et al., ) extends gan by leveraging deep convo- lution neural networks and providing best practices for gan training. (wang and gupta, ) improves dcgan by factorizing the image generation process into style and structure networks, infogan (chen et al., ) extends gan by addition- ally maximizing the mutual information between interpretable latent variables and the generator distribution. gan has also been extended to a conditional gan by feeding the class label (mirza and osindero, ), sentence descriptions (reed et al., b,c; zhang et al., a), into both the generator and discriminator. the theory of gan is recently investigated in (arjovsky and bottou, ; arjovsky et al., ; gulrajani et al., ), where they show that the jenson-shannon divergence opti- mized by the original gan leads to instability issues. to cure the unstable training issues of gans, (arjovsky et al., ) proposes wasserstein-gan (wgan), which optimizes an efficient approximation of the earth mover, i.e. wasserstein- , distance. while wgan attains better theoretical properties than the original gan, it still suffers from vanishing and exploding gradient problems due to weight clipping to enforce the -lipschitz constraint on the discriminator. hence, (gulrajani et al., ) proposes an improved version of wgan enforcing the lipschitz constraint through gradient penalty. although those papers have demonstrated realistic looking images, they have not applied this idea to image feature generation. in this chapter, we empirically show that images generated by the state-of-the-art gan (gulrajani et al., ) are not ready to be used as training data for learning a classifier. hence, we propose a novel gan architecture to directly generate cnn features that can be used to train a discriminative classifier for zero-shot learning. combining the powerful wgan (gulrajani et al., ) loss and a classification loss which enforces the generated features to be discriminative, our proposed gan architecture improves the original gan (goodfellow et al., ) by a large margin and has an edge over wgan (gulrajani et al., ) thanks to our regularizer. for zero-shot and generalized zero-shot learning literature, readers can refer to chapter . feature generating networks for zero-shot image classification chapter . in this chapter, we propose to tackle generalized zero-shot learning by generating cnn features for unseen classes via a novel gan model. our work is different from (hariharan and girshick, ) because they generate additional examples for data-starved classes from feature vectors alone, which is unimodal and do not generalize to unseen classes. our work is closer to (bucher et al., ) in which they generate features via gmmn (li et al., ). hence, we directly compare with them on the latest zero-shot learning benchmark (xian et al., ) and show that wgan (arjovsky et al., ) coupled with our proposed classification loss can further improve gmmn in feature generation on most datasets for both zsl and gzsl tasks. . feature generation & classification in zsl existing zsl models only see labeled data from seen classes during training biasing the predictions to seen classes. the main insight of our proposed model is that by feeding additional synthetic cnn features of unseen classes, the learned classifier will also explore the embedding space of unseen classes. hence, the key to our approach is the ability to generate semantically rich cnn feature distributions conditioned on a class specific semantic vector e.g. attributes, without access to any images of that class. this alleviates the imbalance between seen and unseen classes, as there is no limit to the number of synthetic cnn features that our model can generate. it also allows to directly train a discriminative classifier, i.e. softmax classifier, even for unseen classes. we begin by defining the problem of our interest. let s = {(x, y, c(y))|x ∈ x , y ∈ ys, c(y) ∈ c} where s stands for the training data of seen classes, x ∈ rdx is the cnn features, y denotes the class label in ys = {y , . . . , yk} consisting of k discrete seen classes, and c(y) ∈ rdc is the class embedding, e.g. attributes, of class y that models the semantic relationship between classes. in addition, we have a disjoint class label set yu = {u , . . . , ul} of unseen classes, whose class embedding set u = {(u, c(u))|u ∈yu, c(u) ∈c} is available but images and image features are missing. given s and u, the task of zsl is to learn a classifier fzsl : x →yu and in gzsl we learn a classifier fgzsl : x →ys ∪yu. . . feature generation in this section, we begin our discussion with generative adversarial networks (gan) (goodfellow et al., ) for it being the basis of our model. gan consists of a generative network g and a discriminative network d that compete in a two player minimax game. in the context of generating image pixels, d tries to accurately distinguish real images from generated images, while g tries to fool the discriminator by generating images that are mistakable for real. following (mirza and osindero, ), we extend gan to conditional gan by including a conditional variable to . feature generation & classification in zsl both g and d. in the following we give the details of the conditional gan variants that we develop. our novelty lies in that we develop three conditional gan variants, i.e. f-gan, f-wgan and f-clswgan, to generate image features rather than image pixels. it is worth noting that our models are only trained with seen class data s but can also generate image features of unseen classes. f-gan. given the train data s of seen classes, we aim to learn a conditional generator g : z ×c → x , which takes random gaussian noise z ∈ z ⊂ rdz and class embedding c(y) ∈c as its inputs, and outputs a cnn image feature x̃ ∈x of class y. once the generator g learns to generate cnn features of real images, i.e. x, conditioned on the seen class embedding c(y) ∈ ys, it can also generate x̃ of any unseen class u via its class embedding c(u). our feature generator f-gan is learned by optimizing the following objective, min g max d lg an =e[log d(x, c(y))]+ ( . ) e[log ( − d(x̃, c(y)))], with x̃ = g(z, c(y)). the discriminator d : x ×c → [ , ] is a multi-layer perceptron with a sigmoid function as the last layer. while d tries to maximize the loss, g tries to minimizes it. although gan has been shown to capture complex data distributions, e.g. pixel images, they are notoriously difficult to train (arjovsky and bottou, ). f-wgan. we extend the improved wgan (gulrajani et al., ) to a conditional wgan by integrating the class embedding c(y) to both the generator and the discriminator. the loss is, lw g an =e[d(x, c(y))]− e[d(x̃, c(y))]− ( . ) λe[(||∇x̂ d(x̂, c(y))|| − ) ], where x̃ = g(z, c(y)), x̂ = αx + ( − α)x̃ with α ∼ u( , ), and λ is the penalty coefficient. in contrast to the gan, the discriminative network here is defined as d : x ×c → r, which eliminates the sigmoid layer and outputs a real value. the log in equation . is also removed since we are not optimizing the log likelihood. instead, the first two terms in equation . approximate the wasserstein distance, and the third term is the gradient penalty which enforces the gradient of d to have unit norm along the straight line between pairs of real and generated points. again, we solve a minmax optimization problem, min g max d lw g an ( . ) f-clswgan. f-wgan does not guarantee that the generated cnn features are well suited for training a discriminative classifier, which is our goal. we conjecture that this issue could be alleviated by encouraging the generator to construct features that can be correctly classified by a discriminative classifier trained on the input chapter . feature generating networks for zero-shot image classification cnn f-clswgan z ~ n( , ) head color: brown belly color: yellow bill shape: pointy discriminator generator head color: brown belly color: yellow bill shape: pointy figure . : our f-clswgan: we propose to minimize the classification loss over the generated features and the wasserstein distance with gradient penalty. data. to this end, we propose to minimize the classification loss over the generated features in our novel f-clswgan formulation. we use the negative log likelihood, lcls = −ex̃∼px̃ [log p(y|x̃; θ)], ( . ) where x̃ = g(z, c(y)), y is the class label of x̃, p(y|x̃; θ) denotes the probability of x̃ being predicted with its true class label y. the conditional probability is computed by a linear softmax classifier parameterized by θ, which is pretrained on the real features of seen classes. the classification loss can be thought of as a regularizer enforcing the generator to construct discriminative features. our full objective then becomes, min g max d lw g an + βlcls ( . ) where β is a hyperparameter weighting the classifier. . . classification given c(u) of any unseen class u ∈yu, by resampling the noise z and then recom- puting x̃ = g(z, c(u)), arbitrarily many visual cnn features x̃ can be synthesized. after repeating this feature generation process for every unseen class, we obtain a synthetic training set ũ = {(x̃, u, c(u))}. we then learn a classifier by training either a multimodal embedding model or a softmax classifier. our generated features allow to train those methods on the combinations of real seen class data s and generated unseen class data ũ. multimodal embedding. many efficient zero-shot learning approaches, e.g. (akata et al., a), devise (frome et al., ), sje (akata et al., c), eszsl (?) and . experiments latem (xian et al., ), learn a multimodal embedding between the image feature space x and the class embedding space c using seen classes data s. with our generated features, those methods can be trained with seen classes data s together with unseen classes data ũ to learn a more robust classifier. the embedding model f(x, c(y); w), parameterized by w, measures the compatibility score between any image feature x and class embedding c(y) pair. given a query image feature x, the classifier searches for the class embedding with the highest compatibility via: f (x) = argmax y f(x, c(y); w), ( . ) where in zsl, y ∈yu and in gzsl, y ∈ys ∪yu. softmax. the standard softmax classifier minimizes the negative log likelihood loss, min θ − |t | ∑ (x,y)∈t log p(y|x; θ), ( . ) where θ ∈ rdx×n is the weight matrix of a fully connected layer which maps the image feature x to n unnormalized probabilities with n being the number of classes, and p(y|x; θ) = exp(θty x) ∑ni exp(θ t i x) . depending on the task, t = ũ if it is zsl and t = s∪ũ if it is gzsl. the prediction function is: f (x) = arg max y p(y|x; θ), ( . ) where in zsl, y ∈yu and in gzsl, y ∈ys ∪yu. . experiments first we detail our experimental protocol, then we present ( ) our results comparing our framework with the state of the art for gzsl and zsl tasks on four challenging datasets, ( ) our analysis of f-xgan under different conditions, ( ) our large-scale experiments on imagenet and ( ) our comparison of image and image feature generation. datasets. caltech-ucsd-birds - (cub) (welinder et al., ), oxford flowers (flo) (nilsback and zisserman, ) and sun attribute (sun) (patterson and hays, ) are all fine-grained datasets. cub contains , images from different types of birds annotated with attributes. flo dataset images from different types of flowers without attribute annotations. however, for both cub and flo we use the fine-grained visual descriptions collected by (reed et al., a). sun contains , images from scenes annotated with attributes. finally, animals with attributes (awa) (lampert et al., ) is a coarse-grained we denote our f-gan, f-wgan, f-clswgan as f-xgan chapter . feature generating networks for zero-shot image classification dataset att stc |ys|+ |yu| |ys| |yu| cub (welinder et al., ) y + flo (nilsback and zisserman, ) – y + sun (patterson and hays, ) n + awa (lampert et al., ) n + table . : cub, sun, flo, awa datasets, in terms of number of attributes per class (att), sentences (stc), number of classes in training + validation (ys) and test classes (yu). dataset with , images, classes and attributes. statistics of the datasets are presented in table . . we use the zero-shot splits proposed by (xian et al., ) for awa, cub and sun insuring that none of the training classes are present in imagenet (deng et al., ) . for flo, we use the standard split provided by (reed et al., a). features. as real cnn features, we extract -dim top-layer pooling units of the -layered resnet (he et al., ) from the entire image. we do not do any image pre-processing such as cropping, background subtraction etc, or use any other data augmentation techniques. resnet is pre-trained on imagenet k and not fine-tuned. as synthetic cnn features, we generate -dim cnn features using our f-xgan model. as the class embedding, unless it is stated otherwise, we use per-class attributes for awa ( -dim), cub ( -dim) and sun ( -dim). furthermore, for cub and flowers, we extract -dim character-based cnn-rnn (reed et al., a) features from fine-grained visual descriptions ( sentences per image). none of the yu sentences are seen during training the cnn-rnn. we build per-class sentences by averaging the cnn-rnn features that belong to the same class. evaluation protocol. at test time, in the zsl setting, the aim is to assign an unseen class label, i.e. yu to the test image and in gzsl setting, the search space includes both seen or unseen classes, i.e. ys ∪yu. we use the unified evaluation protocol proposed in (xian et al., ). in the zsl setting, the average accuracy is computed independently for each class before dividing their cumulative sum by the number of classes; i.e., we measure average per-class top- accuracy (t ). in the gzsl setting, we compute average per-class top- accuracy on seen classes (ys) denoted as s, average per-class top- accuracy on unseen classes (yu) denoted as u and their harmonic mean, i.e. h = ∗ (s ∗ u)/(s + u). implementation details. in all f-xgan models, both the generator and the discrimi- nator are mlp with leakyrelu activation. the generator consists of a single hidden layer with hidden units. its output layer is relu because we aim to learn the top max-pooling units of resnet- . while the discriminator of f-gan has as imagenet is used for pre-training the resnet (he et al., ) . experiments zero-shot learning generalized zero-shot learning cub flo sun awa cub flo sun awa classifier fg t t t t u s h u s h u s h u s h devise none . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . f-clswgan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . sje none . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . f-clswgan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . latem none . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . f-clswgan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . eszsl none . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . f-clswgan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ale none . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . f-clswgan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . softmax none – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – f-clswgan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . table . : zsl measuring per-class average top- accuracy (t ) on yu and gzsl measuring u = t on yu, s = t on ys, h = harmonic mean (fg=feature generator, none: no access to generated cnn features, hence softmax is not applicable). f- clswgan significantly boosts both the zsl and gzsl accuracy of all classification models on all four datasets. one hidden layer with hidden units in order to stabilize the gan training, the discriminators of f-wgan and f-clswgan have one hidden layer with hidden units as wgan (gulrajani et al., ) does not have instability issues thus a stronger discriminator can be applied here. we do not apply batch normalization our empirical evaluation showed a significant degradation of the accuracy when batch normalization is used. the noise z is drawn from a unit gaussian with the same dimensionality as the class embedding. we use λ = as suggested in (gulrajani et al., ) and β = . across all the datasets. . . comparing with state-of-the-art in a first set of experiments, we evaluate our f-xgan features in both the zsl and gzsl settings on four challenging datasets: cub, flo, sun and awa. unless it is stated otherwise, we use att for cub, sun, awa and stc for flo (as att are not available). we compare the effect of our feature generating f-xgan to recent state-of-the-art methods (xian et al., ). zsl with f-clswgan. we first provide zsl results with our f-clswgan in table . (left). here, the test-time search space is restricted to unseen classes yu. first, our f-clswgan in all cases improves the state of the art that is obtained without feature generation. the overall accuracy improvement on cub is from . % to . %, on flo from . % to . %, on sun from . % to . % and on awa from . % to . %, i.e. all quite significant. another observation is that feature generation is applicable to all the multimodal embedding models and softmax. these chapter . feature generating networks for zero-shot image classification devise sje latem eszsl ale softmax classification model t op - a cc . ( in % ) flo none f-gan f-gmmn f-wgan f-clswgan devise sje latem eszsl ale softmax classification model t op - a cc . ( in % ) cub none f-gan f-gmmn f-wgan f-clswgan figure . : zero-shot learning results when comparing f-xgan versions with f- gmmn as well as comparing multimodal embedding methods with softmax. results demonstrate that indeed our f-clswgan generates generalizable and strong visual features of previously unseen classes. gzsl with f-clswgan. our main interest is gzsl where the test time search space contains both seen and unseen classes, ys ∪yu, and at test time the images come both from seen and unseen classes. therefore, we evaluate both seen and unseen class accuracy, i.e. s and u, as well as their harmonic mean (h). the gzsl results with f-clswgan in table . (right) demonstrate that for all datasets our f-xgan significantly improves the h-measure over the state-of-the-art. on cub, f-clswgan obtains . % in h measure, significantly improving the state of the art ( . %), on flo it achieves . % (vs. . %), on sun it reaches . % (vs. . %), and on awa it achieves . % (vs. . %). the accuracy boost can be attributed to the strength of the f-clswgan generator learning to imitate cnn features of unseen classes although not having seen any real cnn features of these classes before. we also observe that without feature generation on all models the seen class accuracy is significantly higher than unseen class accuracy, which indicates that many samples are incorrectly assigned to one of the seen classes. feature generation through f-clswgan finds a balance between seen and unseen class accuracies by improving the unseen class accuracy while maintaining the accuracy on seen classes. furthermore, we would like to emphasize that the simple softmax classifier beats all the models and is now applicable to gzsl thanks to our cnn feature generation. this shows the true potential and generalizability of feature generation to various tasks. zsl and gzsl with f-xgan. the generative model is an important component of our framework. here, we evaluate all versions of our f-xgan and f-gmmn for it being a strong alternative. we show zsl and gzsl results of all classification models in figure . and figure . respectively. we selected cub and flo for them . experiments devise sje latem eszsl ale softmax classification model h ar m on ic m ea n (i n % ) flo none f-gan f-gmmn f-wgan f-clswgan devise sje latem eszsl ale softmax classification model h ar m on ic m ea n (i n % ) cub none f-gan f-gmmn f-wgan f-clswgan figure . : generalized zero-shot learning results when comparing f-xgan versions with f-gmmn as well as comparing multimodal embedding methods with softmax. being fine-grained datasets, however we provide full numerical results and plots in the supplementary which shows that our observations hold across datasets. our first observation is that for both zsl and gzsl settings all generative models improve in all cases over “none” with no access to the synthetic cnn features. this applies to the gzsl setting and the difference between “none” and f-xgan is strikingly significant. our second observation is that our novel f-clswgan model is the best performing generative model in almost all cases for both datasets. our final observation is that although f-wgan rarely performs lower than f-gmmn, e.g. eszl on flo, our f-clswgan which uses a classification loss in the generator recovers from it and achieves the best result among all these generative models. we conclude from these experiments that generating cnn features to support the classifier when there is missing data is a technique that is flexible and strong. . . analyzing f-xgan under different conditions in this section, we analyze f-xgan in terms of stability, generalization, cnn archi- tecture used to extract real cnn features and the effect of class embeddings on two fine-grained datasets, namely cub and flo. stability and generalization. we first analyze how well different generative models fit the seen class data used for training. instead of using parzen window-based log- likelihood (goodfellow et al., ) that is unstable, we train a softmax classifier with generated features of seen classes and report the classification accuracy on a held-out test set. figure . shows the classification accuracy w.r.t the number of training epochs. on both datasets, we observe a stable training trend. on flo, compared to the supervised classification accuracy obtained with real images, i.e. the upper bound marked with dashed line, f-gan remains quite weak even after convergence, which indicates that f-gan has underfitting issues. a strong alternative is f-gmmn chapter . feature generating networks for zero-shot image classification epoch t op - a cc . ( in % ) flo f-gan f-gmmn f-wgan f-clswgan real data epoch t op - a cc . ( in % ) cub f-gan f-gmmn f-wgan f-clswgan real data figure . : measuring the seen class accuracy of the classifier trained on generated features of seen classes w.r.t. the training epochs (with softmax). cnn fg u s h googlenet none . . . f-clswgan . . . resnet- none . . . f-clswgan . . . table . : gzsl results with googlenet vs resnet- features on cub (cnn: deep feature encoder network, fg: feature generator, u = t on yu, s = t on ys, h = harmonic mean, “none”= no generated features). leads to a significant accuracy boost while our f-wgan and f-clswgan improve over f-gmmn and almost reach the supervised upper bound. after having established that our f-xgan leads to a stable training performance and generating highly descriptive features, we evaluate the generalization ability of the f-xgan generator to unseen classes. using the pre-trained model, we generate cnn features of unseen classes. we then train a softmax classifier using these synthetic cnn features of unseen classes with real cnn features of seen classes. on the gzsl task, figure . shows that increasing the number of generated features of unseen classes from to leads to a significant boost of accuracy, e.g. . % to . % on cub and . % to . % on flo. as in the case for generating seen class features, here the ordering is f-gan < f-wgan < f-gmmn < f-clswgan on cub and f-gan < f-gmmn < f-wgan < f-clswgan on flo. with these results, we argue that if the generative model can generalize well to previously unseen data distributions, e.g. perform well on gzsl task, they have practical use in a wide range of real-world applications. hence, we propose to quantitatively evaluate the performance of generative models on the gzsl task. . experiments # of generated features per class t op - a cc . ( in % ) flo f-gan f-gmmn f-wgan f-clswgan # of generated features per class t op - a cc . ( in % ) cub f-gan f-gmmn f-wgan f-clswgan figure . : increasing the number of generated f-xgan features wrt unseen class accuracy (with softmax) in zsl. c fg u s h attribute (att) none . . . f-clswgan . . . sentence (stc) none . . . f-clswgan . . . table . : gzsl results with conditioning f-xgan with stc and att on cub (c: class embedding, fg: feature generator, u = t on yu, s = t on ys, h = harmonic mean, “none”= no generated features). effect of cnn architectures. the aim of this study is to determine the effect of the deep cnn encoder that provides real features to our f-xgan discriminator. in table . , we first observe that with googlenet features, the results are lower com- pared to the ones obtained with resnet- features. this indicates that resnet- features are stronger than googlenet, which is expected. besides, most importantly, with both cnn architectures we observe that our f-xgan outperforms the “none” by a large margin. specifically, the accuracy increases from . % to . % for googlenet features and . % to . % for resnet- features. those results are encouraging as they demonstrate that our f-xgan is not limited to learning the distribution of resnet- features, but also able to learn other feature distributions. effect of class embeddings. the conditioning variable, i.e. class embedding, is an important component of our f-xgan. therefore, we evaluate two different class embeddings, per-class attributes (att) and per-class sentences (stc) on cub as this is the only dataset that has both. in table . , we first observe that f-clswgan features generated with att not only lead to a significantly higher result ( . % vs . %), s and u are much more balanced ( . % and . % vs. . % and . %) chapter . feature generating networks for zero-shot image classification h h m m k m k l l k l k all t o p - a cc . (i n % ) zsl ale ours h h m m k m k l l k l k all t o p - a cc . (i n % ) gzsl ale ours figure . : zsl and gzsl results on imagenet (zsl: t on yu, gzsl: t on yu). the splits, resnet features and word vec are provided by (xian et al., ). “ours” = feature generator: f-clswgan, classifier: softmax. compared to the state-of-the-art, i.e. “none”. this is because generated cnn features help us explore the space of unseen classes whereas the state of the art learns to project images closer to seen class embeddings. finally, f-clswgan features generated with per-class stc significantly improve results over att, achieving . % in h measure, and also leads to a notable u of . % without hurting s ( . %). this is due to the fact that stc leads to high quality features (reed et al., a) reflecting the highly descriptive semantic content language entails and it shows that our f-clswgan is able to learn higher quality cnn features given a higher quality conditioning signal. . . large-scale experiments our large-scale experiments follow the same zero-shot data splits of (xian et al., ) and serve two purposes. first, we show the generalizability of our approach by conducting zsl and gzsl experiments on imagenet (deng et al., ) for it being the largest-scale single-label image dataset, i.e. with k classes and m images. second, as imagenet does not contain att, we use as a (weak) conditioning signal word vec (mikolov et al., b) to generate f-clswgan features. figure . shows that softmax as a classifier obtains the state-of-the-art of zsl and gzsl on imagenet, significantly improving over ale (akata et al., a). these results show that our f-clswgan is able to generate high quality cnn features also with word vec as the class embedding. for zsl, for instance, with the h split “ours” almost doubles the performance of ale ( . % to . %) and in one of the extreme cases, e.g. with l k split, the accuracy improves from . % to . %. for gzsl the same observations hold, i.e. the gap between ale and “ours” is . vs . with h split and . vs . with l k split. note that, (xian et al., ) reports the highest results with . experiments cub flo generated data u s h u s h none . . . . . . image (with (zhang et al., a)) . . . . . . cnn feature (ours) . . . . . . table . : summary table (u = t on yu, s = t accuracy on ys, h = harmonic mean, class embedding = stc). “none”: ale with no generated features. sync (changpinyo et al., ) and “ours” improves over sync as well, e.g. . % vs . % with h and . % vs . % with l k. with these results we emphasize that with a supervision as weak as a word vec signal, our model is able to generate cnn features of unseen classes and operate at the imagenet scale. this does not only hold for the zsl setting which discards all the seen classes from the test-time search space assuming that the evaluated images will belong to one of the unseen classes. it also holds for the gzsl setting where no such assumption has been made. our model generalizes to previously unseen classes even when the seen classes are included in the search space which is the most realistic setting for image classification. . . feature vs image generation as our main goal is solving the gzsl task which suffers from the lack of visual training examples, one naturally thinks that image generation serves the same purpose. therefore, here we compare generating images and image features for the task of gzsl. we use the stackgan (zhang et al., a) to generate × images conditioned on sentences. in table . , we compare gzsl results obtained with “none”, i.e. with an ale model trained on real images of seen classes, image, i.e. image features extracted from × synthetic images generated by stackgan (zhang et al., a) and cnn feature, i.e. generated by our f-clswgan. between “none” and “image”, although the seen class accuracy improves, the unseen class accuracy is extremely low ( . % for cub and . % for flo) which shows that the generated images do not generalize to unseen classes. on average, i.e. the h measure, generating images of unseen classes leads to . % on cub and . % accuracy on flo whereas “none” leads to . % on cub and . % accuracy on flo. upon visual inspection, we have observed that although many images have an accurate visual appearance as birds or flowers, they lack the necessary discriminative details to be classified correctly and the generated images are not class-consistent. on the other hand, generating cnn features leads to a significant boost of accuracy, e.g. . % on cub and . % on flo which is clearly higher than having no generation, i.e. “none”, and image generation. we argue that image feature generation has the following advantages. first, the chapter . feature generating networks for zero-shot image classification number of generated image features is limitless. second, the image feature generation learns from compact invariant representations obtained by a deep network trained on a large-scale dataset such as imagenet, therefore the feature generative network can be quite shallow and hence computationally efficient. third, generated cnn features are highly discriminative, i.e. they lead to a significant boost in performance of both zsl and gzsl. finally, image feature generation is a much easier task as the generated data is much lower dimensional than high quality images necessary for discrimination. . conclusion in this work, we propose f-clswgan, a learning framework for feature generation followed by classification, to tackle the generalized zero-shot learning task. our f-clswgan model adapts the conditional gan architecture that is frequently used for generating image pixels to generate cnn features. in f-clswgan, we improve wgan by adding a classification loss on top of the generator, enforcing it to generate features that are better suited for classification. in our experiments, we have shown that generating features of unseen classes allows us to effectively use softmax classifiers for the gzsl task. our framework is generalizable as it can be integrated to various deep cnn archi- tectures, i.e. googlenet and resnet as a pair of the most widely used architectures. it can also be deployed with various classifiers, e.g. ale, sje, devise, latem, eszsl that constitute the state of the art for zsl but also the gzsl accuracy improvements obtained with softmax is important as it is a simple classifier that could not be used for gzsl before this work. moreover, our features can be generated via different sources of class embeddings, e.g. sentence, attribute, word vec, and applied to different datasets, i.e. cub, flo, sun, awa being fine and coarse-grained zsl datasets and imagenet being a truly large-scale dataset. finally, based on the success of our framework, we motivated the use of gzsl tasks as an auxiliary method for evaluation of the expressive power of generative models in addition to manual inspection of generated image pixels which is tedious and prone to errors. for instance, wgan (gulrajani et al., ) has been proposed and accepted as an improvement over gan (goodfellow et al., ). this claim is supported with evaluations based on manual inspection of the images and the inception score. our observations in figure . and in figure . support this and follow the same ordering of the models, i.e. wgan improves over gan in zsl and gzsl tasks. hence, while not being the primary focus of this chapter, we strongly argue, that zsl and gzsl are suited well as a testbed for comparing generative models. e n h a n c e d f e a t u r e g e n e r a t i o n f r a m e w o r k s f o r l o w - s h o t l e a r n i n g contents . introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . related work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . f-vaegan-d model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . baseline feature generating models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . our f-vaegan-d model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . experiments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (generalized) zero-shot learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (generalized) few-shot learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . interpreting synthesized features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i n chapter , we show that feature generation is an effective way to tackle the data imbalance issue. therefore in this chapter, we extend this idea to any-shot learning i.e., few-shot and zero-shot learning. we improve the feature generator f-clswgan of chapter in two ways. first, our combine gans and vae to construct a stronger generative model. second, our model additionally adds a descriminator that learns marginal distribution of novel classes from their unlabeled examples. our proposed approach achieves the sota on the zero-shot learning benchmark introduced in chapter . the previous chapters including this chapter are all about image classification. in the next two chapters, we will move our attention to more complicated tasks includ- ing the semantic segmentation in chapter and video classification in chapter in the context of zero-shot and few-shot learning. . introduction learning with limited labels has been an important topic of research as it is unrealistic to collect sufficient amounts of labeled data for every object. recently, generating visual features of previously unseen classes (e.g. xian et al., ; bucher et al., ; kumar verma et al., b; felix et al., a) has shown its potential to perform well on extremely imbalanced image collections. however, current feature generation approaches have still shortcomings. first, they rely on simple generative models which are not able to capture complex data distributions. second, in many cases, they do not truly generalize to the under represented classes. third, although classifiers chapter . enhanced feature generation frameworks for low-shot learning … it has a brown center and yellow petals . textual explanation … because it has a brown center and yellow petals . this flower has a large brown center and its petals are long. f-vaegan-d sunflower visualization transductive learning (d ) feature generator (f-wgan) feature reconstruction (f-vae)real image ∈ this is a sunflower because ... feature space figure . : our any-shot feature generating framework learns discriminative and interpretable cnn features from both labeled data of seen and unlabeled data of novel classes. trained on a combination of real and generated features obtain state-of-the-art results, generated features may not be easily interpretable. our main focus in this work is a new model that generates visual features of any class, utilizing labeled samples when they are available and generalizing to unknown concepts whose labeled samples are not available. prior work used gans for this task (xian et al., ; felix et al., a) as they directly optimize the divergence between real and generated data, but they suffer from mode collapse issues (arjovsky and bottou, ). on the other hand, feature generation with vae (kumar verma et al., b) is more stable. however, vae optimizes the lower bound of log likelihood rather than the likelihood itself (kingma and welling, ). our model combines the strengths of vae and gans by assembling them to a condi- tional feature generating model, called f-vaegan-d , that synthesizes cnn image features from class embeddings, i.e. class-level attributes or word vec (mikolov et al., b). thanks to its additional discriminator that distinguishes real and generated features, our f-vaegan-d is able to use unlabeled data from previously unseen classes without any condition. the features learned by our model, e.g. figure . , are disciminative in that they boost the performance of any-shot learning as well as being visually and textually interpretable. our main contributions are as follows. ( ) we propose the f-vaegan-d model that consists of a conditional encoder, a shared conditional decoder/generator, a conditional discriminator and a non-conditional discriminator. the first three networks aim to learn the conditional distribution of cnn image features given class embeddings optimizing vae and wgan losses on labeled data of seen classes. the . related work encoder (e) d ec od er /g en er at or (g ) cape may warbler discriminator (d ) discriminator (d ) vae gan d d f-wgan f-vae figure . : our any-shot feature generating network (f-vaegan-d ) consist of a feature generating vae (f-vae), a feature generating wgan (f-wgan) with a conditional discriminator (d ) and a transductive feature generator with a non- conditional discriminator (d ) that learns from both labeled data of seen classes and unlabeled data of novel classes. last network learns the marginal distribution of cnn image features on the unlabeled features of novel classes. once trained, our model synthesizes discriminative image features that can be used to augment softmax classifier training. ( ) our empirical analysis on cub, awa , sun, flo, and large-scale imagenet shows that our generated features improve the state-of-the-art in low-shot regimes, i.e. (generalized) zero- and few shot learning in both the inductive and transductive settings. ( ) we demonstrate that our generated features are interpretable by inverting them back to the raw pixel space and by generating visual explanations. . related work in this section, we discuss related works on generative models. we will not repeat the zero-shot and few-shot learning works that have been discussed in chapter . generative models. generative modeling aims to learn the probability distribution of data points such that we can randomly sample data from it that can be used as a data augmentation mechanism. generative adversarial networks (gans)(goodfellow et al., ; mirza and osindero, ; radford et al., ) consist of a generator that synthesizes fake data and a discriminator that distinguishes fake and real data. the instable training issues of gans have been studied by (gulrajani et al., ; arjovsky and bottou, ; miyato et al., ). an interesting application of gans is cyclegan (zhu et al., ) that translates an image from one domain to another domain. (reed et al., c) generates natural images from text descriptions, and srgan(ledig et al., ) solves single image super-resolution. variational autoen- coder (vae) (kingma and welling, ) employs an encoder that represents the input as a latent variable with gaussian distribution assumption and a decoder that chapter . enhanced feature generation frameworks for low-shot learning reconstructs the input from the latent variable. gmmn (li et al., ) optimizes the maximum mean discrepancy (mmd) (gretton et al., ) between real and gener- ated distribution. recently, generative models (bucher et al., ; zhu et al., b; kumar verma et al., b; xian et al., ) have been applied to solve generalized zero-shot learning by synthesizing cnn features of unseen classes from semantic embeddings. among those, (bucher et al., ) uses gmmn (li et al., ), (zhu et al., b; xian et al., ) use gans(goodfellow et al., ) and (kumar verma et al., b) employs vae (kingma and welling, ). our model combines the advantages of both vae and gan with an additional discriminator to use unlabeled data of unseen classes which lead to more discriminative features. . f-vaegan-d model existing models that operate on sparse data regimes are either trained with labeled data from a set of classes which is disjoint from the set of classes at test time, i.e. inductive zero-shot setting (e.g. lampert et al., ; frome et al., ), or the sam- ples can come from all classes but then their labels are not known, i.e. transductive zero-shot setting (e.g. fu et al., a; rohrbach et al., ). recent works (e.g. xian et al., ; kumar verma et al., b; felix et al., a) address generalized zero-shot learning by generating synthetic cnn features of unseen classes followed by training softmax classifiers, which alleviates the imbalance between seen and unseen classes. however, we argue that those feature generating approaches are not expressive enough to capture complicated feature distributions in real world. in addition, since they have no access to any real unseen class features, there is no guarantee on the quality of generated unseen class features. as shown in figure . , we proposes to enhance the feature generator by combining vae and gans with shared decoder and generator, and adding another discriminator (d ) to distinguish real or generated features without applying any condition. intuitively, in transduc- tive zero-shot setting, by feeding real unlabeled features of unseen classes, d will be able to learn the manifold of unseen class such that more realistic features can be generated. hence, the key to our approach is the ability to generate semantically rich cnn feature distributions, which is generalizes to any-shot learning scenar- ios ranging from (generalized) zero-shot to (generalized) few-shot to (generalized) many-shot learning. setup. we are given a set of images x = {x , . . . , xl}∪{xl+ , . . . , xt} encoded in the image feature space x , a seen class label set ys, a novel label set yn, a.k.a unseen class label set yu in the zero-shot learning literature. the set of class embeddings c = {c(y)|∀y ∈ ys ∪yn} are encoded in the semantic embedding space c that defines high level semantic relationships between classes. the first l points xs(s ≤ l) are labeled as one of the seen classes ys ∈ ys and the remaining points xn(l + ≤ n ≤ t) are unlabeled, i.e. may come from seen or novel classes. in the inductive setting, the training set contains only labeled samples of seen class images, i.e. {x , . . . , xl}. on the other hand, in the transductive setting, the . f-vaegan-d model training set contains both labeled and unlabeled samples, i.e. {x , . . . , xl , xl+ , . . . , xt}. for both inductive and transductive settings the inference is the same. in zero-shot learning, the task is to predict the label of those unlabeled points that belong to novel classes, i.e. fzsl : x →yn, while in the generalized zero-shot learning, the goal is to classify those unlabeled points that can be either from seen or novel classes, i.e. fgzsl : x → ys ∪yn. few-shot and generalized few-shot learning are defined similarly. our framework can be thought of as a data augmentation scheme where ar- bitrarily many synthetic features of sparsely populated classes aid in improving the disciminative power of classifiers. in the following, we only detail our feature generating network structure as the classifier is unconstrained (we use linear softmax classifiers). . . baseline feature generating models in feature generating networks (f-wgan) (xian et al., ) the generator g(z, c) generates a cnn feature x̂ in the input feature space x from random noise zp and a condition c, and the discriminator d(x, c) takes as input a pair of input features x and a condition c and outputs a real value, optimizing: lsw g an =e[d(x, c)]− e[d(x̃, c)] ( . ) − λe[(||∇x̂ d(x̂, c)|| − ) ], where x̃ = g(z, c) is the generated feature and x̂ = αx + ( − αx) with α ∼ u( , ) and λ is the penalty coefficient. the feature generating vae (kingma and welling, ) (f-vae) consists of an encoder e(x, c), which encodes an input feature x and a condition c to a latent variable z, and a decoder dec(z, c), which reconstructs the input x from the latent z and condition c optimizing: lsvae = kl(q(z|x, c)||p(z|c)) ( . ) − eq(z|x,c)[log p(x|z, c)], where the conditional distribution q(z|x, c) is modeled as e(x, c), p(z|c)) is as- sumed to be n( , ), kl is the kullback-leibler divergence, and p(x|z, c) is equal to dec(z, c). . . our f-vaegan-d model it has been shown that ensembling a vae and a gan leads to better image generation results (larsen et al., ). we hypothesize that vae and gan learn complementary information for feature generation as well. this is likely when the target data follows a complicated multi-modal distribution where two losses are able to capture different modes of the data. chapter . enhanced feature generation frameworks for low-shot learning to combine f-vae and f-wgan, we introduce an encoder e(x, c) : x ×c →z, which encodes a pair of feature and class embedding to a latent representation, and a discriminator d : x ×c → r maps this embedding pair to a compatibility score, optimizing: lsvaeg an = l s vae + γl s w g an ( . ) where the generator g(z, c) of the gan and decoder dec(z, c) of the vae share the same parameters. the superscript s indicates that the loss is applied to feature and class embedding pair of seen classes. γ is a hyperparameter to control the weighting of vae and gan losses. furthermore, when unlabeled data of novel classes becomes available, we propose to add a non-conditional discriminator d (d in f-vaegan-d ) which distinguishes between real and generated features of novel classes. this way d learns the feature manifold of novel classes. formally, our additional non-conditional discriminator d : x → r distinguishes real and synthetic unlabeled samples using a wgan loss: lnw g an =e[d (xn)]− e[d (x̃n)]− ( . ) λe[(||∇x̂n d (x̂n)|| − ) ], where x̃n = g(z, yn) with yn ∈ yn, x̂n = αxn + ( − αxn) with α ∼ u( , ). since lsw g an is trained to learn cnn features using labeled data conditioned on class embeddings of seen classes and class embeddings encode shared properties across classes, we expect these cnn features to be transferable across seen and novel classes. however, this heavily relies on the quality of semantic embeddings and suffers from domain shift problems. intuitively, lnw g an captures the marginal distribution of cnn features and provides useful signals of novel classes to generate transferable cnn features. hence, our unified f-vaegan-d model optimizes the following objective function: min g,e max d ,d lsvaeg an +l n w g an ( . ) implementation details. our generator (g) and discriminators (d and d ) are implemented as multilayer perceptron (mlp). the random gaussian noise z ∼ n( , ) and class embedding c(y) are concatenated and fed into the generator, which is composed of fully connected layers with hidden units. we find dimension of noise dz = dc, i.e. dimension of class embeddings, works well. similarly, the discriminators take input as the concatenation of image feature and class embedding and have fully connected layers with hidden units. we use leakyrelu as the nonlinear activation function except for the output layer of g, for which sigmoid is used because we apply binary cross entropy loss as lrec and input features are rescaled to be in [ , ]. we find β = and γ = works well across all the datasets. gradient penalty coefficient is set to λ = and generator is updated every discriminator iterations as suggested in wgan paper (arjovsky et al., ). as for the optimization, we use adam optimizer with constant learning rate . and early stopping on the validation set. . experiments model zsl gzsl inductive gan . . vae . . vae-gan . . transductive gan . . vae . . vae-gan . . table . : ablating different generative models on cub (using attribute class em- bedding and image features with no fine-tuning). zsl: top- accuracy on unseen classes, gzsl: harmonic mean of seen and unseen class accuracies. . experiments in this section, we validate our approach in both zero-shot and few-shot learning. the details of the settings are provided in their respective sections. . . (generalized) zero-shot learning we validate our model on five widely-used datasets for zero-shot learning, i.e. caltech-ucsd-birds (cub) (welinder et al., ), oxford flowers (flo) (nilsback and zisserman, ), sun attribute (sun) (patterson and hays, ) and animals with attributes (awa ) (xian et al., b). among those, cub, flo and sun are medium scale, fine-grained datasets. awa , on the other hand, is a coarse- grained dataset. finally we evaluate our model also on imagenet (deng et al., ) with more than million images and k classes as a large-scale and fine-grained dataset. we follow the exact zsl and gzsl splits as well as the evaluation protocol of (xian et al., b) and for fair comparison we use the same image and class embeddings for all models. briefly, image (with no image cropping or flipping) features are extracted from the -dim top pooling units of -layer resnet pretrained on imagenet k. for comparative studies, we also fine-tune resnet- on the seen class images of each dataset. as for class embeddings, unless otherwise specified, we use class-level attributes for cub ( -dim), awa ( -dim) and sun( -dim). for cub and flo, we also extract -dim sentence embeddings of character-based cnn-rnn model (reed et al., a) from fine-grained visual descriptions ( sentences per image). ablation study. we ablate our model with respect to the generative model, i.e. using gan, vae or vae-gan in both inductive and transductive settings. our conclusions from table . , are as follows. in the inductive setting vae-gan has an edge over both vae and gan, i.e. . % and . % vs . % in zsl setting. chapter . enhanced feature generation frameworks for low-shot learning zero-shot learning generalized zero-shot learning cub flo sun awa cub flo sun awa method t t t t u s h u s h u s h u s h ind ale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . clswgan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . se-gzsl . - . . . . . - - - . . . . . . cycle-clswgan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ours . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ours-finetuned . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . tran ale-tran . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . gfzsl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . dsrl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ue-finetune . - . . . . . - - - . . . . . . ours . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ours-finetuned . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . table . : comparing with the-state-of-the-art. top: inductive methods (ind), bottom: transductive methods (tran). fine tuning is performed only on seen class images as this does not violate the zero-shot condition. we measure top- accuracy (t ) in zsl setting, top- accuracy on seen (s) and unseen (s) classes as well as their harmonic mean (h) in gzsl setting. adding unlabeled samples to the training set, i.e. transductive learning setting, is beneficial for all the generative models. as in the inductive setting vae and gan achieve similar results, i.e . % and . % for zsl. our vae-gan model leads to the state-of-the-art results, i.e. . % in zsl and . % in gzsl confirming that vae and gan learn complementary representations. as vae-gan gives the highest accuracy in all settings, it is employed in all remaining results of the chapter. comparing with the state-of-the-art. in table . we compare our model with the best performing recent methods on four zero-shot learning datasets on zsl and gzsl settings. in the inductive zsl setting, our model both with and without fine-tuning outperforms the state-of-the art for all datasets. our model with fine-tuned features establishes the new state-of-the-art, i.e. . % on cub, . % on flo, . % on sun and . % on awa. for the transductive zsl setting, our model without fine-tuning on cub is surpassed by ue-finetune of (song et al., ), i.e. . % vs . %. however, when we also fine-tune our features, we establish the new state-of-the-art on the transductive zsl setting as well, i.e. . % on cub, . % on flo, . % on sun and . % on awa. in the gzsl setting, we observe that feature generating methods, i.e. our model, clswgan (xian et al., ), se-gzsl (kumar verma et al., b), cycle- clswgan (felix et al., a) achieve better results than others. this is due to the fact that data augmentation through feature generation leads to a more balanced data distribution such that the learned classifier is not biased to seen classes. note that although ue (song et al., ) is not a feature generating method, it leads to strong results as this model uses additional information, i.e. it assumes that unlabeled test samples always come from unseen classes. nevertheless, our model . experiments h h m m k m k l l k l k all t o p - a cc . (i n % ) conse cmt latem ale devise sje eszsl sync sae h h m m k m k l l k l k all . . . t o p - a cc . (i n % ) conse cmt latem ale devise sje eszsl sync sae figure . : top- zsl results on imagenet. we follow the splits in (xian et al., b) and compare our results with the state-of-the-art feature generating model clswgan (xian et al., ). with fine-tuning leads to . % harmonic mean (h) on cub, . % h on flo, . % h on sun and . % h on awa achieving significantly higher results than all the prior works. large-scale experiments. although most of the prior work presented in table . has not been evaluated in imagenet, this dataset serves a challenging and interesting test bed for (g)zsl research. hence, we compare our model with clswgan (xian et al., ) on imagenet using the same evaluation protocol. as shown in figure . our model significantly improves over the state-of-the-art in both zsl and gzsl settings in h, h and all splits determined by considering the classes hops or hops away from classes of imagenet as well as all the remaining classes. these experiments are important for two reasons. first, they show that our feature generation model is scalable to the largest scale setting available. second, our model is applicable to the situations even when human annotated attributes are not available, i.e. for imagenet classes attributes are not available hence we use per-class word vec representations. . . (generalized) few-shot learning in few-shot or low-shot learning scenarios, classes are divided into base classes that have a large number of labeled training samples and novel classes that contain only few labeled samples per category. in the plain fsl setting, the goal is to achieve good performance on novel classes whereas in gfsl setting good performance must generalize to all classes. among the classic zsl datasets, cub has been used for few-shot learning in (qi et al., ) by taking the first classes as base classes and the rest as novel classes. however, as imagenet k contains some of those novel classes and feature extractors chapter . enhanced feature generation frameworks for low-shot learning # training samples per class t o p - a cc . (i n % ) cub ours-tran ours-ind imprint[ ] softmax analogy[ ] ale-tran[ ] # training samples per class t o p - a cc . (i n % ) flo ours-tran ours-ind imprint[ ] softmax analogy[ ] ale-tran[ ] figure . : few-shot learning (fsl) results on cub and flo with increasing number of training samples per novel class. we report the top- accuracy on novel classes. are pretrained on it, we use the class splits from the standard zsl setting, i.e. base and novel. for flo we also follow the same class splits as in zsl. as for features, we use the same fine-tuned resnet- features and attribute class embeddings used in zero-shot learning experiments. for fairness, we repeat all the experiments for (qi et al., ) and (hariharan and girshick, ) with the same image features. comparing with the state-of-the-art. as shown in figure . and figure . , both for fsl and gfsl settings and for both datasets, both our inductive and transductive models have a significant edge over all the competing methods when the number of samples from novel classes is small, e.g. , and . this shows that our model generates highly discriminative features even with only few real samples are present. in fact, only with one real sample per class, our model achieves almost the full accuracy obtained with samples per class. going towards the full supervised learning, e.g. with or samples per class, all methods perform similarly. this is expected since in the setting where a large number of labeled samples per class is available, then a simple softmax classifier that uses real resnet- features achieves the state-of-the-art. in the inductive fsl setting, our model that uses one labeled sample per class reaches the accuracy as softmax that uses five samples per class. in the transductive fsl setting, our model that uses one labeled sample per class reaches the accuracy of softmax obtained with samples per class. furthermore, the inductive gfsl setting, our model with two samples per class achieves the same accuracy as softmax trained with ten samples per class on cub. in the transductive gfsl setting, for flo, for our model only one labeled sample is enough to reach the accuracy obtained with labeled samples with softmax. note that the same behavior is observed on sun and awa as well. due to space restrictions we present them in the supplementary material. . experiments # training samples per class t o p - a cc . (i n % ) cub ours-tran ours-ind imprint[ ] softmax analogy[ ] ale-tran[ ] # training samples per class t o p - a cc . (i n % ) flo ours-tran ours-ind imprint[ ] softmax analogy[ ] ale-tran[ ] figure . : generalized few-shot learning (gfsl) results on cub and flo with increasing number of training samples per novel class. we report the top- accuracy on all classes. large-scale experiments. regarding few-shot learning results on imagenet, we follow the procedure in (hariharan and girshick, ) where k imagenet cat- egories are randomly divided into base and novel classes. to facilitate cross validation, base classes are further split into c base ( classes) and c base ( classes), and novel classes into c novel ( classes) and c novel ( classes). the cross validation of hyperparameters is performed on c base and c novel and the final results are reported on c base and c novel . here, we extract image features from the resnet- pretrained on c base ∪ c base, which is provided by the benchmark (hariharan and girshick, ). since there is no attribute annotation on imagenet, we use -dim word vec (mikolov et al., b) embeddings as the class embedding. following (wang et al., c), we measure the averaged top- accuracy on test examples of novel classes with the model restricted to only output novel class labels, and the averaged top- accuracy on test examples of all classes with the model that predicts both base and novel classes. our baselines are pmn w/g* (wang et al., c) combining meta-learning and feature generation, analogy generator (hariharan and girshick, ) learning an analogy-based feature generator and softmax classifier learned with uniform class sampling. for, few-shot learning results in figure . (left), we observe that our model in the transductive setting, i.e. ours-tran improves the state-of-the-art pmn w/g* (wang et al., c) significantly when the number of training samples is small, i.e. , and . notably, we achieve . % vs . % state-of-the art at shot, . vs . % at shots. this indicates that our model generates highly discriminative features by leveraging unlabeled data and word embeddings. in the challenging generalized few-shot learning setting (figure . right), although pmn /g* (wang et al., c) is quite strong by applying meta-learning (snell et al., ), our model still achieves comparable results with the state-of-the-art. it is also worth noting that pmn w/g* (wang et al., c) cannot be directly applied to zero-shot learning. chapter . enhanced feature generation frameworks for low-shot learning # training samples per class t o p - a cc . (i n % ) fsl ours-tran ours-ind pmn w/g*[ ] softmax analogy[ ] # training samples per class t o p - a cc . (i n % ) gfsl ours-tran ours-ind pmn w/g*[ ] softmax analogy[ ] figure . : few shot learning results on imagenet with increasing number of training samples per novel class (top- accuracy). left: fsl setting, right: gfsl setting. hence, our approach is more versatile. . . interpreting synthesized features in this section, we show that our generated features on flo are visually discrimina- tive and textually explainable. visualising generated features. a number of methods (dosovitskiy and brox, a; mahendran and vedaldi, ; dosovitskiy and brox, b) have explored strategies to generate images by inverting feature embeddings. we follow a strategy similar to (dosovitskiy and brox, a) and train a deep upconvolutional neural network to invert feature embeddings to the image pixel space. we impose a l loss between the ground truth image and the inverted image, as well as a perceptual loss, by passing both images through a pre-trained resnet , and taking an l loss on the feature vectors at conv and average pooling layers. we also utilize an adversarial loss, by feeding the image and feature embedding to a discriminator, to improve our image quality. our generator consists of a fully connected layer followed by upconvolutional blocks. each upconvolutional block contains an upsampling layer, a x convolution, batchnorm and relu non-linearity. the final size of the reconstructed image is x . the discriminator processes the image through downsampling blocks, the feature embedding is sent to a linear layer and spatially replicated and concatenated with the image embedding, and this final embedding is passed through a convolutional and sigmoid layer to get the probability that the sample is real or fake. we train this model on all the real feature-image pairs of the classes, and use the trained generator to invert images from synthetic features. in figure . , we show generated images from real and synthetic features for comparison. we observe that images generated from synthetic features contain the . experiments … this flower has a wide brown center and tapered yellow petals. … this flower has a wide center and layers of wide, tapered yellow petals. this is a sunflower because ... … this flower has petals that are white and has a bushy yellow center … the flower is big with white petals, and a bulb of yellow colored anthers. this is a tree poppy because ... … this flower has simple rows of overlapping orange petals with a notched tip of yellow stamen in the center. se en c la ss es u ns ee n c la ss es this is a marigold because ... … this flower has layers of long tapered pale yellow petals surrounding orange and red stamen. … this flower is pink in color, and has petals that are drooping downward. … this flower has pink petals that are pointed down, and a lot of red stamen in the center this is a purple coneflower because ... r s r s … this flower has red petals that have yellow tips. … this flower has petals that are red with yellow edges this is a blanket flower because ... … the petals of the flower are light pink, while the anthers are white and yellow. … this flower is pink and white in color, with petals that are rounded. this is a pink primrose because ... … the petals on this flower are mostly lavender in color and the inner stamen is the color purple. … this flower is green, white, and purple in color, and has petals that are oval shaped. this is a passion flower because ... … this flower has petals that are red with pointy tips … this flower has a lot of very thin red petals and a lot of white stamen on it this is a king protea because ... c ha lle ng in g c la ss es r s … this flower has wide trumpet shaped purple flowers with a star shape. this is a canterburry bells because … … this flower has broad alternating leaves, and its pink colored petals are lighter pink. this is a sweat pea because … … the flowers color of the flower are visible. the stamen and pistil <unk> from it. this is a balloon flower because … … this flower has petals that are pink and white with green pedicel. … the petals on this flower are mostly bulb shaped purple. this is a cameilla because … … the flower has five purple petals with white stamen and a white pistil. … this red flower has rounded petals and yellow stamen with yellow anthers. … the petals of the flower are layered in layers while the anthers and are yellow in color. figure . : interpretability: visualizations by generating images and textual explana- tions from real or synthetic features. for every block, the top is the target, the middle is reconstructed from the real feature (r) of the target, the bottom is reconstructed from a synthetic feature (s) from the same class. we also generate visual explanations conditioned with the predicted class and the reconstructed real or synthetic images. top (middle): features come from seen (unseen) classes. bottom: classes with a large inter-class variation lead to poorer visualizations and explanations. essential attributes required for classification, such as the general color distribution and sometimes even features like the petal and stamen are visible. also, the image quality is similar for the images generated from real and synthetic features. inter- estingly, the synthetic features of unseen classes generated by our model without observing any real features from that class, i.e. “unseen classes” and “s” row, also yield pleasing reconstructions. as shown in “challenging classes” of figure . , in some cases the generated images from synthetic features lack a certain level of detail, e.g. see images for “balloon flower” and in some cases the colors do not match with the real image, e.g. see images for “sweat pea”. we noticed that these correspond to classes with high inter class variation. explaining visual features. we also explore generating textual explanations of our synthetic features. for this, we choose a language model (hendricks et al., ), that produces an explanation of why an image belongs to a particular class, given a feature embedding and a class label. the architecture of our model is similar to (hendricks et al., ), we use a linear layer for the feature embedding, and feed it as the start token for a lstm. at every step in the sequence, we also feed the class embedding, to produce class relevant captions. the class embedding is obtained by chapter . enhanced feature generation frameworks for low-shot learning training a lstm to generate captions from images, and taking the average hidden state for images of that class. a softmax cross entropy loss is imposed on the output using the ground truth caption. also, a discriminative loss that encourages the generated sentence to belong to the relevant class is imposed by sampling a sentence from the lstm and sending it to a pre-trained sentence classifier. the model is trained on the dataset from (reed et al., a). as before, we train this model on all the real feature-caption pairs, and use it to obtain explanations for synthetic features. in figure . , we show explanations obtained from real and synthetic features. we observe that the model generates image relevant and class specific explanations for synthetic features of both seen and unseen classes. for instance, a “king protea” feature contains information about “red petals and pointy tips” while “purple coneflower” feature has information on “pink in color and petals that are drooping downward” which are the most visually distinguishing properties of this flower. on the other hand, as shown at the bottom of the figure, for classes where image features lack a certain level of detail, the generated explanations have some issues such as repetitions, e.g. “trumpet shaped” and “star shape” in the same sentence and unknown words, e.g. see the explanation for “balloon flower”. . conclusion in this work, we develop a transductive feature generating framework that syn- thesizes cnn image features from a class embedding. our generated features circumvent the scarceness of the labeled training data issues and allow us to ef- fectively train softmax classifiers. our framework combines conditional vae and gan architectures to obtain a more robust generative model. we further improve vae-gan by adding a non-conditional discriminator that handles unlabeled data from unseen classes. the second discriminator learns the manifold of unseen classes and backpropagates the wgan loss to feature generator such that it generalizes better to generate cnn image features for unseen classes. our feature generating framework is effective across zero-shot (zsl), generalized zero-shot (gzsl), few-shot (fsl) and generalized few-shot learning (gfsl) tasks on cub, flo, sun, awa and large-scale imagenet datasets. finally, we show that our generated features are visually interpretable, i.e. the generated images by by inverting features into raw image pixels achieve an impressive level of detail. they are also explainable via language, i.e. visual explanations generated using our features are class-specific. z e r o - l a b e l a n d f e w - l a b e l s e m a n t i c s e g m e n t a t i o n contents . introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . related works . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . semantic projection network (spnet) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . baseline: hinge visual-semantic loss (hvsl) . . . . . . . . . experiment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . zero-label semantic segmentation task . . . . . . . . . . . . . . few-label semantic segmentation task . . . . . . . . . . . . . . qualitative results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i n chapters , , , and , we develop methods and define evaluation protocols for the image classification tasks. however, in fact, the long-tail issue almost appear in many computer vision applications. semantic segmentation is one of the most fundamental problems in computer vision. as pixel-level labelling in this context is particularly expensive, there have been several attempts to reduce the annotation effort, e.g. by learning from image level labels and bounding box annotations. in this chapter, we take this one step further and propose zero- and few- label learning for semantic segmentation as a new task and propose a benchmark on the challenging coco-stuff and pascal voc datasets. in the task of zero-label semantic image segmentation no labeled sample of that class was present during training whereas in few-label semantic segmentation only a few labeled samples were present. solving this task requires transferring the knowledge from previously seen classes to novel classes. our proposed semantic projection network (spnet) achieves this by incorporating class-level semantic information into any network designed for semantic segmentation, and is trained in an end-to-end manner. our model is effective in segmenting novel classes, i.e. alleviating expensive dense annotations, but also in adapting to novel classes without forgetting its prior knowledge, i.e. generalized zero- and few-label semantic segmentation. in chapter , we will take a further step to address the few-shot learning chal- lenges in the video domain. chapter . zero-label and few-label semantic segmentation classes with many samples classes with few samples zero-label semantic segmentation few-label semantic segmentation training set test set semantic knowledge our prediction our prediction figure . : we propose (generalized) zero- and few-label semantic segmentation tasks, i.e. segmenting classes whose labels are not seen by the model during training or the model has a few labeled samples of those classes. to tackle these tasks, we propose a model that transfers knowledge from seen classes to unseen classes using side information, e.g. semantic word embedding trained on free text corpus. . introduction in semantic image segmentation the aim is assign a label to every pixel in an image by partitioning it into several semantic regions and then learning the appearance of various classes as well as the background. although deep cnn-based approaches have achieved good performance for this task, they require costly dense annota- tions to learn their numerous parameters. hence, leveraging weak annotations via image-level labels (pathak et al., ; papandreou et al., ; oh et al., ) or point (bearman et al., ), bounding box (khoreva et al., ), scribble-level anno- tations (lin et al., ) recently gained interest. on the other hand, as humans, we easily learn to recognize a previously unseen, i.e. novel, class by associating it with classes that we know. however, segmenting such novel classes via modern machine learning techniques is still an open problem as this process requires knowledge transfer from known classes to previously unseen ones. knowledge transfer to novel classes is not a new task. learning to predict novel classes has been studied extensively in the context of image classification, i.e. zero- shot learning (lampert et al., ; zhang and saligrama, ; changpinyo et al., ; akata et al., b). in zero-label semantic segmentation (zlss), our aim is to segment previously unseen, i.e. novel, classes, in few-label semantic segmenta- tion (flss) these novel classes have a small number of labeled training examples (see figure . ). in this work, we also aim for learning without forgetting the previously seen classes, i.e. generalized zlss and flss. to achieve these aims, we propose semantic projection network (spnet) that incorporates semantic word embeddings to an arbitrary semantic segmentation network inspired by the success of zero-shot learning. prior models that tackle few-shot semantic segmentation (shaban et al., . related works ; dong and xing, ) operate in the foreground-background segmentation setting. however, in our definition of flss the model has to predict all the classes in an image separately, which is more challenging and realistic. our framework utilizes the similarity between different categories in a semantic segmentation network, enabling it to transfer learned representations to other classes. consequently, our model is able to segment scenes containing novel classes. our main contributions are as follows. ( ) we introduce the (generalized) zero- label and few-label semantic image segmentation task in a realistic settings inspired by zero-shot learning for image classification. ( ) we propose semantic projection network (spnet), an end-to-end semantic segmentation model which maps each image pixel to a semantic word embedding space where it is projected with a fixed word embedding to class probabilities optimizing the cross-entropy loss. ( ) we cre- ate a benchmark for (generalized) zero- and few-label semantic image segmentation with two challenging datasets, i.e. coco-stuff and pascal-voc. our analysis shows that the spnet model achieves impressive results both quantitatively and qualitatively in (generalized) zero-label and few-label tasks. furthermore, as a side- product, our model improves the state of the art in zero-shot image classification demonstrating that it successfully generalizes to other tasks. . related works in this section, we review prior work on semantic segmentation and its combination with zero-shot learning. related works on zero-shot learning have been extensively discussed in chapter and will not be repeated here. semantic segmentation with weak supervision. modern semantic segmentation systems (long et al., ; chen et al., ; badrinarayanan et al., ) are built on the encoder-decoder networks and trained with densely labeled annotations. much efforts focus on improving semantic segmentation under fully supervised settings, e.g. adding global context information (zhao et al., b; zhang et al., a; liu et al., ), applying graphical models as a post-processing step to refine the output (zheng et al., ; chen et al., ), etc. on the other hand, weakly supervised semantic segmentation, i.e. reducing the annotation effort, has recently gained momentum. as weak supervision, prior works use image-level annotation (pathak et al., ; papandreou et al., ; oh et al., ), point (bearman et al., ), scribble (lin et al., ) and bounding box (khoreva et al., ) annotations. those methods propagate the supervision to larger regions by measuring objectness (bearman et al., ) and saliency (oh et al., ), or applying graphical models (lin et al., ). other methods refine the coarse annotated regions to more accurate ones (khoreva et al., ; papandreou et al., ). however, those models still require all the classes to be seen during training, thus cannot easily be adapted to new classes. in contrast, we focus on segmenting completely novel classes. semantic segmentation of novel classes. the term zero-shot semantic segmentation appears in prior works (ji et al., a; zhao et al., a). the aim of (ji et al., a) chapter . zero-label and few-label semantic segmentation is to segment novel actor-action patterns during test time. while (zhao et al., a) proposes open-vocabulary scene parsing task that segments novel objects by performing hierarchical parsing, we leverage word embeddings to predict the exact unseen classes and address the few-label problem in a unified framework. for few-shot semantic segmentation, previous approaches (shaban et al., ; rakelly et al., ; dong and xing, ; zhang et al., b) follow the meta-learning setup (vinyals et al., ; snell et al., ), which uses a support set to predict an query image. however, those approaches are restricted to output a binary mask and fail to segment an image with multiple classes. in contrast, our approach is operating in the more realistic (generalized) few-label semantic segmentation setting, i.e. pixel-level labeling of an image where labels come from both base and novel classes. semantic embeddings. in learning with limited labels, some form of side infor- mation is required to transfer the knowledge learned from seen classes to unseen classes. one popular form of side information is attributes (lampert et al., ) that, however, require costly expert annotation. thus, there has been a large group of studies (akata et al., b; reed et al., a; qiao et al., ; ding et al., ) utilizing other sources such as word vec (mikolov et al., b), fasttext (joulin et al., a), or hierarchies (miller, ) for building semantic embeddings. in this work, we utilize word vec and fasttext as they do not require dataset specific human annotation. . approach modern semantic segmentation models are built on fully convolutional encoder- decoder architectures (chen et al., ; long et al., ) that output intermediate feature maps and posteriors for individual classes. however, to segment novel classes these models need to be adapted to transfer knowledge from one class to the other. such knowledge can be obtained from class-level semantic embeddings associating different classes. hence, the main insight of our approach is to leverage semantic word embeddings, i.e. word vec (mikolov et al., b) or fast-text (joulin et al., a), to transfer knowledge learned from base classes to novel classes in a two-step process. first, we propose to learn a visual-semantic embedding module that produces intermediate feature maps in the word embedding space. second, we project those feature maps into class probabilities via a fixed word embedding projection matrix. at test time, by replacing the projection matrix with word embeddings of novel classes, our model is able to segment unseen categories. our model is trained end-to-end and can be incorporated into any semantic segmentation network, i.e. fcn (long et al., ) and deeplab (chen et al., ). we illustrate our overall pipeline in figure . . task formulation. we denote the set of seen classes as s and a disjoint set of unseen classes as u. let ds = {(x, y)|x ∈ x , y ∈ ys} be our labeled training data of seen classes where x is an image in the image space x , y is its corresponding label mask . approach semantic projection gt loss prediction train test visual-semantic embedding fcn deeplab ... segmentation networks cnn feature maps word embedding matrices ={horse, bush, ...} ={cow, grass, ...} figure . : our zero-label and few-label semantic segmentation model, i.e. spnet, consists of two steps: visual semantic embedding and semantic projection. zero- label semantic segmentation is drawn as an instance of our model. replacing different components of spnet, four tasks are addressed (solid/dashed lines show the training/test procedures respectively). in the dense label mask space ys ⊂ sa∗b of seen classes with a and b being the height and the width of the image respectively. similarly, we define the label mask space of unseen classes as yu ⊂ua∗b. in addition, w s ∈ rdw×|s| and w u ∈ rdw×|u| denote the word embedding matrices of seen and unseen classes where dw is the word embedding dimension. given ds, w s, and w u, the task of zero-label semantic segmentation (zlss) is to learn a model that takes an image as an input and predicts the label of each pixel among unseen classes. a more realistic setting is generalized zero-label semantic segmentation (gzlss) where the learned model predicts both seen and unseen classes. as for the (generalized) few-label semantic segmentation task, a few labeled samples from unseen classes du = {(x, y)|x ∈ x , y ∈ yu} are provided to the model during training. the test time target classes include only seen classes in few-label semantic segmentation (flss) whereas they include both seen and unseen classes in generalized few-label semantic segmentation (gflss). here, we refer to the classes with a few labeled samples as unseen or novel, interchangeably. we summarize train class, test class and word embeddings used in different settings in figure . . . . semantic projection network (spnet) we address all four tasks with an unified model spnet, which consists of two parts: visual-semantic embedding module and semantic projection layer. i. visual-semantic embedding module. this module is parameterized by a cnn and maps an input image x ∈x into dw feature maps via φ : x →ra×b×dw of size a × b. this is equivalent to embedding each pixel at (i, j) into a dw dimensional class embedding vector φ(x)ij that lies in the semantic embedding space shared by all the classes. the semantic embedding space constrains the output of the chapter . zero-label and few-label semantic segmentation visual-semantic embedding extractor φ and transfers knowledge from seen to unseen classes. note that this is different from a standard cnn where pixels are mapped into an unconstrained feature space. ii. semantic projection layer. the semantic projection layer maps the feature embedding φ(x)ij into unnormalized logit scores followed by a softmax activation that outputs the probability distribution over each training category, p(ŷij = s|x; w s) = exp (w>s φ(x)ij) ∑ c∈s exp (w>c φ(x)ij) ( . ) where ŷij represents the prediction for pixel (i, j), wc is the c-th column of w s normalized to have unit length. in contrast to standard cnns that predict the class posterior by adding × convolution layer or fully connected layer with learnable weights, our classifier weights w s are predefined by a word embedding model, e.g. word vec (mikolov et al., b), and then fixed during training. the w s and the semantic projection layer estimate the compatibility between class prototypes and a feature embedding in terms of inner product similarity. our proposed semantic projection layer is easy to implement by computing the tensor product between feature maps φ(x) and word embedding matrix w s followed by the softmax activation function. after this layer, we directly optimize the standard cross-entropy loss over the spatial dimensions (i, j) ∈i, ∑ (i,j)∈i − log p(ŷij = yij|x) ( . ) which can be viewed as maximizing the negative log likelihood of predicting each pixel as its true label yij. since there are no learnable parameters at the semantic projection layer, the optimization is over parameters of the visual-semantic embed- ding extractor φ. compared to the standard semantic segmentation network, we have made subtle yet critical changes, i.e. mapping pixels to the semantic word embedding space followed by stacking a projection layer. inference. at the test time, in zlss and flss, we predict unseen classes by replacing the word embedding matrix in eq. ( . ) with w u. each pixel label is predicted by: argmax u∈u p(ŷij = u|x; w u). ( . ) on the other hand, for gzlss and gflss, we predict both seen and unseen class labels via their word embedding: argmax u∈s∪u p(ŷij = u|x; [w s; w u]). ( . ) the extreme case of the imbalanced data problem occurs when there is no labeled training images of unseen classes, and this results in predictions being biased to seen . approach classes. to fix this issue, we follow (chao et al., ) and calibrate the prediction by reducing the scores of seen classes, which leads to: argmax u∈s∪u p(ŷij = u|x; [w s; w u])− γi[u ∈s] ( . ) where i = if u is a seen class and otherwise, γ ∈ [ , ] is the calibration factor tuned on a held-out validation set. theoretically, the semantic projection layer allows our model to predict any class by simply copying its word embedding to the classifier weights. however, intuitively, the model can only perform well on the classes that share visual similarities with training classes. hence, the word embedding ought to capture the similarity between classes. two-stage training in few-label setting. in our flss and gflss, we train a model with both ds that includes a large number of samples per seen class and du that has only a few samples per unseen, i.e. novel, class. this is a typical imbalanced learning problem. the naive idea is to learn using both seen and unseen class samples within a mini-batch sampled uniformly from the whole training data. as expected, this leads to good performance on seen classes but inferior performance on unseen classes. another strategy is to oversample unseen classes by first uniformly sampling a mini-batch of classes and selecting one sample from each of those classes. we found that this strategy remedies the imbalance issues to some extent but the results still remain unsatisfactory. on the other hand, fine-tuning the learned classifier on unseen class samples, i.e. after the initial optimization with only seen class samples, yields better results on unseen classes in flss as well as better overall results in gflss. hence, we report our results in this setting. . . baseline: hinge visual-semantic loss (hvsl) the choice of the loss function turns out to be important in zero-label semantic segmentation. hence, in this section, we develop a baseline that shares the same embedding extractor φ as our spnet but adopts the hinge visual-semantic loss instead of cross-entropy loss. indeed hinge visual-semantic loss constitutes the most widely used loss function for zero-shot image classification (akata et al., a; bansal et al., ; frome et al., ; zhang and saligrama, ; xian et al., ). in the context of semantic segmentation, we define the following hinge ranking loss for a single training example (x, y) as, ∑ (i,j)∈i ∑ s∈s [∆(s, yij) + w > s φ(x)ij − w > yij φ(x)ij]+ ( . ) where ∆(s, yij) = if s = yij otherwise , φ(x)ij is the visual-semantic embedding for pixel (i, j) in image x, yij is its corresponding ground-truth label. in practice, we follow (frome et al., ) to truncate the sum by randomly sampling one class that is not ground-truth. chapter . zero-label and few-label semantic segmentation . experiment in this section, we present both quantitative and qualitative results of zero-label semantic segmentation and few-label semantic segmentation. datasets. we evaluate our model on the challenging coco-stuff (caesar et al., ) and pascal-voc (everingham et al.) datasets. coco-stuff has k images with dense pixel-level annotations from classes including thing classes, stuff classes. pascal-voc is a smaller dataset which contains k images from classes. word embeddings. encoding the semantic similarity between labels plays an im- portant role in bridging the gap between seen and unseen class predictions. in this work, we study two different word embedding models, i.e. word vec (mikolov et al., b) trained on google news (wang et al., a) and fasttext (joulin et al., a) trained on common crawl (mikolov et al., ). the word embeddings of classes that contain multiple words are obtained by averaging the embeddings of each individual word. implementation details. we implement our spnet model with pytorch (paszke et al., ). we apply imagenet pretrained vgg- (simonyan and zisserman, b) and resnet- (he et al., ) as our backbone to extract features, and our model is built on the deeplab-v (chen et al., ) that first extract features and apply atrous spatial pyramid pooling layer to produce the visual features, whose dimension is the same as the dimension of the semantic embedding space (i.e., for fast-text and word vec; for their concatenation). in this work, for vgg backbone we apply adam solver (kingma and ba, ) with initial learning rate . × − , and for resnet we use sgd with initial learning rate . × − . following (chen et al., ), we use the “poly” learning rate policy where current learning rate is the initial one multiplied by ( − itermax iter ) power, and we set power to . . momentum and weight decay are set to . and . . . . zero-label semantic segmentation task one of the contributions of our work is to propose a new task of zero-label semantic segmentation (zlss). in this section, we propose two benchmarks with zero-label data splits and detail the zero-label evaluation protocol. proposed zero-label dataset splits. the zero-label assumption, i.e. similar to the zero-shot assumption (xian et al., b), states that none of the pixel values of the query images are allowed to belong to the classes that were used in any part of the training procedure, i.e. be it the model training or cnn training. this means that as cnns are commonly trained on imagenet k, none of the test classes should overlap with it. following this rule, in coco-stuff dataset, we create a new zero-label class split by selecting classes as unseen and the rest of the classes as seen classes as they appear in imagenet k which was used to pretrain resnet. . experiment # classes # images train+val test train+val test coco-stuff + + pascal-voc + + table . : statistics of data splits for coco-stuff and pascal-voc datasets in terms of the number of classes and the number of images in the training and test splits. in contrast to zero-shot image classification, we do not remove images that contain unseen classes from the training set, otherwise most of training images will be eliminated because seen and unseen classes co-occur frequently. instead, we utilize the whole training set but ignore the labels of pixels belonging to unseen classes during training, i.e. these pixels do not effect the loss we optimize in any stage of the training. for pascal-voc, since (a) only classes are unseen in imagenet k, (b) one of the candidate class ‘person’ has no semantically similar class present in the dataset, (c) all vehicles appear in imagenet thus reducing candidate diversity - we simply take the first classes as seen classes and the last classes as unseen classes. we use the train/val split provided by the coco-stuff dataset: k training images as our training set and k validation images as our test set, and pascal-voc: k training images and . k test images. following the cross- validation procedure of (xian et al., b), we further hold out a subset of training classes as our validation set for tuning hyperparameters. more details about our data splits are shown in table . . evaluation protocol. the intersection-over-union (iou), i.e. the standard evaluation criteria commonly used in semantic segmentation, quantizes the overlap between the predicted mask and the target mask. it is defined to be the size of the intersection between predicted and target regions divided by the union of them. for each class, its mean iou is computed by averaging the iou over all the query images. in zlss, as the test-time search space is restricted to be unseen classes we report the mean iou averaged over unseen classes. in gzlss, the search space becomes the union of seen and unseen classes. in analogy to generalized zero-shot image classification (xian et al., b), we report the mean iou on seen classes, the mean iou on unseen classes and the harmonic mean (h) of them, which is defined as, h = ∗ miouseen ∗ miouunseen miouseen + miouunseen ( . ) where miouseen and miouunseen represents the mean iou of seen classes and unseen classes respectively. similarly, in few-label semantic segmentation, we report mean iou on unseen classes, but in generalized few-label semantic segmentation, the mean iou over all classes is reported. chapter . zero-label and few-label semantic segmentation fasttext (ft) word vec (w v) ft + w v hvsl . . . spnet . . . table . : effect of word embeddings: mean iou of unseen classes in zlss with different word vec, fasttext and their combination on coco-stuff. both hvsl and spnet are based on resnet . coco-stuff pascal voc spnet-vgg . . spnet-resnet . . table . : effect of cnn architectures: zlss with different cnn architectures, i.e. vgg and resnet on coco-stuff and pascal-voc. word embedding is the ft + w v. . . . spnet model analysis for zlss in this section, we provide an extensive evaluation for different design choices of our model. effect of word embeddings. we compare our spnet model with hvsl and study the effect of different word embeddings in table . . we investigate three types of word embeddings, i.e. fasttext, word vec and their concatenation. our first observation is that spnet performs significantly better than hvsl wrt. all the word embedding types, e.g. spnet achieves . vs . with fasttext, and . vs . with word vec compared to hvsl. this implies that the cross-entropy loss is more suitable to the zlss task than hinge loss. furthermore, we observe that fasttext and word vec achieve comparable results, and combining them significantly boosts the performance, e.g. mean iou of spnet are improved from . and . to . . this indicates that fasttext and word vec contain complementary information. hence, for the rest experiments, we use spnet with fasttext and word vec combined. effect of cnn architectures. our aim here is to compare different cnn architec- tures that are used as the backbone network to encode images in deeplab-v (chen et al., ). table . shows the zlss results with vgg (simonyan and zisserman, b) and resnet (he et al., ). we first observe that with vgg , the results are lower than with resnet on both coco-stuff and pascal-voc which im- plies that resnet generate stronger features than vgg for this task. besides, these results show that our spnet achieves reasonably good results in zlss with both cnn architectures. specifically, on coco-stuff, spnet obtains . % miou with vgg and . % miou with resnet . this is promising because our model does not require expensive dense pixel-level annotations for each class, e.g. it is not trained with any of the unseen class labels of coco-stuff. this also indicates . experiment figure . : miou of unseen classes on coco-stuff ordered wrt average object size (left to right). that our model is easily adapted to various semantic segmentation architectures. effect of the object size. we study the difficulty of zero-label semantic segmentation as a function of object sizes. figure . presents a plot of per class miou score for the unseen classes in coco-stuff. the classes are ordered according to their average object sizes – with the largest on the right. it shows that there is a tendency that the performance is better for classes with larger objects. the plot also indicates that the knowledge transfer from seen to unseen classes is in general successful for the challenging stuff classes, such as, tree ( . %), grass ( . %, clouds ( . %), considering the fact that they do not have semantically similar classes present in imagenet k. we also observe that our model performs well for cow ( . %) however the result is quite poor the other unseen animal class giraffe ( . %). . . . generalized zero-label semantic segmentation gzlss is a practical segmentation setting as the test time search space contains both seen and unseen classes, i.e. the pixel can be assigned to one of the seen or one of the unseen classes. since the training images contain only labeled pixels of seen classes, at the test time, prediction will be biased to seen classes. hence, this is a particularly challenging task. we alleviate this issue by using the calibrated classifier formulated in eq. ( . ), which reduces the prediction scores of seen classes by a calibration factor γ. we select the optimal γ value based on the best harmonic mean iou on a held-out validation set. figure . shows the mean iou on unseen classes, seen classes and their harmonic mean on coco-stuff and pascal voc datasets. on coco-stuff spnet obtains . % mean iou on unseen classes while iou on chapter . zero-label and few-label semantic segmentation figure . : gzlss results on coco-stuff and pascal-voc. we report mean iou of unseen classes, seen classes and their harmonic mean (perception model is based on resnet and the semantic embedding is ft + w v). spnet-c represents spnet with calibration. zsl gzsl cub sun awa cub sun awa ale . . . . . . sje . . . . . . sync . . . . . . gfzsl . . . . . . spnet . . . . . . table . : spnet loss on (generalized) zero-shot learning tasks. top- accuracy on unseen classes is reported for zsl and harmonic mean of seen and unseen classes is for gzsl. seen classes is high, i.e. . %. this is expected, in fact the same trend is observed in generalized zero-shot image classification task (xian et al., b; chao et al., ). on the other hand, after calibration i.e. spnet-c, on coco-stuff, mean iou of unseen classes jumps to . % while maintaining high miou on seen classes, i.e. . % and overall spnet-c achieves a harmonic mean of . %. this is due to the fact that after calibration, i.e. reducing prediction scores of seen classes, pixels get predicted as seen classes less frequently. on pascal-voc we observe a similar trend. while spnet performs poorly on unseen classes, i.e. . % miou, with calibration this increases to . % miou. accordingly, spnet-c achieves an impressive . % harmonic miou. these results demonstrate that our spnet does not only tackle zlss but also can handle the more practical gzlss via predictor calibration. . experiment # training samples per class m io u o ve r u n se e n c la ss e s (i n % ) coco-stuff spnet baseline # training samples per class m io u o ve r u n se e n c la ss e s (i n % ) pascal-voc spnet baseline figure . : few-label semantic segmentation (flss) on coco-stuff and pascal voc with increasing number of training samples per class, i.e. n ∈{ , , , , }. . . . (generalized) zero-shot image classification we evaluate our spnet on the zero-shot image classification task on three benchmark datasets, i.e. cub (welinder et al., ) ( types of birds with attributes), sun (patterson and hays, ) ( scenes with attributes) and awa (lampert et al., ) ( classes of animals with attributes) with various sizes and com- plexities, following the data splits and evaluation protocol of (xian et al., b). we train spnet with cross-entropy loss: l(x, y) = − log exp (φ(x)>vwy) ∑c∈s exp (φ(x)>vwc) ( . ) where φ(x) is -dim image feature extracted from a pre-trained resnet (no fine-tuning on the task), wc ∈ rdw is the class attribute of class c, v ∈ r ×dw is the linear embedding we aim to learn. table . shows that both in zsl and gzsl settings, our spnet improves over the state of the art on both cub and sun while it obtains the second best results on awa despite the simplicity of our model. both ale (akata et al., a) and sje (akata et al., b) utilize the visual-semantic hinge loss, sync (changpinyo et al., ) align visual and semantic embedding space using manifold learning, and gfzsl (verma and rai, ) learns a generative model to capture the class conditional distribution. however, our spnet simply projects image feature into the class embedding space and apply the standard softmax classifier with the class embedding being the weights. . . few-label semantic segmentation task the (generalized) few-label semantic segmentation (flss and gflss) tasks arise in many real-world applications since class distribution in semantic segmentation chapter . zero-label and few-label semantic segmentation # training samples per class o ve ra ll m io u ( in % ) coco-stuff spnet baseline # training samples per class o ve ra ll m io u ( in % ) pascal-voc spnet baseline figure . : generalized few-label semantic segmentation (gflss) on coco-stuff and pascal voc with increasing number of training samples per class, i.e. n ∈ { , , , , }. is usually skewed, e.g. there are far more road pixels than bicycles. in contrast to zlss where the training set has no labeled example from unseen (novel) classes, in flss and gflss, the model is trained with all classes. at the evaluation time, the goal of flss is to segment only the novel classes, while gflss aims to segment both base and novel classes. for each novel class, we randomly draw n ∈{ , , , , } images that contain this class from the training set and disable ignore-label condition for those novel pixels. in addition, we develop a simple baseline based on the original deeplab-v (chen et al., ), which is finetuned on novel classes after an initial optimization on base classes. we carry out experiments in flss and gflss with the baseline and our spnet on coco-stuff and pascal-voc. in flss task, figure . shows the comparison results with the baseline model (chen et al., ). our spnet yields significantly better results than the baseline in all cases on both coco-stuff and pascal voc. in particular, when there is only labeled example, our spnet significantly outperforms the baseline, achieving a mean iou of . % over . % in coco-stuff and . % over . % in pascal voc on fzlss. the accuracy improvement from labeled sample to labeled samples is significant, i.e. ≈ % miou for both coco-stuff and pascal voc. these results demonstrate the effectiveness of our spnet when the training samples are scarce. as for gflss in figure . , a similar trend is observed. our spnet improves over deeplab in all cases. the accuracy improvement is steady from to , , , especially on coco-stuff. the difference between deeplab and ours is . % miou over both seen and unseen classes on pascal voc when our model has access to only one labeled sample from novel classes. . experiment (b) (a) figure . : qualitative results of our spnet in -, - and -label semantic segmenta- tion settings on coco-stuff on novel classes (color coded at the top). base classes are masked out with black color. (a) promising results (b) failure cases. . . qualitative results figure . shows the qualitative results obtained by our spnet in zlss and flss on coco-stuff. our target novel classes are encoded with the colors shown at the top. base classes are masked out with black color. some interesting results are as follows. in the first row and left column, our spnet is already able to segment two previously unseen classes cows and grass at zlss, i.e. -label, and results get refined after the model sees more examples. it is also worth noting that our spnet is able to predict stuff classes, such as road, river, clouds etc., in zlss setting. for instance, spnet successfully segments clouds and roads in the image at the second row and right column, and perfectly segments the river in the image at the third row and left column. another interesting result is in the left column of th row where the model correctly segments the frisbee in -label setting but incorrectly labels most pixels as ‘skateboard’ which in fact is another sports category object. on the other hand, some failure cases are shown in the bottom row. our spnet fails to predict giraffe at -label because shape and appearance of a giraffe vary significantly from seen classes. however, seeing only example is enough to recognize and segment it, which demonstrates the ability of our spnet in learning from few examples. again, the result gets refined with labeled examples. these results support our observations in the previous sections and indicate that our spnet, although simple, adapts its knowledge attained in previously seen examples to unseen ones. chapter . zero-label and few-label semantic segmentation . conclusions in this work, we propose spnet to semantically segment novel classes with no labeled examples or with only a few samples, within the new tasks of zero-label semantic segmentation and few-label semantic segmentation respectively. this model consists of a visual-semantic embedding module that encodes images in the word embedding space and a semantic projection layer that produces class probabilities. our spnet is both conceptually and computationally simple but surprisingly effective and end-to- end trainable. we have shown its applicability across zero-shot image classification to zero-label and few-label semantic segmentation tasks on various benchmark datasets. g e n e r a l i z e d m a n y- way f e w - s h o t v i d e o c l a s s i f i c a t i o n contents . introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . related work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . r- dfsv approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . d cnn for fsv ( dfsv) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . retrieval-enhanced dfsv (r- dfsv) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . experiments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . experimental settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . comparing with the state-of-the-art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . increasing the number of classes in fsv . . . . . . . . . . . . . . evaluating base and novel classes in gfsv . . . . . . . . . . . . ablation study and retrieved clips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . qualitative results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i n chapters , and , we show that semantic embeddings can be used as an effective way for knowledge transfer on image classification tasks. we extend this idea to the semantic segmentation field in chapter . while most of works for few-shot learning are in the image domain, there are many real-world applications that takes as input videos e.g., self-driving cars and video surveillance. therefore, in this chapter, we study how to develop efficient methods for the few-shot video classification task where there are only few training examples per class. our main idea is to improve the issues of video representation learning and lacking of training data. we argue that existing methods with d cnns are unable to learn temporal information and thus develop a simple d cnn baseline, surpassing existing methods by a large margin. to circumvent the need of labelled examples, we propose to leverage weakly-labelled videos from a large dataset using video tag retrieval followed by selection of the best clips with visual similarities, yielding further improvement. our results saturate current -way benchmarks for few- shot video classification and therefore we propose a more challenging benchmark involving more classes and a mixture of classes with varying supervision. chapter . generalized many-way few-shot video classification classes with many videos learning d cnn leverage tag-labeled videos few-shot video learning playing guitar # of class labeled videos # of classes arabesque (ballet) tag-labeled videos + class-labeled videos few-shot videos text figure . : leveraging the lack of class-labeled videos (time-consuming to obtain) with tag-labeled videos, few-shot videos and text, our d cnn saturates existing benchmarks and enables the more challenging generalized few-shot multi-way video classification task. . introduction in the video domain annotating data is very time-consuming due to the additional time dimension. a lack of labelled training data is more prominent in fine-grained scenarios such as action recognition. for some fine-grained action classes at the ”tail” of the skewed long-tail distribution (see figure . for an illustration), e.g., ‘arabesque in ballet”, collecting enough training videos is even not possible it is thus of great importance to investigate how to learn to classify videos in the limited labeled training data regime. visual recognition methods that operate in the few-shot learning setting aim to generalize a classifier trained on known classes (often referred to as base classes) with enough training data to unknown (novel) classes with only a few labelled training examples. while considerable attention has been devoted to the scenario of few-shot image classification (vinyals et al., ; qi et al., ; ravi and larochelle, ; chen et al., ), few-shot video classification is relatively unexplored. existing few-shot video classification approaches (zhu and yang, ; cao et al., ) are mostly based on frame-level features extracted from a d cnn, which essentially ignores the important temporal information. although additional temporal modules have been added at the top of a pre-trained d cnn, necessary temporal cues may be lost when temporal information is learned on top of static image features. we argue that under-representing temporal cues may negatively impact the robustness of the classifier. in fact, in the few-shot scenario it may be . related work risky for the model to rely exclusively on appearance and context cues extrapolated from the few examples available. in order to make temporal information available we propose to represent the videos by means of a d cnn. while obtaining labelled videos for target classes is time-consuming and chal- lenging, there are many weakly-labelled videos available on the internet, e.g. there are , tag-labelled videos in the yfcc m (thomee et al., ) dataset. our second goal is thus to leverage such tag-labelled videos (figure . ) to alleviate the lack of training data for our few-shot video models. existing experimental settings for few-shot video classification (zhu and yang, ; cao et al., ) are limited. searching for the label among novel classes, i.e. classes with few-shot videos, in each testing episode is restrictive. moreover, restricting the search space to novel classes at test time, i.e. test set consists of only videos from novel classes and models only have to predict novel classes, and ignoring the base classes is unrealistic because in real-world applications test videos are expected to belong to any class. in this work, our goal is to push the progress of few-shot video classification in three ways: ) to learn the temporal information, we revisit spatiotemporal cnns in the few-shot video classification regime. we develop a d cnn baseline that maintains significant temporal information within short clips; ) we propose to retrieve relevant tag-labeled videos from a large video dataset, i.e. yfcc m, to circumvent the need for class-labeled videos of novel classes; ) we extend current few-shot video classification evaluation by introducing two challenging experimental settings. in generalized few-shot video classification task, the search space has no restriction in terms of classes. in few-shot video classification with more ways, the search space goes beyond five towards all classes. our extensive experimental results demonstrate that on existing settings spatiotemporal cnns outperform the state-of-the-art by a largin margin, and on our proposed settings weakly-labeled videos retrieved using tags successfully tackles both of our new few-shot video classification tasks. . related work low-shot learning setup. the low-shot image classification (mensink et al., ; ravi and larochelle, ; hariharan and girshick, ) setting uses a large-scale fully labelled dataset for pre-training a dnn and a low-shot dataset with a small number of examples from a disjoint set of classes. the terminology “k-shot n-way classification” means that in the low-shot dataset there are n distinct classes and k examples per class for training. evaluating with few examples (k small) is bound to be noisy. therefore, the k training examples are often sampled several times and accuracy results are averaged (hariharan and girshick, ; douze et al., ). many authors focus on cases where the number of classes n is small as well, which amplifies the measurement noise. for that case (ravi and larochelle, ) introduce the notion of “episodes”. one episode is one sampling of n classes and k examples chapter . generalized many-way few-shot video classification per class. it is feasible to use distinct datasets for pre-training and low-shot evaluation. hovever, to avoid dataset bias (torralba et al., ) it is easier to split a large super- vised dataset into a set of “base” classes and a set of “novel” classes. the evaluation is most often performed only on novel classes, except (hariharan and girshick, ; xian et al., c; schoenfeld et al., ) who evaluate on the combination of base+novel classes. recently, a low-shot video classification setup has been proposed (zhu and yang, ; dwivedi et al., ). they use the same type of decomposition of the dataset as (ravi and larochelle, ), with learning episodes and random sampling of low-shot classes. in this work, we follow and extend the evaluation protocol of (zhu and yang, ). tackling low-shot learning. the simplest low-shot learning approach is to extract embeddings from the images using the pre-trained trunk and train a linear classi- fier (akata et al., a) or logistic regression (hariharan and girshick, ) on top using the k training available examples. another approach is to cast low-shot learn- ing as a similarity search problem (wang et al., b). the “inprinting” approach (qi et al., ), consists in building a linear classifier from the embeddings of training ex- amples, then fine-tune it. it also belongs to this family, since it is equivalent to doing class-mean similarity search with a cosine distance. as a complementary approach, (joulin et al., b) has looked into exploiting noisy labels to aid classification. by leveraging tags of m images from the yfcc m dataset (thomee et al., ), they show improvements over imagenet-pretraining. in this work, we use videos from yfcc m retrieved by tags to augment and improve training of our classifier. in a meta-learning setup, the the low-shot classifier is assumed to have hyper- parameters or parameters that must be adjusted before training. thus, there is a preliminary meta-learning step that consists in training those parameters on simu- lated episodes sampled from the main training data. matching networks (vinyals et al., ) “meta-learns” an lstm that maps the low-shot training examples into a classifier. feature hallucination (wang et al., c) meta-learns how to generate ad- ditional training data for novel classes, directly in the feature space. in maml (finn et al., ), the embedding classifier is meta-learned to adapt quickly and without overfitting to fine-tuning. recent works (chen et al., ; wang et al., b) suggest that state-of-the- art performance can be obtained by methods that do not need meta learning. in particular, (chen et al., ) show that meta-learning methods are less useful when the image descriptors are expressive enough, which is the case when they are from high-capacity networks trained on large datasets. therefore, we focus on techniques that do not require a meta-learning stage. deep descriptors for videos. moving from hand-designed descriptors (dollár et al., ; laptev, ; sadanand and corso, ; wang and schmid, ) to learned deep-network based descriptors (feichtenhofer et al., a,b; karpathy et al., ; simonyan and zisserman, a; wang et al., ; tran et al., ) has been . r- dfsv approach enabled by labeled large-scale datasets (kay et al., ; karpathy et al., ), and parallel computing hardware. deep descriptors are either based on d-cnn models operating on a frame-by-frame basis with temporal aggregation (girdhar et al., ; yue-hei ng et al., ), or more commonly d-cnn models operating on sequential sequences of images we refer to as video-clips (tran et al., , ). recently, ever-more-powerful descriptors have been developed leveraging two-stream architectures using additional modalities (feichtenhofer et al., b; simonyan and zisserman, a), factorized d convolutions (tran et al., , ), or multi- scale approaches (feichtenhofer et al., ). while most of these descriptors are trained in a fully supervised way, advances in learning deep descriptors in either weakly-supervised (yalniz et al., ; ghadiyaram et al., ; mahajan et al., ) or self-supervised fashion have been explored as well (korbar et al., ; owens and efros, ). . r- dfsv approach in the few-shot learning setting (zhu and yang, ), classes are split into two disjoint label sets, i.e., base classes (denoted as cb) that have a large number of training examples, and novel classes (denoted as cn) that have only a small set of training examples. let xb denote the training videos with labels from the base classes and xn be the training videos with labels from the novel classes (|xb|� |xn|). given the training data xb and xn, the goal of the conventional few-shot video classification task (fsv) (zhu and yang, ; cao et al., ) is to learn a classifier which searches for the labels among novel classes at test time. as the test-time search space is restricted to novel classes, the fsv setting is unrealistic. thus, in this chapter, we additionally study the generalized few-shot video classification (gfsv) which allows videos at test time to belong to any base or novel class. . . d cnn for fsv ( dfsv) in this section, we introduce our spatiotemporal cnn baseline for few-shot video classification ( dfsv). our approach in figure . consists of ) a representation learning stage which trains a spatiotemporal cnn on the base classes, ) a few-shot learning stage that trains a linear classifier for novel classes with few labelled videos, and ) a testing stage which evaluates the model on unseen test videos. the details of each of these stages are given below. representation learning. our model uses a spatiotemporal cnn (tran et al., ) φ : rf× ×h×w → rdv , encoding a short, fixed-length video clip of f rgb frames with spatial resolution h × w to a feature vector in the dv-dimensional euclidean space. on top of the feature extractor φ, we define a linear classifier f (•; wb) parameterized by a weight matrix wb ∈ rdv×|cb|, producing a probability distribution over the base classes. the objective is to jointly learn the network φ and the classifier wb by minimizing the cross-entropy classification loss on video clips randomly chapter . generalized many-way few-shot video classification fixed stage : pretraining stage : fine-tuning stage : meta-testing meta-train set clips per videor d r d linear layer & softmax output ce sampling clip batch sampling clip batch linear layer & softmax output ce sampling clip batch r d (fixed) linear layer & softmax output ce videos from tag retrieval support set clips per video select best clips r d (fixed) linear layer & softmax output average over clips of a video query set clips per video tag retrieval “dancing ballet” select best clips “busking” class name "arnold,bandstan d,busking,circus" "ballet" video tagsfasttext embedding retrieved video support video r d (fixed) clips per video clips per video r d (fixed) clip embeddings avg top- clip nearest neighbor search sampling clip batch representation learning few-shot learning testing pre-training fine-tuning videos from tag retrieval support set tag-based video retrieval select best clips sampling clip batch fasttext embedding ballet dancing ballet busking avg avg top- clip select best clips nearest neighbor search + r d r d playing drums ice-skating playing in a band representation learning few-shot learning testing videos from base classes on target dataset tag-based video retrieval fasttext embedding ballet dancing ballet busking top- clip select best clips + r( + )d r( + )d dancing ballet ice skating busking random or pretrained ` class name of a novel class tags of yfcc m yfcc m candidate videos clip embedding nearest neighbor search class prototype of a novel class clip of candidate videos -shot video support set novel classes fsv gfsv playing golf figure . : our approach is composed of three steps: representation learning, few- shot learning and testing. in representation learning, we train a r( + )d from the random initialization or sports m-pretrained model on the base classes of our target dataset. in few-shot learning, given few-shot support videos from novel classes, we first retrieve a list of candidate videos for each class from yfcc m (thomee et al., ) using their tags, followed by selecting the best matching short clips from the retrieved videos using visual features. those clips serve as additional training examples to learn classifiers that generalize to novel classes at test time. sampled from training videos xb of base classes. more specifically, given a training video x ∈xb with a label y ∈cb, the loss for a video clip xi ∈ rf× ×h×w sampled from video x is defined as, l(xi) = − log σ(w tb φ(xi))y ( . ) where σ denotes the softmax function that produces a probability distribution and σ(•)y is the probability at class y. following (chen et al., ), we do not do meta-learning, so we can use all the base classes as a whole to learn the network φ. few-shot learning. this stage aims to adapt the learned network φ to recognize novel classes cn with a few training videos xn. to reduce overfitting, we fix the network φ and learn a linear classifier f (•, wn) by minimizing the cross-entropy loss on video clips randomly sampled from videos in xn, where wn ∈ rdv×|cn| is the weight matrix of the linear classifier. similarly, we define the loss for a video clip xi sampled from x ∈xn with a label y as l(xi) = − log σ(w tn φ(xi))y ( . ) testing. the spatiotemporal cnn operates on fixed-length video clips of f rgb frames and the classifiers make clip-level predictions. at test time, the model must . r- dfsv approach predict the label of a test video x ∈ rt× ×h×w with arbitrary time length t. we achieve this by randomly drawing a set l of clips {xi}li= from video x, where xi ∈ rf× ×h×w . the video-level prediction is then obtained by averaging the prediction scores after the softmax function over those l clips. for few-shot video classification (fsv), this is: l l ∑ i= f (xi; wn). ( . ) for generalized few-shot video classification (gfsv), both base and novel classes are taken into account and we concatenate the base class weight wb learned in the representation stage with the novel class weight wn learned in the few-shot learning stage: l l ∑ i= f (xi; [wb; wn]). ( . ) . . retrieval-enhanced dfsv (r- dfsv) during few-shot learning, fine-tuning the network φ or learning the classifier f (•; wn) alone is prone to overfitting. moreover, class-labeled videos to be used for fine- tuning are scarce. instead, the hypothesis is that leveraging a massive collection of weakly-labeled real-world videos would improve our novel-class classifier. thus, for each novel class, we propose to retrieve a subset of weakly-labelled videos, associate pseudo-labels to these retrieved videos and use them to expand the training set of novel classes. for efficiency and to reduce the label noise, we adopt the following two-step retrieval approach. tag-based video retrieval. the yfcc m dataset (thomee et al., ) includes around k videos collected from flickr, with a total length of over hours. processing a large collection of videos has a high computational demand and a large portion of them are irrelevant to our target classes. thus, we restrict ourselves to videos with tags related to those of the target class names. leveraging information orthogonal with the actual video content increases the visual diversity. given a video with user tags {ti}si= where ti ∈t is a word or phrase and s is the number of tags, we represent it with an average tag embedding s ∑ s i= ϕ(ti). the tag embedding ϕ(.) : t → rdt maps each tag to a dt dimensional embedding space, e.g., fasttext (joulin et al., ). similarly, we can represent each class by the text embedding of its class name and then for each novel class c, we compute its cosine similarity to all the video tags and retrieve the n most similar videos according to this distance. selecting best clips. the video tag retrieval selects a list of n candidate videos for each novel class. however, those videos are not yet suitable for training because the annotation may be erroneous, which can harm the performance. besides, some weakly-labelled videos can last as long as an hour. we thus propose to select the chapter . generalized many-way few-shot video classification best short clips of f frames from those candidate videos using the few-shot videos of novel classes. given a set of few-shot videos x cn from novel class c, we randomly sample l video clips from each video. we then extract features from those clips with the spatiotemporal cnn φ and compute the class prototype by averaging over clip features. similarly, for each retrieved candidate video of novel class c, we also randomly draw l video clips and extract clip features from φ. finally, we perform a nearest neighbour search with cosine distance to find the m best matching clips of the class prototype. this can be formulated as max xj cos(pc, φ(xj)) ( . ) where pc denotes the class prototype of class c, xj is the clip belonging to the retrieved weakly-labeled videos. after repeating this process for each novel class, we obtain a collection of pseudo-labeled video clips xp = {x cp} |cn| c= where x c p indicates the best m video clips from yfcc m for novel class c. batch denoising. the retrieved video clips contribute to learning a better novel class classifier f (•; wn) in the few-shot learning stage by expanding the training set of novel classes from xn to xn ⋃ xp. xp may inevitably include noisy video clips with wrong labels. during the optimization, we adopt a simple strategy to alleviate the noise: we construct a mini-batch with half video clips from xn and another half video clips from xp at each iteration. the purpose is to reduce the gradient noise in each mini-batch by enforcing that half of the samples are correct. . experiments in this section, we first describe the existing experimental settings and our proposed setting for few-shot video recognition. we then present the results comparing our approaches with the state-of-the-art methods in the existing setting on two datasets, the results of our approach in our proposed settings, model analysis and qualitative results. . . experimental settings here we describe the four datasets we use, previous few-shot video classification protocols and our settings. datasets. kinetics (kay et al., ) is a large-scale video classification dataset which covers human action classes including human-object and human-human interactions. its videos are collected from youtube and trimmed to include only one action class. the ucf (soomro et al., ) dataset is also collected from youtube videos, consisting of realistic human action classes, with one action label in each video. somethingv (goyal et al., ) is a fine-grained human action recognition dataset, containing action classes, in which each video shows a . experiments # classes # videos train val test train val test kinetics + ucf + somethingv + table . : statistics of our data splits on kinetics, ucf and somethingv datasets. we follow the train, val, and test class splits of (zhu and yang, ) and (cao et al., ) on kinetics and somethingv respectively. in addition, we add test videos (the second number under the second test column) from train classes for gfsv. we also introduce a new data split on ucf and for all datasets we propose -, -, -, -way (the maximum number of test classes) and -, -shot setting. human performing a predefined basic action, such as “picking something up” and “pulling something from left to right”. we use the second release of the dataset. yfcc m (thomee et al., ) is the largest publicly available multimedia collection with about . million images and k videos from flickr. although none of these videos are annotated with a class label, half of them ( k) have at least one user tag. we use the tag-labeled videos of yfcc m to improve the few-shot video classification. prior setup. the existing practice of (zhu and yang, ) and (cao et al., ) indicates randomly selecting classes on kinetics and on somethingv datasets respectively. those classes are then randomly divided into , , and non- overlapping classes to construct the meta-training, meta-validation and meta-testing sets. the meta-training and meta-validation sets are used for training models and tuning hyperparameters. in the testing phase of this meta-learning setting (zhu and yang, ; cao et al., ), each episode simulates a n-way, k-shot classification problem by randomly sampling a support set consisting of k samples from each of the n classes, and a query set consisting of one sample from each of the n classes. while the support set is used to adapt the model to recognize novel classes, the classification accuracy is computed at each episode on the query set and mean top- accuracy over , episodes constitutes the final accuracy. proposed setup. the prior experimental setup is limited to n = classes in each episode, even though there are novel classes in the test set. as in this setting the performance saturates quickly, we extend it to -way, -way and -way settings. similarly, the previous meta-learning setup assumes that test videos all come from novel classes. on the other hand, it is important in many real-world scenarios that the classifier does not forget about previously learned classes while learning novel classes. thus, we propose the more challenging generalized few-shot video classification (gfsv) setting where the model needs to predict both base and novel classes. to evaluate a n-way k-shot problem in gfsv, in addition to a support and a query chapter . generalized many-way few-shot video classification set of novel classes, at each test episode we randomly draw an additional query set of samples from each of the base classes. we do not sample a support set for base classes because base class classifiers have been learned during the representation learning phase. we report the mean top- accuracy of both base and novel classes over episodes. kinetics, ucf and somethingv datasets are used as our few-shot video classification datasets with disjoint sets of train, validation and test classes (see table . for details). here we refer to base classes as train classes. test classes include the classes we sample novel classes from in each testing episode. for kinetics and somethingv , we follow the splits proposed by (zhu and yang, ) and (cao et al., ) respectively for a fair comparison. it is worth noting that out of test classes in kinetics appear in sports m, which is used for pretraining our d convnet. but the performance drop is negligible if we replace those classes with other random kinetics classes that are not present in sports m (more details can be found in the supplementary material). following the same convention, we randomly select , and non-overlapping classes as train, validation and test classes from ucf dataset, which is widely used for video action recognition. we ensure that in our splits the novel classes do not overlap with the classes of sports m. for the gfsv setting, in each dataset the test set includes samples from base classes coming from the validation split of the original dataset. implementation details. unless otherwise stated our backbone is a -layer r( + )d (tran et al., ) pretrained on sports m (karpathy et al., ) which takes as input video clips consisting of f = rgb frames with spatial resolution of h = × w = . we extract clip features from the dv = dimensional top pooling units of the r( + )d. in the representation learning stage, we fine-tune the r( + )d with a constant learning rate . on all datasets and stop training when the validation accuracy of base classes saturates. we perform standard spatial data augmentation including random cropping and horizontal flipping. we also apply temporal data augmen- tation by randomly drawing clips from a video in one epoch. in the few-shot learning stage, the same data augmentation is applied and the novel class classifier is learned with a constant learning rate . for epochs on all the datasets. at test time, we randomly draw l = clips from each video and average their predictions for a video-level prediction. as for the retrieval approach, we use the dimensional (dt = ) fast- text (joulin et al., a) embedding trained with googlenews. we first retrieve n = candidate videos for each class with video tag retrieval and then select m = best clips among those videos with visual similarities. . . comparing with the state-of-the-art in this section, we compare our model with the state-of-the-art in existing evaluation settings which mainly consider -shot, -way and -shot, -way problems and . experiments kinetics somethingv method -shot -shot -shot -shot cmn (zhu and yang, ) . . - - cmn++ (cao et al., ) . . . . tam (cao et al., ) . . . . dfsv (ours, scratch) . . . . dfsv (ours, pretrained) . . . . r- dfsv (ours, pretrained) . . - - table . : comparing with the state-of-the-art few-shot video classification methods. we report top- accuracy on the novel classes of kinetics and somethingv for -shot and -shot tasks (both in -way). dfsv (ours, scratch): our r( + )d is trained from scratch; dfsv (ours, pretrained): our model is trained from the sports m- pretrained r( + )d. r- dfsv (ours, pretrained): our model with retrieved videos, trained from the sports m-pretrained r( + )d. evaluate only on novel classes, i.e., fsv. the baselines cmn (zhu and yang, ) and tam (cao et al., ) are considered as the state-of-the-art in few-shot video classification. cmn (zhu and yang, ) proposes a multi-saliency embedding function to extract video descriptor, and few-shot classification is then done by the compound memory network (kaiser et al., ). tam (cao et al., ) proposes to leverage the long-range temporal ordering information in video data through temporal alignment. they additionally build a stronger cmn, namely cmn++, by using the few-shot learning practices from (chen et al., ). we use their reported numbers for fair comparison. the results are shown in table . . as the code from cmn (zhu and yang, ) and tam (cao et al., ) is not available at the time of submission we do not include ucf results. on kinetics, we observe that our dfsv (pretrain) approach, i.e. without retrieval, outperforms the previous best results by over % in -shot case ( . % of tam vs . % of ours), and by % in -shot case ( . . % of tam vs . % of ours). on somethingv dataset, we would like to first highlight that our dfsv (scratch) significantly improves over tam by . % in -shot ( . % of tam vs . % of ours) and by surprisingly . % in -shot ( . % of tam vs . % of ours). this is encouraging because the d cnn backbone of tam is pretrained on imagenet, while our r( + )d backbone is trained from random initialization. our dfsv (pretrain) yields further improvement after using the sports m- pretrained r( + )d. we observe that the effect of the sports m-pretrained model on somethingv is not as significant as on kinetics because there is a large domain gap between sports m to somethingv datasets. those results show that a simple linear classifier on top of a pretrained d cnn, e.g. r( + )d (tran et al., ), performs better than sophisticated methods with a pretrained d convnet as a backbone. although as shown in c d (tran et al., ), i d (carreira and zisserman, ), r( + )d (tran et al., ), spatiotemporal cnns have an edge over d spatial chapter . generalized many-way few-shot video classification convnet (he et al., ) in the fully supervised video classification with enough annotated training data, we are the first to apply r( + )d in the few-shot video classification with limited labeled data. it is worth noting that our r( + )d is pretrained on the sports m while the d resnet backbone of cmn (zhu and yang, ) and tam (cao et al., ) is pretrained on imagenet. a direct comparison between d cnns and d cnns is hard because they are designed for different input data. while it is standard to use an imagenet-pretrained d cnn in image domains, it is common to apply a sports m-pretrained d cnn in video domains. one of our goals is to establish a strong few-shot video classification baseline with d cnns. intuitively, the temporal cue of the video is better preserved when clips are processed directly by a spatiotemporal cnn as opposed to processing them as images via a d convnet. indeed, even though we train our dfsv from the random initialization on somethingv dataset which requires strong temporal information, our results still remain promising. this confirms the importance of d cnns for few-shot video classification. our r- dfsv (pretrain) approach, i.e. with retrieved weakly-labeled video clips, lead to further improvements in -shot case ( dfsv (pretrain) . % vs r- dfsv (pretrain) . ) on kinetics dataset. this implies that weakly-labeled videos retrieved from the yfcc m dataset include discriminative cues for kinetics tasks. in -shot, our r- dfsv (pretrain) approach achieves similar performance as our dfsv (pretrain) approach however with an . % this task is almost saturated. we do not retrieve any weakly-labeled videos for the somethingv dataset because it is a fine-grained dataset of basic actions and it is unlikely that yfcc m includes any relevant video for that dataset. as a summary, although -way classification setting is still challenging to those methods with d convnet backbone, the results saturate with the stronger spatiotemporal cnn backbone. . . increasing the number of classes in fsv although prior works evaluated few-shot video classification on -way, i.e. the number of novel classes at test time is , our -way results are already saturated. hence, in this section, we go beyond -way classification and extensively evaluate our approach in the more challenging, i.e., -way, -way and -way few-shot video classification (fsv) setting. note that from every class we use one sample per class during training, i.e. one-shot video classification. as shown in figure . , our r- dfsv method exceeds % accuracy both in kinetics and ucf datasets for -way classification. with the increasing number of novel classes, e.g. , and , as expected, the performance degrades. note that, our r- dfsv approach with retrieval consistently outperforms our dfsv approach without retrieval and the more challenging the task becomes, e.g. from -way to -way, the larger improvement retrieval approach can achieve on kinetics, i.e. our retrieval-based method is better than our baseline method by . % in -way (ours dfsv . % vs our r- dfsv . % ) and the gap becomes . % in -way (our dfsv . % vs our r- dfsv . %). . experiments # of novel classes (n-way) t o p - a cc . (i n % ) kinetics r- dfsv dfsv # of novel classes (n-way) t o p - a cc . (i n % ) ucf r- dfsv dfsv figure . : results of dfsv and r- dfsv on both kinetics and ucf in the one-shot video classification setting (fsv). in this experiment we go beyond the classical -way classification setting. we use , , and (all) of the novel classes in each testing episode. we report the top- accuracy of novel classes. the trend with a decreasing accuracy by going from -way to -way indicates that the more realistic task on few-shot video classification has not yet been solved even with a spatiotemporal cnn. we hope that these results will encourage more progress in this challenging setting of many-way few-shot video classification setting. . . evaluating base and novel classes in gfsv the fsv setting has a strong assumption that test videos all come from novel classes. in contrast to the fsv, gfsv is more realistic and requires models to predict both base and novel classes in each testing episode. in other words, base classes become distracting classes when predicting novel classes which makes the task more challenging. intuitively, distinguishing novel and base classes is a challenging task because there are severe imbalance issues between the base classes with a large number of training examples and the novel classes with only few-shot examples. in this section, we evaluate our methods in the more realistic and challenging generalized few-shot video classification (gfsv) setting. in table . , on the kinetics dataset, we observe a large performance gap between base and novel classes in both -shot and -shot cases, i.e., dfsv only achieves . % on novel classes vs . % on base classes. the reason is that predictions of novel classes are dominated by the base classes. interestingly, our r- dfsv improves dfsv on novel classes in both -shot and -shot cases, e.g., . % of dfsv vs . % of r- dfsv in -shot. a similar trend can be observed on the ucf dataset. those results demonstrate that our retrieval-based approach can alleviate the imbalance issues to some extent. at the same time, we find that generalized few-shot video classification (gfsv) setting, e.g. not restricting the test time search space only to novel classes but considering all of the classes even though base classes are chapter . generalized many-way few-shot video classification kinetics ucf method novel base novel base -shot dfsv . . . . r- dfsv . . . . -shot dfsv . . . . r- dfsv . . . . table . : generalized few-shot video classification results on kinetics and ucf in -way tasks. we report top- accuracy on both base and novel classes. pr ss rl vr bd bc acc x . x . x x . x x . x x x . x x x x . x x x x . table . : ablation study on -way -shot video classification task on the meta-test set of kinetics. pr: pretrain r( + )d on sports m; ss: self-supervised model of avts (korbar et al., ); rl: representation learning on base classes; vr: retrieve unlabeled videos with tags (thomee et al., ); bd: batch denoising. bc: best clip selection. distracting, is still a challenging task and hope that this setting will attract interest of a wider community for future research. . . ablation study and retrieved clips in this section, we perform an ablation study to understand the importance of each component of our approach. after the ablation study, we evaluate the importance of the number of retrieved clips to the few-shot video classification (fsv) performance. ablation study. we ablate our model in the -shot, -way video classification task on kinetics dataset with respect to six critical parts including pretraining r( + )d on sports m (pr), self-supervised model of (korbar et al., ) as the backbone (ss), representation learning on base classes (rl), video retrieval with tags (vr), batch denoising (bd) and best clip selection (bc). table . shows the results. we start from a model with only a few-shot learning stage on novel classes. if a pr component is added to the model (first result row in table ( . ), the newly- obtained model can achieve . % accuracy which is only slightly better than random guessing performance ( %). it demonstrates that a pretrained d cnn alone is . experiments # of retrieved clips per class t o p - a cc . (i n % ) kinetics # of retrieved clips per class . . . t o p - a cc . (i n % ) ucf figure . : the effect of increasing the number of retrieved clips, left: on kinetics, right: on ucf . both experiments are conducted on the one-shot, five-way classification task, reporting top- accuracy in the few-shot video classification (fsv) setting. not sufficient for a good performance. besides, it also indicates that there exists a domain shift between the pretraining dataset, i.e. sports m, and our target kinetics dataset. adding rl component to the model (the second result row) means to train representation on base classes from scratch, which results in a worse accuracy of . % compared to our full model. the primary reason for worse results is that optimizing the massive number of parameters of r( + )d is difficult on a train set consisting of only videos. interestingly, if we adopt the self-supervised pretrained d cnn (mc pretrained on kinetics without using any label) of (korbar et al., ), i.e., ss, we immediate get . % performance gains (the third result row) over training from random initialization. adding both pr and rl components (the fourth row) obtains an accuracy of . which significantly boosts adding pr and rl components alone. next, we study two critical components proposed in our retrieval approach. comparing to our approach without retrieval (the fourth row), directly append- ing retrieved videos from yfcc m (vr) to the few-shot training set of novel classes (the fifth result row) leads to . % performance drop, while performing the batch denoising (the sixth row) in addition to vr obtains . % gain. this implies that noisy labels from retrieved videos may hurt the performance but our batch denoising technique handles the noise well. finally, adding the best clip selection (bc, the last row) after vr and bd gets a big boost of . % accuracy. in summary, those ablation studies demonstrate the effectiveness of the six different critical parts in our approach. influence of the number of retrieved clips. intuitively, when the number of re- trieved clips increases, the retrieved videos become more diverse, but at the same time, the risk of obtaining negative videos becomes higher. we show the effectiveness chapter . generalized many-way few-shot video classification retrieved clipsquery video blasting sand busking dancing ballet ice skating paragliding clarkeconner, sand clarkeconner, sand day,dirt,hat,man,ro- cks,sand,walkway beach,sand beach,sand buskers, nightlife busking,londonist, music,musicians busking,londonist, music,musicians buskers,nightlife, winstonsalem arnold,bandstand, busking,circus ballet,dance, nutcracker ballet ballet ballet ballet cold,ice,iceskating, outdoor,skating cold,ice,iceskating, outdoor,skating cold,ice,iceskating, outdoor,skating cold,ice,iceskating, outdoor,skating cold,ice,iceskating, outdoor,skating paraglider paraglider paragliding paraglider poweredparagliding baking,chop, kitchen,knife,towel cake,cut,fondant, zombie baking,chop, kitchen,knife,towel baking,chop, kitchen,knife,towel backyard,chickens, eating,watermelon cutting watermelon query video retrieved clips unboxing play trumpet music , sussex, trombone, trumpet base , club, jazz guitar, music base , club, jazz guitar, music base , club, jazz guitar, music base , club, jazz guitar, music asthma, gadgets, unboxing makerbot, unboxing asthma, gadgets, unboxing iphone, apple, unboxing apple, macbook unboxing figure . : top- retrieved video clips from yfcc m for novel classes on kinetics. the left column is the class name with its one-shot query video and the right column shows the retrieved -frame video clips (middle frame is visualized) together with their users tags. negative retrievals are marked in red. of our r- dfsv with the increasing number of retrieved clips in figure . . on the kinetics dataset (left of figure . ), without retrieving any videos, the performance is . %. as we increase the number of retrieved video clips for each novel class, the performance keeps improving and saturates at retrieving clips per class, reaching an accuracy of . %. on the ucf dataset (right of figure . ), retrieving clip gives us . % gain. retrieving more clips does not further improve the results, indicating more negative videos are retrieved. on the other hand, our batch denoising strategy is able to tolerate the noise to some extent. we observe a slight performance drop at retrieving clips because the noise level becomes too high, i.e. there are times more noisy labels than clean labels. . . qualitative results in figure . , we visualize the top- video clips we retrieve from yfcc m dataset with video tag retrieval followed by the best clips selection. here we only show novel classes of kinetics dataset due to the space limitation and visualization of other classes are in supplementary. we observe that the retrieved video clips of some classes are of high quality, meaning that those videos truly reveal the target novel classes. for instance, retrieved clips of class “busking” are all correct because user tags of those videos consist of words like “buskers”, “busking” that are close to the class name, and the best clip selection can effectively filter out the irrelevant clips. it is intuitive those clips can potentially help to learn better novel class classifiers by supplementing the limited training videos. failure cases are also common. for example, videos from the class “cutting . conclusion watermelon” do not retrieve any positive videos. the reasons can be that there are no user tags of cutting watermelon or our tag embeddings are not good enough. those negative videos might hurt the performance if we treat them equally, which is why the batch denoising is critical to reduce the effect of negative videos. . conclusion in this work, we point out that a spatiotemporal cnn trained on a large-scale video dataset saturates existing few-shot video classification benchmarks. hence, we propose new more challenging experimental settings, namely generalized few-shot video classification (gfsv) and few-shot video classification with more ways than the classical -way setting. we further improve spatiotemporal cnns by leveraging the weakly-labelled videos from yfcc m using weak-labels such as tags for text- supported and video-based retrieval. our results show that generalized more-way few-shot video classification is challenging and we encourage future research in this setting. c o n c l u s i o n s a n d f u t u r e p e r s p e c t i v e s contents . discussion of contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . future perspectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . zero-shot image classification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . few-shot image classification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . zero-shot and few-shot learning beyond image classification . . a broader view on the topic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . s ignificant progress has been made across various computer vision tasks in recent years. deep neural networks have achieved great breakthrough in reliable object recognition for up to object categories (he et al., ), in widely-applicable activity recognition (carreira and zisserman, ) and in robust semantic image segmentation (chen et al., ) for autonomous driving. despite the success, training a deep neural network always requires a massive amount of labeled instances. in real world applications, labeled instances are often expensive and difficult to obtain because annotating data requires expert knowledge. training a standard deep neural network on a small training set will lead to overfitting. it is thus of great importance to study the problems of learning with limited labeled data. this thesis aims to push the progress of the field by exploring how to transfer knowledge from known classes with enough labeled instances to novel classes with only limited labeled instances. more specifically, we focus on the following three directions, ( ) zero-shot image classification where novel object classes have zero training examples, ( ) few-shot image classification where each novel object class has only a few training examples, and ( ) zero-shot and few-shot learning for semantic image segmentation and video action recognition. after a summary of the thesis with respect to the three directions in the following, we discuss our contributions and future perspectives. first, we examined zero-shot image classification. the goal of the task is to recognize novel object classes without observing any image instances of them by transferring knowledge from known to novel classes. in order to capture the complex correlation between image and semantic embedding spaces, we propose a piece- wise linear label embedding approach called latem that learns multiple linear transformation from image embedding space to the semantic embedding space. as there is no agreed upon zero-shot image classification benchmark, we first define a new benchmark by unifying both the evaluation protocols and data splits of publicly available datasets. we re-evaluate a significant number of methods on our chapter . conclusions and future perspectives benchmark. our analysis shows the status of the field and advocates to study the realistic generalized zero-shot learning problem where both known and novel classes are predicted during the test phase. to tackle the extreme data imbalance issue in generalized zero-shot learning, we introduce a feature generation framework, namely f-clswgan, that synthesizes visual features for novel classes. we empirically show that f-clswgan is effective to balance the base and novel class performance and the generated features can be applied to any zero-shot learning methods. additionally, we extend f-clswgan to a stronger version called f-vaegan-d , which combines vae and gans for a better generative model and can learn from unlabeled data as well. the second direction of this thesis is concerned with few-shot image classification. the goal of the task is to recognize novel object classes after observing only a few instances of them. while human beings naturally have such ability, deep neural networks are difficult to be trained on a small training set due to the high risk of overfitting. while most of few-shot learning methods only rely on images of base class for knowledge transfer, we argue that semantic embeddings e.g., attributes, word embeddings and class hierarchy, provide complementary information that would benefit novel classes. therefore, we extend our zero-shot learning approaches i.e., latem and f-vaegan-d , to work in the few-shot learning setting. to this end, we generate few-shot learning splits on public datasets what are widely used for zero- shot learning. we show that our approaches have an edge over the standard linear classifier in few-shot image classification, indicating the benefits of using semantic embeddings. in addition, it is encouraging that our f-vaegan-d outperforms the state-of-the-art few-shot approaches on challenging large-scale few-shot benchmarks as well. our experimental results also demonstrate that f-vaegan-d is able to obtain further improvement from unlabeled data . the third part of the thesis looks at zero-shot and few-shot learning tasks be- yond the image classification. more specifically, we tackle both semantic image segmentation and video action recognition with limited training examples. while most few-shot and zero-shot works are tackling image classification, there are little works on other computer vision tasks. to this end, we introduce the zero-label and few-label semantic segmentation problems and new data splits on public semantic segmentation datasets i.e., coco-stuff and pascal-voc. the task is to segment novel classes with few or zero instances. inspired by our previous experience in zero-shot image classification, we develop a novel approach called spnet, that projects each pixel into the semantic embedding space for knowledge transfer. our spnet can be incorporated into any semantic segmentation networks. we empirically show that it achieves decent results in zero-label setting and outperforms the state-of- the-art methods in the few-label setting. in addition, we study the few-shot video classification problem. we found that previous methods focus only on developing complicated few-shot methods but fail to adopt strong video representation that captures better temporal information. our work shows that video representation with strong temporal modeling is critical for few-shot video classification. moreover, we propose to leverage weakly-labeled videos from a large-scale video dataset to . discussion of contributions expand the few-shot training set, leading to further improvement. in summary, this thesis defines a new zero-shot image classification benchmark. in order to improve the benchmark performance as well as few-shot image classifica- tion, we present a multi-modal learning approach and another two methods that generate synthetic visual features. we further tackle few-shot and zero-shot learning challenges for semantic segmentation and video action classification tasks. . discussion of contributions the goal of this thesis is to develop efficient methods to improve the performance of learning with limited labeled data. to this end, we study zero-shot and few-shot learning problems which aim to learn novel classes with zero or only a few training examples. in the following we will discuss the contributions and steps we made towards these goals and tasks with respect to the individual chapters. first, we presented a novel latent variable model, latent embeddings (latem), for learning a nonlinear (piece-wise linear) compatibility function for the task of zero-shot classification in chapter . latem is a multi-modal method, it uses images and class-level side-information either obtained through human annotation or in an unsupervised way from a large text corpus. latem incorporates multiple linear compatibility units and allows each image to choose one of them – such choices being the latent variables. we proposed a ranking based objective to learn the model using an efficient and scalable sgd based solver. we empirically validated our model on three challenging benchmark datasets for zero-shot classification of birds, dogs and animals. we improved the state-of-the-art for zero-shot learning using unsupervised class embeddings i.e., word embeddings, on awa and on two fine-grained datasets (cub and stanford dogs). on awa, we also improve the accuracy obtained with supervised class embeddings i.e., human-annotated attributes. this demonstrates quantitatively that our method learns a latent structure in the embedding space through multiple compatibility units. we also presented a qualitative analysis of our results and showed that the latent embeddings learned with our method leads to visual consistencies. we proposed a new method for selecting the number of latent variables automatically from the data by pruning. such pruning based method speeds up the training and leads to models with competitive space-time complexities compared to the cross-validation based method. we further extended our application domain to generalized zero-shot and generalized few-shot learning setting where at training time we assume the availability of either no or a few labeled samples from unseen classes. on the other hand, both at training and test time the search space includes all the class embeddings from seen and unseen classes. as expected, our evaluation on generalized zero-shot learning setting showed a significant loss of accuracy compared to the standard zero-shot learning setting which we analyzed through visualizations and quantitative results. our evaluation on generalized few-shots setting showed that with as few as two to ten samples from unseen classes, unsupervised class embeddings can outperform the supervised chapter . conclusions and future perspectives attributes. therefore, with increasing number of additional training samples, the difference between different class embeddings are reduced. second, in chapter , we evaluated a significant number of state-of-the-art zero-shot learning methods, i.e. (lampert et al., ; zhang and saligrama, ; xian et al., ; akata et al., c; romera-paredes et al., ; changpinyo et al., ; socher et al., ; norouzi et al., ; frome et al., ; akata et al., a; kodirov et al., ; verm and rai, ; ye and guo, ), on several datasets, i.e. sun, cub, awa , awa , apy and imagenet, within a unified evaluation protocol both in zero-shot and generalized zero-shot settings. our evaluation showed that generative models and compatibility learning frameworks have an edge over learning independent object or attribute classifiers and also over other hybrid models for the classic zero-shot learning setting. we observed that unlabeled data of unseen classes can further improve the zero-shot learning results, thus it is not fair to compare transductive learning approaches with inductive ones. we discovered that some standard zero-shot dataset splits may treat feature learning disjoint from the training stage as several test classes are included in the imagenet k dataset that is used to train the deep neural networks that act as feature extractor. therefore, we proposed new dataset splits making sure that none of the test classes in none of the datasets belong to imagenet k. moreover, disjoint training and validation class split is a necessary component of parameter tuning in zero-shot learning setting. in addition, we introduced a new animal with attributes (awa ) dataset. awa inherits the same classes and attributes annotations from the original animal with attributes (awa ) dataset, but consists of different , images with publicly available redistribution license. our experimental results showed that the methods that we evaluated perform similarly on awa and awa . moreover, our statistical consistency test indicated that awa and awa are compatible with each other. finally, including training classes in the search space while evaluating the methods, i.e. generalized zero-shot learning, provides an interesting playground for future research. although the generalized zero-shot learning accuracy obtained with models compared to their zero-shot learning accuracy is significantly lower, the relative performance comparison of different models remain the same. in summary, our work extensively evaluated the good and bad aspects of zero-shot learning while sanitizing the ugly ones. third, in chapter , we propose f-clswgan, a learning framework for feature generation followed by classification, to tackle the generalized zero-shot learning task. our f-clswgan model adapts the conditional gan architecture that is frequently used for generating image pixels to generate cnn features. in f-clswgan, we improve wgan by adding a classification loss on top of the generator, enforcing it to generate features that are better suited for classification. in our experiments, we have shown that generating features of unseen classes allows us to effectively use softmax classifiers for the gzsl task. our framework is generalizable as it can be integrated to various deep cnn architectures, i.e. googlenet and resnet as a pair of the most widely used architectures. it can also be deployed with various classifiers, e.g. ale, sje, devise, latem, eszsl that constitute the state of the . discussion of contributions art for zsl but also the gzsl accuracy improvements obtained with softmax is important as it is a simple classifier that could not be used for gzsl before this work. moreover, our features can be generated via different sources of class embeddings, e.g. sentence, attribute, word vec, and applied to different datasets, i.e. cub, flo, sun, awa being fine and coarse-grained zsl datasets and imagenet being a truly large-scale dataset. finally, based on the success of our framework, we motivated the use of gzsl tasks as an auxiliary method for evaluation of the expressive power of generative models in addition to manual inspection of generated image pixels which is tedious and prone to errors. for instance, wgan (gulrajani et al., ) has been proposed and accepted as an improvement over gan (goodfellow et al., ). this claim is supported with evaluations based on manual inspection of the images and the inception score. our observations in figure . and in figure . support this and follow the same ordering of the models, i.e. wgan improves over gan in zsl and gzsl tasks. hence, while not being the primary focus of this chapter, we strongly argue, that zsl and gzsl are suited well as a testbed for comparing generative models. fourth, in chapter , we develop a transductive feature generating framework that synthesizes cnn image features from a class embedding. our generated features circumvent the scarceness of the labeled training data issues and allow us to effectively train softmax classifiers. our framework combines conditional vae and gan architectures to obtain a more robust generative model. we further improve vae-gan by adding a non-conditional discriminator that handles unlabeled data from unseen classes. the second discriminator learns the manifold of unseen classes and backpropagates the wgan loss to feature generator such that it generalizes better to generate cnn image features for unseen classes. our feature generating framework is effective across zero-shot (zsl), generalized zero-shot (gzsl), few-shot (fsl) and generalized few-shot learning (gfsl) tasks on cub, flo, sun, awa and large-scale imagenet datasets. finally, we show that our generated features are visually interpretable, i.e. the generated images by by inverting features into raw image pixels achieve an impressive level of detail. they are also explainable via language, i.e. visual explanations generated using our features are class-specific. fifth, in chapter , we propose spnet to semantically segment novel classes with no labeled examples or with only a few samples, within the new tasks of zero-label semantic segmentation and few-label semantic segmentation respectively. this model consists of a visual-semantic embedding module that encodes images in the word embedding space and a semantic projection layer that produces class probabilities. our spnet is both conceptually and computationally simple but surprisingly effective and end-to-end trainable. we have shown its applicability across zero-shot image classification to zero-label and few-label semantic segmentation tasks on various benchmark datasets. finally, in chapter , we point out that a spatiotemporal cnn trained on a large-scale video dataset saturates existing few-shot video classification benchmarks. hence, we propose new more challenging experimental settings, namely generalized few-shot video classification (gfsv) and few-shot video classification with more chapter . conclusions and future perspectives ways than the classical -way setting. we further improve spatiotemporal cnns by leveraging the weakly-labelled videos from yfcc m using weak-labels such as tags for text-supported and video-based retrieval. our results show that generalized more-way few-shot video classification is challenging and we encourage future research in this setting. . future perspectives the content of this thesis mainly focuses on establishing benchmark and tackling imbalanced issues for few-shot and zero-shot learning in various computer vision applications. despite the progress we achieved, few-shot and zero-shot learning are still not saturating. in the following we first discuss items of future work with respect to the different directions of the thesis. in the last section we give a broader outlook for the field. . . zero-shot image classification most of zero-shot learning methods as well as proposed approaches in this thesis rely on deep representation that is pretrained or finetuned following the standard supervised learning setting. we postulate there exists special image representation that is more efficient for zero-shot learning. in addition, as semantic embeddings play an important role in zero-shot learning, it is promising to explore better unsupervised semantic embeddings rather than annotating attributes. we layout the following directions for future work. explainable zero-shot learning. this thesis has been adopting human annotated attributes for several datasets i.e. cub, awa and sun. while decent zero-shot results have been achieved with the attributes, we still lack an explainable approach that tells us how the zero-shot prediction is made. one possible way to improve the visual explainability is by localizing semantic parts i.e., “head of a bird”, “beak of a bird”, etc. previous works (e.g. zhang et al., b, ) directly tackle the bird part detection problem by using the part annotation, which is expensive to obtain. in a future work, we are interested in introducing new intermediate layers into a cnn architecture such that bird parts can be localised using only class-level attributes. we believe such representation network will naturally have better interpretibility and potentially lead to better fine-grained zero-shot learning performance due to its better locality. improving locality and compositionality of the image representation zero-shot learn- ing aims to achieve generalization on novel tasks. however, most of existing zero-shot learning works rely on the standard cnns, which has a different goal of achieving the same task generalization. in a future work, we are interested in exploring special representation learning framework for zero- shot learning. we are inspired by (sylvain et al., ) which points out that . future perspectives locality and compositionality are the two representation learning principles that attribute to a good performance in zero-shot learning. local features have been widely used in computer vision for a long history. the traditional hand-crafted features e.g., sift (lowe, ), surf (bay et al., ), extract statistics within local patches in an image and aggregate them to form a global image representation. similarly, cnns (lecun et al., ) perform convolution operation on local patches in the images followed by some non-liearity and pooling. by stacking multiple such convolutional layers, cnns increase its receptive and get more global features. local features can beneficial to novel task generalization because local information is often shared by many classes. on the contrary, global information is often category-specific and requires a lot of training examples to learn the within-class variations. another direction is to explore compositionality of the representation. the key insight is that the representation will be able to encode classes more efficiently if representation is compositional of visual primitives. the challenge is that how we define the compositional function and how we learn visual primitives. compositional zero-shot learning. most of the existing zero-shot learning works rely on attribute annotation to achieve the best performance. in real-world applications, attribute annotation is often not available. compositional zero- shot learning (purushwalkam et al., ) is a special zero-shot learning problem where attribute annotation is not available, but visual concepts are assumed to be composed by an adjective and an object e.g. “red apple” and “green apple”. the goal is to predict novel visual concepts that are unseen compositions of existing adjective and objects. interesting research ideas could be to explore how our feature generation idea can be adapted to this problem and how we learn compositional representation. graph convolutional networks (gcn) for large-scale zero-shot image classification. the zero-shot learning performance on the large-scale imagenet is limited by the weakness of noisy word embeddings. recently (wang et al., b) signifi- cantly improves the large-scale zero-shot learning performance by adopting a graph cnn (kipf and welling, ) on the wordnet hierarchy. but (wang et al., b) simply takes as input the original class hierarchy, ignoring the special tree structure of the wordnet and visual similarities. the gcn used in (wang et al., b) also has over-smoothing issues. therefore, we are interesting in exploring a better graph construction method and a new graph convolutional neural network technique for the large-scale zero-shot learning performance. learning unsupervised semantic embeddings. it is clear in this thesis that the se- mantic embeddings play a critical role in zero-shot learning performance. attributes often achieve the best results but they require expert knowledge to annotate. unsupervised word embeddings i.e., word vec (mikolov et al., b) and glove (pennington et al., ), are easier to obtain but it has a big performance gap behind the attributes. recently, a new language model chapter . conclusions and future perspectives called bert (devlin et al., ) has created new state-of-the-art on a wide range of nlp tasks. we believe it is promising to enhance the unsupervised embeddings by incorporating bert (devlin et al., ). . . few-shot image classification both zero-shot and few-shot learning share the same goal of novel task generalization. therefore, we believe technique that work for zero-shot learning can potentially work well in few-shot learning as well. for this reason, it is interesting to investigate image representation with better locality and compositionality for few-shot learning. in addition to that, we would consider the following topics as promising directions. cross-domain few-shot learning. significant improvement has been made in the few-shot learning setting where both base and novel classes belong to the same dataset i.e., mini-imagenet and omniglot. however, in many real-world applications, novel classes are likely from a different domain. for example, if the target novel classes belong to the medical image domains, it is difficult to collect sufficient amount of base class data from the same domain. therefore, we consider that learning to learn adaptation with limited labeled data would be an important direction for future few-shot learning research. unlabeled data from novel classes could potentially help to domain adaptation. generalized few-shot learning. majority of few-shot learning methods are evalu- ated in the meta-learning setup where a new set of classes is sampled from all the novel classes in each episode and the goal is to improve the novel class accuracy over many episodes. however, such evaluation protocol is not realistic because it ignores the base classes. in real-world applications, we are interested in the generalized few-shot learning where the model has to predict both base and novel classes. similar setting in zero-shot learning has attracted increasing attention, but there are not much few-shot learning works that tackle this problem. we believe it is an important direction as well. semi-supervised few-shot learning. while obtaining labeling data is difficult, un- labeled data is often easy to collect. therefore, it is of great importance to study semi-supervised few-shot learning field where the training set consists of few-shot labeled examples and a large number of unlabeled examples. pre- vious approaches are limited to adopt the classical semi-supervised learning technics like label propogation or semi-svm. we are interested in combining a few-shot learning objects on the labeled data with self-supervised learning ob- jectives on unlabeled data. given the success of recent self-supervised learning approaches (e.g. chen et al., ; he et al., ), we believe those technics would benefit few-shot learning. meta-learning. meta-learning or learning to learn, is a popular subfield of few- shot learning. the key insight is to exploit training classes for the purpose . future perspectives of learning “a meta procedure”, e.g., initialization, optimization algorithm, that generalizes well to novel classes. this concept sounds appealing, but we concern the limitation of their evaluation setting. more specifically, most of papers are only evaluated on classes with or samples per class in each episode. recently, (triantafillou et al., ) proposes a new large-scale meta-dataset that addresses those issues. we think it is interesting to work on meta-learning field on this more realistic benchmark. bayesian few-shot learning. most of few-shot learning approaches produce a single model after learning from only a small amount of training examples. however, there are a lot of uncertainties about the novel classes due to the small training set, resulting ambiguous description of novel classes. it is impossible that a single model could achieve accurate results on those novel classes. we believe that bayesian learning could address the ambiguity issues by learning a distribution of models for novel classes. unfortunately, previous bayesian few-shot approaches (e.g. gordon et al., ; yoon et al., ; finn et al., ) still do not achieve state-of-the-art results on mini-imagenet and recent realistic meta-learning benchmark (triantafillou et al., ). it would be important to further push the performance of bayesian approaches such that they are more appealing in practice. . . zero-shot and few-shot learning beyond image classification in addition to the image classification, there are many other computer vision applica- tions naturally facing the few-shot learning problems. here we list a few applications we are interested in. learning stronger temporal information for few-shot videos classification. our ap- proach for few-shot video classification does not capture long-term temporal information, which can be critical for recognizing actions. we are currently working on a project that aims to learn long-term temporal correlation in video through self-attention (vaswani et al., ). although the self-attention has been well established in the standard setting, it is not trivial on how to extend it to the few-shot learning setting. few-shot learning for medical image analysis. medical image analysis has always been an important field of computer vision research. the tasks for medical images analysis include image segmentation, computer-aided disease diag- nosis, and image registration for scanned images from ct, fmri, and x-ray. chexnet (rajpurkar et al., ) achieves radiologists-level pneumonia detec- tion performance by learning a deep cnn on a large-scale chest x-ray dataset. however, such large-scale medical image dataset is not always feasible due to the huge cost of collecting medical images. for novel diseases or other medical image tasks, the few-shot learning challenges remain there. we are excited to extend our expertise in few-shot learning to disease diagnosis from medical chapter . conclusions and future perspectives images. in particular, we plan to investigate knowledge transfer technics for novel diseases. improving zero-label and few-label semantic segmentation. this thesis has made the first step towards the zero-label and few-label semantic segmentation problems. while we have shown that a semantic project layer followed by the cross-entropy loss works well, we believe that exploring better loss functions is likely to lead to big improvements in the predictions. furthermore, we found that the performance of generalized zero-label semantic segmentation is still unsatisfied, we believe that exploring better semantic embeddings and special normalization technics are promising directions for this issue. few-shot d computer vision. d computer vision is a critical field for virtual reality, robotics and autonomous driving because the real world is obviously in d. typical d vision tasks include d reconstruction, d human body modeling and d scene understanding like detection and tracking problems. although deep learning has achieved big breakthrough in d vision , we have not seen the same progress in d vision because collecting and processing d training data are difficult. we do not have much expertise in d vision and it is hard to suggest any good ideas but we are definitely interested in studying it in the near future. . . a broader view on the topic our long-term goal is to develop machine perception that can generalized well after observing only limited labeled examples of novel tasks. few-shot and and zero-shot learning are simply two directions towards this goal. from a broader view, topics of learning with limited labeled data include but not limited to self-supervised learning, and long-tailed recognition problem and multi-modal learning. semi-supervised and self-supervised learning. semi-supervised and self-supervised learning are both two practical solutions for learning with limited labeled data. while semi-supervised learning leverages unlabeled data in addition to labeled data, self-supervised learning learns from a completely unlabeled dataset by solving other proxy tasks that make use of the structure of the input data. i am interested in develop an efficient learning algorithm that combines low-shot learning, semi-supervised learning and self-supervised learning. long-tailed recognition problem. real-world datasets inherently follow a long-tail distribution i.e., the number of samples per class is decreasing exponentially. a reliable visual recognition system should perform well on all the classes by balancing the dataset and transferring knowledge from known classes to novel classes. this is a very challenging task because it must handle imbalanced clas- sification and low-shot learning at the same time. i believe developing robust novelty detection algorithms, special sampling methods, and normalization technics to calibrate the prediction are promising directions. . future perspectives multi-modal learning. learning from multiple modalities of data has been shown to the amount of necessary training instances because different modalities often contain complementary information. in fact, human beings learn from multiple sensory modalities i.e., the five classic types of human perception are senses of vision (sight), audition (hearing), tactile stimulation (touch), olfaction (smell), and gustation (taste). while there have been a lot of studies in learning with vision and language, little research has been done in combining those five sensory modalities (or subsets of them). i feel it hold the potential to improve self-supervised learning by predicting the correspondence between two or multiple modalities. l i s t o f f i g u r e s . in almost all real-wold settings, the number of samples per category follows a skewed distribution i.e. a few categories have a large num- ber of samples while most of categories have only a small number of samples (as shown in the left figure). the scarcity of samples results in poor generalization performance of the powerful deep learn- ing methods which often require a huge number of labeled data to train. in this thesis, we address the challenges when learning with limited labeled data in the scenarios of image classification (e.g. he et al., ), semantic segmentation (e.g. long et al., ) and video classification (e.g. tran et al., ). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . compatibility learning frameworks that use a linear projection, e.g. sje akata et al. ( c) (figure on the left) may lead to a large projection error, however learning a piece-wise linear model (figure on the right) leads to more precise projections. here, crosses represent image embeddings and their projections on the class embedding space, w are the parameters of the compatibility function, solid circles represent the ground truth class embedding. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . effect of latent variable k on cub, awa and dogs datasets. we measure top- accuracy (in %) with the increasing number of latent models, i.e. k, learned with unsupervised class embeddings, i.e. w v, glo, hie. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . top images ranked by the matrices using word vec, glove, hierarchy and attribute class embeddings on cub dataset, each row corresponds to different matrix in the model. qualitative examples support our intuition – each latent variable captures certain visual aspects of the bird. note that, while the images may not belong to the same fine- grained class, they share common visual properties. . . . . . . . . . . . . left: confusion matrix of all the classes on awa dataset based on the latent factors learned using latem in the general setting (we use glo as class embedding). unseen classes are shown at the top of the confusion matrix. right: t-sne visualization of the confusion matrix with seen and unseen classes marked with blue and red respectively. visually similar classes such as chimpanzee and gorilla are embedded close to each other, hence being confused by the classifier. . . . . . . . . generalized zero- and few-shots learning settings evaluated on all for cub, awa and dogs using att (where available), w v, glo and hie embeddings. we show the top- , top- and top- accuracy (in%) with the increasing number of images per unseen class used during training. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . list of figures . zero-shot learning (zsl) vs generalized zero-shot learning (gzsl): at training time, for both cases the images and attributes of the seen classes (ytr) are available. at test time, in the zsl setting, the learned model is evaluated only on unseen classes (yts) whereas in gzsl setting, the search space contains both training and test classes (ytr ∪yts). to facilitate classification without labels, both tasks use some form of side information, e.g. attributes. the attributes are annotated per class, therefore the labeling cost is significantly reduced. . comparing awa (lampert et al., ) and our awa in terms of number of images (left) and t-sne embedding of the image features (the embedding is learned on awa and awa simultaneously, there- fore the figures are comparable). awa follows a similar distribution as awa and it contains more examples. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . robustness of methods evaluated on sun, cub, awa , apy using validation set splits (results are on the same test split). top: original split, bottom: proposed split (image embeddings = resnet). we measure top- accuracy in %. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ranking models by setting parameters on three validation splits on the standard (ss, left) and proposed (ps, right) setting. element (i, j) indicates number of times model i ranks at jth over all × observations. models are ordered by their mean rank (displayed in brackets). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . zero-shot learning experiments on imagenet, measuring top- , top- and top- accuracy. / h = classes with / hops away from imagenet k training classes (ytr), m /m k/m k denote , k and k most populated classes, l /l k/l k denote , k and k least populated classes, all = the remaining k categories of imagenet. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . gzsl on imagenet, measuring top- , top- and top- accuracy. / h: classes with / hops away from imagenet k ytr, m /m k/m k: / k/ k most populated classes, l /l k/l k: / k/ k least populated classes, all: remaining k classes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ranking models on the proposed split (ps) in generalized zero-shot learning setting. top-left: top- accuracy (t ) is measured on unseen classes (ts), top-right: t is measured on seen classes (tr), bottom: t is measured on harmonic mean (h). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . zero-shot (left) and generalized zero-shot learning (right) results in the transductive learning setting on our proposesd split. . . . . . . . . list of figures . cnn features can be extracted from: ) real images, however in zero- shot learning we do not have access to any real images of unseen classes, ) synthetic images, however they are not accurate enough to improve image classification performance. we tackle both of these problems and propose a novel attribute conditional feature generating adversarial network formulation, i.e. f-clswgan, to generate cnn features of unseen classes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . our f-clswgan: we propose to minimize the classification loss over the generated features and the wasserstein distance with gradient penalty. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . zero-shot learning results when comparing f-xgan versions with f-gmmn as well as comparing multimodal embedding methods with softmax. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . generalized zero-shot learning results when comparing f-xgan ver- sions with f-gmmn as well as comparing multimodal embedding methods with softmax. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . measuring the seen class accuracy of the classifier trained on generated features of seen classes w.r.t. the training epochs (with softmax). . . . . increasing the number of generated f-xgan features wrt unseen class accuracy (with softmax) in zsl. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . zsl and gzsl results on imagenet (zsl: t on yu, gzsl: t on yu). the splits, resnet features and word vec are provided by (xian et al., ). “ours” = feature generator: f-clswgan, classifier: softmax. . . our any-shot feature generating framework learns discriminative and interpretable cnn features from both labeled data of seen and unlabeled data of novel classes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . our any-shot feature generating network (f-vaegan-d ) consist of a feature generating vae (f-vae), a feature generating wgan (f-wgan) with a conditional discriminator (d ) and a transductive feature generator with a non-conditional discriminator (d ) that learns from both labeled data of seen classes and unlabeled data of novel classes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . top- zsl results on imagenet. we follow the splits in (xian et al., b) and compare our results with the state-of-the-art feature gener- ating model clswgan (xian et al., ). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . few-shot learning (fsl) results on cub and flo with increasing number of training samples per novel class. we report the top- accuracy on novel classes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . generalized few-shot learning (gfsl) results on cub and flo with increasing number of training samples per novel class. we report the top- accuracy on all classes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . few shot learning results on imagenet with increasing number of training samples per novel class (top- accuracy). left: fsl setting, right: gfsl setting. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . list of figures . interpretability: visualizations by generating images and textual ex- planations from real or synthetic features. for every block, the top is the target, the middle is reconstructed from the real feature (r) of the target, the bottom is reconstructed from a synthetic feature (s) from the same class. we also generate visual explanations conditioned with the predicted class and the reconstructed real or synthetic images. top (middle): features come from seen (unseen) classes. bottom: classes with a large inter-class variation lead to poorer visualizations and explanations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . we propose (generalized) zero- and few-label semantic segmentation tasks, i.e. segmenting classes whose labels are not seen by the model during training or the model has a few labeled samples of those classes. to tackle these tasks, we propose a model that transfers knowledge from seen classes to unseen classes using side information, e.g. semantic word embedding trained on free text corpus. . . . . . . . . our zero-label and few-label semantic segmentation model, i.e. sp- net, consists of two steps: visual semantic embedding and semantic projection. zero-label semantic segmentation is drawn as an instance of our model. replacing different components of spnet, four tasks are addressed (solid/dashed lines show the training/test procedures respectively). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . miou of unseen classes on coco-stuff ordered wrt average object size (left to right). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . gzlss results on coco-stuff and pascal-voc. we report mean iou of unseen classes, seen classes and their harmonic mean (perception model is based on resnet and the semantic embedding is ft + w v). spnet-c represents spnet with calibration. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . few-label semantic segmentation (flss) on coco-stuff and pascal voc with increasing number of training samples per class, i.e. n ∈ { , , , , }. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . generalized few-label semantic segmentation (gflss) on coco-stuff and pascal voc with increasing number of training samples per class, i.e. n ∈{ , , , , }. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . qualitative results of our spnet in -, - and -label semantic seg- mentation settings on coco-stuff on novel classes (color coded at the top). base classes are masked out with black color. (a) promising results (b) failure cases. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . leveraging the lack of class-labeled videos (time-consuming to ob- tain) with tag-labeled videos, few-shot videos and text, our d cnn saturates existing benchmarks and enables the more challenging gen- eralized few-shot multi-way video classification task. . . . . . . . . . . list of figures . our approach is composed of three steps: representation learning, few-shot learning and testing. in representation learning, we train a r( + )d from the random initialization or sports m-pretrained model on the base classes of our target dataset. in few-shot learning, given few-shot support videos from novel classes, we first retrieve a list of candidate videos for each class from yfcc m (thomee et al., ) using their tags, followed by selecting the best matching short clips from the retrieved videos using visual features. those clips serve as additional training examples to learn classifiers that generalize to novel classes at test time. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . results of dfsv and r- dfsv on both kinetics and ucf in the one-shot video classification setting (fsv). in this experiment we go beyond the classical -way classification setting. we use , , and (all) of the novel classes in each testing episode. we report the top- accuracy of novel classes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the effect of increasing the number of retrieved clips, left: on kinetics, right: on ucf . both experiments are conducted on the one-shot, five-way classification task, reporting top- accuracy in the few-shot video classification (fsv) setting. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . top- retrieved video clips from yfcc m for novel classes on ki- netics. the left column is the class name with its one-shot query video and the right column shows the retrieved -frame video clips (middle frame is visualized) together with their users tags. negative retrievals are marked in red. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . l i s t o f t a b l e s tab. . the statistics of cub, awa and dogs datasets in zero-shot setting. cub and dogs are fine-grained datasets whereas awa is a more general concept dataset. ytr+v and yts are seen and unseen class embeddings respectively. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . tab. . the statistics of cub, awa and dogs datasets in the generalized zero-shot learning setting. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . tab. . average per-class top- accuracy in zero-shot setting on awa, cub and dogs datasets. we compare eszsl (romera-paredes et al., ), eszsl* (romera-paredes et al., ), cmt (socher et al., ), sse (zhang and saligrama, ), jlse (zhang and saligrama, ), sje (akata et al., c) and latent embedding model (k is cross-validated) using the same splits, image and class embeddings as in (akata et al., c). . . . . . . . . . . . . . tab. . number of matrices selected using pruning (pr) and using cross- validation (cv). pr is obtained by k = . . . . . . . . . . . . . tab. . class embeddings combined as in (akata et al., c) (cnc: early fusion of class embeddings, cmb: late fusion of scores). . . . . . . tab. . average per-class top- accuracy on unseen classes (the results are averaged on five folds). sje: (akata et al., c), latem: latent embedding model (k is cross-validated). . . . . . . . . . . tab. . average per-class top- accuracy on unseen classes (averaged over five zero-shot splits that we used in the stability experiments). pr: proposed model learnt with pruning using k = , cv: with cross validation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . tab. . average per-class top- , and accuracy, i.e. t , t and t respectively, in generalized zero-shot learning setting when we have no samples from yts during training, however the search space during testing includes all the available labels, i.e. namely y = ytr ∪yv ∪yts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . tab. . statistics for sun (patterson and hays, ), cub (welinder et al., ), awa (lampert et al., ), proposed awa , apy (farhadi et al., ) in terms of size, granularity, number of attributes, number of classes in ytr and yts, number of images at training and test time for standard split (ss) and our proposed splits (ps). tab. . reproducing zero-shot results with methods that have a public implementation: o = original results, r = reproduced using provided image features and code. we measure top- accuracy in %. −: image features are not provided in the original paper for this dataset. top: zsl, bottom: transductive zsl. . . . . . . . list of tables tab. . zero-shot learning results on sun, cub, awa , awa and apy using ss = standard split, ps = proposed split with resnet features. the results report top- accuracy in %. . . . . . . . . . . tab. . cross-dataset evaluation over awa and awa in zero-shot learning setting on the proposed splits: left of the colon indicates the training set and right of the colon indicates the test set, e.g. awa :awa means that the model is trained on the train set of awa and evaluated on the test set of awa . we measure top- accuracy in %. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . tab. . imagenet with different splits: / h = classes with / hops away from the ytr of imagenet k, / k/ k most populated classes, / k/ k least populated classes, all = the remaining k categories of imagenet (yts). we measure top- accuracy in %. tab. . generalized zero-shot learning on proposed split (ps) measur- ing ts = top- accuracy on yts, tr=top- accuracy on ytr, h = harmonic mean (cmt*: cmt with novelty detection). we measure top- accuracy in %. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . tab. . cub, sun, flo, awa datasets, in terms of number of attributes per class (att), sentences (stc), number of classes in training + validation (ys) and test classes (yu). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . tab. . zsl measuring per-class average top- accuracy (t ) on yu and gzsl measuring u = t on yu, s = t on ys, h = harmonic mean (fg=feature generator, none: no access to generated cnn features, hence softmax is not applicable). f-clswgan signifi- cantly boosts both the zsl and gzsl accuracy of all classification models on all four datasets. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . tab. . gzsl results with googlenet vs resnet- features on cub (cnn: deep feature encoder network, fg: feature generator, u = t on yu, s = t on ys, h = harmonic mean, “none”= no generated features). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . tab. . gzsl results with conditioning f-xgan with stc and att on cub (c: class embedding, fg: feature generator, u = t on yu, s = t on ys, h = harmonic mean, “none”= no generated features). . tab. . summary table (u = t on yu, s = t accuracy on ys, h = harmonic mean, class embedding = stc). “none”: ale with no generated features. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . tab. . ablating different generative models on cub (using attribute class embedding and image features with no fine-tuning). zsl: top- accuracy on unseen classes, gzsl: harmonic mean of seen and unseen class accuracies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . list of tables tab. . comparing with the-state-of-the-art. top: inductive methods (ind), bottom: transductive methods (tran). fine tuning is performed only on seen class images as this does not violate the zero-shot condition. we measure top- accuracy (t ) in zsl setting, top- accuracy on seen (s) and unseen (s) classes as well as their harmonic mean (h) in gzsl setting. . . . . . . . . . . . tab. . statistics of data splits for coco-stuff and pascal-voc datasets in terms of the number of classes and the number of images in the training and test splits. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . tab. . effect of word embeddings: mean iou of unseen classes in zlss with different word vec, fasttext and their combination on coco-stuff. both hvsl and spnet are based on resnet . . . tab. . effect of cnn architectures: zlss with different cnn architec- tures, i.e. vgg and resnet on coco-stuff and pascal- voc. word embedding is the ft + w v. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . tab. . spnet loss on (generalized) zero-shot learning tasks. top- accu- racy on unseen classes is reported for zsl and harmonic mean of seen and unseen classes is for gzsl. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . tab. . statistics of our data splits on kinetics, ucf and somethingv datasets. we follow the train, val, and test class splits of (zhu and yang, ) and (cao et al., ) on kinetics and somethingv respectively. in addition, we add test videos (the second number under the second test column) from train classes for gfsv. we also introduce a new data split on ucf and for all datasets we propose -, -, -, -way (the maximum number of test classes) and -, -shot setting. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . tab. . comparing with the state-of-the-art few-shot video classifica- tion methods. we report top- accuracy on the novel classes of kinetics and somethingv for -shot and -shot tasks (both in -way). dfsv (ours, scratch): our r( + )d is trained from scratch; dfsv (ours, pretrained): our model is trained from the sports m-pretrained r( + )d. r- dfsv (ours, pretrained): our model with retrieved videos, trained from the sports m- pretrained r( + )d. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . tab. . generalized few-shot video classification results on kinetics and ucf in -way tasks. we report top- accuracy on both base and novel classes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . tab. . ablation study on -way -shot video classification task on the meta-test set of kinetics. pr: pretrain r( + )d on sports m; ss: self-supervised model of avts (korbar et al., ); rl: representation learning on base classes; vr: retrieve unlabeled videos with tags (thomee et al., ); bd: batch denoising. bc: 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relations to our work 	 . few-shot image classification 	 . . problem definition 	 . . evaluation protocols 	 . . a literature review of few-shot approaches 	 . . relations to our work 	 . zero-shot and few-shot tasks beyond image classification 	 . . semantic image segmentation 	 . . video action recognition 	 . . relations to our work 	 latent embedding for zero-shot image classification 	 . introduction 	 . background: bilinear joint embeddings 	 . latent embeddings model (latem) 	 . . objective 	 . . optimization 	 . . model selection 	 . . discussion 	 . experiments 	 . . zero-shot learning experiments 	 . . generalized zero-shot learning setting 	 . conclusions 	 zero-shot learning: the good, the bad and the ugly 	 . introduction 	 . related work 	 . evaluated methods 	 . . learning linear compatibility 	 . . learning nonlinear compatibility 	 . . learning intermediate attribute classifiers 	 . . hybrid models 	 . . transductive zero-shot learning setting 	 . datasets 	 . . attribute datasets 	 . . large-scale imagenet 	 . evaluation protocol 	 . . image and class embedding 	 . . dataset splits 	 . . evaluation criteria 	 . experiments 	 . . zero-shot learning experiments 	 . . generalized zero-shot learning results 	 . . transductive (generalized) zero-shot learning 	 . conclusion 	 feature generating networks for zero-shot image classification 	 . introduction 	 . related work 	 . feature generation & classification in zsl 	 . . feature generation 	 . . classification 	 . experiments 	 . . comparing with state-of-the-art 	 . . analyzing f-xgan under different conditions 	 . . large-scale experiments 	 . . feature vs image generation 	 . conclusion 	 enhanced feature generation frameworks for low-shot learning 	 . introduction 	 . related work 	 . f-vaegan-d model 	 . . baseline feature generating models 	 . . our f-vaegan-d model 	 . experiments 	 . . (generalized) zero-shot learning 	 . . (generalized) few-shot learning 	 . . interpreting synthesized features 	 . conclusion 	 zero-label and few-label semantic segmentation 	 . introduction 	 . related works 	 . approach 	 . . semantic projection network (spnet) 	 . . baseline: hinge visual-semantic loss (hvsl) 	 . experiment 	 . . zero-label semantic segmentation task 	 . . few-label semantic segmentation task 	 . . qualitative results 	 . conclusions 	 generalized many-way few-shot video classification 	 . introduction 	 . related work 	 . r- dfsv approach 	 . . d cnn for fsv ( dfsv) 	 . . retrieval-enhanced dfsv (r- dfsv) 	 . experiments 	 . . experimental settings 	 . . comparing with the state-of-the-art 	 . . increasing the number of classes in fsv 	 . . evaluating base and novel classes in gfsv 	 . . ablation study and retrieved clips 	 . . qualitative results 	 . conclusion 	 conclusions and future perspectives 	 . discussion of contributions 	 . future perspectives 	 . . zero-shot image classification 	 . . few-shot image classification 	 . . zero-shot and few-shot learning beyond image classification 	 . . a broader view on the topic 	 list of figures 	 list of tables 	 bibliography wp-p m- .ebi.ac.uk params is empty sys_ exception wp-p m- .ebi.ac.uk no params is empty exception params is empty / / - : : if (typeof jquery === "undefined") document.write('[script type="text/javascript" src="/corehtml/pmc/jig/ . . /js/jig.min.js"][/script]'.replace(/\[/g,string.fromcharcode( )).replace(/\]/g,string.fromcharcode( ))); // // // window.name="mainwindow"; .pmc-wm {background:transparent repeat-y top left;background-image:url(/corehtml/pmc/pmcgifs/wm-nobrand.png);background-size: auto, contain} .print-view{display:block} page not available reason: the web page address (url) that you used may be incorrect. message id: (wp-p m- .ebi.ac.uk) time: / / : : if you need further help, please send an email to pmc. include the information from the box above in your message. otherwise, click on one of the following links to continue using pmc: search the complete pmc archive. browse the contents of a specific journal in pmc. find a specific article by its citation (journal, date, volume, first page, author or article title). http://europepmc.org/abstract/med/ microsoft word - jazz education in india-a case study.docx abstract title of thesis: jazz education in india: a case study marcus hansel daniel, master of arts in music education, thesis directed by: michael p. hewitt, ph.d. professor of music education school of music there are people in india who enjoy jazz. it is a complex art form that requires proper instruction. the early part of my own jazz education was done in india and i did find learning opportunities rare. i wanted to study the experience of another indian who learns and performs jazz in india to be able to get an understanding of the status of jazz education in india. an exploratory, narrative single-case study was done of kirtana krishna, a jazz singer and guitarist in india. the international faculty at her institution gave her world class instruction. one of them, steve zerlin, was able to corroborate the facts and provide his own input. two other jazz intuitions have opened and all three serve as primers. they have increased the quality and quantity of jazz being performed and some of their alumni are continuing their jazz studies in the us. jazz education in india: a case study by marcus hansel daniel thesis submitted to the faculty of the graduate school of the university of maryland, college park, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of master of arts in music education advisory committee: dr. michael p. hewitt, chair dr. kenneth elpus dr. yo-jung han © copyright by marcus hansel daniel ii dedication this thesis is dedicated to my wife, esther daniel, who believed in me and that this was possible. i recall when i first said that i wanted to get my master's in music education; it seemed inconceivable, but now has become a reality, and the process has completely changed our lives. thank you for your support every step of the way, and for not giving up even when we had to be apart for a year and five days. i love you! who can find a virtuous woman, for her price is above rubies. - proverbs : iii acknowledgements it is with great gratitude that i acknowledge the many who have helped me write this thesis and in procuring my music education degree. it took great courage, commitment and sacrifice for many individuals in india to help me make the journey to the us in order to study for my master's in music education. my late father, francis daniel, who was a classical pianist and my first piano teacher. my mother, shanthi daniel, who always knew the value of education and encouraged me to pursue this degree. my mother in law, vijaykumari murari and my father in law mk murari, who spent countless hours on his knees to see me through - from the day we shared our plan with him and until today. the individuals who helped me through some tough barriers in paperwork and processes in getting across to the us. philip bhaskar, sudha rao, vijay babu, swaroop cormaty, abhishek kanti and arava solomon. for those who shepherded and guided me: vm samuel, george cherian, arul job, chandra paul and daniel david. friends in the us who were very immensely supportive: dawn rodgers-de fouw, terry bonham, delois bonham, sheldon cunningham and reginald slade. friends and fellow students at the university of maryland who inspired me, allowed me to pick their brains, and have just been a lot of fun. dana varona, grace chris, adam grisé, austin gaskin, yurong yang, michael quinlivan and sharon how. the exceptional faculty at the university of maryland. the late chris vadala, for making jazz so joyful and for gently guiding my piano playing in big band when i iv was so lost in the beginning. the amazing music education faculty and my thesis committee, dr. elpus, dr. han. my advisor, dr. michael hewitt, who has been very kind and has patiently been steering me in the right direction in the writing of this thesis. learning from him has been a great blessing! v table of contents dedication......................................................................................................................ii acknowledgements ...................................................................................................... iii table of contents...........................................................................................................v list of abbreviations ...................................................................................................vii identities .....................................................................................................................viii chapter : introduction ................................................................................................. synopsis of personal story ............................................................................................ the problem .......................................................................................................... the rationale......................................................................................................... research questions.................................................................................................... scope and limitations................................................................................................ chapter : literature review ........................................................................................ the history of jazz education in the us................................................................... the pioneers.......................................................................................................... the jazz degree.................................................................................................. jazz education in k- schools.......................................................................... excerpts from around the world ............................................................................ jazz in greece..................................................................................................... jazz in israel........................................................................................................ jazz in australia.................................................................................................. jazz in estonia..................................................................................................... jazz in the uk..................................................................................................... potential for growth........................................................................................... jazz in the indian context ....................................................................................... early jazz in india............................................................................................... bollywood music................................................................................................ jazz and traditional indian music...................................................................... the small indian jazz audience......................................................................... chapter : methodology .............................................................................................. axiological assumption .......................................................................................... my narrative....................................................................................................... epistemology and methodical choice .................................................................... narrative as an avenue of insight ........................................................................... a single-case study with narrative inquiry...................................................... exploratory study............................................................................................... case selection..................................................................................................... member check.................................................................................................... chapter : the narratives ........................................................................................... a synopsis of kirtana krishna's story .................................................................... a synopsis of steve zerlin's story .......................................................................... a combined story ................................................................................................... continued learning............................................................................................ answering the research questions ......................................................................... chapter : discussion ................................................................................................. vi comparing results .................................................................................................. economics ........................................................................................................... enculturation....................................................................................................... implications for music education ........................................................................... directions for future research ................................................................................ conclusion ............................................................................................................... appendices................................................................................................................... references ................................................................................................................... vii list of abbreviations berklee: berklee college of music comps: communities of musical practice gmi: global music institute hbcus: historically black colleges and universities sam: swarnabhoomi academy of music stem: science, technology, engineering and math umd: university of maryland us: united states of america usa: united states of america viii identities the names of people mentioned are all used with written permission, except for ramaswamy prasanna, due to his being a well-known figure and the founder of swarnabhoomi academy of music. chapter : introduction synopsis of personal story as an indian jazz pianist, my jazz education took its own unique path and trajectory. i was born in and my father, a classical pianist, had me undergo classical training. he was my first teacher and also taught me how to play by ear. by eighteen, i had heard enough about jazz to be interested in it. a former schoolmate and pianist, samuel samson and i used to play for each other and exchange notes. he had a teacher named dizzy sal, who, in his prime, was india's best jazz pianist. though samuel was in the early stages of piano playing and had been learning some pop and playing by ear from dizzy, through this association he knew that something fascinating called jazz existed. i did not know anything about dizzy sal, except the name as mentioned by samuel. only when preparing for this thesis, through my reading, i really learned who dizzy sal was (fernandes, ). dizzy met famous american jazz pianist dave brubeck in bombay (now renamed mumbai), india. brubeck took dizzy under his wing and helped him get enrolled in berklee college of music in boston, usa. dizzy left the us prematurely and returned to india after having contracted some undefined disease. he remained a recluse and taught a very limited number of students. samuel was one of the few fortunate students to have dizzy as his piano teacher. when we were in our late teens, he often talked about this extraordinary and elusive entity called jazz that dizzy played, much to my curiosity. samuel also introduced me to my first jazz teacher victor martins, who had studied jazz at north texas state university in the s. i took lessons from victor for just a few months, before he immigrated to canada. after that, i studied through books and vhs tapes for a few years while continuing classical training. at twenty-three i began my bachelor of music, in michigan, at grace christian university, where professor steve talaga was a faculty member and jazz piano instructor. i took lessons from him for five of my eight semesters. i returned to india after getting my bachelor of music. after some years of running a business there, i changed careers and became a professional jazz musician and also a private piano instructor. around , i formed the group traffic jam and we performed until . we never lacked an audience, an indication that there are indians who enjoy jazz. since, , i have been enrolled in the university of maryland, in college park, maryland, usa. while essentially a music education grad student, i have also been involved in the jazz department. in each semester at umd i have played in two jazz ensembles, one being a big band and the other being a sextet or septet and this has been a huge learning experience. the problem the study of jazz for me is ongoing and is currently continuing in the united states. the brief personal narrative serves to highlight four factors that contributed to my motivation for this research. firstly, a part of my jazz education was done in india, mostly in the early stages. secondly, the majority of my professional jazz career was in india. thirdly, even though, in india, jazz is a niche genre, there are people who enjoy it. the gigs and concerts i played there always had some jazz aficionados present. the interest exists, but there are few opportunities to learn jazz. fourthly, my recent experiences of playing in jazz ensembles in the university of maryland made me aware that i was a lot less exposed to jazz than my bandmates, many of whom had far higher levels of expertise than me. this created an awareness of jazz being a much larger ocean than i had conceived of and that i had to catch up. apart from the brief few months of studying under victor martins, there were no other opportunities for jazz instruction that i was able to find in india. most of the jazz musicians i played with in the s in traffic jam and in other bands were self- taught, and some part of their learning was online. being able to receive private instruction would have been a dream for them. the private jazz piano students that i had considered themselves privileged to have found me, i was a rare commodity. in my city, bangalore, of about ten million people, there were perhaps no more than two other jazz piano teachers, and as far as i knew, i was the only one who taught regular weekly lessons. there was one competent jazz guitar teacher in bangalore, and even he did not teach regular weekly lessons, just occasional master classes. i did not know any other jazz teachers of voice or of any other instrument. one past issue has been resolved. today, almost any material available in the united states can be purchased through www.amazon.in, and my students hardly ever lacked the books that they needed. though jazz can be learned from books and the internet, they provide limited guidance. developing wrong technique is one of the potential problems. the rationale based on the interest that exists, it seems logical that if there were more opportunities, there would be many more learners receiving jazz instruction. nothing compares to having actual lessons from an expert instructor. because of the limited opportunities, it is important to study the reasons why these conditions exist. regarding current practice in jazz education in india, i am not the best person to share my experience. two of the larger drawbacks are my age, and that i presently reside outside india. a native indian younger person, in an earlier learning phase, who has more recently been receiving jazz instruction in india and is a current performer there, would have more updated and relevant information. this led to the decision to find a participant to conduct a case study. of the options considered for an individual on whom to conduct a case study, jazz singer and guitarist, kirtana krishna stood out as the best option. i have been impressed with her knowledge of jazz harmony which indicated to me that she had studied it in depth. i knew enough about her to know she had some degree of formal jazz study within india and was therefore acquainted with current practices in jazz education. the purpose of the study the purpose of the study is to determine the status of jazz education in india through the narrative case study of kirtana krishna. though i was unaware at the time i set out to do the study, a former faculty of the participant lives close to the university from where the research is based. it was opportune to be able to include his angle on the participant's experience from the other side of the desk, as a faculty member. furthermore, i was able to also view the participant from my lens, and included my perspective based on the four aforementioned factors under the "the problem" heading. therefore, it is a single case study, with three perspectives. research questions based on the rationale and purpose of the study i have formulated the following research questions, which i hope will yield a better understanding of the status of jazz education in india: . what are the circumstances that might cause an indian to choose jazz as a genre to perform? . how does someone interested in jazz develop their musical skill in india? . in what ways do jazz artists build professional careers in india? scope and limitations a limitation is that it is a single case study. others might have had quite different experiences. since this study is a primer, in new territory, it is intended to explore the topic. hence, it is also exploratory research. there is potential for future studies to expand into having multiple cases. a deliberate limitation is someone who did her jazz studies exclusively in india. this is because the purpose is to find out about the status of jazz education in india, and someone with mixed experiences might not fit the requirement. another limitation is that this would be a definitive study in the years from to . i wanted the study to be as recent as possible as, the only article i found with any reference to jazz education in india is mentions the dates being in the early s (pinckney, ). therefore, due to the need for research reflecting the current situation, i wanted it to be as recent as possible, with a time span wide enough to cover the years of jazz activity of the participant in question. chapter : literature review in order to determine the status of jazz education in india, it would be expedient to examine the literature on how jazz education developed and progressed in the united states as it is the country of origin. certainly, jazz is often learned and taught informally through private instructors and enculturation. however, the degree programs in us universities provide the records and the documentation to track this growth in a more objective manner. if it is indeed deemed to be a success and has had a good growth rate, as jazz education goes beyond american shores, the precedent is established. jazz does require a demanding training regime and jazz education has become a field of study; it is a complex, intricate and intellectual genre of music (przysinda et. al., ). a few worldwide examples and excerpts bear reviewing which helps in understanding the international growth trend in jazz education, and also how cultural factors affect each country differently. finally, the history of jazz in india and the current music culture will be examined in order to understand the setting into which the current practice in jazz education is being done. the history of jazz education in the us jazz initially did not readily receive acceptance in the united states academic world. "introducing jazz into the american academy was a complex and multilayered proposition, and one that not only necessitated changes at the institutional level, but also demanded initial acceptance on the part an academic community that was not fully prepared to make these adjustments"(calkins, ). classical music had been the primary music of study in educational institutions since the eighteenth century (calkins, ). however, music education is changing and jazz education is growing at a tremendous rate. it has been growing in formal and informal settings in the us and worldwide. a major milestone for k- schools was when participants of the tanglewood symposium in signed the tanglewood declaration which is comprised of a list of guiding principles to be followed by music education professionals. the document called for the inclusion of jazz in school music programs and was offered in an attempt to facilitate a "turning point in the struggle for jazz to be sanctioned as a legitimate academic pursuit"(calkins, ). in tracing a timeline for the development of jazz education, it is helpful to establish a date for the emergence of the genre. there cannot be an exact year, as jazz evolved out its four precursors, brass band music, the blues, negro spirituals and ragtime. (gridley, ) though the range of jazz starting point is from to , a span of years, a plausible and generally accepted year is , making it a genre having been in existence for little over years at the time of writing this article. one of the reasons for attribution of a starting date of is the first documented usage of the word jazz, though spelled "jass", through the recording of "livery stable blues" by the original dixieland jass band. however, owing to the fact the band consisted entirely of caucasian musicians, who were claiming to be the originators of the genre, this is controversial. however, is also the likely year of the launching of louis armstrong’s prolific musical career, in construing his biographical timeline. through his unique approach, style and ways of improvising on the trumpet, he would be more credible as a founder of jazz(gridley, ; kirchner, ; whitehead, ). therefore, although it was a progression and a transition, if a specific year has to be attributed for historically dating the starting point of jazz, may be used. from this point, jazz became a clearly distinct style of music. it is often referred to as america's classical music (whyton, ), as it historically did start in the united states, in new orleans. classical music, on the other hand, is mostly european in its origins, although there have been major american classical composers. as jazz spread, people wanted to learn to perform it, and jazz education transpired. though it was traditionally self-taught, or picked up from peers, methods and materials did start to emerge. over time jazz education progressed rapidly, and became more and more recognized. this trend continued all over the world and is still rapidly increasing today. while western classical music had a head start by centuries, and advanced classical education is almost entirely through academia, this -year-old american artform called jazz appears to be ascending the ranks of university education both in its extent and in the degree program offerings. some chronological excerpts of jazz educators, curriculum and programs could provide insights into this burgeoning field. additionally, some forays into the rest of the world, with some examples, depict the extent of worldwide influence that jazz education is encompassing. the pioneers the first documented jazz educator appears to be w. c. handy (prouty, ), an accomplished pianist and composer of “st. louis blues,” which is a standard today. the early part of his teaching career was well before . w. c. handy, the famous "father of the blues" and bandmaster, may have been the first jazz educator in a school. in , he was appointed bandmaster at teacher's agricultural and mechanical college for negroes at normal, alabama. while there, he taught many students the techniques and music which, in later years, would be called jazz. (prouty, , p. ). being musically literate, and being involved in publishing and composing, handy had the credentials to serve as an educator. while there would have certainly been jazz education outside the "institution," it is far likelier that teaching of jazz in schools would be documented. there are a few records of out-of-school, or community-based teachers in new orleans (buerkle & barker, ). until the 's "institutional" jazz education took place within historically black colleges and universities (hbcus), though actual jazz degrees were not conceived of yet. another well-known jazz educator, len bowden, began teaching at college level at . prouty ( ) writes: educator and bandleader len bowden is presented as another early innovator in jazz education, having directed ensembles and likely some classes at other predominantly black colleges through the s and s. ... (he held) positions as director of bands at tuskegee institute, georgia state university, and alabama state university. bowden later directed the training program for black musicians at the great lakes naval training center in chicago during the second world war. the extent of bowden's influence as a jazz educator is unprecedented due to the sheer number of military personnel he taught. bowden was later to direct the training and education of one of the largest number of musicians ever to be undertaken in this country. as director for the training of the black musicians at the great lakes naval base ( - ), len participated in the music education of over , men, all of whom were expected to function as jazz (dance) as well as military band musicians. ...the learning environment provided by the early pioneers parallels the courses suggested for today's jazz studies curriculum (carter, ). it was over a decade after the time len bowden started teaching in hbcu's that jazz courses started to occur on non-hbcu campuses. there were many questions surrounding the legitimacy of jazz and acceptance of it took time. "the long, arduous passage of jazz from a despised, marginal entertainment to the solid respect conferred by academe has relatively little to do with the music, and a great deal to do with class, race, jobs, and—that potent persuader—money"(marquis, ). racism and other social stigmas associated with jazz hampered jazz education in its early days. the jazz degree the first college to have a degree in jazz studies was north texas state college, which is now the university of north texas (prouty, ). even then, they did not want to use the name jazz and thus the degree was called a dance band degree though it was understood by all to be a jazz degree. this degree came to be through a series of small steps, spanning several years. in m. e. hall started a big band called the one o'clock lab band, one o'clock referring to rehearsal time. this became a world famous group (prouty , prouty ), giving hall the clout needed to introduce courses in performance and jazz history. by the (jazz) dance band degree came into being. it eventually became called a degree in jazz studies in the 's (marquis, ). the next institution to develop a jazz degree program was through schillinger house, now known berklee college of music. joseph schillinger was a soviet immigrant, who was both a mathematician and a jazz composer. he taught his mathematically based composition system to george gershwin, his most famous student. another famous student was lawrence berk who went on to form the shillinger house in , expressly to teach jazz. on the eve of their th anniversary his son, lee berk, changed the name to berklee college of music. in , they granted their first bachelor's degree in jazz and in became accredited through the new england association of schools and colleges. (gerritse, ; whyton, ; prouty, ). it is interesting to note, that a classical conservatory followed suit in offering a jazz degree (though at least two other universities had started a jazz studies program in between, that is towson university and miami university). new england conservatory, which, in present day boston, is just down the street (massachusetts avenue) from berklee college of music. gunther schuller was a french horn player in the new york metropolitan opera orchestra, also a composer, conductor and author. even from his early classical days he started gradually changing interest towards jazz. his epitome as a jazz musician was when he was in the miles davis nonet for the groundbreaking “birth of the cool” album. in , he became the president of new england conservatory and did not waste time seeking to gain approval for establishing degrees in jazz studies. "in , schuller proposed the creation of bachelors and master’s degree programs in two areas—jazz performance and jazz composition" (calkins, , p. ). the jazz department officially launched in . another radical move of schuller was the hiring of african-american professors, who were outstanding instrumentalists from new york city. three years later, in , a total of colleges and universities offered degrees in jazz studies. in another ten years, that is , there were colleges and universities that had degrees in jazz studies (barr, ). the jazz degree has not only grown in its ubiquity but also in availability of more advanced degrees being offered. master's degrees, that began circa (fischer, ) have become nearly half as common as bachelor’s degrees. the doctorate in jazz, which was almost unheard of two decades ago, is also gradually starting to emerge (downbeat, ). "the university of miami is the only program at the time of this writing that offers a doctoral degree with jazz studies as the primary emphasis"(fischer, ). downbeat magazine's special edition in october , has a listing of colleges and universities entitled “where to study jazz.” this is not a work of literature, but rather as it is from a periodical magazine and not a journal. however, it contains data fields listed under each college or university through which statistics can be extracted. this serves to confirm the exponential expansion of jazz education explained in the actual literature, with data that is more recent than the articles. also, while the literature is confined to specific regions and institutions, this is a broad strokes overview. two hundred-fifty universities and colleges are in the list of where to study jazz, with two hundred nineteen within the us. in the us there are one hundred- eighty bachelor's degrees in jazz studies/ performance, eighty-eight master's degrees and seventeen doctorates. even canada has four universities offering doctorate degrees (downbeat, ). therefore, there has been a high growth rate of jazz degree programs and even among advanced degrees. jazz education in k- schools while jazz education has grown at the university level it has also grown through private instruction, and in other more informal settings (prouty, ; whyton, ). there also is a debate about the canonization of jazz education and how conventional and methodical it should or should not be (reimann, ; whyton ). due to its enormity, the extent of non-university-based jazz education is unlikely be featured in a list, such as that found in "where to study jazz"(downbeat, ). however, there is likely to be a much larger contingent of jazz musicians without scholastic credentials, many of whom might have an equal or higher level of expertise (whyton, ). for those who do attend colleges and universities for jazz studies, the jazz education that they had in school was probably the biggest reasons they would have the experience and playing ability to be able to pass a college audition. jazz has been part of many k- school music programs since around (west, ) and the tanglewood declaration of called for the introduction of jazz into school music programs (calkins, ). a large part of middle school and high school music education has been through jazz ensembles. teaching improvising has been a challenge in schools as not all instrumentalists far the aptitude for it, but in a large jazz band, not all students need to improvise, only those comfortable with it. the jazz ensembles are also good for student social interactions (west, ), therefore, enculturation also takes place. excerpts from around the world the expansion of jazz education around the world is vast, and is continuously growing even in the present time. there is a large, ever growing number of institutes, across many countries, and research information gets outdated fast. though a few institutes that stand out could be mentioned, it would be better to feature examples of certain countries and the jazz activities and jazz education that takes place there. apart from canada in its geographic and cultural proximity to the us, there are no determined correlating factors that appear to make one region of the world better than others, in terms of quality or quantity of jazz performance or education (reimann, ). in the brief summary of worldwide jazz, the choice of featuring a particular nation is merely the availability and accessibility of literature, within the last ten years, on that country. though there may be partial homogenization and overlapping themes in the summaries that follow, each article has an altogether different approach. they serve as excerpts, featuring the particular nations, to aid in understanding of worldwide jazz and jazz education. jazz in greece as implied by the title, “jazz in athens: frustrated cosmopolitans in a music subculture,”tsioulakis ( ) paints an overall pessimistic and morose description of the gigging scenario of jazz musicians in athens. they are presented as being overworked, underpaid and unappreciated. the problem is that the us is constantly used as a benchmark and this is an unfair comparison. also, through the descriptions of the lives of the local jazz musicians, there appears to be substantial live jazz activity, which in turn does not does not appear to justify the gloomy outlook (tsioulakis, ). jazz education in greece was spearheaded by the philippos nakas conservatory: in the philippos nakas conservatory one of the largest music schools in greece established a jazz department, which in became affiliated with the berklee college of music in boston. this development had a dual effect: first, it gave employment to jazz musicians; and second, it gave students the opportunity, especially those living in or near athens, to receive a jazz education without having to leave the country. on these courses, students were introduced to techniques of improvisation and jazz theory, whilst also having the opportunity to participate in ensembles directed by their mainly foreign-educated tutors. this small circuit of musicians, the single radio station, the dedicated magazine, the four specialised music venues, the educational foundation and the hundreds of eager students was what constituted the jazz music scene of athens during the s. nevertheless, there was still one important thing missing: the audience (tsioulakis, ). there seems to be enough of an audience for live jazz for it is survive. the negativity continues. the jazz department of the nakas conservatory still exists, but in the words of one of its former teachers ‘instead of the big names of the jazz scene it now employs their former students ‘cause they’re cheaper and they don’t object to the rip off that is working for ten euros an hour’. and the audience for jazz has not grown; the only quantity that seems to have disproportionally increased is that of professional skilled musicians. the eager hundreds of the s are now qualified musicians who have either continued their education abroad or learned through obsessive album collecting and endless hours of transcribing improvisations: (tsioulakis, ) a new generation of locally trained instructors actually seems like a positive situation, indicating an increase in the skill level of the locals. there is further lamenting about two jazz clubs that closed down with the blame being exclusively placed on a declining jazz audience (tsioulakis, ). there could be several reasons for the closing of a bar or restaurant as a failed business that may have little to do with the genre of live music being played there. jazz clubs close down even in new orleans and new york city which certainly would have larger jazz audiences than in athens. overall the negativity overshadows the actual description of unique qualities and experiences of greek jazz. jazz in israel in this article, caplan asserts that israel is a great place for jazz. he was inspired to choose this topic when he came across a jam session in a bar on ben yehuda street in jerusalem, israel. he participated in the jam, playing the standard "how high the moon," though he does not state what instrument he played(caplan, ). while there are several institutions where jazz is taught in israel, the rimon school of jazz, founded in , appears to be the most prominent. this school operates in partnership with berklee college of music both as a platform and an international student exchange program. as in the previous article (tsioulakis, ) the second generation of instructors at rimon were former students. however, in this case, it is portrayed as a benefit to have locals who are competent to teach at the same standard as berklee instructors. it also reveals berklee's strategy of forging partnerships worldwide and thereby boosting its recruitment among international students (caplan, ). the late arnie lawrence, jazz musician and music educator, co-founded the new school of jazz and contemporary music in israel in . he is an alumnus of the new school of jazz and contemporary music in new york city. the israel conservatory of music serves as the platform for the us based institution (caplan, ). other institutions which have thriving jazz departments are the jerusalem academy, the rubin academy of music at tel aviv university and thelma yellin high school for the arts. caplan goes through biographical information of different musicians, a majority of whom were born in, or began study, in israel but eventually moved to the us to study at berklee college of music or new england conservatory and stayed on with successful careers. while the information indicates that israel is a significant contributor to the jazz world, it is also likely that most of the musicians would have a higher degree of fame in israel than in the us (caplan, ). while fifteen israeli musicians are listed, two of them, bear special mentioning. anat cohen is clarinetist and tenor saxophone player. she has received numerous awards for her clarinet prowess. in addition to being a solo artist she is known as part of the three cohens, that band she formed with her two brothers, yuval cohen on the soprano saxophone and avishai cohen on the trumpet, having recorded albums and performed with them for a number of years. the other artist is double bassist avishai cohen(not the same avishai cohen who is anat's brother). he recorded and toured extensively with chick corea. he also collaborated with a lot of big names including bobby mcferrin, roy hargrove, herbie hancock, kurt rosenwinkel, nnenna freelon, and paquito d'rivera, claudia acuña, alicia keys and the london and israel philharmonic orchestras (caplan, ). cohen is among the israelis who moved to the us to advance his studies in jazz. this phenomenon of the interchange of jazz musicians between israel and other countries, particularly the united states is described by the interview subjects. due to the jewish diaspora in north america and europe, there is a lot of back and forth travel, including jazz musicians that are making aliyah. dr. arnold palty says that there are million jews in israel and close to that in the united states. he also mentions american jewish composers such as gershwin and copeland. when yair was asked about the israelis who graduate from the new school in new york, he replies "i think they are great. but, i am surprised that so many israelis are in the front of the jazz scene in new york. i ask myself are they really that good? or, did the american jazz musicians move on and left the scene for them i don’t know what to say about this. maybe it is because you can't just be a jazz musician in new york you have to be everything. so maybe they just left the scene a little bit open. but the israeli musicians are very good of course." (caplan, , p. ) thus, exposure has been an important factor for israeli musicians to become good. another factor that makes jazz in israel flourish is the festivals. there is the israel festival in jerusalem, the tel-aviv jazz festival, the haifa jazz festival. the biggest and most successful jazz festival however is the red sea jazz festival at eilat which began in . some of the notable performers who have played there are bill evans, christian mcbride, randy brecker and john scofield. avishai cohen being the current artistic director plays there regularly (caplan, ). israel seems like a great, thriving, jazz scenario, and certainly has a tremendous output from its small population size. sometimes the lines are blurred as to whether they all are actually israeli citizens, if they have an israeli origin, whether they have some ties to israel, or if they just have jewish ethnicity and may have never actually lived in israel (caplan, ). jazz in australia this is an insightful and relevant article and some aspects of it would befit it serving as a model for exploration of jazz in india. most of the abstract and introduction explains how australia developed its' own distinct kind of jazz. most of it relates to the geographic placement and historical musical roots. australia's distance from the united states and its isolation from much of the world, caused a unique blend of jazz to come about: developing upon anglo-celtic and african american traditions, australian jazz musicians have built upon a transplanted and imagined musical culture. early australian musicians developed improvising within a decontextualized environment, acquiring sounds, styles and ways of jazzing via occasional visits by touring bands and early recordings. musicians temporally and physically distant from direct interaction with mainstream african american or european activity or creative thought opportunistically appropriated styles and voices. (debruin, , p. ) it is the decontextualization that caused australia to develop its originality, and as jazz musicians naturally exhibit a high degree of originality (przysinda et al., ), it is staying true to form. the participants consist of five improvising jazz musicians. for two of them, their learning was partially through enculturation. the term communities of musical practice (comp) is also used throughout, first described under the heading of "communities in learning jazz" (de bruin, , p. ). another topic is "communities in and beyond the institution" (p. ). for all of these musicians, jazz learning took place largely through collaborative experiences, rather than through institutions. though two of them did attend university to learn music, they cited difficulties with the structured environment. all of them forged their own music educational paths. this is an example of the concept of "enculturation" espoused in lucy green's, "how popular musicians learn."( ) like it is for popular music, it seems that "enculturation" is how jazz musicians learn too. therefore, the institution, though it is meant to serve the purpose of education, may actually serve the community of musical practice to a greater extent, causing musicians to be in an environment where they could learn from each other. this is depicted through these statements from de bruin's conclusion: australian improvisers in this study articulate the importance of their interactions within comps that shape and influence their evolving relationships, processes and perspectives to creative musicmaking. comp can situate learning beyond the class within non- linear, multimodal and collaborative environments that for inquisitive learners foster vast possibilities implicit in improvised music. the learning by these participants reveals how comps can possess relevance, value and meaning. understanding the ways community-oriented music practices culturally and socially facilitate holistic music education outcomes has potential to more effectively shape practices in formal music classrooms (p. - ). in some cases, there could possibly be greater learning from "comps", for jazz students than they could learn from their academic courses; or in the least there would be the synergy where they could immediately start experimenting with, implementing, and unpacking what they learn in the classroom. jazz in estonia while estonia is largely focused on european classical music traditions, a major step towards jazz education occurred in , when the academy of music started offering courses in jazz. while it does seem like a late juncture, reimann calls it an academically conservative country. though jazz started being played circa (reimann, ), it took a good years to make its way into academia, due more to political reasons than anything else (reimann, ). by using the periphery in the title " jazz education and the jazz periphery: an example from estonia," she implies that estonian jazz is in the periphery. what she means is that if the united states, is at the center, estonia is far from the center, more towards the edge or "periphery." she is against defining jazz education in terms of a canon, but supports decanonization. "the academic study of jazz history and performance should not be an isolated pedagogical system transmitting certain immutable aesthetical and stylistic paradigms, and educational practices; rather jazz education is an extension of the jazz performance." like jazz is spontaneous and improvisatory, she argues that jazz education should also be so. it should be more adaptable to the setting, and she uses the words "flexible" and "changing situations" to make her point (reimann, ). she ends with the following statement: i would like to conclude my ruminations by turning once again to scott deveaux ( ) by talking about (american) jazz history he warns us against exclusionary tendencies, grand narratives and canonization. those thoughts are easily conveyed to the global context and to jazz education. hence, the future of jazz education relies in inclusion rather that in exclusion, in diversity of methodologies rather than in one orthodox or central approach, and in decanonization rather than in canonization. (p. ) estonia is in the periphery, or in a location not expected to be a hotbed of jazz. jazz education, and the resultant performances from the artists that it produces, does not have to follow the traditions of the country of its origin. it should form its own path and keep reinventing itself according to the circumstances of the students and their environment and other musical experience and exposure. in other words, she seems to imply, all jazz education, and hence the resultant jazz performance, even that in the "periphery", such as estonia, does not have to be follow the jazz traditions that came from the country or origin, but it should forge its own path. (reimann, ). jazz in the uk tony whyton's chapter, "brilliant corners: the development of jazz in higher education” in the book "advanced musical performance: investigations in higher education learning"( ), asserts that in the uk, jazz education largely follow the trend of classical music in graded exams of specific instruments. jazz education's growth rate in the uk is explosive and it is represented in over institutions of higher education. he describes european jazz having a sound that is different from north american jazz, with it's distinct qualities. he also describes the conflict between institutional learning and learning through communities and through experimentation. there are also suggestions in the article that jazz education also develops within geaographical boundaries, in order for the approaches to be more suited to the country or culture where it takes place (prouty, ). there is some debate about whether jazz is part of popular music and the and conclusion is jazz is separating itself more and more from popular culture due to it's unique characteristics, particularly the improvisational aspect. jazz does seem to be quite a well loved genre in the uk. according to descriptions of the extent of acceptance and availability of jazz, it seems that after the us and canada, the uk might be the third highest nation where jazz and jazz education is flourishing (prouty, ). potential for growth the growth rate of jazz education in both degree programs and non-degree formal and informal teaching institutions that exists in the united states is being replicated in countries around the world. it appears to be highest in english speaking western countries such as canada, uk, australia and new zealand in respective order (downbeat, ). it is also high in western europe. few excerpts such as greece, israel, uk, australia and estonia indicate that even though jazz is not today's most popular music, it is alive and well, and jazz education has potential for further growth. there is no doubt that education is a growing field. jazz education is certainly growing, and with the above information being established, it does seem that jazz education in india would also have potential. jazz in the indian context there is very little literature about jazz education in india. the following two statements might be the only research on jazz education on india. the s marked the beginning of jazz education programs in bombay. according to tony fernandes of the american center in bombay, the united states information service in washington began sending books and other source materials on jazz to the center in the early s (pinckney, ). in comparison to music education of indian classical music the topic of jazz education is revisited: the absence of formal musical instruction in jazz is responsible for the fact that most indian jazz musicians are self-taught, in complete contrast to the rigorous training with a guru that is characteristic of traditional methods of instruction in indian classical music (pinkney, , p. ). due to the dearth of articles on jazz education in india, it would be important to examine the cultural conditions that contributed to this dearth. in terms of indian arts and culture, where jazz belongs, or if it belongs at all needs to be established. while india has its own genres of popular and classical music, any relationship in terms of compatibility or adaptability can be evaluated. this can be done through a brief overview of india's jazz history. also, in examining the music culture of india, whether there is a relationship between jazz and popular music, or between jazz and traditional music can be explored. it is not a premise that a connection has to be made; jazz could exist in its own niche, and it may well be. in other words, if jazz is an outlier, this is not a problem. to understand a current jazz artist in india, the setting into which they are placed largely determines the experiences they will have in a holistic or phenomenological sense. early jazz in india jazz did not take long to reach indian shores. the earliest documented occurrence of a jazz performance was in , by dan hopkins and the syncopated (dorin, ). as in the united states, the time period when live jazz was at its peak in india was from the mid s to the s (kalmanovitch, ). india was under british rule until ; much of the audience, particularly in the beginning were british and from other european countries (pinkney, ; shope, ). african american musicians played at five-star hotels mostly in the cities of bombay and calcutta for north americans, europeans and wealthy, elite, indians (dorin, ; fernandes, ; kalmanovitch, ). gradually indian musicians began to assimilate the genre and started playing together with international musicians. in the earlier years, a few african american musicians lived in india for several years at a stretch. among these were trumpeter cricket smith and pianist teddy weatherford. the latter, who at one time was louis armstrong’s pianist, remained in india all his life. three of the greatest indian musicians deserve mention. trumpeter chick chocolate, born in was the most well-known musician among the first generation of indian jazz musicians. later came braz gonsalves the saxophone player and louis banks the pianist. they were born in and respectively, were most active in the s and s, and are still alive. braz is not very active musically now and louis banks went on to be a film scorer since the s(pinckney, ). pinckney argues that "louis banks is considered to be one of the most accomplished jazz musicians and studio composers in india(pickney, , p. ) he was instrumental in participating in and managing the biennial jazz festival known as the jazz yatra, which ran from , bringing hundreds of international jazz artists to india (pinckney, ). the jazz yatra jazz festival ceased after and this is indicative of a waning jazz audience. prior to banks generation, the greatest pianist was likely dizzy sal ( - ), from the city of bangalore. he traveled to the united states to study at berklee college of music and also performed and recorded there. there was an unspecified illness that caused him to return abruptly to india, where he remained a recluse at his home in bangalore (fernandes, ). among the next generation following banks, there seems to have been only one musician to have reached his stature. eccentric pianist madhav chari was known to lash out at his audience, and also was rude and railed at reporters, so therefore nobody published his biography. he studied in the united states and collaborated with jazz artists max roach, kenny barron and wynton marsalis and performed across the us, europe, and asia. in , at forty-eight years of age, he died of a heart attack. i did attend a concert of his in the same year. he came forty-five minutes late and, without apologizing, boasted for half an hour about how great he was, and about the impact he had for jazz in india, before starting to play. it was in a trio format with an electric bassist and drummer. there was an interval, after which he boasted about himself and the trio, and criticized other musicians and reporters for another fifteen minutes before continuing. on both sides of the stage, in a megalomaniacal style, were huge banners with his picture and the caption "india's greatest jazz musician." he sold physical cds but did not let his material be sold digitally or videos posted on youtube, and did not allow his concerts to be recorded, so there are severe limitations to researching him apart from hearsay. he is known to have screamed at and embarrass those trying to take videos of him. the epicenter for live jazz was the taj mahal hotel in bombay. the greatest indian and international jazz musicians played there through the years, and particularly in the s and s there were notable artists who stayed there for a period of time giving daily performances. these include louis armstrong, duke ellington, dave brubeck and paul desmond, and during their indian tours spent the majority of their time at the hotel (fernandez, ). the city of calcutta also had a thriving jazz hotel scenario and audience, with local and international artists doing most of their performing in these two cities (dorin, ; pinckney, ). among the mass of common folk living around india, few would have even heard of jazz, let alone heard it. it was an elitist genre and still is only among a tiny niche of english speaking, city based, audience. there does not seem to be much scholarly research on jazz music and musicians in india since the turn of the century. there is some interest in jazz in india during british rule, that is until , with most books and articles describing that time period (fernandes, ; shope ). some articles may go up to the s (pinkney, ). even though jazz never stopped, it may be considerably rarer, and hence not a topic for scholarly research. bollywood music indian popular music consists predominantly of songs that are heard in bollywood films. like the name 'bollywood' is an imitation, so is the music from this massive film industry. these film songs are a "ubiquitous presence in urban south asia"(morcom, , p. ). the indian film industry, bollywood, churns out about movies a year (hasan & nika, ). each film contains about six to eight song and dance sequences (sarrazin, n., ). therefore , to , popular songs in hindi and other regional languages are released a year through the movies. anna morcom has done extensive theoretical analysis on bollywood music and explains how indian film music does not fit into the tenets of indian music theory in that "stylistically, there is considerable overlap between song and background music. some sections of songs sound more like background music, breaking markedly from the idiom of the song" (morcom, , p. - ). she also says, "the appearance of hollywood-style music in hindi films is easily traceable to a direct influence from hollywood"(p. ). from there she goes into detail about indian rāga and has sections devoted to whole tone scales, chromatic movement, diminished harmony, orchestration, blues elements and ostinato and how they are "alien to the rāga system" (p. ). this suggests that, popular music in india is largely constructed on the western system of diatonic harmony. in the early days of bollywood, for less than a decade, most recordings were played by jazz musicians as at that point only they could read music (fernandes et al., ). apart from this, and the fact that both genres use western diatonic harmony, there is not much intersection between jazz and bollywood. there are no songs that actually sound like jazz. listener's ears are more attuned to western music than most would realize, though it would be much simpler forms, and with nothing close to the kind of modulations found in jazz. bollywood dominates the indian music scene and is an essential part of indian culture. jazz and traditional indian music indian traditional music has far greater possibilities for compatibilities for jazz and its popular counterpart. the two most famous indian classical musicians, ravi shankar and zakir hussain had a number of jazz collaborations in recordings and performances with western jazz artists and even the jazzmine album by ravi shankar (simons, ). british born guitarist john mclaughlin guitarist also fused the two genres. essentially a jazz musician, he studied, played and recorded indian music extensively. there are two traditions of indian classical music: carnatic music and hindustani music. both styles are based largely on aural tradition and improvisation. also, both genres are in the category of world music in which intricate listening skills and playing by ear is a large part. "performance skills in other sophisticated music styles - american jazz, irish celtic music, argentinean tango, and indian raga, among a myriad - traditionally have been aurally developed and maintained" (woody, , p. ). various aspects of jazz improvisation such as motivic development, target notes, reharmonization, and licks contribute to this improvisation tradition. spontaneity, individuality, creativity, and imagination are what make up the jazz language (przysinda, e., zeng, t., maves, k., arkin, c., & loui, p., ). jazz is good genre for exploring playing by ear, as it involves experimentation and working with chordal harmony. it provides a platform for organized improvising based on the form and chord changes. in this way, jazz improvisation is different from both kinds of indian classical improvisation. jazz and indian classical are not highly compatible as indian classical music has no harmony (raman & dowling, )(sharma ), and consists of melody and rhythm only. the prominent indian artists played jazz because of their skill as improvising. there are a number of indo-jazz fusion bands. yet, there remains a limited historic discography (simons, ). in the overall scheme and world of jazz, indo-jazz fusion remains very small, and is never likely to reach the enormity of latin-jazz. a case in point of indo-jazz's drawbacks is john coltrane. he did take some hindustani lessons from ravi shankar, and released a tune called "india" in his later album "live at the village vanguard." the tune uses a pedal point on g, or a drone like sound known as a tambura (raman & downing, ). coltrane is known for his extraordinary harmony and modulations in his former giant steps. his forays into the other extreme, with "india", met with very little success as compared with "giant steps", which, due to its harmonic symmetry, has been discussed and dissected by music theorists and mathematicians ever since (mazzola & pang, ). while he used many complex modulations earlier in his career, with his experiments in indian music, he almost entirely stopped using modulations. the small indian jazz audience jazz is now well past its heyday and has yielded popularity to many other genres since, with only about % of the music listened to in the us being jazz (gridley, ). there seems to be no statistics on how much jazz is listened to in india, probably because the figures or percentages may be too small to be represented on any list, table, or graph. the latest research of music listened to through digital media (easwaran & menon, , p. ) indicates that % of the music listened to in india is “international.” if for the sake of making an estimate, we say that within the % that % is jazz, that would be . %. however, it is almost certain that jazz would be considerably lower than % of the %. india's population is large though, being , , , in the census (chandramouli, ). because of this high population, the number of people who enjoy jazz may be higher than an estimation of percentage might indicate. chapter : methodology jazz, an american artform, is played, learned, listened to, and danced to in many countries. "though it originated in america, jazz is so compelling that musicians on every continent have played it, and today there is no city without it"(gridley, , p. ). while there is successful jazz education around the world, jazz education in india has unique traits and needs a deliberate development of the ideologies according to the setting. axiological assumption the philosophical assumption that best fits the study is the axiological assumption where bias has to be acknowledged. "in a qualitative study, the inquirers admit the value-laden nature of the study and actively report their values and biases as well as the value-laden nature of information gathered from the field"(creswell & poth, , p. ). the value is the quest for expertise in jazz musicianship for indian musicians. the proposed participant of the study and i are of indian nationality and origin. the biases are ideal within the context of the axiological assumption because of partial foreknowledge that the narratives of the selected participants would cover a range of situations. there is comparison with my own learning experience and that of kirtana's and how different it was. there is also a comparison between the experience of kirtana and other indian jazz musicians whom i have known. while usually the comparisons made are deliberate, it is likely that comparisons could have been subconscious at times or there could be considerable opinionating. this is permissible within the axiological assumption as my mind ponders the range of situations among various indian jazz learners and myself. a range of situations would be a jazz learner who stayed in india versus a jazz learner who went abroad. another range of situations would be a jazz learner who had the means for advanced studies versus a jazz learner who had financial barriers. to make my biases obvious, i have, from the onset, provided information about myself. based on the axiological assumption, i also develop my narrative in more details, to make my biases obvious. the assumptions are made from my standpoint as the researcher, therefore, my personal experiences provide the associations and connections to the experiences of the participant, and the way the information is disseminated. my narrative this autobiographical material will serve as the perspective, or lens, through which i observe the participants. this fits the format of an interpretive biography. as the researcher, my presence is apparent in the text. i do admit that the voiced represents my interpretation, as much as the subject of the study. therefore, both my ideas, and the participants’ ideas are represented, as it should be for an interpretive biography (denzin, ). i was born in , i grew up in india in the pre-internet age, i did not know what jazz was. in my late teens, i had a cousin from the united states who visited our family for a few days and taught me the blues scale in c, along with the basic -bar blues pattern. using my classical-style scale background, i just did what i learned to do with major and minor scales, i learned it in all keys. i had a friend, samuel, who attended the same school as me and also played piano. we met once in a while and showed each other our latest repertoire and tricks. i could not wait to show him the blues scale and demonstrate my blues prowess to him. he would often talk about a style of music called jazz and told me that if i wanted to play jazz, i needed to learn the jazz scale. he did not know this scale, but he knew people who did. i then went on a quest to find out the 'jazz scale' by using any possible source including writing to my cousin. i found out that there is not just a single 'jazz scale'. it has led me to the incredible possibilities of the various complex scales used in jazz and there is only more to discover. samuel knew a little about jazz from his former teacher dizzy sal, to whom he went for beginner pop lessons for about two years. he used to talk about dizzy a lot, but i had forgotten about this until recently, as he was mentioned in the only book i found of the history of jazz in india. (fernandes, ). a specific memory i had was of riding our bicycles with samuel in front of dizzy sal's house, which had a big treble clef sign in front of his door. while researching for this thesis, i read taj mahal foxtrot (fernandes, ), and in the opening pages edward saldhana, nicknamed dizzy sal, was mentioned. the name rang a bell and i could not get it out of my mind. before reaching the end of the book, i decided to text samuel, to confirm if dizzy sal was indeed his teacher. it was in middle of the night for him, but as soon as he woke up, he did confirm this. he also said that in his prime, dizzy sal was india's top jazz pianist, before louis banks came on the scene. this is confirmed by the latter part of taj mahal foxtrot (fernandes, ) as an entire chapter "a damned good show", is dedicated to dizzy, including some photographs. therefore, it was providence, and a rare chance, that i could be influenced by a student of one of india's early jazz legends. when i was about eighteen, i had the opportunity to take lessons with a jazz piano teacher, whom samuel introduced me to. being the son of a christian pastor, both of my parents dreaded the possibility of me playing in a bar and so the lessons i had were taken in secret. i had raved about the jazz pianist, who became my teacher, at home, ever since samuel and i visited him and were left agape with his jamming on the piano. now i had to be careful to hide any association with him. he was the notorious victor martin; the bar pianist. the lessons were early on saturday morning, at a time when no one would notice me missing from the house. i was also taking classical lessons at the time, and it did make my parents wonder about the other tunes i was practicing. i caught my mother recognizing and humming along to some of the tunes although a little puzzled about how i had learned them. after only a few months of lessons, victor made the announcement that he was emigrating to canada. the principles of jazz he taught and the foundation he laid for me were invaluable. the two concepts he emphasized the most were the importance of practicing scales and arpeggios and practicing tunes in all twelve keys. another source of jazz learning for me was through listening. the roads from classical music and rock converged for me as i gained exposure to jazz. i was playing in a rock band that literally formed the day i turned eighteen. the singer taught classical guitar at the same music school where i took classical piano lessons. he told me about the other classical guitar teacher kenny at the same school who had a big collection of jazz and blues recordings. i made friends with him and borrowed many of his cassette tapes and every single vhs tape that he had. as i watched the videos at home, my father sometimes watched along, and even knew many of the big-name jazz legends that were featured. this exposure provided me with a good understanding of what jazz sounded like and its typical instrumentation. i liked the way the musicians passed on the spotlight to each other when they did their solo improvising. this was in contrast to the rock band that i played in, where the singer and lead guitarist always had the spotlight. finally, when i first came to the united states in and started my undergraduate degree at grace christian university, i began taking jazz piano lessons from professor steve talaga at my college. the fascinating world of jazz was accessible from then on. although it was great at the time, looking back, it seems that what i learned was just a drop in the ocean. ironically, i played more pop/rock and classical music in these four years mainly because i played for a singing group, making an album with them and touring on a bus. therefore, i could not focus completely on jazz. in , three months after i returned to india with my bachelor's degree, my father died of cancer. i took over the family business and my music activities were few and far between. the decade starting in brought jazz back to me a little by little, more and more each year. of the many factors that led to my revival, the strangest was a spanish girl. she was looking for someone to co-write songs with as she had penned lyrics to several songs. a mutual friend referred her to me, and i agreed to cowrite with her. i moved a digital piano into my office, we worked three times a week, and we had fourteen songs in about four months. she had paid an advance to a studio producer and he had never finished the job. since we had all these songs we started looking for venues where we could perform them. i had no idea that there were all these little restaurants and bars in my city bangalore where live music could be performed. we played only one small gig together and it wasn't successful, particularly due to conflict between her and the drummer. this fiasco was all the impetus i needed to seek out my own kind. finding and getting along with local jazz musicians was an arduous process, with a lot of trial and error, but it started coming together. by i was playing out five nights a week. simultaneously i also started teaching piano privately and was also writing arrangements for a church every week. i began the process of closing down the business. at the time of writing this, i am in studying for my master’s in music education at the university of maryland. while in my undergrad, jazz was a minor part of their focus, the university of maryland has an active jazz department and offers degrees in jazz studies up to the masters level. i have taken jazz piano instruction for three semesters and have been playing both in big bands and smaller jazz combos. i have also taken two courses in jazz theory and arranging and been part of the jazz department's official jam sessions. this interpretive biography (denzin, ) is highly impacted by the recent and current activities at the university in my own jazz education, as it is ongoing. all these experiences form the framework by which i base the axiological assumption of my personal story. it will play a major role in how i perceive the experience of the participant and her quest in gaining jazz education as it in the present and ongoing for me. we are from the same hometown, on the same quest, but on different stages of this journey, and are finding ourselves. jazz, after all, is the definitive genre of self-expression (przysinda et. al., ). epistemology and methodical choice narrative as an avenue of insight in this single case-study, there is a large element of the narrative. it is the story that can provide the insights that would shed light on what kind of jazz education exists in india. "narrative imagining - story - is the fundamental instrument of thought, rational capacities depend on it. it is our chief means of looking into the future, or predicting, of planning, and of explaining....most of our experience, our knowledge and our thinking is organized as stories"(turner, ). a wide range of information is expected be gathered though the story of the participant. in story form, there could be emotions, and expressions of both joy and frustration in the journey of learning jazz. however, even emotions would also be revealing of conditions and situations that jazz learners in india face. this kind of information could not be revealed in mere statements or lists of facts. daniel pink( ) also believes in the power of stories, he says: we are our stories. we compress years of experience, thought, and emotion into a few compact narratives that we convey to others and tell to ourselves. that has always been true. but personal narrative has become more prevalent, and perhaps more urgent, in a time of abundance, when many of us are freer to seek a deeper understanding of ourselves and our purpose. more than a means to sell a house or even to deepen a doctor's compassion, story represents a pathway to understanding that doesn't run through the left side of the brain. we can see this yearning for self- knowledge through stories in many places - in the astonishingly popular "scrapbooking" movement, where people assemble the artifacts of their lives into a narrative that tells the world, and maybe themselves, who they are and what they're about, and in the surging popularity of genealogy as millions search the web to piece together their family histories. what these efforts reveal is a hunger for what stories can provide - context enriched by emotion, a deeper understanding of how we fit in and why that matters. the conceptual age can remind us what has always been true but rarely acted upon - that we must listen to each other's stories and that we are the author of our own lives. (p. ) stories are the key to finding out what each participant experienced and what it learning jazz meant to them. a single-case study design with narrative inquiry two options for case study methods are the single case study and the multiple case study. "a primary distinction in designing case studies is between single- and multiple-case designs. this means the need for a decision, prior to any data collection, on whether single or multiple cases are going to be used to address the research"(yin, , p. ). in this case, a single case study was selected. being a field where there does not seem to be any prior scholarly research, in its limited size and scope, this thesis serves as a primer. due to my own personal experiences with jazz education, my personal interaction with the subject and having unexpectedly met the very professor that enabled the participant to gain her knowledge of jazz harmony, triangulation can take place. therefore, more of a -degree view can be made of the participant. also, based on the research questions, the study goes beyond just the student life of the participant, but also what being a jazz musician in india means for her. therefore, it is a phenomenological study which takes into consideration, all aspects of her life. due to delving into the details, and being an in-depth study, a single case study is used to answer the research questions. exploratory study as it is probable that no research of this kind is done before, trying to fulfill a theoretical basis might not be suitable. prior expectations do not exist, it is unknown territory. overall, it would be an exploratory study, as this is the guiding principle of an exploratory study: exploratory studies may have a legitimate reason for not having any propositions. every exploration, however, should still have some purpose. instead of propositions, the design for an exploratory study should state this purpose, as well as the criteria by which an explanation will be judged successful (or not). (yin, , p. ) the purpose is to understand the status of jazz education in india. it also does partially cover an aspect of phenomenological research as it is "the study of the lived experiences of persons, the view that these experiences are conscious ones"(cresswell, , p. ). the lived experience of the participant is what needs to be disseminated. as she lives in india right now, and due to her recent studies at swarnabhoomi academy of music (sam) and the community of musicians she is with, her experience and knowledge about current practice of jazz education in india is up to date. this information can serve as a starting point to investigate the status of jazz education in india. case selection to restate what i mentioned in the introduction, my surprise at the participant's knowledge of jazz theory is what primarily sparked my curiosity of how someone in india did learn her jazz and knew it so well. i knew some outstanding musicians who were the best in the country, and also some who studied jazz but gave it up altogether. since it was a single case study, i wanted someone in the middle, as representation at either extreme might not have painted a picture of how what an average jazz musician would struggle with and have a worthwhile story to share. it needed to be someone with a lifelong commitment to being a jazz musician, who was serious in their jazz education. the decision was made after narrowing down six possible participants and making initial contact with three. kirtana, the participant, was interviewed twice, and steve zerlin, a faculty member at sam was interviewed once, in order to corroborate the information given by kirtana. the case study is about kirtana krishna with my perspective, and that of her faculty steve zerlin being taken into consideration. member check the first interview of kirtana's was on october th, and the second on november th, . the interview with steve zerlin was on february th, . the time lapse between the interview and kirtana and steve were due to the fact the i did not originally intend to interview steve, however it turned out to be greatly beneficial. on april th, , i conducted a member check with both of them by emailing them the part of my manuscript where i respectively retold their stories. kirtana was happy with what i had written. steve wanted some misperceptions to be rectified and i made the changes accordingly. chapter : the narratives this chapter contains a brief story of kirtana krishna and how she came to be a jazz artist. following this is a brief story steve zerlin and his teaching and playing experiences in india. kirtana was a student at sam at the same time that steve was faculty there. the next section contains a combined story largely revolving around their experiences at sam and their information about jazz education in india. the combined story begins with the background of my relationship with kirtana including the incident that became the biggest factor for choosing her as the participant for the case study. the chapter culminates with the answers to the research questions being provided though the experiences and perspectives of kirtana, steve, and me. a synopsis of kirtana krishna's story kirtana krishna, grew up in bangalore, india, and her father used to play jazz records at home, which influenced her musical taste. as a child, she received instruction in traditional south indian carnatic singing. she also learned some basic guitar. when she was about twenty-one years old, circa , she was part of a rock band as a singer, and abhishek prakash was the bass player. during conversations, they discovered their mutual love for jazz. he revealed to her that he was essentially a jazz guitarist and asked her if she would sing with him. when kirtana agreed, they formed a duo called "blue rhythm." blue rhythm quickly put a jazz set together and started playing gigs across bangalore city. they performed both paid and unpaid gigs for about seven to eight months. abhishek told kirtana about a jazz institution called swarnabhoomi academy of music (sam) near the city of pondicherry in india. she was incredulous at first, saying that something like this could not exist in india. however, she discovered it did, applied there, and was accepted. when she was twenty-two, in circa , kirtana began her jazz studies in sam as a singer, attending for one year. prior to this, she could not read music. she covered a good amount of ground in her jazz theory knowledge and understood harmonic concepts and form better than most of her fellow students. one significant highlight was that, through the private vocal instruction she received there, she began scatting. she said that though she struggled to scat in the beginning, she has improved over the years and has become good at it. after a year at sam, kirtana returned to her hometown, bangalore, where she spent her time doing jazz gigs, and also taught private voice lessons at a music school. further, she had a brief stint in the nation of bangladesh, where she was also involved in a jazz group. currently, she has permanently returned to the vicinity of sam and is building a house in pondicherry. she is highly involved in the activities of the town of auroville, which is a sub-section of pondicherry, and is an artistic community. since , she has been accompanying herself on the guitar and states that she has been constantly improving. she is currently receiving private jazz guitar lessons. she teaches private voice lessons, mostly to children. she also continues playing gigs in pondicherry, bangalore and other cities, preferring to sing with small combos like duos and trios, which she says is better suited to her voice. she plans on continuing to pursue a jazz career, has dedicated her life to it, and hopes to keep attaining higher levels of expertise. a synopsis of steve zerlin's story steve zerlin is an accomplished jazz bass player from berwyn heights, maryland, who has had a significant performing and recording career in the united states and overseas. he has been visiting india since and has traversed across the whole country, except for the northwest region. his initial trips to india were to learn transcendental meditation. ramaswamy prasanna, the famous carnatic-jazz fusion guitarist was also the founder of sam. in order to recruit and inspire the students, his strategy was to recruit faculty who were exceptional musicians. while prasanna had difficulty in convincing another bass player to move to india to teach, that bass player recommended steve due to the fact that steve had been to india before and would very likely be willing to travel there. steve taught at sam for about six years from to . he began just a few months after it was founded. there were twelve students when he began. towards the end of his time there, there were about or students. he taught ensembles, ear training, jazz harmony, the history of jazz fusion and private bass lessons. steve played in many of the top jazz venues in all major cities in india, and also played in colombo, sri lanka. he performed on weekends and after the trimesters ended. during the breaks between trimesters, he would stay on for a while before returning to the us. during this time, he performed, traveled extensively around india, and taught specialized lessons. he has now returned to maryland and is continuing his performing career, is building a studio, and is open to the possibility of going back to india to teach. a combined story it was circa ; i remember the singer kirtana, a bass player, and i being present. there were probably other musicians present. it was a rehearsal for an upcoming gig. the bass player asked the group what scale could be used over a minor seven flat five chord. without batting an eyelid, kirtana answer that the locrian scale could be used. i was impressed and expressed my amazement at her knowledge of jazz theory. it was an unforgettable moment and we even reminisced about this when i interviewed her. it was mainly because of this incident that i wanted to know how she received her jazz education. the first time i saw kirtana was about three years before this, circa . i was at a restaurant in bangalore named "herbs and spice" and she was performing along with a guitarist in their duo named "blue rhythm." i got into a conversation with the guitarist, who introduced himself as abhishek prakash. i said i would like to jam with him sometime. we exchanged numbers. i did not meet kirtana at this point. after several months, abhishek called me to set up a jam. he was prompted to do this after seeing a video i had posted of myself on the "jazz in bangalore" facebook page. he and i ended up jamming many times and performing together a few times. it was about two years later, through our mutual friendship with abhishek, that kirtana and i got in contact. somewhere around this time abhishek moved out of bangalore. like abhishek had done about two years before, she called me to ask if we could jam. therefore, she and i started jamming and i have a memory of at least four performances together. for the last of these performances, abhishek happened to be in town and joined us. it was ironic that both members of blue rhythm had become part of my band for that gig. "blue rhythm" had been an initiation for kirtana and jazz came naturally to her. she says: all my contemporaries were doing pop, i somehow sought to distinguish myself, and went back to the memory of what i had already listened to. abhishek suggested these tunes and when i started singing them. i found that it came to me very easily, very naturally, i didn't have to make as much of an effort, which is funny, because for most people, it's the other way around. she loved it and wanted to explore it some more. abhishek told her about sam and she quickly enrolled there. the cost for a year at sam was about indian rupees , , which according to the historic exchange rate is about us dollars , . this included tuition, boarding and food. the diploma program they had was for two years, but due to the expense, kirtana could only attend for one year. she did however, make good use of that one year and worked hard. all the jazz faculty at sam were from overseas, and kirtana considered this to be a great benefit. she had an opportunity to learn from highly skilled professionals from around the world without needing to leave the country. steve zerlin was also one of her faculty. he shared the following about prasanna's recruitment philosophy: i was talking about prasanna, and that was prasanna's genius with the school, as if he said, let me bring faculty form the west, so that the students here in india, who will probably never have the opportunity the leave india and go to the west have a chance to study with westerners. the ones who, you know, grew up with this music, it's like if i wanted to study indian music, i don't really want to study it from some guy here, who went over to india and studied with somebody. i want to go to the guy that he went to, in india, you know. so there is a difference, you know, that's i guess the best you can hope when you come from another culture is, is you're never gonna be the same as the people who grew up with that music and who've been listening to it since they were listening to their parents talk, and they learned how to talk; the vocabulary of it, the feeling of the culture and everything, it's in your blood, it's in your, you know it's in your physiological makeup. so that's what prasanna brought to india was, those of us from the west who weren’t just - he said i don't want just teachers, i want people who are players; who've been out actually doing it, who understand this music, and do this music, so i think that that was really what gave sam the spark that it had. during her year at sam, kirtana had three vocal instructors who were women from mexico, jordan, and france. a big breakthrough in her learning was when, inspired by her instructor, kirtana began scatting. as kirtana told it, she was in a room with the teacher from mexico and as she played the piano and started scatting over john coltrane's equinox. this is how she animatedly describes it: i will never forget it, it was during one of our, one of the classes and i had my voice teacher ... and she was teaching us minor blues. we were doing john coltrane's equinox actually; we were doing that tune. she was sitting at the piano and she said ok, so now if i had to improvise over this, this is how i would go about it, and it was the first time that i was hearing it happening in front of me - live, i think. i fell in love with it immediately, because it sounded so..., i mean maybe it was the note choice of what she was using, or the chords, or i don't know what it was. it just like, drew me in and from then from then i want to know, ok, i need to know how the hell to do that. it was an epiphany, a life-changing, inspirational moment for her. when i asked her if it was difficult to scat, she explained, using jazz terms and concepts pertaining to improvisation, that it was difficult, particularly in the early stages. she said that she is much better at it now. most of the students at sam started with limited knowledge and ability, but there were a few who worked really hard and covered a lot of ground. kirtana was one of them, she went from being unable to read music, to have quite a remarkable understanding of theory in just a year. she said, "that's me though, that's just my efforts, i mean, they taught that to everyone, but not everyone got that you know." steve did attest that many could not read music, or even chord charts, and depended highly on their ear; some did need convincing of the value of being able to read. however, he had copious praise for the few hardworking students who made excellent progress, both his bass students, and those in his harmony class. he said that some of his former bass students are currently the best jazz bassists in the metropolitan cities of delhi, mumbai, and kolkata. he also explains about his harmony class, "jazz is a very advanced style of playing music. to understand the vocabulary involves a fairly complex music theoretical background. so, in my harmony class, i started steering everybody towards it, and those who could get there - got there." kirtana was one of those who "got there." steve had to cater his teaching for the indian environment and notes some differences. sam was a college-level academy and it was for those who had at least finished high school. he said that the indian students were very talented, less experienced, and that some applied themselves. he used the word "competitive" frequently, when describing the west versus india. as he explains it: if you come over here to learn jazz, you're gonna to really get thrown in the thick of it, because you're in a class with students who kind of grew up and the culture and you really got to cover lot of ground fast. over there, i couldn't really do that to the students because i had to work with what they were able to get, you have to get them there, and get them step by step to a place where there's understanding. this is what prasanna confessed, he said when he first came to berklee, berklee kicked his ass, he really had to get up to speed, and he did, he did the work, he really - and it shows in his playing. he also explained how india was more laidback as it was more "cooperative" than "competitive:" so, the western influence, i mean it's kind of a butt kicker when you come over here, you know, there's a big contrast between the general mood of learning and pace of living in india, as opposed to when you come over here, it very like, you know, ruthlessly competitive over here. so, the whole mode of behavior, it's got this real competition vibe about it. in india i felt, it was much more of a cooperative feeling thing. everybody would let each other use everybody's instruments. everybody shared everything very, very, willingly in india. it's not like that here. due to the students at sam not having grown up in the culture, and therefore having less exposure to jazz and less experience playing it, steve had to tailor his lesson modules according to the circumstances. kirtana shared information about two other jazz institutions that have since opened in india. they were the global music institute (gmi) in delhi and the true school of music in mumbai. steve did not know of the existence of the true school of music, but had visited gmi once. in response to my questions of whether these were exclusively jazz schools, she responded: i think as more and more people go to music school i think they're recognizing that jazz is kind of a mother ship of theory, of you know, of experimental possibilities, so, i think more people will take it up, and even if, even if it is not in its purest form, uh, i think songwriters and all the young blood, they are looking for, you com..., i wouldn't say complicated but looking for more sophisticated changes and sophisticated harmony when it comes their songs, so, you know, it, they might, it might still be rock, but then the rock will have some, you know, flat seven, flat nine, you know, which is unusual. implementing jazz concepts into rock is a start towards jazz, and it does indicate some theoretical knowledge has been acquired. her statement about these two other jazz schools appears to be reflective of her experience at sam. these schools were a steppingstone to playing or singing jazz. the ensembles there did not actually perform jazz. in response to my question asking whether the students were able to “get jazz” in two years, my understanding is that he implied that they did not. this is because he said that they played rock, pop, and funk tunes that were specifically selected to stretch them and help them bridge the gap to help them understand more advanced harmonic progressions. another common factor of the three music schools, and for india in general, is the instrument choice. the overwhelming popular choice of instrument is the guitar and kirtana was impressed with the guitarists at sam who had been there for at least a year. in the first interview she said "guitar" or "guitarist" times and only twice in direct response to a question. steve even mentioned that heavy metal was popular in india, and that many of those trying to learn jazz guitar at sam came from the heavy metal background. double basses are rare. steve saw one double bass, when he went to the state of mizoram for a week to give private lessons to someone who had bought one. kirtana has seldom seen double basses or performed with double bass players. she said that most don't even know what it is. i played a double bass player in india only once, the rest of the time it was with electric bassists. on the other hand, when playing in the jazz ensembles at umd, double basses were used frequently, and electric basses were rare. referring to trumpets or saxophones, which are important to the jazz tradition, both kirtana and steve said that sam did not have a horn teacher, and the websites of the other indian schools shoed that they did not have horn instruction either(professional courses, n.d.; program structure, n.d.). both of them hardly encountered horns in india at all. every ensemble i played in at umd had trumpets and saxophones and the big bands also had trombones. india does present some unique instrument preferences. continued learning steve did not know of any other instructors or institutions for learning jazz in india once a student had finished their two years at sam. however, he did mention some of the alumni who were in delhi, who regularly met together to play. he said, those guys have good understanding of the jazz idiom, and the jazz players in the city, the guys who get together and do this stuff, they are their own school cause they understand the fundamentals. did i give the example - a starving person, if you feed him a meal, you feed him once, if you teach him how to fish, you feed him for life? so, these guys know how to fish. by meeting together, playing together, and exchanging ideas "they are their own school" and can keep learning from each other and improving jazz performance and understanding. kirtana's act of moving to the city of pondicherry helped her to keep learning jazz. though there are jazz musicians in her hometown of bangalore and other cities, these large cities would not have the kind of concentration of jazz musicians in one area that she had. pondicherry is close to sam, and it is even closer to the artistic community of auroville. she is receiving jazz guitar lessons from a teacher whom she met in auroville. she met him when he was a part of the auroville jazz quartet which and they played at a bar in auroville, where she was a programmer. her continued involvement in a jazz community has helped her grow and mature as a jazz artist. steve did speak about some of the wealthier sam alumni who are presently continuing their jazz education in the us. there is a contingent of them at berklee college of music, and other schools across the us. he has been in touch with most of them and he had recently been to los angeles where he met with three of them. one of them, a drummer, at musicians institute in hollywood, knew his harmony so well he did not have to take the harmony classes and was able to go directly to the next level of classes. most of the time, the sam alumni came to their respective us institutions in groups of twos, threes, or more. this may imply that they were not only learning from their schools, but also that they were learning from each other. i gained all this knowledge through interviews with kirtana and steve. there was a time lapse for over three months between my interviews with kirtana and steve. by this time, i learned they must have known each other since their time at sam overlapped. steve knew kirtana but could not remember if she was in his harmony class, though he thought that she probably was. after my interview with steve, on the same day, i texted kirtana to ask her if she was in steve's harmony class. she replied affirmatively. it is an incredible coincidence that i could actually meet the very teacher who imparted the theory knowledge, that helped kirtana to be able to know that the locrian mode could be used to solo over a minor-seven-flat-five chord. answering the research questions here is a restatement of the research questions: . what are the circumstances that might cause an indian to choose jazz as a genre to perform? . how does someone interested in jazz develop their musical skill in india? . in what ways do jazz artists build professional careers in india? through the case study of kirtana krishna, and through the perspectives of both steve zerlin and myself, the answers to the research questions are reported here. due to overlapping points in the answers the questions are addressed as a whole, rather than one at a time. as rare as it is, it is quite possible for people in india to never be exposed to jazz, or for musicians to rarely encounter the genre. there were two factors that influenced kirtana to become a jazz musician. firstly, her father had jazz records and she listened to them growing up. secondly, her duo partner abhishek prakash influenced her to play jazz gigs with him and to eventually study at sam.. i was influenced by my friend samuel, who was influenced by dizzy sal, who was influenced by dave brubeck. the influence samuel had on me was not only creating the curiosity for this supposed final frontier of music call jazz, but also to taking me to victor matins' house and asking him to play for us. he got me to listen to jazz firsthand and introduced me to first jazz teacher. this opened doors for me that led to additional circumstances allowing me to meet individuals who helped open other doors and the cycle has continued. the big first influencer appears to serve as an ambassador for jazz and may be the most important factor causing another to choose learn jazz and for some to even choose to become a professional jazz musician. i have been a private jazz piano teacher in bangalore. there were probably no more than two other private jazz piano teachers in that city of over ten million people and to my knowledge, none of them taught as many students than i did. there was guilt in leaving bangalore, where there was a dearth of jazz teachers. through writing and presenting about jazz education in india, i believe, it would eventually do far more for jazz education in india. additionally, there also is information for future researchers. the main point is, though few and far between, the private instructors in india do play a small role in helping budding jazz musicians develop their skill. a surprising and positive revelation during the first interview with kirtana was that there were two other institutions in india whose main focus was jazz. both of these are in the two main cities of india. the true school of music is in mumbai, and gmi is in delhi. she said that gmi was started by two brothers who were berklee graduates. gmi mentions itself as a partner with berklee on their website(berklee global partnership, n.d.), and berklee's website confirms that six ensemble credits can be transferred from gmi(global partners, n.d.). there seems to be a consistency between kirtana's experience, my experience, steve's descriptions of the indian students, and even the literature: community should be built first, and then the career will follow. kirtana's choice of settling and building a house in an artistic community helps her to have musician friends and she appears to have frequent gigs with barely any dry spells. she never did have trouble finding musicians to play with. i had trouble finding musicians and gigs as i did not have the community, due to have studied jazz in the us. during my four years of study, i did not have any interaction with indian jazz musicians. it was only after i started jamming with local indian jazz musicians in that i was able to slowly build that community for myself. steve made three trips to india before he went as a faculty member for sam. during these trips he did not have any jazz performances, and nobody knew about him as a musician. however, once he began teaching at sam he was in demand as a high-profile jazz bassist, traveling all over india to perform. due to his interaction with the students and the jazz community, and his renown as a sam faculty member, many gigging opportunities opened up for him. for me, it was through friendly jams, that my first jazz gigs started opening up. the musicians i jammed with would suggest places to play, and these musicians and i would sometimes visit these places to hear others play live jazz. i was introduced to restaurant and bar managers through the musicians i jammed with, and thus started calling them to schedule gigs for us to play there. some managers had never heard us play or even seen videos of us on youtube. this suggests that as much as musical skill, or even at times more than musical skill, networking is important for a career as a jazz musician in india. jazz musicians learning from each other, building a musical community, jamming, and networking would all be part of the jazz enculturation experience. chapter : discussion comparing results the growth of formal jazz education is a trend seen first seen in the us and replicated in other parts of the world, and this has now come to india shores, with three institutions opening since . there could possibly be still newer institutions of which neither kirtana, steve, nor i are aware. if the trend continues in india, perhaps at some point in the future there may be a jazz degree offered. most likely, this would have to be through a partnership such with an international college or university such as the nakas conservatory in athens had or the rimon school of jazz in israel (caplan, ) both had with the berklee college of music (tsioulakis, ). it doesn't have to necessarily be through berklee though. however, a jazz degree in india could be years or even decades away. economics in , sam was the only option that kirtana knew about. because it was too expensive for her, she could only attend one year of the two-year program. in spite of this she did acknowledge that she was economically privileged enough to be able to be a jazz musician. when steve told me about the sam alumni who had come to the us to study jazz, he referred to them as "those who had the means" and "the lucky ones." for the majority of indians, due to the unaffordability, studying jazz abroad is not an option. for some, even studying in one of the indian academies may be out of their reach. potential students and their parents will likely consider the return on investment, and it does not seem to be currently viable. berklee also has strategically teamed up with a number of jazz colleges and universities around the world (toulakis, ; caplan ) and even have their auditions across the globe. their marketing for international students has been brilliant. i did email asking them if they could provide me with data regarding how many students are of indian nationality and how many students are of indian ethnicity. however, they did not respond. i did have a piano student in india who asked me to prepare him for a berklee audition. when i asked him how he would be able to afford it, he replied that his parents intended to sell the plot of land that was to be his inheritance. in the end he dropped out of lessons with me as i insisted he pick a later audition date. in another instance, a former bandmate passed the berklee audition that was held in malaysia, was accepted, and made it to boston. however, he could not gather the funding before the payment deadline and ended up attending new england conservatory. from interactions such as those mentioned, it seemed to me that in india the only us jazz school people knew about and applied to was berklee. this view was corrected by steve's information that some sam alumni had chosen other colleges including the manhattan school of music and musicians institute in los angeles. both prasanna and steve went to berklee and it was their benchmark to measure competitiveness. it is not the s anymore, and there are hundreds of options all over the world and especially in the us where there are at least universities offering jazz programs (downbeat, ), most of which tuition would be considerably less expensive than berklee, and also the cost of living would be lower than boston. berklee does not possess a magic formula that makes someone who goes there a great jazz musician. i do know some berklee graduates and have witnessed the playing of many. in my opinion, some are phenomenal yet not all are impressive. from my interaction with the students at umd who were getting jazz degrees, there was a clear delineation between those who practiced hard, and those who didn't. in my assessment, there are two or three diligent umd jazz students whose skill level would be on par with an above average berklee graduate. it is not entirely what a program offers a student, but what a student can extract out of the program, and if they can do so for a considerably lower cost, it does seem to be more viable. enculturation while it is generally understood that practice is what makes a musician good (ericsson, krampe, & tesch-roemer, ; ozmentes, ), it is easier said than done (harnum, ). it is the community that inspires jazz musicians to put in the practice hours and make progress (renick, ). having to play or show your progress, whether it is at a jam session, or to your friends or bandmates, or to a professor; this is what might push one to practice. the effectiveness of communities of musical practice (comps) is depicted by de bruin ( ) in an article about jazz in australia. he defines comps as "groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly"(p. ). as in australia, it would be difficult for a jazz musician in india to develop in complete isolation, something i can personally attest to during my years that were musically inactive. de bruin, also cites lucy green's groundbreaking book "how popular musicians learn"( ). this book contains a multiple case study of popular musicians in london, england. she presents the concept of "enculturation" throughout the book, as the way popular musicians learn. to take the concept a little further, enculturation does not necessarily need to be exclusive to popular music. popular music may only be different as it may not require "institutional" learning. every genre including jazz might depend to some extent on enculturation for the musicians to grow, and this can greatly complement formal learning because "iron sharpens iron"(proverbs : ). social media could also play a large role in forming community in rare music genres (cawley, ). some cities in india do have facebook groups for those who like jazz, and i am part of jazz facebooks groups of three different cities. these have been immensely helpful is connecting me with many jazz musicians. social media is a vital part of networking and enculturation. implications for music education as is seen in the literature review, jazz education is growing at a fast rate in schools, colleges and universities in the us and round the world. in the us, the introduction of jazz studies is breaking centuries old purist classical traditions (calkins, ). conservatories and music departments in colleges and universities are noticing this trend as more and more of them are introducing jazz studies or adding graduate jazz degrees. therefore, for music educators with knowledge and skills in jazz, the employment opportunities are increasing. therefore, it would be advantageous for jazz musicians to study to be school music teachers or college professors. due to the presences of alumni from the three music schools, there appears to be an increase in young jazz musicians in india and kirtana, too, believes this to be the case. these alumni can raise the bar. steve mentioned that some of his bass students were the "go to guys" in delhi, mumbai and kolkata. if they do indeed have professional performing careers, they may need to supplement their income through teaching. kirtana did say she could not make a living by only playing gigs but had to also teach private voice lessons. all through my gigging career i also taught private piano lessons. therefore, it is likely that some of the alumni of the three institutions are now teaching private lessons. when the sam alumni who are studying in the us return to india, they can greatly contribute to jazz education in india. they can inspire fledgling jazz musicians and impart their newly gained knowledge. there could also be gmi and true school of music alumni who are studying in the us. if they have a us student visa in a non-stem field such as music, currently policy dictates they can remain in the us for up to a year after graduating. among those that do return, it is very likely that many of them would teach. since they would be well networked, they have a lot of influence and could also have a lot of recording and output. some implications for jazz education in india through these musicians returning from the us would be are that there would be many more competent jazz musicians who can spread their influence. these musicians would probably draw bigger crowds when they play at jazz clubs and increase the popularity of the genre. through their pedagogy, jazz might get introduced into music schools that typically have western classical lessons, and jazz may be even grow in k- schools where jazz ensembles could even be formed. the future certainly seems to have greater possibilities for jazz education through them. directions for future research for future research on jazz education in india, there are a wide range of topics in need of exploration as it still is a very open, unexplored territory for research. additional case studies examining the lives of professional jazz musicians and teachers in india will be helpful in examining the current state of affairs and beliefs about jazz in india. case studies from the other two institutions in india might be an option. this could be done to find out more experiences of jazz learners and to compare and contrast the jazz education between the three schools. it would also be interesting to perform case studies of us returned alumni of the indian schools, particular if they engage in pedagogy upon their return. other possibilities for research that might indirectly be useful for jazz education in india is cost comparisons between different jazz degree programs in the us, including the cost of living in the particular university towns. also, perhaps a cost to quality analysis could be made to find out affordable schools that have good programs. for prospective indian jazz students, this is something that would be helpful in light of the gdp per capita of india. some financial analysis could be done in terms of return of investment, for returning to india and performing jazz gigs and teaching. since enculturation is also important, jazz department demographics on ethnicity and nationality would be helpful. conclusion like kirtana, there are some in india who are influenced by western culture, and who prefer to study and perform jazz. there could be a combination of reasons why the genre has appeal. it could be the improvisational element, the rhythm, the feel, the harmony, etc., or a combination of factors. the internet provides unlimited ways to listen to and savor the music. accessibility in is not like it was when i had four instructional jazz piano vhs tapes, and a few books in the s and s. there are many audio and video streaming services available on the internet along with a plentiful amount of free, downloadable instructional material. technology provides unlimited listening opportunities to make informed taste defining choices. for some, learning a score note for note, or playing pop covers exactly like the original may be their preferred artform. however, others might follow in the footsteps of kirtana and pursue jazz. as for jazz musician and instructor like steve, he believes hearing musicians playing pop or rock covers is uninspiring and that jazz musicians are an entirely different breed of artists. at this point in time, as i come towards the conclusion of this thesis, it is during the corona virus disease (covid ) pandemic. life does not follow a script, nor does improvisational jazz. there is a very human and existential expressivity in musical improvisation. of all western music genres, jazz is the best- known platform for this kind spontaneity. for kirtana, singing and playing jazz means everything. she said, "i can't do anything else, that i would be depressed and annoyed and defeated ... at life." it was great that an opportunity like sam came her way. her experience at studying and performing jazz provides some valuable insights about jazz educational in india; the perspectives of steve and i validate her story. appendices internal review board certificate the first interview with kirtana kirtana: ok, sure it's saying recording. do i have to do anything? it's saying recording, so. marcus: oh really! i thought it will ask you for permission or something, just one sec, ah kirtana: well let me just get my headphones because i can't hear you very well marcus: ok, sure kirtana: two minutes marcus: i'm using the computer's mic so kirtana: yeah, i am too, but i mean somehow you're not loud enough, just hang on marcus: ok, sure pause marcus: great, is it better, great kirtana: yes, better, can you see me? shall i position myself better marcus: yes, sure, whatever you like, i mean, nobody's go - i'm not going to show this video to anyone, it's just for me to like do my transcribing, i mean, i'm going to transcribe the entire interview and kirtana: ok, alright, then this is ... there's no problem as such marcus: yeah, ok, great, um, ok sure, so where are you right now kirtana: i'm in pondicherry marcus: cool, nice, decided to - did you decide to move there permanently, or kirtana: yeah, i decide to move here permanently, i'm building my own house here, this is roots now marcus: wow, great, great, what prompted you to do that, to move here kirtana: um, interesting, after sam i got connected with the adhishakti theatre company, that you know theatre company that is based out of auroville, and i kept kind of doing work for them i would come here and teach them, and then i was also part of some of their productions, ok, so i found that its, you know it’s a good environment in terms of having a kind of an artists community that's backing you. and also its a really nice place to live, you know, it's not polluted it's *** city, so i thought it would be best to move and kind of study in peace without too much outside influence i suppose. marcus: nice, nice, ok cool, so tell me about cheap delerium. kirtana: it's just my instagram handle, there's nothing more to it marcus: ok, is it you band or something kirtana: no, no, no, i had, i have a band sage for the ages, but at the moment we're not doing anything, as in i recorded an ep with them and i haven't released yet, so i you know, didn't get two of the tracks mastered and then i'm going to see maybe next year i'll put it out marcus: ok, cool, alright, great, um i have a good friend in chennai if you want, if you needed, you probably already have the contacts, but, uh, he does mixing and mastering and stuff, if you're interested i can send you his contact details. kirtana: sure, because, i 'm having a little, the thing is i recorded, uh, this entire album at, this place called eb, which was run *** for roshan george thomas, for some reason he majorly messed up the recording process and then, you know, whatever, there was a lot of noise coming in and then he decided that he didn't want *** do the mixing after, i had to find someone else who was not the engineer on the process to do the mixing and mastering so there is a little bit of uh, tsk, just bad luck i don't know. marcus: ok, ok, sure, i'll send you his details, i'm very satisfied with his work, and he's really patient with me, i always come back with tons of feedback and changes, and he was always been happy to work with me. he's actually a former student also so kirtana: what's his name? marcus: his name is vasan. kirtana: ok, alright. please send me his contact. marcus: he lives somewhere in chennai, i don't know where exactly, but, he's moved so i don't know where he is right now, but i went to his old former studio. kirtana: ok marcus: that's a good three or four years ago. yeah, cool, ok, let’s just get to the actual questions, but it doesn't have to be the actual questions, but kirtana: sure however, you feel marcus: ok, sure, what were your first experiences learning music kirtana: uh, first experiences learning music would be going for carnatic classes when i was young but i somehow never followed through. i mean i went to various people in, you know, at, in different ages from six onwards and i never really progressed beyond the basics, in carnatic, so marcus: is it singing? kirtana: it was singing, yes, marcus: ok kirtana: carnatic singing marcus: ok kirtana: it didn't appeal to me as much marcus: ok, i see kirtana: then, when i was twelve, i started learning guitar marcus: ok, oh really kirtana: but again, i, maybe i learned for a year, and the knowledge of what i learned for a year i continued till i was twenty four, you know with the open chords, like, you realize that you don't need much to write music, so i learned, you know, just the basics, and i took it till i was twenty four and then i decided ok i'm going to study guitar now properly. marcus: i see, i see, wow, ok, so, when did you start guitar then kirtana: so, like i said, i started when i was twelve marcus: i mean properly kirtana: properly would be in after i did sam, i finished sam in , and then, uh, around that time was when i *** that ok i'll try and get into studying guitar more seriously. marcus: ok, started in you said kirtana: i went to sam marcus: ok kirtana: for, you know, voice educa, for, you know, to study jazz, and just as a vocalist marcus: ok, was that straight out of school, or was, did you have some other time in between, or i mean how... kirtana: yeah, i had some time in between, so at i graduated from management school. marcus: oh ok, ok kirtana: i worked uh corporate till i was , marcus: ok kirtana: it was around that time that abhishek and i started blue rhythm, so, marcus: ok kirtana: (laugh) i called it *** to performing jazz and then i realized that actually i did not know ***, so ... that's when i said ok fine, this is something that really appeals to me, the performance, i might as well go and, you know, educate myself. marcus: ok, so how old were you when you started at sam kirtana: marcus: , ok kirtana: and a half, and a half and i was out of it at and a half marcus: ok, great, yeah, cool, so, i mean, what made you jazz k : ha, that's a really difficult, um, i had the memory of listening to jazz, my dad had records and he would play them marcus: ok kirtana: so, i remember listening to quite a bit of marcus: ok kirtana: but, it was also, you know, mixed with, i mean, when you're teenagers, *** years you're also listening to rock and, you know, it was mixed with a lot of other things, so at uh, i think, when i wanted to chose a repertoire for me to sing, i found that, uh, and especially because all my contemporaries were doing pop, i somehow sought to distinguish myself, you know, and went back to this the memory of what i had already listened to. and when abhishek and i, when he suggested, you know these tunes, and we, when i started singing them i found that it came to me very easily, very naturally, i didn't have to make as much of an effort, which is funny, because for most people, it's the other way around, you know. marcus: i see kirtana: other things come naturally to them and they have just really get into jazz, but, for me somehow it is something that i, felt comfortable with like, i knew, and it knew me kind of situation. marcus: oh wow, cool, how did you and abhishek decided to, decide to form blue rhythm, how did that happen kirtana: (laughs) um, when i was, um, i think, or something, i had a crush on this boy who used to play at this band, a, he was the guitarist, and abhishek was the bassist, so i would go to watch *** and that how abhishek and i formed a friendship, and of course, i would sing with them once, and then, he, uh, came up to he afterwards, in a couple of months later and said i have an idea for a duo, and you know, i'll play guitar, i've been studying jazz, why don't you sing. i said ok, we just started jamming, and he came up with everything else, with the name and with the tag line and the brand concept and everything, he did all of that marcus: i see, what kind of music that that band play kirtana: oh they played uh classic rock like ***, boyd, like krytos and you know the *** marcus: ok, so you guys took a different turn, with *** kirtana: of course, yeah, and i had no idea.. he was a bass player right, i had no idea that he could play guitar and in fact he was studying joe pass and you know like doing his work, i had no idea marcus: uh ha, yeah go ahead kirtana: no so suddenly he had all of this done, like, in terms of technique and he just wanted someone to, you know, share it with and have someone else, a bandmate, i suppose, so. marcus: i see, did you guys do a lot of gig s and stuff or kirtana: uh, yeah, it was actually going pretty well before i decided to, i mean, we probably had or months before i decided to go sam and those time, i mean, in those months, you know we quickly put together a set and we would just perform as much as we wanted, not all of them were paid at that time, we were just happy to, you know, sing and play, and it seemed like we were getting somewhere, which is when i though that, ok, now that this is getting somewhere, i might as well, you know, really get my basics, and foundation, understand what the hell it is that i have to be, so i kind of left the band midway, and went to study music, and he hasn't forgiven me for it (laugh). marcus: i actually remember hearing you guys at herbs and spice kirtana: yeah, that's right, we did have one, i think, one or two shows there. marcus: yeah, i actually met abhishek, i took his number, and forgot, i said i want to jam with you sometime, and i forgot all about it, and then he called and texted like some months later. kirtana: right marcus: because, i (laugh) kirtana: no, yeah, i guess, i mean, i guess he was looking for you know, other people to play with, so (laugh) marcus: but, sadly i'm not in touch with him anymore, i think once he left to delhi or something, i just lost touch with him kirtana: well he recently got married marcus: oh he did, kirtana: he did (big laugh) marcus: wow, oh wow kirtana: i know (still laughing). marcus: ok kirtana: he's married a lovely girl (***couldn't pick up the name) here in *** perfect for each other. marcus: ok, yeah, wow, ok, so that kirtana: so that's, how did you hear about sam, uh, funnily enough it was through abhishek itself like, like, he's been such an influence in my life, my god, yeah, it was through him, and i even remember having this conversation him, telling him that it’s not possible for india to have such a school, i do, i don't believe, you know, to have such a school. and he'd say no no it's true there is such a place, and you can go it, there are some amazing that have come down and if you really want to get into it then this is the place marcus: aha, i see, i don't know, oddly, in whatever conversation i had with abhishek about sam he never seemed too impressed, i don't know why. kirtana: he never seemed too impressed with sam marcus: yeah, yeah he said, wha, he said he went there and jammed a couple of times and everyone and everyone seems to be a beginner or something. that's what he's told me, way back. kirtana: maybe, i don't know what experiences he had there, but, uh, when i went there, there were some really phenomenal guitar players, at least in the guitar department, everyone was a real cat, uh, those who had at spent a couple of semesters there. there weren't too many bass players, the vocalists were ok, uh, there were some good drummers as well. uh, and, i mean it was a, i feel like now it's really fallen in terms of the pool that catch, because i think they just accept everyone, earlier when prassana was'n, had a say, it was a, you know a more vibrant environment. but all the same, uh i, the teachers that come down, if you know how to make use of them, you can go from zero to like a really good space you know in good time, marcus: ok, i see, i see kirtana: in my experience of course, marcus: so you have, like guitar, bass, drums, you have piano there, or were there piano teachers? kirtana: yeah, piano as well, piano, and voice marcus: and voice, did they have any other instruments? or do they kirtana: no, no ,no, there was no horn section, no violin, none of that. marcus: ok. i see, yeah cool, so just talk about sam and your teachers there if you could , you experience there kirtana: sure, sam, what would you like to know, ok so, i had three vocal teachers, i did one year there marcus: ok kirtana: and in my first semester the system was that we would have two bits, and then the faculty would change after seven weeks, so we had two sets of faculty, m : ok kirtana: uh, i had this mexican super-star by the name of magos herrera, she's quite something in mexico *** marcus: oh ok kirtana: uh, she was my first teacher, then i had uh, someone called farah siraj who was jordanian, she was my second teacher, so in terms of what they taught me it was kind of i mean, i was put into the beginner section because i did not know how to read music, so, but again, i have a good sense of pitch, so i could pick up things very easily, but, in terms of what they taught me, it my beginnings towards vocal improvisation over changes, which is i think, you know the biggest thing when it come to jazz ex, of course you know you can learn *** and you can learn to sing, and you can learn the head, etc, but then understanding changes, like what is happening, how to maneuver yourself through all that both of them taught all that, not so much in terms of technique, which was great, which was exactly what i needed. marcus: yeah kirtana: and, ah, then of course you had all of the other, common classes and you had, you know, your introduction to harmony and how to, you know, what, what the hell is going on and ensembles, so that's about it. marcus: and i know, i mean i told i was really impressed with your jazz theory knowledge, and haha ... kirtana: hahahaha that's me though, that's just my efforts, i mean, they taught that to everyone, but not everyone got that you know. marcus: ok, yeah, i was, i'll never forget that, that time kirtana: the locrian bit marcus: yeah, i will never forget that, yeah, wow, cool, yeah and also , i've hardly seen any, uh, anyone scat in bangalore or india at all. kirtana: oh really, ok marcus: oh, but, i mean, you used to scat and you understood the changes and stuff, so that was, yeah kirtana: but that, that is what attracted me most, you know, to, i mean, when you hear ella you're like, wow i want to be able to do that, but i also want to be able to do it as authentically as possible. which i, which i still have not got there, i don't know, i don't know, heh, you know marcus: ok, ok, i see, so you went there for one year only kirtana: for one year, yeah, just for one year marcus: ok, ok, i see, um, is there a reason you decided not to do the two-year program kirtana: yeah, because it was expensive, again i think the only reason, i mean i did of course want to go abroad and study, but i think the, the financial, you know, i didn't want to loan and all of that, because that's, i didn't want to get into a mess of it, so one year was good marcus: so , you kind of had it on your mind that you might possible like to go abroad. kirtana: yeah , yeah, for sure marcus: is that, are you still open to that, if you can, if money was not an issue, you'd do it right. kirtana: yeah, if money was not an issue, i would definitely *** abroad, definitely marcus: ok, um, so um, apart from sam, did you do any other learning with other teachers, or kirtana: yes, so um and after i left sam i think, um, i wanted to get into you know, uh, basically supporting myself as a vocalist, i wanted to study guitar more seriously, like i mentioned earlier, so i looked for, uh, guitar teachers, and that's when i started, i mean i was teaching as well, i was teaching voice, but i was also studying guitar with various different teachers and somehow like, i just could not make, connect with any of them marcus: ok kirtana: except to, you know, uh till a couple of months when i finally found my guitar teacher and now we have a duo, marcus: ok kirtana: uh haho, ah, so till then of course i've also been studying, ah, of learning videos and i have a you know a large collection books and just material that i sift through now and then see how i can get better. marcus: uh, ok kirtana: but now the focus is entirely guitar, focus on just, is just on you know improvising on the guitar marcus: i see, i see, ok, um, did you learn anything online at all kirtana: ah, yeah, i mean, when i wouldn't get some things i would look it up online, i would look up how to play certain rhythms and you know, uh, when i can't hear the changes properly i always looked for things online, but not, it's not like i went on a course or anything like marcus: ah, ok, ok, uh, did you pick up stuff from other musicians around kirtana: um, marcus: like you jammed with or performed with kirtana: uh, not in terms of technique, i think the musician community has been most helpful to me in, in kind of crafting my taste, you know, on what to listen to, who to listen to, ah, what, but i, i don't think i ever picked up anything from them in terms or technique, so marcus: ok, ok i see, just general advice or something like that kirtana: yeah, just general advice, yeah, i mean like ah, yeah marcus: neither did abhishek show you anything, or did he kirtana: not on the guitar, somehow nobody ever took me seriously on the guitar, i don't know why, haha, you know, it's like they never bothered to tell me that you can do this, this way or you can do it that way marcus: ok, so to him you were just a singer kirtana: yeah, it's insulting, but yeah marcus: ok, that's sad, yeah, was all of your jazz learning done in india kirtana: yes all of it marcus: yes all of it was done in india marcus: all of it, ok, wow kirtana: i was lucky enough to have been exposed to people who have played, you know, in different scenes around the world, mostly from sam, so the information that i got was first hand authentic from, you know, american jazz players, and latin jazz players. but i did not have to go outside of my environment to receive it. marcus: ok, i see, wow, um, how, how do your family members respond you becoming a jazz musician kirtana: ah ha, they don't understand it, but they support it all the same marcus: they support it? kirtana: yeah they do, because they know that i, you know i'm an absolute ***, they know that i can't do anything else, that i would be depressed and annoyed and defeated, yeah ha, at life i had to do anything apart from what i'm doing, so they understand that marcus: that's absolutely true about us jazz guys we just can't just do anything else and be happy in life kirtana: exactly marcus: yeah, so that's the only thing we can do, are you a natural improviser, can you say that? kirtana: ah marcus: uh, singing or guitar, either or both kirtana: on voice, i'm definitely more comfortable, i would say yes, uh, i am natural at it. marcus: aha kirtana: uh, uh, but at the same time, um, i think form taught to me, so, i can at least, i know when to stop and when to start i'm not completely lost, marcus: ok kirtana: so that much has been given to me and then within that i think i just, yeah, marcus: uh ok kirtana: i think it's seen *** marcus: ok kirtana: it also depends on, you know, who you listen to, so i've been lucky enough to have listened to a lot people who do this stuff right, so i do pick up from that marcus: i see, wow, ok, how are the venues where you play jazz kirtana: um, well there used to more in bangalore, but day by day they are all shutting down, um you know marcus: *** kirtana: sorry marcus: is that, is that, because they are less people interested in listening to live jazz, or kirtana: no, no, i think's it's a, um in bangalore, i think it's at, at, at the moment it's political climate marcus: ok kirtana: uh, because there have always been certain institution and certain people, who might not have able to pay as much, but at least, the passion for keeping the music alive. but now, you know, with the current climate, that's become difficult marcus: but, ah, you know when i call, lot of people say that people are not interested in jazz, actually that's not true, cause in my experience, every time i've, i've played, they were, there has been a quality crowd that has appreciated and you know, listen to, listen to jazz marcus: ok, i see kirtana: so *** marcus: there's always people ready to listen to it kirtana: yeah, more and more ready, i think there's more awareness now, marcus: ok kirtana: uh, not a lot people understand it, but they want to make the effort to, you know, listen to it, and they've learned to the etiquette of shutting up, haha marcus: haha kirtana: and you're gonna have people talk, but they're becoming a little bit more aware. marcus: yeah, yeah, do you think sam has made a big in many, uh guys and girls going out there and learning and learning jazz and then performing it kirtana: for sure, for sure, bit's it's a, i also feel like it's brought about a kind of, you know, a difference in class of musicians, because there are a lot of people who haven't gone to music school, and who haven't been to a sam and who aren't necessarily aware of theory, uh, but still, and then there are some of us who, or i mean, i wouldn't want to say us, but then are some, ah, you know, some people who go to music school, who are not so technically able, but are aware of the theory, so there's a little bit of a, you this kind of, i've been to music school, i've not been to music school, kind of, you know marcus: ah, ok kirtana: but then i hear some bigger pictures that you all come in, you know come together and say that you're playing music and get out of it marcus: uh, are there other jazz institutions in india apart from sam kirtana: yeah, there are two others, there's this, the true school of music in bombay and uh, the global *** music institute in delhi. marcus: oh the, say that again, the global kirtana: music institute, gmi marcus: ok, ok kirtana: uh, and gmi was started by, uh, two berklee uh, you graduates, uh, they’re brothers marcus: um, kirtana: tarun balani and aditya balani, and they, they've, you know, they've been to berklee and they want to bring the berklee vibe here and true school of music is, i know ranjit barot's on the trustees, uh board, and i, but i'm not sure who has started it, but yeah. marcus: are they both exclusively, jazz schools, jazz institutions, or kirtana: uh, you know what, i'm not sure but i know that the focus is definitely on jazz, i mean, they might churn out a, you other musician, might churn out how to make pop songs, but then i know for a fact that the harmony that they study is all jazz harmony. marcus: ok great, so then they're probably a lot, lot of young people learning jazz india now because of the three kirtana: yes, yeah, there are a lot of, yeah, i mean, yeah, there are a lot of people learning jazz in india. okirtana: kirtana: at the moment, i don't know how good they are or how, how far they're gonna go but then, the study material what you, what you're expected to learn is all jazz *** (as all changes) marcus: ok, i see, i've actually downloaded uh the syllabus or curriculum, don't know what, i think the syllabus, uh of sam, and kirtana: ok marcus: *** it looks good to me kirtana: looks like they're ok haha, good to know marcus: haha, but mean i mean i you don't know the specific, details, i once called on the phone cause one of my students wanted to go there, i once called on the phone to ask some questions, but anyway, yeah kirtana: right marcus: is it hard to find jazz musicians to jam with or even perform with? kirtana: um marcus: in india or in, from where you're at, in pondicherry or wherever kirtana: you know, i wasn't actively looking for a, jazz musicians to jam with, somehow they always just came my way marcus: ok kirtana: and i made best of the situation marcus: i see kirtana: uh, i also feel that, uh, considering the nature of my voice, um, a big band doesn't work for me, so i always like to limit my, you know, my performance situations to two or three people, and that has never been hard so far, ***(like they're always good) marcus: so you never have trouble getting musicians kirtana: no, not really marcus: ok, i see kirtana: i've been lucky that way i think marcus: ok, because i sometimes had a hard time, but kirtana: haha, yeah, sure marcus: yeah, but, i mean, uh kirtana: i think, because i went to school, right, then there was a network which formed right, so marcus: yeah, i didn't have that kirtana: *** a call away, haha, you marcus: ok, yeah, yeah, yeah, cause i was like, trying to convert, like, rock guys into jazz, just to play jazz and stuff like that, that never worked kirtana: no but, so much has changed in the past like twenty years i suppose, or nearer ten years ***, so yeah marcus: cause i, i mean i'm and i actually years, years ago i think, i was about , same age as when you went to sam, i did my bachelor of music in the us. at that age, but then i had absolutely no contacts in bangalore. kirtana: yeah because you did it abroad right, marcus: yeah, yeah kirtana: if you have *** wanted to continue there then it would have been possible for you *** marcus: maybe, i don't know, you know, i also did it in a very small town, with, with very few jazz musicians, so, yeah, that also didn't help me network *** and i actually ended up playing pop than jazz. kirtana: right, which is not a bad thing, because pop music back then i suppose had a little bit more value than pop music right now. *** unbearable haha marcus: but like, i toured with pop band, and, nobody asked me, like did you learn pop in india or anything like, did you learn to play in india, but whenever i play here, i mean, maybe a hundred people have asked me, did you learn in india. kirtana: oh nice, ok m; and i've always found, why is it, when i play jazz, you ask that question, i just, may, i just, anyway it just is interesting to them kirtana: yeah - it's interesting, i think it's more cultural, to them no, more than pop marcus: ok, yeah, i see, um, is jazz you career kirtana: ah, i'd have to say at i think it's becoming my career, haha and uh marcus: ok, um, can you make a living gigging kirtana: gigging alone, no, but gigging and teaching, yes. marcus: ok, is teaching pretty good? kirtana: yes, marcus: are you teaching right now kirtana: yes, of course, marcus: ok, how many students do you have kirtana: marcus: , ok, do you teach singing? or guitar? kirtana: yeah, i don't teach guitar marcus: ok, i see kirtana: i think i, i'd like consider myself a student of guitar and a teacher of voice. i think that's ok. marcus: ok, ok, how's the, how's the practice environment, do. you find the musicians around you practice hard or ... kirtana: absolutely, it's amazing in main auroville and in pondicherry, uh, it's a small circle, there aren't too many people, but the people who are here are very serious about what they are doing, which is again one of the reasons why i want to be here. um, it's a place for the arts to thrive and everyone practices really hard, or constantly you know, updating repertoire and listening to the current trends in the jazz world, it's, it's it's great, it's really great. marcus: ok yeah, how's your practice like? kirtana: it's very serious at the moment, oh, with guitar especially, uh, voice, voice, ah, i practice kind of a, you of kind of *** gigs, i think *** most *** my practice ***. marcus: really? kirtana: i have given myself till to be able to, you know, some more teaching and learn on guitar improvisations for another six years. so , in years i better get there. marcus: haha. i don't know. it's something you can never stop i guess in jazz, you can never stop learning kirtana: sure, sure marcus: 'cause i'm and i'm, i'm still learning. kirtana: no but that's great. i mean i don't ever want the study to stop, i, i think the more you can discover about the music everyday and *** the more combinations you can try that's great, but i think uh, you know, there's got to be a stage where you can stay that ok i, i'm at least competent on this, and i still can't say that. marcus: ok, i see, so um, how do you say, how's the gig environment in india, i mean overall, not just bangalore. kirtana: um you know i'm so confused about it because in some ways. i think it's good, and on some other days i think it's bad, i think, uh, so far, uh musicians have been a little bit entitles in the sense that they expect the venues to do everything, you know, for you in terms of payment and promotion and everything but i think i've understood the mindset now that you've got to do your own leg work, and you've got to bring the crowd to you, you know that means pitching your word out there and trying to, you make sure your *** and kind of build a following for what your trying to do and then the gigs you'll get is good for you. if you have a name for every city that you go to with your own efforts, that's great. but you're ex, if you're relying on someone else to do that for you it doesn't work out. marcus: ok, ok, yeah, actually while you mentioned that, there's an interesting e- book i came across, i'll send it to you. kirtana: sure, sure, is it ***(published) marcus: it's called the the uh, figure musician. kirtana: ok, haha, monetizing, haha marcus: yeah, yeah, so , i mean, if you literally do everything that's in it, i think you'll make money anywhere. kirtana: oh, yeah marcus: uh, i never literally did everything that's in it, so, yeah, it includes lot of social, social media and all that stuff. kirtana: right m : i only facebook and i don't even look at it everyday so, kirtana: haha marcus: yeah, um, do you feel you're properly paid when you do gigs? kirtana: again, um, when i'm relying on the venues, no, not really, but when we go on a gate share, then yes, marcus: say that again, when you go on a kirtana: when we go on gate share *** we have like say, we make a good deal with the venue saying we'll give you or % and then you know, sell tickets, then we made, we make actually quite a lot *** these shows that we did with shanks, that's that we went with that model, just this weekend, and we actually ended up making quite a bit, much more than what we expected. marcus: oh really kirtana: which *** you know in a traditional setup if you've gone to b flat *** ok we'll pay you five thousand rupees. er, you know, per person, right ok they'll give you ten grand in total but then that's that's not much. so, in terms of the tickets, we did do a lot in turn to promote and to invite people and you know, all of those efforts were made, so we made money. marcus: ok, i see kirtana: so yeah, gotta be a little savvy, hehe, but venues don't pay, they don't pay much. marcus: i see, ok, have you done anything in chennai, cause you're lot closer *** kirtana: chennai, no, no actually no, chennai is such a dead scene marcus: yeah? kirtana: nothing happening there. marcus: ok, ok kirtana: pondi has got better scene than chennai, unless a singing a *** or carnatic margari basan, that style, haha, otherwise, no. marcus: uh, do you see a future for yourself as a jazz musician in india kirtana: i hope so, haha marcus: ok, haha, i see, i see kirtana: uh, i mean, you know, um, i think as long as i can just continue to study and i have a few bunch of people who are around, i think um, i think it's it's a viable thing. i don't ever expect to be famous or you know, or even make a name for my... pure jazz is very selfish, cause it's just for me, me and my head like, my jazz, i'd, i'm not really interested in, in you know i don't know if i will ever make it to stage where, you know where blue note will come and tell you can i ***, not gonna happen, i've made my peace over that, haha. marcus: it's weird because i've had the, like very opposite thing happen like, i've done like, like three restaurant gigs with a singer, and the in bangalore, and then she thinks she's like a superstar, that prima donna syndrome, it's interesting that you have none of that. kirtana: yeah, well you know, i mean, it's reality right, and it's the, i don't think anyone should do music to be famous or to even earn money on what you can make, pay your bills i think that's ok. but i think for much more spiritual and, more, uh, you know a vast intention, it's a part of expanding and knowing more marcus: ok, i see, uh, so you're building the house with with what you earned with jazz. kirtana: oh my god i wish i could say yes but no. marcus: ok, ok kirtana: *** i mean i don't want to put this thing, i don't want to come across, you know, in the wrong way, but in a sense i am privileged to be able to do this because if i didn't come from a certain family and if i didn't have a certain backing, i don't think i would be able to follow, pursue jazz, i didn't think someone who is you know, from another kind of an economical background would be able to do this. you know, be able to afford a guitar or be able to *** so i have my mom who's helping me out, you know, building this thing for me so that i don't have to, you she can say, ok, do your jazz in peace you know, it's really, i'm really grateful to her. marcus: that's nice of her kirtana: yeah, it's very nice of her marcus: would you, has it ever crossed your mind, i'm trying to say, i'm trying to frame these questions right, but you could possibly be performing jazz somewhere else and would you like that or prefer that to india or you're content or what, what's you kirtana: uh, i think the kind of person that i am i don't *** i mean, uh, i'm not going to say that i haven't had these thoughts, i did want to go abroad, and i did want to study music elsewhere, i mean of course, you know *** to you know having finished studying there maybe stay back and explore a scene and see if i could fit there. but, at the moment i think, uh, i want it to be that, i get to a level where i can be assessed on a world stage, and then maybe you know, try and maybe get gigs and tour elsewhere. but, i don't think i ever want to live abroad, i think i love india too much, it's a great country and uh you know i'd rather do something, that is maybe not culturally mine, but do it here, *** do this somewhere else. marcus: ok kirtana: yeah ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------ marcus: um, do you see a future for jazz in india? kirtana: yes, yes, of course i do, i think uh, i think as more and more people go to music school i think they're recognizing that jazz is kind of a mother ship of theory, of you know, of experimental possibilities, so , uh, i think more people will take it up, and even if, even if it is not in it's purest form, uh, i think songwriters and all the young blood, they are looking for, you com..., i wouldn't say complicated but looking for more sophisticated changes and sophisticated harmony when it comes their songs, so, you know, it, they might, it might still be rock, but then the rock will have some, you know, flat seven, flat nine, you know, which is unusual, so, haha, yeah marcus: i hate to this in the middle of the interview, but i need a bathroom break, if you don't mind, kirtana: oh, ya ya, of course, of course marcus: i, i, i worked out in the gym then i drank like liters of water, so if you don't mind, sorry about that, kirtana: no problem, of course, marcus: i'll be right back kirtana: not, at all, ok i'll get some water myself ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------ kirtana: hi marcus: ok kirtana: hi marcus: hi again, um, tell me about any, tell me about any recording in the works or past recordings or what you're working kirtana: so uh, in june, um, i had, uh, you know formed a, ok wait, so, uh in i had moved to bangladesh, to work with a, some people, um, somebody that i was in a relationship with but not anymore, so, haha, *** we had a band that's when *** you know we started doing uh, recordings uh, of uh, tagore, so we did jazz arrangements somewhat of tagore, it was interesting, i know that time *** marcus: talk about fusion, ok, anyway kirtana: yeah, i’ll about fusion yeah, that's in, i mean that was ok, uh and then um, uh, earlier this year i'd formed this band with again a couple of sam musicians itself, and we kind of a arranged my songs and uh, i recorded this ep, and you know *** like i mentioned earlier in the beginning of this interview, i'm waiting to release them. then uh, with my guitar teach and we've formed this duo, so, with him we are going to be recording three songs in december. marcus: ok kirtana: so, one is an original and two of them are rearrangements, so marcus: ok, i believe i saw a video of, i think it was a bossanova tune, kirtana: aha marcus: on facebook, a couple of days ago kirtana: just ***. yeah yeah yeah yeah marcus: ok *** kirtana: so our, our set is very largely latin jazz, we do a lot of bossa and samba, and you know a couple of *** marcus: were you singing in portuguese by any chance? kirtana: yes, yes, yes marcus: wow! kirtana: so i'm stu..., i studying portuguese at the moment. marcus: you are? kirtana: yeah, haha. marcus: to sing it, or you just like the language kirtana: no, to understand what the hell i'm singing marcus: ok kirtana: *** imitate the web, well enough but then i want to know what, what the meaning of it is, there i can be *** better marcus: ok, ok, yeah, yeah, yeah, wow, yeah i remember you're singing girl for, girl from ipanema (in portuguese) haha, yeah, but that's interesting. um, tell me about composing, do you compose a lot and what's the process like for you and... kirtana: uh, so i think could say i write songs more than, you know, actually compose music, so uh, the process has always been that you sit with the guitar and uh, and look for changes that sound appealing ... marcus: ok kirtana: and then find a melody over it and then write the words to it. so, it's always the case and that hasn't changed, haha marcus: ok, uh have you wri... how how many songs a year would you write kirtana: uh, god, so, i mean, i think as an exercise i started writing songs when i was twelve or thirteen marcus: ok kirtana: so, if i were to really count all of that i don't know how many songs i have, maybe like, i really don't know, but *** what i can perform today would maybe be twelve or fifteen marcus: ok kirtana: that i'm happy with marcus: i see, i see, you had some shows in bangalore right? kirtana: yeah, yeah marcus: who were the band members, uh, who were the band members you played with and tell me about those shows and so that, the project that is, uh, that i'm currently, uh, you know, pushing out of everything is uh, this git... *** what i'd like to call a teacher student duo, uh, wherin i'm, i'm, you know, i'm the student and my guitar teacher so him and i we perform uh, its two guitars and both of us sing, and uh we, we do jazz, latin jazz mostly and some swing standards thrown in. so that was the video clip that you watched. marcus: ok, i see, wha... what attracts you to latin jazz kirtana: oh my god, i, you know, it was this emotional opening, i did not, i'd never un, i never, i didn't realize how, at... uh attached i could become to that, that form of music but uh, sometime around, last year, , uh i started listening to george roberto, and i had heard him before, but for some reason, i, you know, i, i, i just started listening really hard to him and then, uh, i, i felt really connected and then after that it's just artists just kept coming, you know, my way one after the other, and now, i don't know, i think i have a, i think i'm most invested in that music at the moment, like i have very vast collection of artists and i keep learning portuguese songs of artists and songs all the time, so haha marcus: wow, that's cool, you should probably go to brazil and ***(just learn jazz) kirtana: i do, i want to go, i'm planning a trip, yeah, i'm planning a trip maybe for two thousand and twenty two, not twenty one, twenty two maybe, marcus: ok, if you, if you ever want to come visit here you're welcome to some stay with us, kirtana: oh, that would be lovely, marcus: on your way to brazil or whatever, so, yeah kirtana: on my way to brazil ... getting a visa to the states though, i don't know how *** that's going to be like marcus: i actually got rejected my first time, i got rejected like three times kirtana: right, but you're persistent, so i don't think i have the money to spend on haha, visas, they don't return that money to you, they don't return rejection money to you marcus: yeah, yeah, wow kirtana: cough, cough, excuse me ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------ marcus: so, uh, so your bangalore gigs were with just the guitar teacher and you? kirtana: yeah, with just my guitar teacher, yeah marcus: how many did you have? kirtana: we had two gigs, for one friday, one saturday, we just, we actually debuted this set, uh, last sunday, over here at *** theatre. marcus: oh you did? kirtana: yeah, so, that was like, i mean it's, it's very new actually, it's just, it's been a couple since we started jamming*** th of october, and then we got two gigs in bangalore, so that's friday - saturday marcus: ok kirtana: and then, i think our next gig is in november, so i'm trying to see if i can get some in the meanwhile. marcus: where is that, the next gig kirtana: uh, it's at the storytellers bar in pondicherry. marcus: oh, it's over there. is pondicherry a good place for gigs. kirtana: uh, shh, it's funny, uh, it used to be an absolutely amazing place, for for gigs, uh, there was this space called kashakiasha that was run by an american woman, uh, for about odd years she ran really happening scene and then last year she got deported. so ... you know... marcus: oh no, that's terrible kirtana: that's terrible, it was great but she had some really fantastic musicians come play and she herself is a violist and, you know, she really supported the scene, uh, i mean and then there are a couple of other places and within auroville there are always, you know, there's always something of the other happening, in terms of music and also interestingly enough, i'm also part of this, uh um, four-part, uh, vocal ensemble, uh marcus: oh kirtana: that are doing, you know, jazz harmony marcus: wow kirtana: yeah it's really interesting marcus: oh wow! kirtana: yeah, haha marcus: tell me more about that - sounds exciting kirtana: uh, so there's this pianist lady by the name of shakti, who's ukranian, uh, cause in auroville there are ***. and we're doing, we're doing some latin standards, we're doing ***, *** and triste, and there are four girls who are, you know, who's singing, jazz harmony and i, i've got alto, *** marcus: ok kirtana: so, yeah, its, its fun marcus: who writes the arrangements kirtana: she does, the pianist marcus: wow, wow kirtana: yeah marcus: writing jazz arrangement is i think way harder than classical ever is kirtana: yeah, absolutely marcus: i think jazz itself is definitely much harder than western classical kirtana: yeah i mean, because you have the whole improvisational bit to it and then if you are, yeah i don't know, if you're writing arrangements for, for four-part harmony, it's not easy cause you've the bass, you've got the drums you got the piano and then you got these like, you've got to fill up the chords, right, it's really like superb really difficult work. most challenging thing i mean, most challenged affair of the long term. marcus: aha, cause i have a lot of friends who are classical pianists, and if i just ask them, you know, i, like they are, they are, like we just talk about what we have to do for our, you know university work and i said you know i gotto, i gotto go transcribe this tune, by the way do you guys transcribe, and like they've never transcribed in their life, kirtana: my gosh marcus: and if they had to, they know how to do, they could not do kirtana: right, it's it's like their ear is really weak no, you need to give them sheet music all the time. y: yeah, and like, to play a tune in another key would be like, they would have to rewrite the entire thing kirtana: right marcus: or something like that kirtana: and here it's like you're expected to know, you know, so many tunes in so many different keys and to be able do all of the changes, it's like, aw, love it marcus: especially when you work singers you know you're gonna get a different key kirtana: haha, yeah, hahah, i think it's fair, i think it's fair marcus: i think, i think it's a necessary skill cause learning different keys does so much for your ear kirtana: exactly, absolutely marcus: i mean, i've taken several, several tunes and practiced them in twelve keys including girl for, girl from ipanema, i've practiced that in twelve, yeah kirtana: right, and that's the practice that is expected, i mean at least what is drilled all in you, whatever you learn, you learn it is twelve keys, you try attempt to learn it in all twelve keys, yeah marcus: yeah kirtana: i also feel like you don't improvise the same way in the same key, like, or different keys, you know you try different things each time so marcus: yeah, and you bring ideas from other keys into other keys kirtana: exactly love marcus: i'm also curious to know about women in jazz in india, how, how is the scene kirtana: while most of them are vocalists, there are, i mean, *** i wouldn’t wouldn't way many but there are quite a few who are attempting, um, i came across this bass player, uh, female, uh, her name is hari priya, she's getting into, you know, playing jazz bass marcus: ok, is she from bangalore or something kirtana: she's from bangalore yes, marcus: cause i just saw her somewhere in some video or something, and i send her a friend request just two days ago and she accepted so kirtana: ok ,yeah marcus: yeah, yeah kirtana: so she's pretty good marcus: there's, there's mohini, you know, mohini dey who gotten a lot of fame but then i, i, i think does more fusion, jazz fusion marcus: ok kirtana: and traditional jazz, but uh, i mean i feel like a lot of people who come out of sam feel like they need to do jazz, even though it might not exactly be their calling marcus: aha kirtana: so i think, uh, some of them end up, you know, spending couple of years kind of just maneuvering themselves through that before they decide maybe they should get to something else, and they use the skill for something else marcus: aha, kirtana: but uh, well honestly i haven't seen too many, uh, uh, yeah, i haven't seen too many female musicians marcus: do you wish there was more, or is there a reason for that kirtana: no, i don't really care marcus: ok, haha, ok, also, i mean i know know you like to have small ba.., uh small uh, playing with small bands, like duo or trio or whatever, do you do any work with horn players, saxophone trumpet players at all or kirtana: i feel like there's a severe lacking of horn players in, in india marcus: ok kirtana: uh, so i haven't uh, i mean have come across some saxophone players, trumpet hardly, marcus: ok k; some saxophone i have come across but then, i, i feel like they're just about getting into, you know understanding, ho to, you know, how to play and what to play, and marcus: ok kirtana: and really irritates me when i have to work with people who don't know, you know, marcus: haha, yeah kirtana: haha, i mean, you, you know, you know how it is, so yeah marcus: yeah, if there were more horn players around would you work with them, or... kirtana: of course, yes, absolutely marcus: yeah kirtana: oh yes, yeah (completely) marcus: do you know someone called steve zerlin? kirtana: oh yes, yeah, he was my professor, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah marcus: ok, he live like a couple of miles away from me kirtana: oh really ok, please go and say hello to him, haha marcus: and i've texting him, k; aha marcus: and i'm supposed to interview him as well, just to learn his perspective as a teacher's perspective, instructor's perspective on, on jazz education in india, and he agreed to do it ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------ marcus: yeah, i'll say hi to him kirtana: yeah, yeah, do tell him, yeah, tell him i say hello, he's amazing marcus: he is kirtana: oh he's a fantastic player, he's a good teacher, he rambles on a bit, but that's just because of his age i think, haha marcus: oh, is he pretty old, i didn't meet him in person, yeah, like the text i sent that, everything text i sent he replied with something really funny like, can i interview you, and he was like at your own peril or something, kirtana: yeah exactly, haha marcus: that's him? ok kirtana: that's him, haha marcus: ok, i see, what else did i want to ask you i completely forgot marcus: yeah, so, anything else you want to say, about yourself, about jazz, about learning jazz, teaching kirtana: uh, i don't know, i mean, no, not really, i think it's a very comprehensive interview and ***, it's some really great questions and it's been so nice talking about myself. so, haha, i don't don't get to do that a lot marcus: uh, of your students are, uh, um, do you teach them to scat, or what do you teach them kirtana: at the moment, nobody is ready is ready to, you know, take that on, um, i kind of just focus on some technique and how and you know, how to sing, i mean, helping them build a repertoire, marcus: aha, aha kirtana: uh, but when i was in bangalore, i used to teach for a thermal school, at that time they were a couple of students, that, you know, who, who were very promising, and who wanted to get into *** marcus: was that takademy, kirtana: yeah, it was takademy yes, marcus: how was teaching there, was it a good experience, or kirtana: um, yeah, so by the time i left takademy i had close to sixty students and it was killing me marcus: wow kirtana: it was killing me because i had no time for myself at all, but uh, i made, i made, uh, i made money, uh, but i don't think i ever want to be in that kind of environment, teaching that way, like, ok that's not teaching, that's some kind of, i don't know what it is, it's impossible to be alert, you know, give yourself like that, my god, no marcus: they called me at some point, way back kirtana: right, right marcus: might be or even earlier that than, maybe they called me then kirtana: right marcus: but i didn't go, uh so kirtana: yeah that's good, no that's good, it's not fair, err, it's not a fair system marcus: ok kirtana: cause, uh, you know, yeah, yeah, you get % and then they keep but... marcus: percent? kirtana: yeah % yeah marcus: my goodness, wow kirtana: yeah, that's not good, yeah, you can, you keep marcus: the highest percentage anyone kept in, i mean i taught in like three music schools and the highest anyone kept was fifty percent, so that, that's really unfair kirtana: yeah, it's really unfair, yeah, i mean you ki.. you kind of understood by the end of it that they didn't really care what you were teaching, they didn't, they didn't care what the content was marcus: ok kirtana: i could have taught them anything, you know, i could've taught them shit and it would have been ok, but huh marcus: ok, ok, does anyone, teach jazz there, takademy, or is it all like kirtana: no, marcus: rock, ok, ok kirtana: i tried to get my students interested in jazz but they were, you know, also not, again, the kind of students that i get were mostly people who were interested in singing pop songs *** they just just wanted to do it because they taught it was cool thing to do, but amongst all of that, like, amongst all of the students, they were maybe, two or three, three girls, who i had to initiate, so speak, into the genre, and by the end of my time with them they were getting into, you wanting to understand how to scat, or getting into listening some old school jazz, so i think i did my job well, haha marcus: did you start scatting af..., only after going to sam or, kirtana: yeah, yeah, i started scatting *** after going to sam marcus: what was that process like? you starting to scat kirtana: oh uh, i will never forget it, um, haha, um, it was during one of our, one of the classes and i had my vo... my voice teacher magos and she was teaching us minor blues marcus: ok kirtana: we were doing john coltrane's equinox actually, we were doing that tune marcus: ok kirtana: and, and she was sitting at the piano and she said ok, so now if i had to improvise over this this is how i would go about it, and it was the first time that i was hearing it happening in front of me live, i think i just, i, i fell in love with it immediately, because it sounded so, i mean maybe it was the note choice of what she was using, or the chords, or i don't know what it was it just like, drew me in and from then from then i want to know, ok, i need to know how the hell to do that, haha marcus: oh really, kirtana: yeah, haha marcus: is that the first you ever heard scatting kirtana: non, no, i had course, i'd, i'd heard it before, i'd heard, i'd heard ella and *** you know, whatever *** records, *** in like whoever, you know, *** marcus: i mean in real life kirtana: yeah but marcus: ok, ok kirtana: uh, it's such, i mean again, in real life i had heard it before yes, *** i have been familiar with the concept itself, i mean scatting, but then i thin k at that moment when she did it, and maybe, i don't know, from when she did it i just wanted to know how to go ahead and do it. marcus: was it difficult to get to scat to kirtana: yeah, yeah, because, um, uh, yeah it was very difficult marcus: was it hard to go along with the changes, or did it kirtana: uh, it wasn't so much the changes, uh, that bothered me as much as you know, i mean it's the same as with improvising on any instrument like the rules are that, you know, you got..., you gotta breathe, you gotto take space, you have to have ideas that make sense, you know, like start slowly, build up, all of those things the how to make uh, a solid uh solo, because of your solo right, marcus: yeah kirtana: so how, how to have in terms of dynamics, in terms of rhythm, all of those things, to really understand it, to get into it, that took a while, cause initially you just, you know, you went with it and you, you saw... you hoped it would take you somewhere, but uh, that's not, it's not appealing marcus: ok kirtana: i think today, i would, i would be able to do a good job of it, but i when i was just started off, obviously not marcus: i see, wow, great, yeah, wow, ok great, uh, appreciate you, uh, being willing to be interviewed, kirtana: thank you so much, it's been so much fun marcus: ok, i look forward to writing kirtana: i look forward to your results, haha marcus: ok, sure ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------ kirtana: thank you so much, it's been an absolute pleasure marcus: thank you, same here kirtana: and i wish you all the best, i wish you all the best marcus: thank you wish you all the best too, i have a lot of work ahead of me right now kirtana: haha marcus: i gotto be done by december if i wanna graduate, but, yeah kirtana: well, i'm sure you'll get to it marcus: ok sure, ok yeah, ok, thanks so much and kirtana: no problem marcus: *** it's pretty late out there too right kirtana: yeah, it's : marcus: ok, yeah, ok, thanks for staying up *** kirtana: no problem, no problem marcus: yeah kirtana: good night then, marcus: alright, thanks yeah, alright, have a good night, alright, bye, bye bye kirtana: bye, bye references angrosino, m. 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( ). case study research and applications: design and methods (sixth ed., applied social research methods series, v. ). los angeles: sage. master thesis on sound and music computing universitat pompeu fabra automatic harmony analysis of jazz audio recordings vsevolod eremenko supervisor: xavier serra co-supervisor: baris bozkurt august master thesis on sound and music computing universitat pompeu fabra automatic harmony analysis of jazz audio recordings vsevolod eremenko supervisor: xavier serra co-supervisor: baris bozkurt august contents introduction . context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . motivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . objectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . structure of the report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . background . “three views of a secret” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . harmony in jazz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . harmony perception . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . harmony in mir: audio chord estimation task . . . . . . . . . . . . . datasets related to jazz harmony . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . probabilistic and machine learning concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . compositional data analysis and ternary plots . . . . . . . . . . . . . jaah dataset . guiding principles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . proposed dataset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . data format and annotation attributes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . content selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . transcription methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . dataset summary and implications for corpus based research . . . . . . classifying chords in the jazz way . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . exploring symbolic data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . visualizing chroma distribution . chroma as compositional data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . automatic chord estimation (ace) algorithms with applica- tion to jazz . evaluation approach. results for existing chord transcription algo- rithms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . evaluating ace algorithm individual components performance on jaah dataset. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . conclusions . conclusions and contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . future work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . list of figures list of tables bibliography acknowledgement first and foremost, i would like to thank xavier serra for introducing me to the world of sound and music computing with his online course and then “live” at the mtg, suggesting a fascinating topic for the thesis and his trust and confidence. i want to thank baris bozkurt for his practical approach and numerous advices helping to shape this work. also, i want to thank emir demirel for his meticulous chord annotations for jaah dataset. without him, this thesis would not be possible. thanks to ceyda ergul for helping with metadata annotations. big thanks to my lab and mtg colleagues for the fruitful discussions, help, and encouragement, especially to rafael, rong, oriol, alastair, albin, pritish, eduardo, olga, and dmitry. warm thanks to the fellow smc master students with whom we have lived so many good experiences and learned a lot. especially to tessy, pablo, dani, minz, joe, kushagra, gerard, marc, and natalia. finally, great thanks to my wife olga and sons petr and iván for taking courage to travel with me into the unknown, for encouraging me to study and complete this work. abstract this thesis aims to develop a style specific approach to automatic chord estima- tion and computer-aided harmony analysis for jazz audio recordings. we build a dataset of time-aligned jazz harmony transcriptions, develop an evaluation metrics which accounts for jazz specificity in assessing the quality of automatic chord tran- scription. then we evaluate some existing state of the art algorithms and develop our own using beat detection, chroma features extraction, and probabilistic model as building blocks. also, we suggest a novel way of visualizing chroma distribution based on compositional data analysis techniques. the visualization allows explor- ing the specificity of chords rendering in general and in different jazz sub-genres. the presented work makes a step toward expanding current music information re- trieval (mir) approaches for audio chord estimation task, which are currently biased towards rock and pop music. keywords: jazz; harmony; datasets; automatic chord estimation; chroma; com- positional data analysis chapter introduction . context this work was started in the vein of the compmusic project described by serra in [ ], which emphasize the computational study of musical artifacts in a specific cultural context. while compmusic includes researches on rhythm, intonation, and melody in several non-western traditions, here we concentrate on harmony phenomenon in jazz using the similar workflow (figure ). we assemble a corpus of manually annotated audio recordings, consider approaches to generate chords annotations automatically and provide tools for finding typical patterns in chord sequences and in chroma features distribution. corpus creation automatic annotation computer-aidedanalysis figure : compmusic-inspired workflow. the other basis for the work is audio chord estimation (ace) task in music in- formation retrieval (mir) field [ ]. there are vast related literature and a lot of implemented algorithms for chord label extraction, but all the concepts validated mainly for mainstream rock and pop music. we aim to adopt these concepts to jazz, thus pushing the boundaries of the current mir approach. chapter . introduction . motivation harmony is an essential concept in many jazz sub-genres. it is not only used for ex- pressive purposes, but serves as a vehicle for improvisation and the base upon which the interaction between musicians is built. knowing tune’s harmony is necessary for any further analysis either performed by music theorist or practicing musician who studies a particular style. audio recording is the primary source of information about jazz performance. harmonic analysis of an audio recording requires transcrip- tion "by ear" which is a time-consuming process and requires certain experience and qualification. reliable automatic harmony transcription tool would make possible large-scale corpus-based musicological research and improve musicians learning ex- perience (e.g., a student could find all the recordings, where chosen artist plays over specific chord sequence). for me as for jazz guitar student, transcribing harmony was a slow process, and i was always looking for a "second opinion" to assure me. besides, i am fascinated with the gap between the abstraction of chord symbols and its rendering by musicians. so i am looking for a way to transcribe chord labels automatically and trying to capture a particular performer’s style elusive "sonic aura." in mir, chord detection is also considered as a building block for many other tasks, e.g., structural segmentation, cover song identification and genre classification. jazz idiom also affects some popular styles such as funk, soul, and jazz-influenced pop. thus, improving automatic chord transcription for jazz would also improve solution for multiple mir tasks for many styles. . objectives main objectives of this study are: • build a representative collection of jazz audio recordings with human-performed audio-aligned harmony annotations which could be used for research in auto- matic harmony analysis. . . structure of the report • evaluate and develop methods of automatic harmony transcription in a way informed of jazz practice and tradition. • provide tools for computer-aided harmony analysis. . structure of the report after the introduction in chapter , chapter gives an overview of the musical, cognitional and engineering concepts used in the thesis and presents state of the art. in chapter we justify the necessity of creating a representative, balanced jazz dataset in a new format and formulate our guidelines for building the dataset. we describe the annotated attributes, track selection principle, and transcription methodology. then we provide and discuss the basic statistical summary of the dataset. chapter considers existing and presents a novel way of visualizing joint chroma features distribution for chord classes based on ternary plots. it discusses general aspects of chroma sampling distribution and its application to characterization of performance style. in chapter we discuss how to evaluate the performance of automatic chord tran- scription on jazz recordings. baseline evaluation scores for two state-of-the-art chord estimation algorithms are shown. we implement a basic automatic transcription pipeline which allows to evaluate performance of the algorithm components sepa- rately and make suggestions about further improvements. finally, in chapter we summarize the results, underline the contributions and provide suggestions for future work. chapter background in the first section of this chapter, i present accounts of harmony from perspectives of: • jazz musicians and theorists • music perception and cognition psychologists • music information retrieval engineers i’ll try to find more connections between them throughout the narration. datasets related to chords and harmony are in particular interest to all these parties, so they are reviewed in a dedicated section. the last section reviews probabilistic and machine learning concepts used in this work. . . “three views of a secret” . “three views of a secret” . . harmony in jazz introduction as strunk laid down in [ ], harmony is “the combining of notes simultaneously to produce chords and the placing of chords in succession”. berliner states in his ethnomusicological study [ ], that for the most jazz styles , composed tunes consisting of a melody and accompanying harmonic progression (or “changes”, as performers call it) provides the structure for improvisation. usually, musicians perform original melody in the first and the last sections of the song and improvised solos goes in between, in a cyclical form. harmony not only contributes to a tune’s mood and character but serves as a "timing cycle which guides, stimulates and limits jazz solo playing." whether a tune was composed by performers themselves or being chosen from the repertory of jazz standards, jazz piece must be analyzed as work which is "created by musicians at each performance event" ([ ]). this is stipulated by what berliner has called “the malleability of form”: musicians use a range of techniques to in- dividualize chords changes. they usually make decisions about harmony during rehearsals, and some features could be determined immediately before music events or while actually performing. berliner calls jazz "ear music," which emphasize the fact that musicians often per- form without a written score, “creating much of the detail of their music in perfor- mance” and their skills are “aural knowledge”, e.g.: “some artists remain ear and hand players”, “some musicians conceptualize the structure of a piece primarily in aural and physical terms as a winding melodic course through successive fields of nowadays jazz embraces many styles and approaches used by musicians to improvise and communicate with each other. but we’ll refer mainly to formative years of jazz ( - s) starting from blues and ragtime through new orleans jazz, swing, bebop, hard bop and some later styles (such as latin jazz and bossa nova). we consider only styles where chord changes played a significant role (thus, such styles as free jazz, where harmony is non-existent or modal jazz, where it’s static are left aside). list of typical examples could be found at https://mtg.github.io/jaah https://mtg.github.io/jaah chapter . background distinctive harmonic color ...”. taking this into account, we could see that audio recordings are the primary sources of reliable information about jazz music. harmony traces in the graphemic domain according to berliner [ ], some musicians find it useful to reinforce their mental picture of the tune’s harmony with notational and theoretical symbols. let’s con- sider it in historical perspective: for jazz veterans, harmony was primarily an aural knowledge. perhaps, because at the time being ( - s), sheet music score was the predominant way of the popular music notation (see [ ]), and it doesn’t seem to provide the necessary level of abstraction for jazz musicians. at figure you could see a typical three-staff score with full piano accompaniment and vocal melody published for the general public, who were expected to realize it as it was written. figure : excerpt from “body and soul” sheet music ( s publication) [ ]. according to kernfeld [ ], “craze for the ukulele” of the s led to the addition of ukulele chord tablature above the vocal stave. sometimes chord labels were added (as at figure ), so the same chords could be read by the guitar player. later, in some publications tablatures were dropped out, but chord symbols remain. according to kernfeld, this transition from piano music to tablatures and then to chord symbols represented “an absolutely crucial move from the specific to the ab- stract”. it gave rise to phenomena of fake books, which were widespread between pop and jazz musicians (see example at figure ). fake book assumes that a performer . . “three views of a secret” figure : excerpt from “body and soul” sheet music with ukulele tablature and chord symbols ( s publication) [ ]. should make his or her own version of the song, or “fake it.” kernfeld underlines, that chord symbols says nothing about how these chords have to be realized. figure : excerpt from “body and soul” from a jazz musician’s fake book. basic aspects of harmony in jazz theory a detailed account of harmony is a huge topic, so i’ll review only basic facts or aspects which could present an issue for or could be exploited during automatic analysis of audio recordings. strunk gives introduction to the area in [ ]. martin presents a theoretical analytical approach in [ ], [ ]. for a pedagogical instructional account, one could check books by levine [ ], [ ] or theory primer for popular aebersold play-along series [ ]. navigating through chords types. chord symbols consist of glued together root pitch class and chord type, e.g., in figure “e[− ” symbol contains “e[” root chapter . background chord type abbreviation degrees in seventh chord rendering major maj i − iii − [v ]−v ii minor min i − iii[− [v ]−v ii[ dominant dom i − iii − [v ]−v ii[ half-diminished hdim i − iii[−v [−v ii[ diminished dim i − iii[−v [−v ii[[ table : main chord types. and “− ” type, which means e[ minor seventh chord. type component could option- ally contain information about added and altered degrees (e.g., “b[ ([ ” denotes b[ dominant seventh chord with flat nine). also, chord inversion is sometimes encoded with the bass note after the slash (e.g., “c /g” means c dominant seventh with the bass g). while preparing a lead sheet database, pachet et al. encountered types of chords in various sources [ ]. but are all of them equally important for music analysis and interpretation? most of the theoretical, e.g., [ ], and pedagogical, e.g., [ ], literature consider five main chord types: major, minor, dominant seventh, half- diminshed seventh, and diminished seventh (presented in table ). as noted by martin [ ], sevenths are the most common chords, sixths are also found in jazz, but to a smaller degree. though in some early styles (e.g., gypsy jazz of django reinhardt) triads and sixth chords were widespread. a perfect fifth degree is not required for distinguishing between major, minor and dominant seventh chord types, so it’s often omitted. in pedagogical literature, such minimalistic approach is called “three-note voicing” [ ] of course, other chord taxonomies are also used. for example, to trace changes in th-century jazz harmonic practice, broze and shanahan assembled a corpus of symbolic data covering compositions from the year to and use eight chord types for the analysis: dominant sevenths, minor sevenths, major, minor, half- diminished, diminished, sustained, augmented. but augmented chord is notated very rarely ( . percent in broze and shanahan corpus), sustained chord ( . percent in their corpus) used in modal and post-modal jazz which we decided to exclude from . . “three views of a secret” the consideration. when chord sequence is analyzed, roman numerals are used sometimes to denote a chord’s root relation to local tonal center[ ]. chords rendering. comping. according to strunk[ ], many experts regard the concept of chord inversion as not generally relevant to jazz. martin [ ] also considers chords as pitch class sets. perhaps, such approach is prevalent because the bass lines are improvised and the bass player usually plays a root of a chord at least once while the chord lasts [ ]. the art of improvising accompaniment in jazz is called “comping” (“a term that carries the dual connotations of accompanying and complementing” [ ]). comping is performed collectively by the rhythm section (e.g., drums, bass, piano, guitar, other non-soloing instruments). to give an idea, how varied chords rendering could be, let’s draw a few examples concerning tonal aspects of comping from berliner [ ]. bass player could interpret chords “literally or more allusively — at times, even elusively”. he or she could use tones other than chord’s root on the downbeat, may emphasize non-chord tones to create harmonic color and suspense. bass players choose some pitches to represent the underlying harmony, and they select other pitches to make smooth and interesting connections between chord tones. a piano player could decorate chord progression with embellishing chords, play coun- terpoint to soloist melody or use so-called “orchestral approach” to comping, which means that he or she could create wide-ranging textures, interweave simultaneous melodies, and thus go far beyond chord tones. soloing “outside” harmony. unlike european tradition, where melodies are very often horizontal projections of a harmonic substructure [ ], jazz allows the soloist to play with harmony in different ways. in particular: • “vertical” approach, when chord tones are involved and the soloist pays atten- tion to each chord in the progression. chapter . background • “horizontal” approach, when the soloist plays in certain mode related to the local tonal center and doesn’t outline all the passing chords. • playing “outside”, when the soloist deliberately plays pitches “outside” from the chord played by the rhythm section [ ]. e.g., one of the simplest “outside” playing devices described by levine [ ] is to play half step up or down from the original chord. many of such “outside” moments could be qualified as bitonality. we should regard this point when transcribing the chord progression from an audio recording. popular patterns. harmonic sequences derived from the circle of fifths or chro- matic movement are widespread [ ]. as pianist fred hersch stated during an inter- view [ ]: "there were as few as ten or so different harmonic patterns." there are works which apply natural language processing (nlp) techniques to the problem of analyzing harmonic progressions of jazz standards in the symbolic domain ([ ], [ ]). harmonic structure regularity. comparing to western concert music, the pro- gression structure in jazz is very regular: • the form of the whole performance is mainly cyclic: the same chorus is re- peated over and over. the number of bars in a chorus is usually thirty-two, sixteen or twelve (blues). occasional intermissions are typically divisible-by- four bars length. • hypermetric regularity [ ]. chorus usually consists of four or eight bars long harmonic phrases (“hypermeasures”). each chord in a phrase lasts for two, four, six or eight beats. thus, jazz tune harmonic structure reminds brickwork: there are lines of even bricks (harmonic phrases), some lines could be shifted but usually only by half-brick. . . “three views of a secret” note about harmony transcription. there’s a huge jazz literature, which anal- yses and teaches how to render abstract chord labels into music, and i briefly re- viewed some ideas in previous paragraphs. but up to my knowledge, there’s no detailed account about how musicians transcribe it, what aural cues they use for that purpose and how they represent it mentally. according to berliner [ ], it’s a complex and highly individual process. e.g., while some prodigies could transcribe harmony as they hear it at the age of seven, for many, the process is largely "a matter of trial and error, trying out different pitches until you get as close as you can to the quality of the chords" (from an interview with kenny barron). to shed some light on it, let’s turn to the literature on music perception. . . harmony perception chords and pitch. in their review [ ] mcdermott and oxenham conclude, that the neural representation of chords could be an interesting direction for future re- search. in some cases it is clear that multiple pitches can be simultaneously repre- sented; in others, listeners appear to perceive an aggregate sound. they formulate the intriguing hypothesis that for more than three simultaneous pitches, chord tones are not naturally individually represented, therefore chord properties must be con- veyed via aggregate acoustic features that are as yet unappreciated. the following facts could be drawn to support the hypothesis: • it’s proven that humans separate tones in simultaneous two tones intervals. though no study was performed for musical chords of three notes, there was an experiment with artificial “chords” generated from random combinations of pure tones. if there are more then three tones, for the listener they are fused together into a single sound, even when the frequencies are not harmonically related. • it’s hard for a listener to name the tones comprising a chord, it requires consid- erable practice in ear training, while far less experienced listener could properly identify chord quality (e.g., major or minor). chapter . background chords and sensory consonance. according to [ ], consonance is another widely studied property of chords. western listeners consistently regard some com- binations of notes as pleasant (consonant), whereas others seem unpleasant (disso- nant). the most prevalent theory of consonant and dissonance perception is usually at- tributed to helmholtz, who links dissonance with roughness (“beating” or fluctuation of the amplitude of superposition of two tone’s partials with adjacent frequencies). a physiological correlate of roughness have been observed in both monkeys and humans. an alternative theory also has plausibility. consonant pair of notes produce partials which could be generated by a single complex tone with a lower but still perceiv- able fundamental frequency. partials of dissonant intervals theoretically could be produced by a single complex tone with an implausibly low f , often below the lower limit of pitch (of around hz). as with roughness, there are physiological correlates of this periodicity: periodic responses are observed in the auditory nerve of cats for the consonant intervals, but not for the dissonant intervals [ ]. pitch. pitch itself is a complex phenomenon. for harmonic sounds, the pitch is a perceptual correlate of periodicity [ ]. it’s known that humans encode absolute pitches of the notes, in particular, this supported by tonotopic representations that are observed from the cochlea to the auditory cortex [ ]. it is a surprising fact, given that the relative pitch is crucial for music perception (e.g., intervals between notes and melody contour are more important than the notes absolute location). relative pitch abilities are present even in young infants, and may thus be a feature inherent to the auditory system, although neural mechanisms of relative pitch remain poorly understood [ ]. interval of octave has a special perceptual status. as was shown by shepard, people could perceive tones which are an octave apart as equivalent in some sense. he demonstrated that pitch perception is two dimensional and consists of “height” (or overall pitch level) and “chroma”, which refers to pitch classes in music theory (or . . “three views of a secret” simply, note names). chords, in turn, often described as pitch class sets (e.g., [ ]). . . harmony in mir: audio chord estimation task in the context of mir, harmony is considered mainly in the scope of the audio chord estimation (ace) task. ace software systems process audio recordings and predict chord labels for time segments. performance of the systems is evaluated by comparing their output to human annotations for some set of audio tracks. mauch [ ] and harte [ ] gave a good introduction to ace framework. there is certain ambiguity in the task goals mentioned by humphrey [ ]: two slightly different problems are addressed. the first, chord transcription is an ab- stract task which could take into account high-level concepts. the second, chord recognition “is quite literal, and is closely related to polyphonic pitch detection.” e.g., mauch in his thesis [ ] regards chord labels as an abstraction, while mcvicar et al in their review [ ] consider chords as slow-changing sustained pitches played concurrently and described by pitch class sets. as we learned from the jazz practice review, chord symbols are highly abstract concept and should not be considered as strict pitch class sets (at least in context of jazz). mir community dedicated some effort to develop unified plain text chord labels, which obey strict rules, but still convenient for humans. harte et al. [ ] suggested an approach which is used since then. it describes the basic syntax and a shorthand system. the basic syntax explicitly defines a chord pitch class set. for example, c:( , , b ) is interpreted as c, e, g, b[. the shorthand system contains symbols which resemble chord representations on lead sheets (e.g., c: stands for c dominant seventh). according to [ ], c: should be interpreted as c:( , , b ). performance evaluation performance evaluation procedure for the ace task is described at mirex site [ ]. the current approach to match predicted chords to ground truth was proposed by chapter . background harte [ ] and pauwels and peeters [ ]. the main metrics is chord symbol recall(csr) = summedduration of correct chords total duration evaluated for the whole dataset. before comparing, ground truth and predicted chords are mapped to equivalence classes according to a certain dictionary. for example, there’s “majmin” dictionary which reduces each chord to contained major or minor triad (or exclude it from con- sideration, if it doesn’t contain a major or minor triad). the others dictionaries used for mirex evaluation are: root (only chord roots are compared), majminbass (ma- jor and minor triads with inversions), sevenths (major and minor triads, dominant, major and minor seventh chords) seventhsbass (major and minor triads, dominant, major and minor seventh chords, all with inversions). dictionaries allow matching datasets and algorithms with different chord “resolutions” (e.g., with and without inversions), and to better see the strengths and weaknesses of the algorithms. humphrey and bello criticized such evaluation approach [ ], because the score is too “flat”: evaluation concept doesn’t support rules to penalize softly chords, which are not exactly the same, but are close to each other in some sense. they supposed that chord hierarchy based on pitch class sets inclusions could resolve some of the issues, and draw an example where e: and e:maj could be considered as close, because e: contains e:maj. i agree that current “flat” evaluation procedure is too restrictive, on the other hand, plausible solution must be much more complex or it will inevitably include some genre bias. e.g., in blues-rock e:maj and e: could be often interchangeable, but in jazz, plausible chord substitutions depend on wider context, such as local tonal center or implied “stack of thirds”, and in most cases just replacing e:maj with e: would be a harsh error. the other related issue outlined in [ ], [ ], [ ] and [ ] is harmony annotation subjectivity. since harmonic analysis is subjective, it’s not quite correct to treat the reference datasets as ground truth, unless we want to develop an algorithm which mimics the style of one particular annotator. according to estimations by ni et al. . . “three views of a secret” [ ] and koops et al. [ ], top performing algorithms are close or even surpass “sub- jectivity ceiling” (which means that quantitatively conformance between algorithms predictions and human annotations are close or even higher than conformance be- tween different human annotations for a part of the same dataset). though, only the quantity of disagreements is considered, but not the quality. i suppose that dis- agreements between human annotators might be more perceptually plausible then disagreements with an algorithm (e.g., humans might disagree on chords which are not structurally important and their alternative choices of chords might be close musically). chord overlap is not the only relevant quality indicator. harte introduces seg- mentation quality measure [ ], which complements chord symbol recall metrics at mirex challenge. he supposed that proper chord boundaries predictions (even without chord labels consideration) are more musically useful than wrong bound- aries predictions. to tackle this, directional hamming distance is used to evaluate the precision and continuity of estimated segments [ ]. to evaluate an algorithm (and to train it, if the algorithm is data-driven) annotated datasets are needed. we consider them in a separate section, because our datasets purpose and usage context is broader than ace task. evolution of ace algorithms mcvicar et al. [ ] provided a comprehensive review of the achievements in the field until . first algorithms performed polyphonic note transcription and then infer chords in the symbolic domain. then fujishima [ ] suggest to use pitch class profiles (pcps), which preserves more information and achieve more robustness than note names. it allows developing more simple and accurate chord detection systems. pcp is a -dimensional vector, which components represent intensities of semitone pitch classes in a sound segment. it’s calculated from the spectra of a short sound segment by summing values of the spectral bins which frequencies are close enough to particular pitch classes. later many similar features were introduced which were called “chroma features”. chapter . background in mirex ace task was started, giving us the opportunity to trace the algorithms performance evolution. for the time being, expert knowledge systems were mostly used. in the first version of matthias and cannam chordino algorithm showed the best performance at mirex. chordino is available as a vamp plugin for sonic visualizer, and it’s quite popular even beyond mir community due to its robust multiplatform open source implementation. it is used as a baseline benchmark in mirex ace challenge since then. then mir community accumulates enough datasets to start development of the data-driven systems. harmonic progression analyzer (hpa) [ ], was a typical example of such system. it was among the top performing algorithms at mirex - with chord symbol recall % higher then chordino (table ). since then, many authors suggested improvements to various parts of the pipeline, but essentially within the same paradigm: chroma features + data-driven algorithms for pattern matching + sequence decoding. the other interesting trend is to depart from chroma features and obtain another low-dimensional projection of time-frequency space, which represents more informa- tion about chords and is more robust than chroma. humphrey et al. [ ] used deep learning techniques to produce a transformation to -d tonnetz-space, which al- lowed them to outperform state-of-the-art algorithm of the period. the most recent mirex top performing ace system madmom from korzeniowski [ ] also follows this trend. it uses a fully convolutional deep auditory model to extract features to feed them to chord matching pipeline. and interestingly, korzeniowski shows [ ], that extracted features not only demonstrate dependency on pitch classes but reveal explicit “knowledge” about chord type (e.g., features which have a high con- tribution to major chords, shows a negative connection to all minor chords and vice versa), which reminds human perception of chords to some degree. http://www.isophonics.net/nnls-chroma https://github.com/skyloadgithub/hpa https://github.com/cpjku/madmom http://www.isophonics.net/nnls-chroma https://github.com/skyloadgithub/hpa https://github.com/cpjku/madmom . . “three views of a secret” year of creation algorithm csr (billboard ) csr (isophonics) chordino . % . % hpa . % . % madmom . % . % table : selected top algorithms performance at mirex ace task with minmaj chord dicitionary, billboard and isophonics datasets. chordino results are taken from re-evaluation. as we could see from table , there’s a % csr increase in seven years (in the table i show only the pivotal years of sharp performance increase and paradigm change). we see that accuracy for isophonics is higher, probably because isophonics dataset as the whole was used for algorithms training and it is more homogeneous than the billboard. there’s a good progress for both datasets, but is the task close to being completely solved? at any rate, according to koops et al. [ ], algorithms performance hit the ceiling of evaluation framework possibilities due to annotation subjectivity problem. another issue is the limitations of available datasets. they include mainly major and minor triad annotations, which makes difficult to evaluate algorithm performance on other chord types. design of ace algorithms ace pipeline consists of several components with the multitude decisions which could be made about each of them. besides, some authors use infamous “everything but the kitchen sink” approach by adding a lot of stages to the algorithm without trying to explain, how much each step adds to the overall performance. therefore there is an overwhelming amount of complex ace algorithms, from which it’s hard to learn the best practices. cho and bello [ ] made a valuable effort to unfold the standardized pipeline to its components and evaluate each component contribution and interaction between them. the paper describes a good practice of development of a multistage algorithm and provides a reasonable introduction to ace in general. my explanation is based on the paper [ ] amended with several recently reported achievements. chapter . background scheme of the basic ace algorithm pipeline shown on figure . firstly, a tran- sition from sound waveform to a time-frequency representation is performed. the popular choice is short time fourier transform (e.g., [ ]) due to its computation- ally efficient implementation based on fast fourier transform (fft). the main problem here is a trade-off between time resolution and frequency resolution, which is ruled by stft window size. constant q (ctq) transform is used (e.g., [ ]) which has different frequency resolution in different ranges: higher resolution in low range, which mimics the human auditory system. rocher et al. [ ] proposed stft analysis with different windows size simultaneously. khadkevich and omologo [ ] used time-frequency reassignment technique to improve the resolution which allows them to develop high-performing algorithm which topped mirex scores in years - . for each time frame, spectrogram is reduced to chroma vector with twelve values. sometimes, several vectors are considered for different frequency ranges ([ ], [ ]). many approaches to chroma extraction have been developed (e.g., [ ], [ ], [ ], [ ], [ ]). authors of the chroma extraction algorithms pursue the following objec- tives: • chroma should be invariant of timbre • chroma should be invariant of loudness • non-harmonic sounds such as noise and transients should not affect chroma • chroma should be tolerant to tuning fluctuations design of computationally effective, robust and representative chroma features is a subject of ongoing research. since chroma features are not robust, usually they are smoothed, e.g., by applying moving average filter or a moving median filter [ ]. alternatively, average chroma is calculated for inter-beat intervals (beat-synchronous chromagram) [ ], where beat positions are provided by a beat detection algorithm. . . datasets related to jazz harmony time-frequency representation chroma prefiltering/ smoothing pattern matching resulting sequence decoding .   .      d:m .   .    g: figure : basic ace algorithm pipeline. at the pattern matching stage, chroma features are mapped to chord labels. soft labeling with gaussian mixture models (gmm) [ ] is usually involved. at the final stage, probabilistic model such as hmm [ ] or crf [ ] is used do decode the whole sequence. we don’t consider approaches involving neural networks, because our dataset is not big enough at the moment ( tracks) and trained network will tend to overfit. now we are finishing the general review of approaches to harmony and switching to consideration of existing datasets, which could be used for training and evaluating ace algorithms and corpus-based musicological research. . datasets related to jazz harmony jazz musicians use an abbreviated notation, known as a lead sheet, to represent chord progressions. digitized collections of lead sheets are used for computer-aided corpus-based musicological research, e.g., [ , , , ]. lead sheets do not provide information about how specific chords are rendered by musicians [ ]. to reflect this rendering, music information retrieval (mir) and musicology communities have cre- ated several datasets of audio recordings annotated with chord progressions. such collections are used for training and evaluating various mir algorithms (e.g., au- tomatic chord estimation) and for corpus-based research. here we review publicly available datasets that contain information about harmony, such as chord progres- sions and structural analysis including both: pure symbolic datasets and audio- aligned annotations. we consider the following aspects: content selection principle, format, annotation methodology, and actual use cases. then we discuss some dis- crepancies in approaches to chord annotation and advantages and drawbacks of different formats. chapter . background isophonics family isophonics is one of the first time-aligned chord annotation datasets, introduced in [ ]. initially, the dataset consisted of twelve studio albums by the beatles. harte justified his selection by stating that it is a small but varied corpus (including various styles, recording techniques and “complex harmonic progressions” in comparison with other popular music artists). these albums are “widely available in most parts of the world” and have had enormous influence on the development of pop music. a number of related theoretical and critical works was also taken into account. later the corpus was augmented with some transcriptions of carole king, queen, michael jackson, and zweieck. the corpus is organized as a directory of “.lab” files . each line describes a chord segment with a start time, end time (in seconds), and chord label in the “harte et al.” format [ ]. the annotator recorded chord start times by tapping keys on a keyboard. the chords were transcribed using published analyses as a starting point, if possible. notes from the melody line were not included in the chords. the resulting chord progression was verified by synthesizing the audio and playing it alongside the original tracks. the dataset has been used for training and testing chord evaluation algorithms (e.g., for mirex ). the same format is used for the “robbie williams dataset” announced in [ ]; for the chord annotations of the rwc and uspop datasets ; and for the datasets by deng: jaychou , cnpop , and jazzguitar . deng presented this dataset in [ ], and it is the only one in the family which is related to jazz. however, it uses short, guitar-only pieces recorded for a study book, and thus does not reflect the variety of jazz styles and instrumentations. available at http://isophonics.net/content/reference-annotations ascii plain text files which are used by a variety of popular mir tools, e.g., sonic visualizer [ ]. http://www.music-ir.org/mirex/wiki/mirex_home http://ispg.deib.polimi.it/mir-software.html https://github.com/tmc /chord-annotations http://www.tangkk.net/label http://isophonics.net/content/reference-annotations http://www.music-ir.org/mirex/wiki/mirex_home http://ispg.deib.polimi.it/mir-software.html https://github.com/tmc /chord-annotations http://www.tangkk.net/label . . datasets related to jazz harmony billboard authors of the billboard dataset argued that both musicologists and mir re- searchers require a wider range of data [ ]. they selected songs randomly from the billboard “hot ” chart in the united states between and . their format is close to the traditional lead sheet: it contains meter, bars, and chord labels for each bar or for particular beats of a bar. annotations are time-aligned with the audio by the assignment of a timestamp to the start of each “phrase” (usually bars). the “harte et al.” syntax was used for the chord labels (with a few additions to the shorthand system). the authors accompanied the annotations with pre-extracted nnls chroma features [ ]. at least three persons were involved in making and reconciling a singleton annotation for each track. the corpus is used for training and testing chord evaluation algorithms (e.g., mirex ace evaluation) and for musicological research [ ]. rockcorpus and subjectivity dataset rockcorpus was announced in [ ]. the corpus currently contains songs se- lected from the “ greatest songs of all time” list, which was compiled by the writers of rolling stone magazine, based on polls of “rock stars and leading authorities.” as in the billboard dataset, the authors specify the structure segmentation and assign chords to bars (and to beats if necessary), but not directly to time segments. a timestamp is specified for each measure bar. in contrast to the previous datasets, authors do not use “absolute” chord labels, e.g., c:maj. instead, they specify tonal centers for parts of the composition and chords as roman numerals. these show the chord quality and the relation of the chord’s root to the tonic. this approach facilitates harmony analysis. each of the two authors provides annotations for each recording. as opposed to the http://ddmal.music.mcgill.ca/research/billboard http://rockcorpus.midside.com/ _paper.html http://ddmal.music.mcgill.ca/research/billboard http://rockcorpus.midside.com/ _paper.html chapter . background aforementioned examples, the authors do not aim to produce a single "ground truth" annotation, but keep both versions. thus it becomes possible to study subjectivity in human annotations of chord changes. the rockcorpus is used for training and testing chord evaluation algorithms [ ], and for musicological research [ ]. concerning the study of subjectivity, we should also mention the chordify annotator subjectivity dataset , which contains transcriptions of songs from the billboard dataset by four different annotators [ ]. it uses json-based jams annotation format. jazz-related datasets here we review datasets which do not have audio-aligned chord annotations as their primary purpose, but nevertheless can be useful in the context of jazz harmony studies. weimar jazz database the main focus of the weimar jazz database (wjazzd ) is jazz soloing. data is disseminated as a sqlite database containing transcription and meta information about instrumental jazz solos from different recordings (more than beats over . hours). the database includes: meter, structure segmentation, measures, and beat onsets, along with chord labels in a custom for- mat. however, as stated by pfleiderer [ ], the chords were taken from available lead sheets, “cloned” for all choruses of the solo, and only in some cases transcribed from what was actually played by the rhythm section. the database’s metadata includes the musicbrainz identifier, which allows users to link the annotation to a particular audio recording and fetch meta-information about the track from the musicbrainz server. although wjazzd has significant applications for research in the symbolic domain [ ], our experience has shown that obtaining audio tracks for analysis and aligning them with the annotations is nontrivial: the musicbrainz identifiers are sometimes https://github.com/chordify/casd http://jazzomat.hfm-weimar.de a community-supported collection of music recording metadata: https://musicbrainz.org https://github.com/chordify/casd http://jazzomat.hfm-weimar.de https://musicbrainz.org . . datasets related to jazz harmony wrong, and are missing for % of the tracks. sometimes wjazzd contains anno- tations of rare or old releases. in different masterings, the tempo and therefore the beat positions, differs from modern and widely available releases. we matched tracks from wjazzd to tracks in our dataset by the performer’s name and the date of the recording. in three cases the musicbrainz release is missing, and in three cases rare compilations were used as sources. it took some time to discover that three of the tracks (“embraceable you”, “lester leaps in”, “work song”) are actually alternative takes, which are officially available only on extended reissues. beat positions in the other eleven tracks must be shifted and sometimes scaled to match available audio (e.g., for “walking shoes”). this may be improved by using an interesting alternative introduced by balke et al. [ ]: a web-based application, “jazztube,” which matches youtube videos with wjazzd annotations and provides interactive educational visualizations. symbolic datasets the irb dataset (announced in [ ]) contains chord progres- sions for jazz standards taken from a popular internet forum for jazz musicians. it lists the composer, lyricist, and year of creation. the data are written in the hum- drum encoding system. the chord data are submitted by anonymous enthusiasts and thus provides a rather modern interpretation of jazz standards. nevertheless, broze and shanahan proved it was useful for corpus-based musicology research: see [ ] and [ ]. “charlie parker’s omnibook data” contains chord progressions, themes, and solo scores for recordings by charlie parker. the dataset is stored in musicxml and introduced in [ ]. granroth-wilding’s “jazzcorpus” contains chord progressions (approximately chords) annotated with harmonic analyses (i.e., tonal centers and roman nu- merals for the chords), with the primary goal of training and testing statistical parsing models for determining chord harmonic functions [ ]. https://musiccog.ohio-state.edu/home/index.php/irb_jazz_corpus https://members.loria.fr/kdeguernel/omnibook/ http://jazzparser.granroth-wilding.co.uk/jazzcorpus.html https://musiccog.ohio-state.edu/home/index.php/irb_jazz_corpus https://members.loria.fr/kdeguernel/omnibook/ http://jazzparser.granroth-wilding.co.uk/jazzcorpus.html chapter . background some discrepancies in chord annotation approaches in the context of jazz an article by harte et al. [ ] de facto sets the standard for chord labels in mir annotations. it describes the basic syntax and a shorthand system. the basic syntax explicitly defines a chord pitch class set. for example, c:( , , b ) is interpreted as c, e, g, b[. the shorthand system contains symbols which resemble chord representations on lead sheets (e.g., c: stands for c dominant seventh). according to [ ], c: should be interpreted as c:( , , b ). however, this may not always be the case in jazz. according to theoretical research [ ] and educational books, e.g., [ ], the th degree is omitted quite often in jazz harmony. generally speaking, since chord labels emerged in jazz and pop music practice in the s, they provide a higher level of abstraction than sheet music scores, allowing musicians to improvise their parts [ ]. similarly, a transcriber can use the single chord label c: to mark the whole passage containing the walking bass line and comping piano phrase, without even noticing, “is the th really played?” thus, for jazz corpus annotation, we suggest accepting the “harte et al.” syntax for the purpose of standardization, but sticking to shorthand system and avoiding a literal interpretation of the labels. there are two different approaches to chord annotation: • “lead sheet style.” contains a lead sheet [ ], which has obvious meaning to musicians practicing the corresponding style (e.g., jazz or rock). it is aligned to audio with timestamps for beats or measure bars. chords are considered in a rhythmical framework. this style is convenient because the annotation process can be split into two parts: lead sheet transcription done by a qualified musician, and beats annotation done by a less skilled person or sometimes even automatically performed. • “isophonics style.” chord labels are bound to absolute time segments. we must note that musicians use chord labels for instructing and describing perfor- mance mostly within the lead sheet framework. while the lead sheet format and the . . probabilistic and machine learning concepts chord-beats relationship is obvious, detecting and interpreting “chord onset” times in jazz is an unclear task. the widely used comping approach to accompaniment [ ] assumes playing phrases instead of long isolated chords, and a given phrase does not necessarily start with a chord tone. furthermore, individual players in the rhythm section (e.g., bassist and guitarist) may choose different strategies: they may antici- pate a new chord, play it on the downbeat, or delay. thus, before annotating “chord onset” times, we should make sure that it makes musical and perceptual sense. all known corpus-based research is based on “lead sheet style” annotated datasets. tak- ing all these considerations into account, we prefer to use the lead sheet approach to chord annotations. now let’s consider mathematical devices which would be help during the work. . probabilistic and machine learning concepts in general, mathematical devices used in this work are quite typical for ace (see [ ]). for a more in-depth introduction to probability, gaussian mixture mod- els, hidden markov models and conditional random fields one could check corre- sponding chapters of murphy textbook [ ]. the one device which is not typical is compositional data analysis, and here is a short introduction. . . compositional data analysis and ternary plots chroma feature vectors are usually normalized per instance to make features inde- pendent of dynamics of a signal [ ]. musically it means, that we are not interested in loudness of the chord played, but only in the balance between its components, therefore we divide all the components on some loudness correlate. norms such as l , l or l∞ are mostly used. after normalization, chroma vector components become interdependent and are distributed not in -dimensional space, but on some constrained -dimensional surface. lets consider normalized chroma vector components xi > , i = .. . than • for l : ∑ i= xi = , the figure is -simplex chapter . background • for l : ∑ i= x i = , the figure is a “half-wedge” of -sphere • for l∞: x ∈ { xi ,∃j : xj = }, the figure is a quarter of the surface of -cube if we exploit the knowledge about normalized chroma vector space geometry, we could: . develop more compact and accurate probabilistic model which doesn’t give positive probabilities to impossible events [ ] . we could obtain more compact and meaningful visualization of the distribution density for this purpose, l -normalized chroma is preferable, because distribution on simplex is studied well enough (simplex has better geometric properties, then the other two: it’s convex) and it’s a subject of compositional data analysis. compositional data are vectors x = (x , ...xd) with all its components strictly positive and carrying only relative information. it is restricted to sum to a fixed constant, i.e. ∑d i= xi = κ [ ]. here we assume that κ = . compositional data analysis is used whenever the balance of parts is studied, but overall “volume” of the composition κ is irrelevant. for example, in geochemistry (e.g., when proportions of different chemicals in rocks are studied), in economics (e.g., when proportions of different items in a state’s budget over the years are studied). the set of all possible compositions is called d-part simplex [ ]: sd = {x = (x , ...xd) : xi > , d∑ i= xi = } in case of d = , the simplex is a segment between points ( , ) and ( , ), see figure . in case of d = , the simplex is a triangle with vertexes at ( , , ), ( , , ) . . probabilistic and machine learning concepts . . . . . . x . . . . . . x figure : -part simplex. and ( , , ) (figure left). since there are actually only degrees of freedom, the data could be presented in two dimensions as ternary . the data from the -part simplex can be presented in dimensions as ternary diagram. the ternary diagram represents set of all possible compositions as an equilateral triangle with vertexes annotated by the axis on which the corresponding vertex lies, and height equal to one. for each data point, we could obtain the components in the following way: the shortest distance from the point to the side is a value of the component corresponding to the opposite vertex. this method exploits the fact that the sum of distances from any interior point to the sides of the equilateral triangle is equal to the length of the triangle’s height (figure right). similarly, we could plot x distribution density as a ternary heat map. -part simplex is a solid, regular tetrahedron, where each possible -part composition is represented on one side of the tetrahedron. we could project content of the tetrahedron to its sides, by obtaining -part subcompositions. as observed in [ ], we could consider higher-dimensional simplexes as hyper-tetrahedrons, obtain -part subcompositions and visualize them as ternary diagrams. thus we could picture content of multidimensional simplex by projecting it to its triangle sides. some fundamental operations on compositions. let’s review some of the operations on compositions which will use in this work: • closure. it’s another name for normalization: c(x) = ∑d i= xi x. it’s applied if the x is not a composition. chapter . background x . . . . . . x . . . . . . x . . . . . . x x x . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . figure : -part simplex (left) and its’ representation as ternary plot (right). the following compositions are shown: red ( , , ), blue ( . , . , . ) and green ( . , . , . ) • subcomposition. used to discard (or “marginalize out” using probabilistic ter- minology) some of the components. thus, it projects original multidimensional data to subspace of smaller dimensionality. • amalgamation. reduce dimensionality by summing some of the components together (e.g., in case of chroma vectors in tonal content which has strong and weak degrees, we could sum chroma components for all strong degrees and weak degrees separately and obtain a new vector y : (ystrong,yweak),ystrong + yweak = ). more detail can be found in [ ]. chapter jaah dataset . guiding principles based on given review and our own hands-on experience with chord estimation algorithm evaluation, we present our guidelines and propositions for building audio- aligned chord dataset. . dataset boundaries should be clearly defined (e.g., certain music style or pe- riod). selection of audio tracks should be proven to be representative and balanced within these boundaries. . since sharing audio is restricted by copyright laws, recent releases and existing compilations should be used to facilitate access to dataset audio. . use time aligned lead sheet approach and “shorthand” chord labels from [ ], but avoid its literal interpretation. . annotate entire tracks, but not excerpts. it makes possible to explore structure and self-similarity. . provide musicbrainz identifier to exploit meta-information from this service. if it’s feasible, add meta-information to musicbrainz instead of storing it pri- vately within the dataset. chapter . jaah dataset . the annotation format should be stored in a machine readable format and suitable for further manual editing and verification. relying on plain text files and specific directory structure for storing heterogeneous annotation is not practical for users. thus, it’s better to use json or xml, which allows to store complex structured data in a single file or a database entry or transfer through the web in a compact and unified form. json-based jams format introduced by humphrey et al. [ ] is particularly useful, but currently, it doesn’t support lead sheet style for chord annotation and is verbose to be comfortably used by the human annotators and supervisors. . it is preferable to include pre-extracted chroma features. it will make possible to conduct some mir experiments without accessing the audio. it would be interesting to incorporate chroma features into corpus-based research, to demonstrate, how particular chord class is rendered in a particular recording. . proposed dataset . . data format and annotation attributes taking into consideration the discussion from the previous section, we decided to use the json format. an excerpt from an annotation is shown in figure . we provide the track title, artist name, and musicbrainz id. the start time, duration of the annotated region, and tuning frequency estimated automatically by essentia [ ] are shown. the beat onsets array and chord annotations are nested into the “parts” attribute, which in turn could recursively contain “parts.” this hierarchy represents the structure of the musical piece. each part has a “name” attribute which describes the purpose of the part, such as “intro,” “head,” “coda,” “outro,” “interlude,” etc. the inner form of the chorus (e.g., aaba, abac, blues) and predominant instrumentation (e.g., ensemble, trumpet solo, vocals female, etc.) are annotated explicitly. this structural annotation is beneficial for extracting statistical information regarding the type of chorus present in the dataset, as well as other musically important properties. we made chord annotations in the lead sheet style: . . proposed dataset figure : an annotation example. each annotation string represents a sequence of measure bars, delimited with pipes: “|”. a sequence starts and ends with a pipe as well. chords must be specified for each beat in a bar (e.g., four chords for / meter). a simplification of this is possible: if a chord occupies the whole bar, it could be typed only once; and if chords occupy an equal number of beats in a bar (e.g., two beats in / metre), each chord could be specified only once, e.g., |f g| instead of |f f g g|. for chord labeling, we use the harte et al. [ ] syntax for standardization reasons, but mainly use the shorthand system and do not assume the literal interpretation of labels as pitch class sets. more details on chord label interpretation will follow in . . . . . content selection the community of listeners, musicians, teachers, critics and academic scholars de- fines the jazz genre, so we decided to annotate a selection chosen by experts. chapter . jaah dataset after considering several lists of seminal recordings compiled by authorities in jazz history and in musical education [ , ], we decided to start with “the smithsonian collection of classic jazz” [ ] and “jazz: the smithsonian anthology” [ ]. the “collection” was compiled by martin williams and first issued in . since then, it has been widely used for jazz history education and numerous musicological research studies draw examples from it [ ]. the “anthology” contains more mod- ern material compared to the “collection.” to obtain unbiased and representative selection, its curators used a multi-step polling and negotiation process involving more than “jazz experts, educators, authors, broadcasters, and performers.” last but not least, audio recordings from these lists can be conveniently obtained: each of the collections are issued in a cd box. we decided to limit the first version of our dataset to jazz styles developed before free jazz and modal jazz, because lead sheets with chord labels cannot be used effectively to instruct or describe performances in these latter styles. we also decided to postpone annotating compositions which include elements of modern harmonic structures (i.e., modal or quartal harmony). . . transcription methodology we use the following semi-automatic routine for beat detection: the dbnbeat- tracker algorithm from the madmom package is run [ ]; estimated beats are visu- alized and sonified with sonic visualizer; if needed, dbnbeattracker is re-run with a different set of parameters; and finally beat annotations are manually corrected, which is usually necessary for ritardando or rubato sections in a performance. after that, chords are transcribed. the annotator aims to notate which chords are played by the rhythm section. if the chords played by the rhythm section are not clearly audible during a solo, chords played in the “head” are replicated. useful guidelines on chord transcription in jazz are given in the introduction of henry martin’s book [ ]. the annotators used existing resources as a starting point, such as published transcriptions of a particular performance or real book chord . . dataset summary and implications for corpus based research figure : distribution of recordings from the dataset by year. progressions, but the final decisions for each recording were made by the annotator. we developed an automation tool for checking the annotation syntax and chord sonification: chord sounds are generated with shepard tones and mixed with the original audio track, taking its volume into account. if annotation errors are found during syntax check or while listening to the sonification playback, they are corrected and the loop is repeated. . dataset summary and implications for corpus based research to date, tracks are annotated with an overall duration of almost hours, or beats. annotated recordings were made from music created between and , with the greatest number coming from the formative years of jazz: the s- s (see figure ). styles vary from blues and ragtime to new orleans, swing, be-bop and hard bop with a few examples of gypsy jazz, bossa nova, afro-cuban jazz, cool, and west coast. instrumentation varies from solo piano to jazz combos and to big bands. chapter . jaah dataset d degree includes diminished th? major minor major chord dominant thchord yes minor chord diminishedchord halfdiminished th chord includes minor th? no noincludes minor th? yesyes no identify chord class figure : flow chart: how to identify chord class by degree set. . . classifying chords in the jazz way in total, distinct chord classes appear in the annotations ( , if we count chord inversions). to manage such a diversity of chords, we suggest classifying chords as it done in jazz pedagogical and theoretical literature. according to the article by strunk [ ], chord inversions are not important in the analysis of jazz performance, perhaps because of the improvisational nature of bass lines. inversions are used in lead sheets mainly to emphasize the composed bass line (e.g., pedal point or chromaticism). therefore, we ignore inversions in our analysis. according to numerous instructional books, and to theoretical work done by mar- tin [ ], there are only five main chord classes in jazz: major (maj), minor (min), dominant seventh (dom ), half-diminished seventh (hdim ), and diminished (dim). seventh chords are more prevalent than triads, although sixth chords are popular in some styles (e.g., gypsy jazz). third, fifth and seventh degrees are used to classify chords in a bit of an asymmetric manner: the unaltered fifth could be omitted in the major, minor and dominant seventh (see chapter on three note voicing in [ ]); the diminished fifth is required in half-diminished and in diminished chords; and [[ is characteristic for diminished chords. we summarize this classification approach in the flow chart in figure . . . dataset summary and implications for corpus based research chord beats beats duration duration class number % (seconds) % dom . . maj . . min . . dim . . hdim . . no chord . . unclassi- . . fied table : chord classes distribution. the frequencies of different chord classes in our corpus are presented in table . the dominant seventh is the most popular chord, followed by major, minor, diminished and half-diminished. chord popularity ranks differ from those calculated in [ ] for the irb corpus: dom , min, maj, hdim, and dim. this could be explained by the fact that our dataset is shifted toward the earlier years of jazz development, when major keys were more pervasive. . . exploring symbolic data exploring the distribution of chord transition bigrams and n-grams allows us to find regularities in chord progressions. the term bigram for two-chord transitions was defined in [ ]. similarly, we define an n-gram as a sequence of n chord transitions. the ten most frequent n-grams from our dataset are presented in figure . the picture presented by the plot is what would be expected for a jazz corpus: we see the prevalence of the root movement by the cycle of fifths. the famous iim-v -i three-chord pattern (e.g., [ ]) is ranked number , which is even higher than most of the shorter two-chord patterns. chapter . jaah dataset quantity dom-p -maj min-p -dom dom-p -dom dom-p -min min-p -dom-p -maj dom-p -min-p -dom maj-p -dom maj-p -dom-p -maj maj-m -dom dom-p -dom-p -maj dom-m -dom dom-p -dom-p -dom dom-p -dom maj-p -dom min-p -min dom-p -min-p -dom-p -maj min-p -dom-p -dom dom-p -maj-p -dom hdim -p -dom dim-d -maj maj-m -dom-p -min dom-p -maj-m -dom maj-p -dom min-p -dom-p -min maj-m -dim maj-p -maj dom-p -maj dom-p -maj-p -dom-p -maj maj-m -dom-p -min-p -dom min-p -dom-p -min-p -dom dom-p -dom-p -dom dom-p -maj-p -dom maj-m -min dom-p -maj-m -dom-p -min maj-m -min dom-p -dom-p -dom hdim -p -dom-p -min min-p -dom dom-p -min maj-m -dim-d -maj n- gr am s figure : top forty chord transition n-grams. each n-gram is expressed as sequence of chord classes (dom, maj, min, hdim , dim) alternated with intervals (e.g., p - perfect fourth, m - major sixth), separating adjacent chord roots. chapter visualizing chroma distribution since chord labels are an abstract representation of harmony which doesn’t pre- scribe how exactly they should be rendered by performers, it could be interesting to study the tonal specificity of chords rendition in different sub-genre or by par- ticular performer or even for a particular composition. in this chapter, i make an attempt to provide a visualization for joint sampling distribution of chroma features for particular chord type. i intend to: • build a visual profile for each chord type for particular performance or selec- tion of performances. then it becomes possible to visually study the tonal specificity of this performance, or compare different performances with each other. • obtain insights about weaknesses (or strengths) of chroma-based chord detec- tion algorithm performance. for each track from jaah dataset we extract nnls chroma features . then we obtain weighted average chroma for each beat and transpose it to a common root (original root is known from the annotation). we denote chroma components by http://www.isophonics.net/nnls-chroma http://www.isophonics.net/nnls-chroma chapter . visualizing chroma distribution roman numerals showing their relation to the common root. for averaging, we use hanning window function with the peak on the beat. as it will be shown in the “algorithms” chapter , such averaging yields best result then averaging by rectangular window between the nearest beats, perhaps because chord tones are more often concentrated close to the beat, and less strong tones are played in weaker rhythmic positions. let’s call such vectors “beat centered chroma”. each component of this -d vector represents the intensity of a particular pitch class near the beat (“intensity” here doesn’t have any proven physical or perceptual meaning). so, we will consider beat centered chroma sampling distribution. figure : beat centered chroma distribution for major chord in jaah dataset. shown as pitch class profile (left), violin plots(right). the standard way to visualize pitch classes distribution in music cognition is pitch class profile [ ]. let’s apply the same method to chroma vector distribution: figure left. it could be extended with variability visualization, in the form of violin plots [ ]. each plot consists of violin-like histograms. each histogram describes the marginal distribution of a particular component: thickness of each “violin” at certain ordinate value is proportional to the number of data points in the neighborhood of this value (figure left). we see that degrees with the high average (“strong”) have high variability as well, because they are used frequently but apparently in different ways; and rare (or “weak”) degrees have low variability, because they are just not used (figure ). otherwise, smeared density plots for . . chroma as compositional data strongest degrees for the major chord (i, iii, v ) reveals no pattern, because the plot gives no information about joint distribution. figure : beat centered chroma distribution for major chord in jaah dataset. shown as violin plot, where scale degrees are ordered according to their “strengths” and simultaneously demonstrate decrease in variability . chroma as compositional data because we are interested in the balance between pitch classes, but not in the ab- solute chroma components, let’s consider l -normalized chroma vectors which are distributed on -part simplex and present a typical example of compositional data (see background section . . ). the simplex has vertexes which correspond to degrees of the chromatic scale. the simplex is bounded by triangle sides, where each triangle represents unique triple of scale degrees, e.g., i - iii - v . to gain some intuition about the visualization, let’s consider single chroma vector extracted from audio of a major triad chord played on guitar: x = ( . , . , . , . , . , . , . , . , . , . , . , . ). after normalization it becomes: xl = ( . , . , . , . , . , . , . , . , . , . , . , . ). we take subcomposition for degrees i, iii and v : xi,iii,v = (xi,xiii,xv ) xi+xiii+xv = ( . , . , . ) and plot this point on a ternary diagram (figure left). similarly, we could plot sampling distribution for a hundred of chords played on guitar. we split ternary diagram to triangle bins and color each bin according to number of vectors which chapter . visualizing chroma distribution dropped in (figure right). it easily can be seen, that the distribution has mode about point ( . , . , . ), and in general fifths degree is presented less then first and even the third. thus, a convenience of the ternary plots is shown: data for three components could be presented unambiguously on a two dimensional plane. v i iii . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v i iii . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . figure : projection of the chroma of triads played on guitar to ternary diagram: single chord(left), sampling distribution(right) projections for different triplets could be combined to obtain a picture in more dimensions. for the sake of better comprehension and compactness, it’s reasonable to arrange ternary plots by uniting identical vertexes and edges. i suggest to combine projections for strongest degrees. if we select the most strong seven degrees for the particular chord type and build projection for each three adjacently ranked degrees, resulting triangles could be arranged as a hexagon, e.g.: the strongest degree in the middle, second-ranking “at seven o’clock”, and the rest — counter clockwise (figure left). supposedly, not all triangles are equally interesting. to proof the idea, let’s build a similar hexagon for the weakest seven degrees (figure right). while the chroma distribution for strong degrees has distinct modes and concentrated patterns, which differ from chord to chord (see also figure ), the distributions for weakest degrees looks like a plateau and quite similar for all chord types (see also figure ). this fact conforms with the idea of tonal hierarchies [ ]: for major, minor and dominant th chord stable pattern of nearly seven strong degrees is used, while the rest five . . chroma as compositional data tones are used rarely and uniformly at random. half-diminished and diminished chords has the fuzziest distribution patterns (be- cause we have the lowest content of these chord in the dataset: about %); major and minor patterns are similar (except for the degrees involved): triad is the most important; but dominant th is different from them: seventh degree is as significant as first, fifth and third, and the spread is higher. figure : combined ternary plots for strongest (left) and weakest (right) degrees for major chords in jaah dataset. figure : combined ternary plots for strongest degrees for minor, dominant th, half-diminished th and diminished chords in jaah dataset. the other possible application of these plots is to compare chord profiles in different styles or performances. let’s briefly compare major chord rendering in ‘dinah” by django reinhardt (left) and “the girl from ipanema” by stan getz and joao gilberto (figure ). in “dinah”, the major triad is balanced and is the most prominent, while other degrees much weaker than root. in “girl. . . ”, all points seem to run away from the root. this conforms with basic features of django reinhardt’s chapter . visualizing chroma distribution figure : combined ternary plots for weakest degrees for minor, dominant th, half-diminished th and diminished chords in jaah dataset. gypsy jazz simplistic approach to harmony and harmonic ambiguity and complexity of bosa-nova. figure : combined ternary plots for strongest (on average in corpus) degrees in major chord for “dinah” by django reinhardt (left) and “the girl from ipanema” by stan getz and joao gilberto. chapter automatic chord estimation (ace) algorithms with application to jazz . evaluation approach. results for existing chord transcription algorithms here we apply existing ace algorithms to our jaah dataset introduced in chap- ter . we adopt the mirex approach to evaluating algorithms’ performance. the approach supports multiple ways to match ground truth chord labels with predicted labels, by employing the different chord vocabularies introduced by pauwels [ ]. the distinctions between the five chord classes defined in . . are crucial for an- alyzing jazz performance. more detailed transcriptions (e.g., a distinction between maj and maj , detecting extensions of dom , etc.) are also important but secondary to classification into the basic five classes. to formally implement this concept of chord classification, we develop a new vocabulary, called “jazz ,” which converts chords into the five classes according to the flowchart in figure . for comparison, we also choose two existing mirex vocabularies: “sevenths” and “tetrads,” because they ignore inversions and can distinguish between major, minor and dom classes (which together occupy about % of our dataset). however, these http://www.music-ir.org/mirex/wiki/ :audio_chord_estimation http://www.music-ir.org/mirex/wiki/ :audio_chord_estimation chapter . automatic chord estimation (ace) algorithms with application to jazz vocabulary coverage chordino crema % accuracy % accuracy % “jazz ” . . . mirexsevenths . . . tetrads . . . table : comparison of coverage and accuracy evaluation for different chord dictio- naries and algorithms. vocabularies penalize differences within a single basic class (e.g., between a major triad and a major seventh chord). moreover, the “sevenths” vocabulary is too basic; it excludes a significant number of chords, such as diminished chords or sixths, from evaluation. we choose chordino , which has been a baseline algorithm for the mirex challenge over several years, and crema , which was recently introduced in [ ]. to date, crema is one of the few open-source, state-of-the-art algorithms which supports seventh chords. results are provided in the table . “coverage” signifies the percentage of the dataset which can be evaluated using the given vocabulary. “accuracy” stands for the percentage of the covered dataset for which chords were properly predicted, according to the given vocabulary. we see that the accuracy for the jazz dataset is almost half of the accuracy achieved by the most advanced algorithms on datasets currently involved in the mirex challenge (which is roughly - %). nevertheless, the more recent algorithm (crema) performs significantly better than the old one (chordino) which shows that our dataset passes a sanity check: it does not contradict technological progress in audio chord estimation. we see from this analysis that the “sevenths” chords vocabulary is not appropriate for a jazz corpus because it ignores almost % of the data. we also note that the “tetrads” vocabulary is too punitive: it penalizes up to % of predictions which are tolerable in the context of jazz harmony analysis. we http://www.isophonics.net/nnls-chroma https://github.com/bmcfee/crema http://www.music-ir.org/mirex/wiki/ :audio_chord_estimation_results http://www.isophonics.net/nnls-chroma https://github.com/bmcfee/crema http://www.music-ir.org/mirex/wiki/ :audio_chord_estimation_results . . evaluating ace algorithm individual components performance on jaah dataset. provide code for this evaluation in the project repository. . evaluating ace algorithm individual compo- nents performance on jaah dataset. in this section i describe a gradual construction of a new ace algorithm. i will make the simplest possible choices to fit the concept. as it was mentioned, our dataset is not big enough so training neural network based algorithms on it could lead to overfitting, besides chord type distribution is rather skewed which complicates training. so i consider algorithms based on “classical” machine learning. algorithm scheme is shown at figure . figure : ace algorithm for evaluating its’ components contribution on jaah dataset. as we argue in , in musical context the harmony is considered in respect to metrical grid of beats, but not in terms of continuous time. jazz music usually has steady pulsation, which is detected by state of the art beat detection algorithms well enough. we came to this conclusion during annotation of jaah dataset: automatic beat detection provides a good base for manual beats annotation, which often doesn’t even need to be corrected. thus i use madmom automatic beat detection as a part of the algorithm, and consider beats as only possible events for a chord change. i decided to use nnls algorithm for chroma features extraction. it shows best results in our preliminary experiments for open source chroma features evaluation. since inversions mostly are not important in jazz, i consider single chroma vector for the whole frequency range, but attenuate low and high frequencies as explained https://madmom.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ http://www.isophonics.net/nnls-chroma https://madmom.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ http://www.isophonics.net/nnls-chroma chapter . automatic chord estimation (ace) algorithms with application to jazz smoothing accuracy inter-beat averaging . beat centered chroma ( . sec hanning window) . table : chroma smoothing influence on the overall algorithm performance. in [ ]. initially i calculated beat-synchronous chromagram as described in [ ]: chroma vector for the beat was estimated as average of chromas between this and the next beat. but performance is improved, if segments larger then one beat were used for averaging. i centered the segment around the beat and use “tapered” window for averaging, so chromas which are close to the beat receive more weight than chromas which are far. results of the experiments are shown in table thus, for averaging we use hanning window function with the peak on the beat, which improves the performance by almost %. i use gmm implementation from scikit learn package to model chroma vector probability distribution for each chord type. then the probabilities are plugged into viterbi decoding as emission probabilities for the chord types. two options for hmm’s transition matrix are used: • the matrix estimated according to chord bigrams frequencies and average har- monic rhythm • only average harmonic rhythm is taken into account, thus the matrix only promotes self-transition, but all other transitions have equally low probability. results are shown in table . interestingly, that this step significantly improves the performance for jazz (accuracy increased by . times), while in experiments by cho and bello [ ] conducted with pop and rock music data, this step if applied to beat-synchronous chroma doesn’t gain much, and most of the effect is explained by setting high self-transition probabilities. http://scikit-learn.org/stable/modules/mixture.html http://scikit-learn.org/stable/modules/mixture.html . . evaluating ace algorithm individual components performance on jaah dataset. transition matrix accuracy uniform (bypass decoding) . % promotes self-transition . % based on bigrams and harmonic rhythm . % table : hmm transition matrix influence on the overall algorithm performance. we are only in the beginning of jazz-oriented ace algorithm development, but it’s already clear, that jazz music have certain specificity which could be exploited. in particular, improving window for per-beat chroma estimation and sequence decod- ing look promising. chapter conclusions . conclusions and contributions in the scope of this thesis, i designed and participated in the creation of jazz audio-aligned harmony dataset (jaah) which is publicly available at https: //github.com/mtg/jaah. a new method for estimating the performance of ace algorithms with respect to specificity of jazz music is developed. its implemen- tation is available in our branch of johan pauwels’s musooevaluator at https: //github.com/mtg/musooevaluator. with this, we aim to stimulate mir and corpus-based musicological researches targeting jazz. these results along with an analysis of the performance of existing algorithms on jaah dataset are published at ismir conference [ ]. a new way of visualizing chroma distributions for different chord types is proposed. it allows to obtain a compact two-dimensional representation of the most important projections of the twelve-dimensional distribution density. i also implemented a testbed for building and evaluating ace algorithms and explore the importance of its components. in particular, it was experimentally shown that • beat-centered chroma gives more accuracy in chord prediction than chroma averaged for inter-beat intervals. it supports the idea that chord tones are https://github.com/mtg/jaah https://github.com/mtg/jaah https://github.com/mtg/musooevaluator https://github.com/mtg/musooevaluator . . future work played mainly on beats. • sequence decoding stage is more important for jazz then for rock and pop music, which emphasize importance of repetitive harmonic structures in jazz. the code for the latest results is openly available at https://github.com/seffka/ jazz-harmony-analysis. . future work further work includes growing the dataset by expanding the set of annotated tracks and adding new features. local tonal centers are of particular interest because we could then implement chord detection accuracy evaluation based on jazz chord substitution rules and train algorithms for simultaneous local tonal center and chord detection. since it was shown that sequence decoding is essential for the ace algorithm perfor- mance for jazz, hmm could be replaced with a more sophisticated model. adaptive window per-beat chroma extraction could be implemented. also, the algorithm could be extended with downbeat detection, search for hypermetric structures and cycles in a chord sequence. for the pattern matching, instead of gaussian mixture model, which treats all the pitch classes equally, a mixture of specific distributions could be used, which assumes the hierarchy of strong and weak degrees in each chord segment. https://github.com/seffka/jazz-harmony-analysis https://github.com/seffka/jazz-harmony-analysis list of figures compmusic-inspired workflow. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . excerpt from “body and soul” sheet music ( s publication) [ ]. . . excerpt from “body and soul” sheet music with ukulele tablature and chord symbols ( s publication) [ ]. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . excerpt from “body and soul” from a jazz musician’s fake book. . . . basic ace algorithm pipeline. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . -part simplex. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . -part simplex (left) and its’ representation as ternary plot (right). the following compositions are shown: red ( , , ), blue ( . , . , . ) and green ( . , . , . ) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . an annotation example. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . distribution of recordings from the dataset by year. . . . . . . . . . . flow chart: how to identify chord class by degree set. . . . . . . . . . top forty chord transition n-grams. each n-gram is expressed as sequence of chord classes (dom, maj, min, hdim , dim) alternated with intervals (e.g., p - perfect fourth, m - major sixth), separating adjacent chord roots. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . beat centered chroma distribution for major chord in jaah dataset. shown as pitch class profile (left), violin plots(right). . . . . . . . . . beat centered chroma distribution for major chord in jaah dataset. shown as violin plot, where scale degrees are ordered according to their “strengths” and simultaneously demonstrate decrease in variability list of figures projection of the chroma of triads played on guitar to ternary dia- gram: single chord(left), sampling distribution(right) . . . . . . . . . combined ternary plots for strongest (left) and weakest (right) de- grees for major chords in jaah dataset. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . combined ternary plots for strongest degrees for minor, dominant th, half-diminished th and diminished chords in jaah dataset. . . combined ternary plots for weakest degrees for minor, dominant th, half-diminished th and diminished chords in jaah dataset. . . . . . combined ternary plots for strongest (on average in corpus) degrees in major chord for “dinah” by django reinhardt (left) and “the girl from ipanema” by stan getz and joao gilberto. . . . . . . . . . . . . ace algorithm for evaluating its’ components contribution on jaah dataset. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . list of tables main chord types. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . selected top algorithms performance at mirex ace task with min- maj chord dicitionary, billboard and isophonics datasets. chordino results are taken from re-evaluation. . . . . . . . . . . chord classes distribution. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . comparison of coverage and accuracy evaluation for different chord dictionaries and algorithms. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . chroma smoothing influence on the overall algorithm performance. . hmm transition matrix influence on the overall algorithm performance. bibliography [ ] serra, x. the computational study of a musical culture through its digital traces. acta 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[ ] hintze, j. l. & nelson, r. d. violin plots: a box plot-density trace synergism. the american statistician , – ( ). url http: //www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/ . / . . . [ ] mcfee, b. & bello, j. p. structured training for large-vocabulary chord recognition. in proc. of the international conference on music information re- trieval (ismir), – ( ). url https://bmcfee.github.io/papers/ ismir {_}chord.pdf. [ ] mauch, m. & dixon, s. mirex : chord detection using a dynamic bayesian network. in international society for music information retrieval conference (ismir) ( ). url http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/ citations;jsessionid= d a b bb d c ?doi= . . . . http://www.music-ir.org/mirex/abstracts/ /md .pdf. [ ] eremenko, v., demirel, e., bozkurt, b. & serra, x. audio-aligned jazz har- mony dataset for automatic chord transcription and corpus-based research. in- ternational society for music information retrieval conference ( ). url http://mtg.upf.edu/node/ . http://link.springer.com/ . / - - - - {_} http://www.springerlink.com/index/ . / - - - - http://link.springer.com/ . / - - - - {_} http://www.springerlink.com/index/ . / - - - - http://link.springer.com/ . / - - - - {_} http://www.springerlink.com/index/ . / - - - - http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/ . / . . http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/ . / . . https://bmcfee.github.io/papers/ismir {_}chord.pdf https://bmcfee.github.io/papers/ismir {_}chord.pdf http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/citations;jsessionid= d a b bb d c ?doi= . . . . http://www.music-ir.org/mirex/abstracts/ /md .pdf http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/citations;jsessionid= d a b bb d c ?doi= . . . . http://www.music-ir.org/mirex/abstracts/ /md .pdf http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/citations;jsessionid= d a b bb d c ?doi= . . . . http://www.music-ir.org/mirex/abstracts/ /md .pdf http://mtg.upf.edu/node/ 	introduction 	context 	motivation 	objectives 	structure of the report 	background 	``three views of a secret'' 	harmony in jazz 	harmony perception 	harmony in mir: audio chord estimation task 	datasets related to jazz harmony 	probabilistic and machine learning concepts 	compositional data analysis and ternary plots 	jaah dataset 	guiding principles 	proposed dataset 	data format and annotation attributes 	content selection 	transcription methodology 	dataset summary and implications for corpus based research 	classifying chords in the jazz way 	exploring symbolic data 	visualizing chroma distribution 	chroma as compositional data 	automatic chord estimation (ace) algorithms with application to jazz 	evaluation approach. results for existing chord transcription algorithms 	evaluating ace algorithm individual components performance on jaah dataset. 	conclusions 	conclusions and contributions 	future work 	list of figures 	list of tables 	bibliography consumption, markets and culture, vol. , no. , september , pp. – issn – (print)/issn – x (online) © taylor & francis group ltd doi: . / “exiled music herself, pushed to the edge of existence”: the experience of musicians who perform background music alan bradshaw, pierre mcdonagh, david marshall & harry bradshaw taylor and francis ltdgcmc .sgm . / consumption, markets and culture - (print)/ - x (online)original article taylor & francis group ltd september alanbradshawa.bradshaw@exeter.ac.uk in reconsidering music in the background, the authors look to what adorno said seventy years ago about music as aural wallpaper, as the muzak corporation put it: “music is there to be listened to but muzak is there to be heard”. examining the history of listening, and in particular the influence of romanticism and bohemia, we explore through depth interviews the experiences of musicians who perform background music. this text is enlivened by an accompanying audio presentation which brings to centre stage the voices of the musicians on how they negotiate the romantic experience of music when the audience isn’t interested. keywords: background music; musicians; romanticism; listening; adorno; muzak the islands of house music are located rather close to the shimmering frozen lake of self- conscious artistic practice. but exiled music herself, pushed to the edge of existence, holds out loyally there: music as background. (adorno , ) seventy years ago adorno used these words to describe the existence of music in german cafes. then, as now background music was often intended as a form of inoffensive and aural wallpaper. since adorno, the provision of background music has increased tenfold due to organisations such as muzak, the usa background music supplier, who described the purpose of background music; “music is there to be listened to but muzak is there to be heard”. this article considers the experiences of alan bradshaw is lecturer in marketing at university of exeter. pierre mcdonagh is lecturer in marketing at dublin city universtiy. david marshall lectures at the management school, university of edinburgh. harry bradshaw is a retired radio producer. correspondence to: alan bradshaw, school of business and economics, university of exeter, streatham court, rennes drive, exeter ex pu, uk; email: a.bradshaw@exeter.ac.uk a. bradshaw et al. musicians who have worked playing live background music in bars, cafes or corporate entertainment. as adorno points out in the above quotation, such an existence of music lies exiled from self-conscious artistic practice or, as johnson ( ) describes it “the romantic experience of music”. this paper and accompanying audio piece addresses the history of listening to music and investigates the experiences of musicians who perform in such contexts. the history of listening the ethnomusicologist gregory ( ) describes the traditional uses of music to be found in archaic societies noting that rather than existing as an independent art form to be enjoyed for its own sake, music is an integral part of culture accompanying every human activity including work, games, dancing, festivals, court and selling. for gregory ( , ) this was distinct from the development of “art” music which is to be listened to (supposedly) for personal enjoyment. indeed as this section shows, much of what we regard as being art music today was originally intended as background music. for example, mozart was known to compose for the court, telemann developed his own style of background music which he referred to as musique de table (table music), whilst the goldberg variations by bach were composed in the hope of curing the insomnia of the patron, count kaiserling (lanza ). meanwhile sacred music, where some of the most significant advances in western music were made, was typically composed as a background to religious practice (raynor ). therefore, we can see that in the history of western culture, the practice of listening to music as an activity in its own right is a relatively new practice caused by a change in the conception of music and its role in society. this section considers the nature of that change. by narrowing his focus to parisian audiences from the early eighteenth century to nineteenth century, johnson ( ) plots this social transformation. “in the old regime”, johnson writes, “attending the opera was more social event than aesthetic encounter. in fact, eighteenth century audiences considered music little more than an agreeable ornament to a magnificent spectacle, in which they themselves played the principal part” ( , ). hence the traditional audience tended to talk continuously, visit one another in private boxes throughout the performance (often loudly banging doors behind them) whilst keeping an eye on one another through their lorgnette. meanwhile the lower classes stood in the main stalls, observed the aristocracy above them, chatted, regularly hummed along with the music and, on occasions when the area was overcrowded, rioted. mozart, identified by elias ( ) as being an important figure in a time where the musician’s role was radically changing in society, was described by johnson as being one of the first visitors to paris to become frustrated with the behaviour of his audience. in a letter to his father mozart wrote: what vexed me most of all was that madame and all her gentlemen never interrupted their drawings for a moment, but went on intently, so that i had to play to the chairs, tables and walls. under these detestable conditions i lost my patience. i therefore began to play the fischer variations and after playing half of them i stood up. whereupon i received a shower of éloges. (cited in johnson , – ) consumption, markets and culture by the time of beethoven, parisian audiences had learnt to sit in reverential silence and were known to be moved to tears by music. the change from unruly to reverential audience, marked by changes in the style of composition of the music itself as well as the architecture of the theatres, is described by johnson as consisting of the “musical experience of romanticism” ( , ). in understanding why the romantic period afforded the musician and indeed music such a privileged role, it is important to note the central role that aesthetics played in romantic philosophy of that era. for example, kant ( ) stressed the role of art in allowing people a glimpse of the sublime and thus allow the mind to develop an auton- omy. another early romantic writer, jean paul, described the need to develop a new language based on visuals and music in order to move away from defining the world by tote buchstabenschrift—the language of dead letters—which illustrates the importance of music to the romantic movement (donovan ). schopenhaur ( ) also stressed the importance of music by arguing that music did not merely represent but rather would constitute an immediate objectification and essence of the will, which he took to be what the world is besides being a representation. rosseau, regarded as a key figure in the romantic movement (heath and boreham ) not just wrote about the power of music as a means of self expression but also was a composer of music himself (johnson ). during this aesthetic and philosophic movement, music was given an important role and the musician and composer became regarded as highly valued members of society (heath and boreham ). the change in social standing of the artist in society was accompanied by a so-called bohemian ideology. as schroeder and borgerson ( ) identify, italian renaissance artists were comfortable benefiting from the increased monetary value of their works. however, by the romantic period griff describes a bohemian ideology as having attached itself to artists: “it is an ideology which not only expresses antinomianism— moral, aesthetic and social—which is central to its ethos, but also implies an active conflict, a war with civil society” (griff , ). part of this ideology represented a rejection of bourgeois and materialist values which lead to the stereotype of the artist as starving, deviant, alcoholic, suicidal undiscovered genius. newly present during this romanticist era were discourses of the artist as genius, a new term which imbued super- natural qualities to the artist as well as special rights and privileges resulting in artists not being held liable to the same constraints imposed on other members of society, they should be allowed to violate rules of decorum, propriety and common sense (becker , ). rather than being something routed in the past, according to griff, the bohemian ideology continues to attach itself to artistic production to this present day and this viewpoint has been shared by subsequent writers who have considered artists’ self-perception (see becker ; frith and horne ; kubacki and croft ). we can describe musicians who wish to reproduce this ideology through their own music and experience as carrying romantic musical intention. despite the romantic musical intention, in many cases music has retained its tradi- tional role of accompaniment for human activity such as selling and dancing. with the advent of large scale department stores, music was quickly recognised as playing an important role in retail atmospherics, for example at stewart’s “cast iron” palace a. bradshaw et al. which opened in new york in included continuous organ playing and by retail music was at such an advanced level that richard strauss conducted the world premiere performance of his “symphonia domestica” in wanamaker’s new york store (schlereth ). technological developments in the early twentieth century revolutionised the means in which background music could be played (north and hargreaves ). in the s general george owen squire of the us army developed a wireless and telegraphy system that formed the basis of the muzak corpo- ration; a name he coined himself that reflected the musical content of the organisation whilst deliberately sounding like kodak (lanza ). thus it became possible for music to be piped into buildings, elevators, places of work, bus stations, and airplanes. the music played by muzak was typically popular songs of the day rearranged to fit more easily into the background; heavy rhythmic parts of the piece were removed and vocals typically replaced by the melody line being played by lounge piano, guitar picking or vibraphone. the muzak philosophy can perhaps best be summed up by an old slogan (since abandoned): “boring work is made less boring by boring music” (lanza , ). this type of music came to be produced by other companies such as audio entertainment incorporated (aei) and was extensively supplied to retailers, becoming ubiquitous with the shopping experience (de nora ; lanza ; waters ). it was also believed that such music could help to improve the productivity of workers. during the second world war the bbc broadcast especially composed music to boost the productivity of the factory workers producing armament. by the end of the war, the programme music while you work was broadcast into nine thousand british factories and had a “listenership” of five million workers (bbc ). in this sense the provision of music as accompaniment has become associated with a taylorist-style social control. marketing studies have been keen to explore the potential of music to influence consumer behaviour and emotions, such as milliman’s seminal study ( ) whereby the impact of musical tempo was observed on restaurant patron’s buying behaviour (milliman’s research inspired a generation of subsequent studies, for a review of this research see turley and milliman ). for bruner music was something for marketers to “control” and concluded that “appropriately struc- tured music acts on the nervous system like a key on a lock, activating brain processes with corresponding emotional reactions” (bruner ii , ). it can be argued that this approach to music is the opposite of romantic musical intention as it is concerned with using music as a resource for social control rather than as an aesthetic object in its own right. for sociology writers such as bull ( ) or cronin ( ), background music (or the use of walkmans) is a form of antisocial barrier, as cronin writes: “music is more and more a way of confining humans to individual, monadic worlds where communi- cation runs the risk of being as worthless as it is wordless. it is almost as if automation empties the everyday life-world of human contact and thus generates more solitude, our public spaces are flooded with music to deal with the anxiety and fretfulness of the solitary consumer” (cronin , ). the loneliness associated with the use of music as a barrier was perhaps most colourfully described by adorno: consumption, markets and culture in forte passages, the music climbs likes a rocket. its arcs glisten over the listeners until they sit there, abandoned once more, in the grey of their cigarette puffs. they are not an audience. scarcely will one of them comment on the quality of the music that is offered. nor are they in a musical mood. the music scarcely touches their inner stirrings. rather it is an objective event among them, above them. the coldness from table to table; the strangeness between the young gentleman and the unknown girl across from him, who waits for the looks that will give her permission to be offended. all of this is not, for the life of you, eliminated by the music, but instead caught up and bound together. (adorno , ) the concerns over the use of background music as a form of social control have been voiced in numerous contexts. for example in george orwell’s critique of authoritari- anism, nineteen eighty four (orwell ), music is piped into people’s homes by the ruling regime whilst huxley’s brave new world carries the promise of “all the latest synthetic music!” (huxley , ). perhaps less seminal in the world of literature, judge dredd—muzak killer (ennis, power, and burns ) details the story of one man who became so obsessed with muzak that he seeks to murder all musicians involved in the production. resistance of background music has manifested itself in numerous ways. for example, the english organisation pipedown have organised extensive campaigns and marches in order to achieve “freedom from piped music” (bradshaw, sherlock, and mcdonagh ). the heavy metal guitar player ted nugent sought to purchase the entire muzak archive with a view to destroying it (channel- ) and in unesco’s international music council passed a resolution with the support of the international council of women denouncing “unanimously the intol- erable infringement of individual freedom and the right of everyone to silence, because of the abusive use, in private and public places of recorded or broadcast music” (lanza , ). a key member of the unesco council who championed the cause was the renowned musician yehudi menuhin, who in his book the music of man, condemns the use of piped music as follows: our world has become a sounding board for manmade sounds, amplified to suffuse and suffocate us: urbanised populations are divorced more and more from the sounds of nature and the living performance of music. we may seek to cover up the artificial sound envi- ronment with muzak, but i feel that man should object to the invasion of his sovereignty and privacy by the constant stream of music which pours out of amplifiers like gas warfare. it is but a short step from there to the infiltration of subliminal messages, influencing our choice of products and services, perhaps even our political and social views. (menuhin and davis , – ) throughout history, the links between background music and authoritarianism has existed at more than the level of conspiracy theory. the muzak corporation itself emerged through scientific research conducted in the us army and during the s muzak conducted several experiments through the us army human engineering labo- ratories masterminded by dr william wokoun (lanza ). these studies included tests on personnel at a cordon of us nuclear missile sites in alaska. during the s, muzak purchased the library of the brno radio orchestra from czechoslovakia who were formed to “sell the stalinist party line”. as then ceo of muzak baum said of the orchestra: “since muzak merely replaced red propaganda with propaganda from the ford motor company or budweiser, i figured they were ideal” (lanza , ). a. bradshaw et al. around this time there were plans to install muzak in a police station interrogation area, only to be nixed by the appointment of a new police chief. meanwhile muzak were trading under slogans such as “the new muzak—a system of security for the s” and “muzak is a total communications system” (lanza , – ). at this stage we can differentiate between music which was intended to satisfy the romantic desire for transcendence and heightened self-awareness through exposure to aesthetics and background music which is used with the intent of social control. whilst lanza ( ) challenges us to regard the output of muzak as aesthetic, following a romantic conception of music and the musician it is perhaps less controversial to regard background music as de-aestheticised music. however, objectively declaring music intended to be played in the background as de-aestheticised is problematic; what are we to make of bach’s goldberg variations, erik satie’s ironic furniture music or indeed the more contemporary ambient music of brian eno and moby? exploring the intent of the musicians helps us to understand if they carry romantic musical intention or if they intend their music to be used for social control. art versus commerce in a community of musicians in becker’s ( ) study of jazz musicians, he noted how a sense of community and shared values existed. this resulted in the musicians seeing themselves as belonging to a particular deviant community. for becker the central factor in this ontology was split between the large sense of self invested by musicians within their occupation and secondly, the degree of interference and pressures put on them to “go commercial”: “to play in accord with the wishes of the non-musicians for whom he works; in doing so he sacrifices the respect of other musicians and thus, in most cases, his self-respect” (becker , ). becker concluded that the dance musicians he studied felt isolated from the larger society and this led to a conception of themselves as “cats” and of non- musicians as “squares”. drawing on romantic discourses becker claims that “the musi- cian is conceived of as an artist who possesses a mysterious gift setting him apart from all other people. possessing this gift, he should be free from control from outsiders who lack it” (becker , – ). the concept of “cats” moved beyond performing music and seeped into other parts of life. for example one musician becker interviewed who was jewish came to regard being a musician as the larger part of his identity, so much so that his religion was unimportant in his concept of self. becker found that the jazz musicians emphasised their isolation from the standards and interests of conventional society and isolated their socialising to almost exclusively other musicians. becker writes: they were unremittingly critical of both business and labour, disillusioned with the economic structure and cynical about the political process and contemporary political parties. religion and marriage were rejected completely, as were american popular and serious culture and their reading was confined solely to the more esoteric avant garde writ- ers and philosophers. in art and symphonic music they were interested in only the most esoteric developments. in every case they were quick to point out that their interests were not those of the conventional society and that they were thereby differentiated from it. it consumption, markets and culture is reasonable to assume that the primary function of these interests was to make this differ- entiation unmistakably clear. (becker , ) indeed this unconventional behaviour amongst jazz musicians was also noted by holbrook ( , ) who described the stereotypical jazz musician as a “socially maladroit, beret-wearing, zoot-suited ne’er-do-well who would indeed smoke pot and join the communist party except that he is too strung out on heroin, cocaine, or demon rum to care about such comparatively light-hearted pastimes”. a more recent study than becker’s was conducted by cottrell ( ) who, in his study of london based professional musicians, noted a relationship between the economic potential of particular work and the associated artistic merit. drawing on bourdieu’s ( ) notion of culture capital versus economic capital, cottrell developed a schematic (see figure ) of the relationship between economic capital and musical capital (which he derived from bourdieu’s cultural capital). figure mapping performance opportunities with respect to economic capital and musical capital. (source: cottrell , ) the outcome was the development of a complex social network whereby musicians would substitute for one another, allowing work to be shared and giving musicians the opportunity to engage in more artistically rewarding yet financially moderate projects. for example whilst a musician may be grateful of regular work performing in an orchestra pit for a west end show, they may wish to perform at a low pay one-off art concert that could both raise their profile within the musician community and appeal to their artistic impulse. again the notion of clash between music and money was noted with cottrell concluding that: “the strategies these musicians adopt result, at least in part, from the antagonistic relationship between music as a cultural symbol and music as an economic process; and the manner in which they resolve this conflict creates and sustains both their self-conception and their individual identity in the wider social world” (cottrell , ). session work london orchestras contemporary western art music provincial orchestras modern jazz london shows touring shows pub jazz economic capital music capital figure mapping performance opportunities with respect to economic capital and musical capital. (source: cottrell , ) a. bradshaw et al. this conflict was further noted in frith and horne’s ( ) study of british pop musicians, where they traced bohemian and romantic values into pop musicians self- identity. paradoxically the pursuit of anti-commercialism often turned out to have excellent selling powers and this paradox came to be a point of obsession for many musicians as they tried to maintain an anti-commercial ideology within the reality of commercial success. frith and horne propose that the emergence of punk was an attempted solution to the continuing dilemma of romantic art—how to be subversive in a culture of commodities ( , ). a defining point in the above studies is a shared value of anti-materialism within a musician community. this can be attributed to the existence of a bohemian ideology. rather than being attached just to certain musical genres, such as jazz, de botton argues that the spirit of bohemia can be located across the aesthetic dimension: “from roman- ticism to surrealism, from the beatniks to the punks, from the situationists to the kibbutzniks” ( , ). de botton identifies bohemia as holding a contrasting assess- ment of value which is pitted against the economic and meritocratic status system. instead of valuing success according to typical conventions such as financial wealth, they (the bohemians) valued the ability to be “receptive to the world and to devote oneself, as a spectator or creator, to the primary repository of feeling: art” (de botton , ). however, as noted by the above studies, as much as musicians may wish to with- draw themselves from the commercial world, economic reality forces them to engage with that very world in order to survive. for steinert this constitutes a “fundamental contradiction in art”, the demand placed on artists to produce a form of art that is both autonomous and oppositional but will also sustain the career of the artist in a very difficult industry (steiner , ). an example of this “fundamental contradic- tion” in action was provided by smith’s ( ) study of the rock musician pete town- shend and how he spent his career negotiating it. smith shows how townshend’s music can be deciphered as a negotiation between conflicting art and commercial pressures. for frith and horne this art/commerce dialogue is what gives meaning to not just pop music but also to the mass market itself, in as much as the mass market depends on each person’s individual impulse to be different, so the triumph of consumption depends on the continuing romantic belief in creative market power and the individual voice. rather than a study of co-optation (which itself has received a tour-de-force critique by frank ), the discussion becomes moved towards one of how “truth” and “subjectivity” and “uniqueness” are registered in normal market relations themselves. for frith and horne, in order to grasp the dynamics of this tension it is important to pay proper attention to music-makers. this paper raises to frith and horn’s call and contributes to the existing literature that pay attention to musicians (for example, see becker ; cottrell ; kubacki and croft ; robinson, buck, and cuthbert ). research design as stated, the purpose of this paper is to explore the experiences of professional musi- cians who perform background music, or have done so in the past. in order to proceed consumption, markets and culture a series of interviews were sought with a cross-section of professional musicians. drawing on contacts made from working within the music industry, open-ended inter- views were sought and conducted in a range of locations. to avoid what adorno and horkheimer ( ) criticised as studies that fetishise the difference between what was held to be “high art” versus “low art”, we took a cross-section of musicians from a range of musical backgrounds in order that the same methodological questions can be put to all forms and genres of music. the musical genres and professions include jazz, folk, irish traditional, composers, theatre pit musicians, session musicians, heavy metal, electronic, pop, rock, and gypsy. the musicians ranged in their nationality and include musicians from france, germany, ireland, lebanon, uk, and the usa; many of whom had experience of working all over the world. owing to the difficulties of accessing trav- elling and sometimes famous musicians, the locations of the interviews varied from the musicians’ homes, university facilities, parks, bars, cafes, hotel lobbies, recording studios, and telephone interviews. all interviews were semi-structured, medium length lasting on average forty-five minutes yielding wide ranging conversations. the interview technique was selected because it was taken to be the most appropriate for seeking to interpret the musician’s knowledge, views, understandings, interpretations, experiences, and interactions which could give meaningful accounts of their experience (mason ). as other studies into the practices of musicians and commercial artists also relied on depth- interviews (becker ; griff ; kubacki and croft ), embracing this method allows the findings to stand within an existing research framework. in order to produce the accompanying audio presentation to the highest standard, this paper marks the collaboration of academics and a radio producer. accordingly all interviews were conducted using a minidisc recorder complete with a professional microphone in order to achieve quality sound levels. a consequence of this was that the microphone played a much more prominent role in interviews as it had to be held close to respondents’ mouths for the required effect. however, given the nature of profes- sional musicians it was found that this presented few problems for the respondents who tended to be well experienced at both interviews and indeed microphones. also, advise was sought in radio interview techniques regarding how best to achieve sound quality whilst building a rapport with the interviewee. the recordings were remastered and edited using the computer programme protools and results in a very high standard of radio presentation. for the purpose of this paper and accompanying audio presentation, the data has been divided into three over-lapping themes: musical integrity, pragmatics of back- ground music performance and finally “people didn’t listen”. the comments of seven interviewees have been selected as being most relevant to the focus of this paper. table contains a short pen-picture of each of the seven musicians as well as links to their respective websites. theme : musical integrity muireann nicamhlaoibh described her form of musical integrity as follows: a. bradshaw et al. people should realise that a lot of groups out there who work really hard and the music is the be all and end all for them and that is why we’re doing this because we’re not rich, we’re not rich at all and i would be making a lot more money if i had any other kind of job, if i was in a bar or anything. we’re not doing it to make money, we’re doing it because we love it so much and we don’t compromise, we really don’t. that’s all important to us, is the integrity of the music. for this musician, musical integrity is closely associated with a lack of financial success. the lack of money at the musician’s disposal is established, through her discourse, as a badge of musical integrity. for rossa Ó snodaigh, the idea of musical integrity and financial hardship was a source of scepticism: there’s this sense that an artist should have integrity for his whole life and integrity means being poor and that you’re not a true artist until two hundred years later people go “wasn’t he amazing, that person, y’know, he did it all for art, great!” he has no money, he’s not healthy, he has no way of surviving. as they say you can’t live off integrity alone and as table table of interviewed respondents muireann nicamhlaoibh young irish traditional singer and whistle player who is leading singer with the group danú who are signed to an international record label. the group have received international awards and have toured world-wide. www.danu.net rossa Ó snodaigh performer and composer with folk rock ensemble kíla who have an international profile and have recorded numerous albums. www.kila.ie hugh buckley jazz guitar player who has released two solo albums and has played across the world. www.hughbuckley.com mick moloney extremely experienced musician who has worked professionally in ireland, england, and the usa. has recorded with numerous renowned groups, recorded solo albums and currently works as a producer and ethnomusicologist. he is the second person to hold the position of global distinguished visiting professor at the new york university, in which he has succeeded adorno. www.mickmoloney.com patrick collins jazz and gypsy-style violin player who has worked professionally in ireland, france, and england. has recorded numerous albums and now plays with the group, the café orchestra who perform mostly corporate concerts. www.cafeorchestra.com christy moore hugely famous and experienced popular folk singer-songwriter in ireland who has played all over the world and released a large number of albums, both as member of numerous groups and solo. www.christymoore.com greg boland guitar player and record producer who has played with numerous groups (including the cult group scullion) and campaigns for musicians’ rights in the musicians union of ireland. www.gregboland.net consumption, markets and culture much integrity as i like to have, if someone offers me ten grand to use a piece of music, fucking brilliant, about time because nobody else is. people might live off your integrity in the pub saying “oh yeah, they’re great lads”. that doesn’t pay the bills. once again the bohemian identity is tied to discourses of money versus art thereby reproducing the art/commerce dialogue—in both cases the cost of integrity is financial hardship. achieving a degree of musical integrity against material gain is therefore a balancing act. as much as the musician might aspire to an anti-materialist ideology, economic reality must be addressed. the balance between the two is nicely summarised by hugh buckley: i’m not really driven by money, really, but obviously i do like to have a nice holiday away with the family and i wouldn’t like to be without a car and stuff like that so in that sense i probably am driven to a certain degree. hugh buckley described his attitude towards bohemia as changing following his experiences in new york: i mean my attitude actually changed when i went to new york, y’know, and i was going out regularly and there was great players doing all sorts of gigs and why not? really, i mean that. once you’re doing the thing that you believe in, why not do other gigs and make money out of it and have a more comfortable lifestyle? i think this thing of the struggling artist is a load of bullshit really, i mean who wants that really, y’know, you can fall into that trap. in this instance buckley changed his perception of bohemia having witnessed musi- cians that he admired taking corporate concerts in the prestigious jazz network of new york. this is an example of a musician taking his cue regarding behaviour and attitude by observing respected peers and shows the trend towards seeking shared values within a wider community. another factor which was repeatedly mentioned as a barrier against achieving bohemia was family, with all its inherent financial responsibilities. mick moloney quite succinctly described the dilemma and subsequent balancing act: you can’t ignore the whole question of the life-cycle here. i try not to be too critical of musicians who do that, i mean, they have to make a living. sometimes they have very few other options. a lot of irish musicians who work in the bar scene in america, for instance, y’know, it’s a hard old slog doing four forty-five minute sets of singing fairly popular mate- rial to people who are not even listening to you for the most part. they have families they have to bring up, they have responsibilities and i think if you were to meet those same people back in their early twenties, they wouldn’t even thought of that and maybe they would have espoused that philosophy of “we don’t care about the cash”. but i think it depends on what stage of your life you’re at. a lot of professional musicians or artists in general who make their living on music, they have to make compromises. it’s a question then of how far are you going to go. this data illustrates that bohemian values of anti-materialism still penetrate beliefs of what constitutes “musical integrity”. the ultimate bohemian form is realised by muireann nicamhlaoibh who describes a life of integrity and the resulting poverty. however for the most part poverty, of course, is not a sustainable career aspiration and ultimately, as rossa Ó snodaigh stated, cash has to be generated by compromising this a. bradshaw et al. integrity. what emerges, as evidenced by the comments of hugh buckley and mick moloney, is a balancing act; “it’s a question then of how far are you going to go?” another important factor is the degree to which musicians are a community constantly striving to gain insights into appropriate behaviour from observing each other. a second issue of integrity and how it manifests itself in art/commerce dialogue relates to how musicians define their success and quality. for some musicians the measure of success was the ability to provide a profound aesthetic experience for the audience. for example christy moore said the following: the things that matter to me with regards to my work are small things: meeting somebody who was affected by a song or meeting somebody whose day was made easier by listening to a song. that might sound a bit corny, but to me they are the successes in my life as a singer is encountering people whose lives have been enhanced in some small way by the work i do. the other stuff is fine and it’s grand in it’s own way but, to me, they are the awards that count, y’know. i meet that in my everyday life, i have people who come and talk to me quietly about hearing a certain song in or the night i sang such-and-such a song in galway or the night they heard it on the radio. i know of cases where the songs have helped people in their grieving, that’s where i would consider my success to lie. for patrick collins musical success was to be measured in the quality of the music he was playing: i did a concerto, a violin and piano concerto with peter reeves and i think that that was one of the best pieces of work i’ve ever done. it’s a full three movement romantic concerto for piano and violin. i was very pleased with that, i thought it was a very good piece of work. i mean you wouldn’t sell it if your life depended on it because again it’s like a minor- ity thing. i did a jazz album last year with drazen derek which i thought was a good album, i thought i actually played well on it, y’know, i thought it was a good piece of work. and they’re probably the two recordings that i’ve done to date that are closest to my heart in terms of quality and standard that i’d like to achieve consistently. they are the records that are closer to what i would want to be than anything else i’ve ever done. in this we can understand patrick collins and christy moore as occupying two separate realities, one where music is a performance designed to make a connection with the audience and the other where the act of making music is an end in itself. as this ties in with concepts noted in latter themes, the significance of this shall be further explored in the analysis section. theme : the pragmatics of background performance for many of the musicians interviewed, they have often been faced with offers to perform to a non-listening audience in return for financial reward. one form of such an offer can be to perform corporate entertainment for clients where musicians are often laid on as a means of developing image. rossa Ó snodaigh describes performing corporate entertainment for a large corporation who were engaged in a direct market- ing event where consumers were brought to a concert to enhance the brand profile: you’re having a guinness experience basically. i mean it’s a load of bollocks really but that’s what they’re doing. they’re bringing people out to races and they’re a patron for a consumption, markets and culture day and it managed to pull us out a financial slump we were in. it meant more people who had never heard our music got to hear it. it’s all, in a way, your doing ripples all the time, little ripples and throwing stone pebbles into the water. and if it’s someone paying us to throw a stone pebble into the water, bloody great, ha ha. in this case the group accept being the subject of a brand development project on the basis that financially they needed the money and secondly because it was an opportu- nity to promote the group. for hugh buckley the task of contributing to a corporate image can be more soul-destroying: the corporate gigs are a funny thing, i mean just to do with the image, y’know, someone might ring up and say they want a trio for this function or something like that and they ask what instruments, y’know. he’ll usually ask you for a saxophone, like y’know. i mean if i say i want to do guitar, piano and a bass and they say they want a saxophone because the saxophone is the image of jazz, y’know, it’s cool. all they want is corporate gigs is some- thing to look like it’s the business really. again the issue of pragmatics is central, given the choice of performing corporate enter- tainment, musicians would most likely reject it. for example, christy moore, after years of performing background music is now suitably established so that he can choose which concerts he wishes to perform and describes how he constantly rejects corporate work: there are things i do turn down. i refuse to play to people who are eating and i refuse to do corporate work and i refuse to do advertising. this demonstrates that there may be a degree of career life-cycle in playing background music; at the beginning the musician has to take whatever is available and build up his profile until he is ready to perform concerts. however, this is not always the case. for example, patrick collins’s group, the café orchestra, have built up a following sufficient for performing normal concerts, however, the costs, risk, and time involved in organising a concert are such that corporate concerts are a far more realistic and convenient venture: working concerts would be very nice but it wouldn’t be terribly realistic, you know what i mean, we wouldn’t make a living if we were just doing that. corporate theatre pays as well as it does to fill a small three hundred seat theatre, i mean with far less effort on your own part where you don’t have to promote the show and sell the tickets. you don’t have to be doing that all the time. therefore for some musicians playing corporate events is a necessary evil which the musician must progress his career beyond and for others it is not a problem at all. theme : “people didn’t listen” for certain musicians interviewed disconcertment (in every sense of the word) arises when they move from listening audiences to non-listening audiences which can challenge the musician’s sense of identity. for example, greg boland said the following: it’s very difficult particularly if you’ve been in a situation where that’s not happening. i mean if that’s all you’ve experienced all your life then you’d say “well ok, that’s just where i’m at, i just don’t really get through to people or whatever”. i’ve seen situations where i’ve a. bradshaw et al. seen musicians who have played on stages to , people who listened to them, not being able to get anybody to listen to them in a pub. however, for patrick collins the idea of his sense of musicianship being challenged by a non-listening audience is rejected: there’s no point saying “oh god i’m an artist and nobody is listening to me!” that’s bullshit, y’know, the whole world is full of people who are talented. you have to keep the whole thing in perspective because irrespective of what you do in life, there are always other people who are equally good if not better, y’know, in any field. so you never lose you’re sense of worth is. i don’t find that regrettable, its just life, i mean you work like everybody else you know. the opposite of this experience was described by mick moloney who felt unnerved by the experience of audiences listening to him having moved from supporting show bands where the audience ignored him to playing the folk circuit in england where the music was listened to reverentially. similarly christy moore shared the same experi- ence and found that the change made possible new musical opportunities: it was a complete revelation to me when i went to england in to discover that there were clubs there that people went to just to listen. it’s a very attractive ambience for a singer to perform a song when people are listening intently. it makes it very easy to really to perform with emotion and to give everything whereas if you’re playing to a room full of fucking yobs who don’t give a shite really i mean how can you give it your all? indeed the belief that the musician can “give it your all” is increased where the audience is more receptive, is shared by patrick collins: if you are playing in a crowded room that’s full of people talking, you loose that dynamic control over music. it just becomes that your pounding it out there, you become more heavy handed whereas in a quiet situation, you can actually pull back on things and have much more subtlety on things you play and have a much bigger dynamic range because it’s quiet. but the vast majority of gigs aren’t like that. an example of a musician reacting to an audience who didn’t listen is provided by hugh buckley: it doesn’t matter how it sounds because we’ve tried actually playing stuff that’s not musical at those gigs and nobody notices. just hit the instruments anywhere, y’know and you get no response. and someone at the end will come up and say “thank you”, ha, ha! hugh buckley’s experience is the absolute example of exiled music, the content of the music has become so irrelevant to the audience that they do not even notice that the musicians are not performing music but instead are banging their instruments. continuing his pragmatic stance patrick collins argues that resenting the audience is a mistake: the thing i believe about this is that there’s no necessity for you to get upset in your head about whether people are listening or not. if you are doing something that is really interesting, people will listen. you don’t have to stand up and say “oh i’m amazing, listen to me, its really important”, if it’s that fucking good they’ll hear it, you know what i mean, people are not stupid y’know. if there’s something decent you will always hit the level of people who have that level of consciousness. if you’re working in a room where consumption, markets and culture people don’t have that level of consciousness, where for example everybody wants abba or something, you’re in the wrong room and you have the wrong type of audience well then that’s the way it is, you’re in the wrong and you can’t blame them. you go to where it works for you and you will always find the people who have the consciousness to appreciate what you are doing, they will hear it y’know, so you don’t have to worry about that, y’know. if you do your job well, it comes back to you, y’know, its just life, y’know. an important point that patrick makes is that the context must be appropriate for the type of music. greg boland accounts the lack of listening in certain audiences as having everything to do with the context: it’s more to do with the environment and the context more than anything else. i mean a pub is not a great place to go and make or listen to music, it’s a noisy environment which has other functions in the sense that people are there to drink, they’re there to talk, they’re there to socialise in a sense. what happens then is that the music becomes oriented towards that environment; lots of music that everybody knows and lots of people can sing along with and it doesn’t particularly matter how well or how badly it’s played. for greg boland the task is then to organise an alternative to this context. one solution, he believes, is to charge people to listen to music: music is about the only free thing in ireland. why when people are prepared to pay silly prices for cups of coffee, a lot of people get their backs up when they are charged into pubs to watch a band. now what that does is that when you have paid into a pub to watch a band, it both empowers you as a customer to ask for a bit of quiet because you’ve paid in to see something and it empowers the act on stage to say “keep it down a bit”. y’know going into a gig in the seventies say, like the meeting place or some venues around the place, em, the audience was able to make a kind of qualitative judgement. in other words you went into a bar and whether you knew who was playing or not, if they were playing something really there was enough people usually to say “there’s something really good going on here, y’know, aren’t we lucky, y’know, could you please keep it down a bit”. that doesn’t exist any more and the pubs are the ones dictating the fees and all that kind of stuff. that has gone, that control has gone. greg has also become president of the musicians union of ireland and campaigns for better rights for musicians. part of their lobbying includes trying to encourage the state to provide more space for musicians to perform in sympathetic contexts. in other words rather than accept the occupation as background musician, it becomes a matter which ought to be lobbied against. this contrasts with patrick collins who is far more reconciled with his faith as performing background music. in terms of understanding patrick collins’s response, it is interesting to note how he uses such performances as a means of practising and developing his technique: you know you can always be working on something when you are playing, you’re always refining something or something is wrong and there’s always something to be worked on. so you get your head around that, you work on the things that you are working on if there isn’t a big audience there. in a similar vain to this, hugh buckley describes using background music gigs as a means of testing new material: a. bradshaw et al. say for instance now at the moment, i’m putting a new group together so i can get together with one of the guys in the group and do a corporate gig and play some of the stuff that we’ve been rehearsing, y’know. in these two examples the musicians are not engaged in making a performance for the audience but rather it is a performance for themselves. the fact that the audience is not listening then becomes a matter of indifference for the musicians. analysis we suggest that background music does not provide a “romantic experience of music” but rather is there to provide non-aesthetic purposes, i.e. hugh buckley is requested to bring a saxophone player because this is the image of jazz though the actual music they perform is irrelevant to the audience. this is the ultimate in muzak’s slogan; “music is there to be listened to, but muzak is there to be heard”. we divide the responses of the musicians into two camps; either the musicians succeed in gaining the attention of the audience, in which case the romantic intention can be realised (inasmuch as any romantic ideal can be realised as a central tenant of romanticism is endless longing and desire; donovan ) as both christy moore and mick moloney have achieved or the musician must accept the career of a background musician, as patrick collins and hugh buckley have done. in the latter cases the musicians turn their performance inward; collins develops his craft by practising and improving his technique whilst buckley uses corporate concerts as a means of practising with musicians he wishes to play with. arguably the latter response is a lived example of what attali calls composition, which he outlined in his text noise: the political economy of music ( ) where music is “performed for the musician’s own enjoyment, as self-communication, with no other goal than his own pleasure, as something fundamentally outside all communication, as self-transcendence, a solitary, egotistical, non-commercial act” (attali , ), simply put it is “doing solely for the sake of doing” (ibid., ). for attali this is a sign of a new political economy whereby the musician is not alienated from his own music as he no longer produces with his audience in mind; “composition thus appears as a negation of the division of roles and labour as constructed by the old codes” (ibid., ). this form of composition collapses the division between production and consumption as they merge into the same process. for attali as music is harbinger of social change, the emergence of composition marks the beginning of a new form of engagement. just as he argues that the development of harmony in the seventeenth century marked the rise of exchange, composition prophe- sises a new social order based on the reappropriation of labour; “not the recuperation of the product, but of his labour itself” (attali , ): the goal of labour is no longer necessarily communication with an audience, usage by a consumer, even if they remain a possibility in the musical act of composition. the nature of production changes; the music a person likes to hear is not necessarily the same music he likes to play, much less improvise. in composition—the absence of exchange, self- communication, self-knowledge, non-exchange, self-valorisation—labour is not confined consumption, markets and culture within a preset programme. there is a collective questioning of the goal of labour. (attila , ) a good example of how this difference between music as performance or composi- tion manifests itself was provided in theme one in the contrast between how patrick collins and christy moore evaluate their own success. for christy moore, success was tied to the romantic ideal of making a profound aesthetic connection with the audience. as opposed to this, patrick collins was not concerned about audience response at all but rather with the quality of his own performance. for christy moore it is essential that his music be performed in the appropriate context in order to achieve this aspiration and for patrick collins, the audience is far less important except that it can subsidise his career as a musician. rather than try to tie the world to the music he creates, he rather regards the act of making music is an end in itself. however, if musicians are not practising composition, then the spirit of the romantic experience of music lives on and does so in the spirit of the musicians who strive against music in the background. for musicians like christy moore who turn down the opportunity to make large amounts of money from performing corporate concerts and advertisements, discourses of integrity are important. in this regard music retains its bohemian ideology of anti-materialism and its striving to create transcendent moments that can be shared with an audience. therefore, background music is divided into two themes, firstly as performance which is an earnest attempt to engage with the audience despite the context. a perfor- mance retains music’s romantic conception as the audience is expected to treat music as an object worthy of reverence. performing background music therefore challenges the importance they place on their music, and by extension the self-identity of the musician. secondly, music exists as composition which is a non-performance whereby the professional musician simply uses the background music as a mechanism for earn- ing money and developing his craft. in this case the musician’s self-identity is not threatened by audience apathy. can we conclude from this data that the romantic experience lives on and will continue to do so in the future, or is the emergence of composition evidence of a start in a gradual decline in romantic values as the musician as romantic hero now appears slightly anachronistic? johnson argues that the romantic musical experience lives on, but in an unexpected and perhaps false way. the opera audience still demands silence, but, for johnson it is not the same phenomenon that took place during romantisicm: alongside genuine musical absorption is a package of reflexes set on a trip-wire to protect the aesthetic moment, nudging the dozers, discouraging applause between movements, glaring at the coughers. it almost seems that profound engagement has passed from aesthetic consequence to social imperative. like the eighteenth-century listener observed weeping during a comic opera, we consider it our duty to be moved every time we listen. of course the prevailing patterns of behaviour are a boon to listening, and i suppose we should be grateful: the climate-controlled, soundproofed halls with their comfortable seats and unobstructed views permit utter, undistracted communion as never before. but ever since romanticism made a religion of art and raised worship to a social virtue, it’s not always been possible to tell true belief from mere fascination with the sacraments. (johnson , ) a. bradshaw et al. according to goodall ( ) the ability of audiences to appreciate music is threat- ened by both the decline in musical education allowing people to understand the form of the music and also because the nature of the visual landscape results in people finding it difficult to sit through long passages of music. indeed de nora’s ( ) research suggests that younger generations have greater difficulties listening to music as an activity in its own right and instead are more used to using it as a resource for implying agency, mood, and constructing their self-identity. this process may go beyond listening to music, for example schroeder ( ) shows us that we live in an image economy replete with “zapping” and where advertising depends on repeated exposure which often function without the full awareness or attention of consumers. all of this suggests that non-listening audiences will continue to increase into the future. if we are to accept attali’s conception of music as prophesising future social conditions, then the experience of musicians in dealing with non-listening audiences and their different responses may signify existence whereby divisions between produc- tion and consumption collapse. rather than taking an either/or response to the question, can we instead claim that background music contains elements of both composition and performance? perhaps the answer to the question can be found in what adorno wrote seventy years ago, long before attali came to theorise composition. in the quotation at the very start of this piece, adorno reminds us that music loyally holds out despite its marginalised existence; in other words it still holds the potential of an aesthetic response. this adds a twist to attali’s notion of composition explored in this paper; does such music, at some level, still carry the romantic longing to be heard from its lonely exile which an audience can tap into at any time? despite his apparently nonplus attitude towards his audience, patrick collins still had faith in his audience to do this, “if it’s that fucking good they’ll hear it”. we conclude our piece as did adorno who, quoting the expressionist poet georg heym, describes what happens when the background music does succeed in stirring at least one member of the audience: anyone who, moved, is startled out of his conversation or thoughts after all, and who looks in that direction, is transformed into georg heym’s suburban dwarf: “he looks up to the great green bell of heaven, where silent meteors cross far away”. (adorno , ) comment on the audio programme as stated this written submission is accompanied by an audio presentation prepared in the form of a radio programme. both the written and audio presentations are intended as autonomous yet complimentary works in their own right. the challenge facing the audio production was to maintain listener attention throughout the presentation and therefore analysis and theory were kept to a minimum. instead, the emphasis on the radio programme was to allow the respondents a greater deal of space to articulate their points in their own way. this was achieved by editing the data clips in such a way as to have the various musicians seemingly debating each other as they respectively presented both point and counter-point with the minimum intrusion from the consumption, markets and culture presenter. in a study of romanticism with its inherent dislike of defining the world by tote buchstabenschrift (language of dead letters), we are satisfied that the audio format enlivens the debate allowing the power of the musicians’ personalities to enrich the reader’s and listener’s perception of the issues at hand—the degree of conviction, irony, and often disgust evident in the speakers’ voices illustrate how much the issues really matter to the respondents. finally, given that most qualitative research is now recorded on an audio format and the development of reasonably priced editing software—thus allowing producers the possibility to bypass a recording studio—we believe that the auditory format provides a far more realistic opportunity for researchers to experiment in multimedia than other forms. we encourage researchers to spend more time improving the auditory quality of their interviews so to allow future programmes and multimedia lectures to be developed. acknowledgements the song in the audio piece, “you are everything to me” which was composed and performed by mike o’laughlin, appears with kind permission of the composer. additional voice-overs were provided by bruno zelic. note [ ] an important factor in the changing regard for the musician in society around this period was the break of the patronage system as composers such as mozart broke their reliance from the court system and redirected their output towards a market system. whilst this transition is treated in other texts (see attali ; elias ; steinert ) it is considered beyond the scope of this review. references adorno, t. w. . music in the background. in adorno—essays on music, edited by r. leppert. berkeley, los angeles and london: university of california press. adorno, t. w., and m. horkheimer. . dialectic of enlightenment. translated by j. cumming. new york: continuum. attali, j. . noise: the political economy of music. minneapolis: university of minneapolis. bbc. . music while you work. available from http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/treasurehunt/ sounds/clip .shtml. last accessed june , . becker, h. . outsiders. new york: free press. becker, h. s. . art 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difficult because it is competitive. hence, both virtuosic performances and lucky successes can be valuable achievements. though men pride themselves on their great deeds, these are not often the result of great plans, but rather the result of chance. (la rochefoucauld [ ]: § ) . introduction many value theorists agree that great achievements make your life go bet- ter ; to attain some properly significant goal through intentional, goal-di- rected activity promotes your welfare. such achievement-value is independent of that borne by the fruit of your achievement. for example, creating a beautiful and original artwork makes your life go better even if you immediately lose the work to a studio-fire. not all successful goal-directed activities are valuable achievements of course. in my case, at least, when i set out to get the mail, and then do so, my performance does not amount to a valuable achievement. in order to iso- late valuable achievements, most philosophical accounts begin with a ver- sion of the following: pacific philosophical quarterly • • ( ) • •–• • doi: . /papq. © the author pacific philosophical quarterly © university of southern california and john wiley & sons ltd. http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi= . % fpapq. &domain=pdf&date_stamp= - - difficulty view (dv): achieving a goal is valuable for the agent if doing so involves difficulty, and it is more valuable the more difficulty it involves. several counterintuitive implications of dv lead most philosophers, how- ever, to propose alternative conditions instead of or in addition to difficulty. consider these three worrisome implications: needless difficulty: according to dv, injecting capsaicin under one’s skin before writing an ac- ademic essay will increase the value the achievement of writing that essay bears for the writer ceteris paribus. misguided but lucky effort: according to dv, stumbling upon a buried treasure by pure luck af- ter following a dowsing rod through a desert counts as a highly valuable achievement for the treasure-hunter because of the effort spent with the dowsing rod. effortless virtuosity: according to dv, a highly skilled and practiced performer of a technical composition on the violin does not attain an achievement of any significant value for herself in performing the piece insofar as doing so is relatively easy for her to do. dv is indeed implausible if it entails that confronting such needless or misguided but lucky difficulties contributes greatly to one’s welfare while virtuosic performance does not. this paper considers whether these are faults with dv itself or only the interpretation to which it is subjected. i propose a new, unified interpretation of difficulty that avoids these implications. on my view, achievement-value is solely determined by the difficulty of the task, but the difficulty of the task is determined by how much effort competitors would exhibit in a comparable task rather than by how much effort the agent herself exhibits in the completion of the task. my argument for this competitive interpretation of dv involves showing how it handles versions of the three objections just enumerated better than the most developed analysis of achievement-value currently on offer: what i call the effortful interpretation (bradford ). in section , i argue that dv is worth taking seriously, that difficulty is not bad for us the way it might seem at first. in section , i lay out the competitive and effortful interpreta- tions side by side. in section , i introduce an important qualification on bradford’s acceptance of dv: she argues that difficulty is required for and that it contributes to, achievement-value but that there is another necessary and contributory condition, competence. i show that dv, on my interpreta- tion, better handles cases of needless difficulty (section ), lucky achieve- ments (section ), and effortless artistic creations (section ) than does bradford’s analysis of achievement-value. in section , i consider an objec- tion to the competitive interpretation of dv based on the role personal struggles play in our intuitions about achievement-value. i conclude that the competitive interpretation provides an adequate analysis of achieve- ment-value, allowing us to reach a reflective equilibrium with respect to © the author pacific philosophical quarterly © university of southern california and john wiley & sons ltd. the competition account of achievement-value our various intuitions and considered judgments regarding achievement and welfare. . isn’t difficulty bad for us? achievements contribute welfare value to the achiever independently of the value of the product of the achievement. the magnitude of the value of the achievement seems to track the difficulty of its accomplishment. this sug- gests that difficulty itself contributes to, or even constitutes, the value of the achievement. hence, dv. there is a common assumption that runs directly against dv. if true, tak- ing dv as a starting point for an analysis of achievement-value would be foolhardy. i think it’s false, unsurprisingly. the assumption is that confronting difficulty in the pursuit of a goal is prima facie bad for us. perhaps no philosopher has articulated this assump- tion with more clarity and vigor than schopenhauer. he argues that humans are wired such that every impediment toward the immediate realization of the ends we pursue constitutes a painful state of want or striving and that all other aspects of our pursuits recede into the background against this pain- ful striving: just as the brook makes no eddy as long as it encounters no obstacles, so too human as well as animal nature entail that we do not properly notice and realize everything that goes in accor- dance with our will. if we were to notice it, then it must not have immediately gone in accordance with our will, but must have met with some obstacle.—on the other hand, we sense directly, im- mediately, and very clearly everything that opposes, crosses and resists our will, therefore all that is unpleasant and painful. […] on this rests the negativity of well-being and happiness, frequently emphasized by me, as opposed to the positivity of pain. (schopenhauer [ ]: ) happiness and well-being have a negative character, for schopenhauer, be- cause what’s good in life (including great achievements) withdraws from our attention in light of the constant struggle our activities require of us. hence, life, for schopenhauer, is constant suffering. nietzsche, too, plays on the intuitiveness of this assumption while articu- lating a directly opposed view, a view that agrees with dv: whether hedonism, [schopenhauerian] pessimism, utilitarianism, or eudaimonsim: all these ways of thinking that measure the value of things according to pleasure and pain, that is accord- ing to concomitants and incidentals, are foreground-ways-of-thinking and naiveties, upon which anyone who appreciates the formative powers and an artist’s conscience will look not without ridicule[…]. you want where possible—and there is no crazier ‘where possible’—to eliminate suf- fering; and we?—it seems precisely that we would rather have it still higher and worse than it has been! well-being as you understand it—this is really no aim [ziel], this appears to us as an end [ende]! ([ ] beyond good and evil § ) © the author pacific philosophical quarterly © university of southern california and john wiley & sons ltd. pacific philosophical quarterly nietzsche praises the value of suffering. the suffering or striving character- istic of a difficult achievement is, he argues, itself valuable. reflection on nietzsche’s example of artistic creation helps us see that things aren’t as sim- ple as schopenhauer would have us think. oftentimes artistic creation does indeed feel hard; there is a first-per- sonal strain associated in general with exerting ourselves in performing a difficult task. call this phenomenal effort. notice two things about phe- nomenal effort: first, it’s not the same as other painful experiences; the feeling of effort or strain in writing is very unlike a headache. accord- ingly, an artist might agree that the creation of an elaborate work of art was difficult, even phenomenally effortful, and yet balk at schopenhauer’s suggestion that it was a pain. so, if difficulty is presumed to be bad for us because it is presumed to entail a kind of pain, the bad- ness of difficulty rests on a misunderstanding. second, whatever value we place on the phenomenal character of difficult tasks, there are other reasons to affirm the positive value of difficulty. this paper raises several. that there are such reasons is suggested already by the attitudes we take toward difficult, past accomplishments. for instance, we would not expect an artist to look back on an ambitious and successful project with regret simply because it was so difficult. imagine we could pres- ent her with a choice between engaging another highly difficult project or taking up a much easier one which, we promise, will bear all the same instru- mental value (in terms of aesthetic value, pay, accolades, etc.). is it at all clear that she would choose the easier project? is it clear that the easier would be the prudentially better choice? even if it is desirable to avoid phenomenal effort when all else is equal, it simply does not follow that difficult tasks are less desirable for their difficulty. i begin this paper by taking sides with nietzsche, and against schopen- hauer, on this issue. i take it that confronting difficulty in the course of an accomplishment enhances eo ipso one’s welfare. in my final view, it is not phenomenal effort that contributes value but other features of diffi- culty. for now, however, consider a thought experiment supporting nietzsche’s view against schopenhauer’s. bradford ( , pp. – ) asks us to imagine ‘a utopia, where everything we could possibly need is at arms’ reach, or at the touch of a button’—or, she adds when considering the gray skies of boredom, with the pop of a pill. in such a place where no exertion is necessary, would we not find ways to introduce challenges into our easy lives? since, by stipulation, such difficulties aren’t necessary in order to obtain any valuable object or even to avoid boredom, ‘there must be something about the [difficult] processes themselves that is choiceworthy for its own sake’ (p. ). © the author pacific philosophical quarterly © university of southern california and john wiley & sons ltd. the competition account of achievement-value if we are gripped by the prima facie plausibility that difficulty constitutes achievement-value—that dv or something like it is true—the next question is how to interpret dv. . what does it mean for a task to be difficult? when is a task difficult and so (per dv) its completion a valuable achieve- ment? if (again per dv) greater difficulty contributes greater value, then pre- cisely how do we measure difficulty? the final aim of this paper is to defend a new interpretation of the measure of difficulty that resolves the apparent objections to dv from above. here, i juxtapose this interpretation to bradford’s recent analysis of difficulty which is both probing and intuitive though, i argue, ultimately mistaken. at stake in the debate between her view and mine is whether difficulty requires that the agent find her perfor- mance effortful. . . bradford’s effortful interpretation of difficulty bradford’s ( , ch. ) interpretation seizes on the intuitive idea that a task is difficult in virtue of the phenomenal effort one exerts in carrying it out. accordingly, i call it the effortful interpretation. it has four principal components. here are the first three: e . difficulty consists in a degree of effort. e . effort is a primitive (but quantifiable) feature of first-personal experience. e . an activity is difficult for an agent in virtue of the effort the agent ex- erts in carrying it out. e and e are fairly self-explanatory. e is drawn from the notion of phe- nomenal effort introduced above. i do not object to e in this paper; my objection focuses on e and e (below). since all activities require some degree of effort on the agent’s part, difficulty proper involves effort above a double-threshold on the effortful interpretation. the first threshold marks off what bradford ( , pp. – ) calls ‘intense effort’ as opposed to a mere or background effort. what matters for measuring the difficulty of a task, she argues, is not the total phenomenal effort exerted by the agent in the performance of the task. if that were so, then the first-personally easiest task imaginable (watching mindless tv) could be more difficult than an incredibly effort- ful task simply through being extended over a long enough period of time (pp. – ). instead, she counts only the effort above a threshold © the author pacific philosophical quarterly © university of southern california and john wiley & sons ltd. pacific philosophical quarterly of intensity such that exhibiting this intense effort constitutes what we or- dinarily call an effortful rather than effortless endeavor. bradford does not state how this intensity threshold is to be determined precisely. per- haps she thinks of it as primitive, like the notion of effort itself. or per- haps it is relative to the task, like the second threshold. my objection below focuses on bradford’s second threshold, and my alternative inter- pretation does without an intensity threshold altogether. bradford argues that the second threshold should be determined abso- lutely rather than agent-relatively. specifically, she offers the following: e . ‘difficult things require some sufficient degree of intense effort greater than the average intense effort’ for the particular class of ac- tivity ( , p. ). these four analysans of difficulty serve as the effortful interpretation of dv’s claim that difficulty is required for and contributes to the value of an achievement. consider the achievement of composing a short story. on the effortful in- terpretation, the composition of a short story is difficult, and so a valuable achievement, to the extent that the writing process involves sufficiently more intense effort for the writer than the average composition involves for the av- erage writer. determining the precise threshold of e will require careful consideration of the relevant class of activity, but the basic picture is clear enough: the more effortful the task feels to the writer, the more difficult and so valuable it is qua achievement. i now compare the effortful interpretation to my preferred alternative. . . interpreting difficulty as competitive performance i propose an interpretation of difficulty that departs from bradford’s in a couple key respects. in particular, instead of focusing on how effortful a task feels to an agent, my interpretation focuses on whether the agent’s perfor- mance of the task is competitive, in the sense of being an effortful task for competitors to accomplish. on my interpretation, an activity is a valuable achievement for the agent insofar as it outdoes others, and it is a greater achievement the more it outdoes others. this account is inspired by the thought that competition provides a special (perhaps unique) means for determining the magnitude and value of human endeavors by comparison. nietzsche, again, gives voice to this thought when he writes that a person’s strength has a kind of measure in the opposition for which he has need; every growth gives itself away by seeking after a mightier opponent—or problem: because a philosopher who is warlike challenges even problems to duel. ([ ] ecce homo, ‘why i am so wise’ § ) © the author pacific philosophical quarterly © university of southern california and john wiley & sons ltd. the competition account of achievement-value a person’s strength is that feature explaining her capacity to achieve. nietzsche’s point is that without a literal or implicit competitor, one has no way to quantify one’s own strength or the degree of difficulty one faces in striving after an achievement. my interpretation of dv runs with this insight. the competitive interpretation of difficulty is a formal interpretation made up of these four components: c . difficulty consists in a degree of effort. c . an activity is difficult for an agent in virtue of the effort an average member of the activity’s reference class would exert in carrying out the activity. c . the reference class of the activity the agent carries out consists in those agents who are or have been engaged in like activities regarded at the time of engaging in the activities. c . difficult activities require some sufficient degree of effort by the ref- erence class greater than the average degree of effort of the reference class for an average like activity. the competitive interpretation of difficulty is similar to the effortful inter- pretation in that both treat the sort of difficulty conditioning valuable achievement in terms of effort exerted above a determinate threshold (c = e ; cf. c to e ). both interpretations, moreover, treat that threshold as relative to the class of activity to which the agent’s achievement is being compared. in my case, the reference class is relative to the activity in the same way (c ). while i cannot consider here how best to specify such activ- ity classes, i point the reader to bradford’s helpful discussion as a starting point ( , pp. – ). my focus in this paper is on the relative merits of the effortful and competitive interpretations. where the competitive interpretation differs most from the effortful inter- pretation is in rejecting the agent-relativity of the difficulty of an achieve- ment (contrast c to e ). on the competitive interpretation, the agent herself need not actually exert effort of the degree required by the threshold described in c in order to count as having done something difficult and so as having attained a valuable achievement. a task is difficult if the average competitors’ completion of that task would involve more effort on their part than the average comparable activity. this rejection of agent-relativity in favor of interpersonal comparison is the most distinctive feature of my competitive interpretation of difficulty. von kriegstein ( ), for instance, also criticizes the effortful interpretation for being too agent-relative, but his proposed alternative is a dualistic inter- pretation of difficulty. on the one hand, he embraces ‘something like’ the ef- fortful interpretation as an interpretation of ‘agent-relative’ difficulty. and, on the other hand, he supplements it with an ‘agent-neutral’ account of diffi- culty measured not in terms of effort at all but in terms of probability of © the author pacific philosophical quarterly © university of southern california and john wiley & sons ltd. pacific philosophical quarterly success. valuable achievements, then, are those that are difficult in one or both senses. i agree (partly for reasons discussed below) that neither the agent-relative effortful interpretation nor the agent-neutral probabilistic in- terpretation suffices on its own as an account of dv. but i worry about, among other things, how precisely these discrete axes of difficulty are sup- posed to interact in comparisons of achievement-value on such a dualistic model. my approach here is different. when it comes to interpreting dv, rather than conceiving of difficulty as an agent-relative notion (where the fact of an endeavor’s difficulty varies based on who performs it) or an agent-neu- tral notion (where there is a constant, objective fact of its difficulty)—and rather than proposing to combine the two in some way—i conceive of diffi- culty in terms of comparisons of actual persons (living or historical). in other words, difficulty, on my view, is an interpersonal matter (i.e. relative to an im- plicit sphere of competition) rather than a wholly subjective (i.e. relative to the agent) or wholly objective one (i.e. relative at most to all agents or humans as such). i argue that this competitive interpretation of dv provides an adequate account of achievement-value all on its own. returning to the comparison to the effortful interpretation, a few more points of clarification are in order. the competitive, unlike the effortful in- terpretation, does not invoke an intensity threshold of effort. the competi- tive interpretation of dv yields fairly consistent results regardless of how finely we measure effort. this is because what matters on this interpretation is only how much effort the average competitor would exert in the perfor- mance in question as compared to the average performance of a like activity. atypical differences across agents in total effort exhibited in the perfor- mance of a like activity will average out. the competitive interpretation is formal because, in addition to a notion of activity class, it requires a measure of effort in order to yield determinate re- sults. in this paper, i take up bradford’s phenomenal conception of effort (e ) for convenience. however, the competitive interpretation is more adapt- able than the effortful interpretation to alternative measures of effort. on the competitive interpretation, the difficulty of an achievement is a function of how effortful the task would be for the average comparable com- petitor. this should not, however, be taken to imply that achievements are only possible in the context of actual interpersonal competition. a philosopher who writes a groundbreaking book on a new area of in- quiry is likely to count, on the competitive interpretation, as having done something difficult (and so achievement-valuable) despite the fact that she was not literally competing with anyone else in writing the book. the sense of competitiveness relevant to assessing the difficulty of her performance concerns simply whether this book would have been difficult for the average philosopher to complete. we can approximate this counterfactual state of affairs by identifying comparable philosophical works and assessing the av- erage effort they required of their authors. © the author pacific philosophical quarterly © university of southern california and john wiley & sons ltd. the competition account of achievement-value beyond implicit competitions, like that between one philosopher and an- other, we can also construe cases of self-competition as valuable achieve- ments on my interpretation of dv. consider usain bolt, the world-record holder for the -m dash. he first set the record in the summer olym- pics in beijing. since then, he has broken his own world-record twice. imag- ine an (admittedly preposterous) world where bolt went on to break his own world-record so many times that all other athletes abandoned the -m race. as he continues setting new records, it would become increasingly irrel- evant to compare bolt’s latest performance to those of other runners. whether bolt’s performance is properly difficult and so a valuable achieve- ment would eventually be determined solely by comparing how much effort it would have taken his prior self to match his latest performance. interpreting dv competitively does not, in short, require there to be other human beings who are or have engaged in the same activity in order for there to be a fact of the matter regarding a performance’s difficulty and achieve- ment-value. nietzsche seems to have something like this in mind when de- scribing philosophers as ‘challenging even problems to duel’; even a solitary task can be competitive. below i compare the merits of the effortful and competitive interpreta- tions of difficulty, arguing that the latter is superior. unfortunately, we can- not simply compare these two interpretations of difficulty by applying problem cases directly to them because the full force of bradford’s effortful analysis of achievement-value requires a further move, one that is not neces- sary for my competitive interpretation. while this move ultimately opens her up to further objections, it is crucial for her response to the objections al- ready raised above. . is difficulty enough for achievement? bradford supplements difficulty with a further necessary and contributory condition on achievement-value, competence. specifically, she argues for the following alternative to dv: difficulty-competence view (dcv): achieving a goal is valuable for the agent if the following two necessary conditions are met and to the extent that the two contributory conditions are met. difficulty: achieving a goal is valuable for the agent only if doing so involves difficulty, and the more difficulty involved in achieving the goal, the more valuable it is for the agent. competence: achieving a goal is valuable for the agent only if the process of reaching it is carried out with at least a minimum of competence, and the greater the competence with which the achievement is carried out, the more valuable it is for the agent. © the author pacific philosophical quarterly © university of southern california and john wiley & sons ltd. pacific philosophical quarterly dv and dcv both claim that difficulty is a necessary and contributory condition on achieve- ment-value. but dcv does not take difficulty to be sufficient for achievement-value the way dv does; dcv also takes competence to be a necessary and a contributory condition. bradford argues that competence is necessary for, and contributes to, achievement-value on the basis of one of the objections to dv from above: misguided but lucky effort: according to dv, stumbling upon a buried treasure by pure luck af- ter following a dowsing rod through a desert counts as a highly valuable achievement for the treasure-hunter because of the effort spent with the dowsing rod. she argues that luckily discovering treasure through arduous but misguided means is not valuable in the way that diligently searching through records, excavations, etc. is. furthermore, she argues, ‘if difficulty were the only source of value in achievements, then [the two] discoveries would have the same [achievement-]value’ (bradford , p. ). one easily sees how the competence condition rules out misguided but lucky effort from being a valuable achievement, even without spelling out a theory of competence. i raise concerns for the competence requirement below. but in order to consider the full force of the effortful interpretation, and so present my argu- ment against it in the most charitable light, we should bear in mind that bradford offers it as an interpretation of dcv rather than of dv. . the competitive interpretation better handles needless difficulties regardless of whether we adopt dv or dcv, the competitive interpretation yields a better response than the effortful interpretation to every objection to the role of difficulty in defining achievement-value from above. recall the first objection: needless difficulty: according to dv/dcv, injecting capsaicin under one’s skin before writing an academic essay will increase the value the achievement of writing that essay bears for the writer ceteris paribus. does the effortful interpretation of dcv allow, problematically, for need- lessly introduced difficulties to contribute to the value of achievements? in short, sometimes. bradford ( , pp. – ) responds to this objection by observing that the ceteris paribus clause in the objection will not typically hold for a couple reasons. first, dcv (like dv) is an account of achievement-value, not an exhaustive account of welfare value much less of value generally. there will of course often be many other evaluative considerations to make when de- ciding how to write besides how to maximize effort. second, making one’s © the author pacific philosophical quarterly © university of southern california and john wiley & sons ltd. the competition account of achievement-value achievements needlessly difficult will tend to prevent one from competently carrying them out. so, assuming that competence is a necessary condition on achievement-value, introducing needless difficulty will not actually enhance achievement-value in those cases. what about when the ceteris paribus clause does hold? in fact, many in- stances of needless difficulty will contribute achievement-value according to the effortful interpretation. we can, for instance, imagine a writer writing just as competently with capsaicin under his skin as without. in that case, the capsaicin would contribute achievement-value for the writer on the effortful interpretation of dcv. this is counterintuitive since his task of writing does not seem any more of an achievement in virtue of the additional, arbitrarily introduced effort. bradford’s effortful interpretation of dcv implies that some, but not all cases of needless difficulty, contribute achievement-value. it limits the scope of the original objection, rather than addressing it completely. how does the competitive interpretation compare? it rules out the contri- bution of needless difficulties to achievement-value much more fully and re- gardless of whether competence is invoked as a separate condition. the extra effort required of the pained writer, for instance, will not contribute one iota to the difficulty of his task on the competitive interpretation, pro- vided that the average competitor does not similarly inject capsaicin under their skin. what matters on this interpretation is not how hard a task is felt to be for the agent but how effortful it would be for a competitor. so, an agent’s introducing arbitrary sources of effort to her task does not make that task any more difficult or its completion any more valuable. this is a clear advantage over the effortful interpretation. the competitive interpretation does imply, however, that if a large pro- portion of comparable authors made their task needlessly difficult by exerting irrelevant effort, this irrelevant effort would bear on questions of achievement-value. such common though needless difficulty would raise the bar of difficulty required for a valuable achievement in that ac- tivity. while surprising, i think this is the correct conclusion. many of what we intuitively think of as remarkable achievements derive their dif- ficulty not from an essential relation between the final goal and the ob- stacles to reaching it but rather from the constraints conventionally placed on the pursuit of the goal. achieving in games is a clear example of this. it is the arbitrary rules of baseball that make hitting a double a valuable achievement. rules that made this needlessly harder, or that re- moved some of the needless difficulty, would have a direct effect on the value of that achievement. chalk one up to the competitive interpretation. this is, admittedly, an in- decisive reason to favor it over the effortful interpretation. the next two ad- vantages are weightier. © the author pacific philosophical quarterly © university of southern california and john wiley & sons ltd. pacific philosophical quarterly . the competitive interpretation better handles misguided, lucky effort recall once more: misguided but lucky effort: according to dv, stumbling upon a buried treasure by pure luck af- ter following a dowsing rod through a desert counts as a highly valuable achievement for the treasure-hunter because of the effort spent with the dowsing rod. the lucky discoverer exerted a great deal of (misguided) effort. so this objec- tion sticks to the effortful interpretation of dv. as we have already seen, however, bradford responds to this objection by invoking competence as a further condition on achievement-value (per dcv). the lucky discoverer’s lucky discovery does not count as a valuable achievement because it was pursued in an incompetent manner. this response, however, seems to me to confuse two different issues: one issue is whether highly difficult and highly valuable achievements (call them great achievements) can be lucky. it is another issue entirely whether mis- guided effort contributes to the greatness of the achievement. in what fol- lows, i argue that great achievements can be lucky but that misguided effort does not contribute to their greatness. the competence requirement is not necessary, on the competitive interpretation, to prevent misguided ef- fort from contributing to the greatness of achievements. moreover, the com- petence requirement rules out too many cases of genuinely great though lucky achievements. for this reason, i prefer dv to dcv. take the issue of misguided effort first. the lucky treasure-hunter is sup- posed to have done something difficult that is only fortuitously connected to his discovery. this seems like an objection to dv because it seems clear that this difficulty does not constitute a valuable achievement, whereas ac- cording to dv, achievement-value simply consists in difficulty. this is not a problem for dv on the competitive interpretation, however, since achievement-value never consists in the effort actually exerted by the agent, misguided or not. what matters, on the competitive interpretation, is how effortful the discovery would have been for the average treasure- hunter (compared to the effort of the average treasure-hunt). the average treasure-hunter would not have proceeded by using a dowsing rod, so the ef- fort exerted doing this is not a factor on the difficulty of the discovery. whether the discovery was an achievement, then, has nothing to do with the agent’s misguided effort on the competitive interpretation of dv. this response is not available to the effortful interpretation, since what matters on that view is simply how effortful the task happens to be for the agent. now for the separate issue of whether luck is consistent with achievement- value. consider, first, how dv evaluates the achievement-value of the lucky treasure-hunter on the competitive interpretation. reaching a verdict here © the author pacific philosophical quarterly © university of southern california and john wiley & sons ltd. the competition account of achievement-value requires comparing two average levels of effort: first, we need to determine how much effort the average treasure-hunter exerts in discovering the aver- age treasure. let us call that level of effort aea. next, we need to know not how much effort our lucky discoverer actually exerted (lel) but how much effort the average treasure-hunter would exert in discovering this lucky dis- coverer’s lucky discovery (ael). according to the competitive interpretation of dv, the value of this lucky discoverer’s achievement is determined by the extent to which ael > aea. if our lucky treasure-hunter stumbled upon a hard-to-find treasure, then his discovery was indeed difficult and so a valu- able achievement for him. if his treasure was easy-to-find, then it wasn’t a valuable achievement. this is a different conclusion regarding the achievement-value of the trea- sure-hunter than we would get if we embraced dcv. but this seems to me precisely the right conclusion for an account of achievement-value to reach. for that reason, this seems to me an objection to the competence requirement. why is this the right conclusion? i offer three reasons. on the competitive interpretation of dv, the lucky discovery of treasure may in fact be a great achievement for the discoverer even though it involved misguided effort. but to repeat, the achievement was not great because of its misguided effort on this view. that would be true if, as on the effortful inter- pretation, we took the misguided effort exerted to be relevant to the diffi- culty of the task. but on the competitive interpretation, such effort is irrelevant. it just so happens that the achievement was a competitive and, so, a difficult one despite the manner in which it was pursued. it is the fact of its competitiveness rather than the fact of the effort actually exerted that makes it a great achievement. my first reason to embrace lucky achieve- ments is that doing so does not require us to value misguided effort. this wasn’t obvious when first considering the lucky treasure-hunter. now consider a less bizarre example: lucky swing: jack is a baseball player with a . batting average, which is fairly typical and not excellent. he takes to the plate at the bottom of the ninth in front a pitcher about to complete a no-hitter. the pitcher throws his infamous curveball. jack reacts with the same instincts he has built up over years of playing, instincts that explain his batting average. he (mistakenly) swings lower than he (incorrectly) thinks the ball is heading, but luckily, his mistaken execution matches his inaccurate prediction perfectly; he makes contact at just the right point in his swing sending the ball out of the park and winning the game. here, unlike with the treasure-hunter, it’s intuitive that jack’s home run is a highly valuable achievement. that he was lucky does not seem to detract from the difficulty or achievement-value of the task. my second reason to embrace lucky achievements is that, when we consider cases that do not © the author pacific philosophical quarterly © university of southern california and john wiley & sons ltd. pacific philosophical quarterly include grossly misguided effort, it is actually intuitive that luck is consistent with achievement-value. a third and deeper reason to embrace lucky achievements is that luck is a nearly ubiquitous feature of the intuitively greatest achievements, even ones that are competently executed. consider this case: competently beating the odds: jesuina is a competent treasure-hunter searching (competently) for a submerged treasure somewhere in a vast region of the pacific ocean. this region is larger than any person—or, indeed, any moderate-sized team of persons—can scour in a lifetime. using the best techniques and research, jesuina forms a hunting plan, pursues it, and then dis- covers the treasure. jesuina’s discovery was partially the product of good research and tech- nique. nevertheless, jesuina’s research and technique were not enough to guarantee success. as described, failure seemed much more likely than suc- cess. so, if beating the odds in a manner that cannot be attributed to one’s agency alone counts as doing something with the aid of luck, then jesuina was quite lucky indeed. but surely her lucky achievement is a paradigmati- cally great one. and the very fact that she beats the odds is what here signifies the greatness of her achievement. thus, far from signifying non- achievement, luck—once stripped of its connection to misguided effort—ac- tually signifies great achievements. one might try to weaken the connection between great achievements and luck by arguing that, while jesuina achieved something great, it was no greater than a similar achievement pursued by the same means but where the discovery required and obtained less luck. on such a view, luck would be consistent with achievement-value, but we would discount achievement- value in proportion to the luck involved. the problem with this response is that many of the features of jesuina’s task that mark out her achievement as intuitively great just are those features that made her success depend upon luck. these features are those properties of reality that determine the proba- bility of success in a task pursued in a particular (competent) manner. for jesuina, they are the features determining how large an area she can search and how narrowly she can determine the treasure’s whereabouts. thus, the proposed view would imply that discovering a buried treasure in the midst of huge region of the pacific bears no more achievement-value than discov- ering a buried treasure in the midst of a much smaller region by the same means. this amounts to throwing out our impression of the greatness of achievements for the sake of blocking luck from correlating to their value for the agents. but once we have distinguished the issue of misguided effort from the issue of luck, i see no reason to block luck at such a cost. recall that the goal of analyzing achievement-value is to account for the contribution great achievements make to one’s welfare. we can ask other evaluative questions about achievements, such as whether they exhibit © the author pacific philosophical quarterly © university of southern california and john wiley & sons ltd. the competition account of achievement-value expertise. that the success of the endeavor was lucky might count against its being an exhibition of expertise. perhaps exhibiting, acquiring, or possessing expertise also contributes to one’s welfare. but i see no reason to insist on the same constraints when analyzing achievement-value. that luck can affect welfare value in the way entailed by embracing lucky achieve- ments is similar to the familiar ways in which it can affect moral worth. as with moral theory, trying to insulate value theory from all impacts of luck so evident in our daily lives threatens to disconnect our theory from lived experience. if my argument for embracing lucky achievements is successful, we have reason to prefer dv to dcv since taking competence as a necessary condi- tion on achievement-value rules out many cases of lucky achievements from being genuinely valuable ones. this, in turn, gives us reason to adopt the competitive interpretation of dv over the effortful interpretation, since the effortful interpretation without the competence requirement implies that misguided achievements are more valuable for the agent because of their mis- guided effort. we have, then, a second argument in favor of the competitive interpretation of dv. i have saved the strongest argument for last. . the effortful interpretation cannot handle noneffortful achievements the most pressing objection to the effortful interpretation of dcv stems from the following: effortless virtuosity: according to dv/dcv, a highly skilled and practiced performer of a tech- nical composition on the violin does not attain an achievement of any significant value for her- self in performing the piece insofar as doing so is relatively easy for her to do. the effortful interpretation of the difficulty requirement implies that effort- less (i.e. non-intensely effortful) performances of otherwise difficult tasks do not count as valuable achievements for the performer. the competitive in- terpretation does not. this is a significant advantage of the competitive in- terpretation since playing a difficult violin piece flawlessly seems like a genuine and valuable achievement for the virtuosic violinist. in this section, i consider, first, how the competitive interpretation handles this case and, then, bradford’s response to this objection. i argue that her ef- fortful interpretation is unable to account for the full range of paradigmatic achievements that aren’t effortful for the agent. i conclude that this provides us with the strongest argument in favor of the competitive interpre- tation of dv. © the author pacific philosophical quarterly © university of southern california and john wiley & sons ltd. pacific philosophical quarterly . . competing interpretations of virtuosity the competitive interpretation better handles the objection of effortless vir- tuosity than the effortful interpretation. because the difficulty of the task, on the competitive interpretation, is measured by how much effort the average competitor would exert in order to accomplish the same end, the effortless- ness of the agent’s actual performance in no way diminishes the difficulty of the task or the value of the achievement for the virtuoso. in order to determine whether a virtuosic performance is a valuable achievement on the competitive interpretation of dv, however, we need to specify the relevant reference class (c ). who are the relevant competitors to our virtuosic violinist: other (professional) violinists or other virtuosi? i am inclined to think there are multiple (potential) achievements here, but i needn’t insist on this point. the competitive interpretation issues the follow- ing conditional verdicts: if the reference class is taken to be any (professional) violinist, then our virtuoso’s performance is a valuable achievement for her; if virtuosi, then it depends on further facts about the ef- fort this particular performance would require of other virtuosi compared to the average effort of a virtuosic performance. if our virtuoso performed a piece so challenging that most virtuosi would exert more effort performing it than they would in the average virtuosic performance, then the competi- tive interpretation yields the verdict that this performance bears achieve- ment-value for the virtuoso. if this was a run-of-the-mill virtuosic performance, then it might not bear achievement-value for the virtuoso. these conditional conclusions seem to me entirely appropriate and cer- tainly far preferable to the conclusion that virtuosic performances never bear any achievement-value for the virtuoso. that latter conclusion is what fol- lows from the effortful interpretation since the difficulty requirement on that interpretation demands that a task involve much intense effort on the agent’s part in order for it to bear any achievement-value. bradford embraces this conclusion, though she introduces a distinct sense in which the virtuoso does achieve something (something, however, of no achievement-value for her). difficulty is an agent-relative notion on the effortful interpretation (e ). bradford points out that we can coin a derivative notion of difficulty by making recourse to an ad hoc reference class (such as the class of average per- sons in relevantly similar circumstances). such a derivative notion allows us to say that some activities are difficult relative to a reference class without being difficult for the agent. but, to be clear, such derivative difficulty does not contribute achievement-value on bradford’s effortful interpretation. on her view, a virtuosic performance can be difficult and so an achievement (vis-à-vis some reference class) even though it is neither difficult nor a valu- able achievement for the virtuoso ( , p. ). it seems wrong to me, and others, to say that the effortlessness of the performance prevents it from being a valuable achievement for the © the author pacific philosophical quarterly © university of southern california and john wiley & sons ltd. the competition account of achievement-value virtuoso. i grant, however, that musical performances require a great deal of practice doing approximately the same activity as the perfor- mance. so perhaps a polished (because patiently practiced) performance is not the remarkable achievement the virtuoso reaches; perhaps the real achievement here is acquiring virtuosity. while this observation helps with the case of the virtuoso, there is a much larger class of noneffortful artistry, which bradford does not consider, and which increases the strain on the effortful interpretation. . . more difficult cases than virtuosity first, consider patient creation: helga is an established, successful painter. she follows a humble, daily rou- tine, which she often finds enjoyable. her most recent project proceeds more easily than usual. its completion involved far below the average level of intense effort she has come to expect from such a project and even farther below the intense effort required of a comparable work of art by the average artist. when she finishes, she believes it to be her best artistic creation to date, one so highly innovative that it will mark a new movement in the medium. others agree. years later, her belief is confirmed. helga clearly has achieved something valuable. such a patient creation is a real achievement, it seems to me, and is genuinely valuable if any achieve- ments are. but helga’s case fails to meet the difficulty requirement on bradford’s effortful interpretation of dcv. because the amount of intense effort involved in the creation was minimal, far less than average, helga’s creation fails to clear the threshold of difficulty necessary for being a valu- able achievement (e ). a different result follows from the competitive inter- pretation. helga’s artistic contribution certainly would have been effortful for the average painter. so the competitive interpretation implies that helga’s creation is a valuable achievement for her. consider, second, creation in the zone: sofía is a novelist who has recently relocated to rural new england where the present winter is especially harsh. with scenic but uninviting views of the world from her desk, she finds it easy to plug away on her latest book. in her daily writing, she quickly enters into the zone, effortlessly putting words on the page, designing, and then carrying out her vision. she completes her first draft in two short months which seem to breeze by. this draft becomes her most critically acclaimed novel. the average drafting of a novel is not, i suppose, spent almost entirely in the zone the way sofía’s was. if we also assume that writing while in the zone is not intensely effortful, then sofía’s achievement involves less in- tense effort than the average comparable novel. so sofía’s composition of her novel fails to count as difficult or, for that reason, as a valuable © the author pacific philosophical quarterly © university of southern california and john wiley & sons ltd. pacific philosophical quarterly achievement on the effortful interpretation. again, her achievement is a valuable one on the competitive interpretation since the average writer would presumably have to work harder than on the average novel in or- der to write such an acclaimed book. here, too, the competitive interpre- tation seems to reach the right conclusion, whereas the effortful interpretation does not: sofía’s composition was a valuable achievement for her. finally, consider a third case : spontaneous creation: irmin was a west-german composer who, in the s, traveled to new york city and spent time at the chelsea hotel. he experimented there with improvisational rock music on the piano opposite a bass player. he described the experience this way, ‘i would play a simple melody, and then he would play a few notes on the bass that completely changed the harmonic context. then i would offer a new variation within that context, and he would re- interpret again.’ this improvisational session led irmin to a whole new approach to popular mu- sic within the rock milieu. he returned to west germany and formed an experimental rock band, which became one of the most influential bands in europe in the middle of the century. when asked, he did not exactly describe his musical co-creations as easy, but he repeatedly called them effortless, much less strenuous than his traditional compositions. irmin’s spontaneous creations are genuine achievements, but they fail to involve as much intense effort for irmin as his traditional compositions did. indeed, it is unclear whether irmin’s effort was intense at all. for reasons analogous to those above, irmin seems not to have done anything difficult on the effortful interpretation even though he has on the competitive inter- pretation. so, again, this case points in favor of the latter. our sense that helga, sofía, and irmin each attained a genuinely valuable achievement undermines the intuitive connection between exerted effort and great achievement that bradford’s view builds on. a lot of artistic creations fail to count as genuinely valuable achievements for the artists on the effort- ful interpretation. it’s possible that bradford, in dismissing the counterex- ample of virtuosic performance, did not appreciate how expansive the range of noneffortful creations is. this expanse alone increases the pressure on us to adopt the competitive interpretation rather than the effortful inter- pretation. moreover, i show that the proposed response to the case of the virtuoso considered above is of no use in these other cases. . . why these cases are more decisive the cases of noneffortful creations i described above share an important fea- ture that may not necessarily belong to effortless virtuosity but which is in- tuitively connected to achievement-value. these cases are stipulated to result in what we might call artistic contributions—the creation of genuinely original and influential works of art. what counts as an achievement in art more than such contribution? indeed, huddleston ( ) plausibly suggests © the author pacific philosophical quarterly © university of southern california and john wiley & sons ltd. the competition account of achievement-value that artistic value (as opposed to the aesthetic or other value of an artwork) consists precisely in the achievement-value of the creation of art. to be clear, i am not suggesting that the value of the achievement consists in the value of the artwork that results. i endorse dv according to which the value of the achievement consists in its difficulty. what i am suggesting, however, is that artistic contribution is a paradigm case of a valuable achievement. so we have a reasonable (though defeasible) expectation that an account of achievement-value would count such contributions as valuable. this expectation is why the effortful interpretation of dcv disappoints so much when it fails to classify such contributions as valuable achievements. given the competitive interpretation as an alternative that meets this expec- tation, we can ask whether it is more desirable to preserve the intuition that intense effort is necessary for an achievement than that artistic contributions are valuable achievements. and since i have already raised separate reasons to refine the intuition that effort contributes achievement-value, this intui- tion seems to provide even less reason to defy our expectation of the achieve- ment-value of artistic contributions. it does not help the effortful interpretation, moreover, to propose that the real achievement reached by helga, sofía, and irmin is that of becoming an artist who creates artistic contributions with little effort. helga certainly achieves something valuable by becoming a methodical and patient creator; so, too, do sofía and irmin. but there are at least three reasons to reject the proposal that this is the only source of achievement-value for the noneffortful creator. first, if huddleston ( ) is right that artistic value just is achieve- ment-value, then reducing the apparent achievement-value of helga’s cre- ation to the achievement of becoming the artist she is would imply that her beautiful, innovative, and influential creations also bear no artistic value! second, the proposal implies that, by becoming especially competent in creating art effortlessly, one thereby achieves less of value for oneself in so creating. but it seems odd to say that becoming good at achieving something can render future achievement less valuable for one. it’s no doubt true that when a child gets the hang of riding her bike, riding around the block ceases to be a valuable achievement for her. but if a professional cyclist were to be- come so good at cycling that she completed the tour of flanders as easily as the child rides around the block, would it thereby cease to be a valuable achievement for the professional? many of the world’s greatest achievers are also among the most competent in what they achieve. this is why i am able to generate several examples of noneffortful artistic creation where both the effortlessness and the greatness of the achievements are intuitive. but if we reduce this achievement-value to that of acquiring competence, then the value of the achievements of these great achievers would, according to © the author pacific philosophical quarterly © university of southern california and john wiley & sons ltd. pacific philosophical quarterly the effortful interpretation, tend to be far less for them than the value for an ambitious dabbler of a one-off success. this is because the expert exerts far less effort in creating original artwork, winning competitions, etc. than the ambitious dabbler whose tremendous effort just happens to be successful this once. on dcv, of course, the more competent the achievement, the more valuable it is all else being equal and provided it meets the necessary con- dition of difficulty. so the effortful interpretation of dcv does not imply that competence detracts from achievement-value in all cases. but it does imply that ( ) competence sufficient for reducing the level of intense ef- fort an agent exhibits in the achievement does render the achievement less valuable and that ( ) in cases like the ones i described where that reduc- tion leads to below-average intense effort, competence undermines any achievement-value in the task whatsoever. competence, in short, some- times contributes to achievement-value, sometimes diminishes it, and sometimes negates it entirely. this is a highly revisionist account of achievement-value. in this way, as in others, the competitive interpreta- tion conserves more of what i think are our ordinary judgments about achievement-value. the third reason to reject the proposal that the achievement-value of noneffortful creations be reduced to the achievement-value of becoming an artist who creates effortlessly is that the proposal fails to account for all our relevant intuitions about noneffortful creations. consider the following comparison: imagine liam who, just like helga, has become a patient crea- tor, and imagine that for several years they lead identical artistic careers. this last year, however, helga created a genuine artistic contribution while liam did not despite his working on a project just as methodically as helga. does helga not acquire more achievement-value in total than liam? but if the only source of helga’s achievement-value is becoming a patient creator, then liam would seem to have acquired just as much, according to the ef- fortful interpretation. it might be mistakenly thought that helga acquired more achievement- value than liam in becoming who she is because becoming who she is was a greater achievement in virtue of the fact that helga achieves more in the end. but it does not follow, on the effortful interpretation, that be- cause helga goes on to achieve more becoming helga was a greater achievement. it may have been that prior to becoming a patient artist, liam had many bad artistic habits (such as waiting for inspiration to strike and drinking or using drugs to hasten it). overcoming these habits may well have involved much more intense effort (thus, difficulty) than helga’s self-creation. in that case, liam’s achievement of becoming who he is was actually a more valuable achievement than helga’s on the effortful interpretation, quite in contrast to the difference in their cre- ative output. © the author pacific philosophical quarterly © university of southern california and john wiley & sons ltd. the competition account of achievement-value my point is that we cannot explain away our intuitions about noneffortful creations by appeal to the distinction between achievement-value for an agent of creating something and achievement-value for the agent of having become the person who creates something. the value of the latter achieve- ment does not track, on bradford’s account, the value of one’s creative en- deavors. nor, i suppose, should it. we have, then, one more—and i think the strongest—reason to endorse the competitive interpretation over and against the effortful interpretation. the former, unlike the latter, can account for the achievement-value noneffortful artistic contributions bear for the artist. the competitive inter- pretation, we have seen, also provides a better explanation for why needless or misguided effort does not contribute to the value of an achievement, and it offers a more compelling account of how valuable achievements can be lucky. my arguments depend on a variety of evaluative intuitions, which are not always the surest guides in analysis. i certainly do not mean to insist that we heed all of our intuitions no matter what. but as with the entire literature on achievement-value, i have striven to show that there is a kind of reflective equilibrium available to the competitive interpretation that is unavailable to the effortful interpretation given that, on the latter interpretation, needless difficulties can often still contribute to achieve- ment-value, while a lucky or noneffortful task can never be a valuable achievement for the agent. . the objection of personal struggle before closing, i consider an objection to my competitive interpretation of dv that might be thought to upset the reflective equilibrium i have endeav- ored to establish. consider this case: personal struggle: django was a guitarist who, through injury, lost the ability to play on the fretboard with his third and fourth fingers. and yet he went on to become one of the most vir- tuosic and accomplished jazz guitar players of all time. his innovations in composition and per- formance have had a lasting effect on jazz music and guitar-playing generally. the competitive interpretation of dv rightly concludes that django’s artis- tic contributions are great achievements. it implies, too, that django’s ac- quisition of virtuosity on the guitar is a great achievement. so far, so good. but the competitive interpretation also seems to imply that django’s accomplishments bear no more achievement-value for him than identical contributions on the guitar would for a guitarist able to use four fretboard fingers. surely, one might object, django’s innovative performances were © the author pacific philosophical quarterly © university of southern california and john wiley & sons ltd. pacific philosophical quarterly more difficult because of his injured hand. but since, on the competitive model, what matters is how effortful the performances would be for an av- erage competitor rather than how much effort the agent herself exhibits in the performance, the number of digits django deployed would seem to be irrelevant to the value of his achievements. django is relevantly similar to a large number of cases where personal struggles seem to bear on the difficulty and value of achievements. one might conclude that the competitive interpretation is misaligned with an im- portant set of our intuitions and that, perhaps, it needs to be supplemented by an agent-relative notion of difficulty in the manner of von kriegstein’s dualistic interpretation. these conclusions would be too hasty. whether django represents a com- pelling counterexample to the competitive interpretation depends on which of django’s achievements we take his injury to be relevant to assessing. let us distinguish two broad achievements: his artistic contributions and his acquisition of virtuosity on the fretboard. they were certainly both great, but was one or the other greater in virtue of django’s physiological limita- tions? i argue that, while his injury plausibly did impact the value of his ac- quisition of virtuosity, it did not impact the achievement-value of his musical contributions—that is, his performances and compositions (which were intertwined). to begin with the latter point, i encourage those unfamiliar with the real django reinhardt to consult videos of his playing. he was a master on the guitar. his first and second fingers on his left hand moved so fluidly along the fretboard as to defy any perception of effort or strain. he played fast, al- ways smoking, and never stumbling. having become virtuosic, his perfor- mances, at least, were decidedly not specially effortful in his case. while i agree that we want to say django did something especially difficult in his life in virtue of his injury, and that our interpretation of dv should allow for that special difficulty to contribute to the value of his achievements, i argue that it’s a mistake to attribute this special difficulty to his performances and compositions. his artistic contributions were greater achievements not be- cause they involved more effort for him than for other influential guitarists (they did not anyway) but because and to the extent that they were more competitive. django’s acquisition of virtuosity, however, probably was more difficult due to his injury. (he was already a skilled guitarist before the injury, and so he had to adapt to a new style of playing). we do seem to have reason to regard this acquisition as a greater achievement in his case. i do not regard this as a problem for the competitive interpretation of dv, however, because i think django’s achievement of acquiring virtuosity is not directly compa- rable to the acquisition of virtuosity with four fretboard fingers. django’s virtuosity-acquisition required different processes, had different and fewer if any models to follow, and crucially resulted in different performative © the author pacific philosophical quarterly © university of southern california and john wiley & sons ltd. the competition account of achievement-value techniques than his acquisition of virtuosity before the injury. all these dif- ferences are surely relevant to determining the class of activity in terms of which we specify the reference class of competitors when assessing the diffi- culty and so value of django’s achievement of virtuosity on my competitive interpretation. in summary, the competitive interpretation of dv entails that a. django’s musical contributions were highly difficult and valuable achievements. b. the difficulty and achievement-value of his contributions are directly comparable to those of guitarists able to play with four fretboard fingers. a. django’s (re)acquisition of virtuosity was a highly difficult and valu- able achievement. b. the difficulty and achievement-value of his acquisition of virtuosity are not directly comparable to those of guitarists who play with four fretboard fingers. i believe that all four of these implications are correct, and it would be an ob- jection to an account of achievement-value if it did not cohere with all four. it is a mark against the effortful interpretation, for instance, that it contra- dicts a. less obvious, perhaps, is that to deny b would be condescending to django as it would be for analogous cases; it would be tantamount to distinguishing django’s artistic contributions from other contributions on the sole basis of django’s physiological limitations. the music he left behind is beautiful, innovative, and has been influential. what makes this music an achievement for him is not the difficulty for someone like him of making such music but its difficulty full stop. this gives us reason to conclude, not only that the competitive interpretation stands in need of no supplementation by an agent-relative account of difficulty, but that in fact the agent-relative account leads us astray here. when we transition from considering django’s contributions to considering his virtuosity, we see that to deny b would be to identify mistakenly the activity of acquiring skills and habits constitutive of musical virtuosity with the performance they make possible. django’s musical compositions/performances are one thing, the constitutive elements of his virtuosity are another. while these implications are specific to django, they represent how to ap- ply the competitive model to other cases where personal struggle seems to bear on the value of an achievement. in the final analysis, the answer on the competitive interpretation depends, as it should, on whether the struggles in question are relevant to marking off a distinct activity and so reference class for the achievement in question. often, as in django’s case, there are discrete but overlapping achievements which require careful analysis and imply discrete reference classes. a systematic account of these cases would © the author pacific philosophical quarterly © university of southern california and john wiley & sons ltd. pacific philosophical quarterly require a fuller account of how to determine activity classes, which will have to wait for a subsequent paper. . conclusion to capture the competitive interpretation of dv with a slogan, the value of an achievement is measured not by how hard the agent worked for it but by how hard others would need to do in order to measure up. we are more, not less, impressed by the deftness of a practiced competitor who easily dispenses with her opponent. to treat such a performance as less of an achievement for the victor is to lose sight of some of the most paradigmatic instances of valuable achievements—including artistic creation. i have proposed an in- terpretation of dv that allows us to preserve this impression, by defining dif- ficulty not in terms of effort actually expended (by the agent) but in terms of effort required (by a competitor). this paper offers several reasons to favor the competitive interpretation over the effortful interpretation of dv. first, the competitive interpretation captures our sense that original and influential artistic creations can be gen- uinely valuable achievements for the artists even when their creation in- volves little or no intense effort. noneffortful creations are common forms of achievement. so it is a strength of the competitive interpretation that it preserves our sense of their achievement-value. second, the competitive interpretation is more flexible regarding how ef- fort is measured than the effortful interpretation. third, on the competitive interpretation, an agent’s arbitrary or misguided effort will not contribute to the value of the achievement. this is because the effort actually exerted by the agent is not, on this view, what determines the difficulty and so value of the achievement. while the effortful interpretation can partially rule out such cases, the competitive interpretation does so much more fully. fourth, the competitive interpretation allows us to preserve the thought that difficulty itself constitutes—rather than merely contributing to—the value of an achievement. it allows us, that is, to dispense with the compe- tence requirement of dcv. besides being more parsimonious, maintaining dv on its own allows a lucky achievement to be a valuable achievement for the agent provided the achievement itself would be difficult for the aver- age competitor. as i argued above, there is a partial correlation between the greatness of an achievement and the luck involved in bringing it about, so embracing lucky achievements is a desirable feature of an account of achievement-value. i close with one final argument in favor of the competitive interpretation of dv. recall the thought experiment of a utopia where everything we want and need (including relief from boredom) is available through no effort on our part. bradford rightly observes that we would, in such a utopia, seek © the author pacific philosophical quarterly © university of southern california and john wiley & sons ltd. the competition account of achievement-value ways to introduce difficulty into our lives. it seems to me, however, that rather than looking for ways of expending effort for its own sake, we would instead seek ways to compete with ourselves and others. we would set ends the success of which is uncertain, and if we succeed, we would modify these ends to be more ambitious. we are more disappointed, i suggest, by failing to measure up to our literal, implicit, or self-competition than we are when our endeavors involve less phenomenal effort than we expect. department of philosophy boston university notes i would like to thank colleen cressman, paul katsafanas, and two anonymous reviewers for their comments on various drafts. they lent me assistance through their insights, clarified my thinking through their questions, and encouraged my work through their interest. i would also like to thank bernard reginster, current and former colleagues at boston university, and my students at boston university, emerson college, and lesley university for fruitful conversa- tions on issues discussed in this paper. hurka ( ), keller ( ), portmore ( ), bradford ( , ), von kriegstein ( , ), and hirji ( ). bradford ( , p. ) even opens her essay with the claim, ‘achievements are, if any thing is, on the “objective list” of the things that can make a life a good one.’ while i do not explore the issue here, it should be noted that there is no reason to limit the domain of possible achievements to those intentional, goal-directed activities that succeed in attaining the specific goal one set out to accomplish. we often do not have a fully accurate pic- ture of the goal we are pursuing until we have achieved it. portmore ( ), bradford ( ), and hirji ( ). cf. von kriegstein ( ). keller ( , pp. – ), portmore ( , pp. – ), and von kriegstein ( , pp. – ). i borrow these last two examples from bradford ( , pp. – , ) who intends to defend her view against them. von kriegstein ( ) and hirji ( ) have both quite recently proposed new accounts aiming to address some of the criticisms raised to bradford’s. while these accounts are interest- ing, they are ( ) quite a bit less developed than bradford’s as well as ( ) more recent and perhaps less well known. more importantly, they ( ) do not defend dv as i propose to do and ( ) depart where i follow bradford while following where i depart. for these reasons, i find it useful to con- trast my view primarily to bradford’s. i note several advantages i take my proposal to have over these others throughout what follows. it seems to be this assumption that leads portmore ( ) to replace dv with what he calls ‘the investment condition (ic)’ in analyzing achievement-value. according to ic, achievements are more valuable the more we have invested in them. difficulty would be a sign of investment. bradley ( ) shows that portmore’s specific explanation of achievement-value rests on an un- tenable evaluative principle. i argue, moreover, that portmore’s approach of substituting ic for dv is itself misguided: the difficulty we confront in carrying out a task is not a welfare-cost invested in an achievement and in need of redemption. © the author pacific philosophical quarterly © university of southern california and john wiley & sons ltd. pacific philosophical quarterly translations of nietzsche are mine based on nietzsche ( ). this addition is necessary to shut down schopenhauer’s ( [ ], p. ) own re- sponse to a similar thought experiment, namely, that boredom is an even more painful state than striving. bradford proposes the following as a general analysis of the concept of difficulty and not only of the difficulty condition on achievement-value. my criticism and alternative, however, are limited to the question of how to interpret dv, so i do not pursue the question of whether either interpretation suffices as an analysis of the general concept. it is my considered view (contra bradford, von kriegstein, , and others) that difficulty is polysemic and does not afford a fully general analysis. bradford does not explicitly state that effort is to be understood first-personally, but this seems to be what she has in mind: she considers it conceptually primitive; she uses thought ex- periments that draw on introspection; she compares effort to pleasure ( , p. ); and through- out the chapter ( , ch. ), she proposes to measure effort through tools developed for hedonic metrics. see von kriegstein ( ) for a detailed discussion of her notion of effort. in context, it’s clear that nietzsche is also discussing a person’s ambition and not just her capacity to achieve. but his point remains that both are to be measured by the ‘might’ of the competitor sought and overcome. von kriegstein ( , p. ) is explicit that this account of achievement-value is only a ‘sketch’ in need of further development. again, see von kriegstein ( ) for a detailed discussion of bradford’s notion of effort and some critical arguments regarding how best to elaborate it. some of his concerns with bradford’s notion of effort are rendered moot in the context of the competitive interpretation (see section ). a full consideration of how to measure effort within the competitive interpreta- tion will have to wait for another paper. consider a measure of effort suggested to me by an anonymous reviewer: effort as the en- ergy expended in the performance of the task’s mechanical and computational components. one immediate concern for this proposal is that some energy expended by a machine or organism during such tasks is lost to mechanical inefficiencies and unrelated organic processes, and these inefficiencies do not seem to contribute to the difficulty of the task proper. for example, the en- ergy spent digesting breakfast does not seem relevant to measuring the difficulty of shovelling snow. we might partially address this by focusing on energy output rather than energy input sim- ilarly to how we measure the output of an automobile engine ([weight × distance]/time).—re- placing phenomenal effort with something like horsepower in bradford’s effortful interpretation leads to untenable results, whereas applying this model of effort to the competitive model would not radically alter its verdicts. imagine two competitive runners who finish the same race in the same time: h is pounds and l is pounds. on the horsepower-effortful interpretation, h did something more difficult than l. and so, h would attain more achieve- ment-value than l all else being equal. on the horsepower-competitive interpretation, however, what matters would not be the level of horsepower h generates but the horsepower required of the average runner to match h’s performance compared to the horsepower required of the av- erage runner for the average comparable race. this comparison is not affected by the relative weights of h and l. so the values of the achievement for h and for l respectively have nothing to do with their respective weights. i appreciate two anonymous reviewers’ calls for a thorough discussion of this point. there is no special conceptual hurdle to determining comparableness of works, even if there are epistemic hurdles. we might, for instance, consider a work comparable if it bears a sim- ilar number of difficult-making features to similar extents as do other works, where which fea- tures are difficult-making is determined by polling professional philosophers. this approach assumes a phenomenal measure of effort (as in e ) and that self-report tracks phenomenal effort. we would employ a different approach if we thought a different model of effort was more sa- lient. again, my focus is a level above the analysis of effort. © the author pacific philosophical quarterly © university of southern california and john wiley & sons ltd. the competition account of achievement-value my preposterous example of bolt is meant to avoid complications regarding how to demarcate the relevant class of activity for self-competitions since i cannot explore the mat- ter in sufficient detail here. on both the effortful and the competitive interpretations, the threshold of difficulty marking off an instance of competing with oneself as a valuable achievement will depend upon how the activity is construed and how one’s performance compares to the average performance in that activity. for the effortful interpretation, what matters is how your level of effort compares to the average competitor’s. for mine, it’s how much effort your performance would require of your competitor. if the activity class of your morning jog is one in which you can reach a valuable achievement, the effortful interpreta- tion would imply that how hard the jog was for you—the extent to which you were out of breath, etc.—compared to your average level of effort would determine the difficulty and value of that achievement. on my competitive interpretation, however, it’s roughly how fast you ran a particular course compared to how fast you have run it that would determine its difficulty and so achievement-value. on this as on other issues, the competitive interpreta- tion of difficulty seems to draw our attention to the more salient considerations; we take do- ing a personal best to be a valuable achievement whereas having to exert ourselves extra hard is a sign of non-achievement. both von kriegstein ( ) and hirji ( ) also take up this further move. my objections to it, below, thus serve as objections to their views. bradford ( , p. ) defends the following view: ‘the extent to which somebody causes something competently is a matter of the extent to which they have justified and true beliefs (jtbs) about what they are doing. whether or not somebody is causing something at all compe- tently is a matter of having some requisite measure of jtbs. so to cause something competently, you need to have enough jtbs, and the more jtbs you have, the more competently you cause it.’ i have reservations about describing competence in terms of countable jtbs. (for one alter- native, see sosa, .) but since the competitive interpretation of dv does not require compe- tence to be a necessary or contributory condition on achievement-value, i do not pursue the matter here. my objections focus on the claim that competence is a necessary condition on achieve- ment-value. i leave consideration of whether competence should be retained as a contributory condition for another time. my view does, though, handle all the objections raised in this paper without any reliance on competence. bradford could respond by adopting von kriegstein’s ( , pp. – ) proposal to fur- ther restrict what effort exerted by the agent is relevant to determining its difficulty. he proposes a requirement that the agent not believe the effort fails to contribute to her success. this might indeed further restrict the problem cases for the effortful interpretation (e.g. by ruling out the ef- fort exerted during obsessive–compulsive rituals), but it would not obviate them entirely. the writer we are imagining, for example, may have no occurrent beliefs about the contribution his pain will make to his success in writing, or he may even falsely believe that the pain makes his success more likely. it still seems wrong, in either case, to say that the pain contributes to the value of his achievement. for the same reason, this seems to be an objection to the accounts proposed by hirji ( ) and von kriegstein ( ). it should be noted that, with jesuina’s case, i am not pumping our intuitions against dcv. jesuina’s achievement is likely to be difficult on either interpretation and competent on bradford’s interpretation. my present point is that jesuina’s case helps us to appreciate that luck does not discount achievement-value. the implications of this response would as best as i can tell converge on what bradford’s account would imply regarding such cases. if so, my objection to this response is an objection to bradford’s view. hirji ( ), too, argues that luck is at least compatible with achievement-value in many cases. and von kriegstein ( ) argues that the points i was just making get straight to one of © the author pacific philosophical quarterly © university of southern california and john wiley & sons ltd. pacific philosophical quarterly the constitutive features of achievement-value: viz., the probability of success. (n.b. i have only claimed, in contrast to von kriegstein, that luck or beating the odds signifies achievement-value; achievement-value remains on my view constituted by its difficulty interpreted in terms of its competitiveness.) there seems, then, to be a shared sense that bradford’s rejection of luck at least goes too far. hirji and von kriegstein, however, still embrace a version of dcv. see lopes ( , ch. ) for an account of aesthetic expertise that affords competence pride of place. cf. von kriegstein ( , ) and hirji ( ). again, see hirji ( ) and von kriegstein ( , ). think here of what is sometimes called the emergence of the muse as it occurs in highly methodical artists. cf. the self-descriptions of ernest hemingway and stephen king, and corinna belz’s depiction of gerhard richter’s methodical routines in the film gerhard richter painting ( ). i note a fourth, more controversial case: the delegated manner of artistic creation for which andy warhol was famous and which, in a different way, one sees in the work of ai weiwei. whether these are a clear counterexample to the effortful interpretation depends on how we classify their activities and on how much intense effort is involved in such art manage- ments. it seems at least imaginable that some delegated creations are genuinely valuable achieve- ments for the delegators and that they involve below-average intense effort on the delegators’ parts. irmin is based on the composer and musician irmin schmidt who cofounded the band, can, in cologne in . the quotation is a rough paraphrase of his interview in the doc- umentary, can—the documentary. to avoid confusion, there is another sense of artistic achievement in the aesthetics litera- ture the value of which is distinct from the achievement-value i am here attributing to noneffortful creation. the value i am after is the welfare value for the artist of having accom- plished a great achievement in her artistic contribution. on the one hand, i believe that this is the sense of achievement-value huddleston ( ) proposes to equate with artistic value. on the other hand, lopes ( ) has a distinct sense of aesthetic achievement in view when proposing to account for the normativity of aesthetic value in terms of aesthetic achievement. lopes’ sense of achievement is roughly that of a successful performance of an action caused by the agent’s competence. it is meant to capture the conditions and value of expert agency, and lopes (p. ) is explicit that it is not meant to capture the conditions of achievement-value in my sense. i thank an anonymous reviewer for pushing for a fuller discussion of this objection. django is, of course, based on the famous case of django reinhardt ( – ). references bradford, g. ( ). achievement. oxford: oxford university press. bradford, g. ( ). ‘the value of achievements,’ pacific philosophical quarterly ( ), pp. – . bradley, b. ( ). ‘narrativity, freedom, and redeeming the past,’ soc theory pract ( ), pp. – . hirji, s. ( ). ‘not always worth the effort,’ pacific philosophical quarterly ( ), pp. – . huddleston, a. ( ). ‘in defense of artistic value,’ the philosophical quarterly ( ), pp. – . hurka, t. ( ). perfectionism. oxford: oxford university press. keller, s. ( ). ‘welfare and the achievement of goals,’ philosophical studies ( ), pp. – . © the author pacific philosophical quarterly © university of southern california and john wiley & sons ltd. the competition account of achievement-value duc de la rochefoucauld, f. ( [ ]) collected maxims and other reflections. trans. e.h. and a.m. blackmore and francine giguère. oxford world classics. (oxford: oxford university press) lopes, d. m. i. ( ). being for beauty. oxford: oxford university press. nietzsche, friedrich. ( ) digitale kritische gesamtausgabe werke und briefe (digital critical edition of the complete works and letters). ed. paolo d’iorio, based on g. colli and m. montinari (berlin/new york: de gruyter, ). <http://www.nietzschesource.org>. portmore, d. ( ). ‘welfare, achievement, and self-sacrifice,’ j ethics soc philos ( ). schopenhauer, a. ( [ ]). parerga and paralipomena, volume . trans. adrian del caro and christopher janaway. cambridge: cambridge university press. sosa, e. ( ). ‘how competence matters in epistemology,’ philosophical perspectives , pp. – . von kriegstein, h. ( ). ‘on being difficult,’ philosophical studies , pp. – . von kriegstein, h. ( ). ‘effort and achievement,’ utilitas ( ), pp. – . © the author pacific philosophical quarterly © university of southern california and john wiley & sons ltd. pacific philosophical quarterly http://www.nietzschesource.org/ the mental representation of music notation: notational audiation warren brodsky and yoav kessler ben-gurion university of the negev bat-sheva rubinstein tel aviv university jane ginsborg royal northern college of music avishai henik ben-gurion university of the negev this study investigated the mental representation of music notation. notational audiation is the ability to internally “hear” the music one is reading before physically hearing it performed on an instrument. in earlier studies, the authors claimed that this process engages music imagery contingent on subvocal silent singing. this study refines the previously developed embedded melody task and further explores the phonatory nature of notational audiation with throat-audio and larynx-electromyography measurement. experiment corroborates previous findings and confirms that notational audiation is a process engaging kinesthetic-like covert excitation of the vocal folds linked to phonatory resources. experiment explores whether covert rehearsal with the mind’s voice also involves actual motor processing systems and suggests that the mental representation of music notation cues manual motor imagery. experiment verifies findings of both experiments and with a sample of professional drummers. the study points to the profound reliance on phonatory and manual motor processing—a dual-route stratagem— used during music reading. further implications concern the integration of auditory and motor imagery in the brain and cross-modal encoding of a unisensory input. keywords: music reading, notational audiation, embedded melody, music expertise, music imagery does the reading of music notation produce aural images in trained musicians? if so, what is the nature of these images triggered during sight reading? is the process similar to other actions involving “inner hearing,” such as subvocalization, inner voice, or inner speech? the current study was designed to inves- tigate the mental representation of music notation. researchers have long been aware that when performing from notated music, highly trained musicians rely on music imagery just as much, if not more, than on the actual external sounds themselves (see hubbard & stoeckig, ). music images possess a sensory quality that makes the experience of imagining music similar to that of per- ceiving music (zatorre & halpern, ; zatorre, halpern, perry, meyer, & evans, ). in an extensive review, halpern ( ) summarized the vast amount of evidence indicating that brain areas normally engaged in processing auditory information are recruited even when the auditory information is internally gener- ated. gordon ( ) called the internal analog of aural perception audiation; he further referred to notational audiation as the spe- cific skill of “hearing” the music one is reading before physically hearing it performed on an instrument. almost years ago, the music psychologist carl seashore ( ) proposed the idea that a musical mind is characterized by the ability to “think in music,” or produce music imagery, more than by any other music skill. seventy years earlier, in the intro- duction to his piano method, the romantic composer robert schu- mann ( / ) wrote to his students, “you must get to the point that you can hear music from the page” (p. ). however, very little is known about the nature of the cognitive process underlying notational audiation. is it based on auditory, phonatory, or manual motor resources? how does it develop? is it linked to expertise of music instrument, music literacy, music theory, sight reading, or absolute perfect pitch? historic doctrines have traditionally put faith in sight singing as the musical aid to developing mental imagery of printed music (karpinski, ), and several pedagogical methods (e.g., gordon, ; jacques-dalcroze, ) claim to develop inner hearing. warren brodsky, music science research, department of the arts, ben-gurion university of the negev, beer-sheva, israel; yoav kessler and avishai henik, department of psychology and zlotowski center for neu- roscience, ben-gurion university of the negev; bat-sheva rubinstein, department of theory and composition, buchmann-mehta school of music, tel aviv university, tel aviv, israel; jane ginsborg, center for excellence in teaching and learning, royal northern college of music, manchester, england. this work was supported by grant / - . to warren brodsky from the israel science foundation, funded by the israel academy of sciences and humanities; and by funding to jane ginsborg from the royal northern college of music. we offer gratitude to college directorates tomer lev (of the buchmann-mehta school of music, tel aviv, israel) and edward gregson, linda merrick, and anthony gritten (of the royal northern college of music). in addition, we offer a hearty thank you to maestro moshe zorman for the high-quality original music materials. further, we deeply appreciate all the efforts of sagi shorer, shimon even-zur, and yehiel braver (klei zemer yamaha, tel aviv, israel) as well as those of master drummer rony holan and yosef zucker (or-tav publications, kfar saba, israel) for their kind permission to use published notation and audio examples. we would like to thank all of the musicians who participated in the studies—they are our partners in music science research. correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to warren brodsky, department of the arts, ben-gurion university of the negev, p.o. box , beer-sheva , israel. e-mail: wbrodsky@bgu.ac.il journal of experimental psychology: copyright by the american psychological association human perception and performance , vol. , no. , – - / /$ . doi: . / - . . . nonetheless, in the absence of experimental investigations, as far as cognitive science is concerned, evidence for imagery as a cued response to music notation is essentially anecdotal. it has been proposed that during auditory and music imagery, the inner voice supplies a kinesthetic stimulus that acts as raw material via some motor output or plan, which is detectable by channels of perception associated with the phonological system (intons-peterson, ; mackay, ; smith, reisberg, & wilson, ). yet hardly any studies have targeted imagery of music triggered by music nota- tion, and perhaps one reason for their scarcity is lack of a reliable method whereby such internal processes can be teased out and examined. in one study, waters, townsend, and underwood ( ; ex- periment ) used a same– different paradigm in which trained pianists silently read cards each containing a single bar of piano music. they found that pianists were successful at matching si- lently read music notation to a subsequently presented auditory sequence. yet the study did little to demonstrate that task perfor- mance was based on evoked music imagery rather than on struc- tural harmonic analyses or on guesswork based on visual surface cues found in the notation. in another study, wöllner, halfpenny, ho, and kurosawa ( ) presented voice majors with two -note single-line c-major melodies. the first was read silently without distraction, whereas the other was read silently with concurrent auditory distraction (i.e., the oscar peterson quartet was heard in the background). after reading the notation, the participants sang the melody aloud. as no differences surfaced between normal sight reading (viewed as “intact” inner hearing) and distracted sight reading (viewed as “hampered” inner hearing), the authors concluded that “inner-hearing is . . . less important in sight-reading than assumed” (wöllner et al., , p. ). yet this study did little to establish that sight reading was equivalent to or based on inner hearing or that a valid measure of the internal process is sight-singing accuracy. in an earlier set of studies (brodsky, henik, rubinstein, & zorman, , , ), we developed a paradigm that ex- ploited the compositional technique of theme and variation. this method allowed for a well-known theme to be embedded in the notation of a newly composed, stand-alone, embellished phrase (hereafter referred to as an embedded melody [em]); although the original well-known theme was visually indiscernible, it was still available to the “mind’s ear.” in the experiments, after the partic- ipants silently read the notation of an em, they heard a tune and had to decide whether this excerpt was the well-known embedded theme (i.e., target) or a different tune (i.e., melodic lure). we found that only a third of the highly skilled musicians recruited were able to perform the task reliably—although all of them were successful when the embellished phrases incorporating ems were presented aloud. it might be inferred from these results that only one in three musicians with formal advanced training has skills that are suffi- cient to internally hear a well-known embedded theme when presented graphically. however, from the outset, we felt that the ability to recognize original well-known embedded themes does not necessarily pro- vide conclusive evidence in itself that notational audiation exists (or is being used). empirical caution is warranted here as there may be several other explanations for how musicians can perform the em task, including informed guesswork and harmonic struc- tural analyses. hence, on the basis of the conception that overt measurement can provide evidence of covert mental processes, whereby one infers the existence of a process by observing some effect caused by that process, we used a distraction paradigm (brodsky et al., , , ). specifically, we argued that if theme recognition can be hampered or blocked by conditions that may be assumed to engage audiation processes, then we could be justified in concluding that notational audiation was in operation during nondistracted score reading. accordingly, four music- reading conditions were used: normal nondistracted sight reading, sight reading with concurrent auditory distraction, sight reading with concurrent rhythmic distraction, and sight reading with con- current phonatory interference. the study found that phonatory interference impaired recognition of themes more than did the other conditions, and consequently, we surmised that notational audiation occurs when the silent reading of music notation triggers auditory imagery resulting in measurable auditory perception. therefore, we suggested that notational audiation elicits kinesthetic-like covert phonatory processes such as silent singing. sight reading music notation is an extremely complicated task: elliott ( ) delineated seven predictor variables of ability; wa- ters, underwood, and findlay ( ) showed there to be at least three different types of processing ability required; and lee ( ) identified component skills. in a more recent study, kopiez, weihs, ligges, and lee ( ) formulated three composite group- ings of requisite skills engaged during sight reading, each with associate subskills; a total of subskills were documented. the grouping concerned with practice-related skills is of particular relevance here because auditory imagery is listed among its asso- ciated subskills. on the basis of previous studies (e.g., lehmann & ericsson, , ), kopiez et al. assumed that sight reading relies to some extent on the ability to generate an aural image (i.e., inner hearing) of the printed score. to test this assumption, they used our em task (brodsky et al., , , ). in kopiez et al.’s study, participants read notated variations of five well-known classical piano pieces, and then after they had heard a tune (i.e., the original target theme or a lure melody), they had to decide whether the excerpt was the theme embedded in the variation previously read. the dependent variable used was d�. on the surface, it might appear that kopiez et al. validated our experimental task. how- ever, the procedures they used were only faintly similar to our protocol, and unfortunately, the d� calculations were not published. the nature of notational audiation is elusive, and one has only to look at the various descriptive labels used in the literature to understand this bafflement. the skill has been proposed to be a process of inner hearing or auralization (karpinski, ; larson, ; martin, ) as well as a form of silent singing (walters, ). the resulting internal phenomenon has been perceived as an “acoustic picture” or “mental score” (raffman, ), as sup- plied by the “hearing eye” (benward & carr, ) or the “seeing ear” (benward & kolosic, ). yet these phenomena should not necessarily be equated with each other, nor do they fundamentally represent the same processes. our previous findings (brodsky et al., , , ) suggest that notational audiation is a process engaging kinesthetic-like covert excitation of the vocal folds, and hence we have theorized that the mind’s representation of music notation might not have anything at all to do with hearing per se. kalakoski ( ) highlighted the fact that the literature is un- equivocal in pointing to the underlying cognitive systems that maintain and process auditory representations as expressed in brodsky, kessler, rubinstein, ginsborg, and henik music images. gerhardstein ( ) cited seashore’s ( ) land- mark writings, suggesting that kinesthetic sense is related to the ability to generate music imagery, and reisberg ( ) proposed the crisscrossing between aural and oral channels in relation to the generation of music imagery. however, in the last decade, the triggering of music images has been linked to motor memory (mikumo, ; petsche, von stein, & filz, ), whereas neu- romusical studies using positron-emission tomography and func- tional mri technologies (halpern, ; halpern & zatorre, ) have found that the supplementary motor area (sma) is activated in the course of music imagery— especially during covert mental rehearsal (langheim, callicott, mattay, duyn, & weinberger, ). accordingly, the sma may mediate rehearsal that involves motor processes such as humming. further, the role of the sma during imagery of familiar melodies has been found to include both auditory components of hearing the actual song and carrier components, such as an image of subvocalizing, of moving fingers on a keyboard, or of someone else performing (schneider & godoy, ; zatorre et al., ). however, it must be pointed out that although all of the above studies purport to explore musical imagery and imagined musical performance—that is, they attempt to tease out the physiological underpinnings of musical cognition in music performance without sensorimotor and auditory confounds of overt performance—some findings may be more than questionable. for example, langheim et al. ( ) themselves concluded the following: while cognitive psychologists studying mental imagery have demon- strated creative ways in which to ascertain that the imagined task is in fact being imagined, our study had no such control. we would argue, however, that to the musically experienced, imagining performance of a musical instrument can more closely be compared to imagining the production of language in the form of subvocal speech. (p. ) nonetheless, no neuromusical study has explored imagery trig- gered by music notation. the one exception is a study conducted by schurmann, raij, fujiki, and hari ( ), who had trained musicians read music notation while undergoing magnetoencepha- logram scanning. during the procedure, schurmann et al. pre- sented the participants with a four-item test set, each item consist- ing of only one notated pitch (g , a , b b , and c ). although it may be necessary to use a minimalist methodology to shed light on the time course of brain activation in particular sites while mag- netoencephalogram is used to explore auditory imagery, it should be pointed out that such stimuli bear no resemblance to real-world music reading, which never involves just one isolated note. it could be argued, therefore, that this study conveys little insight into the cognitive processes that underlie notational audiation. neuroscience may purport to finally have found a solution to the problem of measuring internal phenomena, and that solution in- volves functional imaging techniques. certainly this stance relies on the fact that the underlying neural activity can be measured directly rather than by inferring its presence. however, establish- ing what is being measured remains a major issue. zatorre and halpern ( ) articulate criticism about such a predicament with their claim that “merely placing subjects in a scanner and asking them to imagine some music, for instance, simply will not do, because one will have no evidence that the desired mental activity is taking place” (p. ). this issue can be addressed by the devel- opment of behavioral paradigms measuring overt responses that either depend on or correlate with the internal activity under investigation. only then, by recruiting these responses in combi- nation with state-of-the-art neuroimaging techniques, can cogni- tive neuroscientists make strides in uncovering the particular pro- cesses underlying music imagery in their effort to understand the musical mind. to this end, we carried out the current study. our goal was to refine our previously developed em task by develop- ing new stimuli that are more exacting in their level of difficulty, highly flexible in their functionality, and able to transcend the boundaries of music literacy. we developed this task as a means to demonstrate music imagery triggered by music notation, with which we could then explore the phonatory nature of notational audiation in conjunction with physiological measurements of throat-audio and larynx-electromyography (emg) recordings. experiment the purpose of experiment was to replicate and validate our previous findings with a new set of stimuli. this new set (de- scribed below) was designed specifically to counteract discrepan- cies that might arise between items allocated as targets or as lures, as well as to rule out the possibility that task performance could be biased by familiarity with the western classical music repertoire. we achieved the former goal by creating pairs of stimuli that can be presented in a counterbalanced fashion (once as a target and once as a lure); we achieved the latter goal by creating three types of stimuli (that were either well-known, newly composed, or a hybrid of both). with these in hand, we implemented the em task within a distraction paradigm while logging audio and emg physiological activity. we expected that the audio and emg measures would reveal levels of subvocalization and covert activ- ity of the vocal folds. further, we expected there to be no differ- ences in performance between the three stimulus types. method participants. initially, musicians were referred and tested. referrals were made by music theory and music performance department heads at music colleges and universities, by ear- training instructors at music academies, and by professional music performers. the criteria for referral were demonstrable high-level abilities in general music skills relating to performance, literature, theory, and analysis, as well as specific music skills relating to dictation and sight singing. out of the musicians tested, ( %) passed a prerequisite threshold inclusion criterion demon- strating notational audiation ability; the criterion adopted for in- clusion in the study (from brodsky et al., , , ) represents a significant task performance ( p � . using a sign test) during nondistracted sight reading, reflecting a % success rate in a block of items. hence, this subset (n � ) represents the full sample participating in experiment . the participants were a multicultural group of musicians comprising a wide range of nationalities, ethnicities, and religions. participants were re- cruited and tested at either the buchmann-mehta school of music (formerly the israel academy of music) in tel aviv, israel, or at the royal northern college of music in manchester, england. as there were no meaningful differences between the two groups in terms of demographic or biographical characteristics, nor in terms of their task performance, we have pooled them into a combined mental representation of music notation sample group. in total, there were slightly more women ( %) than men, with the majority ( %) having completed a bachelor’s of music as their final degree; ( %) had completed postgraduate music degrees. the participants’ mean age was years (sd � . , range � – ); they had an average of years (sd � . , range � – ) of formal instrument lessons beginning at an average age of years (sd � . , range � – ) and had an average of years (sd � . , range � – ) of formal ear- training lessons beginning at an average age of (sd � . , range � – ). in general, they were right-handed ( %), pianists ( %), and music performers ( %). less than half ( %) of the sample claimed to possess absolute perfect pitch. eighty-eight percent described themselves as avid listeners of classical music. using a -point likert scale ( � not at all, � highly proficient), the participants reported an overall high level of confidence in their abilities to read new unseen pieces of music (m � . , sd � . ), to “hear” the printed page (m � . , sd � . ), and to remember music after a one-time exposure (m � . , sd � . ). however, they rated their skill of concurrent music anal- ysis while reading or listening to a piece as average (m � . , sd � . ). finally, more than half ( %) of the musicians reported that the initial learning strategy they use when approach- ing a new piece is to read silently through the piece; the others reported playing through the piece ( %) or listening to an audio recording ( %). stimuli. twenty well-known operatic and symphonic themes were selected from barlow and morgenstern ( ). examples are seen in figure (see target themes). each of these original well- known themes was then embedded into a newly composed embel- lished phrase (i.e., an em) by a professional composer–arranger using compositional techniques such as quasi-contrapuntal treat- ment, displacement of registers, melodic ornamentation, and rhyth- mic augmentation or diminution (see figure , embedded melo- dies). each pair was then matched to another well-known theme serving as a melodic lure; the process was primarily one of locating a tune that could mislead the musician reader into assum- ing that the subsequently heard audio exemplar was the target melody embedded in the notation even though it was not. hence, the process of matching lures to ems often involved sophisticated deception. the decisive factor used in choosing the melodies for lures was that there be thematic or visual similarities of at least seven criteria, such as contour, texture, opening interval, rhythmic pattern, phrasing, meter, tonality, key signature, harmonic struc- ture, and music style (see figure , melodic lures). the lures were then treated in a similar fashion as the targets—that is, they were used as themes to be embedded in an embellished phrase. this first set of stimuli was labeled type i. a second set of well-known themes, also selected from barlow and morgenstern ( ), was treated in a similar fashion except that the lures were composed for the purposes of the experiment; this set of stimuli was labeled type ii. finally, a third set of themes was composed for the purposes of the experiment, together with newly composed melodic lures; this set of stimuli was labeled type iii. all three stimulus types were evaluated by b.-s.r. (head of a music theory, composition, and conducting department) with respect to the level of difficulty (i.e., the recog- nizability of the original well-known em in the embellished phrase) and the structural and harmonic fit of target–lure func- tional reversibility (whereby a theme chosen as a lure can become a target while the original target can newly function in a mirrored fashion as the appropriate melodic lure). it should be pointed out that although functional reversibility is commonplace for visual or textual stimuli, such an approach is clearly more of a challenge when developing music stimuli. further, the functional reversibil- ity of target melodies and melodic lures has not as yet been reported in the music cognition literature. subsequently, of the foursomes in each stimulus type, roughly % were deemed in- appropriate and dropped from the test pool. the remaining reversible item pairs ( items) were randomly assigned to three blocks (one block per experimental condition), each containing an equal number of targets, lures, and types. each block was also stratified for an equal number of items on the basis of tonality (major or minor) and meter ( / , / , / , or / ). all items were recorded live (performed by the composer–arranger) with a behringer b- (behringer) dual-diaphragm studio condenser mi- crophone suspended over a yamaha upright piano (with lid open), to a portable korg (korg) -track digital recording-studio desk. the recordings were cropped with soundforge xp . (realnetworks) audio-editing package and were standardized for volume (i.e., reduced or enhanced where necessary). on average, the audio files (i.e., target and lure tunes) were approximately s (sd � . s) in exposure length. the notation was produced with the finale v. (coda music technologies, makemusic) music- editing package and formatted as -bit picture files. the notation was presented as a g-clef single-line melody, with all stems pointing upward, placed in standardized measure widths, of an average of bars in length (sd � . , range � – bars). as reading music notation clearly involves several actions not necessarily linked to the music skill itself, such as fixed seating position, visual scanning and line reading, and analytic processes, a three-task pretest baseline control (bc) task was developed. two -word texts were chosen for silent reading: the hebrew text was translated from brodsky ( ), whereas the english text was taken from brodsky ( ). in addition, there were five mathe- matical number line completion exercises (e.g., , , , , ?) selected from the th-grade math portion of the israel high school national curriculum. apparatus. we used two laptop computers, an integrated bio- monitor, and experiment delivery software. the experiment ran on a thinkpad t (ibm) with intel pentium m . -ghz processor, -in. tft sxga plus lcd screen, and an onboard soundmax audio chipset driving a palm-sized travelsound (creative) -w digital amplifier with two titanium-driver stereo speakers. the biomonitor ran on a thinkpad x (ibm) with intel centrino . -ghz processor and -in. tft xga lcd screen. the three- channel integrated biomonitor was a novacorder ar- custom (atlas researches, israel), with a stretch-band, velcro-fastened strap to mount a throat-contact microphone (to record subvocal- izations, with full-scale integrated output) and two reusable gold- dry emg electrodes (to monitor covert phonatory muscle activity, each composed of a high-gain low-noise atlas bioamplifier [ – hz bandwidth, full scale . – . �v]), an optic-fiber serial pc link, and an integrated pc software package (for recording, display, and editing of data files). the experiment was designed and operated with e-prime (version . ; psychology software tools). design and test presentation. the overall plan included a pretest control task and an experiment set. it should be pointed out brodsky, kessler, rubinstein, ginsborg, and henik that although each participant underwent the control task (serving as a baseline measurement) prior to the experiment set, the two tasks are of an entirely different character, and hence we assumed that there would be no danger of carryover effects. the bc task comprised three subtasks: sitting quietly ( s), silent text reading ( s), and completing five mathematical number lines. the order of these subtasks was counterbalanced across participants. the experimental task required the participants to silently read and recognize themes embedded in the music notation of embellished phrases and then to correctly match or reject tunes heard aloud after the notation had disappeared from the computer screen. sight reading was conducted under three conditions: (a) normal, non- distracted, silent music reading (nr); (b) silent music reading with concurrent rhythmic distraction (rd), created by having the par- ticipant tap a steady pulse (knee patch) while hearing an irrelevant random cross-rhythm beaten out (with a pen on tabletop) by the experimenter; and (c) music reading with concurrent phonatory interference (pi), created by the participant him- or herself by singing a traditional folk song but replacing the words of the song with the sound la. the two folk songs used in the pi condition were embedded melody target theme: boccherini, minuet ( st theme in a major) melodic lure: beethoven, minuet for piano in g major rd movement from “quintet for strings in e major. (transcribed to a major) embedded melody target theme: beethoven, minuet for piano in g major melodic lure: boccherini, minuet ( st theme in a major) (transcribed to a major) rd movement from “quintet for strings in e major. figure . embedded melodies: type i. the embedded melodies were created by moshe zorman, copyright . used with kind permission of moshe zorman. mental representation of music notation “david, king of israel” (sung in hebrew in those experiments conducted in israel) and “twinkle, twinkle, little star” (sung in english in those experiments conducted in england); both songs were chosen for their multicultural familiarity, and both were in a major key tonality in a / meter. in total, there were trials, each consisting of an em paired with either the original target theme or a melodic lure. each block of pairs represented one of the three music-reading conditions. we presented condition (nr, rd, pi), block (item set – , – , – ), and pairs (em–target, em– lure) in a counterbalanced form to offset biases linked to presen- tation order. procedure. the experiment ran for approximately min and consisted of three segments: (a) fitting of biomonitor and pretest bc; (b) oral or written instructions, including four-item demonstration–practice trial; and (c) -trial em task under three reading conditions. in a typical session, each participant was exposed to the following sequence of events: the study was introduced to the participant, who signed an informed consent form and completed a one-page questionnaire containing demo- graphic information and self-ranking of music skills. then, partic- ipants were fitted with a throat-contact microphone and two reus- able gold-dry emg electrodes mounted on a stretch-band, velcro- fastened choker strap; the throat-contact microphone was placed over the thyroid cartilage (known as the laryngeal prominence or, more commonly, the adam’s apple) with each electrode positioned roughly cm posterior to the right and left larynges (i.e., the voice box housing the vocal cords). while seated alongside the experi- menter, the participants completed the bc task. thereafter, in- structions were read orally, and each participant was exposed to a demonstration and four practice trials for clarification of the pro- cedure and experimental task. the participants were instructed to silently read the music notation in full (i.e., not to focus on just the first measure), to respond as soon as possible when hearing a tune, and to try not to make errors. then, the notation of the first em appeared on the screen and stayed in view for up to s (or until a key was pressed in a self-paced manner). after s (or the key press), the em disappeared and a tune was heard immediately. the participants were required to indicate as quickly as possible whether the tune heard was the original theme embedded in the embellished phrase. they indicated their response by depressing a color-coded key on either side of the keyboard space bar; green stickers on the ctrl keys indicated that the tune heard was the original theme, and red stickers on the alt keys indicated that it was not original. a prompt indicating the two response categories with associated color codes appeared in the center of the screen. response times were measured in milliseconds from the onset of the audio file to the key press. subsequently, the second trial began, and so forth. the procedure in all three conditions was similar. it should be noted, however, that the rhythmic distracter in the rd condition varied from trial to trial because the pulse tapping was self-generated and controlled by the participant, and the cross-rhythms beaten by the experimenter were improvised (sometimes on rhythmic patterns of previous tunes). similarly, the tonality of the folk song sung in the pi condition varied from trial to trial because singing was self-generated and controlled by the participants; depending on whether participants possessed absolute perfect pitch, they may have changed keys for each item to sing in accordance with the key signature as written in the notation. biomonitor analyses. the atlas biomonitor transmits serial data to a pc in the form of a continuous analog wave form. the wave form is then decoded during the digital conversion into millisecond intervals. by synchronizing the t laptop running the experiment with the x laptop recording audio–emg output, we were able to data link specific segments of each file representing the sections in which the participants were reading the music notation; because music reading was limited to a -s exposure, the maximum sampling per segment was , data points. the median output of each electrode per item was calculated and averaged across the two channels (left–right sides) to create a mean output per item. then, the means of all correct items in each block of items were averaged into a grand mean emg output per condition. the same procedure was used for the audio data. results for each participant in each music-reading condition (i.e., nr, rd, pi), the responses were analyzed for percentage correct (pc; or overall success rate represented by the sum of the percentages of correctly identified targets and correctly rejected lures), hits (i.e., correct targets), false alarms (fas), d� (i.e., an index of detection sensitivity), and response times (rts). as can be seen in table , across the conditions there was a decreasing level of pc, a decrease in percentage of hits with an increase in percentage of fas, and hence an overall decrease in d�. taken together, these results seem to indicate an escalating level of impairment in the sequenced order nr-rd-pi. the significance level was . for all the analyses. each dependent variable (pc, hits, fas, d�, and rts) was entered into a separate repeated measures analysis of variance (anova) with reading condition as a within-subjects variable. there were significant effects of condition for pc, f( , ) � . , mse � . , �p � . , p � . ; hits, f( , ) � . , table experiment : descriptive statistics of behavioral measures by sight reading condition condition pc hits fas d� median rts (s) % sd % sd % sd m sd m sd nr . . . . . . . . . . rd . . . . . . . . . . pi . . . . . . . . . . note. pc � percentage correct; fa � false alarm; rt � response time; nr � nondistracted reading; rd � rhythmic distraction; pi � phonatory interference. brodsky, kessler, rubinstein, ginsborg, and henik mse � . , �p � . , p � . ; and d�, f( , ) � . , mse � . , �p � . , p � . ; as well as a near significant effect for fas, f( , ) � . , mse � . , �p � . , p � . . there was no effect for rts. comparison analysis showed that as there were no significant differences between the distraction con- ditions themselves, these effects were generally due to significant differences between the nondistracted and distraction conditions (see table ). subsequently, for each participant in each stimulus type (i, ii, iii), the frequency of correct responses was analyzed for pc, hits, fas, d�, and rts. as can be seen in table , there were few significant differences between the different stimulus types. in general, this finding suggests that musicians were just as good readers of notation regardless of whether the embedded theme in the embellished phrase had been previously known or was in fact newly composed music. each dependent variable was entered into a separate repeated measures anova with stimulus type as a within-subjects vari- able. there were significant effects of stimulus type for rts, f( , ) � . , mse � , , �p � . , p � . ; no effects for pc, hits, fas, or d� surfaced. comparison analysis for rts showed that effects were due to significant differences between well-known (shortest rts) and hybrid stimuli (longest rts; see table ). finally, the audio and emg data relating to correct responses for each participant in each condition were calculated for each music-reading segment; measurements taken during the pretest control task (bc) representing a baseline level data were also calculated (see table ). the data for each participant with condition (baseline and three music-reading conditions) as a within-subjects variable were en- tered into a repeated measures anova. there were significant effects of condition for audio output, f( , ) � . , mse � . , �p � . , p � . ; as well as for emg output, f( , ) � . , mse � . , �p � . , p � . . as can be seen in table , comparison analysis for audio data revealed no signif- icant differences between the silent-reading conditions, but there were significant differences between both silent-reading condi- tions and the vocal condition. further, in an analysis of audio data, we found no significant differences between the bc tasks and either silent-reading condition, but significant differences did sur- face between the control tasks and the vocal condition. in addition, comparison analysis of emg data showed no significant differ- ences between the silent-reading conditions, but there were signif- icant differences between both silent-reading conditions and the vocal condition. finally, in our analysis of emg data, we also found significant differences between the bc tasks and all three music-reading conditions, thus suggesting covert activity of the vocal folds in the nr and rd conditions. last, we explored the biographical data supplied by the partic- ipants (i.e., age, gender, handedness, possession of absolute perfect pitch, onset age of instrument learning, accumulated years of instrument lessons, onset age of ear training, and number of years of ear-training lessons) for correlations and interactions with per- formance outcome variables (pc, hits, fas, d�, and rts) for each reading condition and stimulus type. the analyses found a negative relationship between onset age of instrument learning and the accumulated years of instrument lessons (r � �. , p � . ), as well as onset age of ear training and the accumulated years of instrument lessons (r � �. , p � . ). further, a negative correlation surfaced between stimuli type iii– hits and age (r � �. , p � . ); there was also a positive correlation between stimuli type i–d� and age (r � . , p � . ). these correlations indicate relationships of age with dedication (the younger a person is at onset of instrument or theory training, the longer he or she takes lessons) and with training regimes (those who attended academies between and seem to be more sensitive to well-known music, whereas those who attended academies from onward seem to be more sensitive to newly composed music). further, the analyses found only one main effect of de- scriptive variables for performance outcome variables; there was a main effect of absolute perfect pitch for rts, f( , ) � . , mse � , , . , �p � . , p � . , indicating significantly decreased rts for possessors of absolute perfect pitch (m � . s, sd � . s) compared with nonpossessors (m � . s, sd � . s). no interaction effects surfaced. discussion the results of experiment constitute a successful replication and validation of our previous work. the current study offers tighter empirical control with the current set of stimuli: the items used were newly composed and tested and then selected on the basis of functional reversibility (i.e., items functioning as both targets and lures). we assumed that such a rigorous improvement of music items used (in comparison to our previously used set of stimuli) would offer assurances that any findings yielded by the study would not be contaminated by contextual differences be- tween targets and lures—a possibility we previously raised. fur- ther, we enhanced these materials by creating three stimulus types: item pairs (i.e., targets–lures) that were either well-known, newly composed, or a hybrid of both. we controlled each block to facilitate analyses by both function (target, lure) and type (i, ii, iii). the results show that highly trained musicians who were pro- ficient in task performance during nondistracted music reading were significantly less capable of matching targets or rejecting lures while reading ems with concurrent rd or pi. this result, similar to the findings of brodsky et al. ( , , ), suggests that our previous results did not occur because of quali- tative differences between targets and lures. moreover, the results show no significant differences between the stimulus types for table experiment : contrasts between sight reading conditions for behavioral measures dependent variable conditions f( , ) mse �p p pc nr vs. rd . . . �. nr vs. pi . . . �. hits nr vs. rd . . . �. nr vs. pi . . . �. fas nr vs. rd . . . �. d� nr vs. rd . . . �. nr vs. pi . . . �. note. pc � percentage correct; nr � nondistracted reading; rd � rhythmic distraction; pi � phonatory interference; fa � false alarm. mental representation of music notation overall pc. hence, we might also rule out the possibility that music literacy affects success rate in our experimental task. that is, one might have thought that previous exposure to the music literature would bias task performance as it is the foundation of a more intimate knowledge of well-known themes. had we found this, it could have been argued that our experimental task was not explicitly exposing the mental representation of music notation but rather emulating a highly sophisticated cognitive game of music literacy. yet, there were no significant differences between the stimulus types, and the results show not only an equal level of pc but also equal percentages of hits and fas regardless of whether the stimuli presented were well-known targets combined with well-known lures, well-known targets combined with newly com- posed lures, or newly composed targets with newly composed lures. it would seem, then, that a proficient music reader of familiar music is just as proficient when reading newly composed, previously unheard music. further, the results show no significant difference between rts in the different reading conditions; in general, rts were faster with well-known themes (type i) than with newly composed music (type ii or type iii). overall, this finding conflicts with findings from our earlier studies (brodsky et al., , , ). in this regard, several explanations come to mind. for example, one possibility is that musicians are accustomed to listening to music in such a way that they are used to paying attention until the final cadence. another possibility is that musicians are genuinely inter- ested in listening to unfamiliar music materials and therefore follow the melodic and harmonic structure even when instructed to identify it as the original or that they otherwise identify it as quickly as possible and then stop listening. in any event, in the current study we found that rts were insensitive to differences between conditions and were hence ineffective as a behavioral measure for musician participants in a task using em music stimuli. the results suggest that age, gender, and handedness had no influence on the participants’ task performance (reflected by their overall success rate). however, we did find that age positively correlated with d� scores of type i (i.e., the facility to differentiate between original themes and melodic lures) and that age nega- tively correlated with the percentage of hits of type iii (i.e., the aptitude to detect newly composed themes embedded in embel- lished variations). these relationships may be explained as result- ing from pedagogical trends and training regimes of music theory and ear training classes, which typically focus on the development of finely honed skills serving to retrieve and store melodic– rhythmic fragments (or gestalts) that are considered to be the building blocks of th-century modern music. hence, our results seem to point to a delicate advantage for older musicians in terms of experience and for younger musicians in terms of cognitive dexterity. these differences between older musicians and younger musicians also seem to map onto changes in crystallized intelli- gence versus fluid intelligence, which are seen to occur with aging. table experiment : descriptive statistics of behavioral measures by stimuli type and contrasts between stimuli type for behavioral measures condition % pc % hits % fas d� median rts (s) m sd m sd m sd m sd m sd type i . . . . . . . . . . type ii . . . . . . . . . . type iii . . . . . . . . . . note. for the dependent variable rt, type i versus type ii, f( , ) � . , mse � , , , �p � . , p � . . pc � percentage correct; fa � false alarm; rt � response time. table experiment : descriptive statistics of audio and emg output by sight reading condition condition audio (�v) emg (�v) m sd m sd bc . . . . nr . . . . rd . . . . pi . . . . note. emg � electromyography; bc � baseline control; nr � nondis- tracted reading; rd � rhythmic distraction; pi � phonatory interference. table experiment : contrasts between sight reading conditions for audio and emg output conditions f mse �p p audio outputa nr vs. rd . . . . nr vs. pi . . . �. rd vs. pi . . . �. bc vs. nr . . . . bc vs. rd . . . . bc vs. pi . . . �. emg outputb nr vs. rd . . . . nr vs. pi . . . �. rd vs. pi . . . �. bc vs. nr . . . �. bc vs. rd . . . �. bc vs. pi . . . �. note. emg � electromyography; nr � nondistracted reading; rd � rhythmic distraction; pi � phonatory interference; bc � baseline control. a df � , . b df � , . brodsky, kessler, rubinstein, ginsborg, and henik however, we found little benefit for those musicians who possess absolute perfect pitch. that is, although they were significantly faster in their responses (i.e., shorter rts), they were just as accurate as nonpossessors (i.e., there were no differences of pc, hits, fas, or d�), which suggests the likelihood of a speed– accuracy trade-off. this latter finding is especially interesting because most music researchers and music educators tend to believe that possession of such an ability is favorable for reading music, composing, doing melodic or harmonic dictation, and sight singing. however, the main interest of experiment lies in the findings that we obtained from the physiological data. first, there were few differences between audio-output levels in all the tasks that were performed silently. that is, the measured output was roughly the same when participants sat silently, silently read a language text, and silently completed a mathematical sequence (bc) as it was when participants silently read music notation (nr, rd). further, there were significant differences of audio-output level between all of these silent conditions compared with when participants sang a traditional folk song aloud (pi). both of these outcomes were to be expected. however, it is extremely interesting to note that the associated emg-output levels were of a very different character. that is, when monitoring the muscle activation of the vocal folds, we found that not only were there significant differences between subvocal activity occurring during silent reading and the vocal activity of singing aloud, but that significant differences also surfaced within the subvocal conditions themselves. indeed, silent reading of language texts and silent mathematical reasoning have long been associated with “internal mutter” (sokolov, ; vy- gotsky, ). further, there is also considerable evidence indi- cating that printed stimuli are not retained in working memory in their visual form but that they are instead recoded in a phonolog- ical format (wilson, ). therefore, observable subvocal activ- ity during silent reading and reasoning tasks was to be expected as were output levels that were considerably lower than during overt vocal activity. yet the current experiment clearly demonstrates that covert vocal fold activity is significantly more dynamic when the same participants silently read music notation than when they read printed text or work out mathematical sequences (the bc task). we feel that this finding is prima facie evidence corroborating our previous proposal that notational audiation is a process engaging kinesthetic-like covert excitation of the vocal folds linked to pho- natory resources. nevertheless, the results of experiment are not conclusive in differentiating between the effects of rd and pi (as was seen previously in brodsky et al., ). although there is an indication of impairment in both the rd and pi conditions—and although on the basis of a decrement of pc and an increment of fas, the pi condition seems to result in greater interference— differences be- tween the two remain statistically nonsignificant. in an effort to interpret this picture, it may be advantageous to look at the rd condition as supplying a rhythmic distractor that disrupts temporal processing and at the pi condition as supplying a pitch distractor that disrupts spatial (tonal) processing. for example, waters and underwood ( ) viewed a comparable set of conditions in this manner and reported each one as disrupting particular codes or strategies necessary to generate imagery prompted by the visual surface cues provided by the music notation— each different but equally potent. or perhaps another explanation could be found if we were to use baddeley’s ( ) proposal to distinguish between the “inner ear” (i.e., subvocal rehearsal) and the “inner voice” (i.e., phonological storage). this is especially appropriate as not all forms of auditory imagery rely on the same components. for example, using various interference conditions to highlight each of these components, aleman and wout ( ) demonstrated that articulatory suppression interferes with the inner voice while con- current irrelevant auditory stimuli interfere with the inner ear. a third possibility, akin to that reported by smith, wilson, and reisberg ( ), is that both components are essential and thus that no significant difference is to be expected at all. in fact, wilson ( ) not only argues in support of the findings by smith et al., but points out that by interfering with either component, one should not be able to reduce task performance to chance level, because if both components are essential, then when one element is blocked the other resource is still available to maintain infor- mation. in light of these three explanations, a further exploration of differences between the rd and pi conditions seems warranted. given the fact that our emg data suggest that there is vocal fold activity (vfa) in all three music-reading conditions, it would seem appropriate to relabel the conditions accordingly: nr becomes vfa alone; rd becomes vfa plus manual motor activity (finger tapping) plus irrelevant temporal auditory stimuli (heard counter- rhythms); and pi becomes vfa plus phonatory muscle activity (singing aloud) plus irrelevant spatial–tonal auditory stimuli (heard melody). bearing this reclassification in mind, it is interesting to look again at aleman and wout ( ), who found effects of auditory suppression (akin to our pi condition) on auditory–verbal visual tasks, whereas their tapping task (akin to our rd condition) affected the visual-alone tasks. they concluded that the two con- ditions do not by definition interfere with the same processing system and that tapping clearly interfered with visuospatial pro- cessing. therefore, considering the results of experiment , and taking into account aleman and wout’s results, we now ask whether covert rehearsal with the mind’s voice does in fact involve actual manual motor processing systems. that is, because the distraction from rd is as large as the interference from pi, then we might assume there to be an important reliance on kinesthetic phonatory and manual motor processing during subvocalization of music notation. ecological evidence would support such a stance: unlike text reading, the reading of music notation is seldom learned in isolation from learning to play an instrument (involving the corresponding manual motor sequences). however, hard em- pirical evidence to support the above hypothesis might be obtained if a nonauditory manual motor action could facilitate task perfor- mance in the rd condition—while not improving task perfor- mance in the pi conditions. this led to experiment . experiment the purpose of this experiment was to shed further light on the two distraction conditions used in experiment . we asked whether covert rehearsal with the mind’s voice does in fact involve actual motor processing systems beyond the larynx and hence a reliance on both articulatory and manual motor activity during the reading of music notation. to explore this issue, in experiment we added the element of finger movements emulating a music performance during the same music-reading conditions with the mental representation of music notation same musicians who had participated in experiment . we ex- pected that there would be improvements in task performance resulting from the mock performance, but if such actions resulted in facilitated rd performances (while not improving performances in the nr or pi conditions), then the findings might provide ample empirical evidence to resolve the above query. method approximately months after experiment (hereafter referred to as t ), all israeli musician participants were contacted to participate in the current experiment (hereafter referred to as t ). in total, were not available: declared lack of interest, had since moved to europe for advanced training, and was on army reserves duty. the available participants ( % of the original israeli sample) were retested at the buchmann-mehta school of music in tel aviv, in the same room and daytime-hour conditions as in experiment . in general, this subsample included slightly more men ( %) than women. their mean age was years (sd � . , range � – ), and they had an average of years (sd � . , range � – ) of formal instrumental lessons beginning at an average age of (sd � . , range � – ) and an average of years (sd � . , range � – ) of formal ear-training lessons beginning at an average age of (sd � . , range � – ). the stimuli, apparatus, design and test presentation, and proce- dure were the same as in experiment , but with two adjustments. first, all music-reading conditions (nr, rd, and pi) were aug- mented with overt finger movements replicating a music perfor- mance of the presented em notation—albeit without auditory feedback (i.e., the music instruments remained silent). one might, then, consider such activity to be a virtual performance. given that the notation represents a single-line melody, only one hand was actively involved in the virtual performance, freeing the other to implement the tapping task required during the rd condition. for example, using only one hand, pianists pressed the keys of a midi keyboard without electric power, string players placed fingers on the fingerboard of their instrument muted by a cloth, and wind players pressed on the keypads of their wind instrument without its mouthpiece. the second difference between experiments and was that in experiment , the biomonitor was dropped from the procedure. results for each participant at each time point (t : experiment ; t : experiment ) in each music-reading condition (nr, rd, pi), the responses were analyzed for pc, hits, fas, d�, and rts (see table ). each dependent variable was entered separately into a (time: t , t ) � (condition: nr, rd, pi) repeated measures anova. no main effects of time for pc, hits, d�, or rts surfaced. however, there were significant main effects of time for fas, f( , ) � . , mse � . , �p � . , p � . . these effects indicated an overall decreased percentage of fas at t (m � %, sd � . ) as compared with t (m � %, sd � . ). further, there were significant main effects of condition for pc, f( , ) � . , mse � . , �p � . , p � . ; hits, f( , ) � . , mse � . , �p � . , p � . ; and d�, f( , ) � . , mse � . , �p � . , p � . ; there were near significant effects for fas, f( , ) � . , mse � . , �p � . , p � . ; and rts, f( , ) � . , mse � , , , �p � . , p � . . in general, comparison analysis between the conditions demonstrated that effects were due to significant differences between nondistracted music reading and reading under distraction or interference con- ditions (see table , contrasts of condition). further, the anova found significant interactions of time � condition for fas, f( , ) � . , mse � . , �p � . , p � . ; and d�, f( , ) � . , mse � . , �p � . , p � . ; as well as a near significant interaction for pc, f( , ) � . , mse � . , �p � . , p � . . the interaction was nonsignificant for hits or rts. as can be seen in table (time � condition interaction), comparison analyses found that interaction effects were solely due to improvements in the rd condition for t ; this would seem to indicate the efficiency of overt motor finger movements in over- coming the effects of rd. last, for each participant at each time point (t , t ) in each music stimulus type (i, ii, iii) the frequency of correct responses was analyzed for pc, hits, fas, d�, and rts (see table ). each variable was entered separately into a (time: t , t ) � (stimulus type: i, ii, iii) repeated measures anova. there were main effects only for time for fas, f( , ) � . , mse � . , �p � . , p � . ; no main effects for pc, hits, d�, or rts surfaced. the effects indicate an overall decreased percentage of fas at t (m � %, sd � . ) compared with t (m � %, sd � . ). further, no main effects of stimulus type were found. finally, the anova found no significant interaction effects. discussion a comparison of the results of experiments and shows that previous exposure to the task did not significantly aid task perfor- mance— except that participants were slightly less likely to mis- take a lure for a target in experiment relative to that in exper- iment . even the level of phonatory interference remained table experiment : descriptive statistics of behavioral measures by sight reading condition and time (experiment session) dependent variable nr rd pi m sd m sd m sd pcs (%) t . . . . . . t . . . . . . hits (%) t . . . . . . t . . . . . . fas (%) t . . . . . . t . . . . . . d� t . . . . . . t . . . . . . rts (s) t . . . . . . t . . . . . . note. nr � nondistracted reading; rd � rhythmic distraction; pi � phonatory interference; pc � percentage correct; t � experiment ; t � experiment ; fa � false alarm; rt � response time. brodsky, kessler, rubinstein, ginsborg, and henik significantly unchanged. nevertheless, there were significant in- teractions vis-à-vis improvement of task performance for the rd condition in the second session. that is, even though all music- reading conditions were equally augmented with overt motor fin- ger movements replicating a music performance, an overall im- provement of task performance was seen only for the rd condition. performance in the rd condition was actually better than in the nr condition (including pc, fas, and d�). further- more, when looking at table , it can be seen that at t the rd condition emulated a distraction condition (similar to pi), whereas at t with the finger movements the rd condition emulated a nondistracted music-reading condition (similar to nr). it is interesting to note that aleman and wout ( ) questioned the extent to which actual motor processing systems are active during covert rehearsal with the mind’s voice. in fact, they pro- posed that if concurrent tapping interference conditions did not interfere to the same extent as concurrent articulatory suppression conditions, then that would be a strong indication of language processing without sensory-motor processing. however, they also proposed that, in contrast, interference from finger tapping that was as great as the interference from articulatory suppression would indicate reliance on kinesthetic phonatory and motor pro- cessing during subvocalization. we view the results of experiment as empirical support for the latter proposition. not only in the first instance (t ) were rd and pi conditions equal in their distraction–interference effects, but through the provision of motor enhancement (t ), participants were able to combat distraction effects and attain performance levels as high or even higher than in nondistracted conditions. this demonstration confirms that the mental representation of music notation also cues manual motor imagery. this stance is similar to other conceptions, such as that regarding differences between speech and print stimuli. for exam- ple, gathercole and martin ( ) proposed that motoric or artic- ulatory processes may not be the key components in verbal work- ing memory per se, but that the representations involved in rehearsal are representations of vocal gestures—intended for speech perception but not speech production. accordingly, such representations are long-term memory representations, and work- ing memory is believed to consist of their temporary activation. hence, when considering the mental representation of music no- tation, perhaps more than anything else a reliance on manual motor imagery is inevitable because of the closely knit cognitive rela- tionship between reading music and the associated manual ges- table experiment : contrasts between behavioral measures for sight reading conditions and interaction effects between sight reading condition and time (experiment session) dependent variable conditions f( , ) mse �p p contrasts of condition pc nr (m � %, sd � . ) vs. pi (m � %, sd � . ) . . . �. rd (m � %, sd � . ) vs. pi (m � %, sd � . ) . . . . hits nr (m � %, sd � . ) vs. rd (m � %, sd � . ) . . . �. nr (m � %, sd � . ) vs. pi (m � %, sd � . ) . . . �. d� nr (m � . , sd � . ) vs. pi (m � . , sd � . ) . . . �. rd (m � . , sd � . ) vs. pi (m � . , sd � . ) . . . �. fas nr (m � %, sd � . ) vs. pi (m � %, sd � . ) . . . �. rts nr (m � . s, sd � . ) vs. pi (m � . s, sd � . ) . , , . �. nr (m � . s, sd � . ) vs. rd (m � . s, sd � . ) . , , . . time � condition interaction fas rd . . . �. d� rd . . . �. pc rd . . . �. note. pc � percentage correct; nr � nondistracted reading; pi � phonatory interference; rd � rhythmic distraction; fa � false alarm; rt � response time. table experiment : descriptive statistics of behavioral measures by stimuli type and time (experiment session) dependent variable type i type ii type iii m sd m sd m sd pcs (%) t . . . . . . t . . . . . . hits (%) t . . . . . . t . . . . . . fas (%) t . . . . . . t . . . . . . d� t . . . . . . t . . . . . . rts (s) t . . . . . . t . . . . . . note. pc � percentage correct; t � experiment ; t � experiment ; fa � false alarm; rt � response time. mental representation of music notation tures imprinted in the minds of music readers by having a music instrument in hand throughout a lifetime of music development. yet, thus far all our efforts, as well as those of others reported in the literature, have been directed at classically trained musician performers on tonal instruments. specifically, our participants were pianists or players of orchestral instruments, all of which produce tones having a definitive pitch (i.e., measurable fre- quency) and are associated with specific letter names (c, d, e, etc.), solfège syllables (do, re, mi, etc.), and notes (i.e., the specific graphic placement of a symbol on a music stave). one might ask, then, whether the mental representation of music notation (which seems to involve the engagement of kinesthetic-like covert exci- tation of the vocal folds and cued manual motor imagery) is biased by higher order tonological resources. in other words, we ask to what extent the effects found in experiments and are exclusive to musicians who rehearse and rely on music notation in a tonal vernacular, or rather whether the findings reported above reflect broader perceptual cognitive mechanisms that are recruited when reading music notation—regardless of instrument or notational system. this question led to experiment . experiment in the final experiment, we focused on professional drummers who read drum-kit notation. the standard graphic representation of music (i.e., music notation) that has been in place for over years is known as the orthochronic system (os; sloboda, ). os is generic enough to accommodate a wide range of music instruments of assorted pitch ranges and performance methods. on the one hand, os implements a universal set of symbols to indicate performance commands (such as loudness and phrasing); on the other hand, os allows for an alternative set of instrument-specific symbols necessary for performance (such as fingerings, pedaling, blowing, and plucking). nevertheless, there is one distinctive and peculiar variation of os used regularly among music performers— that is, music notation for the modern drum kit. the drum kit is made up of a set of – drums and – cymbals, variegated by size (diameter, depth, and weight) to produce a range of sonorities and relative pitches. the kit is performed by one player in a seated position, using both upper and lower limbs; hands play with drumsticks (also beaters, mallets, and wire brushes), while the feet employ pedals. the drum kit is part of most ensembles performing popular music styles, including country and western, blues and jazz, pop and rock, ballads, polkas and marches, and broadway theatre shows. drum-kit notation uses a music stave, employs similar rhythmic relations between notes and groups of notes, and shares many conventions of os, such as meter values and dynamic markings. however, there are two major differences that distin- guish drum-kit notation from os: (a) drum-kit notation uses var- ious note heads to indicate performance sonority; and (b) the five-horizontal line grid is not indicative of pitch values (inasmuch as to reference placement of fixed-pitch notes such as c, d, and e) but rather designates location of attack (the explicit drum or cymbal to be played), performance timbre (a head or rim shot, open or closed hi-hat), and body-limb part involvement (right or left hand or left or right foot). all of these above are positioned on the grid vertically, from the bottom-most space representing the relatively lowest pitched drum and lower limbs, to the topmost space representing the relatively highest pitched cymbal and higher limbs (see figure ). in experiment , we used a sample of professional drummers reading drum-kit notation in order to further examine the mental representation of music notation. although we expected to find that drummers rely on motor processes including imagery during silent reading, on the basis of the findings of experiments and we also expected to find some evidence of kinesthetic phonatory involvement— despite the fact that the drum kit does not engage higher order tonological resources. method participants. the drummers participating in the study were recruited and screened by the drum specialists at the klei zemer yamaha music store in tel aviv, israel. initially, drummers were referred and tested, but a full data set was obtained from only . of these, ( %) passed the prerequisite threshold inclusion figure . drum-kit notation key. from fifty ways to love your drumming (p. ), by r. holan, , kfar saba, israel: or-tav publications. copyright by or-tav publications. used with kind permission of rony holan and or-tav music publications. brodsky, kessler, rubinstein, ginsborg, and henik criterion; participant was dropped from the final data set because of exceptionally high scores on all performance tasks, apparently resulting from his self-reported overfamiliarity with the stimuli because of their commercial availability. the final sample (n � ) was composed of male drummers with high school diplomas; had completed a formal artist’s certificate. the mean age of the sample was years (sd � . , range � – ), and participants had an average of years (sd � . , range � – ) of experience playing the drum kit, of which an average of years (sd � . , range � – ) were within the framework of formal lessons, from the average age of (sd � . , range � – ). further, more than half ( %) had participated in formal music theory or ear training instruction (at private studios, music high schools, and music colleges), but these programs were extremely short-term (m � . years, sd � . , range � – ). only drummer claimed to possess absolute perfect pitch. the majority were right-handed ( %) and right-footed ( %) dominant drum- mers of rock ( %) and world ( %) music genres. using a -point likert scale ( � not at all, � highly proficient), the drummers reported a medium to high level of confidence in their abilities to read new unseen drum-kit notation (m � . , sd � . ), to “hear” the printed page (m � . , sd � . ), to remember their part after a one-time exposure (m � . , sd � . ), and to analyze the music while reading or listening to it (m � . , sd � . ). finally, the reported learning strategy employed when approaching a new piece was divided between listening to audio recordings ( %) and silently reading through the notated drum part ( %); only drummer reported playing through the piece. stimuli. forty-eight drum-kit rhythms (often referred to as “groove tracks”) were taken from holan ( ; see figure ). the stimuli reflect generic patterns associated with particular stylized dance rhythms; they do not represent the rhythmic frames of an individual melody or of well-known music pieces. hence, al- though most drummers have an elementary familiarity with such beats, the exact exemplars employed here were not known to them. further, it should be pointed out that these stimuli were exclusively rhythmic in character; they were not formatted into embellished phrases (ems) as were the melodic themes used in experiments and . the grooves were rock, funk, and country beats (n � ); latin beats (n � ); brazilian beats (n � ); jazz beats (n � ); middle eastern beats (n � ); and dance beats (n � ). each target groove in the form of a notated score (see figure a) and corresponding audio track was matched to another rhythm from the pool as a lure groove (see figure b). the criteria used in choosing the lures were thematic or visual similarities in contour, texture, rhythmic pattern, phrasing, meter, and music style. the scores were either four or eight bars long (each repeated twice for a total of – measures in length), and the audio tracks were roughly s (sd � . s, range � – s) long. the items were randomly assigned to one of four blocks (one block per experimental condition), each controlled for an equal number of targets and lures. all audio tracks (ripped from the accompanying cd formatted as -bit wave files) were cropped with the sound- forge xp . (realnetworks) audio-editing package and were stan- dardized for volume (i.e., smoothed or enhanced where necessary). the graphic notation, as supplied by the publisher, was formatted as -bit picture files. figure . groove tracks. a: rock beat. b: funk rock beat. from fifty ways to love your drumming (pp. , ), by r. holan, , kfar saba, israel: or-tav publications. copyright by or-tav publications. used with kind permission of rony holan and or-tav music publications. mental representation of music notation the pretest bc task, apparatus (including collection of audio and emg output), design and test presentation, and procedure were the same as in experiment , but with three adjustments. first, a fourth condition was added to the previous three-condition (nr-rd-pi) format: virtual drumming (vd) consisted of a virtual music performance on an imaginary drum kit and involved overt motions of both arms and legs but without sound production. annett ( ) referred to this variety of imaginary action as “voluntary manipulation of an imaginary object” (p. ). sec- ond, taking into account a lower level of mental effort required to decode the groove figures compared with the ems used in exper- iments and , we halved the allotted music notation reading time per item from s to s. third, although the location of testing was somewhat isolated, it was still within the confines of a commercial setting (i.e., a music store). therefore, akg k studio (akg acoustics) circumaural closed-back professional headphones were used. this fixed-field exposure format resulted in the subsequent use of a rhythm watch rw (tama) to supply the concurrent rhythmic distraction stimuli for the rd condition and a samson q (samson audio) neodymium hyper- cardioid vocal microphone to supply the phonatory interference stimuli for the pi condition. the tama rw is essentially a digital metronome with additional features such as a “tap-in” capability; this function served as the means for the experimenter to input (via percussive tapping on a small rubber pad) the irrel- evant cross-rhythms required by the rd condition. during the pi condition, the participant used the q vocal microphone to sing the required interfering folk song. both of these devices were chan- neled to the headphones through an s � amp (samson audio) five-channel mini headphone amplifier linked to an s � mix (sam- son audio) five-channel mini-mixer; the overall output volume was adjusted per participant. results for each participant in each music-reading condition (nr, vd, rd, pi), the responses were analyzed for pc, hits, fas, d�, and rts. as can be seen in table , across the conditions there was a general decreasing level of pc, a decrease in percentage of hits with an increase in percentage of fas and hence a decrease in level of d�, as well as an increasing level of rts. we note that the scores indicate slightly better performances for the drummers in the rd condition (i.e., higher hits and hence higher d� scores); although the reasons for such effects remain to be seen, we might assume that the tapping task may have facilitated in some visuospatial processing, as explained earlier (see aleman & wout, ). taken together, these results seem to indicate an escalating level of impairment in the sequenced order nr-vd-rd-pi. each outcome variable with music reading condition as a within-subjects variable was entered into a repeated measures anova. there was a significant effect of condition for rts, f( , ) � . , mse � . , �p � . , p � . ; no effects for pc, hits, fas, or d� surfaced. as can be seen in table , a comparison analysis for rts showed that effects were due to significant differences between music reading under pi versus nondistracted music reading as well as versus music reading with simultaneous vd. in general, these findings indicate a more serious level of pi effects, as seen in longer rts, in comparison to the other condi- tions (nr, vd, rd). finally, audio and emg output of correct responses for each participant in each condition was calculated for all segments involving music reading; measurements taken during the pretest control task (bc) representing baseline-level data were also cal- culated (see table ). the data for each participant with condition (baseline and the four music-reading conditions) as a within-subjects variable were entered into a repeated measures anova. there were significant effects of condition for audio output, f( , ) � . , mse � . , �p � . , p � . ; as well as for emg output, f( , ) � . , mse � . , �p � . , p � . . as can be seen in table , a comparison analysis for audio data found no significant differences between the silent-reading conditions, but did show significant differences when comparing all three silent-reading conditions with the vocal condition. further, the analysis of audio data found no significant differences between the bc tasks and either silent-reading condition, but did show significant differences between the control tasks and the vocal condition. in addition, comparison analysis of emg data showed no significant differ- ences between the silent-reading conditions, but did reveal signif- icant differences when comparing the two silent-reading condi- tions with the vocal condition. it should be pointed out that finding no significant difference between music-reading with vd (consid- ered a silent-reading condition) and music reading under pi is especially important as this result indicates the subvocal nature of virtual performance (i.e., mental rehearsal). the analysis of emg data also showed significant differences between the bc tasks and all four music-reading conditions. this latter finding is indicative table experiment : descriptive statistics of behavioral measures by sight reading condition and contrasts between sight reading conditions for behavioral measures condition % pc % hits % fas d� median rts (s) m sd m sd m sd m sd m sd nr . . . . . . . . . . vd . . . . . . . . . . rd . . . . . . . . . . pi . . . . . . . . . . note. for rts, pi vs. nr, f( , ) � . , mse � . , �p � . , p � . ; pi vs. vd, f( , ) � . , mse � . , �p � . , p � . . pc � percentage correct; fa � false alarm; rt � response time; nr � nondistracted reading; vd � virtual drumming; rd � rhythmic distraction; pi � phonatory interference. brodsky, kessler, rubinstein, ginsborg, and henik of the fact that phonatory involvement reaches levels of involve- ment during the reading of music notation for the drum kit that are significantly higher than those demonstrated during silent lan- guage text reading or mathematical computation. discussion drum-kit musicians are often the butt of other players’ mockery, even within the popular music genre. clearly, one reason for such harassment is that drummers undergo a unique regime of training, which generally involves years of practice but fewer average years of formal lessons than other musicians undertake. in addition, drummers most often learn to play the drum kit in private studios and institutes that are not accredited to offer academic degrees and that implement programs of study targeting the development of intricate motor skills, while subjects related to general music theory, structural harmony, and ear-training procedures are for the most part absent. furthermore, drum-kit performance requires a distinct set of commands providing instructions for operating four limbs, and these use a unique array of symbols and a notation system that is unfamiliar to players of fixed-pitch tonal instru- ments. subsequently, the reality of the situation is that drummers do in fact read (and perhaps speak) a vernacular that is foreign to most other players, and hence, unfortunately, they are often re- garded as deficient musicians. only a few influential drummers have been recognized for their deep understanding of music theory or for their performance skills on a second tonal instrument. accordingly, spagnardi ( ) mentions jack dejohnette and philly jo jones (jazz piano), elvin jones (jazz guitar), joe morello (classical violin), max roach (theory and harmony), louie bellson and tony williams (composing and arranging), and phil collins (songwriting). therefore, we feel that a highly pertinent finding of experiment is that % of the professional drummers (i.e., the proportion of those meeting the inclusion criterion) not only proved to be proficient drum-kit music readers, but demonstrated highly developed cognitive processing skills, including the ability to generate music imagery from the printed page. the results of experiment verified that the drummers were proficient in task performance during all music-reading conditions but also that they were slightly less capable of rejecting lures in both rd–pi conditions than in the nr–vd conditions and were worse at matching targets in the pi condition. moreover, the pi condition seriously interfered with music imagery, as shown by statistically significantly increased rts. this is in line with our previously reported findings (brodsky et al., ). further, this study found that the vd condition—reading notation with concur- rent overt motions as though performing on a drum kit— did in fact hamper drummers to much the same extent as the rd condition, although not in quite the same way— qualitatively speaking. that is, whereas the rd condition facilitated participants’ ability to choose correct targets (hits) but hindered their ability to correctly reject lures (fas), by contrast the vd condition facilitated partic- ipants’ ability to correctly reject lures (fas) but hindered their ability to choose correct targets (hits). such differences, akin to the results of experiment , support the notion that overt performance movements compensate for the cognitive disruption supplied by concurrent tapping with irrelevant rhythmic distraction. therefore, it would appear that the combination of rd plus virtual music performance (as implemented in experiment ) offsets the effects of rd, allowing for results that are similar to those obtained in the nondistracted normal music-reading condition. the results of experiment include interesting physiological findings that are similar to the findings of experiment . that is, the audio and emg output levels of all three silent-reading con- ditions (nr, vd, and rd) were not statistically significantly different from each other; yet, as expected, all of them were statistically significantly lower than in the vocal condition (pi). further, in all three silent music-reading conditions, vfa levels were higher than those seen in the combined bc control tasks (i.e., sitting quietly, language text reading, and mathematical computa- tion). however, we view the most important finding of experiment to be its demonstration of reliance on phonatory resources among drummers. most musicians, including drummers themselves, would tend to view the drum kit as an instrument essentially based on manual and podalic motor skills. yet anecdotal evidence points to the fact that all drummers learn their instrument primarily via the repetition of vocal patterns and verbal cues representing the table experiment : descriptive statistics of audio and emg output by sight reading condition condition audio (�v) emg (�v) m sd m sd bc . . . . nr . . . . vd . . . . rd . . . . pi . . . . note. emg � electromyography; bc � baseline control; nr � nondis- tracted reading; vd � virtual drumming; rd � rhythmic distraction; pi � phonatory interference. table experiment : contrasts between sight reading conditions for audio and emg output conditions f( , ) mse �p p audio output nr vs. pi . . . �. vd vs. pi . . . �. rd vs. pi . . . �. bc vs. pi . . . �. emg output nr vs. pi . . . �. rd vs. pi . . . �. vd vs. pi . . . . bc vs. nr . . . �. bc vs. vd . . . . bc vs. rd . . . �. bc vs. pi . . . �. note. nr � nondistracted reading; pi � phonatory interference; vd � virtual drumming; rd � rhythmic distraction; bc � baseline control; emg � electromyography. mental representation of music notation anticipated sound bites of motor performance. moreover, all drum- mers are continuously exposed to basic units of notation via rhythmic patterns presented phonetically; even the most complex figures are analyzed through articulatory channels. hence, it is quite probable that the aural reliance on kinesthetic phonatory and manual–podalic motor processing during subvocalization is devel- oped among drummers to an even higher extent than in other instrumentalists. therefore, we view the current results as provid- ing empirical evidence for the impression that drummers internal- ize their performance as a phonatory–motor image and that such a representation is easily cued when drummers view the relevant graphic drum-kit notation. nonetheless, within the framework of the study, experiment can be seen as confirmation of the cog- nitive mechanisms that appear to be recruited when reading music notation—regardless of instrument or notational system. general discussion the current study explored the notion that reading music nota- tion could activate or generate a corresponding mental image. the idea that such a skill exists has been around for over years, but as yet, no valid empirical demonstration of this expertise has been reported, nor have previous efforts been able to target the cognitive processes involved. the current study refined the em task in conjunction with a distraction paradigm, as a method of assessing and demonstrating notational audiation. the original study (brod- sky et al., ) was replicated with two samples of highly trained classical-music players, and then a group of professional jazz-rock drummers confirmed the related conceptual underpinnings. in gen- eral, the study found no cultural biases of the music stimuli employed nor of the experimental task itself. that is, no difference of task performance was found between the samples recruited in israel (using hebrew directions and folk song) and the samples recruited in britain (using english directions and folk song). fur- ther, the study found no demonstrable significant advantages for musicians of a particular gender or age range, nor were superior performances seen for participants who (by self-report) possessed absolute perfect pitch. finally, music literacy was ruled out as a contributing factor in the generation of music imagery from nota- tion as there were no effects or interactions for stimulus type (i.e., well-known, newly composed, or hybrid stimuli). that is, the findings show that a proficient music reader is just as proficient even when reading newly composed, previously unseen notation. thus far, the only descriptive predictor of notational audition skill that surfaced was the self-reported initial strategy used by musi- cians when learning new music: % of those musicians who could demonstrate notational audiation skill reported that they first silently read through the piece before playing it (whereas % play through the piece, and % listen to a recording). drost, rieger, brass, gunter, and prinz ( ) claimed that for musicians, notes are usually directly associated with playing an instrument. accordingly, “music-reading already involves sensory-motor translation processes of notes into adequate re- sponses” (p. ). they identified this phenomenon as music- learning coupling, which takes place in two stages: first, associ- ations between action codes and effect codes are established, and then, simply by imagining a desired effect, the associated action takes place. this ideomotor view of music skills suggests that highly trained expert musicians must only imagine or anticipate a music sequence, and an associated sequence of related actions will subsequently be automatically activated—there is no more need of direct conscious control of movements. although such a concep- tion might explain the automaticity of music performance, one might inquire whether the same is true about music reading. drost et al. further surmised that the ability to generate music imagery from graphic notation is no more than associative learning cou- pling in which mental representations are activated involuntarily. yet they offered no further insights into the nature of the repre- sentation. it is important to ask how the human brain represents music information. for example, if mental representations for music are defined as “hypothetical entities that guide our processing of music” (schröger, , p. ), then it would be clear that how we perceive, understand, and appreciate music is determined not by the nature of the input but by what we do with it. for example, halpern and zatorre ( ) concluded that the sma is activated in the generation of auditory imagery because of its contribution to the organization of the motor codes; this would imply a close relationship between auditory and motor memory systems. hal- pern and zatorre’s study was based on earlier research by smith et al. ( ), who distinguished between the inner ear and the inner voice on the basis of evidence that the phonological loop is subdivided into two constituents. accordingly, the activation of the sma during music imagery may actually imply a “singing to oneself” strategy during auditory imagery tasks, reflecting motor planning associated with subvocal singing or humming during the generation process. whereas the roles of inner ear and inner voice seem to be difficult to disentangle behaviorally, functional neuroimaging studies can potentially shed more light on the issue. both smith et al. ( ) and aleman and wout ( ) proposed that whereas the inner ear would be mediated by temporal areas such as superior temporal gyri, the inner voice would be mediated by structures involving articulation, including the sma and left inferior frontal cortex, broca’s area, the superior parietal lobe, and the superior temporal sulcus—all in the left hemisphere. yet, in later studies, aleman and wout ( ) found contradicting evidence showing that articulatory suppression interfered with processes mediated by broca’s area, whereas finger tapping interfered with processes mediated by the sma and superior parietal lobe— both considered areas involved in phonological decoding (thought to be the seat of the inner ear). finally, in an investigation of mental rehearsal (which is a highly refined form of music imagery representing covert music performance), langheim et al. ( ) found involve- ment of cortical pathways recruited for the integration of auditory information with the temporal- and pitch-related aspects of the music rehearsal itself. they suggested that this network functions independently of primary sensorimotor and auditory cortices, as a coordinating agent for the complex spatial and timing components of music performance. most specifically, langheim et al. found involvement of several pathways: the right superior parietal lobule in the spatial aspects of motor and music pitch representation, the bilateral lateral cerebellum in music and motor timing, and the right inferior gyrus in integrating the motor and music-auditory maps necessary (perhaps via premotor and supplementary motor planning areas) for playing an instrument. we feel that the mental representation of music information cannot be understood by mapping the neurocognitive architecture brodsky, kessler, rubinstein, ginsborg, and henik of music knowledge in isolation, apart from empirically valid behavioral measures. that is, we believe that the juxtaposition of neuropsychological approaches and brain imaging tools with be- havioral measures from experimental psychology and psy- choacoustics is the only way forward in investigating how music is represented in the human brain and mind. therefore, we consider the current exploration of notational audiation an appropriate step toward understanding the musical mind and, based on the results reported above, suggest that the methodological archetype with which to assess such covert processes is the em task. in a recent study, zatorre and halpern ( ) raised the question as to whether there is evidence that auditory and motor imagery are integrated in the brain. we feel that the current findings provide a preliminary answer. we designed our study to uncover the kinesthetic-like phonatory-linked processes used during notational audiation. we exploited smith et al.’s ( ) assumption that imagery tasks requiring participants to make judgments about auditory stimuli currently not present must employ an inner-ear/ inner-voice partnership as a platform for the necessary processes and judgments to take place. accordingly, participants would use a strategy whereby they produced a subvocal repetition (inner voice) and listen to themselves (inner ear) in order to interpret and/or judge the auditory or phonological stream. we thus devel- oped the em task. then we considered smith et al.’s second assumption, that when an empirical task requires analytic judg- ments or the comparison of novel melodic fragments, a reliance on the phonological loop is predicted, and consequently, performance deficits under articulatory suppression can be expected. we there- fore used a distraction paradigm. nonetheless, after refining the ems, the results of experiment could not demonstrate that imagery generated from the reading of music notation was exclu- sively phonatory in nature. in fact, the behavioral results showed that effects of the pi condition were not significantly different from effects of the rd condition. however, the results of experiment showed that movement representations of music performance could facilitate task perfor- mance and even overcompensate for the specific interference- inducing errors during rd. from this we might infer two assump- tions: (a) there is a profound reliance on kinesthetic phonatory and manual motor processing during subvocalization (which is the seat of music imagery generated by the inner voice when one reads music notation); and (b) the mental representation of music nota- tion entails a dual-route stratagem (i.e., the generation of aural– oral subvocalization perceived as the internal kinesthetic image of the inner voice and aural–motor impressions perceived as the internal kinesthetic image of music performance). it is of interest to note that we are not the first to raise such possibilities. for example, in her extensive review of working memory, wilson ( ) highlighted the fact that many central cognitive abilities seem to depend on perceptual and motor processes. accordingly, off-line embodied cognition involves sensorimotor processes that run covertly to assist with the representation and manipulation of information in the absence of task-relevant input. however, in reference to music notation, future research is needed to probe further into these processes. nevertheless, we partially confirmed these assumptions in experiment by examining the music read- ing of drum-kit notation—the drum kit being an instrument as- sumed more often than not to require exclusive motor action as fixed-pitch tonal features are not present. the results of experi- ment show an equal reliance on both phonatory and motor resources among drummers. it is thus our opinion that the results provide evidence that clearly indicates that auditory and motor imagery are integrated in the brain. notational audiation skill, then, is the engagement of kinesthetic-like covert excitation of the vocal folds with concurrently cued motor imagery. finally, we would like to consider the idea that silent reading of music notation is essentially an issue highlighting cross-modal encoding of a fundamentally unisensory input. clearly, most ev- eryday people with naive music experience, as well as all those with formal music training, see the spatial layout on the staff of the auditory array. however, our study plainly shows that only a third of all highly trained expert musicians are proficient enough to hear the temporal, tonal, and harmonic structure of the portrayed visual changes. guttman, gilroy, and blake ( ) claimed that “oblig- atory cross-modal encoding may be one type of sensory interaction that, though often overlooked, plays a role in shaping people’s perceived reality” (p. ). in their nonmusic-based study explor- ing how people hear what their eyes see, they found that the human cognitive system is more than capable of encoding visual rhythm in an essentially auditory manner. however, concerning a more music-specific context, they presumed that such experiences should rather be termed cross-modal recoding. that is, they pro- posed that auditory imagery by music notation develops only after explicit learning, effortful processing, and considerable practice take place. according to guttman et al., the generation of kines- thetic phonatory and manual motor imagery during music reading is exclusively strategic—not automatic or obligatory. although it was not within the objectives of the present study to explore the above issue, our impression from the current results is similar to the assumption made by drost et al. 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(oct., ), pp. - published by: sage publications, inc. on behalf of menc: the national association for music education stable url: http://www.jstor.org/stable/ . accessed: / / : your use of the jstor archive indicates your acceptance of the terms & conditions of use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . jstor is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. we use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. for more information about jstor, please contact support@jstor.org. . sage publications, inc. and menc: the national association for music education are collaborating with jstor to digitize, preserve and extend access to journal of research in music education. http://www.jstor.org this content downloaded from . . . on mon, nov : : pm all use subject to jstor terms and conditions http://www.jstor.org/action/showpublisher?publishercode=sage http://www.jstor.org/action/showpublisher?publishercode=menc http://www.jstor.org/stable/ ?origin=jstor-pdf http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp development and validation of a rating scale for wind jazz improvisation performance journal of research in music education ( ) - © mengtne national association for music education reprints and permission: http://www .sagepub.com/journalspermissions.nav doi: i o.i / http://jrme.sagepub.com jjj music s n n education de re kt. smith abstract the purpose of this study was to construct and validate a rating scale for collegiate wind jazz improvisation performance. the -item wind jazz improvisation evaluation scale (wjies) was constructed and refined through a facet-rational approach to scale development. five wind jazz students and one professional jazz educator were asked to record two improvisations accompanied by an aebersold play-along compact disc. sixty-three adjudicators evaluated the improvisations using the wjies and the instrumental jazz improvisation evaluation measure. reliability was good, with alpha values ranging from . to . . construct validity for the wjies was confirmed through the analysis of a multitrait-multimethod matrix.the results of this study indicate that the facet-rational approach is an effective method of developing a rating scale for collegiate wind jazz improvisation performance. keywords improvisation, jazz pedagogy, jazz performance, music rating scale with its origins dating back to the turn of the th century, jazz has progressed from an american music curiosity to an international phenomenon. this popularity undoubtedly has contributed to the increase in jazz instruction within schools and colleges. over recent years, jazz as an academic discipline has grown in volume and stature. indeed, jazz studies now play a significant role in a number of music pro- grams within the higher education sector (whyton, ). improvisation can be 'lincoln university of missouri, jefferson city, mo, usa corresponding author: derek t. smith, stone mountain parkway, columbia, mo usa e-mail: smithd i @lincolnu.edu this content downloaded from . . . on mon, nov : : pm all use subject to jstor terms and conditions http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp journal of research in music education ( ) found in every music style and culture, but in jazz, it is the predominant and driving force (kynaston & ricci, ). jazz has brought about a renaissance in improvisa- tion, providing a style conducive to spontaneous creation (coker, ). in january , the national committee for standards in the arts announced america's first national voluntary standards for k- education in the arts (menc, ). standard three, improvising melodies, variations, and accompaniments, specifically advo- cates instruction in improvisation as part of a holistic music curriculum. however, the aggregate of musicians, educators, and researchers has yet to agree upon what elements constitute the core of jazz improvisation. many believe that spontaneous creation lies at the heart of the improvisational process (coker, casale, campbell, & greene, ; gridley, ). others, such as berliner ( ), dispute the term spontaneous. he stated, "performance without previous preparation is fun- damentally misleading. there is, in fact, a lifetime of preparation and knowledge behind every idea that an improviser performs" (p. ). coker ( ) identified five factors that chiefly determine the outcome of a jazz player's improvisation: intuition, intellect, emotion, sense of pitch, and habit. kenny and gellrich ( ) suggested that "two key constraints of improvisation - knowledge bases and referents - work together to generate new music structures" (p. ). although music researchers have attempted earnestly to unravel the process of jazz improvisation, research on the subject continues to be sparse in comparison to other areas of music education. the current literature related to jazz improvisation, although limited, is diverse. in order to better understand the theoretical constructs that generate improvisation, an attempt has been made to model its salient features (kenny & gellrich, ). pressing ( ) presented a highly developed cognitive model in which improvisa- tion was construed as an ordered sequence of event clusters. through his computer-based model, johnson-laird ( ) suggested that improvisational cre- ativity should be computable and that only three sorts of algorithms can be creative. the essence of this theoretical model is the internalization (long-term memory) and automation (readily accessible through practice and performance) of the knowledge base (previously learned material) (kenny & gellrich, ). in addition to defining the theoretical process of improvisation, researchers have sought to understand how certain factors and instructional methodologies influence improvisation achievement. several conclusions can be drawn from the collective findings. the results of these studies indicated that it is possible to create an objective instrumental measure of improvisation (burnsed, ; may, ). various instructional sequences have been shown to be effective methods of teaching improvisation, including nontechnical, aural, and visual approaches (aitken, ; bash, ; burnsed, ; damron, ; hores, ). variables such as self-evaluation of improvisation skill and aural imitation were found to be good predictors of jazz improvisation achievement (greennagel, ; may, ). in addition to effectively improving improvisation skill, instructional sequences related to improvisation may also result in improved attitudes toward improvisation and the particular instruction method utilized (berard, ). this content downloaded from . . . on mon, nov : : pm all use subject to jstor terms and conditions http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp smith instruction in any music performance medium invariably calls for a valid and reli- able method of evaluation (bergee, ). jazz improvisation can be manifested in a virtually infinite number of acceptable musical outcomes. as a result, jazz improvi- sation evaluation presents additional reliability challenges. however, despite the potential for added subjectivity, several researchers have succeeded in developing reliable and valid improvisation measurements (horowitz, ; may, ; mcpherson, ; pfenninger, ). if reliable and valid instrumental jazz improvi- sation measures presently exist, is it truly necessary to construct additional rating scales? although the existing measures have proved to be reliable and valid, there remains an opportunity for improvement, thus potentially producing an evaluation that more closely reflects the construct of wind jazz improvisation. the measures developed by may ( ) and mcpherson ( ) both contain a total of seven items. these small item pools may only partly describe jazz improvisation performance, especially when compared to the -item scale created by pfenninger ( ) and the -item scale produced by horowitz ( ). pfenninger ( ) divided the improvisation construct into three distinct dimensions: (a) tonal, (b) rhythm, and (c) expression. a separate scale was developed to evaluate each of the three dimensions. although both the tonal and rhythm scales proved to be reliable measures, the expression scale was shown to be unreliable. because horowitz's jazz guitar improvisation rating scale (jgirs; horowitz, ) includes a lack of inherently "guitaristic" items, he suggested further research to determine the suitability of the jgirs for use with certain instruments. he raised several questions related to the scale's general usabil- ity. could one scale be used for all instruments, or should different scales be developed using some, but not all, common items (horowitz, )? numerous music performance measures have been developed using the facet- factorial approach to scale construction outlined by butt and fiske ( ). this method has proved to be an effective means of creating reliable and valid perfor- mance measures (abeles, ; bergee, ; dcamp, ; jones, ; pazitka-munroe, ; zdzinski, ). a few reliable jazz improvisation scales also have been constructed using this technique (horowitz, ; may, ). however, research exploring the viability of using the facet-rational approach to scale develop- ment, discussed by butt and fiske ( ), remains limited. in addition, the use of a multitrait-multimethod (mtmm) matrix outlined by campbell and fiske ( ) to assess the construct validity of various music performance measures has been sparse. despite limited use in the context of music performance evaluation, the mtmm matrix constitutes one of the most advanced means for assessing construct validity (campbell & fiske, ). historically, learning to improvise in the genre of jazz encompassed an individual exploratory process of listening and imitation. evaluation of improvisation was limited essentially to either praise or admonition by an audience or by one's peers. this methodology invariably raises issues of reliability and validity. consequentially, the inclusion of jazz studies within the structured environment of the school this content downloaded from . . . on mon, nov : : pm all use subject to jstor terms and conditions http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp journal of research in music education ( ) curriculum demands that the methods utilized to evaluate jazz improvisation be both valid and reliable. students must be provided with appropriate feedback in order to improve performance. likewise, jazz educators must employ measurement tools that adequately measure the intended phenomenon in order to provide appropriate instruction. if music curricula are to offer instruction in jazz, methods of evaluating improvisation must be developed that more accurately account for all the factors that define improvisation. accordingly, the purpose of this study was to develop a valid and reliable rating scale designed to evaluate the improvisation ability of collegiate wind instrumentalists. the study also was intended to examine the viability of the facet-rational approach to scale development, as well as the feasibility of utilizing a mtmm matrix to assess validity. method measure development e-mail solicitations were sent out to a variety of jazz musicians, educators, and advanced jazz students. each was asked to write down descriptors for either a good or poor wind instrumental improvisation. by including a variety of jazz musicians at varying stages of development in the process, a diverse, comprehensive item pool was generated. additional descriptors were produced by the examination and analy- sis of interviews of jazz wind instrumentalists published in downbeat, jazzed, the jazz educators journal, and other jazz-related publications including saxophone journal and jazziz. pedagogical materials related to the teaching of jazz improvisa- tion also were reviewed and analyzed for additional improvisation descriptors. this material existed in the form of books, guides, or audiovisual instructional aids. the final source for improvisation descriptors came from the research literature. a few improvisation scales have been developed previously that exhibited acceptable levels of both reliability and validity (horowitz, ; may, ; mcpherson, ; pfenninger, ). relevant items were borrowed from these measures and added to the initial item pool. once all of the items were collected, the pool was examined for clarity and redun- dancy. redundant items were combined or eliminated. some items were reworded in order to enhance clarity, while others were discarded altogether because of ambigu- ity. each of the items was placed into one of item groupings by the researcher (for additional details, see d. smith, ). initially, group placement of each item was based on three main considerations: a review of jazz related literature, perfor- mance measurement research, and the intuition of the researcher. these groupings represented distinct evaluation areas. the items within each group were combined and/or modified in order to produce one concise descriptor for each of the group- ings. the resulting item pool was reviewed by a panel of jazz educators who provided feedback related to the clearness, appropriateness, and conciseness of the items. at the conclusion of the refinement process, remaining items randomly were phrased this content downloaded from . . . on mon, nov : : pm all use subject to jstor terms and conditions http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp smith [ positively and negatively to avoid acquiescence bias (spector, ). each item was then paired with a -point likert-type scale. responses included disagree strongly, disagree moderately, disagree slightly, neither agree nor disagree, agree slightly, agree moderately, and agree strongly. although -point scales have been shown to provide an adequate number of response categories (abeles, ; bergee, ; horowitz, ; zdzinski, ), i chose to use a -point scale after a review of the instrumental jazz improvisation evaluation measure created by may ( ). i hoped that the addition of more precise degrees of agreement and/or disagreement would produce a more accurate measurement scale capable of successfully discriminating between performances of similar quality. prior to finalizing the wind jazz improvisation evaluation scale (wjies), the measure was piloted by two faculty members at a large midwestern university. both adjudicators possessed extensive jazz experience, one as a distinguished performer and the other as a performer/educator. the judges were given a packet containing two copies of the wjies and a compact disc recording of two improvised jazz solos. the adjudicators were asked to evaluate each solo using the wjies and to provide feedback related to its usability. feedback was positive. items were seen to be con- cise, easy to understand, and relevant. one pilot adjudicator also commented on the need to read each item carefully in order to ascertain whether or not the item was worded negatively or positively. based on the resulting feedback provided by both evaluators, the wording of one of the items was modified slightly and the -item wjies was then finalized. this method of scale development is consistent with procedures first discussed by butt and fiske ( ). they referred to this methodology as the facet-rational approach to scale development. a facet-rational approach involves the test construc- tor developing and/or choosing items based on personal rationale or preconceived ideas related to a particular subject. this method also assumes that the construct in question is composed of various facets. a facet-rational approach differs from a facet-factorial approach in that factor analysis is not used initially to determine the item pool. factor analysis may then be employed as a method of content validation. participants instrumentalists. five wind jazz students and one professional jazz educator were asked to record two improvisations. five of the six performers self-described their improvisation ability as either moderate or advanced. four of the six performers reported from to years of piano experience. in addition, four of the six partici- pants also reported to hours of jazz listening per week, with the remaining two reporting listening for or more hours. collegiate improvisers consisted of three juniors, one senior, and one graduate student. the professional musician (trombon- ist) provided improvisations at a high level of sophistication. the instrumentalists were chosen purposively based on their improvisation ability in an attempt to pro- vide the judges with a varied set of stimuli (two saxophonists, two trumpeters, and this content downloaded from . . . on mon, nov : : pm all use subject to jstor terms and conditions http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp journal of research in music education ( ) two trombonists). the improvisers were sorted based on improvisation ability into one of three descriptive categories: (a) intermediate, (b) advanced, or (c) sophisti- cated. i attempted to facilitate the creation of two stimuli from each category. the placement and determination of student improvisation ability was decided by the collaborative observations of the researcher and the jazz studies director at the uni- versity. decisions were based on past improvisation performances and/or successful completion of jazz improvisation course work. delineation was done in such a way as to create three groups of two. the intermediate category included a trombonist and a trumpeter. the advanced category included a trumpeter and an alto saxophonist. the sophisticated category included a tenor saxophonist and the professional trombonist. adjudication. according to procedures outlined by gorsuch ( ), the ideal ratio of adjudicator-to-scale items should be about to when utilizing factor analysis as part of the content validation process. therefore, the items on the wjies called for an adjudicator panel of about members. seventy-one adjudication packets were compiled and presented to potential evaluators. sixty-three of the adjudicator packets were returned, resulting in an adjudicator-to-scale ratio of . to . adjudicators consisted of university jazz students enrolled at a large midwestern university, college jazz students enrolled at a small rural university, and, various jazz educators and experienced jazz performers. a smaller adjudicator panel consisted of the most highly experienced jazz musicians among the original . three of these judges were jazz educators with to years of experience teaching and evaluating jazz improvisation. at least of the evaluators had worked as professional jazz musi- cians for at least years prior to returning to college. overall, the evaluators were selected to represent a variety of age groups, improvisational ability, and jazz instruc- tion experience. the intent was that the wjies could be utilized reliably by a wide spectrum of jazz educators, performers, and students. in order to generate global evaluation scores, an advanced jazz musician was asked to listen to the recorded improvised solos and rate them based on two traits, performance skills and creative development. this individual possessed years of experience performing instrumental wind jazz in both north american and south american venues. he was excluded purposely from the original adjudicator pool in order to be available to provide the global evaluations. the traits emerged as a result of factor analyzing the performances as measured by the wjies. a -point scale with being the high score was employed. consistent with the traditional rating schemes for adjudicated festivals, a -point scale was deemed appropriate based on the nature and purpose of the global evaluations (b. smith & barnes, ). the descriptive items of the wjies categorized under both performance skills and cre- ative development were read to the evaluator in order to provide a definitive explanation for the two traits. six of the improvised solos were chosen randomly and evaluated twice so that test-retest reliability coefficients for both traits could be calculated. this content downloaded from . . . on mon, nov : : pm all use subject to jstor terms and conditions http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp smith procedures development of the stimuli. the improvisations from the six participating per- formers were recorded digitally. each performer was asked to complete two tasks. the first consisted of an improvisation of two choruses of fast blues in bb (quarter note = bpm) performed with a jamey aebersold ( ) play-along recording. written chord changes were provided. the second improvisation task consisted of each player performing one chorus of benny golson's "killer joe" (quarter note = bpm), also accompanied by an aebersold ( ) play-along recording. one chorus of the bb blues accompaniment was played for each participant prior to the improvisation. the a section of the "killer joe" song-form also was played for each instrumentalist prior to the second improvisation task, and a lead sheet with chord changes was provided. some participants chose to play along with the recorded accompaniments prior to recording each task in order to further familiarize them- selves with the specific chord progressions. all improvisations were recorded using a sharp im-dr hs -bit minidisc recorder along with a sony ecm-ms stereo microphone. the accompaniment was played on a technics sl-pg com- pact disc player utilizing a set of paradigm performance series speakers. the recordings were made in a small, acoustically treated studio office. at the conclusion of each improvisation task, the recordings were played for each participant to deter- mine acceptability. if a performer judged an improvisation to be unacceptable, additional takes were recorded until an acceptable performance was produced. once the improvised solos were recorded successfully to minidisc, the stimuli were uploaded to computer via apple's garage band program and then burned to compact disc. in an effort to provide the best possible stimuli to the adjudicators, minor balance effects were added to each recording prior to burning the disc. the improvisations were arranged on each disc in order, according to my assessment of the performer's improvisation ability, from intermediate level through sophisticated. data collection. before evaluating the stimuli, each judge was asked to listen to two anchor examples representing a strong and a relatively weak performance on the bb blues task. each adjudicator was asked to read and adhere to specific instructions related to the anchors prior to evaluating the stimuli. the anchor recordings were provided so that each evaluator would have a reference point in order to judge each solo within the ability range of the samples. the researcher performed and recorded both examples. the first anchor example represented a relatively good solo based on a conscious attempt to address positively each of the items found on the wjies. if i used the wjies to self-evaluate anchor recording number , each of the items would score a or higher. likewise, the second example represented a relatively weak solo based on an attempt to address inadequately each performance category. the majority of the scores for this improvisation would fall on the lower end of the scale. at the conclusion of the recording process, the two anchor recordings also were evaluated by the researcher against the stimuli in order to ensure that both examples conformed to the range of skill exemplified by the improvisations. in the this content downloaded from . . . on mon, nov : : pm all use subject to jstor terms and conditions http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp journal of research in music education ( ) same way that you would not judge beginners with the same criteria as professionals, the raters were asked to concentrate on judging each solo within the range of skill illustrated by the two anchor recordings. adjudicators were given a packet containing one wjies as well as one instrumental jazz improvisation evaluation measure (ijiem; may, ) for each recorded solo. detailed instructions were provided by the "directions for evaluators" letter within each packet. the ijiem was included for validation purposes. it consists of seven items each paired with a -point likert-type scale. the seven items include technical facility, rhythm/time feel, melodic and rhythmic development, style, har- monic material, expressiveness, and creativity. along with the evaluation forms, a compact disc containing both the recorded improvisations and the anchor recordings was provided. the adjudicators were asked to evaluate the improvisations accord- ingly and not to discuss the scores until all forms were returned to the researcher. the completion time for the adjudicator packet was estimated at approximately min- utes. the majority of evaluators returned the completed packets within weeks. results the items that were retained for the wjies were selected from the perspective of a facet-rational theoretical framework first described by butt and fiske ( ). consistent with a facet-rational approach to scale construction, decisions to retain, combine, modify, or reject items were made based largely on input from accom- plished jazz musicians and the knowledge and expertise of the researcher. a majority ( %) of the items were adapted from descriptions of wind jazz improvisation writ- ten by knowledgeable jazz performers and educators. other items ( %) were modified from books and magazines related to jazz improvisation and items found in the jazz improvisation research literature (anderson, ; berliner, ; clarke, ; coker et al., ; hores, ; horowitz, ; hynes, ; may, ; murph, ; stamm, ). the final items of the wjies are found in table . butt and fiske's ( ) facet-rational approach calls for a grouping of items into subscales based on the researcher's a priori conceptions. hence, i initially grouped the items of the wjies into four broad areas: (a) technique/tone quality, (b) structure/ development, (c) rhythm/style, and (d) expression. the decision for this grouping was based on a combination of my assumptions related to the structure of wind jazz improvisation and a perusal of various music performance adjudication forms includ- ing both classical and jazz formats. the various evaluation methods reviewed seemed to support a four-area delineation of wind improvisation performance. i utilized the principle component analysis extraction method along with varimax rotation to factor analyze the solos. initial analyses suggested various solutions ranging from one to three factors. seven of the improvised solo evaluations produced factor solutions with three primary factors. improvisation produced a solution with a single factor. the improvisations also were examined via the kaiser-meyer-olkin this content downloaded from . . . on mon, nov : : pm all use subject to jstor terms and conditions http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp smith table i . wind jazz improvisation evaluation scale items . soloist demonstrates a knowledge of theory. . soloist plays with uncharacteristic tone quality. . soloist uses melodic motifs and/or sequences. . soloist plays with a lack of confidence. . soloist plays with appropriate time feel and/or rhythm. . soloist plays with good technical facility. . soloist expresses ideas with a lack of certainty. . soloist plays with poor intonation. . development of solo is logical. . soloist performs with emotional expression. . soloist plays with appropriate style. . soloist's performance lacks imagination and/or creativity. . solo lacks interaction and fails to dialog with accompaniment. . soloist effectively uses chromatic approach tones. procedure. results ranged from . to . , a strong indication of sampling ade- quacy (asmus, ). based on an examination of the scree plots and rotation matrices for each of the improvised solos, a two-factor structure was determined to be the best overall descriptor of collegiate wind jazz improvisation. this conclu- sion was reached based on the overall strength of the factor loadings for the three component initial analyses, and the distribution of items, especially those related to factor . analysis of the initial factor loadings specific to component seemed inconsistent at best. scree plots showed a leveling off of the curve between the second and third factors, further supporting the viability of a two-factor solution. i subsequently forced a two-factor solution for each of the improvised solos, all of which yielded logical item groupings. i named the two factors (a) performance skills and (b) creative development. the two factors changed place in amount of variability explained depending on the quality of the performances. for the intermediate perfor- mances, performance skills generally emerged as the first factor. when the performances were more sophisticated, creative development became factor in the analyses. table illustrates the two-factor groupings for the wjies. although the a priori structure was not supported by the factor analyses, a logical reconciliation of the resulting two-factor solution is possible. the majority of the items that make up the technique/tone quality and structure/development factors within the a priori structure emerged as elements of factor , performance skills. likewise, most of the items that constitute the rhythm/style and expression factors within the a priori structure loaded on factor , creative development. factor , per- formance skills, essentially represents items related to technique and music structure. factor , creative development, is made up of items specific to musical expressive- ness, creativity, and style. this content downloaded from . . . on mon, nov : : pm all use subject to jstor terms and conditions http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp journal of research in music education ( ) table . wind jazz improvisation evaluation scale as a two-factor structure i. performance skills . soloist demonstrates a knowledge of theory. . soloist uses melodic motifs and/or sequences. . soloist plays with a lack of confidence. . soloist plays with inappropriate time feel and/or rhythm. . soloist plays with good technical facility. . soloist plays with poor intonation. . development of solo is logical. ii. creative development . soloist plays with uncharacteristic tone quality. . soloist expresses ideas with a lack of certainty. . soloist performs with emotional expression. . soloist plays with appropriate style. . soloist's performance lacks imagination and/or creativity. . solo lacks interaction and fails to dialog with accompaniment. . soloist effectively uses chromatic approach tones. two adjudicator panels were employed for the reliability procedures conducted within the present study. a large panel of judges was composed primarily of stu- dents enrolled in two separate university jazz performance programs. the students possessed a wide variety of jazz performance, jazz education, and jazz instruction experience. a second, much smaller adjudicator panel consisted of the most highly experienced jazz musicians among the original . a variety of strategies was used to determine the reliability of the wjies. cronbach's alpha ranged from . to . , with of evaluations producing a coefficient score of . or better. these high reliability coefficients indicated a substantial level of internal stability in the wjies structure. adjudicator consistency was calculated by an application of the intraclass correlation coefficient and kendall's coefficient of concordance (w). the intra- class correlation coefficient measured the agreement of the judges within the set of items. intraclass correlation scores were comparable to the high alpha estimates, ranging from . to . . the more conservative ffwas calculated both for the panel of and for the smaller panel of . both procedures yielded mixed results. in reference to the panel of , coefficients ranged from . to . for the impro- visations. the panel of produced marginally better coefficient scores, ranging from . to . . the high coefficient alpha values produced by the wjies suggest that low interjudge reliability may owe to adjudicator unreliability rather than to struc- tural flaws within the wjies. the reliability statistics also indicated that the adjudicators more reliably evaluated the solos at the advanced and sophisticated levels. these outcomes suggest that adjudicators seem better able to agree on what constitutes skilled rather than developing improvisation performance. complete reli- ability statistics are reported in table . this content downloaded from . . . on mon, nov : : pm all use subject to jstor terms and conditions http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp smith table . reliability analyses for the instrumental jazz improvisation evaluation scale (ijiem) and the wind jazz improvisation evaluation scale (wjies) ijiem wjies improvisation a w a ic avg.-ic sd ic-single a,a w w . . ** . . . . . . . . * . . ** . . . . . . . * . ** . . ** . . . . . . . * . ** . . ** . . . . . . . * . ** . . ** . . . . . . . * . ** . . ** . . . . . . . * . ** . . ** . . . . . . . * . * . . ** . . . . . . . * . ** . . ** . . . . . . . * . ** . . ** . . . . . . . * . ** . . * . . . . . . . * . ** . . ** . . . . . . . * . ** note: a = cronbach's coefficient alpha; ic = intraclass correlation coefficient (n = ); avg.-ic = average intraclass correlation of six random extractions (average of runs); sd = standard deviation; ic-single = estimate of intraclass correlation assuming a single adjudicator; a, = guttman's lambda for lower bound reliability; w = kendall's coefficient of concordance (n = ); vv = kendall's coefficient of concordance with n = . a guttman proposed several measures that estimate the lower bounds for true reliability, that is, the reli- ability of the hypothesized population of adjudicators. in this study, i used the first estimate, which is the simplest and most conservative. *p<.o .**f><.oi. the mtmm matrix construct validity was determined by the analysis of a mtmm matrix encompassing three measurement methods (the ijiem, the wjies, and a global rating) and two performance traits (performance skills and creative development). the performance traits emerged as a result of factor analyzing the improvisation evaluations. the matrix represents an integrated multivariable platform by which information relative to convergent and discriminant validity is gathered and evaluated. with this proce- dure, assessments of two or more traits using two or more measurement methods are intercorrelated (bryant, ). campbell and fiske's ( ) approach produces four different types of correlations: (a) monotrait-monomethod, (b) heterotrait- monomethod, (c) monotrait-heteromethod, and (d) heterotrait-heteromethod. one form of construct validity found in mtmm designs specifically relates to convergent validity. convergent validity is the degree to which multiple measures of the same construct agree, or converge (campbell & fiske, ). valid measures of the same underlying concept should correlate highly. campbell and fiske ( ) proposed several criteria for the evaluation of validity within the mtmm matrix. the first of these criteria deals with convergent validity. this content downloaded from . . . on mon, nov : : pm all use subject to jstor terms and conditions http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp journal of research in music education ( ) table . multitrait-multimethod matrix trait a i bl a b a b method i:ijiem al j * bl . ** . a method :wjies a . ** . ** . a b . ** . ** . ** . a method : global rating a ** . ** . ** . ** . b b . ** . ** . ** . ** . ** . b note: traits: a = performance skills subscale, b = creative development subscale. the monotrait- monomethod diagonal is in boldface. a averaged coefficient alpha for the evaluations. btest-retest correlations. **f><. l. convergent validity exists when the correlations among multiple methods of measur- ing the same construct (monotrait-heteromethod coefficients) are "significantly different from zero and sufficiently large" (p. ). these values correspond to the correlations between a -a , a -a , a -a , b -b , b -b , and b -b found in table . the corresponding coefficients of . , . , . , . , . , and . , respectively, confirm this criterion. therefore, convergent validity of the wjies is confirmed. content validity was determined via two methods: (a) a methodical development of the initial item pool and (b) a later validation of the structure of the items by factor analysis. by incorporating the expertise of a wide variety of authorities in the devel- opment of the initial item pool, a comprehensive description of wind jazz improvisation was produced. the resulting items of the wjies were factor ana- lyzed, resulting in two distinct factors that subsumed the four-area a priori structure. criterion-related validity was examined by comparing total scores obtained from the wjies and the ijiem evaluations. pearson's r was used to analyze relationships between each pair of summated scores. results were mixed. six of the compari- sons produced low to moderate correlations ranging from . to . , while the remaining six comparisons yielded high correlations ranging from . to . . while the highest three correlations (. , . , . ) occurred between improvisations at the advanced and sophisticated levels, there does not seem to be a discernable pattern to these results. perhaps, variability in adjudicator experience is responsible for the inconsistent outcomes. although the correlation outcomes were mixed, the . found for arguably the best of the performances is encouraging. discussion jazz education in america has progressed steadily since its beginnings in the mid- (abeles, hoffer, & klotman, ). horowitz ( ) successfully predicted that this content downloaded from . . . on mon, nov : : pm all use subject to jstor terms and conditions http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp smith "as this growth continues, there will be a concomitant increase in the need for objective methods of evaluation" (p. ). a multimillion-dollar industry has emerged that sup- plies a large quantity of pedagogical materials to jazz educators as well as to students of all ages. jazz theory books, play-along materials, and various audiovisual methods are widely accessible to aspiring jazz musicians. unfortunately, the ready availability of pedagogical materials has not led to the development of a wealth of valid and reli- able methods of assessing improvisation. in spite of this, evaluations of jazz improvisations must continue to take place (horowitz, ). auditions, contests, fes- tivals, studio lessons, and private practice sessions illustrate the various situations in which reliable and valid assessment procedures would assist student progress. although the present study is similar in many ways to the investigations con- ducted by horowitz ( ), may ( ), and mcpherson ( ), it is a departure from the facet-factorial approach to scale development. instead, i employed a facet- rational strategy to develop the wjies. the results of this study demonstrate that the facet-rational approach to rating scale construction can be used to develop a wind jazz improvisation measure that exhibits acceptable levels of both reliability and validity. music educators who possess extensive instructional and performance experience, aided by a systematic method, should be able to develop effective per- formance measures. jazz improvisation performance is in a constant state of transformation. therefore, evaluation of such an evolving construction must be flexible and adaptive. the evaluator of an avant-garde or free wind jazz improvisa- tion might need to consider a set of variables unique to those subcategories of jazz. this might be true especially when considering improvisation that departs from tradition harmonic parameters. the facet-rational approach to scale construction may provide jazz educators with the means to introduce a degree of adaptability and flexibility that might be missing in a facet-factorial based approach to scale devel- opment. horowitz ( ) stated the following: many rating scales at festivals are developed through the "rational" means described by butt and fiske ( ). that is, they are constructed according to the opinions of the developer. this may not result in objective and valid measures, (p. ) i am inclined to agree. but i would argue that years of specialized music expertise should not be discounted. utilized within a methodical facet-rational approach to scale development, the extensive knowledge of expert teachers could be used to produce objective performance measures. one of the primary outcomes of any scale development project is an eventual description of the construct. in this case, the -item wjies along with previously constructed jazz improvisation scales (horowitz, ; may, ; mcpherson, ; pfenninger, ) expand the collective understanding of the jazz improvisa- tion process. in contrast to may ( ), who found that instrumental jazz improvisation emerged as a single construct, the results of this study suggest a this content downloaded from . . . on mon, nov : : pm all use subject to jstor terms and conditions http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp journal of research in music education ( ) two-factor structure. the present findings also represent a departure form the work of horowitz ( ) and madura ( ), whereas jazz improvisation performance was defined as a three-factor construct. these varied results could be viewed as con- founding jazz improvisation understanding. may ( ) suggested that mixed results might be due to differences in performance mediums or, rather, the selection of dif- fering criteria at the start of the investigations. i believe the combined findings suggest that jazz improvisation is an extremely complex construct that might be understood better within specific contexts. continued research focused on revealing what core elements constitute jazz improvisation in a variety of contexts is needed. further descriptions of jazz improvisation also may help music educators address pedagogical issues related to improvisation in general. although improvisation is linked inherently to jazz, it also is associated with many different genres of music performance (bitz, ; tomassetti, ). elementary music is one obvious example. children routinely are taught to improvise melodies both vocally and instrumentally. although the wjies was developed with more mature performers in mind, many of the performance skills described by the scale might be applied to a variety of skill levels including elementary-aged students. through transfer and modification, it may be possible for music educators teaching a variety of levels and genres to utilize items found within the wjies successfully for the purpose of evaluating improvisa- tion. the scale also may be useful to teachers developing instructional strategies designed to teach improvisation. additional investigations are needed in order to confirm or refute these suggestions. a critical finding of this study was the emergence of two factors central to wind jazz improvisation - performance skills and creative development - and the factors' relationship to skill level. may ( ) concluded that if the subskills that contribute to instrumental jazz improvisation achievement are truly interdependent, they should be developed "contiguously." however, the results of the present study support a sequential format for teaching jazz improvisation instruction implicated by the close relation of the performance skills factor and developing improvisation. the items associated with the creative development factor were related more closely to impro- visation at the sophisticated level. consequently, it is reasonable to suggest that in order to progress from a novice improviser to a sophisticated or expert improviser, the elements that make up the performance skills factor must be mastered first. this is consistent with the conclusions reached by antonelli ( ), bash ( ), burnsed ( ), and meadows ( ). the elements of the performance skills factor include jazz theory, melodic motifs and/or sequences, confidence, time feel, technique, into- nation, and solo development. once a progressing improviser is relatively proficient at the skills related to this factor, those skills can be transcended and attention can be focused on the elements of creative development, which include fluidity, expression, imagination and/or creativity, and so forth. works completed by berliner ( ) and corpolongo ( a, b, a, b, ) outline methodology for the devel- opment of the skills associated with creative development. this content downloaded from . . . on mon, nov : : pm all use subject to jstor terms and conditions http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp smith there is one issue associated with the hypothesized "sequential format" for teach- ing improvisation that must be considered, however. as stated earlier, the improvisation stimuli were placed on the adjudicator compact disc according to my perceptions of the improvisation ability of the performers. instrumentalists at the intermediate level performed solos through . advanced-level performers recorded solos through , and instrumentalists with sophisticated skill performed solos through . this does not mean inevitably that the stimuli produced strictly followed this delineation. but it does increase the possibility of an order effect. avoiding the possibility of an order effect would be paramount to investigating the sequential format hypothesis. improvisation should not be deferred until sufficient performance skills are realized, however. students of all ages should be encouraged to experiment with improvisa- tion early in their development. these skills must be learned by engaging actively in the improvisation process. what the findings of this study do imply, however, is that the level of sophistication may be related to performance skill. as performance skill increases, the potential to create more creative improvised solos also may increase. therefore, any competent musician can learn to improvise. improvisation is not a cryptic talent bequeathed only to a chosen few. advanced improvisation skill can be learned if students are willing to develop the prerequisite skills. in addition, jazz educators might foster advanced improvisation skills successfully by developing curricula that focus on performance skills early in the instructional pro- cess. one of the first elements that must be cultivated in young students is confidence. improvisation is essentially a leap of faith in which musicians rely solely on their referent knowledge and expression to create spontaneously. this requires sufficient confidence. if young students are unsuccessful at developing this confidence early, it may become increasingly difficult to foster, especially relative to female instrumen- talists (webster, ; wehr-flowers, ). there is one point of contention related to the two-factor solution that deserves mention. item number , soloist plays with uncharacteristic tone quality, consis- tently was grouped with factor , creative development. some would argue that tone quality should be appropriately grouped with factor , performance skills. the factor analysis did not support this grouping. maybe the judges somehow viewed tone qual- ity in a more subjective manner as a result of the jazz context. this outcome is plausible especially when considering the possible variability of saxophone tone. for example, the difference between lester young's tenor saxophone tone and john coltrane's tenor saxophone tone is quite significant. but to place value on that differ- ence invites a certain amount of subjectivity. by its very nature, jazz allows for a wide spectrum of "acceptable" tone qualities. so in essence, in the context of jazz, tone might indeed function as a "creative" variable. further investigation of this specific query is needed. furthermore, the results related to judge reliability underscore several issues related to adjudicator training. the adjudicators in the present study were largely this content downloaded from . . . on mon, nov : : pm all use subject to jstor terms and conditions http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp journal of research in music education ( ) student performers with little or no experience evaluating jazz improvisation. the variability of the adjudication scores suggests that mere participation in jazz perfor- mance ensembles does not prepare musicians sufficiently to adjudicate improvisation reliably. although anchor recordings were provided for each judge, the resulting scores varied. this outcome suggests a need for more extensive training for jazz improvisation adjudicators, especially in the case of inexperienced judges. the find- ings of this study also indicate a need for training in the case of experienced jazz musicians. given that an acceptable jazz improvisation can be manifested in a vari- ety of forms, determining what constitutes a good performance may be problematic even for veteran judges (pfenninger, ). adjudicator training has become a staple of solo and ensemble competitions across the country. some form of structured adju- dicator training prior to jazz festivals, jazz try outs, and so forth seems reasonable. as previously stated, adjudicator consistency was a concern in the present study. based on the reliability outcomes of the wjies, researchers should explore reliability among various panels of judges. how reliable is the wjies when used by a larger panel of experienced adjudicators? is reliability adversely affected when used by judges possessing extensive instrumental music education credentials but who lack specific jazz education experience? how does adjudicator training affect reliability? although the wjies was developed with a specific age group and ability level in mind, the wjies might be effective in evaluating performances from a wider age range and variety of improvisation skill levels. by examining the reliability of the scale across varying ability levels, the efficacy of using the wjies to evaluate devel- oping improvisers may be confirmed or refuted. future research should be undertaken to examine findings in relation to previously conducted research in order to advance understanding of the jazz improvisation construct and to determine whether wjies items support or con- tradict theoretical explanations for the improvisation process. by doing so, a more productive approach to jazz instruction, especially as it relates to jazz impro- visation, might be developed. author's note the article is based on the author's doctoral dissertation, "development and validation of a rating scale for wind jazz improvisation performance," completed at the university of missouri-columbia in . declaration of conflicting interests the author declared no conflicts of interest with respect to the authorship and/or publication of this article. funding the author received no financial support for the research and/or authorship of this article. this content downloaded from . . . on mon, nov : : pm all use subject to jstor terms and conditions http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp smith references abeles, h. f. 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( ). patterns for jazz ( rd ed.). miami, fl: warner bros. this content downloaded from . . . on mon, nov : : pm all use subject to jstor terms and conditions http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp journal of research in music education ( ) corpolongo, r. ( a). moving beyond basic improvisation. the instrumentalist, , - . corpolongo, r. ( b). teaching improvisation with blues and bebop. the instrumentalist, , - . corpolongo, r. ( a). advanced improvisation techniques. the instrumentalist, , - . corpolongo, r. ( b). teaching advanced improvisation. the instrumentalist, , - . corpolongo, r. ( ). turnaround patterns in jazz improvisation. the instrumentalist, , - . damron, b. l. ( ). the development and evaluation of a self-instructional sequence jazz improvisation. dissertation abstracts international, ( ), a. (university microfilms no. ) dcamp, c. b. ( ). an application of the facet-factorial approach to scale construction in the development of a rating scale for high school band music performance. dissertation abstracts international, ( ), . gorsuch, r. ( ). factor analysis ( nd ed.). hillsdale, nj: lawrence erlbaum. greennagel, d. j. ( ). a study of selected predictors of jazz vocal improvisation skills. dissertation abstracts international, ( ), . gridley, m. c. ( ). jazz styles: history & analysis. englewood cliffs, nj: prentice hall. hores, r. g. ( ). a comparative study of visual- and aural-orientated approaches to jazz improvisation with implications for instruction. dissertation abstracts international, ( ), a. (university microfilms no. ) horowitz, r. a. ( ). the development of a rating scale for jazz guitar improvisation performance. thesis (ed. d.), columbia university, teachers college. hynes, t. ( ). melody and melodicism in the teaching of jazz improvisation. jazz educators journal, , - . johnson-laird, p. n. ( ). jazz improvisation: a theory at the computational level. in p. howell, r. west, & d. cross (eds.), representing musical structure (pp. - ). london: academic press. jones, h. ( ). an application of the facet- factorial approach to scale construction in the development of a rating scale for high school vocal solo performance. dissertation abstracts international, ( ), . kenny, b. j., & gellrich, m. ( ). improvisation. in r. parncutt & g. e. mcpherson (eds.), the science and psychology of music performance (pp. - ). new york: oxford university press. kynaston, t. p., & ricci, r. j. ( ). jazz improvisation. englewood cliffs, nj: prentice hall. madura, p. d. ( ). relationships among vocal jazz improvisation achievement, jazz the- ory knowledge, imitative ability, musical experience, creativity, and gender. journal of research in music education, , - . may, l. f. 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( ). the development and validation of three rating scales for the objec- tive measurement of jazz improvisation achievement. dissertation abstracts international, ( ), a. pressing, j. ( ). the micro- and macrostructural design of improvised music. music perception, , - . smith, b. p., & barnes, g. v. ( ). development and validation of an orchestra performance rating scale. journal of research in music education, , - . smith, d. t. ( ). development and validation of a rating scale for wind jazz improvisation per- formance. columbia: university of missouri-columbia. retrieved from http://etd.missouri .edu/summer /dissertation/smithd- -d / spector, p. e. ( ). summated rating scale construction: an introduction. newbury park, ca: sage. stamm, m. ( ). improvisation. jazz educators journal, , - . tomassetti, b. ( ). beginning blues improvisation pedagogy for the non-jazz specialist music educator. music educators journal, ( ), - . webster, p. r. ( ). a factor of intellect approach to creative thinking in music. rochester, ny: university of rochester. wehr-flowers, e. ( ). differences between males and females in confidence, anxiety, and attitude towards learning jazz improvisation. journal of research in music education, , - . whyton, t. ( ). birth of the school: discursive methodologies in jazz education. music education research, {\), - . zdzinski, s. f. ( ). development and validation of a string performance rating scale. journal of research in music education, , - . bio derek t. smith is assistant professor of music at lincoln university of missouri. his research interests include jazz improvisation and instrumental pedagogy. submitted august , ; accepted june , . this content downloaded from . . . on mon, nov : : pm all use subject to jstor terms and conditions http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp 	article contents 	p. [ ] 	p. 	p. 	p. 	p. 	p. 	p. 	p. 	p. 	p. 	p. 	p. 	p. 	p. 	p. 	p. 	p. 	p. 	p. 	issue table of contents 	journal of research in music education, vol. , no. (oct., ), pp. - 	front matter 	forum [pp. - ] 	piano students' conceptions of musical scores as external representations: a cross-sectional study [pp. - ] 	an analysis of tonal patterns used for sight-singing instruction in second-grade general music class [pp. - ] 	development and validation of a rating scale for wind jazz improvisation performance [pp. - ] 	effects of recorded models on novice teachers' rehearsal verbalizations, evaluations, and conducting [pp. - ] 	effects of early and late rest intervals on performance and overnight consolidation of a keyboard sequence [pp. - ] 	the effects of score use on musicians' ratings of choral performances [pp. - ] 	back matter wp-p m- .ebi.ac.uk params is empty sys_ exception wp-p m- .ebi.ac.uk no params is empty exception params is empty / / - : : if (typeof jquery === "undefined") document.write('[script type="text/javascript" src="/corehtml/pmc/jig/ . . /js/jig.min.js"][/script]'.replace(/\[/g,string.fromcharcode( )).replace(/\]/g,string.fromcharcode( ))); // // // window.name="mainwindow"; .pmc-wm {background:transparent repeat-y top left;background-image:url(/corehtml/pmc/pmcgifs/wm-nobrand.png);background-size: auto, contain} .print-view{display:block} page not available reason: the web page address (url) that you used may be incorrect. message id: (wp-p m- .ebi.ac.uk) time: / / : : if you need further help, please send an email to pmc. include the information from the box above in your message. otherwise, click on one of the following links to continue using pmc: search the complete pmc archive. browse the contents of a specific journal in pmc. find a specific article by its citation (journal, date, volume, first page, author or article title). http://europepmc.org/abstract/med/ microsoft word - front cover .docx 	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   musi	
   	
  m.mus	
  composition	
   supervisor:	
  dr	
  gao	
  ping	
   	
   nanako	
  sato	
   student	
  id	
   	
  	
   	
   a	
  thesis	
  submitted	
  in	
  fulfilment	
  of	
  the	
  requirements	
  for	
  the	
  degree	
  of	
  master	
  of	
  music	
  	
   in	
  composition	
  in	
  the	
  university	
  of	
  canterbury	
   	
   	
   juxtaposition	
   	
   	
   juxtaposition a thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of master of music in composition in the university of canterbury by nanako sato university of canterbury 	
   	
   	
   table of contents acknowledgments........................................................................................ - abstract ........................................................................................................ - chapter : a piece of hope in the darkness .......................................... - chapter : effect .................................................................................... - chapter : rainforest .......................................................................... - chapter : blue butterfly ................................................................... - chapter : reminescence of a japanese garden............................. - chapter : conspiracy theory .......................................................... - references ...................................................................................................... audio and visual media information ......................................................... 	
   	
   *** acknowledgements *** working through my masters paper from to was a real challenge, giving me fresh hurdles to overcome. unforeseen circumstances changed many lives during this time, including my own. there have been a significant number of earthquakes and three major aftershocks that affected people in christchurch. one of these took my friend’s life. meanwhile, my home country japan had major earthquakes and a tsunami hit my sister’s city in japan. i would like to dedicate my compositions to the people who are no longer with us, as well as people who are still grieving. firstly, i would like to express my gratitude to my supervisors dr gao ping and cameron pearce for their support and encouragement throughout my studies. i would also like to note my appreciation to the musicians who rehearsed my pieces with me, and performed beautifully despite all the shakes we had. the garden city big band: stu buchanan, iain clark, james parker, keith power, lana law, david wallace, andrew leathem, jill fenton, tony lewis, ray baxter, aaron chandler, scott taitoko, greg knowles, chris harris, jeff henry, andrew cooper, claude askew, sam blacklock, and michael story. small combo and other ensembles: reuben derrick, rachael travaille, michael bell, joe mccullum, jasmine jiang, rosa brooke, elvira dommisse, roanna funcke and tim sellars. thank you daisy timo for reading poems during my final recital and john kane for filming the final recital. 	
   	
   special thanks goes to michael bell for recording my pieces and giving me technical support. a further thank you must go to music director janet kingsbury at rangi ruru girls’ school who allowed us to use their facility for rehearsals and recordings. thanks again to all my friends and family for supporting me, especially mike cheer and rachael travaille for their patience, constant support and proofreading. all is well. nanako sato 	
   	
   abstract this collection of original compositions shows the juxtaposition of modern jazz and contemporary classical music. the aim was to create original and interesting compositions based on linear ideas from a variety of pentatonic scales; both existing scales and those of my own device. these works explore and combine heterophonic texture with jazz modality. the works were composed and arranged within two distinct genres and four ensembles; a jazz big band, a small jazz combo, a chamber orchestra group and a reduced orchestra. elements of modern classical, jazz and non-western harmonies were incorporated into these compositions, with melodic ideas limited to five-note scales. the compositions implemented jazz improvisational methods to develop each piece. they were inspired by ancient japanese literature, poems and some current events, which of these descriptions have been included at the beginning of each piece. my three big band jazz pieces are called a piece of hope in the darkness, effect, and rainforest. each piece explores the compositional methods that have been explained above. all three works were composed and arranged for a regular jazz big band setting, consisting of a saxophone section (two altos, two tenors and baritone); a brass section (three trombones, bass trombone and four trumpets); and a rhythm section (guitar, piano, double bass and drum set). in the composition effect, however, the first alto saxophone is substituted by clarinet to add a gloomy texture. i tried to achieve linear approach of writing style in each part of the compositions. resulted sounds like delicate and smooth sounding than the punchy normal setting of the big band sound. 	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  heterophonic	
  texture	
  is	
  the	
  use	
  of	
  a	
  simultaneous	
  variety	
  of	
  single	
  melody	
  lines	
  with	
  embellishment.	
  	
  it	
  can	
  be	
  described	
  as	
   complex	
  monophony.	
  heterophonic	
  textures	
  are	
  often	
  a	
  feature	
  of	
  non-­western	
  traditional	
  music	
  and	
  can	
  be	
  found	
  in	
   japanese	
  gagaku,	
  gamelan	
  music,	
  and	
  traditional	
  music	
  from	
  thailand.	
  	
  	
   	
   	
   a small ensemble piece called blue butterfly is in a sonata form. the work was based around the following five-note scale: d, f, a, bb, c. performers are required to improvise in a linear fashion within this mode for the improvisation section. the instrumentation of this piece is alto and tenor saxophones, piano, double bass and drums. the pianist and bassist on this piece were to spontaneously create chords based on the five-note scale. two modern classical setting pieces are called reminiscence of a japanese garden and conspiracy theory. reminiscence of a japanese garden is composed with the following two sets of five-note modes: d, e, g, a and bb; and d, f#, a, c and e as a base. a very prominent heterophonic texture was utilised in this composition, which resulted a very linear work. the ensemble consists of flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano. the cadenza that is performed by the flute is improvised in this mode. conspiracy theory is based around the following five notes: d, e, f, g and a. the ensemble consists of flute, clarinet, string sections (violin, viola and cello), piano, timpani and marimba. the resulting compositions are much more linear than my previous works. performers of these compositions enjoyed working with this concept and have shown great understanding and flexibility. working within the limited framework of different pentatonic scales has been both restrictive and liberating and the use of heterophonic textures presented me with new dimensions and perspectives on my writing style. the process of writing and recording these compositions has been a rewarding and enlightening experience. 	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   chapter a piece of hope in the darkness in september a major earthquake severely damaged christchurch, and in february another hit, causing many to lose friends and houses. it is hard to believe that i have been facing these unforeseen circumstances in my lifetime. there are so many broken bricks in the city. it is normal now to see the construction sites, reflective jackets and helmets all around christchurch. we lost friends, homes and belongings, yet most of canterbury did not lose hope even under these trying times. this piece is composed to describe the emotion of those affected by the christchurch earthquake. happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light. - j.k. rowling this work is dedicated to all of canterbury. 	
   master of music in composition musi mmus composition at the university of canterbury student id: nanako sato a piece of hope in the darkness nanako sato note: trumpet sections require a cup mute and a harmon mute, trombone section need a harmon mute for this composition. wind chimes can be stationed close to the drum kit. instrumentation alto saxophone tenor saxophones baritone saxophone trumpets trombones bass trombones wind chimes jazz guitar piano acoustic bass drum set transposed score nanako sato nanako sato duration: approx. minutes nanako sato nanako sato nanako sato ° ¢ ° ¢ { copyright © nanako sato alto alto tenor tenor bari. sax. trumpet trumpet trumpet trumpet trombone trombone trombone bass trombone wind chimes guitar piano double bass drums moderato straight a b mf p dalente mf mf mf mf p p d g‹ mp g‹Œ„! ° ° ° ff mf g‹Œ„! moderato straight a b f mp moderato straight a b &# ! ! ! ! ! !u ! ! ! ! ! ! ! a piece of hope in the darkness nanako sato &# ! ! ! ! ! !u ! ! ! ! ! ! ! & ! ! ! ! ! !u ! ! ! ! ! ! ! & ! ! ! ! ! !u ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &# ! ! ! ! ! !u ! ! ! ! ! & - - u ! ! ! ! ! ! ! & ! ! ! ! ! !u ! ! ! ! ! ! ! & ! ! ! ! ! !u ! ! ! ! ! ! ! & ! ! ! ! ! !u ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ?bb ! ! ! ! ! !u ! ! ! ! ! ! ?bb ! ! ! ! ! !u ! ! ! ! ! ! ?bb ! ! ! ! ! !u ! ! ! ! ! ! ?bb ! ! ! ! ! !u ! ! ! / ! ! ! ! ! !u ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bb ! ! ! ! ! !u ! ! ! ! ! ! &bb ! ! ! ! ! !u ! ! ! ! ?bb ! ! ! ! ! !u ! ?bb ! ! ! ! ! !u double stop-> / ! ! ! ! ! !u • • œ œ œ œ œ œ œ# œ œ ™ ‰ Œ œ œ ˙ œ œ# œ œ œ œ# œ œ œ œ œ œ# ˙ œ œ# œœœ œ œ# œ ˙# ˙ ˙ w œ ™ œ ™ œ# ™ œ ™ œ ™ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ# œ œ ™ ‰ Œ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ œœœ# ™™™!!!! œœœ ™™™!!!! ˙̇b ™™ ˙̇b ™™ œ ™ œ ™ œ œ œœœ ˙̇̇ ™™™ œ œ œœœ ˙̇̇ ™™™ œ œ œœœ ˙̇̇ ™™™ œœ Œ Ó œ œ œ ˙ ™ œ œ œ ˙ ™ œ œ œ ˙ ™ ¿ Œ Ó œ¿ ™ Œ ¿ ™Œ y™ œ¿ ™ Œ ¿ ™Œ y™ nanako sato ° ¢ ° ¢ { alto alto tenor tenor bari. sax. tpt. tpt. tpt. tpt. tbn. tbn. tbn. b. tbn. w.ch. j. gtr. pno. db. dr. mf mf mf mf g‹(# ) g‹ g‹(# ) g‹ g‹ g‹Œ„! g‹(# ) e¨% g‹ e¨% g‹ g‹Œ„! ° ° ° ° ° ° ° g‹(# ) e¨% g‹ e¨% g‹ g‹Œ„! &# ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &# ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! & ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! & ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &# ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! & ! ! ! con sord. (harmon) ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! & ! ! ! con sord. (harmon) ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! & ! ! ! con sord. (harmon) ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! & ! ! ! con sord. (harmon) ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ?bb ! ! ?bb ! ! ?bb ! ! ?bb / ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bb ! use this voicing ! use this voicing ! &bb ! ! ?bb ?bb / • • • • • • • • • • • • • • œb ˙n œb ˙n œ ˙ œ ˙ œ ˙ œ ˙ œ# ˙ œ# ˙ œ œ# œ œ œ ˙ ‰ "œr œ# ˙ fiœj œ# ˙ œ ˙ ‰ œ j œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ œ ˙ ‰ œ j œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙# ™ œ# œ œ œ œ ˙ ‰ "œr œ ˙ fiœj œ ˙ œ ˙ ‰ œ j œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ œ ˙ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ œ œ œ# œ œ ˙ ‰ "œr œn ˙ fiœj œn ˙ œ ˙ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ œ ˙ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ œ ™ œ ™ œ ™ œ ™ œ œ# œ œ œ ˙ Œ œœœ#!!!!! ˙̇̇!!!! œœœ#!!!!! ˙̇̇!!!! ‰ œj œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ œ ˙ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ ˙̇̇ ™™™!!!! ˙̇̇# ™™™!!!! œ œ# œ œ œ ˙ ‰ "œr œ# ˙ fiœ j œ# ˙ œ ˙ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ œ ˙ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ ˙̇̇ ™™™!!!! ˙̇̇# ™™™!!!! œ œ œœœ ˙̇̇ ™™™ œ ˙̇̇ œ ˙̇̇ œ ˙̇̇ œ ˙̇̇ œ ˙̇̇ œ ˙̇̇ œ œ œœœ œ œ œœœ œ ˙̇̇ œ ˙̇̇ œ œ œœœ ˙̇̇ ™™™ œ œ œ ˙ ™ œ Ó œ Ó œ Ó œ Ó œ Ó œ Ó œ œ œ ˙ ™ œ ˙ œ ˙ œ ™ œ ™ œ ™ œ ™ nanako sato ° ¢ ° ¢ { alto alto tenor tenor bari. sax. tpt. tpt. tpt. tpt. tbn. tbn. tbn. b. tbn. w.ch. j. gtr. pno. db. dr. mf c mf mp mp mp p mp p mp p mp p g [äÁ] g (“ ) mp g‹ g‹Œ„! g‹Œ„! g‹Œ„! g‹(# ) g‹Œ„! g‹(# ) g‹Œ„! e¨% g [äÁ] g (“ ) g‹ g‹Œ„! g‹Œ„! g‹Œ„! g‹(# ) g‹Œ„! g‹(# ) g‹Œ„! e¨% ° mf° ° ° ° ° g [äÁ] g (“ ) mf g‹ g‹Œ„! g‹Œ„! g‹Œ„! g‹(# ) g‹Œ„! g‹(# ) g‹Œ„! e¨%c mf c &# ! ! ! ! &# ! ! ! ! & ! ! ! ! & ! ! ! ! &# ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! & ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! & ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! & ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! & ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ?bb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ?bb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ?bb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ?bb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! / ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bb ! ! ! ! &bb ! ! ! ?bb ?bb / • • • • • • • • • • • • ˙ ™ œ ™ œ ™ œ œ# œ œ œ ˙ ‰ "œr œ# ˙ fiœj œ# ˙ œ ˙ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ œ ™ œ ™ œ œ# œ œ œ ˙ ‰ "œr œ# ˙ fiœj œ# ˙ œ ˙ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ œ# ™ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ ‰ "œr œ# ˙ fiœj œ# ˙ œ ˙ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ œ# ™ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ ‰ "œr œ# ˙ fiœj œ# ˙ œ ˙ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ# ˙ œ# ˙ œ ˙ œ ˙ œ ˙ œ ˙ œ# ˙ œ# ˙ ˙ ™ ˙n ™ œj ‰ Œ Œ ˙b ™ ˙ ™ œj ‰ Œ Œ ˙b ™ ˙ ™ œj ‰ Œ Œ œ ™ œ ™ œ ™ œ ™ œj‰ Œ Œ ˙̇̇bb ™™™!!!! ˙̇̇n ™™™!!!! œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œb œn œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ# ‰ œj œ œ# œ œ ˙̇̇bb ™™™!!!! ˙̇̇n ™™™!!!! œœ# ™™ œ ™ œ œ# œ œ œ ˙ ‰ "œr œ# ˙ fiœj œ# ˙ œ ˙ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ ˙ œ ˙n œ œ œœœ ˙̇̇ ™™™ œ œ œœœ ˙̇̇ ™™™ œ ˙̇̇ œ ˙̇̇ œ ˙̇̇ œ ˙̇̇ œ ˙̇̇ œ ˙̇̇ œ ™ œ ™ œ ™ œ ™ œ œ œ ˙ ™ œ œ œ ˙ ™ œ Ó œ Ó œ Ó œ Ó œ ˙ œ ˙ nanako sato ° ¢ ° ¢ { alto alto tenor tenor bari. sax. tpt. tpt. tpt. tpt. tbn. tbn. tbn. b. tbn. w.ch. j. gtr. pno. db. dr. d mf mf mf mf p p p p g‹ e¨% f b¨/a¨ g‹ g‹ e¨% g‹ g‹Œ„! g‹ g‹Œ„! mf b¨/a¨ g‹ ° ° ° ° g‹ e¨% g‹ g‹Œ„! g‹ g‹Œ„! mf b¨/a¨ g‹ d p d &# - - - - - ! ! ! ! ! &# - - - - - ! ! ! ! ! & - - - - - ! ! ! ! ! & - - - - - ! ! ! ! ! &# ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! & ! ! - - - - - ! senza sord. & ! ! - - - - - ! senza sord. & ! ! - - - - - ! ! senza sord. & ! ! - - - - - ! ! senza sord. ?bb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ?bb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ?bb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ?bb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! / ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bb ! ! ! ! &bb ! ?bb ?bb / • • • • • • • • ˙ ™ ˙ ™ œ ˙ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙b ™ ˙b ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ œ ˙ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙b ™ ˙b ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ œ ˙ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ œ ˙ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ œ ˙ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙b ™ ˙b ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ Œ œ ˙ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙b ™ ˙b ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ Œ œ ˙ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ Œ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œb œ ˙ Œ œ ˙ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ Œ Œ œb œ œ œb œ œ œ ˙ Œ Œ ˙ œb œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ Œ ˙ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ œb œ ˙ œ œb œ œ œ œ œ ˙ œb œ ˙ œb œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œj ‰ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œj ‰ Œ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ œ ˙ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙̇# ™™ ˙̇# ™™ œ œ œ œ œ œj ‰ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œj ‰ Œ œ œ œ œ œœœ œ œ œœœ œ ˙̇̇ œ ˙̇̇ œ œ œœœ ˙̇̇ ™™™ œ œ œœœ ˙̇̇ ™™™ œb œ ˙ œb œ œ œ Œ œ œ ˙ œ œ œ œ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ œ ˙ œ œ œ ˙ ™ œ œ œ ˙ ™ œb œ ˙ œb œ œ œ Œ œ œ ˙ œ œ œ œ Œ Œ¿ ™ ¿ ¿ ™ Œ Œ¿ ¿¿ Œ¿ Œ¿ ™ ¿ ¿ ™ Œ Œ ¿¿ ¿ ‰ Œ¿ j ‰ ¿j nanako sato ° ¢ ° ¢ { alto alto tenor tenor bari. sax. tpt. tpt. tpt. tpt. tbn. tbn. tbn. b. tbn. w.ch. j. gtr. pno. db. dr. pp mf pp mf pp mf pp mf mf f f f mf b¨/a¨ g‹ g¨Œ„! f‹ (b ) b¨/a¨ g‹ g¨Œ„! f‹ (b ) b¨/a¨ g‹ g¨Œ„! f‹ (b ) &# &# & & ! &# ! ! ! ! & ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! & ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! & ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! & ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ?bb ! ! ?bb ! ! ?bb ! ! ?bb ! ! / ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bb &bb ?bb ?bb / " " " " œ œn œ œ œ œ œ œn œ œ œ œ œ œn œ œ œ œ œ œn œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ# œb œ œ œn œb œ œ œ œ œ œ œn œ œ œ œn œ œb œ œ œn œ œ œ œ œ œn œ œ œ œ œ œn œ œ œ œ œ œn œ œ œ œ Ó œ œ œ œ œ# œb œ œ œn œb œ œ œ œ œ œ œn œ œ œ œ œb œ œ œ œ œ œb œ œ œ œ œ œb œ œ œ œ œ œb œ œ œ œ Œ œ œ œ œ œ# œb œ œ œb œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œb œ œ œ œ œ œ œb œ œ œ œ œ œb œ œ œ œ œ œb œ œ œ œ œ œb œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ# œb œ œ œb œb œ œ œ œ œ œ œb œ ‰ œ# j œbj œ ™ œ# œb œ œ œ œ œ œ œb œ œn œ œ œb œ œn œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œb ™ œ ™ œ ™ œ ™ œ ™ œb ™ œ ™ œb ™ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ ™ œ ™ œb ™ œ ™ œb ™ œ ™ œb ™ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œb ™ œ ™ œ ™ œb ™ œb ™ œb ™ œ ™ œ ™ ˙b ™ ˙b ™ œ# œb œ ™ ‰ œ# œb œ œ œ œ œ œ œb œ œb œ œ œb œ œb œ œ œ œ œ œ œj ‰ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ œ œ œ œb œ œb œ œ œ œb œ œb œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœj ‰ Œ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ Œ œœ œœ œ œ œ œ œb œb œ œ œb œb œ œ œ œ œ œ œb œ œ œ œb œ œb œ œb œ ˙ œb œ œ œ Œ œ œ ˙ œ œ œ œ Œ œb œb œ ™ ‰ œb œb œ œ œ œ œ œ œb œ œb œ œ œb œ œb œ œb œ ˙ œb œ œ œ Œ œ œ ˙ œ œ œ œ Œ œb œb œ ™ ‰ œb œb œ œ œ# œ œ œ œb œ œb œ œ œb œ œb œ nanako sato ° ¢ ° ¢ { alto alto tenor tenor bari. sax. tpt. tpt. tpt. tpt. tbn. tbn. tbn. b. tbn. w.ch. j. gtr. pno. db. dr. e mf mf mf mf mp mp mp mp mf g¨Œ„! f‹ (b ) f g¨Œ„! f‹ (b ) f ° ø ° ø ° ø ° g¨Œ„! f‹ (b ) e e &# ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &# ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! & ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! & ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &# ! ! ! ! ! ! & con sord. (cup mute) ! ! ! ! ! ! & con sord. (cup mute) ! ! ! ! ! ! & con sord. (cup mute) ! ! ! ! ! ! & ! con sord. (cup mute) ! ! ! ! ! ! ?bb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ?bb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ?bb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ?bb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! / ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bb ”“ &bb ?bb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ?bb ! piano and guitar only ! ! ! ! ! ! / " " use drum sticks and scratch the surface of the ride cymbal to make dolphin sounds throughout e section ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ œn œ œb œ Œ œb œ Œ Œ œ œ œb œ œb œ œ# œb œ ™ ‰ œ# œb œ œ œ œ œ œ œb œ œn œ œ œb œ œn œ œj ‰ Œ Œ œ œ œ œ œ# œb œ œ œb œb œ œ œ œ œ œ œb œ œ œ œb œ œb œ œj ‰ Œ Œ Ó œ œ œ œ œ# œb œ œ œb œb œ œ œ œ œ œ œb œ œ œ œj ‰ Œ Œ Œ œ œ œ œ œ# œb œ œ œb œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œb œ œ œ œ œ œj ‰ Œ Œ œ œ œ œ œ# œb œ œ œb œb œ œ œ œ œ œ œb œ œj ‰ Œ Œ œb ™ œ ™ œ ™ œ ™ œ ™ œb ™ œ ™ œb ™ œ ™ œ ™ œb ™ œ ™ œb ™ œ ™ œb ™ œ ™ œb ™ œ ™ œ ™ œb ™ œb ™ œb ™ œ ™ œ ™ œ# œb œ ™ ‰ œ# œb œ œ œ œ œ œ œb œ œb œ œ œb œ œb œ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ œ œb œ œb œ œ œ œ# œ œb œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ# œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ# œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œb œb œ œ œb œb œ œ œ œ œ œ œb œ œ œ œb œ œb œ œ œ# œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ# œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œb œb œ ™ ‰ œb œb œ œ œ œ œ œ œb œ œb œ œ œb œ œb œ œb œb œ ™ ‰ œb œb œ œ œ# œ œ œ œb œ œb œ œ œb œ œb œ y™ nanako sato nanako sato ° ¢ ° ¢ { alto alto tenor tenor bari. sax. tpt. tpt. tpt. tpt. tbn. tbn. tbn. b. tbn. w.ch. j. gtr. pno. db. dr. mf f mf mf p p p mf bŒ„! ø ° ø ° ø ° ø ° ø mf bŒ„! senza ped. mf bŒ„! f mf f &# ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &# ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! & ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! & ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &# ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! & ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! & ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! & ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! & ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ?bb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ?bb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ?bb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ?bb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! / ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bb o o o o o o o o o o o o o“< > locoo o o &bb ?bb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ?bb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! / ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ œn œ œb œ œ œ œn œb œ œ œn œ œb œ œ œ œn œb œ œ œ# œb œ œn œ œ œ# œb œ œn œ œ ˙b ™ ˙ œ ˙ ™ ˙ œ ˙b ™ ˙b œ ˙b ™ ˙b œ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ# ™ œn ™ œ ™ œ ™ œ ™ œ# ™ œ ™ œ ™ œ# ™ œn ™ œ ™ œ ™ œ ™ œ# ™ œ ™ œ ™ v v v v v v œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ# œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ# œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œb œ œb œ œ œ œb œb œ œ œn œb œ œb œ œ œn œb œ œb œ œ œn œ# œn œ œ œ œn œ# œn œ œ œ Œ¿ ™ ¿ ¿ ™Œ Œ¿ ¿¿ Œ¿ a piece of hope in the darkness nanako sato ° ¢ ° ¢ { alto alto tenor tenor bari. sax. tpt. tpt. tpt. tpt. tbn. tbn. tbn. b. tbn. w.ch. j. gtr. pno. db. dr. pp pp mp pp mp pp pp pp mf pp mf pp mf pp mf b¨‹(b ) bŒ„! b¨‹(b ) d¨‹ bŒ„! d¨‹ bŒ„! gŒ„! b¨‹(b ) bŒ„! b¨‹(b ) d¨‹ bŒ„! d¨‹ bŒ„! gŒ„! b¨‹(b ) bŒ„! b¨‹(b ) c©‹ bŒ„! c©‹ bŒ„! gŒ„! &# - - - - - - ! ! - - - - - - ! ! ! ! ! &# - - - - - - ! ! - - - - - - ! ! ! ! ! & - - - - - - - - - - - - ! ! ! ! ! & - - - - - - - - - - - - ! ! ! ! ! &# ! ! ! ! ! & ! ! senza sord. & ! ! senza sord. & ! ! senza sord. & ! ! senza sord. ?bb ! ! ! ! ?bb ! ! ! ! ?bb ! ! ! ! ?bb ! ! ! ! / ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bb &bb - - - - - - - - - - - - ?bb ?bb / " " œn œ œ œn œb œb œn œ œ œn œb œb œn œ œ œn œb œb œn œ œ œn œb œb œb œ œb œb œb œb œb œ œb œ œ œ œb œb œ œ œb œ œb œb œb œb œb œ œb œb œb œ œb œ œb œ œ œ œb œb œ œ œb œ œb œb œb œ œ œb œ œ# œn œ œ œb œ œ# œn œ œ# œb œ œn œ œ œ# œb œ œn œ œ œ œb œ œ# œn œ œ œb œ œ# œn œ ˙b ™ ˙ œ ˙b ™ ˙ ™ œ œb œ œb ™ œbj œœ œb œ œb œ œb œb œ# œ# œ ˙ ™ ˙ œ ˙b ™ ˙b ™ œ œb œ œb ™ œj œœ œb œb œb œb œ œ œ œ# œ ˙b ™ ˙b œ ˙b ™ ˙b ™ œb œ œ œb ™ œj œœ œb œb œ œ œ œb œ# œ œ ˙b ™ ˙b œ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ œ œb œ œb ™ œbj œœ œb œ œb œ œb œb œ œ œ ˙b ™ ˙ ™ ˙n ™ ˙b ™ ˙# ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙b ™ ˙b ™ ˙# ™ ˙ ™ ˙n ™ ˙b ™ ˙n ™ ˙b ™ ˙b ™ ˙n ™ ˙b ™ ˙# ™ ˙b ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙# ™ ˙b ™ ˙n ™ ˙b ™ ˙ ™ v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v œœœbbb œœœ œœœb œœœbbb œœœb œœœ œb œ œb œ œ œ œb œb œ œ œœœbbb œœœ œœœb œœœbbb œœœb œœœ œœœb œœœb œœœ œœœ##n ™™™ œœj œœœœœ œœnb œœb œ œœb œœn œ œœœœ#n œœœœn œœœœ œ œb œ œ# œn œ œ œb œ œ# œn œ œn œb œ œb œ œ œn œb œ œb œ œ œ œb œ œ# œn œ œ œb œ œ# œn œ ˙̇nb ™™ ˙̇b ™™ ˙̇nb ™™ ˙̇b ™™ ˙̇̇̇n ™™™™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œn œ# œn œ œ œ œn œ# œn œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œb œn œ œn œ œ œb œn œ œn œ œ œ œn œ Œ¿ ™ ¿ ¿ ™ Œ Œ ¿¿ ¿ ‰ Œ¿ j ‰ Œ¿ j ¿ ™ ¿ ¿ ™Œ a piece of hope in the darkness nanako sato ° ¢ ° ¢ { alto alto tenor tenor bari. sax. tpt. tpt. tpt. tpt. tbn. tbn. tbn. b. tbn. w.ch. j. gtr. pno. db. dr. f mf q= swing g f mf f mf f mf mf f f f f ff g¨‹ fŒ„! ff g‹Œ„! g‹Œ„! g‹Œ„! a¨‹Œ„! g‹Œ„! g¨‹ fŒ„! ff mf g‹Œ„! g‹Œ„! g‹Œ„! a¨‹Œ„! g‹Œ„! f©‹ fŒ„! mf g‹Œ„! g‹Œ„! g‹Œ„! a¨‹Œ„! g‹Œ„! q= swingg mp mf q= swing g &# ! ! > . > &# ! ! > .> & ! ! > .> & ! ! > .> &# ! ! ! ! ! ! > .> & ! ! ! ! ! & ! ! ! ! ! & ! ! ! ! ! & ! ! ! ! ! ?bb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ?bb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ?bb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ?bb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! / ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bb o o o ! &bb ! ?bb ! ! ! ?bb ! ! ! / ! ! • • Ó Œ œ# œ ˙ Œ Œ œ# ™ œ ™ œ Œ Ó Ó Œ ‰ œ#j w Ó œ#j ‰ Œ œ#j ‰ œ œ œ Œ Ó Œ œ œ ˙ Œ Œ œ ™ œ ™ œ Œ Ó Ó Œ ‰ œj w Ó œj ‰ Œ œj ‰ œ œ œ Œ Ó Œ œ œ ˙ Œ Œ œ ™ œ ™ œ Œ Ó Ó Œ ‰ œj w Ó œj ‰ Œ œj ‰ œb œ œ Œ Ó Œ œ œ ˙ Œ Œ œ ™ œ ™ œ Œ Ó Ó Œ ‰ œj w Ó œj‰ Œ œj ‰ œb œ œ Œ Ó Œ ‰ œj w Ó œj‰ Œ œj ‰ œn œ œ Œ œ# œ œ œ# œ œ ™ ‰ Ó œ# œ œ œ# ™ œ ™ œ Œ Ó œ# œ œ# œ œ œ ™ ‰ Ó œ œ œ œ ™ œ ™ œ Œ Ó œ œ œ œ œ œ ™ ‰ Ó œ œ œ œ ™ œ ™ œ Œ Ó œ# œ œ# œ œ œ ™ ‰ Ó œ œ œ œ ™ œ ™ œ Œ Ó ˙ ™ w w ˙n ™ w w ˙ ™ w w ˙# ™ w w ˙ Ó v v v v v v v v v v v Œ œn ™ œ ™ w Ó Œ ‰ vj + Ó vj ‰ Œ vj ‰ v v v Œ œœœœn#n œœœœ œœœœn œœn œœ œœ œœ œœ œœn œœ œœ Œ œœnn ™™ œœ ™™ ww Ó Œ ‰ œœœœ# j wwww Ó œœœœ# j‰ Œ œœœœ# j ‰ œœœœbb œœœœ œœœœ Œ ˙̇̇̇nb ™™™™ ˙̇̇̇ ™™™™ œœœœ wwww œ œ œn œ# œj œ œj œj œ œj œjœ ™ œ ™ œj œjœ œj w œ# œ œb w w œ œ œn œ# œj œ œj œj œ œj œjœ ™ œ ™ œj œjœ œj œj ‰ œb œ œ Œ Œ¿ ¿ ¿ Œ¿ Œ¿ ¿ ¿ Œ¿ Œ¿ ¿ ¿ Œ¿ Ó ¿ ¿ Ó ‰™ œœœœœ" œ¿ ¿œ œ¿ œ œ¿ ¿ ¿ œ¿ ¿ ¿œ œ œ¿ ¿ a piece of hope in the darkness nanako sato ° ¢ ° ¢ { alto alto tenor tenor bari. sax. tpt. tpt. tpt. tpt. tbn. tbn. tbn. b. tbn. w.ch. j. gtr. pno. db. dr. f f f f f mf mf f g‹Œ„! g‹Œ„! a¨‹Œ„! g‹Œ„! g‹Œ„! g‹Œ„! g‹Œ„! g‹Œ„! g‹Œ„! g‹Œ„! a¨‹Œ„! g‹Œ„! g‹Œ„! g‹Œ„! g‹Œ„! g‹Œ„! g‹Œ„! a¨‹Œ„! g‹Œ„! g‹Œ„! g‹Œ„! &# > . > ! ! ! ! &# > .> ! ! ! ! & > .> ! ! ! ! & > .> ! ! ! ! &# > .> ! ! ! ! & ! & ! & ! & ! ?bb ! ! ! ! ! ! ?bb ! ! ! ! ! ! ?bb ! ! ! ! ! ! ?bb ! ! ! ! ! ! / ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bb .> . &bb .> . ?bb ?bb / • • • • • • • • œ# œ Œ œj ‰ ‰ œj œj ‰ œ œ# œ Œ Ó Œ ‰ œ#j w œ œ Œ œj ‰ ‰ œj œj ‰ œ œ œ Œ Ó Œ ‰ œj w œ œ Œ œj ‰ ‰ œj œj ‰ œb œ œ Œ Ó Œ ‰ œj w œ œ Œ œj ‰ ‰ œj œj ‰ œb œ œ Œ Ó Œ ‰ œj w œ œ Œ œj ‰ ‰ œj œj ‰ œn œ œ Œ Ó Œ ‰ œj w w w œ ™ œ# ™ œ œj ‰ Œ Œ ‰ œj œb ™ œnj ˙ ˙ Œ ‰ œj œb ™ œnj ˙ w# w œ# ™ œ ™ œ œj ‰ Œ Œ ‰ œj œ ™ œj ˙ ˙ Œ ‰ œj œ ™ œj ˙ w w œ ™ œ ™ œ œj ‰ Œ Œ ‰ œj œ ™ œj ˙ ˙ Œ ‰ œj œ ™ œj ˙ w w œ ™ œ# ™ œ œj ‰ Œ Œ ‰ œj œb ™ œn j ˙ ˙ Œ ‰ œj œb ™ œn j ˙ œb ™ œnj ˙ œb ™ œnj ˙ œ ™ œj ˙ œ ™ œj ˙ œ ™ œj ˙ œ ™ œj ˙ œb ™ œnj ˙ œb ™ œnj ˙ v v Œ vj ‰ ‰ vj vj ‰ v v v Œ Ó Œ ‰ vj + Ó Œ ‰ vj + Ó vj ‰ Œ v ‰ vj v Œ œœœœ# œœœœ Œ œœœœ j ‰ ‰ œœœœ j œœœœ j ‰ œœœœbb œœœœ# œœœœ Œ Ó Œ ‰ œœœœ# j wwww Ó Œ ‰ œœœœ# j wwww Ó œœœœ# j ‰ Œ œœœœ# ‰ œœœœ j œœœœ Œ œ œ œn œ# œj œ œj œj œ œj œj œ ™ œ ™ œj œj œ œj w œ œ œn œ# œj œ œj œj œ œj œj œ ™ œ ™ œj œj œ œj w œ œ œn œ# œj œ œj œj ‰ œb œ œ Œ œ ™ œj œj œ œj w œ œ œn œ# œj œ œj œj œ œj œj œ ™ œ ™ œj œj œ œj œ œ œ œ œ a piece of hope in the darkness nanako sato nanako sato ° ¢ ° ¢ { alto alto tenor tenor bari. sax. tpt. tpt. tpt. tpt. tbn. tbn. tbn. b. tbn. w.ch. j. gtr. pno. db. dr. f f f f e¨% g‹ e¨% g‹ e¨% g‹ e¨% g‹ e¨% g‹ e¨% g‹ &# ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &# ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! & ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! & ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &# ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! & ! ! ! ! & ! ! ! ! & ! ! ! ! & ! ! ! ! ?bb ! ! ! ! ?bb ! ! ! ! ?bb ! ! ! ! ?bb ! ! ! ! / ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bb .> . .> . .> . .> . &bb .> . .> . .> . .> . ?bb ?bb / • • • • • • • • œ ™ œj ˙ œ ™ œj œ œ œ œ w w œ ™ œj ˙ œ ™ œj œ œ œ œ w w œ ™ œj ˙ œ ™ œj œ œ œ œ w w œ ™ œj ˙ œ ™ œj œ œ œ œ w w œ ™ œj ˙ œ ™ œj œ œ œ œ œ ™ œj ˙ ˙ Ó œ ™ œj ˙ œ ™ œj œ œ œ œ œ ™ œj ˙ ˙ Ó œ ™ œj ˙ œ ™ œj œ œ œ œ œ ™ œj ˙ ˙ Ó œ ™ œj ˙ œ ™ œj œ œ œ œ œ ™ œj ˙ ˙ Ó v v Œ vj ‰ Œ v ‰ vj v Œ v v Œ vj ‰ Œ v ‰ vj v Œ v v Œ vj ‰ Œ v ‰ vj v Œ v v Œ vj ‰ Œ v ‰ vj v Œ œœœœ œœœœ Œ œœœœ j ‰ Œ œœœœ ‰ œœœœ j œœœœ Œ œœœœ œœœœ Œ œœœœ j ‰ Œ œœœœ ‰ œœœœ j œœœœ Œ œœœœ œœœœ Œ œœœœ j ‰ Œ œœœœ ‰ œœœœ j œœœœ Œ œœœœ œœœœ Œ œœœœ j ‰ Œ œœœœ ‰ œœœœ j œœœœ Œ œ œ œ œ œj œ œj œjœ œj œj œ œj œ œ œ œ œj œ œj œjœ œj œjœ ™ œ œ œ œ œj œ œj œjœ œj œj œ œj œ œ œ œ œj œ œj œjœ œj œjœ ™ œ œ œ œ œj œ œj œj œ œj œj œ œj œ ™ œj œj œ œj œj œ œj œj œ ™ œ œ œ œ œj œ œj œj œ œj œj œ œj œ ™ œj œj œ œj œj œ œj œj œ ™ a piece of hope in the darkness nanako sato ° ¢ ° ¢ { alto alto tenor tenor bari. sax. tpt. tpt. tpt. tpt. tbn. tbn. tbn. b. tbn. w.ch. j. gtr. pno. db. dr. mf pp jazz waltzh mf pp mp pp mp pp mf pp pp pp pp pp p p p p p p f bŒ„! b¨‹(b ) p bŒ„! b¨‹(b ) f bŒ„! b¨‹(b ) p bŒ„! b¨‹(b ) f bŒ„! b¨‹(b ) mp bŒ„! b¨‹(b ) jazz waltz h mf mp jazz waltzh &# ! ! &# ! ! & ! ! & ! ! &# & ! ! ! ! & ! ! ! ! & ! ! ! ! & ! ! ! ! ?bb ?bb ?bb ?bb / ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bb &bb ?bb ?bb / • • • • • • • • œn œ œb œ œ œ‰ œj ‰ œbj œj œ œn ‰ œn ™ œ ™ œ œn ™ œb ™ œb œn ™ œ ™ œ œn ™ œb ™ œb œn œ œb œ œ œ‰ œj ‰ œbj œj œ œn ‰ œn ™ œ ™ œ œn ™ œb ™ œb œn ™ œ ™ œ œn ™ œb ™ œb œb ™ œ ™ œb œb ™ œb ™ œb œb œ œb œ œ œ‰ œj ‰ œb ™ œ œb œb ™ œ ™ œb œb ™ œb ™ œb œb ™ œ ™ œb œb ™ œb ™ œ œb œ œb œ œ œ‰ œj ‰ œb ™ œ œb œb ™ œ ™ œb œb ™ œb ™ œ œ# œb œ œn œ œ‰ œj ‰ œbj œ œ œn œ œj ‰ œ œb ‰ œj œ# œn œ œ œb ‰ œj œ#j‰ œn œ œ# œb œ œn œ œ‰ œj ‰ œb ™ œ œn œ œ œ œb ‰ œj œ#j ‰ œn œ œj œb œj œ#j‰ œn œ ˙b ™ ‰ œj ‰ œ ™ œ œ ˙b œ œ œ ™ œ ™ œ ˙ ™ ‰ œj ‰ œ ™ œ œ ˙b œ œ œb ™ œ ™ œ ˙b ™ ‰ œj ‰ œb ™ œ œ ˙b œ œ œb ™ œ ™ œ ˙b ™ ‰ œj ‰ œb ™ œ œ ˙ œ œ œ ™ œ ™ œ ˙b ™ ‰ œ j ‰ œ œ œ ‰ Œ œb ™ ‰ œ œ ™ œ ™ ‰ œ j ˙b ™ ‰ œ j ‰ œ œ œ ‰ Œ œb ™ ‰ œ œ ™ œ ™ ‰ œ j ˙ ™ ‰ œj ‰ œ œ œ ‰ Œ œb ™ ‰ œ œb ™ œ ™ ‰ œ j ˙ ™ ‰ œj ‰ œ œ œ ‰ Œ œb ™ ‰ œ œb ™ œ ™ ‰ œ j ˙b ™ ‰ œj ‰ œb œ œ ‰ Œ œb ™ ‰ œ œb ™ œ ™ ‰ œj ˙b ™ ‰ œj ‰ œb œ œ ‰ Œ œb ™ ‰ œ œb ™ œ ™ ‰ œj ˙n ™ ‰ œj ‰ œn œ œ ‰ Œ œb ™ ‰ œ œ ™ œ ™ ‰ œj ˙n ™ ‰ œj ‰ œn œ œ ‰ Œ œb ™ ‰ œ œ ™ œ ™ ‰ œj v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v œb œ œb œ œ œ‰ œj ‰ œbj œj œ œb ‰ œœœbbb ‰ œœœj œœœ œœœb œœœbbb œœœ ‰ œœœb ‰ œœœ œb œ œb œ œ œ‰ œj ‰ œb ™ œ œb œœœbbb ‰ œœœj œœœj ‰ œœœb œœœbbb ™™™ œœœb ™™™ œœœ œn œb œ œb œ œ‰ œj ‰ œbj œ œ œb œ œj ‰ œ œb ‰ œj œ# œn œ œ œb ‰ œj œ#j‰ œn œ œn œb œ œb œ œ‰ œj ‰ œb ™ œ œb œ œ œ œb ‰ œj œ#j ‰ œn œ œj œb œj œ#j‰ œn œ œn œ# œn œ œn œ# œn œ œ œ# œ œ œ œ# œ œ œn œ# œn œ œn œ# œn œ œ œ# œ œ œ œ# œ œ a piece of hope in the darkness nanako sato ° ¢ ° ¢ { alto alto tenor tenor bari. sax. tpt. tpt. tpt. tpt. tbn. tbn. tbn. b. tbn. w.ch. j. gtr. pno. db. dr. mf gracefully q= straighti j mf gracefully mf gracefully mp mf gracefully mp mp mf gracefully mp mf gracefully mp mf gracefully mp mf gracefully mp mp gracefully mp gracefully mp gracefully mp gracefully mp mf mf d¨‹ gracefully bŒ„! d¨‹ bŒ„! gŒ„! g¨‹ fŒ„! f mp gŒ„! mf d¨‹ gracefully bŒ„! d¨‹ bŒ„! gŒ„! g¨‹ fŒ„! f ° ø mp gŒ„! ° ° mf d¨‹ gracefully bŒ„! d¨‹ bŒ„! gŒ„! g¨‹ fŒ„! mp gŒ„! gŒ„! q= straighti j mf gracefully p dolce q= straighti j &# ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !u ! ! ! &# ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !u ! ! ! & ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !u & ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !u &# ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !u & ! ! ! !u ! con sord. (harmon mute) ! & ! ! ! !u ! con sord. (harmon mute) ! & ! ! ! !u ! con sord. (harmon mute) ! & ! ! ! !u ! con sord. (harmon mute) ! ?bb ! ! ! !u ! ! ! ?bb ! ! ! !u ! ! ! ?bb ! ! ! !u ! ! ! ?bb ! ! ! !u / ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! u ! let ring ¿ ! ! &bb o o o o o ou &bb - - - - u ! ! ?bb ! ! ! !u ?bb - ! ! !u / • • • • • • u œ# œ# œ œ# œ œ œ# œ œ œ# œ œ œ œ œ œ# œ œ# œ œ œ œ œ œ œ# œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ Ó œ# ˙# ™ Ó œ# œ œ œ œ# œ œ# œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ ˙ ˙# ™ Œ ˙ ˙ œ ˙ ™ ˙ œ œ œb œ œb œb œ œb œ œb œ œb œb œ# œ# œ œ# œ œ œ# œ œ œ# œ œ ˙# ™ œ œ œ œb œ œ œb œb œb œb œ œ œ œ œ œ# œ œ# œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙# ™ œb œ œ œb œ œ œb œb œ œ œ œb œ# œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ œ œb œ œb œb œ œb œ œb œ œb œb œ œ œ œ# œ œ# œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙# ™ ˙n ™ ˙b ™ ˙# ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙# ™ ˙ ™ ˙n ™ ˙b ™ ˙n ™ ˙n ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙n ™ ˙n ™ ˙# ™ ˙n ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙b ™ ˙b ™ ˙n ™ ˙b ™ ˙ ™ ˙# ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ œ ˙ ™ ˙ œ ˙ ™ v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v œµ ™ œ ™ ˙ ™ œ ™ œ ™ ˙ ™ œ œ œn + ™ œ œ œn œœœb œœœb œœœ œœœbbb œœœb œœœ œœœbbb œœœb œœœ œœœb œœ œb œœœb œœœœ#n œœœœn œœœœ œœœœnbn œœœœ# œœœœn œœœ œn œœœœ œœœœ œœœœn œœœœ œœœœ œœnn ™™ œœ ™™ ˙̇ ™™ œœ ™™ œœ ™™ ˙̇ ™™ ˙̇#n ™™ ˙̇nb ™™ ˙̇b ™™ ˙̇nb ™™ ˙̇b ™™ ˙̇n ™™ ˙̇b ™™ ˙̇ ™™ ˙̇ ™™ œ œ œœœn ˙̇̇ ™™™ œ œ œœœn œb ‰ œj ‰ œj œn œ# œn œb ‰ œj ‰ œj œn œ# œn œ œn œ œb œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ Œ œ ˙ œn ˙ œ ˙ Œ¿ ¿ Œ ¿ ¿ ¿ Œ¿ ¿ Œ ¿ ¿ ¿ Œ¿ ™ ¿ ¿ ™Œ y™ Œ¿ ™ ¿¿ ™Œ y™ œ¿ ™ Œ ¿ ™Œ y™ œ¿ ™ Œ ¿ ™Œ a piece of hope in the darkness nanako sato ° ¢ ° ¢ { alto alto tenor tenor bari. sax. tpt. tpt. tpt. tpt. tbn. tbn. tbn. b. tbn. w.ch. j. gtr. pno. db. dr. p p mp mf mp mf mp mf mp mf gŒ„! gŒ„! gŒ„! gŒ„! (# ) gŒ„! gŒ„! (# ) gŒ„! e¨% e¨% gŒ„! (# ) gŒ„! gŒ„! (# ) gŒ„! e¨% ° ° ° ° ° gŒ„! gŒ„! gŒ„! (# ) gŒ„! gŒ„! (# ) gŒ„! e¨% &# ! ! ! &# ! ! ! & ! & ! &# & ! ! & ! ! & ! ! & ! ! ?bb ! ! ! ! ! ! con sord. harmon mute ! ! ! ?bb ! ! ! ! ! ! con sord. harmon mute ! ! ! ?bb ! ! ! ! ! ! con sord. harmon mute ! ! ! ?bb / ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bb &bb ! ! ?bb ?bb / œ# ™ œ# ™ œ ™ œ ™ œ œ# œ œ œ ˙ Œ œ# ˙ œ# ˙ ˙ ™ œ ™ œj œ œ œ# ™ œ# ™ œ ™ œ ™ œ œ# œ œ œ ˙ Œ œ# ˙ œ# ˙ ˙ ™ œ ™ œj œ œ ˙# ™ Ó œ# ˙# ™ Ó œ# ˙# ™ Œ ˙ Œ ˙ Œ ˙ Œ ˙ Œ ˙ ˙# ™ Œ ˙ ˙# ™ Œ ˙ ˙# ™ Œ ˙# Œ ˙# Œ ˙# Œ ˙# Œ ˙ ˙ ™ ˙ œ ˙ ™ ˙ œ ˙ ™ œ ˙ œ ˙ œ ˙ œ ˙ œ ˙ œ ˙ ˙# ™ œ# ™ œ ™ œ ™ œ# ™ œ œ# œ œ œ ˙ ‰ " œr œ# ˙ fiœj œ# ˙ œ ˙ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ ˙# ™ œ# ™ œ ™ œ ™ œ# ™ œ œ# œ œ œ ˙ ‰ " œr œ# ˙ fiœj œ# ˙ œ ˙ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ œ ™ œ ™ œ# ™ œ ™ œ# œ œ œ œ# ˙ Œ œ ˙# œ ˙# œ ˙ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ ˙# ™ œ ™ œ# ™ œ ™ œ ™ œ œ œ# œ œ ˙ Œ œ# ˙ œ# ˙ œ ˙ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ# ˙ œ# ˙ œ ˙n œ ˙n œn ˙ œn ˙ ˙ ™ ˙ œ ˙ ™ ˙ œ ˙ ™ œ ˙ œ ˙ œ ˙ œ ˙ œ ˙ œ ˙ + ™ œ œ œn + ™ œ œ œn + ™ Œ + Œ + Œ + Œ + Œ + Œ + ˙̇#n ™™ œœœ# ™™™ œœœn ™™™ œœœ# ™™™ œœœn ™™™ œœœ# œœœ œœœ# œœœ œœœn ˙̇̇ ‰ " œr œœœ#n ˙̇̇n fiœj œœœ#n ˙̇̇n œœœ ˙̇̇ ‰ œœœj œœœ œœœ œœœ œœœ ˙̇̇<n> ™™™ œ œ œœœn ˙̇̇ ™™™ œ œ œœœn ˙̇̇ ™™™ œ ˙̇̇n œ ˙̇̇n œ ˙̇̇n œ ˙̇̇n œ ˙̇̇ œ ˙̇̇ œn ˙ œ ˙ œn ˙ œ ˙ œn ˙ œ ˙ œn ˙ œ ˙ œn ˙ œ œ œ œ œ œ y™ œ¿ ™ Œ ¿ ™ Œ y™ œ¿ ™ Œ ¿ ™ Œ y™ œ¿ ™ Œ ¿ ™ Œ y™ œ¿ ™ Œ ¿ ™ Œ y™ œ¿ ™ Œ ¿ ™ Œ y™ a piece of hope in the darkness nanako sato ° ¢ ° ¢ { alto alto tenor tenor bari. sax. tpt. tpt. tpt. tpt. tbn. tbn. tbn. b. tbn. w.ch. j. gtr. pno. db. dr. mf mf mf mf mf mf mf mf mf mf mf mf mf gŒ„! gŒ„! e¨% e¨% gŒ„! g‹Œ„! mf g‹Œ„! /e¨ gŒ„! e¨% gŒ„! g‹Œ„! mf g‹Œ„! /e¨ ° ° ° ° ° gŒ„! e¨% gŒ„! g‹Œ„! mf g‹Œ„! /e¨ mf &# ! ! ! u &# ! ! ! u & ! ! u & ! ! u &# u & ! ! u & ! ! u & ! ! u & ! ! u ?bb senza sord. ! ! ! u ?bb senza sord. ! ! ! u ?bb senza sord. ! ! ! u ?bb u / ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !u &bb u &bb ! ! u ?bb u ?bb u / u ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙# ™ ˙# ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ Œ ˙ Œ ˙ Ó œ# ˙# ™ Ó œ ˙# ™ Ó œ ˙ ™ Œ ˙ Œ ˙ Œ ˙ ˙# ™ Œ ˙ ˙ ™ Œ ˙ ˙ ™ œ œ# œ œ œ œ# œ ˙ œ œ œ ˙ œ ˙ ™ ˙ œ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ œ ˙ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙# ™ ˙# ™ ˙# ™ ˙# ™ ˙ ™ œ ˙ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙# ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ œ ˙ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ ˙# ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ œ ˙ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ œ œ œn œ œ œ œn œ œ œ œn œ ˙ Œ œ œ œn œ œ œ œn œ œ œ œn œ ˙ Œ ˙# ™ œ œ œn œ œ œ œn œ œ œ œn œ ˙ Œ œ œ œn œ œ œ œn œ œ œ œn œ ˙ Œ ˙ ™ œ œ œn œ œ œ œn œ œ œ œn œ ˙ Œ œ œ œn œ œ œ œn œ œ œ œn œ ˙ Œ ˙ ™ ˙ œ ˙ ™ œ ˙ œ ˙ ˙ œ ˙ ™ ˙ œ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ Œ + Œ + Œ + Œ + œ œ œn + ™ œ œ œ + ™ œ œ œ + ™ ˙̇̇̇n ™™™™ ˙̇̇̇ ™™™™ œœœ ˙̇̇ ‰ œœœj œœœ œœœ œœœ œœœ ˙̇̇̇n ™™™™ ˙̇# ™™ ˙̇# ™™ ˙̇̇̇# ™™™™ œ œ œœœn œ œ œœœn œ ˙̇̇ œ ˙̇̇ œ œ œœœn ˙̇̇ ™™™ œ œ œœœ ˙̇̇ ™™™ œ œ œ ˙̇ ™™ œ œ œn œ œn œ œn œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ œn ˙ œ ˙ œ ˙ œ ˙ ˙ ™ œ¿ ™ Œ ¿ ™ Œ y™ œ¿ ™ Œ ¿ ™ Œ y™ œ¿ ™ Œ ¿ ™ Œ y™ œ¿ ™ Œ ¿ ™ Œ y™ œ¿ ™ Œ ¿ ™ Œ y™ a piece of hope in the darkness nanako sato nanako sato nanako sato alto copyright © nanako sato moderato straight a b mf c pp d mf mf e f pp f mf q= swingg &# !u ! a piece of hope in the darkness nanako sato &# ! ! &# - - - - - ! &# &# &# - - - - - - &# - - - - - - &# ! > . > &# > . > ˙ ™ œ ™ œ ™ œ œ# œ œ œ ˙ ‰ "œr œ# ˙ fiœj œ# ˙ œ ˙ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ œ ˙ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙b ™ ˙b ™ œ œn œ œ œ œ œ œn œ œ œ œ œ œn œ œ œ œ œ œn œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ# œb œ œ œn œb œ œ œ œ œ œ œn œ œ œ œn œ œb œ œn œ œb œ œ œ œn œb œ œ œn œ œ œn œb œb œn œ œ œn œb œb Ó Œ œ# œ ˙ Œ Œ œ# ™ œ ™ œ Œ Ó Ó Œ ‰ œ#j w Ó œ#j ‰ Œ œ#j ‰ œ œ œ Œ œ# œ Œ œj ‰ ‰ œj œj ‰ œ œ# œ Œ Ó Œ ‰ œ#j w a piece of hope in the darkness nanako sato mf pp h mf gracefully jazz waltzi p q= straight j mf &# &# &# !u ! &# ! &# u œn œ œb œ œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œbj œj œ œn ‰ œn ™ œ ™ œ œn ™ œb ™ œb œn ™ œ ™ œ œn ™ œb ™ œb œ# œ# œ œ# œ œ œ# œ œ œ# œ œ œ# ™ œ# ™ œ ™ œ ™ œ œ# œ œ œ ˙ Œ œ# ˙ œ# ˙ ˙ ™ œ ™ œj œ œ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙# ™ alto a piece of hope in the darkness nanako sato nanako sato alto copyright © nanako sato moderato straight a b mf c pp d mf mf e f pp f mf q= swingg mf h &# !u ! a piece of hope in the darknessnanako sato &# ! ! &# - - - - - ! &# &# &# - - - - - - &# - - - - - - &# ! > .> &# > .> &# ˙ ™ œ ™ œ ™ œ œ# œ œ œ ˙ ‰ "œr œ# ˙ fiœj œ# ˙ œ ˙ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ œ ˙ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙b ™ ˙b ™ œ œn œ œ œ œ œ œn œ œ œ œ œ œn œ œ œ œ œ œn œ œ œ œ Ó œ œ œ œ œ# œb œ œ œn œb œ œ œ œ œ œ œn œ œ œ œn œ œb œ Œ œn œ œb œ œ œ œn œb œ œ œn œ œ œn œb œb œn œ œ œn œb œb Ó Œ œ œ ˙ Œ Œ œ ™ œ ™ œ Œ Ó Ó Œ ‰ œj w Ó œj ‰ Œ œj ‰ œ œ œ Œ œ œ Œ œj ‰ ‰ œj œj ‰ œ œ œ Œ Ó Œ ‰ œj w œn œ œb œ œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œbj œj œ œn ‰ œn ™ œ ™ œ œn ™ œb ™ œb a piece of hope in the darkness nanako sato pp mf gracefully jazz waltzi p q= straight j mf &# &# !u &# ! ! &# u œn ™ œ ™ œ œn ™ œb ™ œb œ œ œ œ# œ œ# œ œ œ œ œ œ œ# ™ œ# ™ œ ™ œ ™ œ œ# œ œ œ ˙ Œ œ# ˙ œ# ˙ ˙ ™ œ ™ œj œ œ ˙# ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ alto a piece of hope in the darkness nanako sato tenor copyright © nanako sato moderato straight a b mp c pp d mf mp e f pp f mf q= swingg h & !u ! a piece of hope in the darknessnanako sato & ! ! & - - - - - ! & & & - - - - - - & - - - - - - & ! > .> & > .> & ˙ ™ œ# ™ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ ‰ "œr œ# ˙ fiœj œ# ˙ œ ˙ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ œ ˙ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ œ œb œ œ œ œ œ œb œ œ œ œ œ œb œ œ œ œ œ œb œ œ œ œ Œ œ œ œ œ œ# œb œ œ œb œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œb œ œ œ œ œ œb œ Œ Œ œb œ œb œb œb œb œb œ œb œ œ œ œb œb œ œ œb œ œb œb œb œb Ó Œ œ œ ˙ Œ Œ œ ™ œ ™ œ Œ Ó Ó Œ ‰ œj w Ó œj ‰ Œ œj ‰ œb œ œ Œ œ œ Œ œj ‰ ‰ œj œj ‰ œb œ œ Œ Ó Œ ‰ œj w a piece of hope in the darkness nanako sato mp pp mf gracefully jazz waltzi mp q= straightj mf & & & !u & ! & u œb ™ œ ™ œb œb ™ œb ™ œb œb œ œb œ œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œb ™ œ œb œb ™ œ ™ œb œb ™ œb ™ œb œ# œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ Ó œ# ˙# ™ Ó œ# ˙# ™ Ó œ# ˙# ™ Ó œ# ˙# ™ Œ ˙ Œ ˙ Œ ˙ Œ ˙ Œ ˙ Œ ˙ Œ ˙ Ó œ# ˙# ™ Ó œ ˙# ™ Ó œ ˙ ™ tenor a piece of hope in the darkness nanako sato tenor copyright © nanako sato moderato straight a b mp c pp d mf mp e f pp f mf q= swingg h & !u ! a piece of hope in the darknessnanako sato & ! ! & - - - - - ! & & ! & - - - - - - & - - - - - - & ! > .> & > .> & ˙ ™ œ# ™ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ ‰ "œr œ# ˙ fiœj œ# ˙ œ ˙ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ œ ˙ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ œ œb œ œ œ œ œ œb œ œ œ œ œ œb œ œ œ œ œ œb œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ# œb œ œ œb œb œ œ œ œ œ œ œb œ œ œ œb œ œb œ œb œ œb œb œb œ œb œ œb œ œ œ œb œb œ œ œb œ œb œb œb œ Ó Œ œ œ ˙ Œ Œ œ ™ œ ™ œ Œ Ó Ó Œ ‰ œj w Ó œj‰ Œ œj‰ œb œ œ Œ œ œ Œ œj‰ ‰ œj œj‰ œb œ œ Œ Ó Œ ‰ œj w a piece of hope in the darkness nanako sato mp pp mf gracefully jazz waltzi mp q= straight j mf & & & !u & ! & u œb ™ œ ™ œb œb ™ œb ™ œ œb œ œb œ œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œb ™ œ œb œb ™ œ ™ œb œb ™ œb ™ œ œ œ œ œ# œ œ# œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ ˙ ˙# ™ Œ ˙ ˙# ™ Œ ˙ ˙# ™ Œ ˙ ˙# ™ Œ ˙# Œ ˙# Œ ˙# Œ ˙# Œ ˙ Œ ˙ Œ ˙ Œ ˙ ˙# ™ Œ ˙ ˙ ™ Œ ˙ ˙ ™ tenor a piece of hope in the darkness nanako sato nanako sato bari. sax. mf moderato straight a copyright © nanako sato b c mf d mf e f pp mf q= swingg &# !u a piece of hope in the darkness nanako sato &# &# &# &# &# &# &# ! > .> &# > .> œ œ œ œ œ œ œ# œ œ ™ ‰ Œ ‰ œ# j œbj œ ™ œ# œb œ œ œ œ œ œ œb œ œn œ œ œb œ œn œ œ# œb œ ™ ‰ œ# œb œ œ œ œ œ œ œb œ œn œ œ œb œ œn œ œj ‰ Œ Œ œ# œb œ œn œ œ œ# œb œ œn œ œ œ œb œ œ# œn œ œ œb œ œ# œn œ œ# œb œ œn œ œ œ# œb œ œn œ œ œ œb œ œ# œn œ œ œb œ œ# œn œ Ó Œ ‰ œj w Ó œj ‰ Œ œj ‰ œn œ œ Œ œ œ Œ œj‰ ‰ œj œj‰ œn œ œ Œ Ó Œ ‰ œj w a piece of hope in the darkness nanako sato mf h pp jazz waltzi mp q= straight j mf &# &# &# &# !u &# &# u œ# œb œ œn œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œbj œ œ œn œ œj ‰ œ œb ‰ œj œ# œn œ œ œb ‰ œj œ#j ‰ œn œ œ# œb œ œn œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œb ™ œ œn œ œ œ œb ‰ œj œ#j ‰ œn œ œj œb œj œ#j ‰ œn œ ˙ œ ˙ ™ ˙ œ ˙ ™ ˙ œ ˙ ™ ˙ œ ˙ ™ œ ˙ œ ˙ œ ˙ œ ˙ œ ˙ œ ˙ œ œ# œ œ œ œ# œ ˙ œ œ œ ˙ œ ˙ ™ ˙ œ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ bari. sax. a piece of hope in the darkness nanako sato trumpet p dalente moderato straight a copyright © nanako sato mf b mp p c mf d mf pp e f mf f f q= swingg & - - a piece of hope in the darknessnanako sato & u ! con sord. (harmon)! & ! - - - - - & ! senza sord. & con sord. (cup mute) & & senza sord. & & ! & œ œ ˙ œ œ# œ œ œ œ# œ œ œ œ œ œ# ˙ œ œ# œœœ œ œ# œ ˙# ˙ ˙ w œb ˙n œb ˙n œ# ˙ œ# ˙ œ ˙ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙b ™ ˙b ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ Œ œ œ œ œ œ# œb œ œ œb œb œ œ œ œ œ œ œb œ œ œ œb œ œb œ œj ‰ Œ Œ ˙b ™ ˙ œ ˙b ™ ˙ ™ œ œb œ œb ™ œbj œ œ œb œ œb œ œb œb œ# œ# œ œ# œ œ œ# œ œ ™ ‰ Ó œ# œ œ œ# ™ œ ™ œ Œ Ó w w œ ™ œ# ™ œ œj ‰ Œ Œ ‰ œj œb ™ œnj ˙ ˙ Œ ‰ œj œb ™ œnj ˙ a piece of hope in the darkness nanako sato f pp h mf gracefully jazz waltzi mp q= straight j mf & & & & & !u ! con sord. (harmon mute) ! & ! ! & ! ! u œ ™ œj ˙ œ ™ œj œ œ œ œ w w ˙b ™ ‰ œj ‰ œ ™ œ œ ˙b œ œ œ ™ œ ™ œ œ œb œ œb œb œ œb œ œb œ œb œb œ# œ# œ œ# œ œ œ# œ œ œ# œ œ ˙# ™ ˙# ™ œ# ™ œ ™ œ ™ œ# ™ œ œ# œ œ œ ˙ ‰ "œr œ# ˙ fiœj œ# ˙ œ ˙ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ œ ˙ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙# ™ ˙# ™ ˙# ™ trumpet a piece of hope in the darkness nanako sato trumpet copyright © nanako sato mf moderato straight a b mp p c mf d mf pp e f mf f f q= swingg & !u ! con sord. (harmon)! a piece of hope in the darkness nanako sato & ! & - - - - - ! & senza sord. & con sord. (cup mute) & & senza sord. & & ! & œ ˙ œ ˙ œ ˙ œ ˙ œ ˙ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙b ™ ˙b ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ Œ Ó œ œ œ œ œ# œb œ œ œb œb œ œ œ œ œ œ œb œ œ œ œj‰ Œ Œ ˙ ™ ˙ œ ˙b ™ ˙b ™ œ œb œ œb ™ œj œ œ œb œb œb œb œ œ œ œ# œ œ# œ œ# œ œ œ ™ ‰ Ó œ œ œ œ ™ œ ™ œ Œ Ó w# w œ# ™ œ ™ œ œj ‰ Œ Œ ‰ œj œ ™ œj ˙ ˙ Œ ‰ œj œ ™ œj ˙ a piece of hope in the darkness nanako sato f pp h mf gracefully jazz waltzi mp q= straightj mf & & & & & !u ! con sord. (harmon mute) ! & ! ! & ! ! u œ ™ œj ˙ œ ™ œj œ œ œ œ w w ˙ ™ ‰ œj ‰ œ ™ œ œ ˙b œ œ œb ™ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œb œ œ œb œb œb œb œ œ œ œ œ œ# œ œ# œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙# ™ ˙# ™ œ# ™ œ ™ œ ™ œ# ™ œ œ# œ œ œ ˙ ‰ "œr œ# ˙ fiœj œ# ˙ œ ˙ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ ˙# ™ ˙<#> ™ œ ˙ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙# ™ ˙ ™ trumpet a piece of hope in the darkness nanako sato trumpet copyright © nanako sato mf moderato straight a b mp p c mf d mf pp e f mf f f q= swingg & !u ! con sord. (harmon)! a piece of hope in the darkness nanako sato & ! & - - - - - ! & ! senza sord. & con sord. (cup mute) & & senza sord. & & ! & œ ˙ œ ˙ œ ˙ œ ˙ œ ˙ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ Œ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œb œ ˙ Œ Œ œ œ œ œ œ# œb œ œ œb œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œb œ œ œ œ œ œj ‰ Œ Œ ˙b ™ ˙b œ ˙b ™ ˙b ™ œb œ œ œb ™ œj œ œ œb œb œ œ œ œb œ# œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ™ ‰ Ó œ œ œ œ ™ œ ™ œ Œ Ó w w œ ™ œ ™ œ œj ‰ Œ Œ ‰ œj œ ™ œj ˙ ˙ Œ ‰ œj œ ™ œj ˙ a piece of hope in the darkness nanako sato f pp h mf gracefully jazz waltzi mp q= straight j mf & & & & & !u ! con sord. (harmon mute) ! & ! ! & ! ! u œ ™ œj ˙ œ ™ œj œ œ œ œ w w ˙b ™ ‰ œj ‰ œb ™ œ œ ˙b œ œ œb ™ œ ™ œ œb œ œ œb œ œ œb œb œ œ œ œb œ# œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ œ ™ œ ™ œ# ™ œ ™ œ# œ œ œ œ# ˙ Œ œ ˙# œ ˙# œ ˙ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ œ ˙ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ ˙# ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ trumpet a piece of hope in the darkness nanako sato trumpet copyright © nanako sato mf moderato straight a b mp p c mf mf d e pp mf f f f q= swingg f h & !u ! con sord. (harmon)! a piece of hope in the darkness nanako sato & ! & - - - - - ! & ! senza sord. con sord. (cup mute) & & senza sord. & & ! & & œ# ˙ œ# ˙ œ# ˙ œ# ˙ œ ˙ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ Œ Œ œb œ œ œb œ œ œ ˙ Œ œ œ œ œ œ# œb œ œ œb œb œ œ œ œ œ œ œb œ œj ‰ Œ Œ ˙b ™ ˙b œ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ œ œb œ œb ™ œbj œ œ œb œ œb œ œb œb œ œ œ œ# œ œ# œ œ œ ™ ‰ Ó œ œ œ œ ™ œ ™ œ Œ Ó w w œ ™ œ# ™ œ œj‰ Œ Œ ‰ œj œb ™ œn j ˙ ˙ Œ ‰ œj œb ™ œn j ˙ œ ™ œj ˙ œ ™ œj œ œ œ œ w w a piece of hope in the darkness nanako sato pp jazz waltz mf gracefully i mp q= straight j mf & & & !u ! con sord. (harmon mute)! & ! ! & ! ! u ˙b ™ ‰ œj ‰ œb ™ œ œ ˙ œ œ œ ™ œ ™ œ œ œb œ œb œb œ œb œ œb œ œb œb œ œ œ œ# œ œ# œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙# ™ ˙# ™ œ ™ œ# ™ œ ™ œ ™ œ œ œ# œ œ ˙ Œ œ# ˙ œ# ˙ œ ˙ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ œ ˙ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ trumpet a piece of hope in the darkness nanako sato trombone copyright © nanako sato mf moderato straight a b p c d f mp p e f f q= swingg ?bb !u ! a piece of hope in the darkness nanako sato ?bb ! ! ?bb ?bb ! ?bb ?bb ?bb ?bb ?bb ! ! ?bb œ ™ œ ™ œ œ# œ œ œ ˙ ‰ "œr œ# ˙ fiœj œ# ˙ œ ˙ ‰ œ j œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ œ ˙ ‰ œ j œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙# ™ ˙ ™ ˙n ™ œ<n>j ‰ Œ Œ Œ ˙ œb œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œb ™ œ ™ œ ™ œ ™ œ ™ œb ™ œ ™ œb ™ œb ™ œ ™ œ ™ œ ™ œ ™ œb ™ œ ™ œb ™ ˙b ™ ˙ œ ˙b ™ ˙ ™ ˙n ™ ˙b ™ ˙# ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ w w œb ™ œnj ˙ œb ™ œnj ˙ œ ™ œj ˙ œ ™ œj œ œ œ œ œ ™ œj ˙ ˙ Ó a piece of hope in the darkness nanako sato p p h mp gracefully jazz waltz i mp mf q= straightj mf ?bb ?bb ?bb !u con sord. harmon mute ! ?bb senza sord. ! ?bb u ˙b ™ ‰ œ j ‰ œ œ œ ‰ Œ œb ™ ‰ œ œ ™ œ ™ ‰ œ j ˙b ™ ‰ œ j ‰ œ œ œ ‰ Œ œb ™ ‰ œ œ ™ œ ™ ‰ œ j ˙n ™ ˙b ™ ˙# ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ œ# ˙ œ# ˙ œ œ œn œ œ œ œn œ œ œ œn œ ˙ Œ œ œ œn œ œ œ œn œ œ œ œn œ ˙ Œ ˙# ™ trombone a piece of hope in the darkness nanako sato trombone copyright © nanako sato mf moderato straight a b p c d f mp p e f mf q= swingg ?bb !u ! a piece of hope in the darkness nanako sato ?bb ! ! ?bb ?bb ! ?bb ?bb ?bb ?bb ?bb ! ! ?bb œ# ™ œ ™ œ# œ œ œ œ ˙ ‰ "œr œ ˙ fiœj œ ˙ œ ˙ ‰ œ j œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ œ ˙ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙b ™ ˙ ™ œj ‰ Œ Œ Œ ˙ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ ™ œ ™ œb ™ œ ™ œb ™ œ ™ œb ™ œ ™ œ ™ œ ™ œb ™ œ ™ œb ™ œ ™ œb ™ œ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ œ ˙b ™ ˙b ™ ˙# ™ ˙ ™ ˙n ™ ˙b ™ ˙n ™ ˙n ™ w w œ ™ œj ˙ œ ™ œj ˙ œ ™ œj ˙ œ ™ œj œ œ œ œ œ ™ œj ˙ ˙ Ó a piece of hope in the darkness nanako sato p p h mp gracefully jazz waltzi mp mf q= straightj mf ?bb ?bb ?bb !u con sord. harmon mute ! ?bb senza sord. ! ?bb u ˙ ™ ‰ œj ‰ œ œ œ ‰ Œ œb ™ ‰ œ œb ™ œ ™ ‰ œ j ˙ ™ ‰ œj ‰ œ œ œ ‰ Œ œb ™ ‰ œ œb ™ œ ™ ‰ œ j ˙# ™ ˙ ™ ˙n ™ ˙b ™ ˙n ™ ˙n ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ œ ˙n œ ˙n œ œ œn œ œ œ œn œ œ œ œn œ ˙ Œ œ œ œn œ œ œ œn œ œ œ œn œ ˙ Œ ˙ ™ trombone a piece of hope in the darkness nanako sato trombone copyright © nanako sato mf moderato straight a b p c d f mp e f mf q= swingg ?bb !u ! a piece of hope in the darkness nanako sato ?bb ! ! ?bb ?bb ! ?bb ?bb ?bb ?bb ?bb ! ! ?bb œ ™ œ ™ œ œ œ# œ œ ˙ ‰ "œr œn ˙ fiœj œn ˙ œ ˙ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ œ ˙ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙b ™ ˙ ™ œj ‰ Œ Œ œb œ ˙ œ œb œ œ œ œ œ ˙ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œb ™ œ ™ œ ™ œb ™ œb ™ œb ™ œ ™ œ ™ œb ™ œ ™ œ ™ œb ™ œb ™ œb ™ œ ™ œ ™ ˙b ™ ˙b œ ˙b ™ ˙b ™ ˙n ™ ˙b ™ ˙# ™ ˙b ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ w w œ ™ œj ˙ œ ™ œj ˙ œ ™ œj ˙ œ ™ œj œ œ œ œ œ ™ œj ˙ ˙ Ó a piece of hope in the darkness nanako sato h mp gracefully jazz waltzi mp mf q= straightj mf ?bb ?bb ?bb !u con sord. harmon mute ! ?bb senza sord. ! ?bb u ˙b ™ ‰ œj ‰ œb œ œ ‰ Œ œb ™ ‰ œ œb ™ œ ™ ‰ œj ˙b ™ ‰ œj ‰ œb œ œ ‰ Œ œb ™ ‰ œ œb ™ œ ™ ‰ œj ˙n ™ ˙n ™ ˙# ™ ˙n ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ œn ˙ œn ˙ œ œ œn œ œ œ œn œ œ œ œn œ ˙ Œ œ œ œn œ œ œ œn œ œ œ œn œ ˙ Œ ˙ ™ trombone a piece of hope in the darkness nanako sato bass trombone mf moderato straight a copyright © nanako sato p b p c d mf mp p e f f q= swingg ?bb !u a piece of hope in the darkness nanako sato ?bb ?bb ?bb ! ?bb ?bb ?bb ?bb ?bb ! ! ?bb œ œ œ œ œ œ œ# œ œ ™ ‰ Œ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ œ ™ œ ™ œ ™ œ ™ œ ™ œ ™ œ ™ œ ™ œj‰ Œ Œ œb œ ˙ œb œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ ˙b ™ ˙b ™ œ# œb œ ™ ‰ œ# œb œ œ œ œ œ œ œb œ œb œ œ œb œ œb œ œ# œb œ ™ ‰ œ# œb œ œ œ œ œ œ œb œ œb œ œ œb œ œb œ ˙b ™ ˙b œ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙# ™ ˙b ™ ˙n ™ ˙b ™ ˙ ™ ˙# ™ w w œb ™ œnj ˙ œb ™ œnj ˙ œ ™ œj ˙ œ ™ œj œ œ œ œ œ ™ œj ˙ ˙ Ó a piece of hope in the darkness nanako sato p p h mp gracefully jazz waltzi mp q= straightj mp mf mf ?bb ?bb ?bb !u ?bb ?bb u ˙n ™ ‰ œj ‰ œn œ œ ‰ Œ œb ™ ‰ œ œ ™ œ ™ ‰ œj ˙n ™ ‰ œj ‰ œn œ œ ‰ Œ œb ™ ‰ œ œ ™ œ ™ ‰ œj ˙b ™ ˙b ™ ˙n ™ ˙b ™ ˙ ™ ˙# ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ œ ˙ ™ ˙ œ ˙ ™ ˙ œ ˙ ™ ˙ œ ˙ ™ œ ˙ œ ˙ œ ˙ œ ˙ œ ˙ œ ˙ ˙ œ ˙ ™ œ ˙ œ ˙ ˙ œ ˙ ™ ˙ œ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ bass trombone a piece of hope in the darkness nanako sato wind chimes copyright © nanako sato moderato straight a b c d mf e ff f q= swingg h mf jazz waltz q= straight i j / !u ! a piece of hope in the darkness nanako sato / / ! ! ! ! ! / ! ! ! / ! / ! u let ring ¿ !u ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ Ó ˙ ™ a piece of hope in the darkness nanako sato guitar copyright © nanako sato p d g‹ moderato straight a b g‹(# ) g‹ g‹(# ) g‹ g‹ g‹Œ„! g [äÁ] g (“ ) mp g‹ g‹Œ„! g‹Œ„! g‹Œ„! g‹(# ) g‹Œ„! c g‹(# ) g‹Œ„! e¨% g‹ e¨% f b¨/a¨ g‹ d b¨/a¨ g‹ g¨Œ„! f‹ (b ) g¨Œ„! f‹ (b ) f e v.s. &bb !u ! a piece of hope in the darkness nanako sato &bb ! use this voicing ! use this voicing ! &bb &bb ! &bb ! ! ! &bb &bb &bb &bb ”“ &bb o o o o o o o o o o “< > œœœ# ™™™!!!! œœœ ™™™!!!! œ œ# œ œ œ ˙ Œ œœœ#!!!!! ˙̇̇!!!! œœœ#!!!!! ˙̇̇!!!! ‰ œj œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ œ ˙ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ ˙̇̇ ™™™!!!! ˙̇̇# ™™™!!!! ˙̇̇bb ™™™!!!! ˙̇̇n ™™™!!!! œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œb œn œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ# ‰ œj œ œ# œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œj ‰ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œj ‰ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œj ‰ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ œ œ œ œb œ œb œ œ œ œb œ œb œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œb œ œb œ œ œ œ# œ œb œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ# œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ# œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ# ™ œn ™ œ ™ œ ™ œ ™ œ# ™ œ ™ œ ™ œ# ™ œn ™ nanako sato mf bŒ„! b¨‹(b ) bŒ„! f b¨‹(b ) d¨‹ bŒ„! d¨‹ bŒ„! gŒ„! g¨‹ fŒ„! ff g‹Œ„! g‹Œ„! g‹Œ„! a¨‹Œ„! g‹Œ„! q= swingg g‹Œ„! g‹Œ„! a¨‹Œ„! g‹Œ„! g‹Œ„! g‹Œ„! g‹Œ„! g‹Œ„! e¨% g‹ e¨% g‹ f bŒ„! b¨‹(b ) p bŒ„! h b¨‹(b ) mf d¨‹ gracefully bŒ„! d¨‹ bŒ„! jazz waltz i gŒ„! g¨‹ fŒ„! f mp gŒ„! gŒ„! gŒ„! gŒ„! q= straight j &bb o o o “< > locoo o o &bb &bb o o o &bb ! &bb .> &bb . .> . .> &bb . .> . .> . &bb &bb &bb o o o o o &bb ou œ ™ œ ™ œ ™ œ# ™ œ ™ œ ™ v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v Œ œn ™ œ ™ w Ó Œ ‰ vj + Ó vj ‰ Œ vj ‰ v v v Œ v v Œ vj ‰ ‰ vj vj ‰ v v v Œ Ó Œ ‰ vj + Ó Œ ‰ vj + Ó vj ‰ Œ v ‰ vj v Œ v v Œ vj ‰ Œ v ‰ vj v Œ v v Œ vj ‰ Œ v ‰ vj v Œ v v Œ vj ‰ Œ v ‰ vj v Œ v v Œ vj ‰ Œ v ‰ vj v Œ v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v œµ ™ œ ™ ˙ ™ œ ™ œ ™ ˙ ™ œ œ œn + ™ œ œ œn + ™ œ œ œn + ™ œ œ œn + ™ guitar a piece of hope in the darkness nanako sato gŒ„! (# ) gŒ„! gŒ„! (# ) gŒ„! e¨% e¨% gŒ„! gŒ„! e¨% e¨% gŒ„! g‹Œ„! mf g‹Œ„! /e¨ &bb &bb u Œ + Œ + Œ + Œ + Œ + Œ + Œ + Œ + Œ + Œ + œ œ œn + ™ œ œ œ + ™ œ œ œ + ™ guitar a piece of hope in the darkness nanako sato { { { { { piano copyright © nanako sato mp g‹Œ„! moderato straight a b ° ° g‹(# ) ° ° ° e¨% g‹ ° ° ° e¨% g‹ g‹Œ„! g [äÁ] g (“ ) ° ° ° g‹ g‹Œ„! g‹Œ„! g‹Œ„! g‹(# ) g‹Œ„! c mf ° ° ° &bb !u ! ! ! a piece of hope in the darkness nanako sato ?bb !u ! &bb ! ! ?bb &bb ! ?bb &bb ?bb &bb ! ! ?bb ˙̇b ™™ ˙̇b ™™ œ œ œœœ ˙̇̇ ™™™ œ œ œœœ ˙̇̇ ™™™ œ ™ œ ™ œ œ# œ œ œ ˙ ‰ " œr œ# ˙ œ œ œœœ ˙̇̇ ™™™ œ œ œœœ ˙̇̇ ™™™ œ ˙̇̇ œ ˙̇̇ fiœj œ# ˙ œ ˙ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ œ ˙̇̇ œ ˙̇̇ œ ˙̇̇ œ ˙̇̇ œ œ œœœ œ œ œœœ œ ˙ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ ˙̇̇ ™™™!!!! ˙̇̇# ™™™!!!! ˙̇̇bb ™™™!!!! ˙̇̇n ™™™!!!! œ ˙̇̇ œ ˙̇̇ œ œ œœœ ˙̇̇ ™™™ œ ˙ œ ˙n œœ# ™™ œ ™ œ œ# œ œ œ ˙ ‰ " œr œ# ˙ œ œ œœœ ˙̇̇ ™™™ œ œ œœœ ˙̇̇ ™™™ œ ˙̇̇ œ ˙̇̇ nanako sato { { { { { g‹(# ) g‹Œ„! e¨% g‹ ° ° ° e¨% g‹ g‹Œ„! g‹ g‹Œ„! ° ° ° mf b¨/a¨ g‹ b¨/a¨d g‹ g¨Œ„! f‹ (b ) g¨Œ„! f‹ (b ) f ° ø ° ø e &bb ! ?bb &bb ! ?bb &bb ?bb &bb ?bb &bb ?bb &bb fiœj œ# ˙ œ ˙ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ œ ˙̇̇ œ ˙̇̇ œ ˙̇̇ œ ˙̇̇ œ œ œœœ œ œ œœœ œ ˙ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙̇# ™™ ˙̇# ™™ œ ˙̇̇ œ ˙̇̇ œ œ œœœ ˙̇̇ ™™™ œ œ œœœ ˙̇̇ ™™™ œ œ œ œ œ œj ‰ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œj ‰ Œ œ œ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœj ‰ Œ œœ œœ œb œ ˙ œb œ œ œ Œ œ œ ˙ œ œ œ œ Œ œb œ ˙ œb œ œ œ Œ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ Œ œœ œœ œ œ œ œ œb œb œ œ œb œb œ œ œ œ œ œ œb œ œ œ ˙ œ œ œ œ Œ œb œb œ ™ ‰ œb œb œ œ œ œ œ œ œb œ œb œ œ œb œ œb œ œ œ œ œ œb œb œ œ œb œb œ œ œ œ œ œ œb œ œ œ œb œ œb œ œ œ œb œ œb œ œb œb œ ™ ‰ œb œb œ œ œ œ œ œ œb œ œb œ œ œb œ œb œ œ œ# œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ piano nanako sato { { { { ° ø ° ø ° ø ° ø ° ø ° ø mf bŒ„! b¨‹(b ) f senza ped. bŒ„! b¨‹(b ) d¨‹ bŒ„! d¨‹ bŒ„! gŒ„! g¨‹ fŒ„! v.s. ff mf g‹Œ„! q= swingg &bb &bb &bb &bb - - - - - - ?bb &bb - - - - - - ?bb &bb ?bb &bb ! ?bb ! ! ! œ œ# œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ# œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ# œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œb œ œb œ œ œ œb œb œ œ œœœbbb œœœ œœœb œœœbbb œœœb œœœ œn œb œ œb œ œ œn œb œ œb œ œ œ œb œ œ# œn œ œ œb œ œ# œn œ œb œ œb œ œ œ œb œb œ œ œœœbbb œœœ œœœb œœœbbb œœœb œœœ œœœb œœœb œœœ œn œb œ œb œ œ œn œb œ œb œ œ œ œb œ œ# œn œ œ œb œ œ# œn œ ˙̇nb ™™ œœœ##n ™™™ œœj œœ œœœ œœnb œœb œ œœb œœn œ œœœœ#n œœœœn œœœœ œœœœn#n œœœœ œœœœn œœn œœ œœ œœ ˙̇b ™™ ˙̇nb ™™ ˙̇b ™™ ˙̇̇̇n ™™™™ ˙̇̇̇nb ™™™™ ˙̇̇̇ ™™™™ œœœœ œœ œœn œœ œœ Œ œœnn ™™ œœ ™™ ww Ó Œ ‰ œœœœ# j wwwwwwww œ œ œn œ# œj œ œj œj œ œj œjœ ™ piano a piece of hope in the darkness nanako sato { { { { { g‹Œ„! g‹Œ„! a¨‹Œ„! g‹Œ„! g‹Œ„! g‹Œ„! a¨‹Œ„! g‹Œ„! g‹Œ„! g‹Œ„! g‹Œ„! e¨% g‹ e¨% g‹ f bŒ„! b¨‹(b ) h &bb .> ?bb &bb ?bb &bb . .> . .> ?bb &bb . .> . .> ?bb &bb .?bb Ó œœœœ# j‰ Œ œœœœ# j ‰ œœœœbb œœœœ œœœœ Œ œœœœ# œœœœ Œ œœœœ j‰ ‰ œœœœ j œœœœ j‰ œœœœbb œœœœ# œœœœ Œ œ ™ œj œjœ œj w œ œ œn œ# œj œ œj œj œ œj œjœ ™ Ó Œ ‰ œœœœ# j wwww Ó Œ ‰ œœœœ# j wwww Ó œœœœ# j‰ Œ œ ™ œj œjœ œj w œ œ œn œ# œj œ œj œj œ œj œjœ ™ œ ™ œj œjœ œj œœœœ# ‰ œœœœ j œœœœ Œ œœœœ œœœœ Œ œœœœ j ‰ Œ œœœœ ‰ œœœœ j œœœœ Œ œœœœ œœœœ Œ œœœœ j ‰ Œ w œ œ œ œ œj œ œj œjœ œj œj œ œj œ œ œ œ œj œ œj œœœœ ‰ œœœœ j œœœœ Œ œœœœ œœœœ Œ œœœœ j ‰ Œ œœœœ ‰ œœœœ j œœœœ Œ œœœœ œœœœ Œ œœœœ j ‰ Œ œjœ œj œjœ ™ œ œ œœ œj œ œj œjœ œj œj œ œj œ œ œœ œj œ œj œœœœ ‰ œœœœ j œœœœ Œ œb œ œb œ œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œbj œj œ œb ‰ œœœbbb ‰ œœœj œœœ œœœb œjœ œj œjœ ™ œn œb œ œb œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œbj œ œ œb œ œj ‰ œ œb ‰ œj œ# œn œ piano a piece of hope in the darkness nanako sato { { { { { { p bŒ„! b¨‹(b ) jazz waltz mf d¨‹ gracefully bŒ„! d¨‹ bŒ„! gŒ„! i g¨‹ fŒ„! f ° ø mp gŒ„! q= straight j ° ° ° gŒ„! (# ) gŒ„! gŒ„! (# ) gŒ„! ° ° ° &bb ?bb &bb ?bb &bb ?bb &bb - - - - ?bb ! ! ! &bb u ! ! ?bb !u &bb ! ! ?bb œœœbbb œœœ ‰ œœœb ‰ œœœ œb œ œb œ œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œb ™ œ œb œ œb ‰ œj œ#j ‰ œn œ œn œb œ œb œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œb ™ œ œb œ œ œœœbbb ‰ œœœj œœœj ‰ œœœb œœœbbb ™™™ œœœb ™™™ œœœ œ œb ‰ œj œ#j ‰ œn œ œj œb œj œ#j ‰ œn œ œœœb œœœb œœœ œœœbbb œœœb œœœ œœœbbb œœœb œœœ œœœb œœ œb œœœb œœœœ#n œœœœn œœœœ ˙̇nb ™™ ˙̇b ™™ ˙̇nb ™™ ˙̇b ™™ ˙̇n ™™ œœœœnbn œœœœ# œœœœn œœœ œn œœœœ œœœœ œœœœn œœœœ œœœœ œœnn ™™ œœ ™™ ˙̇ ™™ œœ ™™ œœ ™™ ˙̇b ™™ ˙̇ ™™ ˙̇ ™™ ˙̇ ™™ ˙̇#n ™™ ˙̇#n ™™ œœœ# ™™™ œœœn ™™™ œœœ# ™™™ œœœn ™™™ œ œ œœœn ˙̇̇ ™™™ œ œ œœœn ˙̇̇ ™™™ œ œ œœœn ˙̇̇ ™™™ œœœ# œœœ œœœ# œœœ œœœn ˙̇̇ ‰ " œr œœœ#n ˙̇̇n fiœ j œœœ#n ˙̇̇n œ œ œœœn ˙̇̇ ™™™ œ ˙̇̇n œ ˙̇̇n œ ˙̇̇n œ ˙̇̇n piano a piece of hope in the darkness nanako sato { { e¨% gŒ„! e¨% ° ° ° gŒ„! g‹Œ„! mf g‹Œ„! /e¨ ° ° ° &bb ?bb &bb ! ! u ?bb u œœœ ˙̇̇ ‰ œœœj œœœ œœœ œœœ œœœ ˙̇̇̇n ™™™™ ˙̇̇̇ ™™™™ œœœ ˙̇̇ ‰ œœœj œœœ œœœ œœœ œœœ œ ˙̇̇ œ ˙̇̇ œ œ œœœn œ œ œœœn œ ˙̇̇ œ ˙̇̇ ˙̇̇̇n ™™™™ ˙̇# ™™ ˙̇# ™™ ˙̇̇̇# ™™™™ œ œ œœœn ˙̇̇ ™™™ œ œ œœœ ˙̇̇ ™™™ œ œ œ ˙̇ ™™ piano a piece of hope in the darkness nanako sato double bass ff moderato straight a copyright © nanako sato mf g‹Œ„! g‹(# )b e¨% g‹ e¨% g‹ g‹Œ„! g [äÁ] g (“ ) mf g‹ g‹Œ„! g‹Œ„! g‹Œ„! g‹(# )c g‹Œ„! g‹(# ) g‹Œ„! e¨% g‹ e¨% g‹ g‹Œ„! g‹ g‹Œ„! mf b¨/a¨ g‹ b¨/a¨ g‹ d g¨Œ„! f‹ (b ) g¨Œ„! f‹ (b ) e ?bb !u double stop-> a piece of hope in the darkness nanako sato ?bb ?bb ?bb ?bb ?bb ?bb ?bb ?bb ?bb piano and guitar only œœ Œ Ó œ œ œ ˙ ™ œ œ œ ˙ ™ œ œ œ ˙ ™ œ œ œ ˙ ™ œ Ó œ Ó œ Ó œ Ó œ Ó œ Ó œ œ œ ˙ ™ œ ˙ œ ˙ œ ™ œ ™ œ ™ œ ™ œ ™ œ ™ œ ™ œ ™ œ œ œ ˙ ™ œ œ œ ˙ ™ œ Ó œ Ó œ Ó œ Ó œ ˙ œ ˙ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ œ ˙ œ œ œ ˙ ™ œ œ œ ˙ ™ œb œ ˙ œb œ œ œ Œ œ œ ˙ œ œ œ œ Œ œb œ ˙ œb œ œ œ Œ œ œ ˙ œ œ œ œ Œ œb œb œ ™ ‰ œb œb œ œ œ# œ œ œ œb œ œb œ œ œb œ œb œ œb œb œ ™ ‰ œb œb œ œ œ# œ œ œ œb œ œb œ œ œb œ œb œ a piece of hope in the darkness nanako sato mf bŒ„! b¨‹(b ) bŒ„! f b¨‹(b ) c©‹ bŒ„! c©‹ bŒ„! gŒ„! f©‹ fŒ„! q= swing mf g‹Œ„! g‹Œ„! g‹Œ„! a¨‹Œ„! g‹Œ„! g g‹Œ„! g‹Œ„! a¨‹Œ„! g‹Œ„! g‹Œ„! g‹Œ„! e¨% g‹ e¨% g‹ f bŒ„! b¨‹(b ) mp bŒ„! h b¨‹(b ) mf d¨‹ gracefully bŒ„! d¨‹ jazz waltz i ?bb ?bb ?bb ! ?bb ?bb ?bb ?bb ?bb ?bb ?bb œn œ# œn œ œ œ œn œ# œn œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œn œ# œn œ œ œ œn œ# œn œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œb œn œ œn œ œ œb œn œ œn œ œ œ œn œ œ# œ œb w w œ œ œn œ# œj œ œj œj œ œj œj œ ™ œ ™ œj œj œ œj œj ‰ œb œ œ Œ œ œ œn œ# œj œ œj œj ‰ œb œ œ Œ œ ™ œj œj œ œj w œ œ œn œ# œj œ œj œj œ œj œj œ ™ œ ™ œj œj œ œj œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œj œ œj œj œ œj œj œ œj œ ™ œj œj œ œj œj œ œj œj œ ™ œ œ œ œ œj œ œj œj œ œj œj œ œj œ ™ œj œj œ œj œj œ œj œj œ ™ œn œ# œn œ œn œ# œn œ œ œ# œ œ œ œ# œ œ œn œ# œn œ œn œ# œn œ œ œ# œ œ œ œ# œ œ œb ‰ œj ‰ œj œn œ# œn œb ‰ œj ‰ œj double bass a piece of hope in the darkness nanako sato bŒ„! gŒ„! g¨‹ fŒ„! mp gŒ„! gŒ„! gŒ„! gŒ„! q= straight j gŒ„! (# ) gŒ„! gŒ„! (# ) gŒ„! e¨% gŒ„! e¨% gŒ„! g‹Œ„! mf g‹Œ„! /e¨ ?bb - ?bb !u ?bb ?bb ?bb u œn œ# œn œ œn œ œb œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ Œ œ ˙ œn ˙ œ ˙ œn ˙ œ ˙ œn ˙ œ ˙ œn ˙ œ ˙ œn ˙ œ ˙ œn ˙ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œn œ œn œ œn œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ œn ˙ œ ˙ œ ˙ œ ˙ ˙ ™ double bass a piece of hope in the darkness nanako sato drums copyright © nanako sato f mp moderato straight a b mf c p d e mf f / !u a piece of hope in the darkness nanako sato / • • • • • • • • / • • • • • • • • • • / • • • • • • • • / • • • • • • • • • • / / ! ! ! ! / ! ! use drum sticks and scratch the surface of the ride cymbal to make dolphin sounds throughout e section ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ / ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ / ! ¿ Œ Ó œ¿ ™ Œ ¿ ™Œ y™ œ¿ ™ Œ¿ ™Œ y™ Œ¿ ™ ¿ ¿ ™ Œ Œ¿ ¿¿ Œ¿ Œ¿ ™ ¿ ¿ ™ Œ Œ ¿¿ ¿ ‰ Œ¿ j ‰ ¿j y™ Œ¿ ™ ¿¿ ™Œ Œ¿ ¿¿ Œ¿ Œ¿ ™ ¿¿ ™Œ Œ ¿¿ ¿ ‰ Œ¿ j ‰ ¿j a piece of hope in the darkness nanako sato mp mf q= swingg mf mp jazz waltz h mf gracefully i p dolce q= straightj mf / ! / • • / • • • • • • • • / • • • • • • • • / • • • • • • • • / • • • • • • / u / / u Œ¿ ™ ¿¿ ™Œ Œ¿ ¿¿ Œ¿ Œ¿ ¿¿ Œ¿ Œ¿ ¿¿ Œ¿ Ó¿ ¿ Ó ‰™ œœœœœ" œ¿ ¿œ œ¿ œ œ¿ ¿ ¿ œ¿ ¿ ¿œ œ œ¿ ¿ Œ¿ ¿ Œ ¿ ¿ ¿ Œ¿ ¿ Œ ¿ ¿ ¿ Œ¿ ™ ¿ ¿ ™Œ y™ Œ¿ ™ ¿¿ ™Œ y™ œ¿ ™ Œ¿ ™Œ y™ œ¿ ™ Œ¿ ™Œ y™ œ¿ ™ Œ¿ ™Œ y™ œ¿ ™ Œ ¿ ™Œ y™ œ¿ ™ Œ¿ ™Œ y™ œ¿ ™ Œ¿ ™Œ y™ œ¿ ™ Œ¿ ™Œ y™ œ¿ ™ Œ¿ ™Œ y™ œ¿ ™ Œ¿ ™Œ y™ œ¿ ™ Œ¿ ™Œ y™ œ¿ ™ Œ¿ ™Œ y™ œ¿ ™ Œ¿ ™Œ y™ drums a piece of hope in the darkness nanako sato 	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   chapter effect i have used a standard minor pentatonic scale to compose this work. the clarinet is featured instead of the lead alto saxophone in the big band. this piece evokes an ancient tale of japanese mythology . in the japanese creation myth, the first deities who came into existence are collectively called kotoamatsukami, who appeared at the time of the creation of the universe. later, the seven generations of kami (god 神)known as kamiyonanayo (“seven generations of the age of the gods” 神世七代) emerged after the formation of heaven and earth. the seventh and last generation of kamiyonanayo were izanagi no mikoto (male伊邪那岐神) and izanami no mikoto (female伊邪那美神) and they created the japanese archipelago. they descended from the amenoukihashi (floating bridge of heaven) to the island they created out of cloud. they had many children but izanami died giving birth to the child kagutsuchi (incarnation of fire). izanagi travelled to the afterlife to bring her back, but she had already eaten the food there and was beyond saving. 	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   古事記, kojiki, record of ancient matters is a book which was written in . 	
   effect master of music in composition musi mmus composition at the university of canterbury student id: nanako sato nanako sato instrumentation clarinet in bb alto saxophone tenor saxophones baritone saxophone trumpets trombones bass trombones jazz guitar piano acoustic bass drum set note: trumpet section need a cup mute and a harmon mute to perform this piece. guitar and bass use harmonics at bar - . this section can be conducted. transposed score nanako sato nanako sato duration: . minutes nanako sato { ° ¢ ° ¢ copyright © nanako sato clarinet in bb alto saxophone tenor saxophone tenor saxophone baritone saxophone trumpet in bb trumpet in bb trumpet in bb trumpet in bb trombone trombone trombone bass trombone jazz guitar piano acoustic bass drum set mp q= straight a b mf p mf p mf p mf p mf e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ pp e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! mp e¨‹ a¨ ° ° ° ° p ° ° ° ° ° p e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! mp e¨‹ a¨ p p q= straight a b &bbb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! nanako satoeffect &bb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bbb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bbb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bbb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bbb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bbb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bbb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ?bbbbb ! ! ! ! ?bbbbb ! ! ! ! ?bbbbb ! ! ! ! ?bbbbb ! ! ! ! &bbbbb ! ! ! ! &bbbbb ?bbbbb ?bbbbb ! ! ! ! / ! ! ! ! with stick stick for ride cymbal use mallets for the floor tom ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ w ˙ ˙ w ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ w ˙ ˙ w ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ w ˙ ˙ w ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ w ˙ ˙ w ˙ ˙ œ œ œ œ ™ œj ˙ ™ Œ œ œ œ œ ™ œj ˙ ™ Œ œ œ œ œ ™ œj Œ œœœ ˙̇̇ Œ ˙̇̇ ™™™ Œ œœœ ˙̇̇ Œ ˙̇̇ ™™™ Œ œœœ ˙̇̇ Œ ˙̇̇ ™™™ Œ œœœ ˙̇̇ Œ ˙̇̇ ™™™ Œ œœœ ˙̇̇ œ œœ œœœ œ ™ œœ œn œ ˙ œ œ œb œ œœ œœœ œ ™ œœ œn œ ˙ œ œœ œ œœ œœœ œ ™ œœ œn œ ˙ œ œ œb œ œœ œœœ œ ™ œœ œn œ ˙ œ œœ œ œœ œœœ œ ™ œœ œ œ œ œ ™ œœ ˙n ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ™ œœ ˙n ™ œ œœ ˙ œ ™ œj y y y y y y œ y œ œ ‰¿ ™œj ‰ ¿ j œj effect nanako sato { ° ¢ ° ¢ cl. alto sax. ten. sax. ten. sax. bari. sax. tpt. tpt. tpt. tpt. tbn. tbn. tbn. b. tbn. j. gtr. pno. a. bass dr. mf mf mp mf mf mf p p bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! ° bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! &bbb &bb ! ! ! &bbb ! ! ! ! ! ! &bbb ! ! ! ! ! ! &bb ! ! ! &bbb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bbb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bbb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bbb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ?bbbbb ?bbbbb ?bbbbb ?bbbbb &bbbbb simile. • • • &bbbbb • • • ?bbbbb • • • ?bbbbb / • • • œ œ œ ™ œ œ w ˙ ™ Œ ˙ ˙ œ œ œ ™ œj œ ™ œj ˙ ˙ ™ œ œ œ œ ˙ ˙ œ œ œ ™ œj œ ™ œj ˙ ˙ ™ œ œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ œ œ ˙ ˙ ˙# ™ œn œ œ œ ˙ ˙ ˙# Œ œn œ œ œ Œ ˙ ™ Œ œ ˙ Œ ˙ ™ ˙ ˙ Œ ˙ ™ Œ œ ˙ Œ ˙ ™ Œ ˙ ™ Œ ˙ ™ Œ ˙ ™ ˙ ˙ Œ ˙ ™ Œ ˙ ™ Œ ˙ ™ Œ ˙ ™ Œ ˙ ™ Œ ˙ ™ ˙ ˙ Œ ˙ ™ Œ ˙ ™ Œ ˙ ™ œn œ ˙ ™ œ œ ˙ œn œ ˙ ™ ˙ ˙ w# œ œ ˙ œn œ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ Œ Œ ˙̇̇ ™™™ œn œ ˙ œ œ œb ˙n ™ œ œ œb œ œ œ ™ œj œn œ ˙ œ œ œ ˙ œ ™ œj ˙n ™ œ œ œb œ œ œ ™ œj œn œ œ œb œ œ œ ‰ y œj ‰ œj œj œ œj effect nanako sato { ° ¢ ° ¢ cl. alto sax. ten. sax. ten. sax. bari. sax. tpt. tpt. tpt. tpt. tbn. tbn. tbn. b. tbn. j. gtr. pno. a. bass dr. mf p p c mf p p mf p p mf p p p mf p mf p mf p mf p e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! pp c &bbb &bb &bbb &bbb &bb &bbb con sord. (harmon) &bbb con sord. (harmon) &bbb con sord. (harmon) &bbb con sord. (harmon) ?bbbbb ! ! ! ! ! ?bbbbb ! ! ! ! ! ?bbbbb ! ! ! ! ! ?bbbbb ! ! ! ! &bbbbb • • • &bbbbb • • • ?bbbbb • • • ?bbbbb simile. • • / asian pop feel • • • œj ‰ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ œ œ œ w ˙ ™ œ œ œ œ œj ‰ Œ œ œ œ œ œj ‰ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œj ‰ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ œ œ œ w ˙ ™ œ œ œ œ œj ‰ Œ œ œ œ œ œj ‰ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œj ‰ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ œ œ œ w ˙ ™ œ œ œ œ œj ‰ Œ œ œ œ œ œj ‰ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œj ‰ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ œ œ œ w ˙ ™ œ œ œ œ œj ‰ Œ œ œ œ œ œj ‰ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ# œ ˙ œ œ œ w œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œb œ œ œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ Œ ‰ œ œ œ œ ˙ œ œ œ w ˙ ™ Œ ‰ œœ œ œ œ Œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ Œ Œ œ œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ Œ ‰ œ œ œ œ ˙ œ œ œ w ˙ ™ Œ ‰ œœ œ œ œ Œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ Œ Œ œ œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ Œ ‰ œ œ œ œ ˙ œ œ œ w ˙ ™ Œ ‰ œœ œ œ œ Œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ Œ Œ œ œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ Œ ‰ œ œ œ œ ˙ œ œ œ w ˙ ™ Œ ‰ œœ œ œ œ Œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ Œ Œ œ œ œ j ‰ Œ Ó œ j ‰ Œ Ó œj ‰ Œ Ó Ó Œ Œ Ó Œ Œ œ œ œ œ œn œ ˙ œ œ œ œ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ œ œ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ œ œ œ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ œ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ effect nanako sato { ° ¢ ° ¢ cl. alto sax. ten. sax. ten. sax. bari. sax. tpt. tpt. tpt. tpt. tbn. tbn. tbn. b. tbn. j. gtr. pno. a. bass dr. mf mf mf mf e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! mp e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ c‹ (b ) bŒ„! b¨‹ e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ c‹ (b ) bŒ„! b¨‹ e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! ° ° ° ° e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ c‹ (b ) bŒ„! b¨‹ e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! &bbb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bbb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bbb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bbb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bbb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bbb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bbb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ?bbbbb ! ?bbbbb ! ?bbbbb ! ?bbbbb ! &bbbbb • ”“ &bbbbb • • • ?bbbbb • • • ?bbbbb • • • / • • • • w w w w w w w w ˙ ˙ wb w w w w w w w w Ó Œ ‰ œ j œ ™ œj œ ™ œj œ œ ˙ œ œœ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ œ œ œ œ ™ œj œ ™ œj œ œ ˙ œ ™ œ w ˙ ™ Œ Ó Œ ‰ œj œ ™ œj œ ™ œj œ œ ˙ œ œœ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ œ œ œ œ ™ œj œ ™ œj œ œ ˙ œ ™ œ w ˙ ™ Œ Ó Œ ‰ œj œ ™ œj œ ™ œj œ œ ˙ œ œœ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ œ œ œ œ ™ œj œ ™ œj œ œ ˙ œ ™ œ w ˙ ™ Œ Ó Œ ‰ œj œ ™ œj œ ™ œj œ œ ˙ œ œœ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ œ œ œ œ ™ œj œ ™ œj œ œ ˙ œ ™ œ w ˙ ™ Œ œ œœ œ œ ™ œj œ ™ œ‰ œj ˙ œ œ œ œœ ™ œj w œ œ œ œ œ ™ œj œ ™ œ# ‰ œj ˙ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙# ™ Œ Œ œœœ ˙̇ Œ œœœ Œ œœœœ Œ œœœ ˙̇̇ Œ ˙̇̇ ™™™ œ œœ œœœ œ œœ œœœ œn œ œ œb œœ œ œœ œœœ œ ™ œœ œn œ ˙ œœœ œ œ œ œ œ œn œ œb ™ œj œ œ œ œ œn œ œ œb œ œ œ œ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ œ œ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ œ œ œ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿œ¿ ¿¿ effect nanako sato { ° ¢ ° ¢ cl. alto sax. ten. sax. ten. sax. bari. sax. tpt. tpt. tpt. tpt. tbn. tbn. tbn. b. tbn. j. gtr. pno. a. bass dr. f d e f f f f f f mf f pp f pp f mp f mp f mp f mp f mp a‹ b¨(„ˆˆ )/a¨ g (# ) g¨%(“ ) f (“ ) e (# ) a (b ) a¨ (b ) g (b ) g¨ (b ) f& (b ) mp a‹ b¨(„ˆˆ )/a¨ g (# ) g¨%(“ ) f (“ ) f e (# ) a (b ) a¨ (b ) g (b ) g¨ (b ) f& (b ) mp e¨‹ a¨ ° mf f p e¨‹ a¨ mp p d e &bbb ! ! ! ! ! - - - - - ! &bb ! ! ! ! ! - - - - ! &bbb ! ! ! ! ! - - - - ! &bbb ! ! ! ! ! - - - - ! &bb ! ! ! ! ! - - - - ! &bbb senza sord. - - - - - ! &bbb senza sord. - - - - ! &bbb senza sord. - - - - ! &bbb senza sord. - - - - ! ?bbbbb - ! ?bbbbb - - ! ?bbbbb - - - ! ?bbbbb - - - - ! &bbbbb “< > ! &bbbbb - - - ?bbbbb - - - ?bbbbb arco - - - / stick for ride cymbal use mallets for the floor tom ˙ œ œn œb wn ˙ œj "œrœ œb œ œn ˙ œ œ œ# w w ˙ œ œ œ# w wn ˙n œn œb œ w# w ˙# œ# œn œn w w Ó ‰ œ# j œn œ œ œ ˙ œ œ œ ˙n ˙# ˙ ˙# ˙n ˙ ˙ œ œn œb wn ˙ œj "œrœ œb œ œn Ó ‰ œ# j œn œ œ œ ˙ œ œ œ ˙# ˙ ˙# ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙# œ œn œ# w w wn w wn wb wn ˙# œn œb œ w# wn w# w w# w# w ˙ œ œn œb wn w wn w wb w wn ˙ œ œn œb wn w wn wn w w w ˙n œn œb œ w w wn w wb w wn ˙ œn œb œn w w wn w w wb w ˙ œ œ œn w wn + + + + + + v v v + + wwwwnnnn www wn wwwwnbn wwwwbb wwwnn ˙̇̇### œœœ œœœnnn œœœbnn wwwn wwwn Œ œœœ ˙̇̇wwnn ww wwn wwn ww ˙̇nn œœnn œœbb œœn wwn ww œ œœ œœœ œ ™ œœ wn w wn w w ˙n œn œb œn w w œ œ œ œ ™ œœ y™ ‰ ¿¿ y™ ‰ ¿ ¿ y y y y ¿œ ¿œ ¿œ æææw ¿ Œ Ó œ y œ œ ‰¿ ™œj ‰ ¿ j œj effect nanako sato { ° ¢ ° ¢ cl. alto sax. ten. sax. ten. sax. bari. sax. tpt. tpt. tpt. tpt. tbn. tbn. tbn. b. tbn. j. gtr. pno. a. bass dr. mp mf mf f p mf mp mp e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! ° ° ° bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! f &bbb ! ! ! &bb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bbb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bbb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bbb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bbb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bbb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bbb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ?bbbbb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ?bbbbb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ?bbbbb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ?bbbbb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bbbbb ! ! ! simile. • • • &bbbbb • • • • ?bbbbb • • • • ?bbbbb simile. • • • • • / • • • • • ˙ ˙ œ œ œ ™ œœ w ˙ ™ Œ ˙ ˙ œ ™ œj œ œ ˙ ™ œ ˙ ™ œ œ œ œ ˙ ˙ œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ œ œœœ ˙ ™ œ œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ™ œj ˙ ™ Œ Œ ˙̇̇ ™™™ Œ œœœ ˙̇̇ Œ ˙̇̇ ™™™ œn œ ˙ œ œ œb œ œœ œœœ œ ™ œœ œn œ ˙ œ œ œ ˙n ™ œ œ œ ‰ y œj ‰ œj œj œ œj effect nanako sato { ° ¢ ° ¢ cl. alto sax. ten. sax. ten. sax. bari. sax. tpt. tpt. tpt. tpt. tbn. tbn. tbn. b. tbn. j. gtr. pno. a. bass dr. mf p mf g mf p mf mf p p mf mf p p mf mp mf f mf f mf f p mf f p e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! g &bbb &bb &bbb &bbb &bb &bbb con sord. (cup) &bbb con sord. (cup) &bbb con sord. (cup) &bbb con sord. (cup) ?bbbbb ! ! ! ! ! ! ?bbbbb ! ! ! ! ! ! ?bbbbb ! ! ! ! ! ! ?bbbbb ! ! ! ! ! ! &bbbbb • • • &bbbbb • • • ?bbbbb • • • ?bbbbb • • • / • • • œj ‰ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ œ œ œ w ˙ ™ œ œ œ œ œj ‰ Œ œ œ œ œ œj ‰ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œj ‰ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙# œ œ œ w ˙ ™ œ œ œ œ œj ‰ Œ œ œ œ œ œj ‰ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œj ‰ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ œ œ œ w ˙ ™ œ œ œ œ œj ‰ Œ œ œ œ œ œj ‰ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œj ‰ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ œ œ œ w ˙ ™ œ œ œ œ œj ‰ Œ œ œ œ œ œj ‰ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ# œ œ œ œ w œ œ œ œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ Œ ‰ œ œ œ œ ˙ œ œ œ w ˙ ™ Œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ Œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ Œ Œ œ œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ Œ ‰ œ œ œ œb ˙ œ œ œ w ˙ ™ Œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ Œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ Œ Œ œ œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ Œ ‰ œ œ œ œ ˙ œ œ œ w ˙ ™ Œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ Œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ Œ Œ œ œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ Œ ‰ œ œ œ œ ˙ œ œ œ w ˙ ™ Œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ Œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ Œ Œ œ œ effect nanako sato { ° ¢ ° ¢ cl. alto sax. ten. sax. ten. sax. bari. sax. tpt. tpt. tpt. tpt. tbn. tbn. tbn. b. tbn. j. gtr. pno. a. bass dr. h c‹ f a¨Œ„! f f f‹ b¨ d¨Œ„! pp pp pp pp e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! h &bbb ! ! ! ! &bb ! ! ! ! ! ! solo: alternate call & response between alto and tenor ! &bbb ! ! ! ! ! solo: alternate call & response between alto and tenor &bbb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bbb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bbb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bbb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bbb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ?bbbbb ! ! ?bbbbb ! ! ?bbbbb ! ! ?bbbbb ! ! &bbbbb • • • • • &bbbbb • • • • • ?bbbbb • • • • • ?bbbbb • • • • • / • • • • • w w w ˙ ™ ‰ œœ w œ Œ Ó w w Ó Œ œ œ œ w w Ó ‰ œj œ œ œ ™ œ œ œ ™ œj œ œ ˙ ™ w w ˙ ˙ w# w w w w w w w w Œ œ œ ™ œj w ˙ ˙ w Œ œ ˙ Œ ˙ ™ Œ œ ˙ Œ ˙ ™ Œ œ œ ™ œj w ˙ ˙ w Œ ˙ ™ Œ ˙ ™ Œ ˙ ™ Œ ˙ ™ Œ œ œ ™ œj w ˙ ˙ w Œ ˙ ™ Œ ˙ ™ Œ ˙ ™ Œ ˙ ™ Œ œ œ ™ œj ˙n ™ œ œ ˙ ˙ w œ œ œ ™ œj œn œ ˙ ™ œ œ œ ™ ‰ œn œ ˙ ™ effect nanako sato { ° ¢ ° ¢ cl. alto sax. ten. sax. ten. sax. bari. sax. tpt. tpt. tpt. tpt. tbn. tbn. tbn. b. tbn. j. gtr. pno. a. bass dr. c‹ f a¨Œ„! c‹ f a¨Œ„! c‹ f a¨Œ„! f‹ b¨ d¨Œ„! f‹ b¨ d¨Œ„! f‹ b¨ d¨Œ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! &bbb ! ! ! ! ! ! &bb ! &bbb &bbb ! ! ! ! ! ! &bb ! ! ! ! ! ! &bbb ! ! ! ! ! ! &bbb ! ! ! ! ! ! &bbb ! ! ! ! ! ! &bbb ! ! ! ! ! ! ?bbbbb ! ! ! ! ! ! ?bbbbb ! ! ! ! ! ! ?bbbbb ! ! ! ! ! ! ?bbbbb ! ! ! ! ! ! &bbbbb • • • &bbbbb • • • ?bbbbb • • • ?bbbbb • • • / • • • œ œ ˙ ™ œ œ œ œ Ó Œ œb œ œ œ œ ™ œ œ ˙ ˙ œb œ œ œ œ œ œj ‰ Œ Ó Ó ‰ œj œb œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ Ó œ œ œ œ ˙b Ó effect nanako sato { ° ¢ ° ¢ cl. alto sax. ten. sax. ten. sax. bari. sax. tpt. tpt. tpt. tpt. tbn. tbn. tbn. b. tbn. j. gtr. pno. a. bass dr. q= swingi c‹ f a¨Œ„! c‹ f a¨Œ„! f‹ b¨ d¨Œ„! f‹ b¨ d¨Œ„! f f pp pp mp mp mp mp e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! a‹ b¨(„ˆˆ )/a¨ g (# ) e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! mp a‹ mp b¨(„ˆˆ )/a¨ g (# ) e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! mf a‹ b¨(„ˆˆ )/a¨ g (# ) p q= swingi &bbb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bb ! ! ! ! ! ! &bbb ! ! ! ! ! ! &bbb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bbb ! ! ! ! ! senza sord. &bbb ! ! ! ! ! senza sord. &bbb ! ! ! ! senza sord. &bbb ! ! ! ! senza sord. ?bbbbb ! ! ! ! ?bbbbb ! ! ! ! ?bbbbb ! ! ! ! ?bbbbb ! ! ! ! &bbbbb • • &bbbbb • • ?bbbbb • • ?bbbbb • • . . . / • ! • • • • œœœœœ œ œ œb œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ™ œœœ œ œœœœ w œ Œ Ó Œ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œb œ œ œ œ w w œ Œ Ó Œ œb œn œ œ ™ œjŒ œ ˙ ™ œ ™œ wn w# Œ œb œn œ œ ™ œjŒ œ ˙ ™ œ ™œ w# w w w w w w w# wn w w w w# wn wn w w w wb w wn w wn w w w wn w w w wn w wn w w w w w v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v wwwwnnnn wwww www wn wwww wwwnn www wwnn ww ww ww wwn ww œn ˙ œn œ œn œn œ œ ˙ œ œ œ œ œ œn ˙ œ œ œn œn œ y ¿ ™ œ¿j ¿ ¿ œ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ œ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ œ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿¿ ¿ effect nanako sato { ° ¢ ° ¢ cl. alto sax. ten. sax. ten. sax. bari. sax. tpt. tpt. tpt. tpt. tbn. tbn. tbn. b. tbn. j. gtr. pno. a. bass dr. f f f f f f f f g¨%(“ ) f (“ ) e (# ) a (b ) a¨ (b ) g (b ) c (b ) b (b ) b¨ (b ) g¨%(“ ) f (“ ) f e (# ) a (b ) a¨ (b ) g (b ) c (b ) b (b ) b¨ (b ) g¨%(“ ) f (“ ) f ff mp &bbb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bbb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bbb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bbb - - - - ! - - - &bbb - - - - ! - - - &bbb - - - - ! - - - &bbb - - - - ! - - - ?bbbbb - - - - ! - - - ?bbbbb - - - - ! - - - ?bbbbb - - - - ! - - - ?bbbbb - - - - ! - - - &bbbbb - - - ! - - - &bbbbb - - - ! - - - ?bbbbb - - - ! - - - ?bbbbb . . - - - ! - - - / • • • • • • w w# wn w w ˙ ˙n ˙b ˙ ˙ ˙# w# w w w w ˙ ˙ ˙b ˙ ˙n ˙b w w# w w w ˙ ˙ ˙b ˙n ˙b ˙ w# w w w wn ˙n ˙b ˙ ˙# ˙n ˙n w w wn w w ˙ ˙n ˙b ˙ ˙ ˙n wn w w w wn ˙ ˙ ˙n ˙ ˙n ˙b w w wn w w ˙ ˙ ˙n ˙n ˙b ˙ wb w w w w ˙n ˙b ˙n ˙n ˙b ˙n v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v + + + + + + www#n# www wwwnn www www ˙̇̇ ˙̇̇n ˙̇̇bnn ˙̇̇nn ˙̇̇bb ˙̇̇nnn wwn ww ww ww wwnn ˙̇nn ˙̇bb ˙̇n ˙̇ ˙̇nn ˙̇bb œ ˙ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ œ œ œ œ œ wn ˙n ˙b ˙n ˙ ˙n ˙b œœœœœ œ œ œœœœ œœœœœ ¿ ¿ œ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ effect nanako sato { ° ¢ ° ¢ cl. alto sax. ten. sax. ten. sax. bari. sax. tpt. tpt. tpt. tpt. tbn. tbn. tbn. b. tbn. j. gtr. pno. a. bass dr. f j f f f f f f f f a (b ) a¨ (b ) g& (# ) eŒ„! mf e¨‹ dº d¨‹ c‹ [áÁ] a (b ) a¨ (b ) g& (# ) eŒ„! mf e¨‹ dº d¨‹ c‹ [áÁ] mf ff mp mf j &bbb ! ! ! ! ! ! > - - - - &bb ! ! ! ! ! ! > - - - - &bbb ! ! ! ! ! ! > - - - - &bbb ! ! ! ! ! ! > - - - - &bb ! ! ! ! ! ! > - - - - &bbb ! -> .- -> .- -> .- -> .- > &bbb ! -> .- -> .- -> .- -> .- > - - - - &bbb ! -> .- -> .- -> .- -> .- > - - - - &bbb ! - > .- -> .- -> .- -> .- > - - - - ?bbbbb ! -> .- -> .- -> .- -> .- ! ! ?bbbbb ! -> .- -> .- -> .- -> .- ! ! ?bbbbb ! -> .- -> .- -> .- -> .- ! ! ?bbbbb ! -> .- -> .- -> .- -> .- ! ! &bbbbb ! -> .- -> .- -> .- -> .- &bbbbb ! -> .- -> .- -> .- -> .- ?bbbbb ! -> .- -> .- -> .- -> .- ?bbbbb ! -> .- -> .- -> .- / • • • • Ó œ œ œ œ ‰ œ ™ ˙ œ œ œ œ Ó œ œ œ œ ‰ œ ™ ˙ œb œ œ œ Ó œ œb œ œ ‰ œ ™ ˙# œb œ œ œ Ó œ œ œ# œ ‰ œ ™ ˙ œ œb œ œ Ó œ œ œ œ ‰ œ ™ ˙n œ œb œ œ œ œ Œ Œ œ œ Œ ˙n ™ œ œ Œ Œ œ œ Œ ˙ ™ w ˙ œ œ œ œ ‰ œ ™ ˙ œ œ œ œ œn œ Œ Œ œ œ Œ ˙ ™ œ œ Œ Œ œ œ Œ ˙# ™ w ˙ œ œ œ œ ‰ œ ™ ˙ œb œ œ œ œ# œ Œ Œ œ œ Œ ˙ ™ œ œ Œ Œ œ œ Œ ˙ ™ w ˙ œ œ œ œ ‰ œ ™ ˙ œ œb œ œ œ œ Œ Œ œ œ Œ ˙ ™ œ# œ Œ Œ œ œ Œ ˙ ™ w ˙ œ œ œ œ ‰ œ ™ ˙n œb œ œ œ œ œ Œ Œ œ œ Œ ˙n ™ œ œ Œ Œ œ œ Œ ˙ ™ w ˙ Ó œ œ Œ Œ œ œ Œ ˙ ™ œ œ Œ Œ œ œ Œ ˙ ™ w ˙ Ó œ œ Œ Œ œ œ Œ ˙ ™ œn œ Œ Œ œ œ Œ ˙n ™ w ˙ Ó œn œ Œ Œ œ œ Œ ˙ ™ œ œ Œ Œ œ œ Œ ˙ ™ w ˙ Ó v v Œ Œ v v Œ + ™ v v Œ Œ v v Œ + ™ + + ™ Œ + + + + œœœ œœœ Œ Œ œœœ œœœ Œ ˙̇̇n ™™™ œœœn œœœ Œ Œ œœœ œœœ Œ ˙̇̇ ™™™ www ˙̇̇ ™™™ Œ ‰ œœœœ ™™™™ ˙̇̇̇n œœœœn œœœœ œœœœb œœœœ œœnn œœ Œ Œ œœ œœ Œ ˙̇ ™™ œœn œœ Œ Œ œœ œœ Œ ˙̇nn ™™ ww ˙̇ ™™ Œ ˙̇̇ ˙̇nn ˙̇n ˙̇b œn œ Œ Œ œ œ Œ ˙ ™ œn œ Œ Œ œ œ Œ ˙n œ œ ˙n œ œ ˙n Œ ˙ ˙n ˙ ˙ œœœœœœœœœœœ œœœœœ ¿ ¿ œ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ œ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ œ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ œ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ œ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ œ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ œ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ effect nanako sato { ° ¢ ° ¢ cl. alto sax. ten. sax. ten. sax. bari. sax. tpt. tpt. tpt. tpt. tbn. tbn. tbn. b. tbn. j. gtr. pno. a. bass dr. mf p mf mf p mf mf p mf mf p mf mf p mf mf p fp f f mf p fp f f mf p fp f f mf p fp f f mf p fp f f mf p fp f f mf p fp f f mf p fp f f bŒ„! b¨ (“ ) b¨ a (b ) a¨ g& (# ) g¨Œ„! eŒ„! (# ) f e (# ) f bŒ„! b¨ (“ ) b¨ a (b ) a¨ g& (# ) g¨Œ„! eŒ„! (# ) f e (# ) f mf f &bbb ! ! - - ! ! &bb ! ! - - ! ! &bbb ! ! - - ! ! &bbb ! ! - - ! ! &bb ! ! - - ! ! &bbb -> . > . .> u &bbb -> . > . .> u &bbb -> . > . .> u &bbb - > . > . .> u ?bbbbb ! ! -> . > . .> u ?bbbbb ! ! -> . > . .> u ?bbbbb ! ! -> . > . .> u ?bbbbb ! ! -> . > . .> u &bbbbb . . u ! &bbbbb . . u ?bbbbb . . u ?bbbbb . . u / • • • • • • • • ! œ ™ œj ˙ ˙ œ œ œ œ Ó œ œ œ œ Ó œ œ œ œ ˙ ˙ œ ™ œj œ œ œ ™ œj ˙ ˙ œ œ œ œ Ó œ œ œ œ Ó œ œ œ œ ˙ ˙ œ ™ œj œ œ œ ™ œj ˙ ˙ œ œ œ œ Ó œ œb œ œ Ó œ œ œ œb ˙ ˙ œ ™ œj œ œ œ ™ œj ˙ ˙ œ œ œb œ Ó œ œ œ# œ Ó œ œ œb œ ˙ ˙ œ ™ œj œ œ œb ™ œj ˙ ˙ œ œ œ œ Ó œ œ œ œ Ó œ œ œ œ ˙# ˙ œ# ™ œj œ œb œ ™ œj ˙ ˙ Ó ‰ œ ™ œ ‰ œj ˙ Ó ‰ œ ™ œ ‰ œj ˙ Ó w œj ‰ Œ Ó œ ‰ œj ˙ w œ ™ œj ˙ ˙ Ó ‰ œn ™ œ ‰ œbj ˙ Ó ‰ œ ™ œ ‰ œj ˙ Ó w œj ‰ Œ Ó œ ‰ œj ˙ w œ ™ œj ˙ ˙ Ó ‰ œ# ™ œ ‰ œnj ˙ Ó ‰ œ ™ œ ‰ œj ˙ Ó wb œj ‰ Œ Ó œ ‰ œj ˙ w œ ™ œj ˙ ˙ Ó ‰ œ ™ œ ‰ œj ˙ Ó ‰ œb ™ œ ‰ œj ˙ Ó w œj ‰ Œ Ó œ ‰ œj ˙ w ‰ œ ™ œ ‰ œj ˙ Ó ‰ œ ™ œ ‰ œj ˙ Ó w œj ‰ Œ Ó œ ‰ œ j ˙ w ‰ œ ™ œ ‰ œj ˙ Ó ‰ œ ™ œ ‰ œj ˙ Ó w œj ‰ Œ Ó œn ‰ œnj ˙n wn ‰ œ ™ œ ‰ œj ˙ Ó ‰ œn ™ œ ‰ œj ˙ Ó w œj ‰ Œ Ó œ ‰ œj ˙ w ‰ œn ™ œ ‰ œbj ˙ Ó ‰ œ ™ œ ‰ œj ˙ Ó w œj ‰ Œ Ó œ ‰ œj ˙ w + + + ‰ v ™ v ‰ vj + Ó ‰ v ™ v ‰ vj + Ó + + v ‰ vj + œœœœ ™™™™ œœœœj ˙̇̇̇ ˙̇ ˙̇ ‰ œœœ ™™™ œœœ ‰ œœœ j ˙̇̇ Ó Ó ‰ œœœn ™™™ œœœ ‰ œœœ j ˙̇̇ Ó wwww wwww œœœœ ‰ œœœœj ˙̇̇̇ wwww wwn ww ‰ œœnn ™™ œœ ‰ œœbbj ˙̇ Ó ‰ œœn ™™ œœ ‰ œœb j ˙̇ Ó wwwnn www œœœnn ‰ œœœj ˙̇̇ www wn ˙ ˙ ‰ œn ™ œ ‰ œbj ˙ Ó ‰ œn ™ œ ‰ œbj ˙ Ó wn w œn ‰ œj ˙ w œ¿ ¿‰ ˙ ¿j y effect nanako sato { ° ¢ ° ¢ cl. alto sax. ten. sax. ten. sax. bari. sax. tpt. tpt. tpt. tpt. tbn. tbn. tbn. b. tbn. j. gtr. pno. a. bass dr. mp q= straight rit. k mf dolce e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ pp e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ pp dolce p q= straight rit. k &bbb ! ! ! ! - - ! &bb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bbb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bbb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bbb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bbb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bbb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bbb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ?bbbbb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ?bbbbb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ?bbbbb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ?bbbbb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bbbbb - - - o o o o &bbbbb ! ?bbbbb ! ?bbbbb o o o o”“ / • • • ˙ ˙ œ œ œ œ w ˙ ™ Œ œ œ œ ˙̇̇ œn œ ˙ Œ œ œ œ ˙̇̇ œn œ ˙ Œ œ œ œ ˙̇̇ œn œ ˙ Œ œ œ œ ˙̇̇ œn œ œ ™ œ œ œ w œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ww ˙ ˙ wn ˙ ˙ wn ˙ ˙ wn ˙ ˙ wn ˙ ˙ wn ˙ ˙ wn ˙ ˙ wn ˙ ˙ œn œ œ ™ œ œ œ w y ¿ ™ ¿j y wy effect nanako sato clarinet in bb copyright © nanako sato mp q= straighta b mf mf mf p p c f d mp mf e f mf mf p g mf q= swingh i &bbb nanako satoeffect &bbb &bbb &bbb &bbb - - - - - &bbb &bbb &bbb &bbb &bbb ˙ ˙ œ œ œ ™ œ œ w ˙ ™ Œ ˙ ˙ œ œ œ ™ œj œ ™ œj ˙ ˙ ™ œ œ œ œ œj ‰ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ œ œ œ w ˙ ™ œ œ œ œ œj ‰ Œ œœœœœj ‰ Œ œœœœœ œ œ w w ˙ œ œn œb wn ˙ œj ! œrœ œb œ œn ˙ ˙ œ œ œ ™ œœ w ˙ ™ Œ ˙ ˙ œ ™ œj œ œ ˙ ™ œ ˙ ™ œœœœ œj ‰ Œ œœœœœ œœ œ œ ˙ œœœ w ˙ ™ œ œ œ œ œj ‰ Œ œ œ œ œ œj ‰ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ w w w ˙ ™ ‰ œ œ w œ Œ Ó effect nanako sato f mf j p mf mp q= straight rit. k &bbb > - - - - " &bbb " - - &bbb - - " Ó œ œ œ œ ‰ œ ™ ˙ œ œ œ œ œ ™ œj ˙ ˙ œ œ œ œ Ó œ œ œ œ Ó œ œ œ œ ˙ ˙ œ ™ œj œ œ ˙ ˙ œ œ œ œ w ˙ ™ Œ clarinet in bb effect nanako sato alto saxophone copyright © nanako sato mp q= straighta b mf mf p p c f d p mf e f mf p mf g &bb nanako satoeffect &bb &bb &bb - - - - &bb &bb &bb ˙ ˙ œ œ œ ™ œj œ ™ œj ˙ ˙ ™ œœœœ œj ‰ Œ œœœœœ œœ œ œ ˙ œ œœ w ˙ ™ œœœœ œj ‰ Œ œœœœœj ‰ Œ œœœ œœ œ œ w w ˙ œ œ œ# w w ˙ ˙ œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ œœœœ ˙ ™ œœœœ œj ‰ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙# œ œ œ w ˙ ™ œ œ œ œ œj ‰ Œ œœœœœj ‰ Œ œœœœœ œ œ w w effect nanako sato c‹ f a¨Œ„! f c‹ f a¨Œ„! c‹ f a¨Œ„! h c‹ f a¨Œ„! c‹ f a¨Œ„! c‹ f a¨Œ„! f q= swingi j mf p mf q= straight rit. k &bb solo: alternate call & response between alto and tenor ! ! &bb &bb &bb > - - - - &bb ! ! &bb - - Ó Œ œœœ œ œ ˙ ™ œ œ œ œ Ó Œ œb œœœ œ ™ œ œ ˙ ˙ œb œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œb œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ w œ Œ Ó Ó œ œ œ œ ‰ œ ™ ˙ œb œ œ œ œ ™ œj ˙ ˙ œ œ œ œ Ó œ œ œ œ Ó œ œ œ œ ˙ ˙ œ ™ œj œ œ alto saxophone effect nanako sato tenor saxophone copyright © nanako sato mf q= straighta b mf p p c f d mp e f mf p p mf g f f‹ b¨ d¨Œ„! f‹ b¨ d¨Œ„! h v.s. f‹ b¨ d¨Œ„! f‹ b¨ &bbb nanako sato effect &bbb &bbb &bbb - - - - &bbb &bbb &bbb solo: alternate call & response between alto and tenor &bbb &bbb Ó Œ œ œ œ œ œj ‰ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ œ œ œ w ˙ ™ œ œ œ œ œj ‰ Œ œœœœ œj ‰ Œ œœœœœ œ œ w w ˙ œ œ œ# w wn Ó Œ œ œ œ œ œj ‰ Œ œœœœœ œœ œ œ ˙ œœ œ w ˙ ™ œœœœ œj ‰ Œ œœœœœj ‰ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ w w Ó ‰ œj œ œ œ ™ œ œ œ ™ œj œ œ ˙ ™ œj ‰ Œ Ó Ó ‰ œj œb œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ Ó œ œ œ œ effect nanako sato d¨Œ„! f‹ b¨ d¨Œ„! f‹ b¨ d¨Œ„! f q= swingi j mf p mf q= straight rit. k &bbb &bbb > - - - - &bbb ! ! &bbb - - ˙b Ó Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œb œ œ œ œ w w œ Œ Ó Ó œ œb œ œ ‰ œ ™ ˙# œb œ œ œ œ ™ œj ˙ ˙ œ œ œ œ Ó œ œb œ œ Ó œ œ œ œb ˙ ˙ œ ™ œj œ œ tenor saxophone effect nanako sato tenor saxophone copyright © nanako sato mf q= straighta b mf p c f d mp e f mf p p mf g f q= swingh i mf j p mf q= straight rit. k &bbb nanako sato effect &bbb &bbb &bbb - - - - &bbb &bbb &bbb &bbb &bbb > - - - - ! &bbb ! - - &bbb Ó Œ œ œ œ œ œj ‰ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ œ œ œ w ˙ ™ œ œ œ œ œj ‰ Œ œœœœœj ‰ Œ œœœœœ œ œ w w ˙n œn œb œ w# w Ó Œ œ œ œ œ œj ‰ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ œ œ œ w ˙ ™ œ œ œ œ œj ‰ Œ œœœœ œj ‰ Œ œœœœœ œ œ w w Ó œ œ œ# œ ‰ œ ™ ˙ œ œb œ œ œ ™ œj ˙ ˙ œ œ œb œ Ó œ œ œ# œ Ó œ œ œb œ ˙ ˙ œ ™ œj œ œ effect nanako sato baritone saxophone copyright © nanako sato p p q= straighta b p p c f d mp e f g f q= swingh i mf j p mf q= straight rit. k &bb nanako satoeffect &bb &bb &bb - - - - &bb &bb &bb &bb > - - - - ! &bb ! - - &bb ˙ ˙ ˙# ™ œn œœœ ˙ ˙ ˙# Œ œn œœœ œ œ œœœœœ œœ œ# œ ˙ œœœ w œ œ œ œœœœ œ œ œœœœœ œ œb œ œ œ ˙ ˙ wb ˙# œ# œn œn w w œ ™ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ# œ œœœ w œ œ œ œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ ˙ w# Ó œ œ œ œ ‰ œ ™ ˙n œ œb œ œ œb ™ œj ˙ ˙ œ œ œ œ Ó œ œ œ œ Ó œ œ œ œ ˙# ˙ œ# ™ œj œ œb effect nanako sato trumpet in bb copyright © nanako sato mf q= straighta b c p f d f mf f e f g f q= swing h i f &bbb con sord. (harmon) nanako satoeffect &bbb &bbb senza sord. &bbb - - - - - &bbb con sord. (cup) &bbb &bbb !senza sord. &bbb - - - - ! - - - ! ‰ œœœ œ œ Œ ‰ œœ œ œ ˙ œœœ w ˙ ™ Œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ Œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ Œ Œ œ œ w w Ó ‰ œ# j œn œ œ œ ˙ œ œ œ ˙n ˙# ˙ ˙# ˙n ˙ ˙ œ œn œb wn ˙ œj " œrœ œb œ œn ‰ œœœœœ Œ ‰ œ œ œ œ ˙ œœœ w ˙ ™ Œ ‰ œœœœœ Œ ‰ œœ œœœ Œ Œ œ œ w w Œ œb œn œ œ ™ œjŒ œ ˙ ™ œ ™œ wn w# w w# wn w w ˙ ˙n ˙b ˙ ˙ ˙# effect nanako sato f mf j p fp f f q= straight rit. k &bbb -> .- -> .- -> .- -> .- &bbb > -> . &bbb > . .> u &bbb œ œ Œ Œ œ œ Œ ˙n ™ œ œ Œ Œ œ œ Œ ˙ ™ w ˙ œ œ œ œ ‰ œ ™ ˙ œ œ œ œ œ ™ œj ˙ ˙ Ó ‰ œ ™ œ ‰ œj ˙ Ó ‰ œ ™ œ ‰ œj ˙ Ó w œj ‰ Œ Ó œ ‰ œj ˙ w trumpet in bb effect nanako sato trumpet in bb copyright © nanako sato mf q= straighta b c p mf d f e mf f f g f q= swingh i f &bbb con sord. (harmon) nanako satoeffect &bbb &bbb senza sord. &bbb - - - - &bbb con sord. (cup) &bbb &bbb !senza sord. &bbb - - - - ! - - - ! ‰ œœœœ œ Œ ‰ œœ œ œ ˙ œœœ w ˙ ™ Œ ‰ œœœœ œ Œ ‰ œœ œœ œ Œ Œ œ œ w w Ó ‰ œ# j œn œ œ œ ˙ œ œ œ ˙# ˙ ˙# ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙# œ œn œ# w w ‰ œœœœœ Œ ‰ œœ œ œb ˙ œœœ w ˙ ™ Œ ‰ œœœœœ Œ ‰ œœ œœœ Œ Œ œ œ w w Œ œb œn œ œ ™ œjŒ œ ˙ ™ œ ™œ w# w w# w w w w ˙ ˙ ˙b ˙ ˙n ˙b effect nanako sato f mf j p fp f f q= straight rit. k &bbb -> .- -> .- -> .- -> .- &bbb > - - - - -> . &bbb > . .> u &bbb œn œ Œ Œ œ œ Œ ˙ ™ œ œ Œ Œ œ œ Œ ˙# ™ w ˙ œ œ œ œ ‰ œ ™ ˙ œb œ œ œ œ ™ œj ˙ ˙ Ó ‰ œn ™ œ ‰ œbj ˙ Ó ‰ œ ™ œ ‰ œj ˙ Ó w œj ‰ Œ Ó œ ‰ œj ˙ w trumpet in bb effect nanako sato trumpet in bb copyright © nanako sato mf q= straighta b c p pp f d mf f e f g p pp q= swingh i f &bbb con sord. (harmon) nanako satoeffect &bbb &bbb senza sord. - - - - &bbb con sord. (cup) &bbb &bbb senza sord. &bbb - - - - ! - - - ! ‰ œœœœœ Œ ‰ œœ œ œ ˙ œœœ w ˙ ™ Œ ‰ œœœœœ Œ ‰ œœ œœœ Œ Œ œ œ w w wn w wn wb wn ˙# œn œb œ w# wn ‰ œœœœœ Œ ‰ œœ œ œ ˙ œœœ w ˙ ™ Œ ‰ œ œœœœ Œ ‰ œœ œœœ Œ Œ œ œ w w w w w w w w# w w# w w w ˙ ˙ ˙b ˙n ˙b ˙ effect nanako sato f mf j p fp f f q= straight rit. k &bbb -> .- -> .- -> .- -> .- &bbb > - - - - -> . &bbb > . .> u &bbb œ# œ Œ Œ œ œ Œ ˙ ™ œ œ Œ Œ œ œ Œ ˙ ™ w ˙ œ œ œ œ ‰ œ ™ ˙ œ œb œ œ œ ™ œj ˙ ˙ Ó ‰ œ# ™ œ ‰ œnj ˙ Ó ‰ œ ™ œ ‰ œj ˙ Ó wb œj ‰ Œ Ó œ ‰ œj ˙ w trumpet in bb effect nanako sato trumpet in bb copyright © nanako sato mf q= straighta b c p pp f d mf f e f g p pp q= swingh i f &bbb con sord. (harmon) nanako satoeffect &bbb &bbb senza sord. - - - - &bbb con sord. (cup) &bbb &bbb senza sord. &bbb - - - - ! - - - ! ‰ œœœœœ Œ ‰ œœ œ œ ˙ œ œœ w ˙ ™ Œ ‰ œœœœœ Œ ‰ œœ œœœ Œ Œ œ œ w w w# w w# w# w ˙ œ œn œb wn w ‰ œ œœœœ Œ ‰ œœ œ œ ˙ œœœ w ˙ ™ Œ ‰ œ œ œœœ Œ ‰ œœ œœœ Œ Œ œ œ w w wn w w w w# wn w# w w w wn ˙n ˙b ˙ ˙# ˙n ˙n effect nanako sato f mf j p fp f f q= straight rit. k &bbb - > .- -> .- -> .- -> .- &bbb > - - - - -> . &bbb > . .> u &bbb œ œ Œ Œ œ œ Œ ˙ ™ œ# œ Œ Œ œ œ Œ ˙ ™ w ˙ œ œ œ œ ‰ œ ™ ˙n œb œ œ œ œ ™ œj ˙ ˙ Ó ‰ œ ™ œ ‰ œj ˙ Ó ‰ œb ™ œ ‰ œj ˙ Ó w œj ‰ Œ Ó œ ‰ œj ˙ w trumpet in bb effect nanako sato trombone copyright © nanako sato mf q= straighta p b mf c mp f d pp e f g mp q= swing h i f ?bbbbb nanako satoeffect ?bbbbb ?bbbbb ?bbbbb ?bbbbb - ?bbbbb ?bbbbb ?bbbbb ?bbbbb - - - - ! - - - ! ˙ ˙ w ˙ ˙ w ˙ ˙ Œ ˙ ™ Œ œ ˙ Œ ˙ ™ ˙ ˙ Œ ˙ ™ Œ œ ˙ Œ ˙ ™ œ j ‰ Œ Ó Ó Œ ‰ œ j œ ™ œj œ ™ œj œ œ ˙ œ œœ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ œ œ œ œ ™ œj œ ™ œj œ œ ˙ œ ™ œ w ˙ ™ Œ wn w wb w wn ˙ œ œn œb wn w Œ œ œ ™ œj w ˙ ˙ w Œ œ ˙ Œ ˙ ™ Œ œ ˙ Œ ˙ ™ wn w w w wb w w w wn w w ˙ ˙n ˙b ˙ ˙ ˙n effect nanako sato mf p j fp f f q= straight rit. k ?bbbbb -> .- -> .- -> .- -> .- ?bbbbb -> . > . ?bbbbb .> u ?bbbbb œ œ Œ Œ œ œ Œ ˙n ™ œ œ Œ Œ œ œ Œ ˙ ™ w ˙ Ó ‰ œ ™ œ ‰ œj ˙ Ó ‰ œ ™ œ ‰ œj ˙ Ó w œj ‰ Œ Ó œ ‰ œ j ˙ w trombone effect nanako sato trombone copyright © nanako sato mf q= straighta p b mf c mp f d pp e f g mp q= swing h i f ?bbbbb nanako sato effect ?bbbbb ?bbbbb ?bbbbb ?bbbbb - - ?bbbbb ?bbbbb ?bbbbb ?bbbbb - - - - ! - - - ! ˙ ˙ w ˙ ˙ w ˙ ˙ Œ ˙ ™ Œ ˙ ™ Œ ˙ ™ ˙ ˙ Œ ˙ ™ Œ ˙ ™ Œ ˙ ™ œ j ‰ Œ Ó Ó Œ ‰ œj œ ™ œj œ ™ œj œ œ ˙ œ œœ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ œ œœ œ ™ œj œ ™ œj œ œ ˙ œ ™ œ w ˙ ™ Œ wn wn w w w ˙n œn œb œ w w Œ œ œ ™ œj w ˙ ˙ w Œ ˙ ™ Œ ˙ ™ Œ ˙ ™ Œ ˙ ™ wn w wn w w w wn w<n> w w wn ˙ ˙ ˙n ˙ ˙n ˙b effect nanako sato mf p fp j f f q= straight rit. k ?bbbbb -> .- -> .- -> .- -> .- ?bbbbb -> . > . ?bbbbb .> u œ œ Œ Œ œ œ Œ ˙ ™ œ œ Œ Œ œ œ Œ ˙ ™ w ˙ Ó ‰ œ ™ œ ‰ œj ˙ Ó ‰ œ ™ œ ‰ œj ˙ Ó w œj ‰ Œ Ó œn ‰ œnj ˙n wn trombone effect nanako sato trombone copyright © nanako sato mf q= straighta p b mf c mp f d pp e f g mp q= swing h i f ?bbbbb nanako satoeffect ?bbbbb ?bbbbb ?bbbbb ?bbbbb - - - ?bbbbb ?bbbbb ?bbbbb ?bbbbb - - - - ! - - - ! ˙ ˙ w ˙ ˙ w ˙ ˙ Œ ˙ ™ Œ ˙ ™ Œ ˙ ™ ˙ ˙ Œ ˙ ™ Œ ˙ ™ Œ ˙ ™ œj ‰ Œ Ó Ó Œ ‰ œj œ ™ œj œ ™ œj œ œ ˙ œ œœ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ œ œ œ œ ™ œj œ ™ œj œ œ ˙ œ ™ œ w ˙ ™ Œ wn w wb w wn ˙ œn œb œn w w Œ œ œ ™ œj w ˙ ˙ w Œ ˙ ™ Œ ˙ ™ Œ ˙ ™ Œ ˙ ™ wn w w w wn w w w wn w w ˙ ˙ ˙n ˙n ˙b ˙ effect nanako sato mf p j fp f f q= straight rit. k ?bbbbb -> .- -> .- -> .- -> .- ?bbbbb -> . > . ?bbbbb .> u ?bbbbb œ œ Œ Œ œ œ Œ ˙ ™ œn œ Œ Œ œ œ Œ ˙n ™ w ˙ Ó ‰ œ ™ œ ‰ œj ˙ Ó ‰ œn ™ œ ‰ œj ˙ Ó w œj ‰ Œ Ó œ ‰ œj ˙ w trombone effect nanako sato bass trombone copyright © nanako sato mf q= straighta p b mf c mp d f pp e f g mp q= swingh i f ?bbbbb nanako satoeffect ?bbbbb ?bbbbb ! ! ?bbbbb ?bbbbb ?bbbbb - - - - ?bbbbb ?bbbbb ?bbbbb ?bbbbb - - - - ! - - - ! ˙ ˙ w ˙ ˙ w ˙ ˙ œn œ ˙ ™ œ œ ˙ œn œ ˙ ™ ˙ ˙ w# œ œ ˙ œn œ ˙ ™ Ó Œ Œ Ó Œ Œ Ó Œ ‰ œj œ ™ œj œ ™ œj œ œ ˙ œ œœ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ œ œœ œ ™ œj œ ™ œj œ œ ˙ œ ™ œ w ˙ ™ Œ wn w w wb w ˙ œ œ œn w wn Œ œ œ ™ œj ˙n ™ œ œ ˙ ˙ w œ œ œ ™ œj œn œ ˙ ™ œ œ œ ™ ‰ œn œ ˙ ™ wn w w w w w wb w<b> w w w ˙n ˙b ˙n ˙n ˙b ˙n effect nanako sato mf p j fp f f q= straight rit. k ?bbbbb -> .- -> .- -> .- -> .- ?bbbbb -> . > . ?bbbbb .> u ?bbbbb œn œ Œ Œ œ œ Œ ˙ ™ œ œ Œ Œ œ œ Œ ˙ ™ w ˙ Ó ‰ œn ™ œ ‰ œbj ˙ Ó ‰ œ ™ œ ‰ œj ˙ Ó w œj ‰ Œ Ó œ ‰ œj ˙ w bass trombone effect nanako sato jazz guitar copyright © nanako sato mf e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! q= straighta e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! b e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! mp e¨‹ a¨ c bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ c‹ (b ) bŒ„! b¨‹ e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! mp a‹ b¨(„ˆˆ )/a¨ g (# ) g¨%(“ )d f (“ ) e (# ) a (b ) a¨ (b ) g (b ) g¨ (b ) f& (b ) e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e f e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! g e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! &bbbbb nanako sato effect &bbbbb simile. • • • &bbbbb • • • • ”“ &bbbbb “< > &bbbbb “< > &bbbbb &bbbbb simile. • • &bbbbb • • • • &bbbbb • • • • œ œ œ œ ™ œj ˙ ™ Œ œ œ œ œ ™ œj ˙ ™ Œ œ œ œ œ ™ œj ˙ ™ Œ œ œ œ œ œ ™ œj œ ™ œ‰ œj ˙ œ œ œ œ œ ™ œj w œ œ œ œ œ ™ œj œ ™ œ# ‰ œj ˙ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙# ™ Œ + + + + + + v v v + + œ œ œ œ ™ œj ˙ ™ Œ effect nanako sato e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! h e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! a‹ b¨(„ˆˆ )/a¨ g (# ) q= swing i g¨%(“ ) f (“ ) e (# ) a (b ) a¨ (b ) g (b ) c (b ) b (b ) b¨ (b ) a (b ) a¨ (b ) g& (# ) eŒ„! mf e¨‹ dº d¨‹ c‹ [áÁ] bŒ„! b¨ (“ ) b¨ a (b ) a¨ j g& (# ) g¨Œ„! eŒ„! (# ) f e (# ) f mf dolce e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! q= straight k e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ rit. &bbbbb • • • • • &bbbbb • &bbbbb &bbbbb - - - ! - - - ! -> .- -> .- &bbbbb -> .- -> .- &bbbbb . &bbbbb . u ! &bbbbb &bbbbb - - - o o o o v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v + + + + + + v v Œ Œ v v Œ + ™ v v Œ Œ v v Œ + ™ + + ™ Œ + + + + + + + ‰ v ™ v ‰ vj + Ó ‰ v ™ v ‰ vj + Ó + + v ‰ vj + œ œ œ ˙̇̇ œn œ ˙ Œ œ œ œ ˙̇̇ œn œ ˙ Œ œ œ œ ˙̇̇ œn œ ˙ Œ œ œ œ ˙̇̇ œn œ œ ™ œ œ œ w jazz guitar effect nanako sato { { { { { piano copyright © nanako sato pp e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! q= straight a ° ° ° ° a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! p ° ° ° ° mp e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! b ° ° e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! c e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! &bbbbb nanako satoeffect ?bbbbb &bbbbb ?bbbbb &bbbbb • • • ?bbbbb • • • &bbbbb • • • ?bbbbb • • • &bbbbb • • • ?bbbbb • • • Œ œœœ ˙̇̇ Œ ˙̇̇ ™™™ Œ œœœ ˙̇̇ Œ ˙̇̇ ™™™ œ œœ œœœ œ ™ œœ œn œ ˙ œ œ œb œ œœ œœœ œ ™ œœ œn œ ˙ œ œœ Œ œœœ ˙̇̇ Œ ˙̇̇ ™™™ Œ œœœ ˙̇̇ Œ ˙̇̇ ™™™ œ œœ œœœ œ ™ œœ œn œ ˙ œ œ œb œ œœ œœœ œ ™ œœ œn œ ˙ œ œœ Œ œœœ ˙̇̇ Œ ˙̇̇ ™™™ œ œœ œœœ œ ™ œœ œn œ ˙ œ œ œb effect nanako sato { { { { { { e¨‹ c‹ (b ) bŒ„! b¨‹ e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! ° ° ° ° mp a‹ b¨(„ˆˆ )/a¨ g (# ) g¨%(“ ) f (“ ) f e (# ) a (b ) a¨ (b ) g (b ) g¨ (b )d f& (b ) mp e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e ° ° ° ° e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! f e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! g e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! h &bbbbb ?bbbbb &bbbbb - - - ?bbbbb - - - &bbbbb ?bbbbb &bbbbb • • • • ?bbbbb • • • • &bbbbb • • • • • ?bbbbb • • • • • &bbbbb • • • • ?bbbbb • • • • Œ œœœ ˙̇ Œ œœœ Œ œœœœ Œ œœœ ˙̇̇ Œ ˙̇̇ ™™™ œ œœ œœœ œ œœ œœœ œn œ œ œb œ œ œ œœ œœœ œ ™ œœ œn œ ˙ œ œœ wwwwnnnn www wn wwwwnbn wwwwbb wwwnn ˙̇̇### œœœ œœœnnn œœœbnn wwwn wwnn ww wwn wwn ww ˙̇nn œœnn œœbb œœn wwn wwwn Œ œœœ ˙̇̇ Œ ˙̇̇ ™™™ Œ œœœ ˙̇̇ Œ ˙̇̇ ™™™ ww œ œœ œœœ œ ™ œœ œn œ ˙ œ œ œb œ œœ œœœ œ ™ œœ œn œ ˙ œ œœ piano effect nanako sato { { { { { { e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! mp a‹ mp b¨(„ˆˆ )/a¨ g (# ) g¨%(“ ) f (“ ) q= swing i f e (# ) a (b ) a¨ (b ) g (b ) c (b ) b (b ) b¨ (b ) a (b ) a¨ (b ) g& (# ) eŒ„! mf e¨‹ dº d¨‹ c‹ [áÁ] bŒ„! b¨ (“ ) b¨ a (b ) a¨ j v.s. g& (# ) g¨Œ„! eŒ„! (# ) f e (# ) f &bbbbb • • • • ?bbbbb • • • • &bbbbb ?bbbbb &bbbbb - - - ! - - - ! ?bbbbb - - - ! - - - ! &bbbbb -> .- -> .- -> .- -> .- ?bbbbb -> .- -> .- -> .- -> .- &bbbbb . ?bbbbb . &bbbbb . u ?bbbbb . u wwwwnnnn wwww www wn wwww wwwnn www www#n# www wwwnn wwnn ww ww ww wwn ww wwn ww ww www<n><n> www ˙̇̇ ˙̇̇n ˙̇̇bnn ˙̇̇nn ˙̇̇bb ˙̇̇nnn ww wwnn ˙̇nn ˙̇bb ˙̇n ˙̇ ˙̇nn ˙̇bb œœœ œœœ Œ Œ œœœ œœœ Œ ˙̇̇n ™™™ œœœn œœœ Œ Œ œœœ œœœ Œ ˙̇̇ ™™™ www ˙̇̇ ™™™ Œ œœnn œœ Œ Œ œœ œœ Œ ˙̇ ™™ œœn œœ Œ Œ œœ œœ Œ ˙̇nn ™™ ww ˙̇ ™™ Œ ‰ œœœœ ™™™™ ˙̇̇̇n œœœœn œœœœ œœœœb œœœœ œœœœ ™™™™ œœœœj ˙̇̇̇ ˙̇ ˙̇ ‰ œœœ ™™™ œœœ ‰ œœœ j ˙̇̇ Ó Ó ˙̇̇ ˙̇nn ˙̇n ˙̇b wwn ww ‰ œœnn ™™ œœ ‰ œœbbj ˙̇ Ó ‰ œœœn ™™™ œœœ ‰ œœœ j ˙̇̇ Ó wwww wwww œœœœ ‰ œœœœj ˙̇̇̇ wwww ‰ œœn ™™ œœ ‰ œœb j ˙̇ Ó wwwnn www œœœnn ‰ œœœj ˙̇̇ www piano effect nanako sato { { pp e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! q= straight k e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ rit. &bbbbb ?bbbbb &bbbbb ! ?bbbbb ! œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ ˙ wn ˙ ˙ wn œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ww ˙ ˙ wn ˙ ˙ wn piano effect nanako sato acoustic bass copyright © nanako sato p e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! q= straighta mp e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! b e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! c e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ c‹ (b ) bŒ„! b¨‹ e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! mf f d p e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! f e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! g e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! h ?bbbbb nanako satoeffect ?bbbbb ?bbbbb simile. • ?bbbbb • • • ?bbbbb • ?bbbbb arco - - - ?bbbbb simile. • ?bbbbb • • • • ?bbbbb • • • • • ?bbbbb • • • • œ œ œ œ ™ œœ ˙n ™ œ œœ œ œ œ œ ™ œœ ˙n ™ œ œœ ˙ œ ™ œj ˙n ™ œ œ œb œ œ œ ™ œj œn œ ˙ œ œ œ ˙ œ ™ œj ˙n ™ œ œ œb œ œ œ ™ œj œn œ œ œb œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œn œ ˙ œ œ œ œ œ œn œ œb ™ œj œ œ œ œ œn œ œ œb wn w wn w w ˙n œn œb œn w w œ œ œ œ ™ œ œ ˙n ™ œ œ œ effect nanako sato e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! e¨‹ a¨ bŒ„! mf a‹ b¨(„ˆˆ )/a¨ g (# ) q= swing i g¨%(“ ) f (“ ) f mf j mf f pp dolce q= straight rit. k ?bbbbb • • • • ?bbbbb . . . ?bbbbb . . - - - ! ?bbbbb - - - ! -> .- -> .- -> .- ?bbbbb . ?bbbbb . u ?bbbbb ?bbbbb o o o o”“ œn ˙ œn œ œn œn œ œ ˙ œ œ œ œ œ œn ˙ œ œ œn œn œ œ ˙ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ œ œ œ œ œ wn ˙n ˙b ˙n ˙ ˙n ˙b œn œ Œ Œ œ œ Œ ˙ ™ œn œ Œ Œ œ œ Œ ˙n œ œ<n> ˙n œ œ ˙n Œ ˙ ˙n ˙ ˙ wn ˙ ˙ ‰ œn ™ œ ‰ œbj ˙ Ó ‰ œn ™ œ ‰ œbj ˙ Ó wn w œn ‰ œj ˙ w ˙ ˙ wn ˙ ˙ wn ˙ ˙ wn ˙ ˙ œn œ œ ™ œ œ œ w acoustic bass effect nanako sato drum set copyright © nanako sato p q= straighta p b pp c mp d p e f g h p / ! with stick nanako satoeffect / stick for ride cymbal use mallets for the floor tom • • • / asian pop feel • • • / • • • • / / / stick for ride cymbal use mallets for the floor tom • / • • • • / • • • • • / • • • • / • • • ! y y y y y y œ y œ œ ‰¿ ™œj ‰ œj ‰¿ j y œj ‰ œj œj œ œj œ œ œ œ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ œ œ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ œ œ œ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ œ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ œ œ œ œ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ œ œ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ œ œ œ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ œ¿ ¿ ¿ y™ ‰ ¿ ¿ y™ ‰ ¿ ¿ y y y y ¿œ ¿œ ¿œ æææw ¿ Œ Ó œ y œ œ ‰¿ ™ œj ‰ œj ‰¿ j y œj ‰ œj œj œ œj y ¿ ™ ¿j effect nanako sato q= swingi ff mp ff mp mf j p q= straightk rit. / • • / • • • • / • • • • / / • • • • / • • / • • • • / • • ! / • • • œ¿ ¿ œ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ œ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ œ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ œœœœœœœœœœœ œœœœœ ¿ ¿ œ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ œœœœœœœœœœœ œœœœœ ¿ ¿ œ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ œ¿ ¿ œ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ œ¿ ¿ œ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ œ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ œ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ œ¿ ¿‰ ˙ ¿j y y ¿ ™ ¿j y wy drum set effect nanako sato nanako sato 	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   chapter rainforest this composition features a latin-feel with a twist of swing in the middle. like previous works, rainforest utilises a minor pentatonic scale, but in this case the last two notes are altered, giving us an augmented fifth and a major seventh. the first alto is featured soloist. the piece was inspired by a poem that is based on the magnificent painting by stephen gayford, entitled rainforest phantoms. the leopards listen to each noise of their surrounding sounds… on steadfast feet they gently poise, resisting fearful bounds. perhaps it isn't time to run, like cowards fearing pain, or just like girls who love the sun, yet flee from falling rain... the leopards like the spot they've seen, it suits them to a tee... they'll stay till others intervene, like phantoms on their tree... the forest has its moody times, its fierce and frantic days, its pleasant passing sunny climes and melting dew-dropped phase... the sun shines through the trees above, the clouds go gliding by... and soon the moon will shine with love, to grace the midnight sky... the leopards lack for nothing now, true friends in harmony... receiving what the fates allow - denis martindale rainforest master of music in composition musi mmus composition at the university of canterbury student id: nanako sato nanako sato nanako sato nanako sato note: trumpet section need a cup mute and a harmon mute. instrumentation alto saxophone tenor saxophones baritone saxophone trumpets trombones bass trombones jazz guitar piano acoustic bass drum set nanako sato nanako sato ° ¢ ° ¢ ° ¢ { copyright © nanako sato alto saxophone alto saxophone acoustic guitar -string bass guitar drum set mp q= straight a b mp mf mf p q= straight a b alto sax. alto sax. ten. sax. ten. sax. bari. sax. tpt. tpt. tpt. tpt. tbn. tbn. tbn. b. tbn. a. gtr. pno. bass dr. mf mf p mf p mf p mf p mf p subito p mf p subito p mf p subito p mf p subito p mf p subito p mf p subito p mf p subito p mf p subito p p subito p mf p subito p mf p subito p subito &b ! ! ! ! . . . . nanako sato rainforest &b ! ! ! ! . . . . &bbbb . . . . ! ! ! ! ?bbbb ! ! ! ! . . . . / ! ! ! ! &b ! ! ! ! . . . . &b ! ! ! ! . . . . &bb . . . . . . . . &bb . . . . . . . . &b . . . . . . . . &bb con sord.(cup mute) &bb con sord.(cup mute) &bb con sord.(cup mute) &bb con sord.(cup mute) ?bbbb ?bbbb ?bbbb ?bbbb &bbbb . . . . . . . . &bbbb . . . . . . . . ?bbbb . . . . . . . . ?bbbb . . . . . . . . / ! ! ! œ œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œb œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œb j ‰ œj œ œ œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œb œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œb j ‰ œj œ œ œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œn œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œnj ‰ œj œ œ œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œ j ‰ œj ‰ œ j œ œn œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œ j ‰ œnj ‰ œ j œ œ ¿ œ ‰ Œ ¿j Œ ‰ ¿ œj ‰ Œ œj ‰ ¿ œj œ ¿ œ Œ œ ¿ œ ‰ Œ ¿j Œ ‰ ¿ œj ‰ Œ œj ‰ ¿ œj œ ¿ œ Œ œ œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œb œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œb j ‰ œj œ œ œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œb œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œb j ‰ œj œ œ œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œb œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œbj ‰ œj œ œ œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œb œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œbj ‰ œj œ œ œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œb œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œbj ‰ œj œ œ œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œb œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œbj ‰ œj œ œ œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œb œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œb j ‰ œj œ œ œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œ# œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œb j ‰ œj œ ˙ ˙ wû ˙ ˙ wû ˙ ˙ wû ˙ ˙ wû ˙ ˙ wû ˙ ˙b wû ˙ ˙ wû ˙ ˙b wû ˙ ˙ wû ˙ ˙ wû ˙ ˙ wû ˙ ˙ wû ˙ ˙ wû ˙b ˙ wû ˙ ˙ wû ˙b ˙ wû ˙ ˙ wû ˙ ˙ wû ˙ ˙ wû ˙ ˙ wû ˙ ˙ wû ˙ ˙ wû ˙ ˙ wû ˙ ˙ wû ˙ ˙ wû ˙ ˙ wû ˙ ˙ wû ˙ ˙ wû ˙ ˙ wû ˙b ˙b wn û ˙ ˙ wû ˙b ˙b wn û œ œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œn œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œnj ‰ œj œ œ œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œn œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œnj ‰ œj œ œ œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œ j ‰ œj ‰ œ j œ œn œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œ j ‰ œn j ‰ œ j œ œ œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œ j ‰ œj ‰ œ j œ œn œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œ j ‰ œn j ‰ œ j œ œ œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œn œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œn j ‰ œj œ œ œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œn œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œn j ‰ œj œ œ œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œ j ‰ œj ‰ œ j œ œn œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œ j ‰ œnj ‰ œ j œ œ œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œ j ‰ œj ‰ œ j œ œn œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œ j ‰ œnj ‰ œ j œ = nanako sato ° ¢ ° ¢ { alto sax. alto sax. ten. sax. ten. sax. bari. sax. tpt. tpt. tpt. tpt. tbn. tbn. tbn. b. tbn. a. gtr. pno. bass dr. c mf mp mp mp mp mp mp mp mp mp mp mp mp mp a¨(„ˆˆ )/c a¨(„ˆˆ )/b a¨(„ˆˆ )/c a¨(„ˆˆ )/b mp a¨(„ˆˆ )/c a¨(„ˆˆ )/b a¨(„ˆˆ )/c a¨(„ˆˆ )/b mp p c &b ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &b ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bb - - - - ! &bb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &b ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bb -> ! -> ! -> ! ! ! &bb -> ! -> ! -> ! ! ! &bb -> ! -> ! -> ! ! ! &bb -> ! -> ! -> ! ! ! ?bbbb -> ! - > ! -> ! ! ?bbbb -> ! -> ! - > ! ! ?bbbb -> ! -> ! -> ! ! ?bbbb -> ! -> ! -> ! ! &bbbb . . . . . . . . &bbbb ?bbbb . . . . ?bbbb . . . . / ! Ó œ œ œ ˙ œ œ œ œ ™ œj œ fiœj œ œ œ ˙ Œ Ó œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ w œ œ Œ Ó œ œ Œ Ó œ œ Œ Ó œ œ Œ Ó œ œ Œ Ó œ œ Œ Ó œ œ Œ Ó œ œ Œ Ó œ œ Œ Ó œ œ Œ Ó œ œ Œ Ó œ œ Œ Ó œ œ Œ Ó œ œ Œ Ó œ œ Œ Ó œn œ œ œ œ œ Œ Ó œ œ Œ Ó œ œ Œ Ó œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ Ó œ œ Œ Ó œ œ Œ Ó œb œ œ œn œ œ Œ Ó œn œ Œ Ó œ œ Œ Ó œ œ œb œ œ œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œn œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œnj ‰ œj œ œ œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œn œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œnj ‰ œj œ Ó ˙̇ ww Ó ˙̇̇̇ wwww Ó ˙̇ ww Ó ˙̇̇̇ wwww ˙ ™ œ œ œ Œ Œ œj ‰ ˙n ™ œ œ œn Œ Œ ‰ œ j ˙ ™ œ œ œ Œ Œ œj ‰ ˙n ™ œ œ œn Œ Œ ‰ œ j ˙ ™ œ œ œ Œ Œ œj ‰ ˙n ™ œ œ œn Œ Œ ‰ œj ˙ ™ œ œ œ Œ Œ œj ‰ ˙n ™ œ œ œn Œ Œ ‰ œj ¿ ‰œ œ ¿ œœ ¿j Œ ¿ œ œ œ¿ œ œœ Œ ¿ Æœj œ¿ œ ¿ Œ œ œ ¿ œœ ¿ œ œœ¿ œœ ¿ ¿ ‰ ¿j ‰ œ œ œ¿ œ œœ ¿j Œ ¿ ™ Æœ œœ¿ œœ¿ ¿j ¿ ¿ œ œ ¿ œœ nanako sato ° ¢ ° ¢ { alto sax. alto sax. ten. sax. ten. sax. bari. sax. tpt. tpt. tpt. tpt. tbn. tbn. tbn. b. tbn. a. gtr. pno. bass dr. mp mp mp mp f mp f mp f mp f mp a¨(„ˆˆ )/c a¨(„ˆˆ )/b a¨(„ˆˆ )/c a¨(„ˆˆ )/b &b ! ! ! ! &b ! ! ! ! &bb ! - - - &bb ! ! ! ! &b ! ! ! ! &bb ! ! ! senza sord.-> &bb ! ! ! senza sord.-> &bb ! ! ! senza sord.-> &bb ! ! ! senza sord. -> ?bbbb ! ! -> ?bbbb ! ! -> ?bbbb ! ! - > ?bbbb ! ! -> &bbbb . . . . &bbbb ?bbbb . . ?bbbb . . / ! œ œ œ œ œ œ œ w ˙ ™ œ œ œ œ Œ Ó œ œ Œ Ó œ œ Œ Ó œ œ Œ Ó ˙ ™ œ j ‰ œ œ Œ Ó ˙ ™ œj ‰ œ œ Œ Ó ˙n ™ œj ‰ œ œ Œ Ó ˙ ™ œj ‰ œn œ Œ Ó œ œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œn œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œnj ‰ œj œ Ó ˙̇ ww Ó ˙̇̇̇ wwww ˙ ™ œ œ œ Œ Œ œj ‰ ˙n ™ œ œ œn Œ Œ ‰ œ j ˙ ™ œ œ œ Œ Œ œj ‰ ˙n ™ œ œ œn Œ Œ ‰ œj nanako sato ° ¢ ° ¢ { alto sax. alto sax. ten. sax. ten. sax. bari. sax. tpt. tpt. tpt. tpt. tbn. tbn. tbn. b. tbn. a. gtr. pno. bass dr. p d p p p p f p f p f p f p f a¨(„ˆˆ )/c a¨(„ˆˆ )/b b¨‹ g& /a a¨(„ˆˆ )/c a¨(„ˆˆ )/b b¨‹ g& /a d &b ! ! ! ! - . - . &b ! ! ! ! - . - . &bb . - . - . &bb ! ! ! ! - . - . &b ! ! ! ! - . - . &bb ! -> ! ! con sord. (harmon mute) &bb ! -> ! ! ! ! ! ! &bb ! -> ! ! ! ! ! ! &bb ! -> ! ! ! ! ! ! ?bbbb ! -> ! - - - - ! ! ! ?bbbb ! -> ! - - - - ! ! ! ?bbbb ! -> ! - - - - ! ! ! ?bbbb ! -> ! - - - - ! ! ! &bbbb . . . . &bbbb ?bbbb . . ?bbbb . . / ! ! w Œ œ œ Œ ‰ œj w Œ œ œ Œ ‰ œj w Œ œ œ Œ ‰ œj w Œ œ œ Œ ‰ œj œ œ ˙ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ w w w Œ œ œ Œ ‰ œj w Œ œ œ Œ ‰ œj w Œ œ œ Œ ‰ œj wb Œ œb œ Œ ‰ œj w Œ œ œ Œ ‰ œj wb Œ œb œ Œ ‰ œj œ œ Œ Ó œ œ ˙ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ Ó œ œ Œ Ó œ œ Œ Ó œ œ Œ Ó œn œ œ œ ˙ ™ œj ‰ œ œ Œ Ó œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ œj ‰ œ œ Œ Ó œb œ œ œn ˙ ™ œj ‰ œ œ Œ Ó œ œ œb œ ˙ ™ œj ‰ œ œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œn œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œnj ‰ œj œ v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v Ó ˙̇ ww Ó ˙̇̇̇ wwww œœœœ œœœœ ‰ œœœœ j ‰ œœœœ œj ‰ œœœœ j ‰ œœœœ j œœœœ œœœœ œœœœ œnn œœœœ œ ‰ œœœœ œj ‰ œœœœ œj ‰ œœœœ œnn j ‰ œœœœ œj œœœœ œ œœœœ œ ˙ ™ œ œ œ Œ Œ œj ‰ ˙n ™ œ œ œn Œ Œ ‰ œ j œ ™ œj œ ™ œj œ œ œ œ œ œ œn ™ œj œ ™ œj œ œ œ œn œ œ ˙ ™ œ œ œ Œ Œ œj ‰ ˙n ™ œ œ œn Œ Œ ‰ œj œ ™ œj œ ™ œj œ œ œ œ œ œ œn ™ œj œ ™ œj œ œ œ œn œ œ nanako sato ° ¢ ° ¢ { alto sax. alto sax. ten. sax. ten. sax. bari. sax. tpt. tpt. tpt. tpt. tbn. tbn. tbn. b. tbn. a. gtr. pno. bass dr. mf a¨ a¨ g a¨ g¨ f (# ) f a¨‹ g& a¨ a¨ g a¨ g¨ f (# ) f a¨‹ g& &b &b &bb &bb &b &bb ! > - - &bb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ?bbbb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ?bbbb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ?bbbb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ?bbbb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bbbb &bbbb ?bbbb ?bbbb / ! ! wb œ œb ‰ œnj œ œ œ ™ œ ™ œ w w Œ œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œj w œ ‰ œnj œ œb œ w œ œb ‰ œn j œ œ œb ™ œ ™ œ w wb Œ œb œ ‰ œj ‰ œj wb œb ‰ œj œ œb œ w œ œn ‰ œj œ œb œ ™ œ ™ œ w w Œ œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œj wn œn ‰ œj œ œ œ w œb œ ‰ œj œ œb œ ™ œ ™ œ w wb Œ œb œ ‰ œj ‰ œj w œ ‰ œj œ œn œ w œ œ ‰ œj œ œb œ ™ œ ™ œ w w Œ œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œj w œ ‰ œj œ œ œ w w w ˙ ™ œ œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj œb w ˙ œn œb v v v v v v ‰ vj v v v ™ v ™ v + Ó v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v wwwwwb œœœœb œœœœnnn ‰ œœœœb j œœœœ œœœœbnb œœœœn ™™™™ œœœœ ™™™™ œœœœ ˙̇̇̇ Ó œœœœbb œœœœ ‰ œœœœ j ‰ œœœœ j ‰ œœœœbb j ‰ œœœœ j œœœœ œœœœ œœœœnn œœœœ ‰ œœœœ j ‰ œœœœ j œœœœ ‰ œœœœnnn j œœœœ œœœ œœœ w œ œ ‰ œj œ œb œ ™ œ ™ œ ˙ Ó œ# œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ# œ œn œ œn œ œn œ œ œ œ œ œn œn œ w œ œ ‰ œj œ œb œ ™ œ ™ œ ˙ Ó œ# œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œn œ œn œ œn œ œ œ œ œ œn œn œ nanako sato ° ¢ ° ¢ { alto sax. alto sax. ten. sax. ten. sax. bari. sax. tpt. tpt. tpt. tpt. tbn. tbn. tbn. b. tbn. a. gtr. pno. bass dr. q= e mp mp mp mp c c (b ) f f‹ e (# ) e¨ b¨/d c© c© c c (b ) f f‹ e (# ) e¨ b¨/d d¨ a¨(„ˆˆ )/c a¨(„ˆˆ )/b mp q= e &b ! ! ! ! &b ! ! ! ! &bb ! ! ! ! &bb ! ! ! ! &b . . &bb - - - - ! ! ! &bb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ?bbbb ! ! ! ! ! ?bbbb ! ! ! ! ! ?bbbb ! ! ! ! ! ?bbbb ! ! ! ! ! &bbbb . . . . &bbbb ?bbbb . . ?bbbb . . / ! ! ˙n ˙b w œ œ œ œ w œ œ Œ Ó ˙ ˙ w# œ œn œ œ w œ œ Œ Ó ˙ ˙ w œ œ œ œ w œ œ Œ Ó ˙b ˙ w œ œ œ œ wb œb œ Œ Ó ˙ ˙ w œ œb œ œn œ Œ Ó œ œ Œ Ó ˙ ™ œ œ œ Œ Œ œj ‰ ˙b ™ œ œ œb Œ Œ ‰ œj ˙n ˙b w œ œ œ œ w ˙ œ œb w Ó ˙ w Ó ˙ w Ó ˙ w Ó ˙ w Ó ˙ w Ó ˙ w Ó ˙ w Ó ˙n w + + + v v v v + v v Ó œ œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œn œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œnj ‰ œj œ ˙̇̇̇nn ˙̇̇̇b wwwwn œœœœ œœœ œn œœœœb œœœœ wwwwn œœœœn œœœœ Œ Ó Ó ˙̇ ww Ó ˙̇̇̇ www w ˙ ˙ w œ œn œb œn w œ œ Œ Ó ˙ ™ œ œ œ Œ Œ œj ‰ ˙n ™ œ œ œn Œ Œ ‰ œ j ˙ ˙ w œ œn œb œn w œ œ Œ Ó ˙ ™ œ œ œ Œ Œ œj ‰ ˙n ™ œ œ œn Œ Œ ‰ œj ¿ œ œ ¿ œœ ¿ ¿ ¿ œ œ œ¿ œ œœ ¿ ¿ ¿ Æœj œ¿ œ ¿ ¿ ¿ œ œ ¿ œœ ¿ ¿ ¿ œ œ œ ¿ œœ ¿ ¿ ¿ œ œ œ¿ œ œœ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ Æœ œœ¿ œœ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ œ œ ¿ œœ nanako sato ° ¢ ° ¢ { alto sax. alto sax. ten. sax. ten. sax. bari. sax. tpt. tpt. tpt. tpt. tbn. tbn. tbn. b. tbn. a. gtr. pno. bass dr. f f/a f‹/g©f p p p p p p p p f a¨(„ˆˆ )/c a¨(„ˆˆ )/b mf a¨/c a¨‹/b mf mf f &b ! ! ! ! alto solo &b ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &b . . ! ! ! ! &bb ! ! ! ! ! senza sord. .> ! .> &bb ! ! ! ! ! .> ! .> &bb ! ! ! ! ! .> ! .> &bb ! ! ! ! ! .> ! .> ?bbbb ! .> ! .> ?bbbb ! .> ! . > ?bbbb ! .> ! .> ?bbbb ! .> ! .> &bbbb . . . . . . . . &bbbb > . > . . > . > . . ?bbbb . . > . > . . > . > . . ?bbbb . . . . / ! ! ‰ œj œ œ œ œb œn œ œ œ œœœœœ œ œb œ œ œ œb œ ˙ ‰ œj œ œ œb œ œ ˙ ™ œ œ œ Œ Œ œj ‰ ˙b ™ œ œ œb Œ Œ ‰ œj Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Ó ˙ w Ó ˙ w Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Ó ˙ w Ó ˙ w Œ œ œ Ó Œ œn œ Ó Ó ˙ w Ó ˙ w Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Ó ˙ w Ó ˙n w Œ œ œ Ó Œ œb œ Ó œ œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œn œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œnj ‰ œj œ œ œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œn œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œnj ‰ œj œ Ó ˙̇ ww Ó ˙̇̇̇ wwww œ œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œ ™ œ œ œn œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œ ™ œ œn ˙ ™ œ œ œ Œ Œ œj ‰ ˙n ™ œ œ œn Œ Œ ‰ œ j œ œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œ ™ œ œ œn œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œ ™ œ œn ˙ ™ œ œ œ Œ Œ œj ‰ ˙n ™ œ œ œn Œ Œ ‰ œj ˙ ™ œ œ œ Œ Œ œj ‰ ˙n ™ œ œ œn Œ Œ ‰ œj nanako sato ° ¢ ° ¢ { alto sax. alto sax. ten. sax. ten. sax. bari. sax. tpt. tpt. tpt. tpt. tbn. tbn. tbn. b. tbn. a. gtr. pno. bass dr. f/a f‹/g© f/a f‹/g© a¨/c a¨‹/b a¨/c a¨‹/b &b &b ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &b ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bb ! .> ! .> ! .> ! .> &bb ! .> ! .> ! .> ! .> &bb ! .> ! .> ! .> ! .> &bb ! .> ! .> ! .> ! .> ?bbbb ! .> ! .> ! .> ! .> ?bbbb ! .> ! . > ! .> ! . > ?bbbb ! .> ! .> ! . > ! .> ?bbbb ! .> ! .> ! .> ! .> &bbbb . . . . . . . . &bbbb > . > . . > . > . . > . > . . > . > . . ?bbbb > . > . . > . > . . > . > . . > . > . . ?bbbb . . . . / ! ! ‰ œnj œb œn œ œb œn œ œn œ œ œ œn œ fiœb jœœœœ œ fiœj œ œ œb œ œ ˙ ™ Œ ‰ œj œ œ œn œ œ œ œ œ œ œn œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œn œ œ œ ™ ‰ Œ Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œn œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œn œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œb œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œb œ Ó œ œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œn œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œnj ‰ œj œ œ œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œn œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œnj ‰ œj œ œ œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œ ™ œ œ œn œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œ ™ œ œn œ œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œ ™ œ œ œn œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œ ™ œ œn œ œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œ ™ œ œ œn œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œ ™ œ œn œ œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œ ™ œ œ œn œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œ ™ œ œn ˙ ™ œ œ œ Œ Œ œj ‰ ˙n ™ œ œ œn Œ Œ ‰ œj ˙ ™ œ œ œ Œ Œ œj ‰ ˙n ™ œ œ œn Œ Œ ‰ œj nanako sato ° ¢ ° ¢ { alto sax. alto sax. ten. sax. ten. sax. bari. sax. tpt. tpt. tpt. tpt. tbn. tbn. tbn. b. tbn. a. gtr. pno. bass dr. f/a f‹/g© mf a‹ g©‹ g‹ f©‹ f©‹ fŒ„! e mf mf mf mf mf mf c‹ b‹ b¨‹ a‹ a¨Œ„! g a¨/c a¨‹/b c‹ b‹ b¨‹ a‹ a¨Œ„! g &b . &b ! ! ! ! . &bb ! ! ! ! . &bb ! ! ! ! . &b ! ! ! ! . &bb ! .> ! .> ! ! ! &bb ! .> ! .> ! ! ! &bb ! .> ! .> ! ! ! &bb ! .> ! .> ! ! ! ! ?bbbb ! .> ! .> ! ! ! ! ?bbbb ! .> ! . > ! ! ! ! ?bbbb ! .> ! .> . ?bbbb ! .> ! .> . &bbbb . . . . &bbbb > . > . . > . > . . ?bbbb > . > . . > . > . . ?bbbb . . > . . / ! ! ‰ œj œn œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œn œ œ œ œ œ œ œb œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ Ó œ Œ Œ œ œ œ œ œj œ ™ œ œb œ ˙ ™ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ Œ œ œ œ œ œj œ ™ œ œb œ ˙ ™ ˙ ˙n œ Œ Œ œ œ œ œ œj œn ™ œ œ œ ˙b ™ ˙b ˙ œ Œ Œ œb œ œ œ œj œ ™ œ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙ ˙n œ Œ Œ œb œ œ œb ˙ ˙ ˙b œ œ œb œb Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó ! Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó ! Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó ! Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œn œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó œ Œ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œn œ ˙ ™ œ Œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œb œ Ó œ Œ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ ˙n œ œ œn œn œ œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œn œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œnj ‰ œj œ v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v œ œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œ ™ œ œ œn œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œ ™ œ œn v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v œ œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œ ™ œ œ œn œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œ ™ œ œn v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v ˙ ™ œ œ œ Œ Œ œj ‰ ˙n ™ œ œ ‰ œ ™ œ œn œ œ œn œn œ œ œn œn œ œ œ œb œ œ œn œn nanako sato ° ¢ ° ¢ { alto sax. alto sax. ten. sax. ten. sax. bari. sax. tpt. tpt. tpt. tpt. tbn. tbn. tbn. b. tbn. a. gtr. pno. bass dr. a‹ g©‹ g‹ f©‹ fŒ„! e a‹ g©‹ g‹ f©‹ fŒ„! e p p p p p p p p c‹ b‹ b¨‹ a‹ a¨Œ„! g c‹ b‹ b¨‹ a‹ a¨Œ„! g c‹ b‹ b¨‹ a‹ a¨Œ„! g c‹ b‹ b¨‹ a‹ a¨Œ„! g &b &b ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &b ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bb - > . - - - -> . &bb -> . - - - -> . &bb -> . - - - -> . &bb -> . - - - -> . ?bbbb ! ! ! ! -> . ?bbbb ! ! ! ! -> . ?bbbb ! ! ! ! -> . ?bbbb ! ! ! ! - > . &bbbb &bbbb ?bbbb ?bbbb / ! ! œ œb œn œ œn œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œb œ œn œ œb œ œ œb œn œ œn œ œ œb œn œ œb œn œ œ œ œ œ œn œ œ œ œ œb œn œn œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œn ! ! ! ! œ ™ œŒ Œ œ œ œ œ œj œ ™ œ œ œ˙ ™ ˙ ˙ œ ™ œŒ Œ œ œ œ œ œj œ ™ œ œ œ˙ ™ ˙ ˙ œ ™ œŒ Œ œ œ œ œ œj œ ™ œ œ œ˙ ™ ˙ ˙ œ ™ œŒ Œ œ œ œ œ œj œ ™ œ œ œ˙ ™ ˙ ˙ œ ™ œŒ Œ œn œ œ œ œj œ ™ œ œ œ˙ ™ ˙ ˙ œ ™ œŒ Œ œn œ œ œ œj œ ™ œ œ œ˙ ™ ˙ ˙ œ ™ œŒ Œ œ œ œ œ œj œ ™ œ œ œ˙ ™ ˙# ˙ œ ™ œŒ Œ œb œ œ œ œ jœ ™ œ œ œ˙ ™ ˙b ˙ œ ™ œŒ Œ œ œ œ œ œj œ ™ œ œ œ˙ ™ ˙ ˙ œ ™ œŒ Œ œ œ œ œ œj œ ™ œ œ œ˙ ™ ˙ ˙ œ ™ œŒ Œ œn œ œ œ œj œ ™ œ œ œ˙ ™ ˙ ˙ œ ™ œŒ Œ œb œ œ œ œj œ ™ œ œ œ˙ ™ ˙n ˙ v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v œœ œœ œœnn œœj œœ œœbbj œœj œœ œœnn œœ ™™ ˙̇ ˙̇ ˙̇ ˙̇nn v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v œ œ œn œn œ œ œn œn œ œ œ œ œn œ œn œ œ ™ œœœœ œn œn œ œ œ œ œn œn œ œ œ œ œn œn œ œ nanako sato ° ¢ ° ¢ { alto sax. alto sax. ten. sax. ten. sax. bari. sax. tpt. tpt. tpt. tpt. tbn. tbn. tbn. b. tbn. a. gtr. pno. bass dr. a‹ g©‹ g‹ f©‹ fŒ„! e mf q= swingg h mp p p mp f mp f mp f mp f p mp f mp f p mp f mp f p mp mp f mp f mp mp f mp f mp mp f mp f mp mp f mp f c‹ b‹ b¨‹ a‹ a¨Œ„! g mp b¨ (“ ) a‹ a¨Œ„! f g " mp e¨ (“ ) d‹ d¨Œ„! f c " b¨‹ c‹ b‹ b¨‹ a‹ a¨Œ„! g mp b¨ (“ ) a‹ a¨Œ„! f g " mp e¨ (“ ) d‹ d¨Œ„! f c " p b¨‹ mp f mp f p mp f mp f mf q= swing g h &b ! ! ! ! end of alto solo &b ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bb -> . ! ! ! ! &b -> . ! ! ! ! &bb -> . ! ! ! - . - &bb -> . ! ! ! - . - &bb -> . ! ! ! - . - &bb -> . ! ! ! - . - ?bbbb - . - ?bbbb - . - ?bbbb - . - ?bbbb - . - &bbbb - . - &bbbb - . - ?bbbb - . - ?bbbb - . - / ! drum fill - . - œ œ œ œb œ œ œ œb œn œ œ œb œn œ œ œ œb œn œ œb œ œn œb œn ˙ ™ Œ ˙ œ œ œ œ ˙ œ œ œ œ ˙ œ œ œ œ œ ™ œ Œ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ˙ ™ ˙n ™ Œ ‰ œj Œ œ Œ œ œ ™ œŒ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ w œ œ œb œb ‰ œj Œ œ Œ œ œ ™ œŒ Ó œ ™ œj œ œ œj ‰ œ œ Ó œ ™ œj œ œ œj ‰ œ œ œ œ œr "‰ Œ Œ Ó œ ™ œŒ Ó œ ™ œj œ œ œj ‰ œ œ Ó œ ™ œj œ œ œj ‰ œ œ œ œ œr "œj Œ œ Œ œ œ ™ œŒ Ó œ ™ œn j œ œ œj ‰ œ œ Ó œ ™ œn j œ œ œj ‰ œ œ œ œ œr "œj Œ œ Œ œ œ ™ œŒ Ó œ ™ œj œ œ œj ‰ œb œ Ó œ ™ œj œ œ œj ‰ œb œ œ œ œ r "œj Œ œ Œ œ ˙ ˙n ˙ ˙n ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙n œ ™ œj œ œ œj ‰ œ œ Ó œ ™ œj œ œ œj ‰ œ œ œ œ œ r "‰ Œ Œ Ó ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ œ ™ œnj œ œ œj ‰ œ œ Ó œ ™ œnj œ œ œ j ‰ œ œ œ œ œ r "‰ Œ Œ Ó ˙ ˙b ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙n ˙ œ ™ œj œ œ œj ‰ œn œ Ó œ ™ œj œ œ œj ‰ œn œ œ œ œr "‰ Œ Œ Ó ˙ ˙n ˙n ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙n ˙n œ ™ œn j œ œb œ œ œ Ó œ ™ œnj œ œb œ œ œ œ œ œr "‰ Œ Œ Ó v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v œœœœ ™™™™ œœœ œ n ™™™ ™ œœœ œb œœœ œj ‰ œœœœn œœœœ Ó œœœœ ™™™ ™ œœœœn ™™™ ™ œœœ œb œœœ œj ‰ œœœœn œœœœ œœœœ œœœœ v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v œœœ ™™™ œœœ ™™™ œœœ œœœ j ‰ œœœœn œœœœ Ó œœœ ™™™ œœœ ™™™ œœœ œœœ j ‰ œœœœn œœœœ œœœœ œœœœ ‰ œœœœ j Œ œœœœ Œ œœœœ v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v œ ™ œn ™ œ# œ œ œ Ó œ ™ œn ™ œ# œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ# œn œ œ œn œ œ œ œn œ œ œ œ œb œ œn œn œ œ ™ œn ™ œb œ œ œ Ó œ ™ œn ™ œb œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ œn ¿ ™ ¿ ™ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ Ó ¿ ™ ¿ ™ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ œ ¿ ‰ œœ œ œ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ œ ¿ ¿œ ¿ rainforest nanako sato ° ¢ ° ¢ { alto sax. alto sax. ten. sax. ten. sax. bari. sax. tpt. tpt. tpt. tpt. tbn. tbn. tbn. b. tbn. a. gtr. pno. bass dr. mp i mp f p p p p a‹ (b ) a¨ a¨ a¨‹ g (# ) c (b ) f p f‹ e (# ) a‹ (b ) a¨ a¨ a¨‹ g (# ) c (b ) f f‹ e (# ) p mp mp i &b &b &bb ! &bb ! &b ! &bb ! ! ! ! ! &bb ! &bb ! &bb ! ?bbbb ! ! ! ! ! ! ?bbbb ! ! ! ! ! ! ?bbbb ! ! ! ! ! ! ?bbbb ! ! ! ! ! ! &bbbb &bbbb ?bbbb - - ?bbbb - - / ˙ œ œ œ œ w œ w œ ˙ œ œ œb œ œ œ ˙ ™ œ œb œn ™ œb ™ ˙ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ œ œ œ œ w œ w œ ˙b œ œ œ œ œb œb ˙ ™ œ œ œ ™ œ ™ ˙b œ œ œ œ œ ˙ œ œ œ œ w œ w œ ˙ œ œ œb œ œ œ ˙ ™ œ œb œ ™ œ ™ ˙ ‰ œj Œ œ Œ œ ‰ œj Œ œ Œ œ ‰ œj Œ œ Œ œ ‰ œj Œ œ Œ œ ‰ œnj Œ œ Œ œ ‰ œ j Œ œ Œ œ ‰ œj Œ œ Œ œ ‰ œbj Œ œ Œ œ ‰ œbj Œ œ Œ œ ‰ œbj Œ œ Œ œ ‰ œj Œ œ Œ œ ‰ œbj Œ œ Œ œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj Œ œ Œ œ ‰ œj Œ œ Œ œ ‰ œj Œ œ Œ œ ‰ œj Œ œ Œ œ ‰ œj Œ œ Œ œ ‰ œn j Œ œb Œ œ ‰ œj Œ œ Œ œ ‰ œj Œ œ Œ œ ‰ œj Œ œ Œ œ ‰ œb j Œ œ Œ œ ‰ œb j Œ œ Œ œ ‰ œj Œ œ Œ œn ‰ œj Œ œ Œ œ ‰ œj Œ œ Œ œ ‰ œj Œ œ Œ œ ‰ œj Œ œ Œ œ ‰ œn j Œ œ Œ œ ‰ œj Œ œ Œ œ œ ™ œ ™ œ ™ œn ™ œ ™ œ ™ œ ™ œ ™ v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v ™ v ™ ‰ œœœœ j Œ œœœœ Œ œœœœ ‰ œœœœb j Œ œœœœ Œ œœœœ ‰ œœœœb j Œ œœœœ Œ œœœœ ‰ œœœœbb j Œ œœœœ Œ œœœœ ‰ œœœœnn j Œ œœœœ Œ œœœœ ‰ œœœœnn j Œ œœœœb Œ œœœœnb œœœœ ™™™™ œœœœn ™™™™ œn œ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ ˙ œ ™ œn ™ œn œ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ ˙ œ ™ œn ™ œ ¿ ‰ œœ œ œ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ œ ¿ ¿œ ¿ œ ¿ ‰ œœ œ œ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ œ ¿ ¿œ ¿ œ ¿ ‰ œœ œ œ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ œ ¿ ¿œ ¿ œ ¿ ‰ œœ œ œ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ œ ¿ ¿œ ¿ œ ¿ ‰ œœ œ œ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ œ ¿ ¿œ ¿ œ ¿ ‰ œœ œ œ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ œ ¿ ¿œ ¿ ¿ ™ ¿ ™ rainforest nanako sato ° ¢ ° ¢ { alto sax. alto sax. ten. sax. ten. sax. bari. sax. tpt. tpt. tpt. tpt. tbn. tbn. tbn. b. tbn. a. gtr. pno. bass dr. f j f mp f mp f f f f f f e¨ d‹ f c© f fe¨ d‹ f d¨ f f p j &b - . ! ! ! &b - . ! ! ! &bb - . ! ! ! ! ! &bb - . ! ! ! ! ! &b ! ! - . ! ! ! ! ! &bb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &bb ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ?bbbb - . ! ! ! ! ! ?bbbb - . ! ! ! ! ! ?bbbb - . ! ! ! ! ! ?bbbb - . ! ! ! ! ! &bbbb - . ! . . . . played by guitar . . . . &bbbb - . ! ! ! ! ! ?bbbb - . ! ! ! ! ! ?bbbb - . ! . - . - / - . ! œ ™ œ ˙ ˙ ™ œ œ Ó Ó œb w œ ™ œ ˙ ˙ ™ œ œ Ó Ó œb w œ œ œ œ œ œ ™ œ ˙ œb œ Ó œ œ œ œ œ œ ™ œ ˙ œ œ Ó œ œ Ó ˙ ™ ˙ ™ œ œ Ó ˙ ™ ˙n ™ œ œ Ó ˙ ™ ˙ ™ œn œ Ó ˙ ™ ˙ ™ œ œ Ó + ™ + ™ v v Œ Œ œ œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œn œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œnj ‰ œj œ œ œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œ j ‰ œj ‰ œ j œ œn œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œ j ‰ œn j ‰ œ j œ ˙̇̇̇ ™™™™ ˙̇̇ ™™™ œœœœb œœœœ Œ Œ ˙ ™ ˙n ™ œ œ Œ Œ ˙ ™ ˙n ™ œ œ Œ Œ œ Œ Ó Ó Œ œ œn Œ Ó Ó Œ œn y™ y™ ¿ ¿ Œ Œ œ¿ œ ‰ Œ ¿j Œ ‰ ¿ œj ‰ Œ œj ‰ ¿ œj œ ¿ œ Œ œ ¿ œ ‰ Œ ¿j Œ ‰ ¿ œj ‰ Œ œj ‰ ¿ œj œ ¿ œ Œ rainforest nanako sato ° ¢ ° ¢ { alto sax. alto sax. ten. sax. ten. sax. bari. sax. tpt. tpt. tpt. tpt. tbn. tbn. tbn. b. tbn. a. gtr. pno. bass dr. fp fp fp fp fp fp fp fp mf mf mf mf f f mf &b ! ! ! ! &b ! ! ! ! &bb ! ! ! ! &bb ! ! ! ! &b ! ! ! ! &bb ! ! &bb ! ! &bb ! ! &bb ! ! ?bbbb ! ! ?bbbb ! ! ?bbbb ! ! ?bbbb &bbbb . . . . & bbbb &bbbb > . > . . > . > . . ?bbbb > > . . > . > . . ?bbbb > > . . > . > . . / ! w wb w w w w w wb Œ ‰ œj ˙ Œ ‰ œnj ˙ Œ ˙ ™ Œ ˙n ™ w wn ˙ ˙ œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œ ™ ˙n ˙ œn œ ‰ œn j ‰ œ ™ œ œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œn œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œnj ‰ œj œ œ œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œ ™ œ œ œn œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œ ™ œn œn œ œ œ ˙ ‰ œ ™ œ œ œn œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œ ™ œn œn œ œ œ ˙ ‰ œ ™ œ œ œn œn œn ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œn ™ œn œ rainforest nanako sato ° ¢ ° ¢ { alto sax. alto sax. ten. sax. ten. sax. bari. sax. tpt. tpt. tpt. tpt. tbn. tbn. tbn. b. tbn. a. gtr. pno. bass dr. fp fp p ff fp fp p ff fp fp p ff fp fp p ff p ff p ff p ff p ff p a¨(„ˆˆ )/c b a¨(„ˆˆ )/b¨ e¨/a ff p a¨(„ˆˆ )/c b a¨(„ˆˆ )/b¨ e¨/a ff p ff f &b ! ! ! ! ! !u &b ! ! ! ! ! !u &bb ! ! ! ! ! !u &bb ! ! ! ! ! !u &b ! ! ! ! ! !u &bb ! ! -> -> -> -> -> -> u &bb ! ! - > -> -> -> -> -> u &bb ! ! -> -> -> -> -> -> u &bb ! ! -> -> - > -> -> -> u ?bbbb ! ! -> -> -> -> -> -> u ?bbbb ! ! -> -> -> -> -> -> u ?bbbb ! ! -> -> -> -> -> -> u ?bbbb u &bbbb . . . . -> -> -> -> -> -> -> u &bbbb > . > . . > . > . . -> -> -> -> -> -> u ?bbbb > . > . . > . > . . u ?bbbb > . > . . > . > . . u / ! u w wb œ œ ‰ œj œj ‰ œ œ ‰ œ j ˙ Œ w w œ œ ‰ œj œj ‰ œ œ ‰ œj ˙ Œ w w œ œn ‰ œj œj ‰ œ œ ‰ œ j ˙ Œ w wb œ œ ‰ œj œj ‰ œ œ ‰ œj ˙ Œ Œ ‰ œj ˙ Œ ‰ œnj ˙ œ œ ‰ œj œj ‰ œ œ ‰ œj ˙ Œ Œ ˙ ™ Œ ˙n ™ œ œ ‰ œj œj ‰ œ œ ‰ œ j ˙ Œ w wn œ œ ‰ œj œj ‰ œ œ ‰ œ j ˙ Œ ˙ ˙ œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œ ™ ˙n ˙ œn œ ‰ œn j ‰ œ ™ œ œ j œn ™ œb œ œn ˙ Œ œ œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œn œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œnj ‰ œj œ v v ‰ vj vj ‰ v v ‰ vj + Œ œ œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œ ™ œ œ œn œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œ ™ œn œn œœœ œœœ ‰ œœœ## j œœœ j ‰ œœœœn œœœœ ‰ œœœj ˙̇̇ Œ œ œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œ ™ œ œ œn œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œ ™ œn œn œ œj œn ™ œb œ œn ˙ Œ œ œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œ ™ œ œ œn œn œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œ ™ œn œn œ œj œn ™ œb œ œn ˙ Œ ¿ ™ ¿ ™ ¿ ¿ ¿ y Œ rainforest nanako sato alto saxophone copyright © nanako sato mp q= straight a b mf c p d f f/a f‹/g©q= e f f/a f‹/g© f/a f‹/g© f/a f‹/g© v.s.mf a‹ g©‹ g‹ f©‹ f©‹ fŒ„! e a‹ g©‹ &b . . . . nanako sato rainforest &b . . &b . . &b - . - . &b &b &b alto solo &b &b &b &b . œ œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œb œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œb j ‰ œj œ œ œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œb œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œb j ‰ œj œ w Œ œ œ Œ ‰ œj w Œ œ œ Œ ‰ œj wb œ œb ‰ œnj œ œ œ ™ œ ™ œ w w Œ œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œj w œ ‰ œnj œ œb œ ˙n ˙b w œ œ œ œ w œ œ Œ Ó ‰ œj œ œ œ œb œn œ œ œ œœœœœ œ œb œ œ œ œb œ ˙ ‰ œj œ œ œb œ œ ‰ œnj œb œn œ œb œn œ œn œ œ œ œn œ fiœb jœ œœœ œ fiœj œ œ œb œ œ ˙ ™ Œ ‰ œj œ œ œn œ œ œ œ œ œ œn œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œn œ œ œ ™ ‰ Œ ‰ œj œn œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œn œ œ œ œ œ œ œb œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ Ó œ Œ Œ œ œ œ œ œj œ ™ œ œb œ˙ ™ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œb œn œ œn œ œ œ nanako sato nanako sato g‹ f©‹ fŒ„! e a‹ g©‹ g‹ f©‹ fŒ„! e a‹ g©‹ g‹ f©‹ fŒ„! e mf q= swing g h mp f i j &b &b &b end of alto solo &b ! &b &b - . &b !u œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œb œ œn œ œb œ œ œb œn œ œn œ œ œb œn œ œb œn œ œ œ œ œ œn œ œ œ œ œb œn œn œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œn œ œ œ œb œ œ œ œb œn œ œ œb œn œ œ œ œb œn œ œb œ œn œb œn ˙ ™ Œ ˙ œ œ œ œ ˙ œ œ œ œ w œ w œ ˙ œ œ œb œ œ œ ˙ ™ œ œb œn ™ œb ™ ˙ œ œ œ œ œ œ ™ œ ˙ ˙ ™ œ œ Ó Ó œb w alto saxophone rainforest nanako sato alto saxophone copyright © nanako sato mp q= straighta b mf c p d mf q= e f q= swingg &b . . . . nanako satorainforest &b . . &b . . &b - . - . &b &b &b .alto solo &b ! end of alto solo &b ! œ œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œb œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œb j ‰ œj œ œ œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œb œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œb j ‰ œj œ w Œ œ œ Œ ‰ œj w Œ œ œ Œ ‰ œj w œ œb ‰ œn j œ œ œb ™ œ ™ œ w wb Œ œb œ ‰ œj ‰ œj wb œb ‰ œj œ œb œ ˙ ˙ w# œ œn œ œ w œ œ Œ Ó œ Œ Œ œ œ œ œ œj œ ™ œ œb œ ˙ ™ ˙ ˙n ! rainforest nanako sato mp h mp i f j &b &b &b - . !u ˙ œ œ œ œ ˙ œ œ œ œ w œ w œ ˙b œ œ œ œ œb œb ˙ ™ œ œ œ ™ œ ™ ˙b œ œ œ œ œ œ ™ œ ˙ ˙ ™ œ œ Ó Ó œb w alto saxophone rainforest nanako sato tenor saxophone copyright © nanako sato p q= straight a b mf mf c p d mf q= e f q= swingg &bb . . . . nanako satorainforest &bb . . . . &bb - - - - &bb - - - &bb . - . - . &bb &bb &bb .alto solo &bb ! end of alto solo &bb ! œ œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œb œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œbj ‰ œj œ œ œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œb œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œbj ‰ œj œ Ó œ œ œ ˙ œ œ œ œ ™ œj œ fiœj œ œ œ ˙ Œ Ó œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ w œ œ œ œœœœ w ˙ ™ œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ w w w Œ œ œ Œ ‰ œj w Œ œ œ Œ ‰ œj w œ œn ‰ œj œ œb œ ™ œ ™ œ w w Œ œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œj wn œn ‰ œj œ œ œ ˙ ˙ w œ œ œ œ w œ œ Œ Ó œ Œ Œ œ œ œ œ œj œn ™ œ œ œ ˙b ™ ˙b ˙ ! rainforest nanako sato h mp i f j &bb &bb ! &bb - . ! !u ˙ œ œ œ œ ˙ œ œ œ œ w œ w œ ˙ œ œ œb œ œ œ ˙ ™ œ œb œ ™ œ ™ ˙ œ œ œ œ œ œ ™ œ ˙ œb œ Ó tenor saxophone rainforest nanako sato nanako sato tenor saxophone copyright © nanako sato p q= straight a b mf p c d mf q= e f q= swingg &bb . . . . nanako satorainforest &bb . . . . &bb - . - . &bb &bb &bb . alto solo &bb -> . &bb end of alto solo &bb ! œ œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œb œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œbj ‰ œj œ œ œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œb œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œbj ‰ œj œ w Œ œ œ Œ ‰ œj wb Œ œb œ Œ ‰ œj w œb œ ‰ œj œ œb œ ™ œ ™ œ w wb Œ œb œ ‰ œj ‰ œj w œ ‰ œj œ œn œ ˙b ˙ w œ œ œ œ wb œb œ Œ Ó œ Œ Œ œb œ œ œ œjœ ™ œœœ˙ ™ ˙ ˙n ! œ ™ œ Œ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙n ™ Œ rainforest nanako sato p h mp f i j &bb &bb &bb ! - . ! &bb !u ‰ œj Œ œ Œ œ ‰ œj Œ œ Œ œ ‰ œj Œ œ Œ œ ‰ œj Œ œ Œ œ ‰ œj Œ œ Œ œ ‰ œnj Œ œ Œ œ ‰ œ j Œ œ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ™ œ ˙ œ œ Ó tenor saxophone rainforest nanako sato baritone saxophone copyright © nanako sato p q= straight a b mf c p d q= e mf f &b . . . . nanako satorainforest &b . . &b . . &b - . - . &b &b &b . . . &b . .alto solo &b œ œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œb œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œb j ‰ œj œ œ œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œ# œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œb j ‰ œj œ w Œ œ œ Œ ‰ œj wb Œ œb œ Œ ‰ œj w œ œ ‰ œj œ œb œ ™ œ ™ œ w w Œ œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œj w œ ‰ œj œ œ œ ˙ ˙ w œ œb œ œn œ Œ Ó œ œ Œ Ó ˙ ™ œ œ œ Œ Œ œj ‰ ˙b ™ œ œ œb Œ Œ ‰ œj ˙ ™ œ œ œ Œ Œ œj ‰ ˙b ™ œ œ œb Œ Œ ‰ œj œ Œ Œ œb œ œ œb ˙ ˙ ˙b œ œ œb œb ! nanako sato p q= swing g h f i j &b -> . end of alto solo &b ! &b &b - . ! !u œ ™ œ Œ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ w œ œ œb œb ‰ œj Œ œ Œ œ ‰ œj Œ œ Œ œ ‰ œbj Œ œ Œ œ ‰ œbj Œ œ Œ œ ‰ œbj Œ œ Œ œ ‰ œj Œ œ Œ œ ‰ œbj Œ œ Œ œ œ œ Ó baritone saxophone rainforest nanako sato trumpet in bb copyright © nanako sato p mf q= straight a b p subito mp c mp f d mf q= e p f &bb con sord.(cup mute) nanako satorainforest &bb -> ! -> ! &bb -> senza sord.-> ! -> &bb con sord. (harmon mute) ! &bb > - - - - &bb - - &bb ! senza sord..> ! .> ! .> !alto solo &bb .> ! .> ! .> &bb ! .> ! .> ˙ ˙ wû ˙ ˙ wû ˙ ˙ wû ˙ ˙ wû œ œ Œ Ó œ œ Œ Ó œ œ Œ Ó œ œ Œ Ó œ œ Œ Ó œ œ ˙ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ œ œ œ œ w w w ˙ ™ œ œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj œb w ˙ œn œb ˙n ˙b w œ œ œ œ w ˙ œ œb w Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó nanako sato p mp f mp g f f q= swing h i fp fp fp j fp p ff &bb - > . --- -> . &bb -> . ! end of alto solo &bb - . &bb - ! &bb &bb ! ! &bb ! ! -> -> -> -> -> -> u ! œ ™ œŒ Œ œ œ œ œ œjœ ™ œœœ˙ ™ ˙ ˙ œ ™ œŒ Œ œ œ œ œ œj œ ™ œœœ˙ ™ ˙ ˙ œ ™ œŒ Ó œ ™ œj œ œ œj ‰ œ œ Ó œ ™ œj œ œ œj ‰ œ œ œ œ œr " ‰ Œ Œ Ó ‰ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ w wb w wb œ œ ‰ œj œj ‰ œ œ ‰ œ j ˙ Œ trumpet in bb rainforest nanako sato trumpet in bb copyright © nanako sato p mf q= straight a b p subito mp c mp q= d e p f p &bb con sord.(cup mute) nanako sato rainforest &bb -> ! -> ! &bb -> senza sord.-> ! -> &bb &bb ! .> ! .> ! .> ! alto solo &bb .> ! .> ! .> ! .> &bb ! .> -> . &bb --- -> . &bb -> . ! end of alto solo ˙ ˙ wû ˙ ˙b wû ˙ ˙ wû ˙ ˙b wû œ œ Œ Ó œ œ Œ Ó œ œ Œ Ó œ œ Œ Ó œ œ Œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó ! œ ™ œŒ Œ œ œ œ œ œjœ ™ œœœ˙ ™ ˙ ˙ œ ™ œŒ Œ œ œ œ œ œj œ ™ œœœ˙ ™ ˙ ˙ œ ™ œ Œ Ó nanako sato mp f mp g f p q= swing h fp fp i j fp fp p ff &bb - . &bb - &bb &bb ! ! &bb ! ! - > -> -> -> -> -> u œ ™ œj œ œ œj ‰ œ œ Ó œ ™ œj œ œ œj ‰ œ œ œ œ œr "œj Œ œ Œ œ ‰ œj Œ œ Œ œ ‰ œj Œ œ Œ œ ‰ œj Œ œ Œ œ ‰ œj Œ œ Œ œ ‰ œj Œ œ Œ œ ‰ œn j Œ œb Œ œ w w w w œ œ ‰ œj œj ‰ œ œ ‰ œj ˙ Œ trumpet in bb rainforest nanako sato trumpet in bb copyright © nanako sato p mf q= straight a b p subito mp c mp q= d e p f p &bb con sord.(cup mute) nanako satorainforest &bb -> ! -> ! &bb -> senza sord.-> ! -> &bb &bb ! .> ! .> ! .> ! alto solo &bb .> ! .> ! .> ! .> &bb ! .> -> . &bb --- -> . &bb -> . ! end of alto solo ˙ ˙ wû ˙ ˙ wû ˙ ˙ wû ˙ ˙ wû œ œ Œ Ó œ œ Œ Ó œ œ Œ Ó œ œ Œ Ó œ œ Œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó ! œ ™ œŒ Œ œn œ œ œ œjœ ™ œœœ˙ ™ ˙ ˙ œ ™œŒ Œ œn œ œ œ œj œ ™ œœœ˙ ™ ˙ ˙ œ ™ œ Œ Ó nanako sato mp f mp g f p q= swing h fp fp i j fp fp p ff &bb - . &bb - &bb &bb ! ! &bb ! ! -> -> -> -> -> -> u œ ™ œn j œ œ œj ‰ œ œ Ó œ ™ œn j œ œ œj ‰ œ œ œ œ œr " œj Œ œ Œ œ ‰ œj Œ œ Œ œ ‰ œj Œ œ Œ œ ‰ œj Œ œ Œ œ ‰ œb j Œ œ Œ œ ‰ œb j Œ œ Œ œ ‰ œj Œ œ Œ œn w w w w œ œn ‰ œj œj ‰ œ œ ‰ œ j ˙ Œ trumpet in bb rainforest nanako sato trumpet in bb copyright © nanako sato p mf q= straight a b p subito mp c mp q= d e p f p &bb con sord.(cup mute) nanako satorainforest &bb -> ! -> ! &bb -> senza sord. -> ! -> &bb &bb ! .> ! .> ! .> ! alto solo &bb .> ! .> ! .> ! .> &bb ! .> -> . --- &bb -> . -> . &bb ! end of alto solo ˙ ˙ wû ˙b ˙ wû ˙ ˙ wû ˙b ˙ wû œ œ Œ Ó œ œ Œ Ó œ œ Œ Ó œ œ Œ Ó œ œ Œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó œ ™œŒ Œ œ œ œ œ œj œ ™ œœœ˙ ™ ˙# ˙ œ ™œŒ Œ œb œ œ œ œjœ ™ œœœ˙ ™ ˙b ˙ œ ™œŒ Ó nanako sato mp f mp g f p q= swing h fp fp i j fp fp p ff &bb - . &bb - &bb &bb ! ! &bb ! ! -> -> - > -> -> -> u œ ™ œj œ œ œj ‰ œb œ Ó œ ™ œj œ œ œj ‰ œb œ œ œ œr "œj Œ œ Œ œ ‰ œj Œ œ Œ œ ‰ œj Œ œ Œ œ ‰ œj Œ œ Œ œ ‰ œj Œ œ Œ œ ‰ œn j Œ œ Œ œ ‰ œj Œ œ Œ œ w wb w wb œ œ ‰ œj œj ‰ œ œ ‰ œj ˙ Œ trumpet in bb rainforest nanako sato trombone copyright © nanako sato p mf q= straight a b p subito mp c mp f mp p f mp q= d e p f ?bbbb nanako satorainforest ?bbbb -> ! - > ! ?bbbb -> -> ?bbbb ! -> ! - - - - ?bbbb ?bbbb ! .> ! .> ! alto solo ?bbbb .> ! .> ! .> ! ?bbbb .> ! .> ! .> ˙ ˙ wû ˙ ˙ wû ˙ ˙ wû ˙ ˙ wû œ œ Œ Ó œ œ Œ Ó œ œ Œ Ó œn œ œ œ ˙ ™ œj ‰ œ œ Œ Ó œ œ Œ Ó œn œ œ œ ˙ ™ œj ‰ Ó ˙ w Ó ˙ w Ó ˙ w Ó ˙ w Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó nanako sato p mp mp f mp g f q= swing h p f i mf j p ff ?bbbb -> . ?bbbb - .end of alto solo ?bbbb - ?bbbb - . ! ?bbbb ! ! ?bbbb ! ! -> -> -> -> -> -> u œ ™ œŒ Œ œ œ œ œ œj œ ™ œœœ˙ ™ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙n ˙ ˙n ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙n œ ™ œj œ œ œj ‰ œ œ Ó œ ™ œj œ œ œ j ‰ œ œ œ œ œ r " ‰ Œ Œ Ó œ ™ œ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ œ œ Ó Œ ‰ œj ˙ Œ ‰ œnj ˙ Œ ‰ œj ˙ Œ ‰ œnj ˙ œ œ ‰ œj œj ‰ œ œ ‰ œj ˙ Œ trombone rainforest nanako sato trombone copyright © nanako sato p mf q= straight a b p subito mp c mp f mp p f mp q= d e p f ?bbbb nanako satorainforest ?bbbb -> ! -> ! ?bbbb -> -> ?bbbb ! -> ! - - - - ?bbbb ?bbbb ! .> ! . > ! alto solo ?bbbb .> ! . > ! .> ! ?bbbb .> ! .> ! . > ˙ ˙ wû ˙ ˙ wû ˙ ˙ wû ˙ ˙ wû œ œ Œ Ó œ œ Œ Ó œ œ Œ Ó œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ œj ‰ œ œ Œ Ó œ œ Œ Ó œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ œj ‰ Ó ˙ w Ó ˙ w Ó ˙ w Ó ˙ w Œ œ œ Ó Œ œn œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œn œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œn œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œn œ Ó nanako sato p mp mp f mp g f q= swing h p f i mf j p ff ?bbbb -> . ?bbbb - .end of alto solo ?bbbb - ?bbbb - . ! ?bbbb ! ! ?bbbb ! ! -> -> -> -> -> -> u œ ™ œŒ Œ œ œ œ œ œj œ ™ œ œœ˙ ™ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ œ ™ œnj œ œ œj ‰ œ œ Ó œ ™ œnj œ œ œ j ‰ œ œ œ œ œ r " ‰ Œ Œ Ó œ ™ œn ™ ˙ ™ ˙n ™ œ œ Ó Œ ˙ ™ Œ ˙n ™ Œ ˙ ™ Œ ˙n ™ œ œ ‰ œj œj ‰ œ œ ‰ œ j ˙ Œ trombone rainforest nanako sato trombone copyright © nanako sato p mf q= straight a b p subito mp c mp f mp p f mp q= d e p f mf ?bbbb nanako satorainforest ?bbbb -> ! -> ! ?bbbb -> -> ?bbbb ! -> ! - - - - ?bbbb ?bbbb ?bbbb ! .> ! .> ! . > ! alto solo ?bbbb .> ! . > ! .> ! . > ?bbbb ! .> . ?bbbb ˙ ˙ wû ˙ ˙ wû ˙ ˙ wû ˙ ˙ wû œ œ Œ Ó œ œ Œ Ó œ œ Œ Ó œb œ œ œn ˙n ™ œj ‰ œ œ Œ Ó œ œ Œ Ó œb œ œ œn ˙ ™ œj ‰ Ó ˙ w Ó ˙ w Ó ˙ w Ó ˙ w Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó œ Œ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œn œ ˙ ™ œ Œ Ó nanako sato p mp mp f mp g f q= swing h p f i mf j p ff ?bbbb -> . ?bbbb - . end of alto solo ?bbbb - ?bbbb - . ! ?bbbb ! ! ?bbbb ! ! -> -> -> -> -> -> u œ ™ œŒ Œ œn œ œ œ œj œ ™ œœœ˙ ™ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙b ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙n ˙ œ ™ œj œ œ œj ‰ œn œ Ó œ ™ œj œ œ œj ‰ œn œ œ œ œr " ‰ Œ Œ Ó œ ™ œ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ œn œ Ó w wn w wn œ œ ‰ œj œj ‰ œ œ ‰ œ j ˙ Œ trombone rainforest nanako sato bass trombone copyright © nanako sato p mf q= straight a b p subito mp c mp f mp p f mp q= d e p f mf ?bbbb nanako satorainforest ?bbbb -> ! -> ! ?bbbb -> -> ?bbbb ! -> ! - - - - ?bbbb ?bbbb ! .> ! .> ! alto solo ?bbbb .> ! .> ! .> ! .> ?bbbb ! .> ! .> . ?bbbb ˙ ˙ wû ˙b ˙b wn û ˙ ˙ wû ˙b ˙b wn û œ œ Œ Ó œn œ Œ Ó œ œ Œ Ó œ œ œb œ ˙ ™ œj ‰ œn œ Œ Ó œ œ Œ Ó œ œ œb œ ˙ ™ œj ‰ Ó ˙ w Ó ˙n w Ó ˙ w Ó ˙n w Œ œ œ Ó Œ œb œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œb œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œb œ Ó Œ œ œ Ó Œ œb œ Ó œ Œ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ ˙n œ œ œn œn nanako sato p mp mp f mp g f q= swing h p f i mf j p ff ?bbbb - > . ?bbbb - . end of alto solo ?bbbb - ?bbbb - . ! ?bbbb ?bbbb ?bbbb u œ ™ œ Œ Œ œb œ œ œ œj œ ™ œ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙n ˙ ˙ ˙n ˙n ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙n ˙n œ ™ œn j œ œb œ œ œ Ó œ ™ œnj œ œb œ œ œ œ œ œr " ‰ Œ Œ Ó œ ™ œ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ œ œ Ó ˙ ˙ œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œ ™ ˙n ˙ œn œ ‰ œn j ‰ œ ™ ˙ ˙ œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œ ™ ˙n ˙ œn œ ‰ œn j ‰ œ ™ œ œj œn ™ œb œ œn ˙ Œ bass trombone rainforest nanako sato acoustic guitar copyright © nanako sato mf q= straighta p b p subito mp a¨(„ˆˆ )/c a¨(„ˆˆ )/b a¨(„ˆˆ )/c c a¨(„ˆˆ )/b a¨(„ˆˆ )/c a¨(„ˆˆ )/b a¨(„ˆˆ )/c a¨(„ˆˆ )/b b¨‹ g& /ad a¨ a¨ g a¨ g¨ f (# ) f a¨‹ v.s. g& c c (b ) f f‹ e (# ) e¨ b¨/d c© &bbbb . . . . nanako satorainforest &bbbb . . . . &bbbb . . . . &bbbb . . . . . . &bbbb . . . . &bbbb . . . . . . &bbbb &bbbb &bbbb œ œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œn œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œnj ‰ œj œ œ œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œn œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œnj ‰ œj œ œ œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œn œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œnj ‰ œj œ œ œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œn œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œnj ‰ œj œ œ œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œn œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œnj ‰ œj œ œ œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œn œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œnj ‰ œj œ œ œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œn œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œnj ‰ œj œ v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v ‰ vj v v v ™ v ™ v + Ó v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v + + + v v v v + nanako sato c© q= e f f c‹ b‹ b¨‹ a‹ a¨Œ„! g c‹ b‹ b¨‹ a‹ a¨Œ„! g c‹ b‹ b¨‹ a‹ a¨Œ„! g c‹ b‹ b¨‹ a‹ a¨Œ„! g mp b¨ (“ ) a‹ a¨Œ„! f g " mp e¨ (“ ) d‹ g &bbbb . . . . &bbbb . . . . &bbbb . . . . . .alto solo &bbbb . . . . &bbbb . . . . . . &bbbb &bbbb &bbbb end of alto solo &bbbb - . v v Ó œ œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œn œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œnj ‰ œj œ œ œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œn œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œnj ‰ œj œ œ œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œn œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œnj ‰ œj œ œ œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œn œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œnj ‰ œj œ œ œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œn œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œnj ‰ œj œ œ œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œn œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œnj ‰ œj œ v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v œœ œœ ™™™™ œœœ œ n ™™™ ™ œœœ œb œœœ œj ‰ œœœœn œœœœ Ó œœœœ ™™™ ™ œœœœn ™™™ ™ œœœ œb acoustic guitar rainforest nanako sato d¨Œ„! f c " b¨‹ a‹ (b ) a¨ q= swing h a¨ a¨‹ g (# ) c (b ) f p f‹ e (# ) e¨ d‹ f c© i f f j p a¨(„ˆˆ )/c b a¨(„ˆˆ )/b¨ e¨/a ff &bbbb - &bbbb &bbbb - . ! &bbbb . . . . . . &bbbb . . . . &bbbb . . -> -> -> -> -> -> -> u œœœ œj ‰ œœœœn œœœœ œœœœ œœœœ v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v ™ v ™ + ™ + ™ v v Œ Œ œ œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œn œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œnj ‰ œj œ œ œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œn œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œnj ‰ œj œ œ œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œn œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œnj ‰ œj œ v v ‰ vj vj ‰ v v ‰ vj + Œ acoustic guitar rainforest nanako sato { { { { { piano copyright © nanako sato p q= straight a b mf p subito mp a¨(„ˆˆ )/c a¨(„ˆˆ )/b c a¨(„ˆˆ )/c a¨(„ˆˆ )/b a¨(„ˆˆ )/c v.s. a¨(„ˆˆ )/b a¨(„ˆˆ )/c &bbbb . . . . nanako sato rainforest ?bbbb . . . . &bbbb . . . . ?bbbb . . . . &bbbb ?bbbb . . &bbbb ?bbbb . . . &bbbb ?bbbb . . œ œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œ j ‰ œj ‰ œ j œ œn œ Œ ‰ œj œ œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œn œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œn j ‰ œ j œ œ œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œ j ‰ œj ‰ œ j œ œn œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œn j ‰ œj œ œ œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œn œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œn j ‰ œ j œ Ó ˙̇ ww Ó ˙̇̇̇ www w ‰ œj ‰ œn j ‰ œj œ ˙ ™ œ œ œ Œ Œ œj ‰ ˙n ™ œ œ œn Œ Œ ‰ œ j Ó ˙̇ ww Ó ˙̇̇̇ wwww Ó ˙̇ ˙ ™ œ œ œ Œ Œ œj ‰ ˙n ™ œ œ œn Œ Œ ‰ œ j ˙ ™ œ œ ww Ó ˙̇̇̇ wwww Ó ˙̇ ww œ Œ Œ œj ‰ ˙n ™ œ œ œn Œ Œ ‰ œ j ˙ ™ œ œ œ Œ Œ œj ‰ nanako sato { { { { { { a¨(„ˆˆ )/b b¨‹ d g& /a a¨ a¨ g a¨ g¨ f (# ) f a¨‹ g& c c (b ) f f‹ e (# ) e¨ b¨/d d¨ d¨ a¨(„ˆˆ )/c a¨(„ˆˆ )/b q= e &bbbb ?bbbb . &bbbb ?bbbb &bbbb ?bbbb &bbbb ?bbbb &bbbb ?bbbb &bbbb ?bbbb . . Ó ˙̇̇̇ wwww œœœœ œœœœ ‰ œœœœ j ‰ œœœœ œj ‰ œœœœ j ‰ œœœœ j œœœœ œœœœ ˙n ™ œ œ œn Œ Œ ‰ œ j œ ™ œj œ ™ œj œ œ œ œ œ œ œœœœ œnn œœœœ œ ‰ œœœœ œj ‰ œœœœ œj ‰ œœœœ œnn j ‰ œœœœ œj œœœœ œ œœœœ œ wwwwwb œœœœb œœœœnnn ‰ œœœœb j œœœœ œœœœbnb œn ™ œj œ ™ œj œ œ œ œn œ œ w œ œ ‰ œj œ œb œœœœn ™™™™ œœœœ ™™™™ œœœœ ˙̇̇̇ Ó œœœœbb œœœœ ‰ œœœœ j ‰ œœœœ j ‰ œœœœbb j ‰ œœœœ j œœœœ œœœœ œ ™ œ ™ œ ˙ Ó œ# œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ# œ œn œ œœœœnn œœœœ ‰ œœœœ j ‰ œœœœ j œœœœ ‰ œœœœnnn j œœœœ œœœ œœœ ˙̇̇̇nn ˙̇̇̇b œn œ œn œ œ œ œ œ œn œn œ ˙ ˙ wwwwn œœœœ œœœ œn œœœœb œœœœ wwwwn œœœœn œœœœ Œ Ó w œ œn œb œn w œ œ Œ Ó Ó ˙̇ ww Ó ˙̇̇̇ wwww ˙ ™ œ œ œ Œ Œ œj ‰ ˙n ™ œ œ œn Œ Œ ‰ œ j piano nanako sato { { { { { { a¨(„ˆˆ )/c a¨(„ˆˆ )/b mf a¨/c a¨‹/b a¨/c f a¨‹/b a¨/c a¨‹/b a¨/c a¨‹/b c‹ b‹ b¨‹ a‹ a¨Œ„! g v.s. c‹ b‹ b¨‹ a‹ a¨Œ„! g c‹ b‹ &bbbb ?bbbb . . &bbbb > . > . . > . > . . > . alto solo ?bbbb > . > . . > . > . . > . &bbbb > . . > . > . . > . > . . ?bbbb > . . > . > . . > . > . . &bbbb > . > . . > . > . . > . ?bbbb > . > . . > . > . . > . &bbbb > . . ?bbbb > . . &bbbb ?bbbb Ó ˙̇ ww Ó ˙̇̇̇ wwww ˙ ™ œ œ œ Œ Œ œj ‰ ˙n ™ œ œ œn Œ Œ ‰ œ j œ œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œ ™ œ œ œn œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œ ™ œ œn œ œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œ ™ œ œ œn œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œ ™ œ œn œ œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œ ™ œ œ œn œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œ ™ œ œn œ œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œ ™ œ œ ‰ œ ™ œ œ œn œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œ ™ œ œn œ œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œ ™ œ œ œn œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œ ™ œ œn œ œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œ ™ œ œ œn œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œj œn œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œ ™ œ œn œ œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œ ™ œ œ œn œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œ ™ œ œn v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v ‰ œ ™ œ œn v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v œœ œœ œœnn œœj œœ œœbbj œœj œœ œœnn œœ ™™ ˙̇ ˙̇ ˙̇ ˙̇nn v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v piano nanako sato { { { { { { b¨‹ a‹ a¨Œ„! g c‹ b‹ b¨‹ a‹ a¨Œ„! g mp b¨ (“ ) a‹ a¨Œ„! f g " mp e¨ (“ ) d‹ g d¨Œ„! f c " p b¨‹ a‹ (b ) q= swing h a¨ a¨ a¨‹ g (# ) c (b ) f f‹ e (# ) e¨ d‹ f d¨ i p &bbbb ?bbbb &bbbb - . end of alto solo ?bbbb - . &bbbb - ?bbbb - &bbbb ?bbbb &bbbb ?bbbb &bbbb - . ! ?bbbb - - - . ! v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v œœœ ™™™ œœœ ™™™ œœœ œœœ j ‰ œœœœn œœœœ Ó œœœ ™™™ œœœ ™™™ œœœ v v v v v v v v œ ™ œn ™ œ# œ œ œ Ó œ ™ œn ™ œ# œœœ j ‰ œœœœn œœœœ œœœœ œœœœ ‰ œœœœ j Œ œœœœ Œ œœœœ ‰ œœœœ j Œ œœœœ Œ œœœœ œ<#> œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ# œn œn œ ‰ œj œ œ œ ‰ œœœœb j Œ œœœœ Œ œœœœ ‰ œœœœb j Œ œœœœ Œ œœœœ ‰ œœœœbb j Œ œœœœ Œ œœœœ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ œ ‰ œœœœnn j Œ œœœœ Œ œœœœ ‰ œœœœnn j Œ œœœœb Œ œœœœnb œ œ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ ˙ œœœœ ™™™™ œœœœn ™™™™ ˙̇̇̇ ™™™™ ˙̇̇ ™™™ œœœœb œœœœ Œ Œ œ ™ œn ™ ˙ ™ ˙n ™ œ œ Œ Œ piano rainforest nanako sato { { { { f j f p a¨(„ˆˆ )/c b a¨(„ˆˆ )/b¨ e¨/a ff & bbbb played by guitar . . . . &bbbb ! ! ! ! ?bbbb ! ! ! ! & bbbb &bbbb > . > . . > . > . . > . ?bbbb > > . . > . > . . > . &bbbb > . . > . > . . ?bbbb > . . > . > . . &bbbb -> -> -> -> -> -> u ?bbbb u œ œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œ j ‰ œj ‰ œ j œ œn œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œ j ‰ œn j ‰ œ j œ œ œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œ ™ œ œ œn œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œ ™ œn œn œ œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œ œ ˙ ‰ œ ™ œ œ œn œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œ ™ œn œn œ œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œ ™ œ œ œn œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œ ™ œn œn ‰ œ ™ œ œ œn œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œ ™ œn œn œœœ œœœ ‰ œœœ## j œœœ j ‰ œœœœn œœœœ ‰ œœœj ˙̇̇ Œ œ œj œn ™ œb œ œn ˙ Œ piano rainforest nanako sato -string bass guitar copyright © nanako sato mf q= straight a b p mf p subito mp c d v.s. q= e ?bbbb . . . . nanako satorainforest ?bbbb . . . . ?bbbb . . . . ?bbbb . . . ?bbbb . . . ?bbbb . . ?bbbb ?bbbb ?bbbb ?bbbb . . œ œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œ j ‰ œj ‰ œ j œ œn œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œ j ‰ œnj ‰ œ j œ œ œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œ j ‰ œj ‰ œ j œ œn œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œ j ‰ œnj ‰ œ j œ œ œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œ j ‰ œj ‰ œ j œ œn œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œ j ‰ œnj ‰ œ j œ ˙ ™ œ œ œ Œ Œ œj ‰ ˙n ™ œ œ œn Œ Œ ‰ œj ˙ ™ œ œ œ Œ Œ œj ‰ ˙n ™ œ œ œn Œ Œ ‰ œj ˙ ™ œ œ œ Œ Œ œj ‰ ˙n ™ œ œ œn Œ Œ ‰ œj ˙ ™ œ œ œ Œ Œ œj ‰ ˙n ™ œ œ œn Œ Œ ‰ œj œ ™ œj œ ™ œj œ œ œ œ œ œ œn ™ œj œ ™ œj œ œ œ œn œ œ w œ œ ‰ œj œ œb œ ™ œ ™ œ ˙ Ó œ# œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œn œ œn œ œn œ œ œ œ œ œn œn œ ˙ ˙ w œ œn œb œn w œ œ Œ Ó ˙ ™ œ œ œ Œ Œ œj ‰ ˙n ™ œ œ œn Œ Œ ‰ œj nanako sato mf f mp f mp f q= swingg p h mp f i ?bbbb . . ?bbbb . . . alto solo ?bbbb . . . ?bbbb . . > . . ?bbbb ?bbbb ?bbbb end of alto solo ?bbbb - . - ?bbbb ?bbbb ?bbbb - - - . ! ˙ ™ œ œ œ Œ Œ œj ‰ ˙n ™ œ œ œn Œ Œ ‰ œj ˙ ™ œ œ œ Œ Œ œj ‰ ˙n ™ œ œ œn Œ Œ ‰ œj ˙ ™ œ œ œ Œ Œ œj ‰ ˙n ™ œ œ œn Œ Œ ‰ œj ˙ ™ œ œ œ Œ Œ œj ‰ ˙n ™ œ œ œn Œ Œ ‰ œj ˙ ™ œ œ œ Œ Œ œj ‰ ˙n ™ œ œ ‰ œ ™ œ œn œ œ œn œn œ œ œn œn œ œ œ œb œ œ œn œn œ œ œn œn œ œ œn œn œ œ œ œ œn œ œn œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œn œn œ œ œ œ œn œn œ œ œ œ œn œn œ œ œ œ œn œ œ œ œn œ œ œ œ œb œ œn œn œ œ ™ œn ™ œb œ œ œ Ó œ ™ œn ™ œb œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ œn œn œ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ ˙ œ ™ œn ™ ˙ ™ ˙n ™ œ œ Œ Œ -string bass guitar rainforest nanako sato mf j p ff ?bbbb . - . - > > . . ?bbbb > . > . . > . > . . ?bbbb > . > . . u œ Œ Ó Ó Œ œ œn Œ Ó Ó Œ œn œ œ œ ˙ ‰ œ ™ œ œ œn œn œn ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œn ™ œn œ œ œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œ ™ œ œ œn œn œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œ ™ œn œn œ œj œn ™ œb œ œn ˙ Œ -string bass guitar rainforest nanako sato drum set copyright © nanako sato p q= straighta b p subito p c d mp q= e mf f / nanako sato rainforest / ! ! ! / / ! ! / ! ! / ! / ! ! ! / / ! ! alto solo œ ¿ œ ‰ Œ ¿j Œ ‰ ¿ œj ‰ Œ œj ‰ ¿ œj œ ¿ œ Œ œ ¿ œ ‰ Œ ¿j Œ ‰ ¿ œj ‰ Œ œj ‰ ¿ œj œ ¿ œ Œ ¿ ‰œ œ ¿ œœ ¿j Œ ¿ œ œ œ¿ œ œœ Œ ¿ Æœj œ¿ œ ¿ Œ œ œ ¿ œœ ¿ œ œœ¿ œœ ¿ ¿ ‰ ¿j ‰ œ œ œ¿ œ œœ ¿j Œ ¿ ™ Æœ œœ¿ œœ¿ ¿j ¿ ¿ œ œ ¿ œœ ¿ œ œ ¿ œœ ¿ ¿ ¿ œ œ œ¿ œ œœ ¿ ¿ ¿ Æœj œ¿ œ ¿ ¿ ¿ œ œ ¿ œœ ¿ ¿ ¿ œ œœ¿ œœ ¿ ¿ ¿ œ œ œ¿ œ œœ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ Æœ œœ¿ œœ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ œ œ ¿ œœ nanako sato mp f mp g f mf q= swing h mp f i p j f / ! ! / ! ! / ! ! / ! drum fill - . end of alto solo / - / / - . ! / / ! / ! u ¿ ™ ¿ ™ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ Ó ¿ ™ ¿ ™ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ œ ¿ ‰ œœ œ œ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ œ ¿ ¿œ ¿ œ ¿ ‰ œœ œ œ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ œ ¿ ¿œ ¿ œ ¿ ‰ œœ œ œ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ œ ¿ ¿œ ¿ œ ¿ ‰ œœ œ œ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ œ ¿ ¿œ ¿ œ ¿ ‰ œœ œ œ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ œ ¿ ¿œ ¿ œ ¿ ‰ œœ œ œ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ œ ¿ ¿œ ¿ œ ¿ ‰ œœ œ œ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ œ ¿ ¿œ ¿ ¿ ™ ¿ ™ y™ y™ ¿ ¿ Œ Œ œ ¿ œ ‰ Œ ¿j Œ ‰ ¿ œj ‰ Œ œj ‰ ¿ œj œ ¿ œ Œ œ ¿ œ ‰ Œ ¿j Œ ‰ ¿ œj ‰ Œ œj ‰ ¿ œj œ ¿ œ Œ ¿ ™ ¿ ™ ¿ ¿ ¿ y Œ drum set rainforest nanako sato 	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   chapter blue butterfly blue butterfly is a work in sonata form that explores heterophonic textures. i based this piece on the on the following mode: d, e, a, bb and c - which the performers use to improvise spontaneously. there are no set chord changes provided; only collective improvisation by the musicians. the pianist and bassist improvise chords based on this mode. this work was inspired by a poem about a blue butterfly that comforted me when i lost friends. this heavenly blue butterfly will fly high in the sky, higher and higher. the sunlight will touch the blue on its wings until it seems to disappear. we think it is gone, because the blue of the butterfly is the exact same blue of the sky. we think it is gone, because our eyes are too weak to see— and it is difficult to believe what we cannot see. but the blue butterfly is not gone. it is still flying, higher and higher, nearer the sun. blue against blue. for now and forever. - marjolein bastin 	
   master of music in composition musi mmus composition at the university of canterbury student id: nanako sato blue butterfly nanako sato instrumentation alto saxophone tenor saxophones piano acoustic bass drum set transposed score this piece is in sonata form. exposition - development - recapitulation. in the solo/cadenza sections [a, g, j and m], modal improvisation based on following notes: d, f, a, bb and c should be demonstrated. nanako sato nanako sato duration: . minutes nanako sato nanako sato { ° ¢ { { ° ¢ copyright © nanako sato alto saxophone tenor saxophone piano acoustic bass drum set freely q = straighta b f mp freely q = straighta b pno. a. bass dr. alto sax. ten. sax. pno. a. bass dr. mf c mf mp mp mp c &## ! ! ! blue butterfly piano cadenza for - bars until b section nanako sato &# ! ! ! &b use a mode of d, f a, bb and c as base of improvisation play approx bars - - .> - - ?b play approx bars ?b ! ! ! / .> &b .> - - .> - - .> ?b ?b ! ! ! . / .> • • • • &## &# &b - - .> - - .> - - .> ?b ?b . . . / • • • • • • Œ œ œ Œ œœœ œœœ Œ œœœ Ó Œ œ œ Œ œœœ œœœ œ Œ ‰ œœj Œ ‰ œœj Œ Ó œ Œ ‰ œœj Œ ¿ ™œœ ¿ œ ‰¿ j ¿ ¿¿œj œ œ ‰ ¿ ¿ ¿œœj ¿ ŒÓ ¿ ™¿ ¿ œœ ¿ œ ‰¿ j ¿ ¿¿œj œ œ Œ œœœ Ó Œ œ œ Œ œœœ œœœ Œ œœœ Ó Œ œ œ Œ œœœ œœœ Œ œœœ Ó ‰ œœj Œ Ó œ Œ ‰ œœj Œ ‰ œœj Œ Ó œ Œ ‰ œœj Œ ‰ œœj Œ Ó œ œ œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œ j ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ ‰ ¿ ¿ ¿œœj ¿ ŒÓ ¿ ¿ œ œ œ œ œœœœœœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ w w œ œ œ œ œœœ œœœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœœ œ œ œ œ œœœœœœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ w w œ œ œ œ œœ œ œœœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœœ Œ œ œ Œ œœœ œœœ Œ œœœ Ó Œ œ œ Œ œœœ œœœ Œ œœœ Ó Œ œ œ Œ œœœ œœœ Œ œœœ Ó œ Œ ‰ œœj Œ ‰ œœj Œ Ó œ Œ ‰ œœj Œ ‰ œœj Œ Ó œ Œ ‰ œœj Œ ‰ œœj Œ Ó œ œ œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œ j ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œ j ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œ j ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ nanako sato { ° ¢ { ° ¢ { ° ¢ alto sax. ten. sax. pno. a. bass dr. mf d mf d alto sax. ten. sax. pno. a. bass dr. mp e mp mp mp mp e alto sax. ten. sax. pno. a. bass dr. &## &# &b - - .> - - .> - - .> ?b ?b . . . / • • • • • • &## &# &b - - .> - - .> ?b ?b . . / • • • • &## &# &b ?b ?b / • • • • w w œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ w w w w œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ w w Œ œ œ Œ œœœ œœœ Œ œœœ Ó Œ œ œ Œ œœœ œœœ Œ œœœ Ó Œ œ œ Œ œœœ œœœ Œ œœœ Ó œ Œ ‰ œœj Œ ‰ œœj Œ Ó œ Œ ‰ œœj Œ ‰ œœj Œ Ó œ Œ ‰ œœj Œ ‰ œœj Œ Ó œ œ œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œ j ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œ j ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œ j ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ œœœœœœ œ œ œ œ œ œœœœ w w ‰ œj œ œ ˙ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œœœœ œ œ œ œ œ œœœœ w w œ œ œ ˙ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ œ œ Œ œœœ œœœ Œ œœœ Ó Œ œ œ Œ œœœ œœœ Œ œœœ Ó œœœ œ œ ˙ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ ‰ œœj Œ ‰ œœj Œ Ó œ Œ ‰ œœj Œ ‰ œœj Œ Ó œb œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œb œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œ j ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œ j ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œb œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œb œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ ¿ œ ‰ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿œj œ œ ‰ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ œœj ¿ Œ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿¿ ¿ œ ™ œ ™ œ œj ‰ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œœœœ œ œœœ ˙̇̇ œ œ œ œ œ Ó œœœ œ œ ˙ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œœœ ™™™ œœbb j ˙̇ ww œ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œ œ œ œb œj ‰ œ œ œ œ œb Œ Œ œb œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ nanako sato { ° ¢ { ° ¢ { ° ¢ alto sax. ten. sax. pno. a. bass dr. alto sax. ten. sax. pno. a. bass dr. mf ff alto sax. ten. sax. pno. a. bass dr. mf f mf mf mf mf f &## ! 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! ! ! ! ! ! piano improvisation for - bars until k section &# ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &b “< > ! play approx bars use a mode of d, f a, bb and c as base of improvisation &b play approx bars ? ! ! & ?b ! ! ! ! ! ! ! / ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &## ! ! ! &# &b ”“ &b ?b / .> • • &## &# &b “< > &b ?b / • • • • œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ Ó œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ Ó œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œ œ œ Œ œ œ œ œ Œ Œ Œ œ œ œ œb œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œb œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œ œ œ œb œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œ œ œ œb œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œb œœ œœ œœ œ œ œ œœ œœ œœ œ œ œb œœ œœ œœ œ œ œ œœ œœ œœ œ œ œ œb œ Œ œ œ œj ‰ Œ œ œb œj ‰ Œ œ œ œj ‰ Œ ¿¿œ ¿¿ œ ‰ ¿ ¿ ™¿œj œ œ ‰ ¿ j ¿œœj ¿ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œb œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œb œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œ œ œ œb œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œ œ œ œb œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œb œœ œœ œœ œ œ œ œœ œœ œœ œ œ œb œœ œœ œœ œ œ œ œœ œœ œœ œ œ œ œb œj ‰ Œ œ œ œj ‰ Œ œ œb œj ‰ Œ œ œ œj ‰ Œ nanako sato { ° ¢ { { { ° ¢ alto sax. ten. sax. pno. a. bass dr. q= q= pno. a. bass dr. l ff espress. ff espress. mp espress. l pno. a. bass dr. alto sax. ten. sax. pno. a. bass dr. &## ! ! bass solo ( bars) &# ! ! &b ! ! “< > &b ! ! ? ?b > . - / • • • • ! ! &b ! .?b ?b / &b . ?b ?b / • • &## ! &# ! &b .?b ?b / • • œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œb œ œœœœœœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œb œ œœœœœœ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œ œœ œb œœœœœœ ‰ œœœœœœœœœœ ‰ œ œœ œb œœœœœœ ‰ œœœœœœœœœœ œb œœ œœ œœ œ œ œ œœ œœ œœ œ œ œb œœ œœ œœ œ œ œ œœ œœ œœ œ œ œ œb œj ‰ Œ œ œ œj ‰ Œ œ œb œj ‰ Œ œ œ œj ‰ Œ œ œb œ œ œb œ œœ‰ œj œb œ ™ œ œ œ œœœ œœœ œ ™ œ œ œ œœœ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œn œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ ¿œœ ¿¿ œ ‰ ¿ ¿¿œj œ œ ‰ ¿ ¿œœj ¿œ ¿¿œ ¿œœ ¿¿ œ ‰ ¿ ¿¿œj œ œ ‰ ¿ œœj ¿œ¿ ¿ ¿¿œ œ ™ œ œ œ œœœ œœœ œ ™ œ œ œ œœœ œœœœ œœœœ " œœœœ j " œœœœ œœœœ œœœœ " œœœœ j " ˙̇̇̇ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ Ó Œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœœœ œœœœ " œœœœ j " œœœœ œœœœ œœœœ " œœœœ j " ˙̇̇̇ œ ™ œ œ œ œœœ œœœ œ ™ œ œ œ œœœ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ nanako sato { ° ¢ { ° ¢ { ° ¢ alto sax. ten. sax. pno. a. bass dr. alto sax. ten. sax. pno. a. bass dr. alto sax. ten. sax. pno. a. bass dr. &## ! &# ! &b .?b ?b / • • &## ! > > > - - - &# ! > > > - - - &b .?b ?b / • • &## > > > - - - &# > > > - - - &b .?b ?b / • • œ œ œ œ ˙ ! œ œ œ œ ˙ ! œ ™ œ œ œ œœœ œœœ œ ™ œ œ œ œœœ œœœœ œœœœ " œœœœ j " œœœœ œœœœ œœœœ " œœœœ j " ˙̇̇̇ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ ˙ ‰ œ œ " œr " œr œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ ‰ œ œ " œr " œr œ œ œ œœœœ œœœœ " œœœœ j " œœœœ œœœœ œœœœ " œœœœ j " ˙̇̇̇ œ ™ œ œ œ œœœ œœœ œ ™ œ œ œ œœœ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ ˙ Œ Ó œ œ œ ˙ ‰ œ œ " œr " œr œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ ! œ œ œ ˙ ‰ œ œ " œr " œr œ œ œ œ ™ œ œ œ œœœ œœœ œ ™ œ œ œ œœœ œœœœ œœœœ " œœœœ j " œœœœ œœœœ œœœœ " œœœœ j " ˙̇̇̇ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ blue butterfly nanako sato { ° ¢ { { ° ¢ alto sax. ten. sax. pno. a. bass dr. m m pno. a. bass dr. ff n ff espress. ff espress. f n alto sax. ten. sax. pno. a. bass dr. f o f mp mp mp o &## ! ! mode: b d f# g a play bars collective improvisation section &# ! ! play bars &b play bars use a mode of d, f a, bb and c as base of improvisation ?b play bars ?b play bars / • • play bars &b ! ! .?b ?b ! ! / &## > > > - - - &# > > > - - - &b ! . ?b ?b / œ œ œ ˙ Œ Ó œ œ œ ˙ Œ Ó œœœœ œœœœ "œœœœ j"œœœœ œœœœ œœœœ "œœœœ j " ˙̇̇̇ œœœœ œœœœ "œœœœ j"œœœœ œœœœ œœœœ "œœœœ j " ˙̇̇̇ œœœœ œœœœ "œœœœ j"œœœœ œœœœ œœœœ "œœœœ j " ˙̇̇̇ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ‰ œjœ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ‰ œjœ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ‰ œjœ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ‰ œj œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ‰ œj œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ‰ œj œ ¿œœ ¿¿ œ ‰ ¿ ¿¿œj œ œ ‰ ¿ ¿œœj ¿œ ¿¿œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ‰ œj œ œ ™ œ œ œ œœœ œœœ œ ™ œ œ œ œœœ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ‰ œjœ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ‰ œj œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ‰ œjœ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œjœ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ‰ œj œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ ¿œœ ¿¿ œ ‰ ¿ ¿¿œj œ œ ‰ ¿ ¿œœj ¿œ ¿¿œ ¿œœ ¿¿ œ ‰ ¿ ¿¿œj œ œ ‰ ¿ œœj ¿œ¿ ¿ ¿¿œ ¿œœ ¿¿ œ ‰ ¿ ¿¿œj œ œ ‰ ¿ ¿œœj ¿œ ¿¿œ ¿œœ ¿¿ œ ‰ ¿ ¿¿œj œ œ ‰ ¿ œœj ¿œ¿ ¿ ¿¿œ œ œ œ ˙ ‰ œ œ " œr " œr œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ Œ Ó œ œ œ ˙ ‰ œ œ " œr " œr œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ ! œ ™ œ œ œ œœœ œœœ œ ™ œ œ œ œœœ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ ¿œœ ¿¿ œ ‰ ¿ ¿¿œj œ œ ‰ ¿ ¿œœj ¿œ ¿¿œ ¿œœ ¿¿ œ ‰ ¿ ¿¿œj œ œ ‰ ¿ œœj ¿œ¿ ¿ ¿¿œ blue butterfly nanako sato { ° ¢ { ° ¢ alto sax. ten. sax. pno. a. bass dr. alto sax. ten. sax. pno. a. bass dr. ff sfz ff sfz ff sfz sfz f sfz f sfz &## > > > - - - &# > > > - - - &b . ?b ?b / • &## ! > .> &# ! > .> &b > .> ?b .> ?b .> / œ œ œ ˙ ‰ œ œ " œr " œr œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ Œ Ó œ œ œ ˙ ‰ œ œ " œr " œr œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ Œ Ó œ ™ œ œ œ œœœ œœœ œ ™ œ œ œ œœœ œœœœ œœœœ " œœœœ j " œœœœ œœœœ œœœœ " œœœœ j " ˙̇̇̇ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœœœ œœœœ " œœœœ j " œœœœ œœœœ œœœœ " œœœœ j " ˙̇̇̇ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ ¿œœ ¿¿ œ ‰ ¿ ¿¿œj œ œ ‰ ¿ ¿œœj ¿œ ¿¿œ ¿œœ ¿¿ œ ‰ ¿ ¿¿œj œ œ ‰ ¿ œœj ¿œ ¿ ¿ ¿¿œ blue butterfly nanako sato alto saxophone copyright © nanako sato freely q = straighta b mf c mf d mp e &## blue butterfly piano cadenza for - bars until b section nanako sato &## &## &## &## &## &## œ œ œ œ œœœœœœ œ œ œ œ œ œœœœ w w œ œ œ œ œœœœœœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœœ w w œ œ œ œ œœœœœœ œ œ œ œ œ œœœœ w w œ œ œ œ œœœœœœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœœ w w ‰ œj œ œ ˙ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ™ œ ™ œ œj ‰ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ Ó œ œ œ œ œ nanako sato mf f g adagio h i p j k q= l &## &## &## &## mode: b d f# g a play barscollective improvisation section &## play bars solo eventuary die down play freely piano solo &## piano improvisation for - bars until k section &## &## ! ! bass solo ( bars) &## > > > - - - &## > > > - - - œ œ œ œ œœœœœœ œ œ œ œ œ œœœœ w w œ œ œ œ œœœœœœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœœ w w œ œ œ œ œœœœœœ œ œ œ œ œ œœœœ w w œ œ œ œ œœœœœœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœœ w w Œ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ œœœœœ œ œ œœœœ˙ ! œ œ œ ˙ ‰ œ œ " œr " œr œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ Œ Ó œ œ œ ˙ ‰ œ œ " œr " œr œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ Œ Ó alto saxophone blue butterfly nanako sato m n f o ff sfz &## mode: b d f# g a play bars collective improvisation section &## > > >--- > > >--- &## ! > .> œ œ œ ˙ ‰ œœ"œr"œrœœœ œ œ œ ˙ Œ Ó œ œ œ ˙ ‰ œ œ"œr"œrœœœ œ œ œ ˙ Œ Ó œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ alto saxophone blue butterfly nanako sato tenor saxophone copyright © nanako sato freely q = straighta b mf c mf d mp e mf f g &# blue butterfly piano cadenza for - bars until b section nanako sato &# &# &# &# &# &# &# &# &# mode: c eb g ab bbplay bars collective improvisation section œ œ œ œ œœœ œœœ œ œ œ œ œ œœœœ w w œ œ œ œ œœ œ œœœ œ œ œ œ œ œœœœ w w œ œ œ œ œœœ œœœ œ œ œ œ œ œœœœ w w œ œ œ œ œœ œ œœœ œ œ œ œ œ œœœœ w w œ œ œ ˙ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ Œ œœœœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œn ˙ Œ œ œœœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœœ œœœ œ œ œ œ œ œœœœ w w œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ w w œ œ œ œ œœœ œœœ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œ w w œœœœj œ œ œœœ œœœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ w w nanako sato adagio h i p dolce j k q= l m n f o ff sfz &# play bars solo eventuary die down play freely piano solo &# piano improvisation for - bars until k section &# &# &# ! ! bass solo ( bars) &# > > > - - - &# > > > - - - &# play bars collective improvisation section &# > > >--- > > >--- &# ! > .> œ œb œ œœœ œœœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œb œ œœœ œœœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œb œ œœœ œœœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œb œ œœœ œœœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œb œ œœœ œœœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œb œ œœœ œœœ œ œ œ œ œ Ó Œ ‰ œœ œ œœ œ œ œ œ œœœœ ˙ ! œ œ œ ˙ ‰ œ œ " œr " œr œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ ! œ œ œ ˙ ‰ œ œ " œr " œr œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ Œ Ó œ œ œ ˙ ‰ œœ"œr"œrœœœ œ œœœ ˙ ! œ œ œ ˙ ‰ œœ"œr"œrœœœ œ œ œ ˙ Œ Ó œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ tenor saxophone blue butterfly nanako sato { { { { { piano copyright © nanako sato freely a q = straightb f mp c v.s. &b use a mode of d, f a, bb and c as base of improvisation play approx bars blue butterfly piano cadenza for - bars until b section nanako sato ?b play approx bars &b - - .> - - .> ?b &b - - .> - - .> ?b &b - - .> - - .> ?b &b - - .> - - .> ?b Œ œ œ Œ œœœ œœœ Œ œœœ Ó Œ œ œ Œ œœœ œœœ Œ œœœ Ó œ Œ ‰ œœj Œ ‰ œœj Œ Ó œ Œ ‰ œœj Œ ‰ œœj Œ Ó Œ œ œ Œ œœœ œœœ Œ œœœ Ó Œ œ œ Œ œœœ œœœ Œ œœœ Ó œ Œ ‰ œœj Œ ‰ œœj Œ Ó œ Œ ‰ œœj Œ ‰ œœj Œ Ó Œ œ œ Œ œœœ œœœ Œ œœœ Ó Œ œ œ Œ œœœ œœœ Œ œœœ Ó œ Œ ‰ œœj Œ ‰ œœj Œ Ó œ Œ ‰ œœj Œ ‰ œœj Œ Ó Œ œ œ Œ œœœ œœœ Œ œœœ Ó Œ œ œ Œ œœœ œœœ Œ œœœ Ó œ Œ ‰ œœj Œ ‰ œœj Œ Ó œ Œ ‰ œœj Œ ‰ œœj Œ Ó nanako sato { { { { { { d mp e &b - - .> - - .> ?b &b - - .> - - .> ?b &b ?b &b ?b &b ?b &b ?b Œ œ œ Œ œœœ œœœ Œ œœœ Ó Œ œ œ Œ œœœ œœœ Œ œœœ Ó œ Œ ‰ œœj Œ ‰ œœj Œ Ó œ Œ ‰ œœj Œ ‰ œœj Œ Ó Œ œ œ Œ œœœ œœœ Œ œœœ Ó Œ œ œ Œ œœœ œœœ Œ œœœ Ó œ Œ ‰ œœj Œ ‰ œœj Œ Ó œ Œ ‰ œœj Œ ‰ œœj Œ Ó œœœ œ œ ˙ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœœœ œ œœœ ˙̇̇ œb œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œb œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœœ ™™™ œœbb j ˙̇ œ œ œœ œ Ó œœœ œ œ ˙ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œœœœ œ œœœb ˙̇̇ ww<b><b> œ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœœ ™™™ œœbb j ˙̇ œ œ œ œ œ Ó œœœ œ œœœœb ˙̇̇̇ ˙̇̇̇ ™™™™ ‰ œ œb œœœ œ œœœœbb ˙̇̇̇ ww<b><b> œœ ‰ œœb j ˙̇ ww œœ ‰ œœb j ˙̇ wwww<b><b> Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œj ‰ œ œœœ ˙̇̇ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ww<b> ww œœ ™™ œœbb j ˙̇ ww piano nanako sato { { { { { { mf f mf g &b ?b &b - - - ?b &b - - .> - - .> - - ?b &b .> - - .> - - .> ?b &b - - .> - - .> ?b &b - - .> mode: d f a bb c play bars collective improvisation section ?b play bars œœj ‰ œ œœœb œœœ œœœb j ‰ œ œœœ œœœ œœœ j ‰ œb œœœbb œœœœœ ™™ œœbb j œœ œœbb ™™ œœj œœ œœ ™™ œœ#n j œœ œœœ<b><b> ™™™ œ# œn œb œb œj ‰ Œ œb œb œb œ œ ww<#> œ œb œ œb œb œ œb œn Ó Œ œ œ Œ œœœn œœœ Œ œœœ Ó Œ œ œ Œ œœœ œœœ Œ œœœ Ó Œ œ œ Œ œœœ œœœ œ Œ ‰ œœn j Œ ‰ œœj Œ Ó œ Œ ‰ œœj Œ ‰ œœj Œ Ó œ Œ ‰ œœj Œ Œ œœœ Ó Œ œ œ Œ œœœ œœœ Œ œœœ Ó Œ œ œ Œ œœœ œœœ Œ œœœ Ó ‰ œœj Œ Ó œ Œ ‰ œœj Œ ‰ œœj Œ Ó œ Œ ‰ œœj Œ ‰ œœj Œ Ó Œ œ œ Œ œœœ œœœ Œ œœœ Ó Œ œ œ Œ œœœ œœœ Œ œœœ Ó œ Œ ‰ œœj Œ ‰ œœj Œ Ó œ Œ ‰ œœj Œ ‰ œœj Œ Ó Œ œ œ Œ œœœ œœœ Œ œœœ Ó œ Œ ‰ œœj Œ ‰ œœj Œ Ó piano nanako sato { { { { { { dolce adagio h ° ø ° ø ° ø ° ø ° ø simile. con pedal copyright © nanako sato i mp j k senza pedal &b play bars & ”“solo eventuary die downplay freely piano solo ?b play bars & &b “< > &b &b u“< > & &b ! &b loco ”“ &b ! &b “< > ! play approx bars &b play approx bars &b use a mode of d, f a, bb and c as base of improvisation piano improvisation for - bars until k section &b ? ! wwww!!!!! wwww!!!!! œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ w w w w œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœœ œœœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ w w w w œœœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙̇̇ ˙̇̇̇ ˙̇ ˙ www Ó œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ Ó œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ Ó œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ œ œ œ œ Œ piano nanako sato { { { { { p dolce ° ø ° ø simile. q= &b ”“ ?b ! & &b “< > &b &b “< > &b &b “< > &b &b ! ! “< > bass solo ( bars) &b ! ! ? œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œ œ œ œb œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œb œœ œœ œœ œ œ œ œœ œœ œœ œ œ ‰ œœœ œb œœœœœœ ‰ œœœœœœœœœœ ‰ œœœ œb œœœœœœ œb œœ œœ œœ œ œ œœœ œœ œœ œ œ œb œœ œœ œœ œ œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œ œ œ œb œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œœ œœ œ œ œb œœ œœ œœ œ œ œ œœ œœ œœ œ œ ‰ œ œ œ œb œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œb œœ œœ œœ œ œ œ œœ œœ œœ œ œ ‰ œ œ œ œb œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œb œœ œœ œœ œ œ œ œœ œœ œœ œ œ piano nanako sato { { { { { { l ff espress. &b ! .?b &b .?b &b .?b &b .?b &b .?b &b .?b œ ™ œ œ œ œœœ œœœ œ ™ œ œ œ œœœ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ ™ œ œ œ œœœ œœœ œ ™ œ œ œ œœœ œœœœ œœœœ " œœœœ j " œœœœ œœœœ œœœœ " œœœœ j " ˙̇̇̇ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œœœœ œœœœ " œœœœ j " œœœœ œœœœ œœœœ " œœœœ j " ˙̇̇̇ œ ™ œ œ œ œœœ œœœ œ ™ œ œ œ œœœ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ ™ œ œ œ œœœ œœœ œ ™ œ œ œ œœœ œœœœ œœœœ " œœœœ j " œœœœ œœœœ œœœœ " œœœœ j " ˙̇̇̇ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œœœœ œœœœ " œœœœ j " œœœœ œœœœ œœœœ " œœœœ j " ˙̇̇̇ œ ™ œ œ œ œœœ œœœ œ ™ œ œ œ œœœ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ ™ œ œ œ œœœ œœœ œ ™ œ œ œ œœœ œœœœ œœœœ " œœœœ j " œœœœ œœœœ œœœœ " œœœœ j " ˙̇̇̇ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ piano blue butterfly nanako sato { { { { { { m ff n ff espress. o mp v.s. &b ?b &b play bars use a mode of d, f a, bb and c as base of improvisation collective improvisation section ?b play bars &b ! ?b &b ! .?b &b ! .?b &b .?b œœœœ œœœœ " œœœœ j " œœœœ œœœœ œœœœ " œœœœ j " ˙̇̇̇ œœœœ œœœœ " œœœœ j " œœœœ œœœœ œœœœ " œœœœ j " ˙̇̇̇ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œœœœ œœœœ " œœœœ j " œœœœ œœœœ œœœœ " œœœœ j " ˙̇̇̇ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ ™ œ œ œ œœœ œœœ œ ™ œ œ œ œœœ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ ™ œ œ œ œœœ œœœ œ ™ œ œ œ œœœ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ ™ œ œ œ œœœ œœœ œ ™ œ œ œ œœœ œœœœ œœœœ " œœœœ j " œœœœ œœœœ œœœœ " œœœœ j " ˙̇̇̇ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ piano blue butterfly nanako sato { ff sfz sfz &b > .> ?b .> œœœœ œœœœ " œœœœ j " œœœœ œœœœ œœœœ " œœœœ j " ˙̇̇̇ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ piano blue butterfly nanako sato acoustic bass copyright © nanako sato freely q = straighta b mp c d mp e ?b . blue butterfly piano cadenza for - bars until b section nanako sato ?b . . ?b . . ?b . . ?b . . ?b ?b ?b ?b ! œ œ œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œ j ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œ j ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œ j ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œ j ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œ j ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œ j ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œ j ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œ j ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œ j ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œb œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œb œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œb œj ‰ œœœ œ œb Œ Œ œb œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œb œj ‰ œ œ œ œ œb Œ Œ œb nanako sato ff mf f g adagio h i mp dolce j k ff espress. q= l ?b . ?b . . ?b . . ?b . . ?b . mode: d f a bb c play bars collective improvisation section ?b play bars solo eventuary die down play freely piano solo ?b piano improvisation for - bars until k section ?b ?b ?b > . -bass solo ( bars) œb ™ œ# œn œb œb œ œn œ œn ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œ j ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œ j ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œ j ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œ j ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œ j ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œ j ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œ j ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œ œb œ Œ œ œ œj ‰ Œ œ œb œj ‰ Œ œ œ œj ‰ Œ œ œb œj ‰ Œ œ œ œj ‰ Œ œ œb œj ‰ Œ œ œ œj ‰ Œ œ œb œj ‰ Œ œ œ œj ‰ Œ œ œb œj ‰ Œ œ œ œj ‰ Œ œ œb œ œ œb œ œ œ ‰ œj œb œ ™ œ œ œ œ œn œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ acoustic bass nanako sato m n ?b ?b ?b ?b ?b ?b ?b ?b play bars collective improvisation section œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ acoustic bass blue butterfly nanako sato ff espress. mp o f sfz ?b ?b ?b ?b .> œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ acoustic bass blue butterfly nanako sato drum set copyright © nanako sato mp freely q = straighta b mp c d mp e mf f g adagioh i / .> blue butterfly piano cadenza for - bars until b section nanako sato / .> • • • • / • • • • • • • • / • • • • • • • • / • • • • / • • • • • • / / .> • • • • / • • • • • • • • • • / play bars play bars collective improvisation section solo eventuary die down play freely / piano solo ¿ ™œœ ¿ œ ‰¿ j ¿ ¿¿œj œ œ ‰ ¿ ¿ ¿œœj ¿ ŒÓ ¿ ¿ ¿ ™œœ ¿ œ ‰¿ j ¿ ¿¿œj œ œ ‰ ¿ ¿ ¿œœj ¿ ŒÓ ¿ ¿ œœ ¿ œ ‰ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿œj œ œ ‰ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ œœj ¿ Œ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿¿ ¿ ¿ ™ ¿j ¿ ¿ ¿ ™ ¿j ¿ ¿ ¿ ™ ¿j ¿ ¿ ¿ ™œœ ¿ œ ‰¿ j ¿ ¿¿œj œ œ ‰ ¿ ¿ ¿œœj ¿ ŒÓ ¿ ¿ nanako sato p dolce j k mp espress. q= l m f n mp o f sfz / .> piano improvisation for - bars until k section / • • • • • • • • • • / ! ! bass solo ( bars) / • • • • • • / • • • • • • / play barscollective improvisation section / / / • / ¿¿œ ¿¿ œ ‰ ¿ ¿ ™¿œj œ œ ‰ ¿ j ¿œœj ¿ ¿œœ ¿¿ œ ‰ ¿ ¿¿œj œ œ ‰ ¿ ¿œœj ¿œ ¿¿œ ¿œœ ¿¿ œ ‰ ¿ ¿¿œj œ œ ‰ ¿ œœj ¿œ¿ ¿ ¿¿œ ¿œœ ¿¿ œ ‰ ¿ ¿¿œj œ œ ‰ ¿ ¿œœj ¿œ ¿¿œ ¿œœ ¿¿ œ ‰ ¿ ¿¿œj œ œ ‰ ¿ ¿œœj ¿œ ¿¿œ ¿œœ ¿¿ œ ‰ ¿ ¿¿œj œ œ ‰ ¿ œœj ¿œ¿ ¿ ¿¿œ ¿œœ ¿¿ œ ‰ ¿ ¿¿œj œ œ ‰ ¿ ¿œœj ¿œ ¿¿œ ¿œœ ¿¿ œ ‰ ¿ ¿¿œj œ œ ‰ ¿ œœj ¿œ¿ ¿ ¿¿œ ¿œœ ¿¿ œ ‰ ¿ ¿¿œj œ œ ‰ ¿ ¿œœj ¿œ ¿¿œ ¿œœ ¿¿ œ ‰ ¿ ¿¿œj œ œ ‰ ¿ œœj ¿œ¿ ¿ ¿¿œ ¿œœ ¿¿ œ ‰ ¿ ¿¿œj œ œ ‰ ¿ ¿œœj ¿œ ¿¿œ ¿œœ ¿¿ œ ‰ ¿ ¿¿œj œ œ ‰ ¿ œœj ¿œ ¿ ¿ ¿¿œ drum set blue butterfly nanako sato nanako sato 	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   chapter reminiscence of a japanese garden this composition utilises more prominent heterophonic textures than the previous compositions. time signatures change throughout the piece, making it hard to feel a constant pulse as it flows, twists and turns like a river. there is an emphasis on japanese-style pentatonic sounds. the flautist emulates a japanese flute (shakuhachi) and violinist imitates a japanese harp (koto). reminiscence of a japanese garden attempts to create the feeling of tranquillity that is felt when visiting the gardens of my home country. the kyoto gardens evoke a harmonious feeling of calmness and peace. the scenery often recalls memory of japanese poetries, haiku and other ancient literatures by basho matsuo, shiki masaoka, buson yosa, and issa kobayashi. 月日は百代の過客にして、行かふ年も又旅人也。 舟の上に生涯をうかべ、馬の口とらえて老をむかふる物は、 日々旅にして旅を栖とす。 the months and days are eternal voyagers; the years that come and go are also travelers. for those who float away their lives on boats, for those who grow old leading horses are forever journeying; the journey itself becomes their homes. - basho matsuo ( - ) (translated by nanako sato) 	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
   	
  haiku is one of the most important form of traditional japanese poetry which are introduced throughout education system in japan. haiku was really popular in edo-period ( - ) and masters like basho, buson and issa are considered as the greatest in the literature society called haikai. 	
   reminiscence of a japanese garden master! "of! "music! "in! "composition! " ! musi! " ! "mmus! "composition " at! "the! "university! "of! "canterbury! student! "id:! " ! "! ! nanako sato nanako sato nanako sato transposed score note: grand piano should be used to perform this piece as pianist need to play the inside of piano stirings. pianist need to have metal mallets from bar - to perform this piece. shyakuhachi is a traditional japanese bamboo flute. koto is a traditional japanese harp. instrumentation flute bb clarinet piano violin cello nanako sato nanako sato ° ¢ { ° ¢ °¢ °¢ °¢ { ° ¢ ° ¢ { ° ¢ flute clarinet in bb piano violin violoncello fp fp mp espress. f p andante a b mp mp legato fp p p mf ff p mf° p mf° f mp mf mp marcato andante a b mp f cl. vln. cl. pno. vln. vc. mp° ø mp copyright © nanako sato fl. cl. pno. vln. vc. mp p p &b play like shakuhachi (breathy) f.t.> > > ! nanako sato reminiscence of a japanese garden &# ! ! ! ! ! &b .”“ ! ?b ! ”“ ! ! &b ! ! ! ! pizz. play sounds like koto ?b ! ! ! arco o o !!!!!! > ! ! &# &b - - > . o o o -> -> -> -> -> -> -> -> -> -> &# - - - - - - - - &b ! ! ! ! ! ! ! let ring &b -> -> -> -> ! ?b ! ! ! - - - - - ! ! ! &b ! ! ! &# ! &b ! let ring ¿ ! ! ! ! ?b ! ! ! ! ! ! &b non divis. arco" " ?b pizz. non divis. arco" # " # æææœ œ ™ ˙ ™ w æææœ œ ™ ˙ ™ w œ œ# œœœœ ˙ ™ œj ‰ Œ œ Œ Ó ‰ œj œ œ œ Ó œœ œ œ Œ Œ ‰ œœœ œœ œœœ œ r $‰ Œ œœ œ œ ˙ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œj ‰ Œ Ó œj ‰ Œ Œ ‰ œ œ œœœœ Œ ‰ ‰ Œ Ó Œ ™ œ œ œ œœœ ‰ œ j œ ™ ‰ Œ ‰ $ œ r ‰ œ œœ œœœœœœ œ œ œœ œœ œ œ ‰ æææ̇ ™ œ ‰ œj œ œ ‰ œj œ œœ œ ™j $ Ó ‰ œœœj œœ ™™ ‰ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ $ œ œ œœ ‰ œœœj ‰ œj œ ™ œ ™ œj œ œ œ œ œ œœœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ™ œœœ œœœœœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œj ‰ œ œ œ œ œœœœœr $œœœœœœ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œ j ‰ œj ‰ œœ œœœœ ™ œ œœœœœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœœ œœ œ œœœœ œ# œn œœ œb œn œœœœœœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœœœ œœœ œ œ œ Œ œ œ ˙ œ œ# œ œ ˙b ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ œ œœœœœ˙ ™ œ œ œj ‰ Ó œœœœœ œœœœœj ‰ œb œn œ# œ œ œ œ œ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œœœœ œ œ œ œ œ œj ‰ ‰ œnj œ œ œj ‰ Œ ‰ œb œ œ# œb œ œ œ œ œ œ ™ ‰ Ó Ó Œ $ œ œb œ# œ œb œ œb $œ œb œ# œ œœœ$œ œ œ œb œ œb œ$œ œ œ œ œ œœ$œ œ œ œ œ# œ œ ˙b œb œ œ# œn œ œœÓ œb œ œ# œn œ œ œ œ œ œ# œn œœœœœœœ œ œb œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ Œ Œ ‰ œj œ œ# œb œœ œ œ œj ‰ Œ ‰ œb œ œ# œb œ œ œb œ‰ œj œ œ# œ œœ œ œ wwb wwb wwb wwb œj ‰ Œ ‰ œb œ œ# œb œ œ œb œ‰ ‰ Ó wwbb wwb wwbb wwb nanako sato nanako sato ° ¢ { ° ¢ °¢ { ° ¢ °¢ { ° ¢ ° ¢ { ° ¢ fl. cl. pno. vln. vc. mf legato mf° p mf mf legato mp sempre cl. pno. vln. vc. c mf p mp mf c mp mf fl. pno. vln. vc. espress. fp fp mf mf p rit. mp mf mp mf rit. mp mf mp f mp mp f mp mf fl. cl. pno. vln. vc. mf moderatod p mf° ø ° ø ° ø p° p moderato d mp &b ! ! ! ! ! ! &# ! ! ! ! &b ! . ! ! ?b ! ! ! ! ! con ped. ! &b " # " # sul pont.at tallon -> ?b " # " # ! ! &# ! ! &b ! ! ! ?b ! ! ! ! ! . &b pizz. pluck d string at the same time with finger nail ?b ! ! ! ! ! sul pont. at tallon- - - nat. sim.- - - &b f.t. > > -> -- > > > .> &b ! ! ! ! ! metal mallets ready ! ! ! ?b - - - - ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &b arco ?b - - - - - - nat. &b ! f.t. ! ! ! - - . &# ! ! ! ! ! &b ! use metal mullet to hit the inside of piano strings. use sustain pedal half way through . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . &b ?b ! œb œ œb œ$œ œ œ œ œ œœ$œ œ œ œb œ œb œŒ Ó w œ ˙ œ œ œ œ ˙ œ ‰ œj ˙ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ# œ œ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ œ œj ‰ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ Ó Œ ‰ œœ œ# œ œ# œœ ™ œ ™ œj œ Œ wwb ww ww ww œj ‰ Œ Ó Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ ‰ œj ˙ ™ œ œ wwbb wwb ww w æææw æææœ Œ Ó ˙ œ œ œ œ œj œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œj œ ™ œ œ œ œ Œ Ó Ó Œ $œ œ œ œœœ œ œœœ œ œœœœœ œ œ œ œœœ œ œœÓ™ œ œ œ œœœ œ œœÓ™ Ó œ œ$œœœ œ œœŒ Ó œ œ œ œ œœœ œ œœ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙ œ œ Œ ‰ œj œ ™ œ œ œ w ˙ Ó œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ ‰ œœ j ‰ œœ j œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ ‰ œ œj ‰ œœ j ‰ œj ‰ œj Œ ‰ œj Œ œœœœ ‰ œj ‰ œj Œ ‰ œj Œ œ œœœ ! Œ ææœææœææœææœææ œææ œ æææœ œ ™ ˙ ™ æææ œ œ ™ œ ˙ œ œœœ œœ œ œœœœœ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ œ œœœ œœ œ œ œœœœ œ œ œ œ œ# w œ Œ Ó œ œ œ œ Ó œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ ‰ œœ j ‰ œœ j œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ ‰ œ œj ‰ œœ j œœ œœ Œ œœ œœ œœ Œ œœ œœ œœ Œ œœ œœ œœ Ó æææ ww# æææ ww ‰ œj ‰ œj Œ ‰ œj Œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œj Œ ‰ œj Œ œ œœ w w# w w# w w# w w# ˙ ™ Œ œ œ œ# œ æææœ# Œ Ó ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ# œ œ œ ‰ œ œj ‰ œ œ œ# œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ# œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œ#j ‰ œj ‰ œ j ‰ œ# j ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œ j ‰ œj œ œ# œ œ# œj ‰ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œ#j œ œ ‰ œj Œ œ œ æææ ww<#> æææ̇™ Œ Œ Ó ‰ œ œœœ œ# œ œ œ# œ œ# œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ# œ œ œ œ œ ˙ œ œ œ œ# œ Œ Ó œ œ# œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ œ œ œ# œ œ œ œ reminiscence of a japanese garden nanako sato ° ¢ { ° ¢ ° ¢ { ° ¢ ° ¢ { ° ¢ fl. cl. pno. vln. vc. fp mf f mf fp ø f p pietoso mf p mf p f f fl. cl. pno. vln. vc. mf mp leggiero ff espress. meno mosso e f mp affettuoso mf grazioso mp schleppen ° ø ° mf soave mp mp meno mosso e f mp mf mp schleppen fl. cl. pno. vln. vc. mf mp mp f f ø ° ø ° ø p f &b . . f.t. - - f.t. - - > &# ! &b . . . . . . . . . nat. ?b ! ! ! nat. ! ! &b ! ! ?b ! ! ! ! &b Ÿ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ! f.t. &# ! ! &b ! ! ! ! ! ?b ! ! ! ! ! &b ! ! ?b ! &b ! ! ! ! ! &# ! ! ! ! &b ! ! - . . - . ! . ?b ! ! &b ! ! ! ! ! ?b ! ! - - - œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œ# œ œ ‰ œœ‰ œj œ œ œ œ ™ ‰ Ó fiœj æææ̇# ™ Œ œ# ™ œj œ œ œ# œ æææ œæææ œ æææ œ# æææ œ æææœ ‰ œ œ œ# œ œ œ œœœ œ# œœ œ# œœœœœœœœœ œ ˙ œ Œ Ó Ó œœœ œ# œœ œ ™ œ# œ œ œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œ j ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œ j ‰ œ# j ‰ œj Œ Ó™ Œ fiœj ˙# œœœœœœœ œ Œ œ œ œ# œ œ œ œ# œ ‰ Œ Œ Œ œ# œœœ œ# œœœ œœœ œ# œœ œ Œ Œ œœœœœ œœ œ œ œ œ# œ œ œ œ œ ˙ œj ‰ Œ œœœ œœ ˙# œ œœ Œ Ó Œ œ ˙ œn ˙ œ œ œœœ œ# æææœ<#> Œ Œ ‰ œ# œj œ œ# ˙ ™ w œ ™ ‰ Ó Œ œ œ# œœ œ œ# œ œ œ œ Œ Ó æææœ œ ™ œj ‰ œ œœœœ œ ˙ Œ Ó ˙ ˙ ˙# ˙ œ ™ œj œ œ# œ $œœ œ œ# œœ œœœ œœœ œ ™ ‰ Ó Œ œ œœ œ œ Ó ‰ œœœœœœœœœœœŒ Ó Œ Œ œ œ œ# œ ‰ Œ Ó Ó Œ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ ™ œ ™ œ#j œ œ w ˙ Ó œ# œœ œ# œ Ó Œ œ œœ œ œj œ ™ œj ‰ Œ Ó æææ̇ æææ̇ æææ̇# æææ̇ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ $ œ#r œ œ œ œ ˙ œ Œ Œ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ ™ œ Œ Ó æææœ œ ™ œj ‰ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ Ó Ó œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œ œ œ Œ Œ Ó œ œ œ œœ œ œ œj ‰ Ó œœ œ œœj ‰ Ó œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ Œ ‰ œœj ‰ œœj œœ Œ ‰ œœ j ‰ œœj œ œ Œ œœ œœ œœ œœ œ œ ™ œ œ ™ ‰ Œ œ œ œ$ Œ Ó œ œ œ$Œ Ó œ œ œ$Œ Ó Ó $œœœœ œ œr $ ‰ Œ $œœœœ œ œj ‰ Œ Œ ‰ œœ œ œ Œ œœ œœ œœ œœ œ œ ™ œ œ ™ ‰ Œ ‰ œ œ œ œ Ó ‰ œ œœ œ Ó Œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ reminiscence of a japanese garden nanako sato ° ¢ { ° ¢ ° ¢ { ° ¢ ° ¢ { ° ¢ fl. cl. pno. vln. vc. f fp fp g h p p p p mf° fp fp g h fl. cl. pno. vln. vc. p f f p mf andanterit. i mp p mf f p mf° p mf° mp mf andanterit. i mp f copyright © nanako sato fl. cl. pno. vln. vc. p mp mp f f f &b &# ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &b ! ?b ! ! ! ! &b ! ! ! > > ?b ! ! ! ! ! ! &b - - flute cadenza (begins from bar to ) &# ! ! ! ! &b ! . . ?b ! &b ! ! - -- " " # ?b ! ! arco > ! # " " " # " " " &b flute cadenza begin (improvise using based on d e f# a bb mode) &# ! ! ! ! &b ! - - - - - - - - - - ! ! - - ?b ! ! ! ! & &b " " " # " " # " " " # ! - - - - - - - - - - - - ?b # " " " # " " " # " " " # " " " # " " " # " " ! !" - - - - - - - - - - - - ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ œ Œ Ó Ó œœ œ œ w Ó œœ œ œ ˙ œ œ œj ‰ Ó œœœ œ œœœœ œœœœœœœœœœœœ œ Œ œ œ œ œ ™ œ ™ œj ‰ Œ Ó Œ ™ œœœœœ‰ Œ Ó Ó Œ ‰ œj œ œ œ œœœœœœœœ Œ Œ Ó Œ ™ ‰ ‰ œœ œœœœ œ ™ ‰ Ó œ œ œ œ œ Œ œ œ ™ ˙ ™ w œ œ ™ ˙ ™ œ Œ œj ‰ œœœœœ˙ ˙ Ó œ œ œœœ ™ ‰ Œ œ œn œ œ œ ™ œj ˙ œœ œ œœœ œ# ˙ ™ œ œ œ œj ‰ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ Ó Œ œœœ œ œ œ œ œ ™ œœœœœ‰ Œ Œ ‰ Œ œ œn œ œœ œ œ ™ ‰ Ó Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj œœœ œ œ œ œœ œ# œœ œ œ# œœœ œ œ œ# œ œb œœœ œ# œœœ Ó ‰ œ œœœœœ ˙ œj ‰ ‰ œ œn œ œn Œ ‰ ‰ Œ ™ ‰ Ó œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œ œœ œœœœ œœ œ œœœ œ œn œ œ ‰ æææ̇ ™ æææœ œ œ ™ œ œj ˙ Œ œ œ œ œœœ œ $ Ó ‰ œj œ ™ ‰ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œb œ œ œ œ# œ œ œj ‰ Œ Œ œ œ œ# œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ œœœ œ œ œ œ Œ œœ œ œ œ œ œ Œ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ# œœ œ œ# œ œœ œ œ œ# œ œb œœœ œ# œœ œ œ œ œ# œ œb œ œœ œ# œœœ œ# œ œ œ œ œ# œ œ œ# œ œb œ œœ œœ œœ## œ œ œœ œœ œœ œœ œ œ## œ œ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ Œ œ œ œ ˙ Œ œ œ œ ˙ Œ œ œ œ œ Œ Œ œ œ œ# œ œ œ œ œ œ# œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ# œ œ œ œ œ œ# œ œ œ reminiscence of a japanese garden nanako sato nanako sato ° ¢ { ° ¢ ° ¢ { ° ¢ ° ¢ { ° ¢ fl. cl. pno. vln. vc. mf sfz ff p f mf f mp fl. cl. pno. vln. vc. p f j fp patetico mp mf pp mf ° ø p f° ø mp j mp fl. cl. pno. vln. vc. mp f p k mp pp perdendosi p f mp perdendosi k fp f p mp f mp mp f p &b (cadenza stops)! &# ! ! ! ! ! - &b > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > - - - - - - - &b cross hands -> -> -> -> -> -> -> -> -> -> -> -> -> ->ÿ" ? -> - - - - - - - &b - - ! ?b ! &b - - ! ! ! &# - ! > bŸ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ &b . ?b ! ! &b ! ! ?b ! ! - - - - - - - &b ! f.t.> f.t. f.t. ! ! ! ! ! &# ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &b ! ! ! . . . . ! . . . . . ?b ! ! ! & senza ped. . . . . ! . . . . . &b ! pizz. use open d string at the same time ?b > - ! ! œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœœœ œœœœ œ# œœœ œn œœœœœ œ# œ œ œ# œ œ œ œ œœ œœœ œ# œœœœ œ œ œ œ# œ œ œ œn œ œœœœ œœœœœœœœœ œœœœ œœœ œ ™ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ œ Ó œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œ œ œ œœœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œœœ œœœœœ œ œ œœœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœœœœœ œ œ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œ Œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œ j ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ Œ ‰ œj œ œ œ œj ‰ œj œ œj œ œ ‰ œj œ œ œ œj ‰ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œj ‰ œ œ Œ œ œ œ œb œ œ œ œ Ó œ Œ Œ œ œ ™ ˙ œ œ ˙ ™ œ Œ Ó œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ™j $ Ó œ œ Œ Ó ˙ ™ Ó œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ j ‰ Œ Ó æææw æææw æææœ Œ Ó œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ Ó œ œ# œœœæææ œ æææ̇ ™ æææœ æææ̇ ™ æææ̇ ™ Œ Œ ‰ ®œœ œ# œ ™ œ œ œn œ œ# œœ œ Œ Ó œœ Œ Ó œœ œœ Œ œœ œœ œœ Œ œœ Ó œœ Œ Œ œœ Ó œ Œ Ó œ œ Œ œ œ œ Œ œ Ó œ Œ Œ œ Ó ‰ œ œ œ œœœ œœ œ œ œ œœ œ œ œ œ ‰ æææ̇ ™ œœ œœ Œ œœ œœ œœ Œ œœ œœ œœ Œ œœ œœ œœ Œ œœ Ó œœ Œ Œ œœ Ó œ œ œ œ $ Ó ‰ œj ˙ ™ w w w w w w w w w w reminiscence of a japanese garden nanako sato flute fp fp mp espress. f p andante a copyright © nanako sato mp b espress. fp fp c mf mf p rit. moderato d &b play like shakuhachi (breathy) f.t.> > > nanako sato reminiscence of a japanese garden &b &b &b f.t. > > &b -> - - > > > &b .> ! &b f.t. ! ! ! æææœ œ ™ ˙ ™ w æææœ œ ™ ˙ ™ w œ œ# œœœœ ˙ ™ œj ‰ Œ Ó Œ "œ œb œ# œ œb œ œb "œ œb œ# œ œœœ"œ œ œ œb œ œb œ"œ œ œ œ œ œœ"œ œ œ œb œ œb œ"œ œ œ œ œ œœ"œ œ œ œb œ œb œŒ Ó ! Œ ææœææœææœææœææ œææ œ æææœ œ ™ ˙ ™ æææ œ œ ™ œ ˙ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ# w œ Œ Ó æææœ# Œ Ó nanako sato mf fp mf f mf meno mossoe mp leggiero ff espress. f f g fp fp h p f f p mf andante rit. i &b - - . . . &b f.t. - - f.t. - - > &b Ÿ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ! &b f.t. &b ! ! &b &b &b &b - - flute cadenza (begins from bar to ) ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ# œ œ œ ‰ œ œj œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œ# œ œ ‰ œœ‰ œj œ œ œ œ ™ ‰ Ó fiœj æææ̇# ™ Œ œ# ™ œj œ œ œ# œ æææœæææ œ æææ œ# æææ œ æææœ æææœ<#> Œ Œ ‰ œ# œj œ œ# ˙ ™ w œ ™ ‰ Ó Œ œ œ# œœœ œ# œ œ œ œ Œ Ó æææœ œ ™ œj ‰ œ œœœœ œ œ Œ Ó æææœ œ ™ œj ‰ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ Ó ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ œ Œ Ó Ó œ œ œ œ w Ó œ œ œ œ ˙ œ œ œ œ œ ™ ‰ Œ œ œn œ œ œ ™ œj ˙ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ# ˙ ™ œ<#> œ œ œj ‰ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ flute reminiscence of a japanese garden nanako sato copyright © nanako sato p mp mf sfz ff p f j mp f p k &b flute cadenza begin (improvise using based on d e f# a bb mode) &b &b &b (cadenza stops) ! &b - - ! ! &b f.t.> f.t. f.t. œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œb œ œ œ œ# œ œ œj ‰ Œ Œ œ œ œ# œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ# œ œ œ œn œ œ œ œ œ œ# œ œ œ# œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ# œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ# œ œ œ œn œ œœœœ œœœœœœœœœ œœœœ œœœ œ ™ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ œ œœ œb œ œ œ œ Ó œ œ# œ œ œæææ œ æææ̇ ™ æææœ æææ̇ ™ æææ̇ ™ Œ flute reminiscence of a japanese garden nanako sato clarinet in bb mp mp legato andantea b copyright © nanako sato mf rit.c moderatod &# ! nanako sato reminiscence of a japanese garden &# &# &# - - - - &# - - - - &# &# &# &# &# ! ! ! ! œ Œ Ó ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ " œ œ œ œ ‰ œ œ œj ‰ œj œ ™ œ ™ œj œ œ œ œ œ œœœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ™ œœœ œœœœœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœœœœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ# œn œ œ œb œn œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœœœœœœ œ œ œ Œ œ œ ˙ œ œ# œ œ ˙b ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ# œ œ ˙b œb œ œ# œn œ œœÓ œb œ œ# œn œ œ œ œ œ œ# œn œœœœœœœ œ œb œœœœ ˙ ™ Œ w œ ˙ œ œ œ œ ˙ œ ‰ œj ˙ ˙ œ œ œ œ œj œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œj œ ™ œ œ œ œ Œ Ó nanako sato nanako sato p mf fp mp affettuoso meno mossoe mf f mp g h copyright © nanako sato mp mp andanterit. i fp patetico j &# &# ! &# &# ! &# &# &# ! ! ! ! &# ! &# - - ! &# > bŸ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ‰ œœ œ# œœœ œœœœœœ œ# œœœœœœœœœ œ ‰ œœ œ# œ œœ œœœ œ# œœ œ# œœœœœœœœœ œ ˙ œ Œ Ó Ó œœœ œ# œœ œ ™ œ# œ œ ˙ Œ Ó ˙ ˙ ˙# ˙ œ ™ œj œ œ# œ " œ œ œ œ# œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ™ ‰ Ó Ó œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ Œ Ó œ œ œ œ œ œj ‰ Ó œ Œ Ó Œ œœœ œ œ œ œ Œ œœœ œ œ œ œ Œ œœ œ œ œ œ œ Œ œœœ œ œ œ œ Ó œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ Œ œ œ ™ ˙ œ œ ˙ ™ œ Œ Ó clarinet in bb reminiscence of a japanese garden nanako sato nanako sato mp k &# ! &# Œ ‰ ® œ œ œ# œ ™ œ œ œn œ œ# œ œ œ Œ Ó clarinet in bb reminiscence of a japanese garden nanako sato { { { piano fp p andante a p mf° p mf ff p mf° f mp° ø b v.s. legato &b nanako sato reminiscence of a japanese garden ?b ! &b .”“ ?b ”“ ! &b ! let ring ¿ &b ?b ! ! ! Ó œ œ œ œ Œ Œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ r " ‰ Œ œ œ œ œ Œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ ‰ ‰ Œ Ó ˙ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œj ‰ Œ Ó œj ‰ Œ Œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œ j œ ™ ‰ Œ ‰ " œ r œœœœœ˙ ™ Œ ‰ œj œ œ# œb œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ# œ œ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ œ nanako sato { { { mf° p mf mf c p rit. mf° ø ° ø moderatod ° ø p° &b . ! ?b ! con ped. &b &b ?b . &b ! ! metal mallets ready ! ?b - - - - ! ! &b use metal mullet to hit the inside of piano strings. use sustain pedal half way through . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . &b . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . œj ‰ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ Ó Œ ‰ œ œ œ# œ œ# œ œ ™ œ ™ œj œ Œ Ó Œ " œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ Ó™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ Ó™ Ó œ œ " œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ Ó œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ Ó ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œ#j ‰ œj ‰ œ j ‰ œ# j ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œ j ‰ œj œ œ# œ œ# œj ‰ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œ#j œ œ ‰ œj Œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œ j ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œ j ‰ œ# j piano reminiscence of a japanese garden nanako sato nanako sato { { { { { ø f mf p mf p pietoso meno mosso mf grazioso e f mp schleppen ° ø° ø ° mp f ø° ø p v.s. f g p &b . nat. ?b ! nat. &b ?b ! ! &b ?b &b ! ! - . . ?b ! ! &b - . ! ! . ?b ‰ œj Œ Ó™ Œ fiœj ˙# œ œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ Œ œ# œ œ œ œ# œ œ œ œ œ œ œ# œ œ œ Œ Œ œ Œ œ œ œ# œ œ œ œ# œ ‰ Œ Œ œ œ œ œ œ Ó œ œ œ# œ ‰ Œ Ó ‰ œœœœœœœœœœ œ Œ Ó Œ Œ œ œ œ œ œj ‰ Ó Ó Œ œœ œœ œœ œœ œ œ ™ œ œ Œ œœ œœ œ œœj ‰ Ó œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ Œ ‰ œœj ‰ œœj œœ œœ œœ œ œ ™ œ œ ™ ‰ Œ œ œ œ"Œ Ó œœ Œ ‰ œœ j ‰ œœj œ œ œ " Œ Ó œ œ œ " Œ Ó œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ piano reminiscence of a japanese garden nanako sato nanako sato { { { { p p h p mf° p mf p mf° p mf° f andante rit. i &b &b ?b ! ! &b ! ?b &b . . ?b ! &b ?b œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ œ œ œ œ ™ œ ™ œj ‰ Œ Ó Œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ Œ Ó Ó Œ ‰ œj Œ ™ ‰ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ™ ‰ Ó œ ™ œœœœœ‰ Œ Œ ‰ Œ œ œn œœœ œ œ ™ ‰ Ó Ó ‰ œ œœœœœ ˙ œj ‰ ‰ œ œn œ œn Œ ‰ ‰ Œ ™ ‰ Ó Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ# œ œ œ œ# œ œ œ œ œ œ# œ œb œ œ œ œ# œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ# œ œ œ œ# œ œ œ œ œ œ# œ œb œ œ œ œ# œ œ œ œ œ œ# œ œb œ œ œ œ# œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ piano reminiscence of a japanese garden nanako sato { { { { copyright © nanako sato f p mf f f mp mf pp° j &b ! - - - - - - - - - - - - ?b ! ! &b > > > > > > > > > ?b & cross hands-> -> -> -> -> -> -> -> ->ÿ! &b > > > > > > - - - - - - - &b -> -> -> -> ->!< > ? -> - - - - - - - &b . ?b ! ! œ# œ œ œ œ œ# œ œ œ# œ œb œ œœ œœ œœ## œ œ œœ œœ œœ œœ œ œ## œ œ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœœœœœœœœœ œ œ œœœœœœœœœœ œ œ œœœœœœœœœœ œ œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œ Œ Œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œ j ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ Œ œ œ œ œ œœœœœœœœœ ˙ ™ piano reminiscence of a japanese garden nanako sato nanako sato { { mf ø p f° ø pp perdendosi k &b ?b & &b . . . . ! . . . . . &b senza ped. . . . . ! . . . . . œ œ œ œ œ ™j " Ó œ œ Œ Ó Ó œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ j ‰ Œ Ó œœ Œ Ó œœ œœ Œ œœ œœ œœ Œ œœ Ó œœ Œ Œ œœ Ó œ Œ Ó œ œ Œ œ œ œ Œ œ Ó œ Œ Œ œ Ó piano reminiscence of a japanese garden nanako sato nanako sato violin mp mf andantea mp marcato b copyright © nanako sato p mf legato v.s.mp mf c &b ! nanako sato reminiscence of a japanese garden &b pizz. play sounds like koto - - > . o &b o o -> -> -> -> -> -> -> -> &b -> -> &b -> -> -> -> &b ! non divis. arco" " &b " # " # sul pont.at tallon -> &b &b pizz. pluck d string at the same time with finger nail ‰ œ œ œ œœœœœ œ œ œ œœ œ œ œ œ ‰ æææ̇ ™ œ ‰ œj œ œ ‰ œj œ œ ‰ œj œ œ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œj ‰ œ œ œ œ œœœœœr $œœœœœœ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œœ œœœœ ™ œ œ œ œj ‰ Ó œœœœœ œœœœœj ‰ œb œn œ# œ œ œ œ œ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œœœœ œ œ œ œ œ œj ‰ ‰ œnj œ œ œj ‰ Œ ‰ œb œ œ# œb œ œj ‰ Œ ‰ œb œ œ# œb œ œ œb œ‰ œj œ œ# œœœ œœ wwb wwb wwb wwb wwb ww ww ww œj ‰ Œ Ó Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ ‰ œj ˙ ™ œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙ œ œ Œ ‰ œj œ ™ œ œ œ w ˙ Ó œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ ‰ œœ j ‰ œœ j œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ ‰ œ œj ‰ œœ j nanako sato nanako sato nanako sato mp mf mp mf rit. p moderatod p f mf soave mp mp meno mossoe f g fp fp h mp mf copyright © nanako sato andanterit. i &b &b arco &b &b &b &b ! &b ! &b &b > > ! &b ! - - - &b " " # " " " # " " # œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ ‰ œœ j ‰ œœ j œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ ‰ œ œj ‰ œœ j œœ œœ Œ œœ œœ œœ Œ œœ œœ œœ Œ œœ œœ œœ Ó æææ ww# æææ ww æææ ww æææ̇™ Œ Œ Ó ‰ œ œ œ œ œ# œ œ œ# œ œ# œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœœœ œ œ œ œ# œ œ œ œ œ ˙ œœœœœœœ œ œ œ œ# œ œ œ œ œ ˙ œj ‰ Œ œœœ œœ ˙# œ œœ Œ Ó Œ œ ™ œ#j œ œ w ˙ Ó œ# œœ œ# œ Ó Œ œœœ œ œj œ ™ œj ‰ Œ Ó Ó $ œ œ œ œ œ œr $ ‰ Œ $ œ œ œ œ œ œj ‰ Œ Œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ œ œ ™ ˙ ™ w œ œ ™ ˙ ™ œ Œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œn œ œ ‰ æææ̇ ™ æææœ œ œ ™ œ œj ˙ Œ œ œ œ ˙ Œ œ œ œ ˙ Œ œ œ œ violin reminiscence of a japanese garden nanako sato f mp mp p f j mp perdendosi k &b " " " # ! - - - - - - - - - - - - &b - - &b ! &b pizz. use open d string at the same time ˙ Œ œ œ œ œ Œ Œ œ œ œ# œ œ œ œ œ œ# œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ Œ æææw æææw æææœ Œ Ó ‰ œœœ œœœœœœœ œ œœœœ œœ‰ææ æ̇ ™ œœ œœ Œ œœ œœ œœ Œ œœ œœ œœ Œ œœ œœ œœ Œ œœ Ó œœ Œ Œ œœ Ó violin reminiscence of a japanese garden nanako sato violoncello mp f andantea mp b copyright © nanako sato p mp sempre mp mf mp c mf mp f mp mp f mp mf rit. mp moderato d f mp mf meno mosso e ?b arco o o !!!!!! > ! nanako sato reminiscence of a japanese garden ?b - - - - - pizz. ?b non divis. arco" # " # " ?b # " # ?b sul pont. at tallon- - - nat. sim.- - - - - - ?b - - - nat. ?b ! ?b ?b ?b ! œ œ œ œ ™j $ Ó ‰ œœœj œœ ™™ ‰ Œ œ œ œ œ œ ™ ‰ Ó œj ‰ Œ ‰ œb œ œ# œb œ œ œb œ ‰ ‰ Ó wwbb wwb wwbb wwb wwbb wwb ww w æææw æææœ Œ Ó ‰ œj ‰ œj Œ ‰ œj Œ œœœœ ‰ œj ‰ œj Œ ‰ œj Œ œ œœœ ‰ œj ‰ œj Œ ‰ œj Œ œœœœ ‰ œj ‰ œj Œ ‰ œj Œ œ œœ w w# w w# w w# w w# ˙ ™ Œ œ œ œ# œ œ œ œ œ# œ Œ Ó œ œ# œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ œ œ œ# œ œ œ œ œ ˙ œn ˙ œ œ œ œ œ œ# æææ̇ æææ̇ æææ̇# æææ̇ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ $ œ#r œ œ œ œ ˙ reminiscence of a japanese garden nanako sato nanako sato mp schleppen f f g mp f h andanterit. i copyright © nanako sato f mp fp j f p mp f mp mp f p k ?b ?b ! ! - - - ?b ?b ! ! ! arco > ?b ! # " " " # " " " # " " " # " " " # " " " ?b # " " " # " " " # " " " - - - - - - - - - - - - ?b ?b - - - - - - - ?b > - œ Œ Œ œœ œœ œœ œœ œ œ ™ œ œ Œ œœ œœ œœ œœ œ œ ™ œ œ ™ ‰ Œ ‰ œ œ œ œ Ó ‰ œ œ œ œ Ó Œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ œj ‰ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ ˙ Ó œœœ œ $Ó ‰ œj œ ™ ‰ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ# œ œ œ œ œ œ# œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ œ œj ‰ œj œ œj œ œ ‰ œj œ œ œ œj ‰ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œj ‰ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ Ó œœ œ œ $Ó ‰ œj ˙ ™ w w w w w w w w w w violoncello reminiscence of a japanese garden nanako sato nanako sato 	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   chapter conspiracy theory conspiracy theory features a marimba with a string orchestra. i have used a variety of textures throughout this piece, including heterophony, monophony, homophony and polyphony. i have used two pentatonic scales: the altered pentatonic - d, g, a, b, and c; and the standard minor pentatonic scale - a, c, d, e and g as a base of this work. this composition’s flitting melody reflects people who cannot make their minds up about what they believe. there are many conspiracy theories in the world and which to believe is really your call. after the earthquake, people gullibly believed some strange theories that were circulating, to make sense of what was happening to them. o conspiracy, sham’st thou to show thy dang’rous brow by night, when evils are most free? - william shakespeare conspiracy theory master! "of! "music! "in! "composition! " ! musi! " ! "mmus! "composition " at! "the! "university! "of! "canterbury! student! "id:! ! nanako sato nanako sato transposed score instrumentation flute bb clarinet timpani marimba harp piano strings [violins, violas and cellos] note: timpani should be tuned to c b a e harp should be tuned to dcb|efga nanako sato nanako sato duration: approx. . minutes nanako sato nanako sato nanako sato ° ¢ °¢ { { ° ¢ { °¢ { { ° ¢ { flute clarinet in bb timpani marimba harp piano violin viola violoncello moderato a p animato f mf p f mp p f animato p f f mf moderato a mf mf copyright © nanako sato fl. mar. hp. pno. vln. vla. vc. mp f b mf f f mp f b f f & ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! conspiracy theory nanako sato &## ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ?cb a e ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! & > > > . - . - . - . - ? ! ! ! ! ! ! ! & ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ?dcb | efga ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! & ! ! ! ! ! ? ! ! -> -> -> & ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! pizz.> b ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! pizz.> ? ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! pizz.> & ! ! ! u ! & . - ! ! ! ! ? ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! & u ? ! & ! ! ! ! ! ! u ! ? -> ! u ! ! & > > > > > ! arco non-div.u ! ! b > > > > > ! arco non-div.u ! ! ? > > > > > ! non-div. arco u ! ! œ ‰ œ‰ œ ™ œ Œ Œ œ‰ œ‰ œ ™ œ Œ ‰ œœ œœœœœœœœœœœœ œœ œœ ™™ œœj œœ œœ ™™ œœj œœ œœ ™™ œœj Œ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ œœ œœ ™™ œœj œ‰ œ‰ œ ™ œ Œ Œ œ‰ œ ‰ œ ™ œ Œ Œ Œ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ Œ œ ‰ œ‰ œ ™ œ Œ Œ œ‰ œ‰ œ ™ œ Œ Œ œ œ Œ Œ Œ ‰ œj œj ‰ œ‰ œ‰ œ ™ œ Œ Œ œ‰ œ ‰ œ ™ œ Œ Œ œœ œ œ œ Œ Ó œ œ œœ œ œ œ Œ Ó œ œ œœ œ œ œ Œ œ Œ Œ œ Œ Œ œ Œ Œ œœœ œ œ œ œœœœœ œ œœœ œ œ œ œœœœœ œ œœœ œ œ œ œœœœœ œ œœœ ˙ œj ‰ Œ Œ œœ œœ ™™ œœj Œ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ œœœ œœœ œœ œœœœ œœœœ œœœ œ œœœœœœ œœ œœœœ œœœœœ œœœ œ œ œ œ Œ Œ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ Œ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ Œ ‰ œj œ œ ˙̇̇̇ ™™™™!!!!! Œ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ Ó œ œ œ œ œ Œ Ó œ œ œ œ œ Œ Ó œ œ œ œ œ Œ œ œ œ Œ Ó œ œ ˙̇̇̇ ™™™™!!!!! ˙ ™ Ó œ œ œœ œ œ œ Œ Ó œ œ œœ œ œ œ Œ Ó œ œ ˙̇b ™™!!! œ Œ Œ œ Œ Œ œ Œ Œ œ Œ Œ œ Œ Œ ˙̇ ™™ œ Œ Œ œ Œ Œ œ Œ Œ œ Œ Œ œ Œ Œ ˙̇ ™™ œ Œ Œ œ Œ Œ œ Œ Œ œ Œ Œ œ Œ Œ ˙̇b ™™ = nanako sato °¢ { { ° ¢ { ° ¢ °¢ { { ° ¢ { timp. mar. hp. pno. vln. vla. vc. f ff ff mf ° ø ° ø ° ø f f f fl. cl. timp. mar. hp. pno. vln. vla. vc. c mf ff p mf mf p p° ø ° ø ° ø ° ø ° ø ° ø c ? ! ! > > ! & ! ? ! ! ! ! ! ! ! & o o o ! ? o o o ! & ! ! ! ? ! ! ! ! & ! ! ! pizz. b ! ! ! pizz. ? ! ! ! pizz. & ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &## ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ? ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! & ! - - > ? ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! & ! ! ! o o o o ? ! ! ! & - - > ? ! ! & ! ! ! ! ! ! ! b ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ? ! ! ! ! ! ! ! Ó ‰ "œœ œ Œ Œ Ó ‰ "œœ œ Œ Œ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœœœ œœœœœœœ œ œœœœœœ œœ œœœœ œœœœœœœ œ œœœœœœ œœ œœœœ œœœœœœœ œ œœœœœœ œœ œœœœ œœœœœœœ œ œœœœœœ œœ œœœœ œœœœœœœ œ œœœœœœ œœ œœœœ œœœœœœœ œ Œ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ Ó œœœœ ˙̇̇ ™™™!!!!! ˙̇̇ ™™™!!!!! ˙̇̇ ™™ ™!!!!!! œ œ œ Œ Ó œ œ œœœœœ œœœ Œ ˙̇̇ ™™™!!!!! ˙̇̇ ™™™!!!!! ˙̇̇ ™™™!!!!! ˙̇̇ ™™™!!!!! ˙̇̇ ™™™!!!!! ˙̇̇ ™™ ™!!!!!! œœœœœœ œœ œœœœ œœœœœœœ œ ˙̇̇ ™™™!!!!! ˙̇̇ ™™™!!!!! ˙̇̇ ™™™!!!!! œœœ œ œœ œœœœ œ ™ œ œœ œ œ œœ œœ œœœœ œ œ œœ œœ œœœœ œœœ œ œœ œœœœ œ ™ œ œœ œ œ œœ œœ œœœœ œ œ œœ œœ œœœœ œœœ œ œœ œœœœ œ ™ œ œœ œ œ œœ œœ œœœœ œ œ œœ œœ œœœœ Œ ‰ œœj œœ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ Œ œ œ œ œ Œ œ œ œ œ œœœ!!!!! ˙̇̇ ™™™!!!!! Ó œ œ Ó œ œ œ œ ˙ œ œ ˙ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ œ œ ˙ œœœœœœ œœ œœœœ œœœœ œœœ œ Œ ‰ œœ j œœ œœ Œ ‰ œœ œœœ œ Œ ‰ œœœœœ œ Ó œ œœœœ œœœ Œ ‰ œœœœœ œ Œ ‰ œœœœœ œ Œ ‰ œœœœœ œ œœœ œœ œ‰ Œ œœœ œœœ‰ Œ œœœ œ œœœ œÓ œœœ œœœ‰ Œ œœœ œœ œ‰ Œ œœœ œœœ‰ Œ œ œ œœ œœ œœ ‰ œ œ œœ œœ œœ ‰ œ œ œœ œœ œœ ‰ = nanako sato °¢ { { ° ¢ { ° ¢ °¢ { { ° ¢ { fl. mar. hp. pno. vln. vla. vc. mf dolce mp mp ° ø ° ø ° ø p pp pp fl. cl. timp. mar. hp. pno. vln. vla. vc. mf p mf ° ø f f f & ! ! & ? ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! & o o o o ? & ! ! ! ! ? ! ! ! ! ! ! & ! ! arco div. b ! ! arco div. ? ! ! arco div. & ! ! . . . . &## ! ! ! ! ! . . . . ? ! ! ! - > > > > - > > > > - > > > > - > > > > & ! ! ? ! ! ! ! ! ! ! & gliss. ! ! ! ! ! ? ! ! ! ! ! ! & ! ! ! ! ! ! ? ! ! ! ! ! ! ! & ! unis. . . . . ! ! b ! unis. . . . . ! ! ? ! unis. . . . . ! ! œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ œœ œœ ˙̇ ˙̇ ˙̇ ™™ ˙̇ ™™ œœ œ œœ œ œœ œ œœ œ œœ œ œœ œ œœ œ œœ œ œœ œ œœ œ œœ œ œœ œ œœ œ œœ œ œœ œ œœ œ œœ œ œœ œ Ó œ œ Ó œ œ Œ œœœœœœ‰ Œ ‰ œœœœ œœ Œ œœœ œœœœœ Œ œ œœ œ œœœœ Œ "œœœœœœœ Œ ‰ œœœœœœ œ œ ˙ œ œ ˙ œœœ œŒ ‰ œœ œœœ œœœ‰ Œ œœ œœŒ Œ œœœ œŒ Œ œœœ œœr "‰ Œ œœ œœœ œ‰ Œ Œ ‰ œœœœœ œ Œ ‰ œœœœœ œ Œ ‰ œ œ œœœœ œ Œ Œ œœœ œœœ‰ Œ œœœ œœœ‰ Œ ˙̇ ™™ ˙̇ ™™ ˙̇ ™™ ˙̇ œœ ˙̇ ™™ ˙̇ ™™ ˙̇ ™™ ˙̇ ™™ ˙̇ ™™ ˙̇ œœ ˙̇ ™™ ˙̇ ™™ ˙̇ ™™ ˙̇ ™™ ˙̇ ™™ ˙̇ œœ ˙̇ ™™ ˙̇ ™™ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ œ œj ‰ Œ Œ œœœ œ œœ œœœœ œ œœ œ œœ œœœœ œœœ œ œœ œœœœ œ œœ œ œœ œœœœ œj "œr "œr "œr "œœ œj "œr "œr "œr "œœ œj "œr "œr "œr "œœ œj "œr "œr "œr "œœ œœ œ œœ œ œœ œ œœ j ‰ Œ Œ œœœœœœ œœ œœœœ œœœœœœœ œ œœœœœœ œœ œœœœ œœœœœœœ œ œœœœœœ œœ œœœœ œœœœœœœ œ Œ "œœœœœœœ œœœœœ œ œœœ œœr "‰ Œ ‰ œœœœœœ œ œ œ œœ‰ ˙̇ ™™ ˙̇ œœ œœœ œ œœ œœœœ œœœ œ œœ œœœœ ˙̇ ™™ ˙̇ œœ œœœ œ œœ œœœœ œœœ œ œœ œœœœ ˙̇ ™™ ˙̇ œœ œœœ œ œœ œœœœ œœœ œ œœ œœœœ = nanako sato ° ¢ °¢ { ° ¢ ° ¢ °¢ { { ° ¢ { fl. cl. timp. pno. vln. vla. vc. f f f mp mf mp sfz sfz sfz sfz f mf mf mf fl. cl. timp. mar. hp. pno. vln. vla. vc. f d f f animato mf misterioso f f p f ff d p f ff p f ff & ! ! > > > > > > > > > > > > > ! > &## ! ! > > > > > > > > > > > > > ! > ? - > > > > - > > > > - > > > > - > > > > - > > > > - > > > > - > > > > & > > > > ? ! ‘“ ! ! ! ‘“ & ! ! saltando. . . . . . . . ! b ! ! saltando. . . . . . . . ! ? ! ! saltando. . . . . . . . ! & ! ! ! &## ! ! ! ! ! ? > ! ! ! ! ! ! & ! ! ! ! . . . . . . . . ? ! ! ! ! ! . . ! & ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ? ! ! ! ! ! ! ! & ! ! ! ! ? “< > - . - . - . - . - . - . - . - . - & div. ! ! ! ! pizz. b div. ! ! ! ! pizz. ? div. ! ! ! ! pizz. œœœ œ œœ œœ œ œœœ œœœ œ œ œ œœ œ œœ œ œœœ œ œœ œœ œ œœœ œœœ œ œ œ œœ œ œœœ œœœ œ œœ œœ œ œœœ œœœ œ œ œ œœ œ œœ œ œœœ œ œœ œœ œ œœœ œœœ œ œ œ œœ œ œœœ œj "œr"œr"œr"œœ œj "œr"œr"œr"œœ œj " œr "œ r "œr " œœ œ j " œr " œ r "œr " œœ œ j " œr "œ r "œr " œœ œ j " œr " œ r "œr " œœ œ j "œr "œr " œr " œ œ œœœ œ œœ œœœœ œ œœ œ œœ œœœœ Ó œœœœj ‰ Œ " œœœœ#### j " Œ Ó œœœœj ‰ Œ " œœœœ#### j " Œ œœœ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œœœ œ œœ œœœœ œ œœ œ œœ œœœœ œœœ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œœœ œ œœ œ œœœ œ œœ œ œœ œ œœ œ œ œœ œ œœ œ œœœ œ œœ œ œœ œ œœœ œœœ œ œœ œ œœœ œ œœ œ œœ œ œœ œ œ œœ œ œœ œ œœœ œ œœ œ œœ œ œœœ œœœ œ œœ œ œœœ œ œœ œ œœ œ œœ œ œ œœ œ œœ œ œœœ œ œœ œ œœ œ œœœ œ œ œ œ œ# œj ‰ Ó Ó Œ œ œ# œœ œ# œ ™ ‰ Ó Œ œœ œ œ œ œb œ Œ Ó Œ œ œœœ œ# œ ™ ‰ Ó œj ‰ Œ Œ ! Œ œœœœœœ œ# œ œb œœœ œ œj ‰ Œ Ó œ#r" œr"‰ ‰ Ó œb œ œ# œ œb œ ‰ Œ fiœj œ ™ ‰ fiœj œ# ™ œ œ œb œ ˙ Œ ‰ œ# œ œb œ œb œ œ œ œn œ œ œb j ‰ œn œb j ‰ œ œb j ‰ œn œb j ‰ œ œb j ‰ œn œb j ‰ œ œb j ‰ œn œb j ‰ œœœ œœœbbb œœœ œœœ ˙̇# ™™ ww Œ Œ œ œb œ œ ˙̇# ™™ ww Œ Œ œ œb œ œ ˙̇# ™™ ww Œ Œ œ œb œ œ = nanako sato ° ¢ °¢ { { ° ¢ { ° ¢ °¢ { { ° ¢ { fl. cl. timp. mar. hp. pno. vln. vla. vc. f ff mp f f f fl. cl. timp. mar. hp. pno. vln. vla. vc. ff e ff mp cresc. e & ! ! ! ! ! ! &## ! ! ! ! ! ! ? ! ! ! ! - - - - & . . . ! ! ! ? ! ! ! ! ! ! & ! ! ! ! ? ! ! ! ! ! ! & ! ‘“ ! ! ? - . - . - . - . - . - . - . - . ‘“ & non. div arco ! b non. div arco ! ? non. div arco ! & &## ? - - - - - - - - -> & ? ! ! ! ! ! & ! ! ! ! ? ! ! ! ! ! & ! ! ? “< > ‘“ -> & ! ! ! b ! ! ! ? ! ! ! œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ œ œœ œ# œ œb œœ œ œ œ# œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ# œ œ œ œ œ œ œ# œ œ œ œœ œ œ# œœ œ œ œœœœœœœœ œ œ œ œ œ# œ œ œ œœ œ œœ œœœ fiœj œ# ™ ‰ fiœj œ ™ œ œ# œ# œ œb Œ œœœœ#n ™™™™ œ œœœœ#n ™™™™ œ œœœœ#n ™™™™œ œœœœ#n ™™™™ œÓ œœœ# œœœ##n j ‰ œœœ# œœœn j ‰ œœœ# œœœ##n j ‰ œœœ# œœœn j ‰ œœœ# œœœ##n j ‰ œœœ# œœœn j ‰ œœœ# œœœ##n j ‰ œœœnnb œœœ##n j ‰ œ œ œb œn œ œ œ œ# œ œ œ œ# j ‰ œ œj ‰ œ œ# j ‰ œ œj ‰ œ œ# j ‰ œ œj ‰ œ œ# j ‰ œn œ# j ‰ œœ# ™™ œ œœ ™™ œ œœ ™™ œ œœ ™™ œÓ œ# œn j ‰ œ# œn j ‰ œ# œn j ‰ œ# œn j ‰ œ# œn j ‰ œ# œn j ‰ œ# œn j ‰ œb œn j ‰ œ ™ œ œ ™ œ œ ™ œ œ ™ œÓ œ œ# j ‰ œ œj ‰ œ œ# j ‰ œ œj ‰ œ œ# j ‰ œ œj ‰ œ œ# j ‰ œn œ# j ‰ œ ™ œ œ ™ œ œ ™ œ œ ™ œ Ó ˙ ˙ œ œœ œ# œ œb œn œœ œ œ ˙ æææœ ™ œj œ œœ œ# œ œb œn œœ œ œ ˙ ™ Œ ˙ ˙ œ œœ œ# œ œn œ# œœ œ œ ˙ æææœ ™ œj œ œœ œ# œ œn œ# œœ œ œ ˙ ™ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ Ó œ# œ œ œ œ œ œœœœœ œ œœ œ œ œ œ œœœ œ# œœ œ œ œ# œ œ œ œœ œœ œœ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œœœ œœ œj ‰ Œ Ó œr " ‰ Œ Ó œœœœ#n ™™™™œ œœœœ#n ™™™™ œ œœœœ#n ™™™™ œ œœœœ#n ™™™™ œÓ œœœœ#n ™™™™œ œœœœ#n ™™™™ œ œœœœ#n ™™™™ œ œœœœ#n ™™™™ œÓ ‰ œœœ œ œ# œ œœœ œœ œ œ# œ œ œ œ œ œ œ# œ œ œ œb œn œ œ œ œ# œ œ œ# œ œœ Œ Ó œœ# ™™œ œœ ™™ œ œœ ™™œ œœ ™™ œÓ œœ# ™™œ œœ ™™ œ œœ ™™œ œœ ™™ œÓ œ ™œ œ ™ œ œ ™œ œ ™ œÓ œ ™œ œ ™ œ œ ™œ œ ™ œÓ œ ™œ œ ™ œ œ ™œ œ ™ œ Ó œ ™œ œ ™ œ œ ™œ œ ™ œ Ó = nanako sato °¢ °¢ { { ° ¢ °¢ { ° ¢ { fl. timp. mar. pno. vln. vla. vc. ff f mf ff mf ff mf ff timp. mar. hp. vln. vla. vc. f mp mp mf legato f p p & ! ! ! ! ! ! ? -> ! & ! ! ? ! ! & ! ? -> -> -> -> -> ! & ! ! ! . . . b ! ! ! ? ! ! ! ? ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! & ! ! ? ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! & ? ! & div.# $ # $ # $ # # $ # $ # b ? # # # # œ Œ Ó ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œ j ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œœ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œ œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œ œ œœ œœ œ œœ œœ œ œœ œ œœ œœ œ " œ œœ œœ œ œ œœ œœ œœ œ œ ‰ œœ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œ œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œ œ œœ œœ œ œœ œœ œ œœ œ œœ œœ œ " œ œœ œœ œ œ œœ œœ œœ œ œ œr "œ œœ œ œ# œ œ œœ œ œ œr " œœ œ œ œ# œ œœ œ œ œ œr "œ œ œ œ œ# œ œ œ œ œœ œr " œ œœ œ œ# œ œ œœ œ œ œr " œœ œ œ œ# œ œœ œ œ œ œœ Œ Ó œœ Œ Ó œœ Œ Ó œœ Œ Ó œœ Œ Ó œœ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œœ œœ œ œœ œ œ œ œ œœ œœ œœ œ œ œ œœ œj "œr œ œ œ œœ œ œœ œœ œ œœ œ œœ œœ œ œœ œœ œœ œ œ œœ œœ œœ œ œ œ œœ œ œœ œœ œ œ œœ œœ œ œœ œœ œ œœ œ œœ œœ œ œœ œœ œœ œ œ œœ œœ œœ œ œ œ œœ œ œœ œœ œ œ œœ ˙ ˙ œ œ ˙ ˙ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ˙ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ Œ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ Œ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ Œ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ œ œ œ Œ Ó œ œ œ œ œ Œ Ó œ œ œ œ œ Œ œ œ œ Œ Ó œ œ ˙̇̇ œœœ ˙̇̇ œœœ œœœ œœœ ˙̇̇ ˙̇̇ ™™™ ˙̇̇ œœœ ˙̇̇ œœœ ˙̇̇ ™™™ ˙̇̇ ™™™ œ œ œœœœœœœ œœœœ œ œœœœœœœ œœœœœœœœœœœœ œœœœ œ œ œœœœœœ œ œ œœœœœœœ œœœœ œ œœœœœœœ œœœœœœœœœœœœ œœœœœœœœœœœœ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ = nanako sato °¢ °¢ { { ° ¢ { ° ¢ °¢ { { ° ¢ { cl. timp. mar. hp. pno. vln. vla. vc. ff g h f f ff p pp ° ø ° ø ° ø ° ø g h fl. cl. timp. mar. hp. pno. vln. vla. vc. mf i p mf p marcato ° ø ° ø ° ø ° ø ° ø ° ø ° ø pp i pp pp &## ! ! ! ! ! ! ! - - ? > > > ! ! & ! ! ! - - ->? ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! & ! ! ! ! ! ? ! ! ! ! ! ! & ! - - -> ? ! ! ! ! & unis. pizz. ! ! b pizz. ! ! ? pizz. ! ! & ! ! ! ! ! ! ! &## ! ? ! ! ! ! ! ! ! & ! ? ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! & ! o o o o o o ! o o ? ! ! & > > > > ? & > > > > & ! ! ! ! ! ! ! arco div. b ! ! ! ! ! ! ! arco div. ? ! ! ! ! ! ! ! arco div. œ œ œ œ Ó ‰ "œœ œ Œ Œ Ó ‰ "œœ œ Œ Œ Ó ‰ "œœ œ Œ Œ œœœœœœ œœ œœœœ œœœœ œœœ œ œœœœœœ œœ œœœœ œœœœ œœœ œ œœœœœœ œœ œœœœ œœœœ œœœ œ Œ ‰ œœ j œœ œœ œ œ œ œ Ó œœœœ œ œœœ œ Œ Œ œ œ œ œ œœœœœ œ œ œ Œ œ œ ˙ ˙̇̇ ™™™!!!!! ˙̇̇ ™™™!!!!! ˙̇̇ ™™ ™!!!!!! œœœœœœ œœ œœœœ œœœœ œœœ œ œœœœœœ œœ œœœœ œœœœ œœœ œ Œ ‰ œœ j œœ œœ Œ œ r " œœœœœœ ˙̇̇ ™™™!!!!! ˙̇̇ ™™™!!!!! ˙̇̇ ™™™!!!!! œœœ œ" œ œj œ œ œœœj ‰ Œ Œ œœœ œ œœ œœ œœ œ ™ œ œœ œ œ œœ œœ œœ œœ œ œ œœ œœ œœ œœ œ œ œœ œœ œœ ‰ œj ‰ Œ Œ œœœ œ œœ œœ œœ œ ™ œ œœ œ œ œœ œœ œœ œœ œ œ œœ œœ œœ œœ œ œ œœ œœ œœ ‰ œj ‰ Œ Œ œ œœ œ œœ œœ œœ œ ™ œ œœ œ œ œœ œœ œœ œœ œ œ œœ œœ œœ œœ œ œ œœ œœ œœ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙ œœœœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ æææææ̇™ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œœ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ˙ œ œ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ ˙̇ ™™ ˙̇ ™™ ˙̇ ˙̇ œœ œœ Œ œ œ œ œ œœœ!!!!! ˙̇̇ ™™™!!!!! Ó œ œ Ó œ œ Ó œ œ Ó œ œ œ œ ˙ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ œ œ ˙ œ œ ˙ œ œ ˙ Œ ‰ œœœœœ œ Ó œ œœœœ œœœ Œ ‰ œœœœœ œ Œ ‰ œœœœœ œ Œ ‰ œœœœœ œ Œ ‰ œœœœœ œ Œ ‰ œœœœœ œ œœœœœ œ œœœœœœ œœœ œ"œœ œ œ œœœ œ œœœ œÓ œœœ œœœ‰ Œ œœœ œœ œ‰ Œ œœœ œœœ‰ Œ œœœ œœœ‰ Œ œœœ œœœ‰ Œ œœœœœ œ œœœœœœ æææ̇̇ ™™ æææ̇̇ ™™ æææ̇̇ ™™ = conspiracy theory nanako sato ° ¢ °¢ { { ° ¢ { fl. cl. timp. mar. hp. pno. vln. vla. vc. f f f mf & &## ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ? > & ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ? ! ! ! ! ! ! ! & ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ? ! ! ! ! ! ! ! & > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >”“ > & > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > ?> & b ? œ œ ˙ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ œ œ ™ ‰ Œ Ó Œ æææææ̇™ æææææ̇™ æææææ̇™ æææææ̇™ æææææ̇™ æææææ̇™ æææææ̇™ œ Œ ‰ æææœj œœœœœœ œœ œœœœœœ œœœ œœœ Ó Œ Ó Œ Ó Œ œœ œ œ œ œœœœœœœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœœœœ œ œœœœœœ œœœœœœœœœœœœ œœœœœœœœ œœœœ œœœœœœœœœœœœ œj ‰ Œ Œ œœ œ œ œ œœœœœœœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœœœœ œ œœœœœœ œœœœœœœœœœœœ œœœœœœœœ œœœœ œœœœœœœœœœœœ œj ‰ Œ Œ æææ̇̇ ™™ æææ̇̇ ™™ æææ ˙̇ ææ朜 æææ̇̇ ™™ æææ̇̇ ™ ™ æææ̇̇ ™™ ˙̇ œœ œœj ‰ Œ Œ æææ̇̇ ™™ æææ̇̇ ™ ™ æææ̇̇ ææ朜 æææ̇̇ ™ ™ æææ̇̇ ™™ æææ̇̇ ™ ™ ˙̇ œœ œœj ‰ Œ Œ æææ ˙̇ ™™ æææ ˙̇ ™™ æææ ˙̇ æææ œœ æææ̇̇ ™™ æææ ˙̇ ™™ æææ ˙̇ ™™ ˙̇ œœ œœj ‰ Œ Œ conspiracy theory nanako sato ° ¢ °¢ { { ° ¢ { fl. cl. timp. mar. hp. pno. vln. vla. vc. fp fp f ff fp fp f ff mf ff mf ff mf ff mp ff p ff p ff p ff & ! > > ! ! ! . . . > &## ! > > ! ! ! . . .> ? -> -> -> ! ! .> & ! ! .> ? ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! & ! ! ! > ? ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! & ! .> ? ! > > .> & ! ! ! arco . . . . . . . . .> b ! ! ! arco unis. . . . . . . . . .> ? ! ! ! arco unis. . . . . . . . . .> ‰ œ œ œ œ œ œ‰ Œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ Œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ Œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ Œ œj ‰ Œ ‰ æææœj œj ‰ Œ ‰ æææœj œj ‰ Œ ‰ æææœj œj ‰ Œ ‰ æææœj œj ‰ Œ ‰ æææœj œ Œ Œ œœœœœœ œœ œœœœœœ œœœ œœœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœœœ œœ œœœ œœœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœœœ œœ œœœ œœœ œœ œœœœ œœ œœœœ œœ œœœ œœœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œ œ œœ œœ Œ Œ œj "œr œ œ "œœœ œj " œ r œ œ " œ œœ œj "œr œ œ " œœœ œj " œ r œ œ " œ œ œ œj ‰ Œ Œ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œœœ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œœœ œœœ œ œœ œœœœ œ œœ œ œœ œœ œœ œ œœ œ œœ œ œœœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ Œ Œ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œœœ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œœœ œœœ œ œœ œœœœ œ œœ œ œœ œœ œœ œœ j ‰ Œ Œ œœ j ‰ Œ Œ œœ Œ Œ œœœ œ œœ œœœœ œ œœ œ œœ œœ œœ œ œœ œ œœ œ œœœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ Œ œœœ œ œœ œœœœ œ œœ œ œœ œœ œœ œ œœ œ œœ œ œœœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ Œ œœœ œ œœ œœœœ œ œœ œ œœ œœ œœ œ œœ œ œœ œ œœœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ Œ conspiracy theory nanako sato flute copyright © nanako sato mp moderato a f b mf dolce c f f d ff e f g h & conspiracy theory nanako sato & u & ! & & . . . . > > > & > > > > > > > > > > ! > & ! ! ! & & ! & ! œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ œj ‰ Œ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ œ œj ‰ Œ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœœ œœœ œœœ œœœ œœœ œœœ œœœ œœœ œœœ œœœ œœœ œœœ œ œ œ œ œ# œj ‰ Ó Ó Œ œ œ# œœ œ# œ ™ ‰ Ó Œ œœ œ œ œ œb œ Œ ˙ ˙ œ œœ œ# œ œb œn œœ œ œ ˙ æææœ ™ œj œ œœ œ# œ œb œn œœ œ œ ˙ ™ Œ nanako sato mf i f fp fp f ff & & ! > & > . . . > œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ œ œ ™ ‰ Œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ Œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ Œ flute conspiracy theory nanako sato clarinet in bb moderato a b c f f f d ff e ff f g h fp i fp f ff &## conspiracy theory nanako sato &## ! . . . . &## > > > > > > > > > > &## > > > ! ! ! > &## &## ! &## - - &## &## ! > &## > . . .> œœœ œ œœœœœœ œ œœ œ œœœœœœ œœœ œœœ œœœ œœœ œœœ œœœ œœœ œœœ œœœ œœœ œœœ œœœ œœœ œœœ œœœ œœœ Ó Œ œœœœ œ# œ ™ ‰ Ó ˙ ˙ œ œœ œ# œ œn œ# œœ œ œ ˙ æææœ ™ œj œ œ œ œ# œ œn œ# œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ Ó Œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ Œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ Œ conspiracy theory nanako sato timpani f moderato a b mf c p mp mf f d ff e f ?cb a e > > conspiracy theory nanako sato ? ! - > > > > ? - > > > > - > > > > - > > > > ? - > > > > - > > > > - > > > > ? - > > > > - > > > > - > > > > ? - > > > > > ! - - ? - - - - - - - - - - ? -> -> ? ! ? Ó ‰ "œœ œ Œ Œ Ó ‰ "œœ œ Œ Œ œj "œr "œr "œr "œœ œj " œr " œr " œr " œ œ œj " œr " œr " œr " œ œ œj " œr " œr " œr " œ œ œj " œr" œr" œr" œ œ œj " œr" œr" œr" œ œ œj " œr " œ r " œr " œ œ œj " œr " œ r " œr " œ œ œ j " œr " œ r " œr " œ œ œ j " œr " œ r " œr " œ œ œj "œr "œr "œr "œœ œj ‰ Œ Œ œ œœœœ œ œ œœœœ œ œ œœœœ œ œ œœœœ œ œ œœœœ œ œ œœœœ œ œ Œ Ó œ Œ Ó ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj nanako sato f g p h i f mf ff ? > > > ! ? ! ? > -> -> ? -> .> Ó ‰ "œœ œ Œ Œ Ó ‰ "œœ œ Œ Œ Ó ‰ "œœ œ Œ Œ æææææ̇™ æææææ̇™ æææææ̇™ æææææ̇™ æææææ̇™ æææææ̇™ æææææ̇™ æææææ̇™ œ Œ ‰ æææœj œj ‰ Œ ‰ æææœj œj ‰ Œ ‰ æææœj œj ‰ Œ ‰ æææœj œj ‰ Œ ‰ æææœj œj ‰ Œ ‰ æææœj œ Œ Œ timpani conspiracy theory nanako sato nanako sato { { { { { { marimba p animato f moderato a p f mf mf b & > > > conspiracy theory nanako sato ? ! & . - . - . -? ! ! ! ! ! & . - . - ? ! ! ! ! & ? ! ! ! ! & ? ! ! & ? ! ! œ ‰ œ‰ œ ™ œ Œ Œ œ‰ œ‰ œ ™ œ Œ ‰ œœ œœœœœœœœœœœœ œ‰ œ‰ œ ™ œ Œ Œ œ‰ œ ‰ œ ™ œ Œ Œ œœ œœ ™™ œœj œœ œœ ™™ œœj œœ œœ ™™ œœj Œ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ œœ œœ ™™ œœj œœ œœ ™™ œœj Œ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ œœœœœœ œœ œœœœ œœœœ œœœ œ œœœœœœ œœ œœœœ œœœœœ œœœ œœœ œœœ œœ œœœœ œœœœ œœœ œ œœœœœœ œœ œœœœ œœœœ œœœ œ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œ œ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œ œ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œ œ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œ œ nanako sato { { { { { { mf ff c mp mf f animato d ff & - - > ? ! ! ! ! ! ! & ? ! ! ! ! ! ! & ? ! ! ! ! ! & ? ! ! ! & ! ! . . . . . . . ? ! ! ! . . & . . . . ? ! ! ! Œ ‰ œœj œœ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ ˙̇ ˙̇ ˙̇ ™™ ˙̇ ™™ œœ œ œœ œ œœ œ œœ œ œœ œ œœ œ œœ œ œœ œ œœ œ œœ œ œœ œ œœ œ œœ œ œœ œ œœ œ œœ œ œœ œ œœ œ œœ œ œœ œ œœ œ œœ j ‰ Œ Œ œœœœœœ œœ œœœœ œœœœ œœœ œ œœœœœœ œœ œœœœ œœœœ œœœ œ œœœœœœ œœ œœœœ œœœœ œœœ œ ! Œ œœœœœœ œ# œ œb œœœ œ œ#r " œr "‰ ‰ Ó œj ‰ Œ Ó Œ œ œœ œ# œ œb œœ œ œ œ# œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ marimba nanako sato { { { { { { f e mp f f g & ? ! ! & ? ! ! ! & ! ? ! ! & ! ? ! & ! ? ! ! ! ! ! ! ! & ? ! ! ! œ œ# œ œ œ œ œ œ œ# œ œ œ œ# œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ# œ œ œ œ œ# œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œj ‰ Œ Ó ‰ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ " œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ " œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ ˙ œ œ ˙ ˙ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ˙ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œ œ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œ œ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œ œ marimba nanako sato { { { { ff h f i mf ff & - - ->? ! ! ! ! ! ! & ? ! ! ! & ? ! ! ! & .> ? ! ! ! Œ ‰ œœ j œœ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œœ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ˙ œ œ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ ˙̇ ™™ ˙̇ ™™ ˙̇ ˙̇ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ Ó Œ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œ œ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œ œ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œ œ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œ œ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œ œ œœ œœ Œ Œ marimba conspiracy theory nanako sato nanako sato { { { { harp mp moderato a copyright © nanako sato f b ff & conspiracy theory nanako sato ? dcb | efga & u ? ! & ? & o o o ? o o o Œ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ Œ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ Œ Ó œ œ œ œ œ Œ œ œ œ œ Œ Œ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ Œ ‰ œj œ œ ˙̇̇̇ ™™™™!!!!! Ó œ œ œ œ œ Œ Ó œ œ œ œ œ Œ Œ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ Œ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ œ œ œ Œ Ó œ œ œ œ œ Œ Ó œ œ Ó œ œ œ œ ˙̇̇ ™™™!!!!! ˙̇̇ ™™™!!!!! ˙̇̇ ™™ ™!!!!!! œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ ˙̇̇ ™™™!!!!! ˙̇̇ ™™™!!!!! ˙̇̇ ™™™!!!!! nanako sato { { { { { { p mf c mp d & ! o o ? ! & o o o o o o ? & ? & gliss. ? ! & ! ! ? ! ! ! & ? ! ! Œ œ œ œ œ Œ œ œ œ œ œœœ!!!!! ˙̇̇ ™™™!!!!! Ó œ œ œ œ ˙ œ œ ˙ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ Ó œ œ Ó œ œ Ó œ œ Œ œœœœœœ‰ Œ ‰ œœœœ œœ œ œ ˙ œ œ ˙ œ œ ˙ œœœ œŒ ‰ œœ œœœ œœœ‰ Œ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ " œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ Œ œ œ œ œ Œ Œ œ œ œ œ œr " ‰ Œ Œ ‰ œœœœœœ Œ "œœœœœœœ œœœœœ œ œœ œœœ œ‰ Œ œœœ œœr "‰ Œ œ œ œ œ# œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ# œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œr " ‰ Œ Ó harp nanako sato { { { { { { mp e f g p mf h i & ! ? ! & ? ! & ? ! & ! ? ! & o o o o o o o o ? & ? Œ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ Œ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ Œ Ó œ œ œ œ œ Œ œ œ œ œ Œ Œ ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ ‰ œj œ œ Ó œ œ œ œ œ Œ œ œ œ Œ œ œ œ œ Œ Ó œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ Ó œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ Œ œ œ œ œ Œ œ œ œ œ œœœ!!!!! ˙̇̇ ™™™!!!!! œ œ ˙ œ œ ˙ œ œ œ œ œ œ Ó œ œ Ó œ œ Ó œ œ Ó œ œ œ œ ˙ œ œ ˙ œ œ ˙ œ œ ˙ harp conspiracy theory nanako sato { { mf ff & ? ! ! & > ? ! ! ! Ó Œ œj " œr œ œ " œ œ œ œj " œ r œ œ " œ œ œ Ó Œ œj " œr œ œ " œ œ œ œj " œ r œ œ " œ œ œ œj ‰ Œ Œ harp conspiracy theory nanako sato { { { { piano p f moderato a animato p f f copyright © nanako sato f mp b & ! ! conspiracy theory nanako sato ? ! ! & ! ! ! ! ? -> -> -> & ! ! ! ! ! u ? -> ! u & ? ! œ ‰ œ‰ œ ™ œ Œ Œ œ‰ œ‰ œ ™ œ Œ Œ œ‰ œ‰ œ ™ œ Œ Œ œ‰ œ ‰ œ ™ œ Œ Œ œ œ Œ Œ Œ ‰ œj œj ‰ œœ œ œ œ Œ Ó œ œ œœ œ œ œ Œ Ó œ œ œœ œ œ œ Œ Ó œ œ ˙̇̇̇ ™™™™!!!!! œœ œ œ œ Œ Ó œ œ œœ œ œ œ Œ Ó œ œ ˙̇b ™™!!! ˙ ™ nanako sato { { { { { { ff mf mf ° ø ° ø ° ø p c p° ø ° ø ° ø ° ø ° ø ° ø ° ø ° ø ° ø ° ø mp sfz sfz sfz sfz & - - >? ! ! ! & ? & ? & ? ! ! & ? ! ‘“ & > > > > ? !“< > ! ! ! ˙̇̇ ™™™!!!!! ˙̇̇ ™™™!!!!! ˙̇̇ ™™ ™!!!!!! œœœœœœ œœ œœœœ œœœœ œœœ œ œœœœœœ œœ œœœœ œœœœ œœœ œ Œ ‰ œœ j œœ œœ˙̇̇ ™™™!!!!! ˙̇̇ ™™™!!!!! ˙̇̇ ™™™!!!!! Œ ‰ œœœœœ œ Œ ‰ œœœœœ œ Ó œ œœœœ œœœ œœœ œœ œ‰ Œ œœœ œœœ‰ Œ œœœ œ œœœ œÓ Œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ Œ Œ ‰ œœœœœ œ Œ ‰ œœœœœ œ Œ ‰ œ œ œœœœ œ Œ Œ œœœ œœœ‰ Œ œœœ œœœ‰ Œ ‰ œ œ œœœœ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœœ œ œœ œœœœ Ó œœœœj ‰ Œ " œœœœ#### j "Œ Ó œœœœj ‰ Œ " œœœœ#### j "Œ œœœ œ œœ œœœœ piano nanako sato { { { { { { f mf misterioso d f f mp v.s. mp cresc. e & ! ? ‘“ & ! ! ? - . - . - . - . - . - . - . - . & ! ! ‘“? - - . - . - . - . - . - . & ! ! ? - . - . ‘“ & ! ! ? “< > ‘“ & ? “< > -> -> œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œb œ œ# œ œb œ ‰ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ ‰ œ# œ œb œ œb œ œ œ œn œ fiœj œ ™ ‰ fiœj œ# ™ œœ œb œ ˙ œ œb j ‰ œn œb j ‰ œ œb j ‰ œn œb j ‰ œ œb j ‰ œn œb j ‰ œ œb j ‰ œn œb j ‰ fiœj œ# ™ ‰ fiœj œ ™ œ œ# œ# œ œb Œ œœœ œœœbbb œœœ œœœ œœœ# œœœ##n j ‰ œœœ# œœœn j ‰ œœœ# œœœ##n j ‰ œœœ# œœœn j ‰ œœœ# œœœ##n j ‰ œœœ# œœœn j ‰ œœœœ#n ™™™™œ œœœœ#n ™™™™ œ œœœœ#n ™™™™œ œœœœ#n ™™™™ œÓ œœœ# œœœ##n j ‰ œœœnnb œœœ##n j ‰ œ œ œb œn œ œ œ œ# œ œ œœœœ#n ™™™™œ œœœœ#n ™™™™ œ œœœœ#n ™™™™œ œœœœ#n ™™™™ œ Ó œ œ# œ œ œ œ œ œ œ# œ œ œ œb œn œ œ œ œ# œœœœ#n ™™™™œ œœœœ#n ™™™™ œ œœœœ#n ™™™™œ œœœœ#n ™™™™ œÓ ‰ œœœ œ œ# œ œœœ œœ œr"œœœ œ œ# œ œœœ œœ œ œ œ# œ œœ Œ Ó œœ Œ Ó piano nanako sato { { { { { { f g ° ø ° ø ° ø pp h ° ø ° ø ° ø ° ø ° ø ° ø ° ø ° ø & ? -> -> -> & ! ? -> ! & - - ->? ! ! ! & ? & ? & ? & œr "œœœ œ œ# œ œœœ œœ œr "œœœ œ œ# œ œœœ œœ œr "œœœ œ œ# œ œœœ œœ œœ Œ Ó œœ Œ Ó œœ Œ Ó œr " œ œ œ œ œ# œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ Œ Ó ˙̇̇ ™™™!!!!! ˙̇̇ ™™™!!!!! ˙̇̇ ™™ ™!!!!!! œœœœœœ œœ œœœœ œœœœ œœœ œ œœœœœœ œœ œœœœ œœœœ œœœ œ Œ ‰ œœ j œœ œœ˙̇̇ ™™™!!!!! ˙̇̇ ™™™!!!!! ˙̇̇ ™™™!!!!! Œ œr " œœœœœœ Œ ‰ œœœœ œœ Ó œ œœœœ œœœ œœœ œ" œ œj œ œ œœœ œ"œœ œ œ œœœ œ œœœ œÓ Œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ Œ Œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ Œ piano nanako sato { { { { { p marcato i mf mp ff & > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > & > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > & > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >”“ & > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > & > > > > > > > > > > > >“< > > ! & > > > > > > > > > > > > ? > ! & ? & .> ? > > .> œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œj ‰ Œ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œj ‰ Œ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ Œ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ j ‰ Œ Œ œœ j ‰ Œ Œ œœ Œ Œ piano conspiracy theory nanako sato violin copyright © nanako sato mf moderato a f f b p c f mf p f ff d f e & pizz.> > > > > > conspiracy theory nanako sato & ! arco non-div.u pizz. & ! & ! arco div. & ! unis. . . . . & saltando. . . . . . . . ! & div. pizz. & non. div arco & ! ! ! & œ Œ Œ œ Œ Œ œ Œ Œ œ Œ Œ œ Œ Œ œ Œ Œ ˙̇ ™™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ ˙̇ ™™ ˙̇ ™™ ˙̇ ™™ ˙̇ œœ ˙̇ ™™ ˙̇ ™™ ˙̇ ™™ ˙̇ œœ œœœ œ œœœœœœ œœœ œ œœœœœœ œœœ œ œœœœœœ œ œœ œ œœœœœœ œ œœ œ œœœœœœ œ œœ œ œœœœœœ ˙̇# ™™ ww Œ Œ œ œb œ œ œ œ# j ‰ œ œj ‰ œ œ# j ‰ œ œj ‰ œ œ# j ‰ œ œj ‰ œ œ# j ‰ œn œ# j ‰ œœ# ™™œœœ ™™ œœœ ™™œœœ ™™ œÓ œœ# ™™œœœ ™™ œœœ ™™œœœ ™™ œÓ œœ# ™™œœœ ™™ œœœ ™™œœœ ™™ œÓ nanako sato mf ff mf legato f g h pp i p ff & . . . & div." # " # " # " " # " # " & unis. pizz. & ! ! & arco div. & arco . . . . & . . . . .> œœœ œ œœœœœœœœœœ œœœ œ œœœœœœœœœœ œœœ œj $œr œ œ œ ˙̇̇ œœœ ˙̇̇ œœœ œœœ œœœ ˙̇̇ ˙̇̇ ™™™ ˙̇̇ œœœ ˙̇̇ œœœ ˙̇̇ ™™™ ˙̇̇ ™™™ œœœj ‰ Œ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ æææ̇̇ ™™ æææ̇̇ ™ ™ æææ̇̇ ™™ æææ ˙̇ ææ朜 æææ̇̇ ™™ æææ̇̇ ™ ™ æææ̇̇ ™™ ˙̇ œœ œœj ‰ Œ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ Œ violin conspiracy theory nanako sato viola copyright © nanako sato mf moderato a f f b pp c f mf p f ff d f e b pizz.> > > > > > conspiracy theory nanako sato b ! arco non-div.u pizz. b ! b ! arco div. b ! unis. . . . . b saltando. . . . . . . . ! b div. pizz. b non. div arco b ! ! ! b œ Œ Œ œ Œ Œ œ Œ Œ œ Œ Œ œ Œ Œ œ Œ Œ ˙̇ ™™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ ˙̇ ™™ ˙̇ ™™ ˙̇ ™™ ˙̇ œœ ˙̇ ™™ ˙̇ ™™ ˙̇ ™™ ˙̇ œœ œœœ œ œœœœœœ œœœ œ œœœœœœ œœœ œ œœœœœœ œ œœ œ œœœœœœ œ œœ œ œœœœœœ œ œœ œ œœœœœœ ˙̇# ™™ ww Œ Œ œ œb œ œ œ# œn j ‰ œ# œn j ‰ œ# œn j ‰ œ# œn j ‰ œ# œn j ‰ œ# œn j ‰ œ# œn j ‰ œb œn j ‰ œ ™œœ ™ œœ ™œœ ™ œÓ œ ™œœ ™ œœ ™œœ ™ œÓ œ ™œœ ™ œœ ™œœ ™ œÓ nanako sato mf ff p f g h pp i p ff b b b b pizz. b ! ! b arco div. b arco unis. . . . . b . . . . .> œœœœœœœœœœ œœœœœœ œœœœœœœœœœ œœœœœœ œœœœœœœœœœ œœ œ œ œœœœœœœ œœœœ œ œœœœœœœ œœœœœœœœœœœœ œœœœœœœœœœœœ œ œ œœœœœœœ œœœœ œ œœœœœœœ œœœœœœœœœœœœ œœœœœœœœœœœœ œj ‰ Œ Œ œœœ œ œœœœœœ œ ™ œ œœ œ œ œœœœœœœœ œ œ œœœœœœœœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ æææ̇̇ ™™ æææ̇̇ ™™ æææ̇̇ ™ ™ æææ̇̇ ææ朜 æææ̇̇ ™ ™ æææ̇̇ ™™ æææ̇̇ ™ ™ ˙̇ œœ œœj ‰ Œ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ Œ viola conspiracy theory nanako sato violoncello copyright © nanako sato mf moderato a f f b pp c f mf p f ff d f e ? pizz.> > > > > > conspiracy theory nanako sato ? ! non-div. arcou pizz. ? ! ? ! arco div. ? ! unis. . . . . ? saltando. . . . . . . . ? ! div. pizz. ? non. div arco ? ! ! ! ? œ Œ Œ œ Œ Œ œ Œ Œ œ Œ Œ œ Œ Œ œ Œ Œ ˙̇b ™™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ ˙̇ ™™ ˙̇ ™™ ˙̇ ™™ ˙̇ œœ ˙̇ ™™ ˙̇ ™™ ˙̇ ™™ ˙̇ œœ œœœ œ œœ œœœœ œœœ œ œœ œœœœ œœœ œ œœ œœœœ œ œœ œ œœ œœœœ œ œœ œ œœ œœœœ œ œœ œ œœ œœœœ ˙̇# ™™ ww Œ Œ œ œb œ œ œ œ# j‰ œ œj‰ œ œ# j ‰ œ œj ‰ œ œ# j ‰ œ œj ‰ œ œ# j ‰ œn œ# j ‰ œ ™œ œ ™ œ œ ™œ œ ™ œ Ó œ ™œ œ ™ œ œ ™œ œ ™ œ Ó œ ™œ œ ™ œ œ ™œ œ ™ œ Ó nanako sato mf ff p f g h pp i p ff ? ? ? " " " " ? pizz. ? ! ! ? arco div. ? arco unis. . . . . ? . . . . .> œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ ˙ ™ œj ‰ Œ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ æææ̇̇ ™™ æææ ˙̇ ™™ æææ ˙̇ ™™ æææ ˙̇ æææ œœ æææ̇̇ ™™ æææ ˙̇ ™™ æææ ˙̇ ™™ ˙̇ œœ œœj ‰ Œ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ Œ violoncello conspiracy theory nanako sato nanako sato 	
   	
   references quoted poems and literatures bastin, m. ( ). the blue butterfly. ny: hallmark inc. rowling, j.k.. ( ). the chamber of secret. the united kingdom: bloomsbury publishing plc.	
 martindale, d. ( ). rainforest phantom. unknown. poemhunters.com matsuo, b. ( ). 奥の細道,okuno hosomichi;the narrow road to the deep north. kyoto, japan: the izutsuya press. oono, y. ( ). 古事記,record of ancient matters. nara prefecture, japan: the japanese press. shakespeare, w. ( ). julius caesar, the first folio. stratford, england: stratford's holy trinity church 	
   	
   audio and visual media information cd track : a piece of hope in the darkness................................................. . track : effect .............................................................................................. . track : rainforest ...................................................................................... . track : blue butterfly.............................................................................. . track : reminescence of a japanese garden ......................................... . track : conspiracy theory ....................................................................... . recorded at rangi ruru girls’ school by michael bell and nanako sato edited by nanako sato dvd concert in the theatre at rangi ruru girls’ school track : introductory comments track : a piece of hope in the darkness................................................. . track : effect .............................................................................................. . track : rainforest ...................................................................................... . track : blue butterfly.............................................................................. . track : closing comments and acknowledgements recorded at rangi ruru girls’ school by john kane edited by nanako sato 	front cover 	title page, table of contents, acknowledgements, abstract 	chapter 	 _a piece of hope in the darkness_whole score 	 _a piece of hope in the darkness_alto 	 _a piece of hope in the darkness_alto 	 _a piece of hope in the darkness_tenor 	 _a piece of hope in the darkness_tenor 	 _a piece of hope in the darkness_bari. sax. 	 _a piece of hope in the darkness_trumpet 	 _a piece of hope in the darkness_trumpet 	 _a piece of hope in the darkness_trumpet 	 _a piece of hope in the darkness_trumpet 	 _a piece of hope in the darkness_trombone 	 _a piece of hope in the darkness_trombone 	 _a piece of hope in the darkness_trombone 	 _a piece of hope in the darkness_bass trombone 	 _a piece of hope in the darkness_wind chimes 	 _a piece of hope in the darkness_guitar 	 _a piece of hope in the darkness_piano 	 _a piece of hope in the darkness_bass 	 _a piece of hope in the darkness_drums 	chapter 	 _effect_whole score 	 _effect_clarinet in bb 	 _effect_alto saxophone 	 _effect_tenor saxophone 	 _effect_tenor saxophone 	 _effect_baritone saxophone 	 _effect_trumpet in bb 	 _effect_trumpet in bb 	 _effect_trumpet in bb 	 _effect_trumpet in bb 	 _effect_trombone 	 _effect_trombone 	 _effect_trombone 	 _effect_bass trombone 	 _effect_jazz guitar 	 _effect_piano 	 _effect_bass 	 _effect_drum set 	chapter 	 _rainforest_whole score 	 _rainforest_alto saxophone 	 _rainforest_alto saxophone 	 _rainforest_tenor saxophone 	 _rainforest_tenor saxophone 	 _rainforest_baritone saxophone 	 _rainforest_trumpet in bb 	 _rainforest_trumpet in bb 	 _rainforest_trumpet in bb 	 _rainforest_trumpet in bb 	 _rainforest_trombone 	 _rainforest_trombone 	 _rainforest_trombone 	 _rainforest_bass trombone 	 _rainforest_guitar 	 _rainforest_piano 	 _rainforest_bass 	 _rainforest_drum set 	chapter 	 _blue butterfly_whole score 	 _blue butterfly_alto saxophone 	 _blue butterfly_tenor saxophone 	 _blue butterfly_piano 	 _blue butterfly_acoustic bass 	 _blue butterfly_drum set 	chapter 	 _reminiscence of japanese garden_whole score 	 _reminiscence of a japanese garden_flute 	 _reminiscence of a japanese garden_clarinet in bb 	 _reminiscence of a japanese garden_piano 	 _reminiscence of a japanese garden_violin 	 _reminiscence of a japanese garden_violoncello 	chapter 	 _conspiracy theory_whole score 	 _conspiracy theory_flute 	 _conspiracy theory_clarinet in bb 	 _conspiracy theory_timpani 	 _conspiracy theory_marimba 	 _conspiracy theory_harp 	 _conspiracy theory_piano 	 _conspiracy theory_violin 	 _conspiracy theory_viola 	 _conspiracy theory_violoncello 	references 	audio and visual media information № Мистецтво в міждисциплінарних дослідженнях Рецензент статті: Іванніков Т. П., кандидат мистецтвознавства, ст. викладач кафедри народних інструментів, Національна музична академія України імені П. І. Чайковського Стаття надійшла до редакції . . udk . . : [ . : . . ] id orcid - - - bernath ferenz kharkiv national i. p. kotlyarevsky university of arts Бернат Ф. Перекладення класичних творів для ор- кестру « гітар»: від аналізу до інтерпретації. Протягом останнього десятиліття ХХi століття набуло поширення таке явище як гітарні ор- кестри — великомасштабні ансамблі з вели- кою кількістю учасників. Пошук нових засобів виразності, актуальних у сучасному світі, привів до всіляких сполучень і компіляцій у різних площи- нах: тембровій, інтонаційній, жанровій, стильовій. У контексті сплеску подібної форми музикування у світовому музичному просторі особливий інтерес становить оркестр « гітар» (Угорщина — Україна), до організації якого автор дослідження мав стосунок. Розкриття сутності творчої діяльності цього колективу і стало метою даного дослідження. Проведене дослідження виявило характерні особливості, притаманні творчому пошуку ор- кестру « гітар», зокрема перекладанням: ) наявність абсолютно нового матеріалу як у вступі, так і після нього; ) наявність фрагментів, які передбачають повну імпровізацію; ) повто- рення композиції за принципом АВСА, де розділ С є імпровізацією; ) зміна рівного ритму на синкопо- ваний, або виконання синкопованого ритму пара- лельно з рівним, або введення нового матеріалу з синкопованим ритмом; ) підкреслення виразних засобів, властивих рок-музиці. Таким чином, аранжування Имре Цомби (imre czomba) демонструють явний інтерпретаційний вектор, зокрема успішне завершення пошуку нового звучання гітар, а також розкриття їх потенціалу, актуального в xxi столітті, шляхом поєднання принципово різних музичних напрямків (академічного і неакадемічного). У результаті такої взаємодії виразних засобів музичний матеріал оркестру гітаристів сприймається слухачем як нове явище, в котрому переважає цілісність, згладжується дискретність, спостерігається відповідність до загальної картини світу. Ключові слова: перекладення класичних творів, ор- кестр « гітар» (Угорщина — Україна), гітарні оркестри, аранжування imre czomba. Бернат Ф. Переложение классических произведе- ний для оркестра « гитар»: от анализа к ин- терпретации. За последнее десятилетие ХХi века получило распространение такое явление как ги- тарные оркестры — крупномасштабные ансамбли с большим количеством участников. Поиск новых средств выразительности, актуальных в современ- ном мире, привел к всевозможным соединениям и компиляциям в различных плоскостях: тембровой, интонационной, жанровой, стилевой. В контексте всплеска подобной формы музицирования в мировом музыкальном пространстве особый интерес пред- ставляет оркестр « гитар» (Венгрия — Укра- ина), к организации которого автор исследования имел непосредственное отношение. Раскрытие сути творческой деятельности этого коллектива и стало целью данного исследования. Проведенное исследование выявило характерные особенности, присущие творческому поиску орке- стра « гитар», в частности переложениям: ) наличие абсолютно нового материала как во введении, так и после него; ) наличие фрагментов, которые предусматривают полную импровизацию; ) повторение композиции по принципу АВСА, где раздел С является импровизацией; ) изменение ровного ритма на синкопированный, или выполне- ние синкопированного ритма параллельно с ров- ным, или введение нового материала с синкопиро- ванным ритмом; ) подчеркивание выразительных средств, присущих рок-музыке. Таким образом, аранжировки Имре Цомбы (imre czomba) демонстрируют явный интерпретацион- ный вектор, в том числе — успешное завершение поиска нового звучания гитар, а также раскрытие их потенциала, актуального в xxi веке, путем объ- единения принципиально разных музыкальных на- правлений (академического и неакадемического). В результате такого взаимодействия выразитель- ных средств музыкальный материал оркестра ги- таристов воспринимается слушателем как новое явление, в котором преобладает целостность, сглаживается дискретность, наблюдается соот- ветствие с общей картиной мира. Ключевые слова: переложение классических произ- ведений, оркестр « гитар» (Венгрия — Украина), гитарные оркестры, аранжировки imre czomba. ВІСНИК Мистецтво в міждисциплінарних дослідженнях problem statement and analysis of recent publications. in the last decade of the st century, such phenomenon as guitar orchestras – large-scale ensembles with a large number of participants, has spread. popular are the orchestras in which there are only acoustic guitars, orchestras consisting only of electric guitars, as well as mixed type orchestras – in such collectives acoustic guitars sound along with electric guitars. such combination of electronic and acoustic timbres has been used in musical practice for about years, but it was precisely at the turn of the th – st centuries that composers and per- formers had to fi nd new means of expressiveness that would be relevant in today’s world. these searches led to all sorts of combinations and compilations in different planes: timbre, intonation, genre, and sty- listic. for example, one of the collectives aiming at the above said aims is the warsaw guitar orchestra [ ], which has been functioning since under the direction of igor vardak. the orchestra specializes in performing popular songs, arrangements, classics, acoustic rock, metal, music for fi lms. they released the album called the call of ktulu, a cover version of the music by the metallica band. the main goal of the orchestra is to show the range of different songs, their variety, as well as the possibilities of the guitar as a technically virtuoso instrument. another group working in this direction is the new york city gui- tar orchestra [ ]. it was founded in by jason sagebil and supports the creation and execution of new academic music. the orchestra consists mainly of non-professional performers of different ages and levels of mastery of the instrument. the repertoire of the orchestra consists of works that were created by contemporary composers according to the orchestra’s orders. among them there are “catwalk” by andrew york, concerto for four guitars and orchestra by da- vid loeb and “inner voices” by richard charlton. also the sinfonity guitarists’ orchestra [ ] is worth mentioning. this is the orchestra of profes- sional guitar performers; its founder is pablo salines. the repertoire of the collective is distinguished by a great genre-style variety: from bach and vivaldi to m. de falla and g. holst. the material is per- formed exclusively on electric guitars. the orchestra fi rst performed in and formally since it has been giving concerts. mainly performances are held in madrid, but also the band tours in spain. the boston guitar orchestra [ ], which has existed since , also deserves attention. its founder is scott borg. the collective’s programs are always created with taste and on specifi c topics. genres include a lot from classics to modern times. in general, non- professional musicians of different levels of perfor- mance take part in the orchestra. orchestrations are mostly - -voice; different parties are duplicated for several people. they perform at least times a year. thus, one can observe a surge in the relevance of this form of music playing in the world music space. the particular interest to our work is the “ guitars” orchestra (hungary – ukraine), to the organization of which the author of the present study had a direct relation. to reveal the essence of the creative activity of this collective becomes the goal of this study. exposition of the main material of the study. the idea to create an orchestra of guitarists with a composition of guitars originated in with its current head – ferenz bernath (classical guitar, budapest). the collective has the following compo- sition: guitarists-soloists, of whom four play the classical guitar, fi ve play the electric guitar and one plays the eight-string guitar. there are also acous- tic guitars with metal strings, acoustic guitars with nylon strings, and guitarists that form the classi- cal rhythm section in the orchestra. in addition to the guitarists, the orchestra includes two vocalists and a dj. the repertoire of the project consists of works by vivaldi, piazzolli, albenis, beethoven, as well as jazz and contemporary pop music compositions. the aim of the project is to create the original sound of a guitar orchestra, to combine classical mu- sic with modern means, technical and musical instru- ments, visual techniques, to give classical music a contemporary sound for the st century listener. the scores are attributed according to the parts, re- sulting in the orchestra of guitarists gaining a sym- phonic sound. in the parts there are certain places for the soloists to improvise, among the soloists there are selected guitarists of different styles: classics, fl amenco, jazz, rock and pop music. thus, each gui- tarist brings his/her style to a certain composition. within the year of its existence, the orchestra was ready for a concert activity. at the concert arena in budapest ( ) with the participation of fi fty hun- garian guitarists and fi fty guitarists from ukraine, the premiere of the largest and only worldwide guitar project that is working in this style took place. the concert had a great success and thus the european tour of the project began. below there is an analysis of several scores. l. beethoven. symphony no. in arrangement for guitar orchestra the score of this work includes one part for a jazz guitar [ ], four parts of an electric guitar, four parts of an acoustic guitar, one part for an acoustic rhythm guitar with nylon strings, a part for a rhythm guitar with iron strings, a part for a fi ve-string bass guitar, and also a part of the voice (a female vocal). at the same time it is envisaged that several people can perform each part simultaneously. it should be noted that the performance of beethoven’s sym- phony no. for the guitar orchestra in the arrange- № Мистецтво в міждисциплінарних дослідженнях ment by imre czomba differs signifi cantly from the performance of symphony no. by dvorzak in the arrangement by k. yamashita, which is a complete reconstruction of the author’s text using the guitar (ex. ). for the interpretation of symphony no. , a non-academic presentation is characteristic: the introduction of a completely new text into the au- thor’s original material, an abundance of syncopated rhythms also absent in the original, and the presence of fragments of improvisation. in non-academic music, in particular, in the practice of jazz and rock bands, a similar way of referring to academic com- positions is very common. as the basis performers take the main themes from the compositions, impose on them a jazz or rock rhythm section of bass guitar and percussion instruments, conduct these themes several times in combination with solo improvisation episodes. thus, this performance has an approximate relation to the original compositions. symphony no. by l. beethoven for the orchestra of guitars in the arrangement by imre czomba is presented in a very reduced form. from the original composition there is only the first part, but even the exposure is not fully presented, but only the material of the main part, which, in turn, is split into short motifs which are repeated several times. the side part and the further material of the symphony in this arrange- ment are missing. so, let’s present its more detailed analysis. from the very beginning, the material for gui- tars is signifi cantly different from the original. the original tone – in e fl at major – is saved, but the tempo is not specifi ed (in the original – allegro con brio, half note = ). the main motif is notated by the three-sixteenth and the whole durations, while in the original it is the eighth and the half with the fer- mato. note that for acoustic guitars it is advised to play long notes on tremolo: the usual solution to the problem of rapid fading of sound (ex. ). electric guitars, due to their acoustic charac- teristics, do not have such a problem, since the de- vices for amplifying sound allow sound to last its duration for a long time. all instruments play the main symphony motif, set out in an octave, within the fi rst bars. the part of the jazz and fi rst electric guitar is duplicated with the fi rst and second acoustic guitar parts (sounding of the second octave sol-mi), and the parts of the three remaining electric guitars are duplicated with the third and fourth parts of the acoustic guitars, as well as with the rhythm guitars ex. . dvorjak. symfony (arr. by k.yamachita) ВІСНИК Мистецтво в міждисциплінарних дослідженнях ex. . beethoven symf. ex. _beethoven_symf. ._t. № Мистецтво в міждисциплінарних дослідженнях (the fi rst octave). the bass guitar plays “sol-mi” in the small octave. then, from bar in the rhythm guitar parts, there appears a new pattern, absent in the original; it is a syncopated rhythmic pattern with the indicated number of chords to be performed in this rhythm. such a rhythmic accompaniment will be present throughout the entire composition, except for some fragments, which will be discussed later. the presence of a digital sequence of chords indicates the jazz specifi city of the composition. especially we note the following idea: a syncopated repeating rhythm – a reference to rock music, improvisation and digital chords present jazz specifi city, a synco- pated phrase-pattern – both jazz and rock at the same time. along with the rhythmic pattern in bars and , the jazz guitar plays a short improvisation, and the bass guitar leads a separate line – a repeating half with a point note “do” of the small octave, ligated with the eighth and two separate sixteenths. despite the ligated note, the bass part is not perceived as syn- copated, since the fi rst (strong) beat of each bar is legibly spaced in it. then, in bar , there is another new phrase-pattern, descending, with a syncopated rhythm that sounds in the jazz guitar part, as well as in the vocal part. this phrase introduces the colour of rock music, because it has signs of a riff – the main component of non-academic music . the phrase is played three times, after which all guitars, with the exception of rhythm and bass guitar, resonate with the main motif, consecutive layering of voices, as in the original – the sequential carrying out of this motif in different instruments. from bar to bar , the bass line changes and acquires a syncopated charac- ter, which adds more components of jazz and rock music to the musical material. in bars and , in all leading parts, the end of the fi rst part of the symphony sounds in all the main parts. and from the bar the material is repeated again, as in the begin- ning (bar ). it can be assumed that the performers-guitarists developed the idea potentially laid by the compos- er: the beginning of the main motif is not exactly from the fi rst part, but from the eighth pause. thus, a quasi-hidden syncopation is obtained. in the same arrangement, syncopation already acquires a total, ubiquitous character. attention is also paid to the careful attitude of the arranger to the dynamic nuances of the original. in guitar parts, dynamic recessions and climaxes are clearly traced; the nuance varies from f to mp. fur- ther, the rhythm sections parts remain unchanged, but from bar bass guitar and rhythm guitars are in- cluded into the common music playing, and play the main motif, which sounds in turns in different parts riff is a short ostinate melody and rhythm construction of the guitar parts. thus, the idea of the composer on transferring the motif among different groups of orchestra instruments is preserved. from bar in almost all guitar parts, except for the rhythm section, there is an ascending sequential passage, which in the original is played by a string group (the fi rst, sec- ond violins and violas), which completes the main part, and after which the side part sounds in the origi- nal. note that this interpretation (bar ) changes the size from / to / , and the chord numbers change in rhythm guitar parts. further, from bar a completely new episode follows, it is substantially different from the general nature of the composition. all acoustic guitars and rhythm guitars play repeated groupings of the six- teenths (background) without a fi xed pitch, while the other instruments have pauses. at the last beat of every two bars, the entire collective (except the bass-guitarist) says (shouts) a cry of “hey!” (ex. ). the episode lasts until bar and to an even greater extent transfers the listener to the sphere of non- academic music, but this time with an ethnic touch, because in this case percussion predominates, which, in combination with vocal cries, refers to folklore music. then another unusual presentation of the musi- cal material follows. the main group of the orches- tra pauses, there is only a phrase-riff in the parts of jazz guitar and vocals, accompanied by a bass line, the same as at the beginning of the composition. the original material, just like in the previous episode, is completely missing. in bar , the original material returns, and it is the basic patterns from the musical material of the fi rst part of symphony no. . eve- rything is repeated exactly, all the parts, including the rhythm section, are the same. thus, the compo- sition is structured according to the abca scheme, where c is an improvisational fragment. bar is allocated by the arranger especially and assumes an improvised insert in parts for electric guitars (ex. ). in bars – of the guitar arrangement of sim- phony no. , there is an interesting decision of the arranger: there are roll-calls between the phrase-riff it should be noted that a little earlier, in , two years before the beginning of the concert activity of the orchestra, the thesis called was written, and it includes an analysis of the program work, the composer of which is the author of the dissertation – joshua kimball harris [ ]. in this work, the electric guitar also participates along with acoustic instruments (fl ute, clarinet, bas- soon, violin, cello, piano, percussion), as well as female vocal- ists and a computer. this composition is unusual by the fact that it is modal, that is, it consists of three different “surfaces” (the term of morton feldman), originates from the development of modern-abstract art. in this composition visual metaphors are used: circles and spirals are correlated and refl exed in music on repetitions, rotations, compression and infi nity. the electric guitar takes part in “surface”, and , but optionally, voluntarily. thus, an unusual combination of acoustic and electronic tim- bres is a very relevant phenomenon in the st century, and continues to attract the attention of composers and listeners. ВІСНИК Мистецтво в міждисциплінарних дослідженнях ex. _beethoven._t. ex. _liber_tango._t. _ ex. _liber_tango._t. - ,_tutti in the jazz guitar part and the main motif of the sym- phony and in the parts of the other electric and acous- tic guitars. the original material alternates with the material introduced by the author of the arrangement. until the end of the composition the last four bars are set forth in imitation of the original completion of the main part: the rhythmic pattern is preserved – the grouping of the sixteenths, but the notes themselves do not coincide with the original. in the even rhythm of the eighths, syncopes appear in the parts of elec- tric guitars, total supremacy of e fl at major, we note also suffi cient register “poverty”, since all guitars, both acoustic and electric, play in the same register. the range is narrow – almost two octaves throughout the entire composition, sometimes reaching the third octave. the voice part is divided into a three-sound chord. the composition ends with the main motif of the whole orchestra. let us consider one more example of the ar- rangement – liber tango a. piazzolla for the “ guitars” orchestra [ ]. this version begins with an introduction for bars, which is not observed in other versions of this composition, that is, as in the previous interpretation, № Мистецтво в міждисциплінарних дослідженнях a new material has its place. the introduction con- sists of two phrases with similarity of bars in each. the melodic line contains a group of sixteenths dura- tions framing the note “mi” of the fi rst octave, as well as the descending sounds an octave higher. the bass guitar part at the same time contains both smooth durations, highlighting strong parts of the bars, and syncopated notes, the same ones, repeated “la” and “mi”. this method recreates the sound of the origi- nal. guitar parts and emphasize both rhythm and harmony in this introduction. the peculiarities of ar- rangements for guitar ensembles are detailed in the thesis by christopher adkins [ ]. so, for example, the author of the study notes the following specifi cs when interpreting material for two guitars: the up- per voice can be shifted by an octave downward, and the lower one by an octave upwards, if they do not cross. according to c. adkins, two guitars are con- sidered as pianists’ two hands, sharing a melody and accompaniment, but, unfortunately, the guitar in its technical and dynamic abilities is still inferior to the piano. as for the imitation of orchestral instruments using the guitar, the author suggests paying attention to how the string is clamped: tasto, normal or pon- ticello. the choice of a string to play certain notes is also important, while one should also be paying attention to the articulatory features – the fl ageolet or pizzicato. it is also important to competently solve the problem of the saturation of the score, to make it so that in rarefi ed form when playing the guitar, the score would retain the most important components, as well as the uniform distribution of the melody and accompaniment between the guitars. crossing of voices, when the melody is lower than the accom- paniment in the most frequent cases is considered an unacceptable approach, but the author of the study demonstrates the opposite on the example of e. sa- ti’s interpretations. if in the original work there are parallel octaves, then in many guitar interpretations they remain in a one-voice presentation. in order to successfully imitate the sound of many orchestral instruments, including drums, horns, trumpets and trombones, as in the interpretation by saint-saens, the designation of these instruments is provided in guitar notes. this is done so that the performers themselves could decide by what means to convey the sound of a particular instrument. dynamics is achieved by adding or subtracting voices (perform- ers). this is especially noticeable in the sound of the guitarists’ orchestra, where the parts are duplicated. returning to the analysis of liber tango, we note that the main rhythm pattern, consisting of only eighths durations, begins after a general pause from bar in the part of electric guitar and acoustic guitar . in both parts this motif sounds solo, perform- ing a melodic function, till bar . at the same time, electric guitar performs chords, and not octaves, of bars each, and the bass line now and again repre- sents a “relief bass”, emphasizing the basic harmonic steps and rhythm with syncopation. the tone of the work is in a minor, as in the original. the orchestra- tion is performed for the same composition of per- formers as a. vivaldi’s “winter”, and l. beethoven’s symphony no. – electric guitars, acoustic gui- tars, bass guitar, vocalists. in this arrangement, per- cussion is added; its presence is necessary to better match the nature of the original. the percussion in- struments pause till bar . in this bar, a transitional passage of the eighths durations in the acoustic gui- tar part and and the bass guitar, which leads to the basic melody set forth in the fi rst parts of the acoustic and electric guitar. this melody sounds in other versions on violin and/or fl ute and consists of long notes in a high register, alternating with smaller durations – eighths and sixteenths. duration data performs a binding function. at the same time, the rhythm continues – an ostinato for two guitars (elec- tric and acoustic), as well as for a bass guitar. this is the same material that was previously featured in the fi rst electric and acoustic guitars from bar . from bar everything is represented in a more complete volume – tutti (ex. ). in addition to everything de- scribed above, chords and rhythm continue to sound in parts of acoustic guitars and . as before, the chords change every two bars in accordance with the original, and the rhythm – ostinato + + refl ects the manner of performing the tango, unlike a simple arpeggio, set out at the beginning of the composition. further, the melody continues to sound in the origi- nal tessitura, and only the fi rst electric guitar retains it from bar . at the same time, in parts of electric guitars and there is an additional rhythmic pat- tern – syncopated groups of sixteenths, consisting of repetitions of notes through a pause. all this in a greater degree emphasizes and enhances the percep- tion of the nature of the composition in comparison with the original. sometimes in the melody there is a change in the direction of the movement – a de- scending passage instead of an ascending one, which also differs from the original. in bar there is no glissando, which is present with a violin and a gui- tar. from bar , the number of chromatic passages in the parts of electric guitars and increases no- ticeably. from bar , the rhythm section intensifi es: three more are added to the two usual rhythm guitars. thus, electric guitar and acoustic guitars – play the rhythm + + , as before. the melody is now performed in parts in electric guitars and , and the counterpoint in the parts of acoustic guitar and . ВІСНИК Мистецтво в міждисциплінарних дослідженнях the material set out in bars – is repeated once more in bars – . from bar the presenta- tion of the material has some resemblance to the orig- inal (bar ), but here the tutti is held, a denser texture is observed, as many more instruments perform the theme – a rhythmic drawing in unison or octave: elec- tric guitars , , , and acoustic guitars , . in parts of acoustic guitars , , , and bass guitar ostinato + + continues as before, only additional notes, performing a relief perception, are added to the bass. after a general pause in bar , bars of free im- provisation are observed in the fi rst parts of acoustic and electric guitars. in the original, this material is missing. from bar there sounds the material, pre- sented at the very beginning of the composition (the fi rst bars). the style resembles the original, but it has signifi cant differences. from bar and until the end of the composition, the key changes to d minor – a more comfortable guitar tone. there is an increase in the rhythmic pattern, in many parts it becomes more saturated (electric guitars and , acoustic , ) and is a repetitive grouping of the sixteenths. due to the small durations, such performance becomes like a tremolo, which refl ects the characteristic acoustic feature of the guitar. the result is an increase in the dynamics of sound. also, the harmony is strength- ened by three parts of voices from bar to and from bar to the end. the last bars contain an abundance of chromatisms, they also slow down with the help of durations – the sixteenths pass into the eighths, just like in the original. conclusions of the study. summing up the provided analysis, it is necessary to indicate the characteristic features inherent in both interpretations. these are: ) the availability of an absolutely new material, both in the introduction and after it; ) the presence of fragments providing the complete improvisation; ) the construction of the composition on the principle of abca, where section c is an improvisation; ) the change of the even rhythm to a syncopated rhythm, or performing a syncopated rhythm in parallel with an even rhythm, or introducing a new material with a syncopated rhythm; ) the emphasise of the expressive means inherent in rock music: reef thinking and rhythm section. thus, the arrangements by imre czomba demonstrate an obvious interpretation vector, including the successful completion of the search for a new sound of guitars, as well as the unfolding of their potential that is relevant in the st century by combining fundamentally different musical directions (academic and non-academic). as a result of such interaction of expressive means, the musical material of the guitarists’ orchestra is perceived by the listener as a new phenomenon in which integrity prevails, while the discreteness is smoothed, and correspondence with the overall picture of the world is observed. the prospect of further development of the topic is to further study the specifi c arrangements for such compositions, relevant in the modern cultural paradigm. bibliography: . adkins c. the art of transcription: original transcriptions of erik satie’s five nocturnes for two guitars camille saintsaëns’ danse macabre, op. for four guitars [text] : dissertation prepared for the degree of doctor of the music / christopher neil adkins / florida state university, college of music. — degree awarded : spring semester, . — p. . beethoven. beethoven . symph. arranged by imre czomba for guitar [score]. . boston guitar orchestra [electronic resource] / boston classical guitar society]. — . — retrieved from http://bostonguitar.org/orchestra/ (date of the application : . . ). — screen title. . kimball h. sunken monandock : a composition for fl ute, clari- net, bassoon, violin, violoncello, electric guitar, piano, percus- sion, three female vocalists, and computer [text] : dissertation prepared for the degree of doctor of philosophy / harris joshua kimball. — university of north texas, . — р. . new york city guitar orchestra [electronic resource] / nyccgs : website. — . — retrieved from http://nyccgs. com/orchestra (date of the application : . . ). — screen title. . sinfonity [electronic resource] : website. — . — re- trieved from http://www.sinfonity.es (date of the application : . . ). — screen title. . warsaw guitar orchestra [electronic resource] / last.fm : web- site. — . — retrieved from https://www.last.fm/music/ warsaw+guitar+orchestra/+wiki (date of the application : . . ). — screen title. . piazzola astor. liber tango. for guitar. arranged by imre czomba [score]. references: . adkins, c. ( ). the art of transcription: original tran- scriptions of erik satie’s five nocturnes for two guitars camille saintsaëns’ danse macabre, op. for four guitars. doctor’s thesis. florida state university, college of music. . beethoven. beethoven . symph. arranged by imre czomba for guitar [score]. . boston guitar orchestra. ( ). boston classical guitar society. retrieved from http://bostonguitar.org/orchestra/. . kimball, h. ( ). sunken monandock : a composition for fl ute, clarinet, bassoon, violin, violoncello, electric guitar, piano, percussion, three female vocalists, and computer. doc- tor’s thesis. university of north texas. . new york city guitar orchestra. ( ). nyccgs. retrieved from http://nyccgs.com/orchestra. . sinfonity. ( ). retrieved from http://www.sinfonity.es (in spain & english). . warsaw guitar orchestra. ( ). last.fm. retrieved from https://www.last.fm/music/warsaw+guitar+orchestra/+wiki. . piazzola astor. liber tango. for guitar. arranged by imre czomba [score]. _ _ _article .. bthe city of the hospital^: on teaching medical students to write david j. hellerstein published online: july # the author(s) . this article is published with open access at springerlink.com abstract bthe city of the hospital^ is a creative nonfiction writing workshop for medical students, which the author has conducted annually since . part of the required preclinical narrative medicine curriculum at the columbia university college of physicians and sur- geons, this six-week intensive workshop includes close readings of literary works and in-class assignments that are then edited by fellow class members and rewritten for final submission. over the years, students have produced a wide range of compelling essays and stories, and they describe the class as having an effect that lasts throughout their further medical training. this special section includes selected works from class members. keywords medical student education . creative nonfiction . writing workshop . personal narrative . medical humanities introduction for well over a decade i have been teaching medical students to write. at first it was an odd assignment for me—a research psychiatrist at the new york state psychiatric institute who conducts clinical trials—to face a room full of skeptical second year medical students, few if any of whom aspired to a literary career. as part of their training, medical students at columbia university college of physicians and surgeons are required to take a six-week class in ‘narrative medicine’ (charon ). they choose among options as varied as bthe philosophy of death,” “social justice and health,” “gender and illness narratives,^ fiction and poetry workshops, bnarrative photography,” “mindfulness meditation^–and my creative nonfiction writing class, bthe city of the hospital: the medical student as writer.^ but they can’t opt out: narrative medicine is a required course. j med humanit ( ) : – doi . /s - - - * david j. hellerstein hellers@nyspi.columbia.edu department of psychiatry, new york state psychiatric institute, columbia university, riverside drive, unit # , new york, ny , usa http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi= . /s - - - &domain=pdf the goal is to train better doctors by exposing medical students to humanities perspectives at a crucial phase of their education–before they actually start working on the wards. how is that possible? one might reasonably ask. if they're not well-rounded, ethical people by the time they are admitted to medical school, how can a brief course possibly make a difference? plus, why bother? given the explosive growth of medical knowledge, shouldn’t they be spending all their time learning physiology, pharmacology, molecular biology, and biochemistry, things that will be essential to their future as physicians? and yet, the very inclusion of narrative medicine classes in the packed columbia physicians and surgeons curriculum is a powerful statement in itself: that the humanities have value in a daunting world of fact-based knowledge and that they can provide something essential to the life of a doctor. truthfully, it was not entirely a surprise that i was selected to teach this class, since for several decades of being a physician, administrator and researcher, i have juggled a parallel career as a literary writer, publishing several books—including fiction, nonfiction and mem- oirs—as well as writing for numerous literary and journalistic publications. but until then i had always been an outsider; my writing activities were pursued during off hours, stolen time. this was the first time i had been invited to be part of the medical curriculum. for bthe city of the hospital,^ i was assigned a dozen students, and we were scheduled to meet for three hours each tuesday afternoon for a crash course in writing creative nonfiction. i asked dr. charon to assign me students who wanted to be there; it seemed too difficult to try to rope in the unwilling. i couldn’t bear the idea of teaching a dumbed-down curriculum (btell your patient’s story in his or her words^). and thank god i wasn’t being asked to give one of the all-too-sadly needed classes in ‘writing in the electronic health record’ (i.e., how to type something reasonably coherent in the lonely free-text fields set among thickets of check-boxes and numerical data-fields)—both of these necessary because too many medical students never learn to write basic american prose. instead, i opted from the beginning to teach a true writing class, challenging each student to incarnate herself as a serious literary writer for those six weeks, to put the best of that self on each page. probably the best moment each year is when my puzzled students read isaac babel’s short story, bmy first goose^ ( ) and excerpts from italo calvino’s invisible cities ( ). they stare at me, deer in the headlights. why are you making us read these things? what do these have to do with becoming a doctor? hemingway’s story bindian camp^ ( ), yes, they can understand what that has to do with medicine, as it recounts a young boy’s journey with his surgeon father to deliver a baby at a remote logging camp; similarly william carlos williams’ bthe girl with a pimply face^ ( ), a presumably autobiographical story of an inner-city physician’s efforts to help an immigrant family. but babel writes of a bookish jewish college graduate dropped into a company of illiterate cossack cavalrymen in the chaos of the russian revolution, and calvino transports the reader to medieval venice to listen to the explorer marco polo’s fanciful dialogues with the elderly emperor kublai khan, spinning tales of impossible cities. what’s your point? they wonder. and, more worriedly, what do you expect from us? it is a literary boot camp, a crash course in being a writer, six long afternoons during which we review readings, then do in-class writing exercises for forty-five minutes or so, and then pick several ‘volunteers’ to read aloud. squirm as they might, they must read their raw work aloud to their classmates. j med humanit ( ) : – banything you write here is fair game,^ i tell them, byou can’t say no.^ over the years, class members have included everything from accomplished poets and short story writers to total novices, biophysics majors and humanities-innocent engineers. in recent years, i’ve noticed an increasing diversity of students—gender, ethnicity, nationality, and culture, including students born in vietnam, nigeria, colombia, and east la, not just the usual suburbs of new york, boston, and philadelphia—and a comparable broadening of perspective and life experience. some of them gradually admit having the ambition to follow in the pathway of atul gawande or oliver sacks, a yearning to write elegantly and compellingly for literary audiences. for those aspiring physician-writers, the challenge they face is formidable: their training experiences are shared by tens of thousands of other young people each year. the annual number of graduating american medical students is about , , and there are , physicians practicing in the us and perhaps to million doctors in the world. they are hardly unique. beveryone in this room,^ i tell them, rubbing it in, bwill cut open a cadaver, everyone will do a first pelvic exam and participate in the delivery of a baby and watch someone die–watch many people die.^ they will be among crowds of thousand who observe amazing medical rescues and terrible, avoidable mistakes. at the same time, i tell them, they are explorers in the ever-new city of the hospital. like anthropologists, they are both observers and participants, modifying their environment with their very presence. the city of the hospital—this new, ever-evolving city which has had millions upon millions of previous inhabitants but of which they are the first new explorer—is an amazing world in which they are privileged to spend the rest of their lives (hellerstein ). bhow can you make it new? what can you say that is different from the thousands who have been here before and who will be here in the future? what is it that you observe that is truly unique and that at the same time illuminates general truths?^ it is a daunting challenge, but really, no different than what any writer has always faced. and so, each year there’s the shock of silence when we sit in the room with laptops and ipads fired up–and no one moves. i watch them thinking, whispering, even texting: he can't be serious, wanting us to write for so long! they are used to five-minute free-writes following an instructor’s prompt. but forty-five minutes seems an eternity. after interminable sighing, staring, quiet moaning, the keys start clicking, pens start scratching, so by the end of the period, when i call out, bput your pens down, close your computers!,^ there’s an audible protest against the return to the mundanity of the classroom. * but why write? i need to demonstrate to them, a rightly skeptical audience, that the narrative method is a valid method in its own right. narrative is so different from other methodologies they study in class—statistical techniques, laboratory methods, imaging technologies, epide- miological sampling—the innumerable disciplined ways of viewing the world in which they will be immersed over the coming decades. it is different too from the journalistic method; it is not just reporting but a way of writing that explores beyond the limits of objectivity. why narrative? as venerable as it may be, i contend to them, narrative is yet capable of revealing new truths about medicine that can be communicated to the outside world. in brief, the world of medicine they face—and will be facing over the half-century of their careers—is a new new world. what they can observe in their day-to-day work truly is ‘news,’ j med humanit ( ) : – much more than what is tweeted or facebooked or flashed in newspaper headlines or on the tv news. i expect a lot from them, regardless of their prior experience. there are always one or two jokers, making sarcastic asides, browsing their email, but over the weeks the razzers often become the most seriously engaged. as you will see from the essays and stories that accompany this essay, the writing that emerges from this process is often incredibly intense and moving, surprisingly expertly done, given that it is composed in forty-five minute bursts. often the best work comes from those with the least prior experience–the biophysics majors, the dedicated molecular biologists and radiologists or orthopedists-to-be. their output is often crude at first but rises on a steep learning curve over the six-week course: these are really smart kids (and so young, to boot!); i guess that says something about the rigor of the medical school admission process. i ask them to write about ban initiation,^ and they end up with pieces about flying off ski jumps, piloting a small plane, being branded with a red hot broom handle during a fraternity hazing. such pieces have nothing to do with medicine, but i'm happy with those since they are fresh, authentic, pulsing with life. the following week i ask them to write about their experiences with medical technology. then, they write about their years of premedical life, so often extended these days, and they tell moving stories about working in the cardiology lab with dogs who are going to be sacrificed or with genetically modified mice with fluorescent neurons who likewise will die for science. they write about working as hospital volunteers in the bronx, as paramedics in the new mexican desert, as observers in remote clinics in rural india where the electricity goes out in the operating room in the midst of cataract surgery. or in a remote leper colony whose inhabitants ‘crawled to the doctor’s hut seeking rice wine to help soothe their sore appendages.’ and then, invoking the spirits of italo calvino and jorge luis borges, i ask them to write about their early experiences in the city of the hospital. they write about the id badges that we medical personnel use to get past the various barriers/doors/entrances of the hospital complex in order to enter the medical library, dorms, icus, surgical suites. they write about the mysterious way in which people always are arriving at the hospital on foot, in wheelchairs and stretchers, by taxi and ambulance and private car, but how the departure of those whose lives end here is unseen, how the dead disappear so invisibly that they could be entirely vaporized. inspired, they write of following a rolling gurney through creepy underground tunnels on its way to the radiology suite where their anatomy class cadaver is to be ct scanned to show the disease that their scalpels will later reveal. they write a fanciful david foster wallace-esque ‘laboratory manual’ for doing eegs with screaming young children. they calculate the odds that the man in front of them could have had the particular complications that have led him to be in hospital: less than in billion; yet all the patients on the floor have % chance of having an illness even if individually they were a thousand times more likely to have been struck by lightning. we see portraits of irritable neurosurgeons cursing when instruments are missing, of bagel-bringing anesthesiologists whom all residents look forward to assisting, and of innumerable kindly patients letting med students poke them, listen to bowel sounds, try to evoke reflexes. astutely, they pick up on the surrealism of the hospital city: crafting a nonfiction piece inspired by graphic novels, with five quick acts of an experience with illness, in which the city of the hospital is personified as a complex, even diabolical character. and a phantasmagorical tale of a medical student riding on the a train, imagining the hospital as subway car, or perhaps j med humanit ( ) : – the subway car as a hospital–each passenger experiencing an illness, even dying before his eyes, envisioning the mortality of fellow riders so differently from their classmates who are bankers or lawyers or teachers. most movingly, my students write about their own experiences with illness and loss during medical school, the cruel illnesses of grandmothers and childhood friends, their own harrowing brushes with crohn’s disease and cancer. in all, they write of their first realizations that they are hatching new selves as doctors, as healers, new identities in which they must come to terms with no longer being civilians. from the pieces they write in the first five weeks, i ask them to pick one; it is given to another student to edit, then returned to the author to revise, and then to submit to me as a finished essay. every year, several write publishable and striking work. to mention two: sarah chambers’s piece bthe harvest team,^ ( ) a moving tale about transporting a heart removed from a dying girl to be sewn into the chest of a young boy. and bsaturday night in mariposa,^ by brendan o’byrne ( ), about his experiences as a paramedic in a national park, trying to resuscitate a man whose van rolled off a mountain road. * like all teachers i prefer to think that i’ve had an impact, even on those who don’t fancy themselves to be writers. could our hours here perhaps change how they how they converse with patients? could it make them aware at am, attending a patient in the icu, of the extraordinary nature of their experiences? could it make them more sensitive to how their patients or families may be experiencing illness, so they might yearn not just to be excellent technical physicians but also humane ones? it seems difficult to imagine that a six-week class could have much impact, but just last year i got feedback from rita charon md, the director of the narrative medicine course, who commissioned a survey of the students’ experience (miller et al. ). it turns out that many of the students see bthe city of the hospital^ and the other courses as well as life-changing experiences. to quote one of her respondents: bwhen you write your admission note …it’s non-fiction writing definitely, it’s just very precise, certain words you must use, certain words you would never use in that note. and then [in] the non-fiction writing [you] put emphasis on different things in a way you could never do in a chart, but they’re telling the same story…. i thought that was directly applicable to what i’ll be doing for the next two years and the rest of my life. keeping in mind that the admission note doesn’t really tell the full story. it doesn’t tell you necessarily the feeling in the room.^ * over the weeks of class, in addition to discussing assigned and student-produced readings, our conversations range onto broader topics. we talk about the ethics of writing about your life as a doctor, not only the concrete issues of how to avoid invoking the wrath of the hipaa gods but also the ethics of taking notes during your clinical experiences and whether it is exploit- ative of your physicianly role, or whether it can make you a better physician and should be required of medical students. we have lively discussions about whether it is unethical to write about your patients—or perhaps unethical not to write about your patients, since all of us as patients benefit from what has been transmitted from all previous doctor-patient interactions, whether in the form of an anecdote on rounds, a medical journal article, an example raised during a classroom lesson, or even a story published in a magazine. finally, we touch on a more practical issue, going beyond the writing exercises themselves. how can one be both a doctor and a writer? (hellerstein ). in his autobiography, the physician and poet william carlos williams ( ) describes his special typewriter that j med humanit ( ) : – dropped into his desk every time a patient arrived in his consulting room but could pop up again once the patient left. my students compare this to multitasking on their laptops or entering notes into droids or iphones—though i do everything possible to prevent them from multitasking during the class itself. to some degree, i see them realizing by the end of our course, that writing is something they can do—a skill like playing jazz guitar or classical violin. but writing is also something they can be. it’s a way of experiencing the world, of living in the world of medicine. living a life of narrative allows one to explore and report upon of the complex worlds of doctoring. perhaps it helps one to be a humane physician, also a physician-scientist, maybe even a humane physician-administrator, if that is possible. by grappling with the narrative method, they encounter its inherent complexities, the conflicting obligations that come from being both a healer and a bearer of witness. if they are serious about writing, they must honor both their obligations as physicians to preserve confidences as well as their obligations as physicians to reveal truth. there are risks of excessive disclosure and other risks of excessive self-censorship and secrecy. as my students stumble upon these issues in our final meetings, i realize that they have begun the daunting, irrevocable process of becoming permanent residents of the city of the hospital. * * * choosing pieces for this special section was a difficult process, since there have been so many excellent essays and stories written over the years. i reached out to participants from classes over the past several years, based on their final class submissions, which had under- gone a process of editing by a fellow classmate followed by rewriting. i also asked them what impact participation in our class had had upon their further medical school careers and whether they had continued creative nonfiction writing. their brief biographic sketches show how the class has had a continued impact throughout their medical training. the reader will no doubt be struck by the variety of these pieces, whether in terms of their geographical range, their varied styles and points of view, and their differing levels of literary sophistication. all, though, are heartfelt and full of surprising illuminations, revealing aspects of the medical city that were previously obscure. & deirdre brazil’s ban initiation^ is a moving account of observing her sister’s childhood malignancy. & huy nguyen’s bblackout^ describes observing an eye surgeon working in an isolated indian slum, and what happens when the power fails. & jocelyn compton’s bdo no harm^ describes her time in a remote chinese village populated by lepers, and the strange connection she made with inhabitants over cigarettes and wine. & benjamin stix’s bfaces^ tells of visiting a childhood friend matt, who has an autoimmune disease, in hospital, and the heartbreaking experiences of observing how his face changes from one visit to the next. & kara shetler’s bsundial^ takes a different perspective, in telling of an encounter between a depressed patient and two young medical students from the patient’s point of view. & tavish nanda’s bgrey matter^ describes the fascination—and emotional difficulties—of doing research on a database of patients who have died from malignant brain tumors. & vivian ho’s bthe subjects of science^ tells a moving story of the impact of amytrophic lateral sclerosis on a group of small patients she worked closely with in the laboratory. j med humanit ( ) : – & lisa mack’s b bolts of lightning^ talks about the odds of a patient getting a rare illness, and her reaction to the strange logic of medicine’s fascination with rarity, topped with a strange personal coincidence. & elizabeth balough’s bking richard^ tells of a rushed, disorienting visit to the appala- chians with a surgical team to obtain organs for transplant from a young man who has committed suicide. essays an initiation - deirdre brazil on every other floor the elevator opened to hallways that were as silent and as sterile as a winter’s morning. but when it stopped on the th floor and the doors parted like the red sea, the sounds of shouting, crying, laughing and fighting flooded the vestibule. it was a blast of bustling energy–of mothers fussing over their children like chickens over their chicks, of children fighting over toys like puppies and of people, in general, doing their part to get the show on the road. it strikes the new the same way ellis island struck the irish arriving from plaque stricken ireland. to the new, the four walls contained an area of waiting and processing but also of foreignness and glittering hope. to the new, a seat in the room was a promise. but to the relapsed, the four walls contained nothing more than the waiting room of msk’s pediatric day hospital and a seat was just a place to sit. my sister’s metamorphosis from a high school freshman into a cancer patient was more stunning than a butterfly bursting out of a cocoon because that, at least, is expected. but who expects acute hip pain to turn into a limp that persists for months? and who expects after five visits to the pediatrician and five times returning home with nothing more than reassurance, that he’ll suddenly break down and write a prescription for an x-ray? and finally, who could possibly expect that that x-ray would show a tumor in her pelvic girdle, as clear as the sun rising over a hill? and that we would become one of the families who sat in the waiting room. i remember scanning it as i sat next to my sister. we laughed when a weak blonde angel decided to alternate between hitting a drum and hitting his dad’s ankle with a spoon. the father sat back, resting his eyes, and responding to the crisp sound of metal against tarsal with a weakly murmured bouch.^ in response, my mom told us morphine makes children cranky. what made sense on th street and york no longer made sense when you wheeled your sister off the elevator. my sister thought that the greatest thing in the world was to make someone laugh. with her sparkling blue eyes and radiant face she looked healthy. she didn’t look neoplastic and she certainly didn’t look half as sick as the others. in fact, none of the kids looked like they could, very soon, die. could anyone die? i didn’t know. cats and common sense whisper to us that the living can die, but only experience tells you that someone you love can die and you can be forced to live alone. i remember meeting michael reilly in the waiting room. our moms, with the same drawn faces, figured out that he lived near us in long island and that they came from ireland too. they chatted about back home while he sat deep in his wheelchair and studied the floor. he had a head start on my sister because his cancer fractured his tibia six months before her limp. his mom told us that it happened during a soccer game and he was worried that he wouldn’t be able to play on his team anymore. j med humanit ( ) : – michael told me that people could die, even children. i prayed before him at the wake while his mom told my mom about his last night. it was terrible and bloody and they didn’t make it into the hospital until the end. michael reilly slept peacefully in his coffin, gone was the discolored skin of toxic treatments and the tired face of constant pain. his younger sister, no more than six, skipped around in her new shoes and twirled to show visitors how her black dress spun out. now i am a medical student and i know so much more. i know what small, blue cell carcinomas of childhood look like under a microscope and i know why prednisone treats graft vs. host disease. i know to be suspicious of a fencing injury that progressively worsens after the season ends. and i know that bacteria are racing through the veins of a shivering patient with no blood pressure who tells me she is seeing snakes fall out of the sky. but the more i learn, the more i realize that these answers have nothing to do with my sister. what i need is a textbook that tells me bwhy?^ * * * * blackout - huy nguyen we stood in darkness. barely breathing through our masks, we stood unmoving, feeling the sweat crawl over our bodies. by then my eyes had adjusted so i could just make out abhishek and sushant, who were standing on either side of me. abhishek folded his gloved hands together with his fingers pointing towards the floor as if he were nervous, while sushant held the flashlight steady for dr. sinha, the surgeon. the clicks of dr. sinha’s tools as he pulled away from the patient were loud, now that both the buzz of the machines and the chatter in the room were gone. i was still shocked that the power went out. it had been my first time in an operating room. a few hours earlier i had undergone the rituals of scrubbing in and gloving up with ignorant enthusiasm, seeing the excitement and wonder of surgery for the first time with wide eyes. the blackout had yanked me back to earth; specifically, back to the dusty hot slums of patna, india. i glanced at our patient and saw her shift her right arm slightly under her gown. only local anesthetic had been administered, so even though she couldn’t feel pain, she was still very much awake. she must have realized we had stopped and heard our silence. i wondered if she knew there had been a blackout, and whether she was panicking after recognizing her surgery had been halted. i couldn’t see inside her mind, though, no more than she could see us. it had only been about one minute since the blackout, but i did not know how much longer i could last. still, no one had said a word. my shirt clung harder to my back beneath my gown, but i could not air it out since my hands were trapped beneath sterile gloves. i shifted my weight to my right foot with my left knee bent slightly, and breaths came hot and heavy under my facemask as i struggled with the weight of the air. i looked back at dr. sinha, who had just finished the careful extraction of his tools from our patient’s eyes under sushant’s flashlight. he didn’t reach for any other tools. our patient had stopped moving her arm, but her slow and steady breaths reminded us that she was still there. there were two kinds of cataract surgeries which i had seen dr. sinha perform that day. the older method, ecce, took longer and required a traditional incision in the eye. the newer one, phaco, took only a few minutes but required an advanced machine. that day, dr. sinha started with a few ecce cases to show me what he used to do before his clinic obtained a phaco machine, but since noon he had switched to only doing phaco. as we stood there in the dark, i looked back at the tools on the j med humanit ( ) : – green surgery tarp. i knew dr. sinha could finish the case with an ecce incision, but he remained motionless, slumped forward with his elbows on the edge of the operating table. once we’re spoiled by technology, it’s hard to go back, i guess. i felt a bead of sweat snake down the small of my back. our patient shifted her arm again. she must be feeling the heat too, but i hoped she could put up with it until the lights came back on. she had trusted her doctor to restore her sight, and her doctor had trusted the machines to work for him. but now the machines were down, and he had chosen to wait. the rest of us were now nothing more than silent ghosts in the darkness, hovering, staring. i looked to abhishek, who still had his fingers pointing toward the floor. he closed his eyes. * * * * do no harm - jocelyn compton he props a splintered hoe against the ravine and offers me a cigarette. these gestures have become our common language. bhun hao,^ i say. he smiles and returns, bhun hao, hun hao.^ very good is one of the two phrases i know in mandarin. of course, he doesn’t speak mandarin either, but a distinct dialect. bu hao is the other phrase we share. not good. the tattered box of cigarettes most likely came from the market thirty miles away. the outdoor market has one booth packed with tobacco, opium, and other herbs for good health. with this cigarette, he is wishing me a long life, many children, relaxation, freedom from illness. it’s only march, but the mid-morning sun is blistering. villagers and college students survey the dry cracked countryside together, waiting for another delivery of dusty gravel to arrive. some lean against shovels, hoes, and other agricultural tools. it took three days of work just to flatten a winding path into xiao shui tang; it would take another seven to spread the makeshift pavement over it. the villager’s only hand is occupied with returning the package of cigarettes to a buttoned pocket, so i strike the match for us. here’s to good habits and great health, i think and take a drag. looking around at the workers, it seems that there are about sixty members of the village, but only forty whole human bodies. fingers, toes, arms were each slowly lost to leprosy over the years. dignity, purpose, self-worth seemed to vanish with them. in the ‘sixties, the government prescribed exile for those afflicted with mycobacterium leprae, the bacteria that causes hansen’s disease. and here we are, in xiao shui tang, in . at night we slept on a flattened hilltop in the middle of the village, which served as the hospital compound. the doctor’s hut, a one-room establishment on the compound, was stocked not with antibiotics and multidrug therapy that the villagers desperately needed, but rather rice wine. as the sun set and villagers came in from the fields, many crawled to the doctor’s home seeking rice wine to help soothe their sore appendages. bit doesn’t cure them,^ said dr. h, the village doctor. bbut it takes off the edge. what else can we do? cigarettes are too expensive to give to everyone.^ some years before our cohort arrived at xaio shui tang, another american volunteer group had delivered prosthetics to the village. villagers who had been immobilized returned to the fields and rejoined their small agricultural society. the plastic appendages had saved many of them from suicide. j med humanit ( ) : – but now, the ill-fitting prosthetics often eroded limbs and incited angry infections. red, poisonous, hungry lines raced up numb, swollen legs. the prosthesis that had breathed life back into a dilapidated body was now suffocating it. one evening i sat with dr. h. his first patient of the evening was about sixty years old. he had been living in xiao shui tang for most of his life, and had barely caught a taste of the outside world before mycobacterium leprae had sentenced him to a life on the outskirts of society. when the man removed his worn plastic leg, a putrid smell filled the small hut. i looked at the festering stump. i was afraid. over half the village had died since the last volunteer visit. blisters became deadly infections, claiming shaking, feverish, exhausted villagers. no amount of rice wine or ciga- rettes could cure them. half a world away, carelessly forgotten in a college dorm dresser, i thought about an unfinished course of ampicillin: a likely antidote for the villager’s infections. a simple solution, out of reach. but how can you know if you’re truly doing good? what if the cure leads to a more vicious problem? how do we understand the consequences of our intentions and actions? and where do you begin, if the only way to express compassion and concern is bu hao? out on the road, we wait together in silence. when will the gravel arrive? our precious cigarettes are just about spent. * * * * faces - benjamin stix my heart always starts to beat faster as i press the button to the th floor in the heart hospital. today, matt texted me in his usual way, bwhatsup dude^–a sort of open ended, no-pressure request that i come visit him in his prison on the north side of the unit. as i get off the elevator and walk slowly down the hallway, i always glance at who is at the nurses’ station, worried that i will see a professor who has lectured me or a fellow med student, a bit older, reading over charts or bent near an attending, learning how to write up a patient or assess a case properly. i stroll past, outwardly nonchalant, but inwardly in tumult as i hang a right towards room . each time that i visit matt, i first look at how his face has changed since i last knocked on his closed hospital room door. he has been in the hospital since january th–trapped for the past ½months. matt’s heart failed abruptly, his antibodies attacked him furiously, and he landed up in the ccu, with an lvad and an rvad pumping his blood for him. now matt awaits yet another transplant. i always look at matt’s face, not just because everyone looks at faces first, but because matt’s face ebbs and flows in a bizarre way. in high school, matt was diagnosed with a particularly pernicious form of scleroderma that attacked his organs and obliterated his heart. somehow, he managed to graduate and went on to a degree in engineering, and by sheer force of will he survived until his first transplant. however, the scleroderma had left its mark. his face was drawn and skeletal because of the lack of collagen, and a large scar from his transplant ran down his chest. but the new heart drastically improved matt’s life, and immunosuppression seemed to keep his scleroderma at bay. he enjoyed online dating, obsessive nutrition, weight lifting, and what he described as bthe art of picking up women.^ j med humanit ( ) : – but five years later, matt was suddenly in hell again. his overloaded immune system may have contributed to his abrupt turn, but his heart was in rejection for unknown reasons. when he first got his vads installed, matt looked utterly haggard, worse than i had ever seen him; he was lb and ′ ″, on fluid restriction to prevent the edema that was one of many symptoms. today he looks better than the last time i came to visit, some color and form have returned to his skeleton, and his head sort of resembles a pear. he has unwillingly shaved his scalp due to a chemo medication he was on, and his hair is coming back in light flecks, gradually getting thicker. but his cheeks still have an odd droop to them, the extra fluid in his face is dragged down by gravity into a dead-end, unable to leave and go to his bladder. i always have this profound sense of guilt whenever i visit matt, because i can leave. my life isn’t in stasis, while the only thing that changes in matt’s room is his face. i try to talk about what i am learning about in school, my girlfriend and our long distance relationship, my feelings about the news, but worry that i sound stilted. i can have this comparatively easy life, while a friend whom i have known since i was five years old is dying. once or twice a week, i join him in counting out the minutes until some kid gets drunk, crashes his car, gets brain dead, and donates his heart. in immunology, i learn about transplants on a macro level. i can tell you the average rates of transplant rejection of various organs at one, five, and ten years for hearts. but matt is not average, is he? what if he’s worse? or could he be better? as a first-year medical student, i know more than i should about his condition, but not nearly enough to help my friend. it is worse than sheer ignorance. this visit, matt tells me about his collaboration on a book with a woman he hired from craigslist. the book starts out as matt’s biography since his initial diagnosis, but his goal is to switch gears mid-book and write a field guide for someone diagnosed with a chronic illness, a step-by-step manual for someone who is also stuck in the hospital for a long period of time. matt has always been painfully smart, but we share a certain degree of laziness; outsourcing his work and his story seems appropriate. but it also occurs to me that he doesn’t really have the energy to undertake a task like writing a -page memoir. i also think his profound sense of denial and minimization of his illness also might paralyze him to really write much about himself. better to let someone else capture his life, and he can reap the benefits. so i don’t say much beyond platitudes about his book project, such as bsounds great!^ or bwhat an original idea!^ and i get up uncomfortably to go, never knowing whether i should shake matt’s hand or not, worrying that i might infect him with something that sends him over the edge, changing his face into a death-mask. * * * * sundial - kara shetler bthe students are here for you,^ said the nurse as she opened the door to my room, flattening her back and outspread arms against it to let me pass. i noted with my usual admiration how her bearing left no room for uncertainty. rousing myself from beneath the weight of ticking seconds, i floated past, all eyes and brain. by the nurses’ station stood two young women in short, white, wrinkled coats. they wore their eagerness like perfume; i wondered vaguely if the haze gave everything they saw a certain tint, as the dust in a sunset sky. the nurse unlocked the double doors decisively and we j med humanit ( ) : – went through, down the halls and out the doors of the psychiatric institute, across the curved street under the mid-afternoon shadow of a building and finally through its doors. my guides seemed borne along on a kind of swirling, buoyant fizz. i felt foolish; i tried to decide if the feeling was for me or for them. we entered a tired classroom on an upper floor. a circle of similar white coats beneath similarly fresh faces sat around the periphery in flimsy classroom seats attached to inadequate desks. a black and white institutional-grade clock reigned over the room from high on one wall; light diffused in through the large windows on another. the room looked out on an apartment building, eye to eye with its tawny crown of molding that marched across a vividly blue sky in relief, bathed in the sun from behind us. bi’m dr. d.,^ said a man who was not wearing a white coat. his shirt-sleeves were rolled up, and he extended an easy forearm to shake my hand. bi’m the resident working with these medical students. thanks for coming to talk to us today.^ he looked almost as young as the rest, but i noticed flecks of gray in his hair. his face wore something between openness and businesslike detachment. it was a face i knew well. i sat in a chair placed in the front of the room, this one without a desk, and settled into the stream of seconds that flowed from the clock-face above. i felt the balance of foolishness tip in my direction. the perimeter of faces turned toward me were blank, their only task to listen. i wondered if this was degradation but couldn’t really care one way or another. i cast my mind around for a story of who i was in this room, some kind of anchor or point of reference. the young doctor with the rolled sleeves seemed the most solid bet. bso mr. t,^ said one of my student-interviewers, her eyebrows and the pitch of her voice both elevated. bcan you describe what you mean when you say your depression is severe?^ i gazed out the window at the crowning stone, bold in the sun and sky. it looked like a picture meant for a wall or a book. it hit me, bright and heavy, in the chest. i turned back to the faded room and the flow of the clock. bi just can’t seem to fill the day,^ i answered. * * * * grey matter - tavish nanda bevery single one of them dies. they’re all dead,^ dr. t paused for a moment, byes, they’re all dead,^ he confirms. he scrolled down an excel spreadsheet, the top of each column color- coded, arranged side by side like crayons. infinitely long. on the one end were patient names. stacked alphabetically, like a grocery list. we never used them. each person little more than a nine digit code. * my research partner and i sit next to each other, surrounded by four computer screens, alone in a cold, quiet room. a ghost department past five p.m. bnext?^ he calls. b - - .^ j med humanit ( ) : – blocation?^ banterior falx,^ bwhere’s that?^ he asks. bi have no fucking idea.^ we pore over an mri, sifting through layers of brain matter, memories, experiences, love, hate, sin, thoughts, regrets, passions, reduced to grey mush behind pixelated glass. bpiece of shit image,^ he says. byeah.^ our eyes dart back and forth in unison. peering wildly. bcome on, guy,^ i say, talking to the patient that once was. bthere, he’s got one right there,^ i jump. my index finger prods the screen. bno go back, just…right…you see it? that little smudge.^ i gleam. he leans in, squinting his eyes. a light grey orb pops out from between layers of normal matter. the eight ball of death. byeah that’s it, got to be, what do you think?^ he moves the mouse back and forth. bi’m % positive,^ i say. we take the measurements. bcoronal?^ b . ^ bap?^ b . ^ btrans?^ b . ^ b . ?^ byeah.^ the spreadsheet did the rest. spitting out a tumor volume. bdid it fail?^ bdon’t they all?^ i joke. we laugh for a moment. he shakes his head with a delayed sense of ethics. bthat’s so bad…^ he forces, as if stopping his fall from grace, bdid the treatment control it?^ bno, it grew…does he have a follow up?^ i ask. we pillage through more medical records and find a second mri, three months post-procedure. it loads slowly, real slowly. bhow was your weekend?^ i ask. bgood, went to this bar in brooklyn called union pool.^ bhipsters?^ bmore like rich white kids pretending to be poor,^ he says. bso, hipsters,^ i conclude. the image finally loads. he clicks the radiology report first. j med humanit ( ) : – bthey had a special…one beer and a jager shot for three dollars,^ he says. bstop right there. what does it say…?^ i interject. eight new enhancing lesions were recognized compared to previous imaging ( / / ) possible recurrence or expansion of the… bdid you say three dollars? that’s fucking amazing.^ he thumbs over the image. shifting through the slices. the eyes that saw the love of his life, the death of his father, the beauty of a new york sunset, the face of his oncologist, only a little while ago. the nose that had smelt chinese food, or perfume, or the air after a heavy rain. within the masses of his mind we find a new peppering of blotches, ink stains almost, half of dozen, their edges rugged…alien even. bholy shit, it exploded,^ i say. bsix more.^ bgoddamnit, we’re going to be here forever if every one of these people have multiple tumors.^ bi want to make meal plan,^ he says, irritated, peering down at the time. it’s : on a monday, and dinner is more concerning than death. i add six more columns under the name. finally, i look at it. salvarado. bi think this guy was hispanic,^ i mutter. bhm?^ he asks. bnothing,^ i say. bwho’s next?^ i scroll to the next line. b - - ^ * one month ago, a hundred records sat on a conference table. each had a picture. a smiling face of some patient clipped against the top of a vanilla folder. bjesus, are all these people dead?^ i ask. bunfortunately,^ dr. a says. bwhy do they have to show us the pictures?^ i ask. bthey change a lot during treatment, it’s to help, keep everything straight.^ bthat’s a little morbid,^ i say. my research partner storms into the room. bsorry i’m late,^ he hangs his head low, shamefaced, before taking a seat. bi want to bust out three papers by the summer, so let’s try to get this done in the next few weeks, and burn through some abstracts. these are the only paper records, the rest are in the database, did you guys get access?^ we both nod together. bi think we have about three hundred patients, that’ll be at least five hundred tumors. that’s more than any other institution!^ he claps his hands triumphantly, bno other institution has that kind of volume.^ j med humanit ( ) : – dr. a is always energetic, moving from side to side, like a ritalin-infused child. we run through the project one more time. the nuances of brain metastases, what they look like, the prognosis. he tells a story about a patient who’s lived eight years post-procedure. beight!^ he exclaims, band is still alive!^ midway through he gets paged and blitzes from the room like flash, the superhero. he’ll reappear, an apparition overseeing our progress, from week to week, giving a heartfelt high five. baight boys gotta go, a young korean lady with a massive met. whole temporal lobe.^ bgood luck,^ we’d both say, not really knowing how to respond. we split the files in half. i move from one to the next. so many histories, so many faces. i can’t help but imagine seeing each of these people in a grocery store. maybe i did one time. maybe this is the circle of life, and a certain picture was meant to fall into the hands of a much-too-young medical student. but i recognize none of them. and with time i forget they’re even people. i turn to my colleague. bcan you imagine all these people were alive?^ bwell yeah,^ he says, unfazed. bno i mean, you know, like alive. they all had families, or fought in a war, or something, you know?^ byou don’t know that.^ bi know i don’t know that. i’m just saying…never mind. it’s sad they all died.^ i say, with more amazement than sympathy. byeah,^ he replies. * an mri of the brain is like seeing the earth from the international space station. you can observe the capsule as a whole, imagining all that is contained within. all the tiny, fleeting moments, the daily daydreams, the lives of a thousand fictitious characters. a home to seven billion decisions. you don’t see any of them, but you know they existed at some point. existed to be more than data points on an excel spreadsheet. * * * * the subjects of science - vivian ho i steadied the tray, inhaled, and opened the door. the cell reeked of urine and astringent. he slept fitfully under the tepid fluorescents, his bloated belly heaving over withered, useless legs. when i pressed on his abdomen, pockets of air and undigested food wriggled underneath. no one else in our study had degenerated so quickly. amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, colloqui- ally known as lou gehrig’s disease, causes ascending paralysis at variable rates. in five weeks, we had lost his legs and intestines–his lungs, the fatal choke point, would be next. his plight echoed the devastation of the disease, and the hope my supervisors had for our experimental treatment. i loaded a syringe with one hand, feeling for a soft spot with the other. months of daily injections had stippled his skin with tough, fibrous scars. at one point, he woke with a shiver, regarding me with cloudy red eyes. in one fluid, practiced movement, i lifted the mouse, tucked his tail aside, and injected a control solution into his upper hip. j med humanit ( ) : – human illness engages us physically and philosophically. in addition to our symptoms, we feel a sense of cosmic misfortune. we wonder why: bwhy me?^ or bwhy not someone else?^ in the realm of animal testing, the answer to these questions is clear. mice, rats, and rabbits are sick because we design them to be. we instigate mutations and breed for the trait. as an intern in a mouse laboratory, i learned how simple answers gave way to murkier ethical concerns. lou gehrig’s disease in mice is both identical and foreign to the real thing. in both parties, the paralysis starts at the lower limbs and inexorably rises. as the mice weaken, their fur becomes matted, their paws shrivel, and their food has to be moistened to be digestible. however, mice and humans with lou gehrig’s disease experience very different treatment. people receive ventilators and wheelchairs. mice get a daily dose of experimental drug, a grueling regimen of physical testing, and -day expiration date. after days, it is considered cruel to keep them alive. i administered injections and put the mice on treadmills, balance beams, and in swimming pools to quantify their decline. it was dull, time-consuming work, requiring hours of prodding paralyzed mice over narrow ledges and fishing them out of swimming pools. what kept me going was not a desire to publish, but a nagging sense of humility and shame. no matter how terrible my day could be, i was always the least miserable animal in the testing room. my views on animal testing are ambivalent. i feel strongly about its contributions and the need for ethical restrictions, but these opinions feel divorced from the reality of everyday science. researchers aren’t actively trying to be cruel to animals, but we do feel compelled to suppress our empathy at times. at best, animal testing feels morally permissible, but not comfortingly right. when the mice reached their th day of life, another intern filled their veins with formaldehyde and removed their brains. the brains were frozen, then sliced with a $ , machine into -micron-thin salami slices. the salami was stained with antibodies, washed, and then mounted on slides. other research assistants would count the stained cells, and a report filled with numbers would appear on my principal investigator’s desk. at the end of my internship i thumbed through our report, resplendent with graphs and slides. it was impressive, particularly because i felt like i had nothing to do with it. some- where, the smells, splashes, and squeaks of science had been covered up by p-values and literature reviews. my name was in the acknowledgements, but there was little respect paid to the hundreds of little lives lost. if you look closely, you’ll find them in parentheses, after the bn=^ sign. but whether they belong there is up to you. * * * * bolts of lightning - lisa mack the chances of getting cholangiocarcinoma: . %. the chances of developing pancreatitis after a diagnostic endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography: %. the chances of gastroparesis after a pancreaticoduodenectomy: %. this man was one in a million. technically speaking, he was one in . billion, depending on your sources, of course, but needless to say he was not lucky. that’s not even taking into account the fact that he was about to have a bumbling first-year medical student poke and prod the few parts of his body that remained healthy. he was a middle-aged math professor, and (as we learned obtaining his travel history) loved visiting italy. medically speaking, he had done everything right. he worked out consistently, adhered to a low salt, low fat diet, eating lots of vegetables, had never smoked, and his drug of j med humanit ( ) : – choice was a weekly glass of wine with his loving wife. even his family was perfectly healthy, no illnesses: not a sibling with high blood pressure or an aunt with diabetes. and definitely no cancer. his dad lived well into his nineties, and his mom was still going strong, nearly . but i guess it doesn’t matter when you’re unlucky. the chances of getting struck by lightning are about / , , over times more likely than this man’s past month of misfortune. i’ve always thought it was funny that people compare everything to the chances of getting struck by lightning as opposed to anything else, but it’s one of the few statistics i know without having to look it up. my great-aunt, a near urban legend in my family, like this man, was also unlucky, maybe times luckier than him, but i guess in the end that didn’t give her any advantage. lightning strikes when it wants to. i felt bad bothering him. i felt even worse when i quickly learned that he and his wife were delightful. she mostly kept to herself, occasionally chiming in with a helpful detail, but she was absorbed in her phone. i imagine she was sending updates to family and friends, probably littered with phrases like bwe’re hanging in there!^ and bthings are going well!^ even though her tired face showed she knew that wasn’t true. he was quiet, uncomfortable, but still able to muster a genuine smile (albeit a weak one) when he talked about his children. i progressed through the physical exam, pulling shiny instrument after shiny instrument out of my mary poppins carpet bag of a white coat. when i was done i threw the tools into my backpack. from head to toe i converted this man’s story into a series of values: +, / , , / , etc.… and with each one my pockets got a little lighter. a friend later told me i was lucky to get a patient with such a unique case, someone so interesting. her patient bjust^ had a heart attack. to be honest i didn’t know anything about the rarity of this cancer versus that one. hell, i could barely pronounce what he had. but i remember thinking: isn’t every patient one in a million? one in seven billion, or whatever the growing number is now? sure, some diagnoses are made more than others, but every trip to the hospital is a one of a kind story. the fact my patient had a rare cancer wasn’t ‘interesting’ or ‘cool’ to me. it was sad. not necessarily more sad or less sad than a heart attack, but sad. it’s all just sad. the fact that this math professor got his life-changing diagnosis on march th, pi day, however? that was interesting. the exam was over, the preceptor was gone, and the final glob of purell was evaporating off my hands. i was no longer a ‘future doctor’, just a girl who happened to be wearing an oversized coat with too many pockets, in the room of an unlucky man. bwhere in italy did you go?^ ba small town in the north, an hour or two outside of venice, most people have never heard of it.^ turns out i had heard of it. turns out not only had i heard of this small town of only a few hundred, i had been there myself. at the exact same time as him and his wife. now what are the chances of that? * * * * king richard - elizabeth maier balough settling down on the plastic sofa bed in the office, i waited for the sound. the hospital felt so urban at night, the lights all-aglitter and everyone bustling round. i couldn’t rest, not only because of my anxiety over what was about to ensue, but also because this is simply not a resting place. j med humanit ( ) : – the pager went off, and my hands started to shake. at least when i called back the number, the coordinator was gentle with the information. she wanted to let me know in advance that it had been a suicide. i thought i heard her smile on the other end of the line. estimated time of departure would be : a.m. did i want pancakes on the plane, or something else? i’ll pass this time, i said. where were we going? i couldn’t remember. as usual, i struggled with the lock on the supply closet door. practically sweating expletives i finally felt the key twist, and i tumbled into the small room propelled by the force of my frustration. my compulsive tendencies revved up as i packed the big yellow bag and cooler for the trip. i checked the contents twice, no, three times, against the list and then put one extra of everything we could possibly need on top. into my back pocket i stashed three kits for drawing arterial blood gases because the junior surgeon was sure to drop one during the procedure, and pulling out a spare and handing it over, sterilely, at just the right moment was the one thing i could do during the whole trip that would make me feel like i had any business being there. at the distant hospital nestled somewhere in the appalachian hills i met him. he wore a paper crown. written on it in a shaky hand was this: bking richard, who held the weight of the world upon his shoulders.^ his eyes were covered with the gauze that covered the hole he had made in his head with his dad’s shotgun. from the nose down, though, his body was intact, almost vibrant, like christ in rembrandt’s the storm on the sea of galilee. the phrase the doctors used was bwell-perfused.^ we took his organs and then we were out like bandits, running down the dim halls of the country hospital, jumping into our getaway car, the ambulance with its screaming sirens, and then into the little plane and up, up into the air amongst the angry clouds and the sunset. all in the service of someone who needed a new heart. or was it for that person? maybe it was for us. look at what we can do. and as for king richard? well, medicine hasn’t advanced far enough to save the likes of him, i guess. author biographies elizabeth balough elizabeth is currently a second-year student in the md-phd program at columbia college of physicians and surgeons. she became interested in the intersection of writing and medicine as an undergraduate at columbia, where she was introduced to the essays of walker percy. the writing course that was part of her first year as a medical student reinvigorated elizabeth’s interest in using creative non-fiction as a means for critically processing her experiences in medicine and science. elizabeth studies the neural circuits underlying emotional learning and memory, and she hopes to become a practicing psychiatrist, researcher, and writer someday. * * * * deirdre brazil i am a family medicine resident at hunterdon medical center in flemington, new jersey, and i am also training as a physician acupuncturist. i am finishing my chief year in june, and i used j med humanit ( ) : – some of my academic time to create a narrative medicine lecture series that was based on dr. hellerstein’s bthe city of the hospital^ class. it was very well received, and i plan to continue to develop the lecture series during my final year of residency. i have continued to write, and i consider narrative medicine to be a great source of emotional strength for me and an integral part of my development as a physician. * * * * jocelyn compton i’m a graduating medical student at columbia university’s college of physicians and sur- geons. this past march, i matched into orthopaedic surgery! before medical school, i attended yale university where i participated in a number of outreach opportunities in china, nepal, and various other foreign countries. these service trips affected me deeply, and engrained in me the importance of meaningful, appropriate, durable intervention. i believe that only through thoughtful reflection and writing did i come to fully understand the implications of our best intentions. for me, revisiting words i have written detailing my experiences has been immensely helpful in achieving insight into my beliefs about the purpose of medical care and what it means to bdo no harm.^ * * * * vivian ho i am a second-year medical student at the columbia university college of physicians & surgeons. i received my undergraduate degree in biology at stanford university, where i also enjoyed taking writing classes and teaching science in low-income schools. while i have yet to narrow down a specialty, i gravitate toward teaching and academic medicine. dr. hellerstein’s bthe city of the hospital^ course was foundational in building regular writing habits. ever since i started on the wards, writing has become an invaluable method of organizing and processing my reactions. even on my busiest days, i strive to take a few minutes to jot down my thoughts. finding my voice on paper has been the difference between surviving and thriving in medical school, and will no doubt continue to be a source of insight, perspective, and comfort throughout my medical career. * * * * lisa mack i’ve always been surrounded by the sciences, having majored in chemical engineering and worked as a software engineer before coming to medical school. i never would have thought that as a medical student i’d be writing (or be doing much of anything outside of studying for that matter), but i realized only a few moments into this new experience that i had landed at an institution that emphasized the importance of various methods of self-expression. i joined the medical school theater troupe and performed with other groups: all amazing experiences, but all with the comfort of borrowing other’s words, so when i was placed into the non-fiction writing narrative medicine class i was terrified. i was surprised to learn, however, that i loved writing. it wasn’t a distraction from medicine like i expected it to be, but rather changed the way i interacted with my patients. writing about my exchanges served as a reminder that patients are so much more than their illnesses, and to be successful at my job as a student i j med humanit ( ) : – have to understand the whole story, not just the lab values. even though the class ended almost a year ago i’ve kept writing, whether a story or a few scribbles, just to make sure i don’t forget this. * * * * tavish nanda originally from the san francisco bay area i attended the university of southern california, majoring in anthropology with a minor in screenwriting. in college i interned at nbc, the huffington post, and the japan times before applying and eventually attending medical school. i have an interest in narrative medicine and film with the eventual goal of combining those passions with a career in medicine. bthe city of the hospital^ course helped provide a structured environment to mold a writing style and explore creative potential within the medical field. the course, being taught as part of a medical education curriculum, helped define the often-amorphous idea of the bphysician writer,^ making it seem like a more attainable reality. since taking the course, i’ve continued writing short pieces of a similar fashion, with the hope to continue doing so into residency, and as a professional. * * * * huy nguyen i grew up in california and studied chemical and physical biology at harvard before coming to columbia for medical school. as a son of immigrant parents, i was always aware of cultural differences and the general world around me. my interest in writing down my observations began as a child when i received a small journal as a gift. over time, my journaling grew from recording daily activities and travels to writing my impressions and thoughts about academic and social issues. when i took dr. hellerstein’s bthe city of the hospital^ class as part of the narrative medicine course in medical school, i realized that journaling my impressions on the wards could reveal what was most important to me in medicine, and consequently influence what qualities i would have as a physician. as i went through my medical training, i journaled stories about my patient interactions, which made me reflect on not only how they made me feel but also how i thought the patients felt. as i move forward, i believe that by writing my own stories, i could learn better how to listen to those of my future patients. my interest in ophthalmology began in undergrad when i traveled to india to volunteer in an eye clinic. i solidified that interest during a research year in medical school where i investigated gene therapy on patient-specific stem cell-derived retinal cells. i now have matched into harvard’s ophthalmology residency at the massachusetts eye and ear infirmary for the next step of my training as i pursue my goal of becoming a retinal surgeon. i enjoy playing tennis, photography, and exchanging good stories over a home cooked meal. * * * * kara shetler kara was a writer long before she decided to be a doctor, publishing her first short story in the local newspaper in third grade. she majored in english as an undergraduate while completing her premedical coursework. as a medical student, she served as the editor-in-chief of the edition of reflexions, the art and literary journal of columbia university medical center, and j med humanit ( ) : – participated in a pilot project introducing a longitudinal writing component to the medical curriculum. she was inspired to continue writing by bthe city of the hospital^ class and has found this practice to be one of the most useful tools for processing the challenges and joys of medical training. she plans to pursue a residency in either internal medicine or neurology. * * * * benjamin stix benjamin stix grew up in washington heights, new york. he comes from a family of journalists, so his apartment growing up was stuffed with magazines and newspapers. he initially became interested in writing in high school and college, but took a detour into the world of business, before deciding on medicine as a career. the narrative medicine class bthe city of the hospital^ was the first time he had explored deeply personal non-fiction writing. he hopes to continue writing in this style throughout his career. he is currently interested in the nexus between intensive care and palliative care, and he has undertaken a research project in the department of anesthesiology on reasons for consultation of palliative care in the icu. benjamin and his wife, annesly, are expecting their first child in july, . open access this article is distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution . international license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ . /), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and repro- duction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the creative commons license, and indicate if changes were made. references babel, isaac. .^my first goose.^ in red cavalry and other stories, edited by efraim sicher, – . new york: penguin classics. calvino, italo. . blaudomia.^ in invisible cities. – . orlando, florida: harcourt. chambers, sarah. . bthe harvest team.^ reflexions xi: – . charon, rita. . narrative medicine: honoring the stories of illness. new york: oxford university press. hellerstein, david. .^ on being a physician writer.^ the new physician ( ): – . _____. . bthe city of the hospital.^ reflexions xi: – . hemingway, ernest. . bindian camp.^ in the short stories of ernest hemingway. new york: scribner. miller, eliza, dorene balmer, nellie hermann, gillian graham, and rita charon. . bsounding narrative medicine: studying students’ professional identity development at columbia university college of physicians and surgeons.^ academic medicine ( ): – . o’byrne, brendan. . bsaturday night in mariposa.^ pharos, winter : – . williams, william carlos. . autobiography. new directions: new york. _____. . bthe girl with the pimply face.^ in the doctor stories, edited by robert coles, – . new directions: new york. j med humanit ( ) : – 	&ldquo;the city of the hospital&rdquor;: on teaching medical �students to write 	abstract 	introduction 	essays 	an initiation - deirdre brazil 	blackout - huy nguyen 	do no harm - jocelyn compton 	faces - benjamin stix 	sundial - kara shetler 	grey matter - tavish nanda 	the subjects of science - vivian ho 	 bolts of lightning - lisa mack 	king richard - elizabeth maier balough 	author biographies 	elizabeth balough 	deirdre brazil 	jocelyn compton 	vivian ho 	lisa mack 	tavish nanda 	huy nguyen 	kara shetler 	benjamin stix 	references $$$$p popular music ( ) volume / . copyright  cambridge university press, pp. – . printed in the united kingdom is there such a thing as the ‘blue note’? h a n s w e i s e t h a u n e t among the most frequently repeated formulae in the description of the traditions most often called afro-american music, in particular the styles of jazz, blues, soul and rock, is the concept of the ‘blue note’. it may also seem that this is a most widely accepted idea. the ‘blue note’ is usually thought of as a kind of basic element in those styles, as constituting the ‘ethnic’ or ‘african’ aspect of those musics as opposed to the ‘western’ contributions of harmony. my main attempt here is to step into the somewhat muddy waters of musicol- ogical and sociological/anthropoligical/cultural studies discourses of ‘the blue’ and ask what the ‘blue idea’ really is about. in rethinking the concept of the ‘blue note’, i find it necessary to differentiate between two concerns that often seem to be some- what unconsciously or muddily mixed together: ( ) the idea of the ‘blue note’ as referring to pitch, thinking of the note as an ‘item’, commonly thought of as the slight altering of the minor third and the flattened seventh; and ( ) the general concept of ‘blue feeling’ linked to the idea of playing ‘blue notes’: in short, the performance of music with a ‘blue feel’. from my analysis of performances, interviews and recordings, the conclusion will be that most musicological analyses of these styles are still based on an over- simplified idea of harmony: the applied western major/minor theory concept with the addition of ‘blue elements’. my argument is that the harmonic foundation of blues, rock, and some jazz styles, in emic terms and performance practice, in fact represents both a totally different conception of harmony to that of the western functional (tonal) harmony and also represents a different comprehension of disson- ance/consonance in music. the idea of the ‘blue note’ as pitch is there such a thing as the ‘blue note?’ this question is raised for a number of reasons. first of all i think that the concept of the ‘blue note’ is partly misunderstood and misused. as such it represents a simplified explanatory version of the style of blues music. later on, i will suggest an alternative way of thinking about ‘the blue’ elements in terms of ‘blue harmony’ and ‘bluesness’. the latter term is adopted from steven g. smith ( ) who traces the relationship between blues and ‘blues- ness’ as an aesthetic category: as embodied feeling of ‘blues’ or ‘pain’. it should also be noted that my concept of ‘blue harmony’ diverges from common notions of hans weisethaunet ‘blues harmony’, thought of as ‘patterns of harmony’ or harmonic progressions; and also from commonplace notions of ‘blue notes’ and ‘blues scales’. my concept of ‘blue harmony’ aims at a description of a particular stylised blend of harmony inherent in blues performance – but also partly transformed to other styles – such as jazz and rock. the purpose of this essay is not to give a final definition of ‘the blue’ in music, but rather to raise a few questions which seem crucial to our understanding of theoretical concepts of harmony applied and reworked in blues performance. as known, blues is also commonly understood as ‘form’. having played and intensely listened to blues music myself for more than twenty years, my experience has always been that ‘form’ is internalised by blues musicians in such a way that per- ception of formal structure (as understood in musicological theory) is not at all what is at issue in performance. discussing the topic of ‘blue notes’ with numer- ous – well-known as well as lesser-known – blues musicians and scholars, has further supported my view that the concept of ‘blue notes’ is derived from western musicology and that the ‘blue note’ may not even exist as an element of emic theory: its origin was surely invented to describe the structure of ‘negro’ music as opposed to that of european music: the blues structure, like ragtime, was an admixture of african influence (the call-and- response pattern) and european harmonically derived functional form. but unlike ragtime, the blues were improvised and as such were more successful in preserving the original and melodic patterns of african music . . . harmony has already been mentioned as the basis of blues structure in its later stages of development. (schuller [ ], p. ) the description of ‘blues structure’ here given by schuller seems representative of how jazz and blues historians have imagined how blues music came into being, and the fact that ‘harmony’ is portrayed as the ‘basis of blues structure’. blues is primarily thought of as a mixture of ‘simple structural forms’ of harmony derived from european music with the addition of the ‘negro’s’ ‘hollering’ and ‘crying’ of ‘blue notes’. as described by stearns, blues harmony is thus thought to be simple: the harmony employed in the blues is another matter. it is pretty clearly derived from european music although coloured by the blue tonality of the cry. at its simplest, the har- mony of the blues consists of the three basic chords in our musical language . . . these chords are technically known as the ‘tonic’, the ‘subdominant’, and the ‘dominant’ . . . (stearns , p. ) the view that music is foremost an expression of ‘structure’ – and in particular that of ‘harmonic structure’ – has been the ruling ideology of western musicology (including ethnomusicology) almost up to the present day. as such, the discipline of musicology has in particular been ruled by the ideas of ‘complexity’ versus ‘sim- plicity’; the ‘developed’ versus the ‘primitive’; ‘art’ versus ‘folk’ and ‘pop’; ‘high’ versus ‘low’, and so forth. even though many scholars have come to assume that ‘blues form’ often includes a wide range of variation from the basic i–iv–v, twelve- bar form, the performance of blues is still commonly thought of as exegetic of ‘simple form’ with the addition of ‘blue notes’ and sad lyrics. thus the following definition of blues is given by frank tirro: ‘blues’ refers to a style of music, a type of performance, a musical form, and a state of mind. structurally, the chief characteristic of the musical form is a repeated harmonic pattern of twelve-measures’ duration in / -time. (tirro , p. ) is there such a thing as the ‘blue note’? in defining the ‘blue note’ (by quoting ethnomusicologist bruno nettl), tirro – like most jazz/blues writers and scholars – leans on the ever-repeated definition of the past where ‘blue notes’ came to be classified as the pitch-altering of thirds and sevenths: a frequently mentioned characteristic of u.s. negro songs is the so-called ‘blue note’, the flatted or slightly lowered third and seventh degrees in a major scale. the origin of this phenomenon is not known, but it probably cannot be traced to africa. here is a musical trait which may, possibly, have come into folk music from practices of american negro popular and jazz musicians. (tirro , p. ) i think nettl is wrong in suggesting that the concept of the ‘blue note’ has derived from the musicians performing this music. rather it has originated from the scholars describing the music. in addition, in blues performance every note may be bent or altered, but in different ways depending on style and how such notes appear in the harmonic texture. one of the most frequently heard ‘blue notes’ as regards pitch discrepancy in post-war electric guitar playing may be that of the bent fourth: this is commonly bent to include different pitches between the fourth and the fifth (and higher pitches as well). the second (which does not even appear in what scholars have named the blues scale) also seems to be a very common ‘blue note’ feature of most blues guitarists’ repertoires: moving between the second and the minor third in innumerable ways. in fact every note of the twelve-tone chro- matic scale may appear in a blues tune, possibly also as ‘blue notes’, because micro- tonality, attack, and timbre variation are such essential parts of blues expression. the aesthetics behind this practice – being crucial to the ‘meaning’ of blues perform- ance – is that of ‘putting things to the notes’ as described by b.b. king in his book, blues guitar method: to me it’s more like the human voice. it’s like a person singing. it seems to say more and you can feel it. it makes the sound sort of stimulating . . . i think in terms of not just playing a note but making sure that every note i play means something. you need to take time with these notes. if you just play notes and not put anything into it, you’ll never have a distinctive style. you need to put yourself into what you are doing. it will set you apart from the person just playing the guitar. in other words, make music. (king , p. ) the aesthetics of blues phrasing involves an idea of ‘personifying’ each and every note. the master of blues performance may make his personal mark on each note – with a bend or a vibrato – in such a way that the skilled/socialised listener only needs to hear one single note in order to recognise and feel the presence of the sound of a b.b. king as being distinct from albert king, albert collins, buddy guy, or players like peter green, eric clapton or jimi hendrix. this contrasts with the idea of ‘musemes’ as the smallest item of ‘music’ – sometimes defined as a minimum of three notes, sometimes more ‘flexibly’. (for a summary of the relevant theories of philip tagg and others, see middleton ( ), p. .) among the very few ever to have questioned the widespread mis-assumption of what makes up the pitches of ‘blue notes’ is jeff todd titon in his study of ‘early downhome blues’ (a term borrowed from the vernacular). from analysing a number of downhome blues performances, titon comes to the conclusion that in fact all the pitches of the western twelve-tone scale may be used in one single blues melody in this early performance style of the blues (titon , p. ). hence, titon aban- dons the notion of ‘blue notes’ in favour of his own ‘pitch complexes’. related to the keynote of c he defines groups of pitches as ‘e complex’ (the series between e § and e), ‘g complex’ (the series between g § and g), and ‘b § complex’ (the series hans weisethaunet between b § and b), which he finds to be the most frequently found microtones in this style of blues, alongside movements including the notes a, f and d, while c (tonic) and g (the fifth) still seem to be the most important notes. titon goes on to show that this particular practice does not seem to be a play of chance but occurs within a rather consistent system of melodic contour, lines and stanzas: . . . the most important argument that these quarter-tones form distinct pitches in a down- home blues mode is that singers enter and move within the complexes in a manner reason- ably consistent from phrase to phrase, line to line, and stanza to stanza throughout a given song. (titon , p. ) returning to stearns ( ), data arguing for an alternative concept of ‘blue notes’ seem to have been present also at that time; however, the emic utterances were rather used as a means of documenting the stubbornness and lack of theoreti- cal understanding of the blues performer, for instance, the harmony employed by john lee hooker is viewed as lacking in development. as stearns writes: there were blues singers on recordings in , however, who still did not employ european harmony. it is generally possible to date a blues style by the complexity of the harmony. guitarist john lee hooker, whose recordings are made for negro trade exclusively, employs a drone which sounds very much like the skirl of a bagpipe and he says his grandfather played that way. his rhythms, however, are very complicated. with big bill broonzy it’s a matter of pride not to employ european harmony, although he doesn’t think of it in those terms: . . . for me to really sing the old blues that i learned in mississippi i have to go back to my sound and not the right chords as the musicians have told me to make. they just don’t work with the real blues . . . the blues didn’t come out of no book and them real chords did . . . the real blues is played and sung the way you feel and no man or woman feels the same way every day . . . (stearns , pp. – ) in considering later examples of blues performance, in particular that of post- war electric blues with representatives like b.b. king, albert king, freddie king, john lee hooker, hubert sumlin, albert collins, otis rush, buddy guy, johnny winter, stevie ray vaughan; players like jimi hendrix, eric clapton, peter green, steve cropper, robert cray, rockers like eddie van halen or jimmy page, and even jazz players like john scofield, mike stern and john mclaughlin, my argument is that what is at stake in blues is not simply a major/minor western concept of diatonic practice with the addition of ‘blue notes’, but rather a completely different concept or reworking of functional harmony as regards the comprehension of dis- sonance/consonance. the simplified conceptualisation of what ‘blue notes’ are about partly stems from the intense musicological insistence on separation of elements of musical ‘structure’ derived from western music theory: the insistence on the separation of ‘harmony’ from ‘sound’ (timbre), ‘melody’ and ‘rhythm’, as the starting point of all analysis. music as process: ‘blue notes’ as participatory discrepancies rather than thinking of music as the structure of ‘objects’, i think it is wise to view music as a mode of performance: as a process involving musicians and participants. following charles keil, ‘the power of music lies in its participatory discrepancies’: a concept keil uses to describe the intentional ‘out-of-tuneness’ and ‘out-of- syncness’ of music performance: the ‘process’ of ‘vital drive’, ‘groove’ or ‘beat’ and the ‘texture’ of ‘timbre’, ‘sound’, ‘tone qualities’, etc. (keil and feld , p. ) a similar point of departure is taken by robert walser’s argument that music is there such a thing as the ‘blue note’? table. layers of ‘sound’/‘harmonic texture’. layers instruments texture ( ) lead: vocal/lead guitar/sax melody, improvisation, lines ( ) background: guitar/piano/organ/horns/backing riff, chords vocals, etc. ( ) reference: bass guitar harmonic foundation, arpeggios, lines, root (tonic) references, riff ( ) pattern: drums sound, attack, space should be revived as a verb rather than a noun in order to challenge the common practice of analysing and understanding music in terms of objects. in doing so he takes as a starting point christopher small’s notion of ‘musicking’ (see small and ): ‘musicking embraces composition, performance, listening, dancing – all of the social practices of which musical scores and recordings are merely one- dimensional traces.’ (walser , p. xiii) ‘blue notes’ may obviously be seen as ‘participatory discrepancies’ following keil’s definition which tries to capture the fundamental feature of participation, interaction and sociality of music performance. seeing ‘grooving’ as fundamentally social, my assumption will be that ‘harmony’ must be viewed as part of what keil defines as ‘texture’: ‘sound’, ‘tone qualities’ and so forth. what blues performances of ‘chicago style’ (muddy waters, jimmy reed, etc.), ‘texas style’ (clarence gate- mouth brown, stevie ray vaughan, etc.), ‘new orleans style’ (earl king, snooks eaglin, etc.) and ‘british style’ (the bluesbreakers, s fleetwood mac, etc.) all have in common is that their music is the outcome of an interaction of individual players creating the ‘sound’ or ‘texture’ of the blues in interplay. each musician of a band participates in creating the ‘whole’ – the music – by grooving and creating sounds in real time. there may be expressed or unexpressed stylised rules govern- ing this process; however, to be accepted as a musician (to be able to play the blues), some stylised regularities must be followed as a basis of performance. in performance, interplay (collaboration/communication) is based on the idea that each player finds or defines his ‘space’ in relation to the others. at the bottom there will be a keeper of the groove: usually the bass player and the drummer in interaction. at the next layer there will be some rhythmic ‘lift-up-over-sounding’ discrepancies: rhythm guitar or keyboards. on top, there will be vocals and lead guitar soloing. together, all those layers make the ‘groove’, while simultaneously creating the ‘texture’. as regards ‘texture’, the opening up of ‘sound’ and ‘space’ is created by breaks and continuity in the rhythm pattern set by the drummer. the harmonic reference/ foundation/root is initiated by the bass player, while chords and harmonic riffs are played on guitar/keyboard. on top of this the texture is filled with melodies and lines of lead vocals, lead guitar or possibly other instruments, like piano, sax, har- monica, etc. entering this role (see the table, layer ). the table sets out a very simplified model of how ‘harmonic texture’ is set into play in the process of a blues band performance. ‘groove’ as process occurs at all layers, as does improvisation. what is of main concern here, however, is how the concept of ‘blue notes’ fits within the process of the ‘harmonic texture’: what i am going to term ‘blue harmony’. this interaction between the different layers, hans weisethaunet between different individuals, may also be the essence of the performance as regards ‘sound’ and ‘harmony’, as well as the core of the musical interaction between the members of a band. a man who came to influence the ‘sound’ of s and s soul, blues and rock performance to a great extent is guitarist and pro- ducer steve cropper, who recorded and produced artists like albert king, otis redding, wilson picket, eddie floyd, booker t & the mgs, etc., until he re-entered the stage as a ‘blues brother’ in the s. cropper, in an interview i conducted, especially speaks of ‘sound’ as the identification of different layers, and of different ‘roles’ of the individuals in a band: the ambition ‘to fill in the holes’ of the whole texture: i like to play licks that are of a rhythmic nature. that creates a feel; and a groove. and i like to play in the holes, when the singer is not singing. i like to play stuff that compliments the melody; and really get involved in what the singer is trying to do. and i think that’s where i am most valuable as a guitar player. (weisethaunet, interview with steve cropper, june ) the concept of ‘sound’ is definitively even more complex than that of ‘har- mony’, and in the way it is commonly used amongst musicians it incorporates almost every aspect of the musical performance. in what follows, my main argu- ment is that neither ‘harmony’ nor ‘sound’ are elements as easily separable as is often thought. from my analysis of a vast number of blues tunes and from the experience of playing blues music, however, some simple conclusions might never- theless be drawn as far as ‘harmony’ is concerned. if we stick with the table above, it might be observed that at layer ( ) a pattern or framework of ‘groove’ is laid down by the drummer. as regards texture, this pattern will create a temporal reference which will be varied, broken down or changed at certain points, creating both high and low end sounds and the essential ‘opening up’ and ‘closing’ of space in the texture. at layer ( ) the bass player will usually stay close to the roots of the actual chords or create patterns that will fit with the basic structure employed according to each song. usually this implies a major tonality. (minor blues forms occur but are rather to be seen as a variant that differs from the main formula.) if the ‘simplest’ twelve-bar form is followed, the bass will indicate the chords i–i–i–i–iv–iv–i–i–v–iv–i–v. the bass player will usu- ally hold on to this harmonic foundation, and at its very simplest create walking lines (or ostinato) of notes – – – : the arpeggio of the major chord with the poss- ible addition of the sixth. at layer ( ), however, rhythm guitar or piano may impose major chords, but more commonly they will in blues rather employ sevenths ( – – –§ ), ninths ( – – –§ – ), thirteens or diminished chords, etc. in the style of contem- porary ( s) blues commonly heard in texas (such as on the scene in austin, among players like jimmie vaughan, jesse taylor, john mcvey, ian moore, alan haynes and chris duarte), one of the most common rhythm chords used at this layer seems to be the –§ – – (a voicing of a ninth chord, with root omitted) or § – – – (a voicing of a th chord with the root on top and fifth omitted). on top of this, however, the most ‘naturally’/‘emic sounding’/‘diatonic scale’ on the i chord is neither the major scale (as should be indicated by the bass line) or the mixolydian scale (as should be indicated by the chords at layer ( )), but rather the notes of the dorian scale: – –§ – – – –§ – . my argument here is that the dorian scale (which also may be seen as what is named the ‘blues scale’ with, however, the addition of the significant notes and is there such a thing as the ‘blue note’? ) sounds ‘less dissonant’ to blues performers and listeners when applied against the foundation of a major-oriented bass line – in a texture usually featuring vari- ations of seventh chords – than the major scale. blues players will also employ the major third in their solos and phrases; however, if this is overdone, it will take the feeling away from that of the blues and make the music sound more ‘jazzy’ or ‘country-like’. from the perspective of the blues performer and listener, the major third against the major chord may thus sound more ‘dissonant’ than the application of the minor third over the major chord! seeing the idea of the ‘blue note’ in such a context, it seems clear that the texture of ‘blue harmony’ involves a specific com- prehension of harmony that becomes neglected if ‘harmony’ and ‘melody’, or chords and solos, are analysed entirely separately from each other. in what follows, i will illustrate by examples how such an application of ‘blue harmony’ seems a common characteristic of the style of blues performance. ‘blue harmony’ – a different concept the concept governing western functional harmony (at least in theory and up to a certain point in history) is the diatonic principle: in short, the c-major scale works with c-major, a-minor, g , e-minor, d-minor chords, and so forth. however, c-minor scales are not considered to go along with c-major chords: this will usually be thought of and experienced as ‘dissonance’. in the texture of ‘blue harmony’, however, this does not sound ‘dissonant’ at all to blues people. that is why i think the concept of ‘blue harmony’ may be a good one, as it is experienced as a kind of mode of texture which is known from the blues, but which is not limited to this genre/style. it is also likely to enter into rock as well as jazz, soul, reggae and other african–american influenced popular musics. as walser points out: heavy metal, like all forms of rock and soul, owes its biggest debt to african–american blues. the harmonic progressions, vocal lines, and guitar improvisations of metal all rely heavily on the pentatonic scales derived from blues music. (walser , p. ) before this argument is taken any further, i will give a few examples of how my idea of ‘blue harmony’ has derived from analysis of the harmonic texture of blues performances. the word ‘texture’ seems to be a good one since ‘blue notes’ never appear as isolated ‘items’. often the performer will play two or three notes simul- taneously – also in solo guitar playing – and the effect of ‘blue harmony’ seems to be created by the way those are voiced; put together; imposed, in accordance with the rest of the texture. as such blues is to be experienced as tonal music; there is in blues always a tonal centre; it is a play within a tonal framework. blues is hardly ever ‘a-tonal’, as may be the case with western non-functional musics. example shows one of the most commonly heard ‘blue’ constellations of notes. it seems to occur in most blues guitar players’ repertoires: as in the beginning of eric clapton’s version of ‘ramblin’ on my mind’ (from the lp, john mayall, bluesbreakers with eric clapton, decca, ). when played ‘right’, this example may almost sound like the whistle of a train, one of the core metaphors of blues myth- ology. it is a very common lick, and clapton probably ‘got it’ from robert johnson’s playing. note, however, that the notation here is a reduction of the musical textural complexity, i.e. the notation is a representation of what is played but, on paper, definitively a reduction of the way it ‘sounds’. as such, these examples are bound to a particular performance technique but also to the intrinsic qualities of the guitar hans weisethaunet as an instrument (a pianist would have to approach the examples very differently). for the sake of simplicity, the examples are transcribed in the key of c. imposed over a c major (i) chord, the ‘lick’ in example consists of notes § + , which is like imposing the minor chord over the major. functionally, the § could also be explained as the # , but that does not change the effect. when the chord changes to iv (subdominant) (f), the same ‘lick’ may still be played, but its function has changed: to § + . § + example . another ‘lick’ which is commonly applied on the i chord is shown in example . this ‘lick’ consists of notes ( ) + § . when applied against the iv chord (subdominant) rather than on i (tonic) – which is also very usual – it changes its function to + § ( )+§ example . example is a very common ‘lick’ heard in stevie ray vaughan’s playing which includes an interchange (constant shift/‘hammer on/off ’) between the minor third and the fourth. this is usually also played over the background of a major or seventh chord (initiating a style of guitar playing which is also a typical feature of the music of john lee hooker). example . one of the most used ‘riffs’ in blues rhythm guitar playing is shown in example , and involves a constant shift – or a kind of a trill – between § and , and it is used by everyone from b.b. king to stevie ray vaughan, robert cray, clapton, etc. example . is there such a thing as the ‘blue note’? in general, blues phrasing is based on a very subtle play of tonality, where rhythmic attack, microtonality and bending of strings creating an interplay between major and minor – but also other – intervals is of the essence. among the perform- ances where the kind of trill between § and shown in example may be heard, is stevie ray vaughan’s recording of the blues ‘texas flood’ (written by larry davis and joseph w. scott), from the album, stevie ray vaughan and double trou- ble, texas flood (epic/cbs, ), cf. the g chord in the very beginning. the tran- scription which follows (adapted from vaughan , p. , transcribed by jesse gress) is in g major; however, the tune is played in g §. the reason why it is notated in g is that stevie ray vaughan, like hendrix, usually tuned his guitar down half a step, from e tuning to e § tuning, in order to obtain a ‘fatter’ sound by allowing the use of heavier gauge strings without reducing the ability to perform large bends. after the introduction, displaying in particular th and th chords, the second line of notation here, from the third complete bar, shows some very typical stevie ray vaughan bends: the is bent higher than § almost to , then the line goes: – ′ – § bent almost to ′ – – ′ – ′ – § ′ (§ ) – ′ – § – ′ – § ′ bend to ′ – § ′ bent to ′ – ′ – – bent to § – then § is bent to (a well-marked bend also frequently heard in the playing of buddy guy) – – – and § slightly bent against , before the line ends on , then – § – : leading into the dominant seventh. (i have used the sign ′ just to indicate moves to an octave above.) example . ‘texas flood’ (davis, larry/scott, joseph w.)  duchess music corp./universal/ mca music ltd. used by permission. example , extract from ‘the same way’ by peter green (from the lp, john mayall, a hard road, decca, , my transcription) shows a segment of one of british guitarist peter green’s typical blues lines. the tune is clearly based in a-major tonality, with ‘shuffle’-comping rhythm guitar typical of a blues/rock style. introducing the solo is an e (dominant) chord; however, a second and third guitar play a simple riff which includes the notes c, b, a (§ , , ), also indicating a minor tonality. (while one guitar plays this melodic line, another guitar, however dis- torted, strums the full chords c, b(m) and a, underneath this line.) the overall tonality, however, is a major. in his solo, peter green begins by playing a significant , § , § line. in bar , he makes a bend from the second to § and back. in bar , he makes a very significant bend from the fourth (d) to a note slightly higher than the § (e §). then notice how he fuses major and minor tonality in the outgoing triplet hans weisethaunet line (bar ). first there is a slight indication of a minor third in front of the major third: then the line goes ′– ′– ′–§ ′– ′– – – . green is typically enough using both major and minor thirds in the same line, and ending up on the major third an octave below. example . ‘the same way’ by peter green  getaway music ltd. transcribed by h. weise- thaunet. used by permission. as already pointed out, the texture in which lines and riffs occur consists of several layers that will give an overall picture of ‘blue harmony’ which is quite complex, and much more complex than presented here. neither does the notation feature pitch discrepancies (which are essential to the feel of the overall texture), give any indication of sound/timbre, or point out how the notes appear rhythmi- cally in accordance with what is happening in other layers. my main point, how- ever, is not that of ‘complexity’, but the simple fact that the notion and definition of ‘blue notes’ most commonly applied to blues performance is a misnomer. in conclusion, performances invoking ‘blue harmony’ seem to be based on a constant interplay between pitches, between major and minor thirds; between flat- tened fifths, fourths and fifths; thirds and flattened sevenths; bent seconds; sixths, etc. etc., where a wide range of microtones are created. blues phrases rarely seem to be made out of ‘one scale’, rather they will be based on interplay, bends, slurs, slides, etc. between notes and against the layers of bass lines, guitar riffs and con- trasting chords, a practice which has not yet been adequately described from the point of view of music theory. however, some few relatively good transcriptions, supporting the claims here, do exist. i think it is evident that this stylised practice of ‘blue discrepant harmony’ has also found its way into other styles of music, in particular jazz and rock. one of the jazz players who seems to have incorporated influences from ‘blue harmony’ into his music to a large extent is guitarist john scofield: i am totally in debt to the blues. i think blues is really powerful music, the good blues . . . i think i was one of the first to seriously try to incorporate that element, the phrasing of blues and rock, with be-bop chords and changes. for me it’s really hard to separate between jazz is there such a thing as the ‘blue note’? or fusion, rhythm & blues, blues, or rock music. in a way, i think all those elements are in my music . . . (weisethaunet, interview with john scofield, ) this practice may be heard in almost every phrase of scofield’s music. he seems to be very aware of how ‘blue harmony’ – how each and every single note/bend – fits with the horizontal/vertical structures of chord progressions essential to jazz. essential to ‘harmonic texture’ is that in modern jazz (as in blues) there will often be a play of ambiguous tonality, like in scofield’s tune ‘blue matter’ (from the cd, john scofield, blue matter, gramavision, ) which centres around d, fm, b §, and then bm. blues performance may be completely stripped of what is commonly thought of as blues ‘form’/‘structure’, but it may still be the blues, as evident in the textures of the music of the late miles davis, in which scofield also played an essential role. another guitarist who brought discrepant blues phrases and ‘blue harmony’ concepts into jazz is john mclaughlin. in my earlier work (weisethaunet b), i tried to measure some of those discrepancies as pitch variations and found that one may clearly speak of a ‘microtonal’ practice. in interviewing mclaughlin, he made it clear that in his view the application of what may be called ‘blue harmony’ or ‘blue notes’ – the fundamental practice of bending notes in blues guitar and vocal performances – is not simply a question of ‘natural feeling’ as african–american blues players’ discourses may often seem to stress: nothing is ‘natural’. the first time you pick up a guitar it sounds like crap . . . (demonstrates). bending of strings and application of microtones is learned from listening, and training. that is not a question of ‘natural’ feeling. it is learned from practice; from the music; from the culture in which you are born. i worked a lot with indian musicians. still in my improvising my main influences are from jazz and rock. in the beginning i was very influenced by big bill broonzy . . . (weisethaunet a) mclaughlin also stresses that ‘bending’ of strings to certain intervals is nothing that happens by ‘chance’. it is practised and performed, i.e. it is culturally patterned as style. the influence from the stylised phrasing of blues performances of the past is also emphasised in my dialogue with another white guitar player who seems to have incorporated that element into his playing style, guitarist robben ford. ford in particular stresses the aural side of blues music; that it cannot actually be notated, but must be learned from listening to others: music is an audio experience, right? you listen to music . . . i think it is very important that you learn a lot about music just by listening . . . i learned a lot about phrasing from all the great blues guitar players, blues singers, very important you know; when i play, i very much feel like it’s the same thing as singing. i learned a lot from jimmy whiterspoon, billie holli- day, and b.b. king you know; as a singer as well as a guitar player. the blues really is the sort of thing . . . it’s definitively the thread that runs through music for me, it’s the main ingredient, it’s the thing that bind everything together, you know. (weisethaunet, interview with robben ford, july ) a question that may be raised is whether the practice that i have described as ‘blue harmony’ should be called ‘modal’. van der merwe in his important work tracing african origins in early blues forms, argues that the blues must be seen as a modal form: ‘african modality was reduced to the powerful simplicity of the blues mode’ (van der merwe , p. ). the problem still is, however, that the ‘blues mode’ can hardly be reduced to the notion of a ‘blues scale’ or the ‘modal application’ of certain scales, since the texture of ‘blue harmony’ rarely stays in one scale or ‘modality’ for very long. even each phrase or line will commonly be mixing several ‘modes’ or ‘scales’ together in the overall texture of harmony, and ‘scales’ hans weisethaunet are rarely imposed simply at a ‘horizontal’ level unrelated to the underlying pro- gressions of chords. in defining the ‘modality’ of blues, van der merwe, however, falls back on the notion of the ‘blue note’: what is the essence of the blues? all blues tunes have two things in common: one is synco- pation, and the other is a mode, which in fact is not merely a mode, but a particular kind of modality . . . the first and most fundamental thing to explain is the mode. the blues mode is actually a modal frame: that is, a framework of melodically sensitive notes interspersed with less important notes. among the notes constituting the framework are the famous blue notes, and my explanation of the blues mode must begin by defining them. like the blues in general the blue notes can mean many things. one quality they all have in common, however, is that they are flatter than one would expect, classically speaking. but this flatness may take several forms. on the one hand, it may be a microtonal affair of a quarter-tone or so. here one may speak of neutral intervals, neither major nor minor. on the other hand, the flattening may be a full semitone – as it must be, of course, on keyboard instruments. it may involve a glide, either upward or downward. again, this may be a microtonal, almost imperceptible affair, or it may be a slur between notes a semitone apart, so that there is actually not one blue note but two. a blue note may even be marked by a microtonal shake of a kind common in oriental music. (van der merwe , pp. – ) van der merwe finds that the most important degrees treated as ‘blue notes’ are the third, seventh, fifth and sixth. i think, from analysing performances and recordings, that any note of the twelve-tone chromatic scale may be ‘treated’ in such a way, but that the main question is how they appear within the complete harmonic texture. seeing ‘blue notes’ as ‘neutral intervals’ is off the track, since in performance they seem rather to be the opposite. the main problem is that van der merwe is trying to apply the western musicological notions of consonance/ dissonance to give an explanation of what is going on in blues performance: the reason why these notes change their pitch in this apparently haphazard way is that their function within the mode is also changing. it is a matter of a kind of instability rather anal- ogous to harmonic dissonance. so close is the parallel that it is not misleading to use the term ‘melodic dissonance’. just as a discord resolves on a concord, so a melodically dissonant note resolves on a melodically consonant note. and just as a seventh or ninth is the mark of discord, so the various forms of flattening that make a blue note are the mark of melodic dissonance. (van der merwe , p. ) this is the point where van der merwe’s notion of the ‘blue note’ and blues as a ‘mode’ becomes mistaken. for a blues performer the starting off and ending with a seventh, ninth or diminished chord is not necessarily a question of ‘dissonance’. this will more likely be experienced as the ‘good sounding’ chord/sounds (cf. also the quoted utterances of big bill broonzy), since this is how the harmonic and melodic tension of the blues is ‘resolved’, or rather not ‘resolved’ – but ‘played with’ – as similar to the ‘tension’ apparent in the music of stravinsky or debussy. however, this should be a question of ‘tension’ as emic experience, rather than assuming that music ‘naturally’ lends itself to end on major chords. i think the other main point is that ‘melodic dissonance’ and ‘harmonic dissonance’ should not, contra van der merwe, be seen as ‘independent’ of each other: it should be emphasized that melodic dissonance is completely independent of harmonic dissonance. melodic dissonances may occur against the background of pure triads, or in a single melodic line with no accompanying harmony at all; while conversely melodic conson- ance may go with a dissonant harmony. (van der merwe , p. ) from a performance perspective it is the ‘tension’ between the different layers (as described in the table) which creates the overall texture of ‘blue harmony’. in is there such a thing as the ‘blue note’? my view, one should not think of ‘harmony’ as something which is just played as ‘accompaniment’ to a melodic line (an idea obviously borrowed from the experience of western ‘song’ notation). it is possible that blues performances as argued by van der merwe may be called ‘blue mode’ or ‘modal’; however, the definition of modality must then be an extremely broad one as the blues performer will commonly fuse a number of ‘modal scales’ inside each phrase. the most comprehensive work on ‘modal theory’ as applied to jazz (and rock/blues) is still that of george russell’s lydian chromatic concept, in that it presents a theory and a modal map for musicians thinking in terms of mode and improvisation. the question of creating ‘harmonic texture’ in blues, as in jazz and rock, is a question of which notes are played against which lines, riffs and chords; this comprises the overall texture of ‘blue harmony’. the practice of blues performance shows that the harmonic texture of the blues infuses both ‘vertical’ and ‘horizontal’ approaches to harmony: a concept essential to under- standing how functional harmony applies to improvised music, and which is well explained by russell in his dialogue with martin williams (russell , pp. xx– xxiii, reprint from jazz review). improvising musicians will most commonly relate to both ‘vertical’ changes of chords and ‘horizontal’ lines of ‘melodic’/‘modal’/ diatonic/non-diatonic character. blues performance is deeply embedded in an experience of a tonal centre, which implies that ‘vertical’ phrases will operate in dialogue with more ‘horizontal’ (‘blues-modal’) phrases. a few examples of how this may theoretically work in actual performance can be given. in the soloing/improvising of a blues the choice could be any of the notes from the chromatic scale. however, when playing a major scale, which theoretically works well with the i chord, the major third imposed on the iv chord gives the major th, which may not be particularly ‘well sounding’ according to ‘style’. an easier way to go in a completely ‘horizontal’ blues approach is to hold on to the § (e §), which will change its function to the § as the chord changes to iv (f). further- more, as an overall effect, playing the major rd rather than the § on the i chord may be experienced ‘horizontally’ as creating more ‘tension’, as this note is usually to be avoided on the iv chord. the dorian scale ( – –§ – – – –§ ) or blues penta- tonic scale ( –§ – – –§ ) will go well horizontally on i, iv and v; however, the § of those scales gives the minor third of the dominant (v chord), where the major third to many players might sound more ‘natural’. as regards the modal application of minor scales in blues over the background of major chords, a is more commonly heard than a § , i.e. dorian rather than aeolian, a fact that may be explained because the sixth of the dorian (with its tonic on i) contains the major third of the subdomin- ant (iv). in a ‘horizontal’ approach, this implies that a b §-major scale may be used to improvise over a blues in c major (a practice russell might call ‘pan-tonal’), giving a (c) dorian i chord tonality, a (f) mixolydian iv chord tonality and a (g) aeolian v chord tonality. mixolydian over the iv chord may be perceived of as very ‘bluesy’, but aeolian over the v chord may, as already mentioned, not. most blues performers have learned how to master harmonic changes in such a way that they also may be playing on the edge of the actual chords: going inside/outside tonality as a part of making the music ‘come alive’ and ‘sound good’, similar to what russell ( ) terms ‘ingoing’/‘outgoing’ tonality in jazz. performance instruction books (the production of which has become an indus- try in itself) often set up scales to be imposed on certain chords, which may surely be a way of learning ‘harmony’ for beginners. blues performance, however, is not hans weisethaunet a question of imposing scales, but rather a practice in which a complex stylised idiom of phrasing and bending is essential to texture: to discrepancies as process. i asked robben ford, who himself has released a few instruction books of the kind mentioned, if he thought of the blues as ‘modal form’. his answer was, however: with the blues i never thought about it as a mode. i just listened to it, and i would find it on the guitar. (weisethaunet, interview with robben ford, july ) furthermore, in the mind of the blues performer there is no such thing as a twelve- or six-bar harmonic pattern: forms and patterns are internalised in such a way that he or she will never have to count measures (as beginners may have to do). as also noted by van der merwe, ‘the term ‘‘twelve-bar blues’’ is, as usual, a misnomer’ (van der merwe , p. ). also, harmony (chords) – what musicologists like to think of as fundamental structure – will be improvised: chords may be substituted (as in jazz), and the twelve-bar, six-bar, fourteen-bar formula, or whatever, may suddenly be changed or broken down on the impulse of the guitar player, the vocalist or the impro- vised break of a drummer. as expressed by the late stevie ray vaughan: the blues doesn’t have to be three chords, or two or one. it doesn’t have to be a lot of passing changes. it can be any of those combinations, or notes. (govenar , p. ) the question then is whether it is time for musicology to start measuring the pitch discrepancies of blues performance to ‘crack the code’, to find out what blues is ‘all about’. recent articles by keil, prögler, alén and others ( ) take on the task of measuring pds (as they have come to be called). the main problem with such approaches may be the danger of confusing music with mathematical representation. for what is there to measure? in the participatory processes of performance, time and tonality are felt rather than measured. hence, musicology may never be able to meas- ure experiences of ‘blue harmony’ and ‘bluesness’ because what is measured is not necessarily what is experienced or felt as significant. accounts of cultural discourse thus seem more relevant than the reified structuring of applied mathematics or com- puter formalism. having heard buddy guy perform at the club antone’s in austin, texas, and at other venues – with everyone screaming back, interacting, yelling, and ‘having the blues’ in a positive sense (i.e. i am stressing the point of process/event as the ultimate aspect of music) – the question is: how can the measuring of pitch ever take any account of blues experience? the main question still is: what aspects of the musical material are conceived of as significant to listeners and performers? ‘everyday i have the blues’ – ‘blue harmony’ as a discourse of identity there is only one b.b. there’s a lot of imitations, lot of people pick up the guitar and follow this man – but you can tell when the main person, the main man, hit it. you know it’s b.b. john lee hooker (obrecht , p. ) my conclusion is: there is no such thing as the blue note, the ‘item’ of musicol- ogy. there is no such thing as the ‘blue note’ as a strange or ‘out of tune’ third or seventh (apart from in the theories and ideologies of a few musicologists). rather than thinking of ‘blue notes’ as pitches being out of tune, ‘blue harmony’ creates a space for the play of identity in music performance. there is – as expressed by john lee hooker – only one b.b. king: you can tell when the main man ‘hit it’, or in b.b.’s own words ‘you need to put yourself into what you are doing’ (king , is there such a thing as the ‘blue note’? p. ). that is the core aesthetics of the play of notes, bends, slides and phrases, in the texture of blues performance. following keil, ‘style’ represents struggles (of ‘peoples’, ethnic segments of the working class, etc.) to keep control of their social identities in music. as such, the notion of the ‘blue note’ may have been one of many stereotypes created by the ‘white’ to make and sell ‘black culture’, i.e. ‘the blues’ as the commodity of the suffering black (keil and feld , pp. – ). as keil and feld correctly point out, the ‘sharing’ of income and control of music as industrialised commodities have never been on ‘equal terms’ as regards class, ethnicity and race. still, rather than seeing white players doing and recording blues as a ‘rip-off ’, i think the fact that blues style and discourse have remained for such a long period is because blues has come to be an effective means of artistic expression of individuality and identity in music performance, a stylisation that cannot simply be put aside as ‘nostalgia’, ‘authenticity’ or ‘roots’ megalomania (although all those elements may be part of the experience). music is also a question of good and bad performance – not only of social or moral intentions. as keil maintains, recreation through ritual has sustained these styles, and i think to the point that blues performance for black as well as (or mostly?) for white people has become an effective means of mediating experience. part of this experience is what steven g. smith has termed ‘bluesness’. i postulate that bluesness is an effectively important way of apprehending a musical process and the human world; a way of steering through musical composition and through worldly affairs; and further – considering the passion of the blues – a specially pointed way of realis- ing the mind–body relation, one that tellingly discloses how music as such is concerned with this relation. (smith , p. ) while blues lyrics most often emphasise the fact of ‘being blue’ or ‘having the blues’, the participation in blues performance may be seen as something more’ . . . ‘‘having the blues’’ is easily if inadequately equated with being sad or down, doing blues must involve something far more’ (loc. cit.). at this point it may be that the notion of ‘blue notes’ has come to metaphorise something more than pitch discrep- ancies, namely the general feeling of ‘bluesness’, not in particular linked to that of ‘blue notes’ but to that of ‘playing the blues’ or ‘having the blues’. the latter seems to have been one of the core metaphors of blues experience, as a marker of style, just as much as any formal or structural features. it is also a part of black counterdis- course in america as described by keil ( ). got the blues, can’t be satisfied got the blues, can’t be satisfied keep the blues, i’ll catch that train and ride . . . from ‘mississippi’ john hurt’s ‘got the blues’, december (okeh ). (titon , pp. – ) houston a. baker jr ( ) and henry louis gates jr ( ) place blues as the metaphorical centre of african–american experience and, therefore, literature, taking on afro-american discourse as a ‘signifying’ practice embedded in vernacu- lar theory, or in gates’ own words: afro-american culture is a complex, reflexive enterprise which finds its proper figuration in blues conceived as a matrix . . . the matrix is a point of ceaseless input and output, a web of intersecting, crisscrossing impulses always in a productive transit. afro-american blues constitute such a vibrant network. (baker , p. ) hans weisethaunet the emic concept of ‘blue notes’ is not that of pitches out of tune, but that of ‘having the blues’: the emotional one, and steven g. smith ( ) goes on to argue that ‘blues’ might be one of the central aesthetic categories of humanity, like the ‘grotesque’ and the ‘romantic’. still, there is a danger in simplifying the whole issue by seeing the ‘blues’ metaphor basically as an expression of ‘pain’, or as a coherent mythic creation and ‘parody’ of black everyday life experiences. as correctly noted by keil: bob blaumer got the title wrong in his essay ‘black culture myth or reality?’: it should be ‘myth as reality’. black people have been making it on myth, faith, hope, soul, spirit, and the intangibles for as long as i have been witnessing. (keil , p. ) i think smith gets close in describing ‘bluesness’ as ‘a conception upon indi- viduality, the most intense statement of ‘‘here i am’’ implicit in all musical utter- ance . . .’ (ibid p. ), but i think he makes a big mistake in taking as a point of departure the notion of blues as a kind of ‘anti-music’: ‘the exceptional trick it pulls off is precisely to turn anti-music fully into music’ (ibid. p. ) and in repeating stereotypes like that ‘the harmonic simplicity of blues can be regarded as immediate release from musical tensions . . . ‘(loc. cit.), even if his conclusion fortunately comes to be a different one. i think blues is foremost a means of voiced artistic expression. as such it is the expression of individuality, sociality, sharedness and loneliness, anger and grief, pain and happiness, of being, and even of being as nothingness, in vocal as well as in instrumental performance. the essential point is that blues is music. it is ‘groove’ and ‘texture’ rather than reified forms of structure. as a field of dialogue and struggle, its ‘meanings’ are diverse rather than singular or coherent. yet, the materiality of ‘blue harmony’ is fundamental to the experience of blues music and ‘blue’ elements of related styles, among them jazz and rock. what i have termed ‘blue harmony’ – rather than ‘blue notes’ – may, as illustrated, be a more complex phenomenon than is often thought. it may be easy to play the blues, but it is still not that easy to play the blues. as a stylised expression of individuality, the perform- ances occurring within the framework of ‘blue harmony’ are not that easy to tran- scribe, describe or copy. if it were that easy to play the blues, more musicians would play just as well as b.b. king, elmore james, howlin wolf, buddy guy, jimi hend- rix or eric clapton. however, according to emic conceptualisation, that is not the case: there will always be only one b.b., one muddy, and one john lee. endnotes . i would in particular like to thank charles keil . tirro cites nettl ( , p. ) as reference for for his helpful comments in the process of this quote. it is, in fact, slightly rewritten from writing this essay, as well as the many blues nettl ( , p. ). musicians that i came to know and play with . apart from the major seventh – which seldom during my stays in austin, texas, in and occurs on the i chord apart from in more ‘jazzi- . er’ styles of the blues, due to its leading tone . swedish musicologist lars lilliestam ( ) function. thus the major seventh is seldom makes a good summary of the fundamental ‘bent’. the ‘bent’ note will be the minor sev- problem of the prevailing ideology of ‘com- enth. plexity’ within musicology. moreover, as . i use this term as commonly understood as a walser ( ) argues, the point is not that of translation from the german funktionslehre. claiming blues, pop or rock to be ‘high art’ – however, it also embraces traditional western as opposed to ‘low’ – but that even ‘classical harmonic analysis, where major and minor music’ is a relatively recent cultural construct tonalities can be viewed as very distinct. (see also hobsbawn and ranger ). . i am using the notion ‘diatonic’ to stress the is there such a thing as the ‘blue note’? fact that emic/‘native’ performance theory and . in all of the interviews he particu- may not necessarily regard the major scale as larly spoke of being influenced by the blues ‘diatonic’ in the sense that it is heard as the in his improvisations and ‘harmonic thinking’ scale being ‘closest’ to the major chord. (more detailed discussion in weisethaunet . the practice here described commonly also ). involves playing a rather straight minor over . finding also notes going from higher to lower the major chord: a phenomenon that hardly pitches, i.e. the string may be bent before it is can be explained by the notion of the ‘blue played, and then lowered after it is picked, cf. note’ thought of as a ‘flat’ third. the vast number of bends to be heard in his . i see harmony as an essential part of what keil soloing on ‘every tear from every eye’ (from terms ‘texture’. as such, ‘blue harmony’ com- electric guitarist, cbs, ). prises the harmonic part of ‘texture’ (or sound . this is also the conclusion of titon as regards in emic terms) viewed both vertically and hori- the harmony of ‘down home blues’ perform- zontally (i.e. a particular relationship between ance: ‘the simplification and ambiguities are chords, melodic lines, riffs, etc., occurring at the deliberate and controlled, not accidental and different layers of performance described in the unsuccessful attempts to achieve the standard table). possibly this might also be called ‘blue progression.’ (titon , p. ) mode’ or ‘blue harmonic texture’; however, the . that is also why allan moore’s analysis categ- essential point here is that ‘blue harmony’ orising a vast number of rock/pop songs into diverges from common concepts of modality as different ‘classes’ falls short of actually describ- well as from harmonic progressions. ing what harmonically may be going on with . however, picturing blues performance purely this music (moore ). the same problem as a ‘pentatonic’ practice i think is unfortunate occurs in berendt’s definition of jazz, which as it may simplify what is going on a little too takes as a starting point a reified separation of much. harmony from melody, sound, etc.: ‘jazz, on the . a good example of transcriptions illustrating other hand, though among the most revolution- these points are dave whitehill’s transcrip- ary developments in the arts in our century, is tions of hendrix’s material, in particular his relatively traditional in respect to harmony and transcriptions of several recorded versions of melody. its newness is based on rhythm and the blues ‘red house’ (whitehill ), which sound. almost the only novel and singular hendrix himself expressed as of the ‘down thing in jazz in the harmonic domain are the home’ type, at least as regards inspiration. blue notes.’ (berendt , p. ) analysis of the personal bending styles and . the concept of ‘individuality’ and ‘identity’ typical tonal/harmonic approaches of players advocated here must be seen as constituted by like albert king, johnny winter, t-bone the social, i.e. in accordance with (and not in walker and stevie ray vaughan, is also dem- contradiction to) keil’s concept of ‘style’ as a onstrated by chipkin ( ). furthermore, process of struggle. in figuring music as a ‘pro- there are quite good transcriptions of robert cess’, i follow bakhtin’s theory of ‘dialogue’, johnson’s music by ainslie and whitehill seeing every utterance as fundamentally ( ) indicating how a ‘blue harmony’ con- social: ‘where saussure sees passive assimi- cept also seems inherent in solo performances. lation, bakhtin sees a process of struggle and . for further discussions on the significance of contradiction. and whereas saussure dichoto- ‘style’, see keil and feld . mizes the individual and the social, bakhtin . in jazz guitar playing there was a stylistic assumes that the individual is constituted by change particularly around – – mainly the social, that consciousness is a matter of dia- influenced from blues and rock – where play- logue and juxtaposition with a social other.’ ers like george benson, john mclaughlin, (stewart , p. ) john abercrombie, bill connors, terje rypdal . as lawrence levine ( , p. ) writes: ‘the and others developed playing styles that were blues was the most highly personalised, impregnated with blues phrasing and ‘blue indeed the first almost completely personal- harmony’ textures to an extent which was not ised music that afro-americans developed.’ heard in the styles of jazz players like charlie . i think it is particularly problematic to view christian, barney kessel, tal farlow, joe the contemporary field of blues experiences as pass, etc. a coherent system or ‘culture’, even though it . i met with scofield several times between is definitively a musical ‘style’. references ainslie, s., and whitehill, d. . robert johnson: at the crossroads. the authoritative guitar transcriptions (milwaukee) hans weisethaunet baker, h.a., jr. . blues, ideology, and afro-american literature. a vernacular theory (chicago) berendt, j.e. . the jazz book. from ragtime to fusion and beyond (connecticut) chipkin, k. . real blues guitar, contemporary guitar series (miami) gates, h.l., jr. . the signifying monkey. a theory of african-american literary criticism (oxford) govenar, a. . meeting the blues. interviews with legends and friends (dallas) hobsbawn, e., and ranger, t. . the invention of tradition (cambridge) keil, c. . urban blues, nd edn (chicago) keil, c., and feld, s. . music grooves. essays and dialogues (chicago) keil, prögler, alén and others. . special issue: participatory discrepancies. ethnomusicology, / king, b.b. . blues guitar. a method by b.b. king, compiled and edited by jerry snyder (new york) levine, l. . black culture and black consciousness (new york) lilliestam, l. . gehörsmusik. blues, rock och muntlig tradering, (göteborg) middleton, r. . studying popular music (milton keynes) moore, a. . ‘patterns of harmony’, popular music, / , pp. – nettl, b. . folk and traditional music of western continents, nd edn (new jersey) obrecht, j. . ‘the meeting, b.b. and the hook’, best of guitar player, b.b. king edition, pp. – russell, g. . the lydian chromatic concept of tonal organization for improvisation (new york) schuller, g. [ ]. early jazz. its roots and musical development (oxford) small, c. . music of the common tongue (london) . musicking. the meanings of performing and listening (hanover, nh) smith, s.g. . ‘blues and our mind–body problem’, popular music, / , pp. – stearns, m.w. . the story of jazz (london) stewart, s. . ‘shouts on the street: bakhtin’s anti-linguistics’, in bakhtin, essays and dialogues on his work, ed. g.s. morson (chicago), pp. – tirro, f. . jazz. a history, nd edn (new york) titon, j.t. . early downhome blues. a musical & cultural analysis, nd edn (chapel hill) van der merwe, p. . origins of the popular style. the antecedents of twentieth-century popular music (oxford) vaughan, s.r. . texas flood. recorded versions transcribed by jesse gress (milwaukee) walser, r. . ‘eruptions: heavy metal appropriations of classical virtuosity’, popular music, / , pp. – . running with the devil. power, gender, and madness in heavy metal music (hanover, nh) weisethaunet, h. . ‘john scofield – -åras ledende jazzgitarist?’, musikk praksis, / , pp. – a. ‘john mclaughlin. med disiplin fra india’, musikk praksis, / , pp. – b. modal improvisasjon i Øst og vest. en sammenlikning av improvisasjonsestetikk i to musikkulturer, ma thesis, the university of trondheim, norway . ‘rock + bop = scofield’, musikk praksis, / , pp. – whitehill, d. . hendrix. variations on a theme: ‘red house’ (milwaukee) automatic characterization of music complexity: a multi-faceted approach by sebastian streich submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of diploma of advanced studies doctorate in computer science and digital communication department of technology tutor: dr. xavier serra universitat pompeu fabra barcelona, july “i think the next century will be the century of complexity.” stephen hawking (january ) abstract the aim of this work is to present the concept of a multi-faceted music complexity descriptor set. the complexity of music is one of the less intensively researched areas in music information retrieval. especially an automated estimation based on the audio material itself has not been addressed by many researchers. how- ever, it is not only a very interesting and challenging topic, it also allows for very practical and relevant applications in music information retrieval. after giving some background information about the motivation for this re- search, we will discuss examples of practical applications, such as collection visu- alization, playlist generation, and music recommendation. in a review of former work we will see existing models for melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic complexity facets. since these are not directly applicable for our needs, we will then give a set of operational definitions for the author’s approach to the problem. prelim- inary results for rhythmic and acoustic complexity are reported and discussed. from these we sketch the steps for future work within and beyond the scope of a phd thesis. i acknowledgements at the first place i would like to thank dr. xavier serra, my supervisor, for giving me the opportunity to work on this very interesting topic in his team. also, and specially, i want to thank perfecto herrera for providing countless suggestions and constant support for my work in this research project. further thanks go to my colleagues from office , beesuan ong, emilia gómez, fabien gouyon, and enric guaus for many fruitful discussions and im- portant feedback. i also want to thank the other people – directly or indirectly – involved in the simac research project for their appreciated cooperation. this research was funded by a scholarship from universitat pompeu fabra and by the eu-fp -ist- project simac. i am thankful for this support, which was a crucial economic basis for my research. a special thank goes to the nice people that are my family whose support and encouragement was and is always very important for me. barcelona sebastian streich july , ii contents introduction . background and context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . today’s music consumption behaviour . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . music tracks as data files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . problems with digital collections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . semantic descriptors as a perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . thesis outline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . working thesis and procedure music complexity as a semantic descriptor . what is complexity? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . complexity in information theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . a philosophical point of view . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . perceptual foundations of music complexity . . . . . . . . . applicability of music complexity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . enhanced visualization and browsing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . playlist generation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . song retrieval . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . review of former work . the preferred level of complexity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . psychological experiments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii contents iv . . musicological studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . existing models for melodic complexity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the implication-realization model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . enhancements of the model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . measures for rhythmic complexity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the ps-measure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . danceability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . harmonic complexity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . preference rule system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . rewriting rules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . other related work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . information-based complexity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . complexity of short musical excerpts . . . . . . . . . . . . summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . own approaches . operational definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . acoustic complexity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . timbral complexity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . melodic complexity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . rhythmic complexity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . harmonic complexity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . structural complexity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . implementations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the dynamic component of acoustic complexity . . . . . contents v . . danceability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the dataset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . concluding remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . future work . phd thesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . filling the gaps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . evaluation strategies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . efficiency aspects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . beyond the horizon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . conclusion list of figures bibliography chapter introduction this chapter contains some remarks on the background, context, and motivation of the research presented and the researcher presenting in this document. also, some clarifications about the terminology are given, while a concise demarcation of the topic under research will be done in chapter . . background and context the author obtained the german academic degree of diplom-ingenieur (graduate engineer) in media technology from ilmenau technical university in . al- ready during the last years of his studies he specialized on the field of digital audio signal processing. in his student research project in the author worked in a group that ported an audio watermark decoder to a dsp platform. later, during his internship at nokia research center in tampere, finland, in he had the opportunity to get in touch with audio codec technology [vsv+ , ws ]. he graduated with a thesis on the design of a speaker identification system for the electronic media technology team of fraunhofer gesellschaft. after graduation, the author was employed by fraunhofer gesellschaft as a research engineer. his work was centered around metadata extraction from dig- ital audio with a focus on melody and chord estimation. in september he joined the music technology group (mtg) of pompeu fabra university in barcelona, spain, where he is enrolled in the phd program in computer sci- ence and digital communication and holds a university scholarship. the mtg http://www.iua.upf.es/mtg/ chapter . introduction consists of around researchers, mostly phd candidates, who are working on music signal processing, music information retrieval, musician-computer inter- action, and music software engineering tasks. dr. xavier serra, the head and founder of the group, has also supervised the research presented here. another very important part of the research context is the eu-fp -ist- project simac (semantic interaction with music audio contents). the project was initiated by the mtg and started in january . as the project leader, mtg is heavily involved in administration and research. the author is one of six researchers inside mtg who, lead by the research manager perfecto herrera, are working full-time for simac. the project’s main goal is the devel- opment of prototypes for the automatic generation of semantic descriptors and the development of prototypes for exploration, recommendation, and retrieval of music. further information on the project can be found in the internet under the url http://www.semanticaudio.org. the author is also a hobby musician with a classical piano education. apart from classical music for solo piano, he is also enjoying to play ensemble music from baroque to bossanova jazz. in music listening generally speaking the author has no particular preference for certain genres or artists, but likes to select individual tracks from a wide range of styles depending on the given mood and situation. . today’s music consumption behaviour music, in the western cultural world at least, is present in everybody’s life. it can be found not only at its “traditional” places like opera houses or discotheques, but appears in kitchens and nurseries, in cars and airports, bars and restaurants, parks and sport centers and in many other places. with the increased mobility of music reproduction devices nowadays everybody can bring his own personal music along and listen to it almost anywhere. but this enhanced availability of music also means that concentrated and active listening has become rare. often music serves as a background while the listener is doing something else, it is used as an acoustical “gap filler”, or as an emotional trigger [nh c]. new ways of dissemination for music have been arising and never before has it been as easy as today to get access to such a huge amount of music (more than a million titles are available from a single music portal). yet, it is not always easy to find what one is looking for. chapter . introduction . . music tracks as data files with a broader public becoming aware of efficient audio coding techniques dur- ing the last decade, the amount of music being stored and collected in digital formats increased rapidly. while in former times a music collection consisted of a conglomeration of physical media in form of vinyl discs, analogue or digital tapes, and later also compact discs, a new kind of collections emerged due to the new formats. no longer is the music in these collections attached to a physical medium, but exists merely as a string of bits that can, very easily and without degradation in quality, be moved and copied from any digital storing device to any other one. this property, apart from being very convenient, again reinforced the rapid spread of the new formats, by making it as easy as never before to share and exchange music with virtually anybody on the planet (at least with the roughly % of our world’s population who have access to the internet). nowadays, the music industry managed to hinder the wild exchange of music by filing lawsuits against operators and private users of such content exchange networks. but digital music collections already exist in large numbers and the concept of storing music tracks as digital files with all its advantages is an estab- lished fact for many music consumers. lately, legal options to buy digital music online and receive it by file transfer over the world wide web are arising, often combined with some sort of digital rights management that is supposed to pre- vent consumers from “shamelessly” copying and sharing their new acquisitions. last but not least, alternative models of copyrighting and licensing musical con- tent are emerging (e. g. creative commons ) and contribute a small but growing part to the music that can be found and obtained from the internet. david kusek and gerd leonhard, two music futurists, even coin the term of “music as water” [kl ] in order to describe the change of attitude towards music, music consumption, and music ownership that is in the process of establishing itself: “imagine a world where music flows all around us, like water, or like electricity, and where access to music becomes a kind of ‘utility’. not for free, per se, but certainly for what feels like free.” http://creativecommons.org/ chapter . introduction . . problems with digital collections despite the many advantages that came with this “digital revolution” we can observe some negative effects, too. the flexibility that music tracks in form of individual files provide goes along with a demand for a proper storage organiza- tion and labelling. while in a physical collection an item might be declared lost when it cannot be found, in a large virtual collection this can be said already when there are no means to search for it. the freedom to create personalized play lists and to listen to music tracks independently from concepts like albums or compilations requires on the other hand a good knowledge of the collection at hand in order to arrive at satisfying results. when typing errors in filenames, a lack of systematics, and inconsistency in the manually assigned labels occur in such a collection, navigation and utilization become difficult and limited. another aspect of bit strings representing music is their volatility and re- producibility. with the move of a finger they can be erased and they are gone without leaving any trace. or they can be replicated with very little effort basi- cally infinite times at no cost other than the disk space to store them. especially the latter has an impact on the value that is assigned to such an item. according to the theory of supply and demand a commodity with finite demand but infinite supply has a price of zero (of course this cannot be applied directly to music). as an illustration: if i go into a record shop to buy an album and the salesman gives me two copies for the price of one, i will consider this a true benefit, because i can give one copy to a friend or resell it. if i buy the same album from an online shop and they offer me to download it twice by paying only once, i would just find it silly. this gives a good hint for understanding why people are so “gen- erous” to offer their complete collection of music files for anybody to download without any charge. and it also helps understanding why people do not feel shy to download or copy music from others without paying and without feeling they do something unjust. especially in the times of free peer-to-peer music sharing networks this configuration boosted the dissemination and the enforcement of digital music formats, which are a matter of fact nowadays. on the other hand, this excess of digital tracks decreased the appreciation for the individual item. so some private collections have been extended for the sake of collecting rather than because of a particular interest in the material. summarizing we can say that to date probably many hard disks exist which chapter . introduction contain a large collection of digital music, but the owner is ignorant about the full potential of it. even if he or she is not, it means a lot of effort to fully exploit it and rather sooner than later the currently available tools reach their limits. with the new way of music dissemination through online portals like for example itunes or y!music the problem of searching, browsing, and navigating a (unfamiliar) music collection is brought to an even larger scale. . . semantic descriptors as a perspective slowly, tools and technologies are starting to spread that intent to enhance and facilitate the interaction with digital music collections. the key component of such tools is the assignment of semantic descriptors to the tracks. these descrip- tors capture certain properties and attributes of the music content, for example the tempo, the instrumentation, or the lead singer’s gender. these properties usually reveal themselves automatically to a human who is listening to a music track and hence are potentially relevant information. therefore a link between the pure digital audio data and the semantic concepts describing the content of- fers much more natural ways of searching in music collections than it is currently possible. instead of being limited to titles, artists, and genres as the means of a query even very subtle or abstract aspects of music could be used. apart from the enhanced querying, also an extended interaction becomes possible. browsing through a collection, be it one’s own or a foreign one, where different musical aspects are visualized (see figure . ) is not only amusing, but also may lead to a better understanding of the music. similarities between dif- ferent styles or artists can be discovered, the evolution of a band can be tracked, extreme examples can be identified. this playful and educational side effect could then again lead to a more attentive way of music listening, increasing pleasure and appreciation. but not only for the human do semantic descriptors bring additional oppor- tunities. if they are organized in a machine readable way, there is an access for information processing devices to the properties of music which are relevant for a human listener. basically, this allows computers to mimic a human’s mu- sic perception behaviour. so instead of the human browsing the collection, the http://www.apple.com/itunes/ http://launch.yahoo.com/ chapter . introduction figure . : screenshot from a music browser interface displaying part of a song collection organized by danceability and dynamic complexity. computer could do this automatically and identify for example clusters of sim- ilar tracks. thus, the computer is enabled to generate play lists according to given criteria or to recommend to the user similar tracks to a selected example track. so we see that providing machine readable semantic descriptors for the tracks in a collection opens the door for a large variety of interesting methods of sorting, searching, filtering, clustering, classifying, and visualizing. but how can we arrive there? different ways exist to assign semantic descriptors to music. it is possible (although expensive) to have a group of music professionals annotate them. this is of course usually not an option for private collections. still, the metadata - once annotated - could be stored in a public database and would then be associated through a fingerprinting service with the files in a private collec- tion. to some extent the descriptors can also be assigned by a whole community of listeners by majority vote or by using collaborative filtering techniques. this involves quite some coordinative efforts and furthermore involves a delay until reliable data for a new track becomes available. the most practical and versatile option however is the automatic computation of descriptors based on the audio file itself. this way, an objective, consistent, inexpensive, and detailed annota- tion can be accomplished. the research presented here is about this third option of descriptor extraction. chapter . introduction . thesis outline after this introduction a very compact description of the research procedure will be given in chapter defining the scope of this research. in the following chapter we will then look at different views on complexity and discuss the details of the underlying concept for music complexity as we want to approach it. afterwards, a review of related research is presented in chapter . we will see that several models capturing aspects of music complexity were already proposed in the liter- ature, but that their application to the task we have in mind is problematic or at least not straightforward. in chapter we first consider in more detail how the different facets of music complexity can be approached from the computational perspective. a description of two original contributions of the author follows. the implementations of acoustic and rhythmic complexity models (danceability) are explained, and first results are discussed. in chapter the roadmap for the phd thesis and some ideas reaching beyond will be rolled out. the document concludes with a bottomline of the research presented here. chapter working thesis and procedure it is the goal of this research work to provide operational models for the auto- mated computation of music complexity as it is perceived by human listeners. we regard the complexity of music as a high-level, intuitive attribute, which can be experienced directly or indirectly by the active listener, so it could be estimated by empirical methods. in particular we define the complexity as that property of a musical unit which determines how much effort the listener has to put into following and understanding it (see also section . ). the proposed models are intended to provide a compact description of the musical content, which can be utilized to facilitate the user interaction with music databases. since music has different and partly independent facets, we will address these individually with separate models (see also section . ). we consider the following musical facets, that are also illustrated in figure . : � melody � harmony � rhythm � timbre � acoustics (spatial/dynamic) � structure throughout this document we will use the term “perception” although “cognition” might be considered more appropriate at some places. however, we want to omit this distinction here and consecutively use “perceptual” as the contrasting term to “technical”. chapter . working thesis and procedure figure . : circle of music complexity facets. the descriptors are going to be designed for the track level. that means a complete track of music is considered the unit on which the models are working. the segmentation into tracks is assumed to be given already, so the application to a stream (as in broadcast monitoring) is not addressed. neither will we address the individual characteristics of users’ complexity perceptions. instead it is the goal to provide models for the “common sense” in music complexity rating (see section . . ). we want to focus rather on a näıve complexity estimation without taking expert knowledge about style-specific mu- sical peculiarities into account. that means we are interested in a classification on a large, but rougher scale rather than a precise ranking taking finest nuances into account. for the latter we would have to focus in detail on a particular user’s musical background and listening habits. the former can be achieved by assuming a common background for a certain group of users and then restrict- ing the validity of the provided models only to this group. we chose the group of non-expert music listeners with western cultural background as the intended users for our models, since it forms a large fraction of the users dealing with the above mentioned music databases. chapter music complexity as a semantic descriptor semantic descriptors for music content can come in many forms, because music is rich in aspects and levels of abstraction. this said we immediately arrive at a new problem. which are useful semantic descriptors to be used? there is no obvious solution to this problem and most likely there is more than just one answer depending on the application and maybe even on the content itself. obviously the extracted descriptors should capture features of the music that are relevant to human listeners. furthermore, it would be considered positively, if the descriptors are compact in their representation, and their meaning is easy to be comprehended. of course there are a lot of descriptors fulfilling these demands. in the following we will mainly consider one small fraction of them: the multiple facets of music complexity. . what is complexity? the term complexity is understood differently in different contexts. it is a term that everybody seems to know, but still a unified definition is difficult to find. furthermore, it is a fancy term to use in order to raise interest, which edmonds in [edm ] describes with the following metaphor: “the label of ‘complexity’ often performs much the same role as that of the name of a desirable residential area in estate agent’s advertisements. it is applied to many items beyond the original area but which are still somewhere in the vicinity.” so, despite a compact working chapter . music complexity as a semantic descriptor definition for the use in this research work has already been given in chapter , we dedicate some space in this section to cover the scientific background of the term, and to clarify our understanding in the context of music. . . complexity in information theory in information theory there exist different measures that can be associated with complexity. the most “traditional” one is probably the concept of source entropy introduced in by shannon [sha ]. entropy measures the randomness of the output from an information source, by specifying the average amount of information for each symbol si emitted by the source according to the following formula: h = − n∑ i= p(si) · log p(si), ( . ) where n is the number of distinct symbols and p(si) is the probability that symbol si is emitted. high entropy values would be associated with higher com- plexity, since the information rate is higher. equation . assumes a memoryless source, like the flipping of a coin or the rolling of a dice, where the preceding symbol in the sequence has no influence at all on the symbols to follow. this assumption is not justified in many practical applications. for structured data as texts for example, the probability of a symbol depends strongly on its prede- cessors. in information theory the terms markovian source and markov chain are used in these cases. equation . can be adapted for a markov chain by tak- ing the corresponding conditional probabilities into account. if only the direct predecessor is relevant (as in a first order markov chain), the equation takes the following form: h = − n∑ i= p(si) n∑ j= p(sj|si) · log p(sj|si), ( . ) where p(sj|si) denotes the conditional probability of symbol sj appearing after symbols si in the sequence. h is the upper bound for h and any higher order entropy of a given source, since the structural regularities captured by the conditional probabilities can only decrease randomness. the most widespread definition of complexity in the information theory field originates from the theory of algorithmic information. referring to one of the main scientists behind it this definition is usually called kolmogorov complexity chapter . music complexity as a semantic descriptor (see [gv ] for a short introduction). in contrast to entropy it addresses the absolute information content of an object, which is the amount of data that needs to be transmitted in the absence of any other a priori knowledge. it is defined as the length of the shortest program p (in bits), that can generate the sequence s. formally we can write: k(s) = min(|p| : t (p) = s), ( . ) where t (p) refers to the output of a universal turing machine executing p. thanks to its general nature kolmogorov complexity has been applied also in the digital audio domain (see [sch ]) as a way to prove mathematically the advantages of structured audio in generalized audio coding. the striking quality of both concepts is the objectivity of the measures. kol- mogorov complexity and shannon entropy both exist as exclusive properties of the object and are completely independent from an observer. but when consid- ering musical audio signals we face problems. first, the entropy measure needs a finite set of discrete symbols being emitted from the source, but this is not what we have. the signal would need to be converted somehow into symbols like the letters in a written text, which is not very straightforward. despite that music can be generated with a keyboard it is usually much more than the output of a “typewriter” . secondly, both measures are rather technical focusing on an efficient encod- ing, while we are interested in the reception by humans. a practical example illustrating this difference very well is given by standish in [sta ]. he points out that a random sequence of numbers will always yield a maximum complexity al- though it does not contain any meaningful information for a human. comparing a random string of characters with the manuscript of a theater play, the random sequence would yield the higher kolmogorov complexity value, because there is no program shorter than the sequence itself. however, for a human the order would be exactly reversed, because the random string is perceived as meaning- less noise, while the theater play is recognized as a sophisticated, multi-layered setting (at least if it is a good one). the apparent objectivity of the measure makes it meaningless when context has to be considered. standish suggests the use of equivalence classes to overcome this. an equiv- this can be experienced easily by comparing a monophonic mobile phone ringing tone with a live performance of the same piece. chapter . music complexity as a semantic descriptor alence class for him is the set of all mutations of a sequence that are equivalent in a given context. so for example different random sequences could hardly be distinguished by a human observer and would therefore form a large equivalence class. on the other hand, for a written text carrying a meaning, only relatively few mutations exist that would be judged as equivalent. this judgement depends not only on the data itself but also the context in which it is observed. if the equivalence classes are considered in the complexity computation, we arrive at more meaningful results from a human’s point of view. but still we do not have a practical solution. the decision of what is equivalent and what is not does not seem to be very straightforward, especially when it comes to music. further- more there is no closed mathematical solution for computing the kolmogorov complexity and it remains a rather theoretical measure. . . a philosophical point of view edmonds, who is reviewing the matter of complexity from the philosophical point of view [edm ], gives us the following definition: complexity is “[t]hat property of a language expression which makes it difficult to formulate its overall behav- iour, even when given almost complete information about its atomic components and their inter-relations.” this is a very general statement leaving (purposely) a lot of room for inter- pretation depending on the given context where it is to be applied. although it is not explicit in the statement, edmonds considers a subjective element of complexity, because what “makes it difficult” can vary with the context and the observer. we can agree on this definition also for the case of musical complexity, yet, it does not bring us much closer to an implementable model. how do we identify the aspects of music that make the formulation of the overall behaviour difficult? what are the atomic components we should consider in this context? however, we can take out at least two ideas from this statement. first, we can think of complexity as being a property that varies along an axis between easi- ness and difficulty. second, it is a kind of meta-descriptor, because it describes a certain property of lower-level descriptors (atomic components) when they are arranged to form a bigger unit. so by nature a complexity descriptor is com- pact even though it might contain information about a wide-stretched temporal process. chapter . music complexity as a semantic descriptor in the case of music it is not unambiguous to speak of a unit. music can be structured on different levels. for the applications we have in mind it is advantageous to consider the music tracks that can be found in a collection as the units whose complexity is to be described. this way, we can avoid additional problems of segmentation (still an unsolved problem for musical audio [oh ]) and simply rely on the assumption that one digital file corresponds to one musical unit. it is worthwhile mentioning that it could also make sense to go below the track level and provide complexity estimates for smaller fractions. in fact, an instant computation of complexity estimates in a sliding window fashion itself could be helpful in segment identification or other tasks related to very high- level aspects of music. however, we save these considerations for the chapter on future work. . . perceptual foundations of music complexity if we move our focus more from the general towards the specific, we can find the following remark on music complexity by finnäs. in [fin ] he states that “unusual harmonies and timbres, irregular tempi and rhythms, unexpected tone sequences and variations in volume” raise the level of perceived complexity. this statement is neither exhaustive nor precise. however it brings some aspects into play, which are special for music and therefore interesting for us. we can see that finnäs mentions very different facets of music (harmony, rhythm, volume, . . . ) that are at least partly independent from each other. nevertheless, they all are or can be of relevance for the level of musical complexity. for example one music track can contain very sophisticated rhythm patterns, but no melodic voice at all. another one might have unexpected changes in volume and timbre, but very straightforward melody and chord sequences. which one should be rated more complex? looking at the problem this way calls for a multi-faceted approach with an individual complexity estimation for each facet, as we already proposed in chapter . a joint measure of global complexity does not necessarily make sense under these circumstances. the terms “unusual”, “irregular”, and “unexpected” again lead to context dependency and subjectivity. whether an event is expected or unexpected is not completely immanent in the event itself. in extreme cases both could be true, chapter . music complexity as a semantic descriptor depending on who we ask. this is of course not very encouraging for somebody who is supposed to develop a computer model that gets only the event descrip- tion (in our case obtained from the audio data) as an input. it is obvious that not everybody will share the same opinion about the complexity of a particular piece of music, depending on his or her individual musical knowledge and the familiarity with special musical styles. however, if we restrict ourselves – as pro- posed in chapter – to only deal with individuals from a certain cultural heritage (i. e. eliminating influences from different tuning or scale systems, etc.) we can still identify something like a musical “common sense”. it can be understood for example as the ability to judge whether a singer is singing in tune or not, to clap on the beat, or to distinguish consonant from dissonant chords. neurologi- cal experiments for example by barbara tillmann et al. proved the existence of such effects (e. g. in [tbb ]). tillmann refers to the cause as implicit learning of music by mere exposure. so simply by frequent exposure to music in their everyday life humans unconsciously learn certain immanent regularities or rules of the music. violation of these rules then increases the effort a listener has to put into “decoding” or processing the music and thus increases the perceived complexity according to our definition. at this point there is also a link to gestalt theory, which assumes the existence of certain universal principles like proximity, continuation, closure, etc. that are supposed to be “hardwired” in our perception (see e. g. [bre ]). these principles have very similar effects as the implicitly learned rules, but they are given to us already by birth and hence do not have to be induced through frequent exposure to stimuli of a certain type. while learned rules are stored in long-term memory, the gestalt principles are operational directly in short-term memory due to the organization and design of our “operating system”. this implies that the gestalt principles do not even depend on cultural background and environment, but form – in the widest sense of the word – a “common sense” for the perception of stimuli. for example the implication-realization model for melodic complexity by narmour [nar ], which will be reviewed in section . , is built on these principles. we want to consider this “common sense” or implicit knowledge as the basis for our complexity estimations. so rather than adapting to individual peculiar- ities of single music listeners we want to provide a general model, which is able to make predictions on a large scale that everybody can agree on with a small chapter . music complexity as a semantic descriptor amount of error tolerance. it is however very interesting to follow the thought of a learning complexity agent system adapting to its owner’s preferences and advancing in its estimations along with him. we will get back to this idea in chapter . . applicability of music complexity we now explained what we refer to with the term “music complexity”. after these, up to this point, quite academic considerations we will now turn to the practical motivation of the described concept. why should musical complexity descriptors be particularly interesting for the normal music consumer? the answer has two parts. first, it is not too far fetched that certain facets of complexity might be directly relevant for the listener. for example if i am interested in finding danceable music for a party, the rhythmic complexity already provides a useful parameter for my search. or if i am looking for “easy listening” music, i might restrict my search to tracks at the lower end of the complexity scale on one or on several dimensions. for the second part of the answer we have to go back to the year where we find a publication by daniel berlyne [ber ]. in this publication he states that an individual’s preference for a certain piece of music is related to the amount of activity it produces in the listener’s brain, to which he refers as the arousal potential. according to this theory there is an optimal arousal potential that causes the maximum liking, while a too low as well as a too high arousal potential result in a decrease of liking. he illustrates this behaviour by an inverted u- shaped curve (see figure . ) which was originally introduced in the th century already by wundt [wun ] to display the interrelation between pleasure and stimulus intensity. berlyne identifies three different categories of variables affecting arousal (see [ber ] for details). as the most significant he regards the collative variables, containing among others complexity, novelty/familiarity, and surprise effect of the stimulus. since we are intending to model exactly these aspects of music with our descriptor, it is supposed to be very well suited for reflecting the potential liking of a certain piece of music. we will return to this topic and review several related experiments in section . . chapter . music complexity as a semantic descriptor figure . : the wundt curve for the relation between music complexity and preference. this said we can now flesh out the motivations for the use of semantic de- scriptors given in section . . . when a user is interacting with a music database or a music collection three major tasks can be identified: . providing an appropriate interface for navigation and exploration. . the generation of a program (playlist) based on the user’s input. . the retrieval of songs that match the user’s desires. we can identify applications of complexity descriptors in all three tasks, which is discussed in the three following sections. . . enhanced visualization and browsing for smooth navigation and exploration of databases a well-designed visualization of the contents is a crucial condition. this is a very difficult task when it comes to large amounts of complex data like music tracks. one example for such visual- ization is the islands of music application, developed by elias pampalk [pam ]. this application uses the metaphor of islands and sea to display the similarity of songs in a collection. similar songs are grouped together and represented by an island, while dissimilar ones are separated from them through “the sea”. the application uses features that are motivated from psychoacoustic insights, and processes them through a self-organizing map (som). in order to compute sim- ilarity between songs the sequence of instantaneous descriptor values extracted from each song has to be shrunken down to one number. pampalk does this by chapter . music complexity as a semantic descriptor taking the median. he reports satisfying results, but at the same time states that the median is not a good representation for songs with changing properties (e. g. bimodal feature distributions). here, the complexity descriptors have a clear advantage, because by default they consist only of one number which represents the whole track and thus do not need to be further reduced by basic statistical measures, like the mean or the median. obviously, complexity represents a self-contained concept and is not intended to from an alternative to the use of such measures. as pointed out in the beginning of this section, the different complexity descriptors reflect specific characteristics of the music that are potentially of direct relevance for the listener. the descriptors are therefore very well suited to facilitate the visualization of musical properties the user might want to explore. it is straightforward to plot the whole collection in a plane showing for example rhythmic complexity versus loudness complexity without the need for specifying a similarity metric (see also figure . on page ). another aspect is the possibility of a more “musicological” way of interaction with a music collection. by providing the link between the actual audio and the musical content description a user might increase his knowledge about the music in his own or a different collection. common properties of music from different artists or different genres might be discovered. the changes in musi- cal characteristics over time for a particular band can be made visible. also here the complexity descriptors form an interesting addition, which opens new opportunities that are still to be explored. . . playlist generation a playlist is a list of titles to be played like a musical program. a user interacting with a database might ask for the automated generation of such a list. as pachet, roy, and cazaly point out in [prc ] the creation of such a list has to be taken serious, since “[t]he craft of music programming is precisely to build coherent sequences, rather than just select individual titles.” a first step towards coherence is to set certain criteria the songs have to fulfill in order to be grouped into one playlist. the user could be asked to provide a seed song for the playlist and the computer would try to find tracks from the database which have similar descriptor values. pachet, roy, and cazaly go further and look at an even more advanced chapter . music complexity as a semantic descriptor way of playlist generation capturing the two contradictory aspects of repetition and surprise. listeners have a desire for both, as they state, since constant repetition of already known songs will cause boredom, but permanent surprise by unknown songs will probably cause stress. in their experiments pachet, roy, and cazaly use a hand edited database containing, among others, attributes like type of melody or music setup. we can see a correspondence here to melodic and timbral complexity, that encourages the utilization of complexity descriptors for playlist generation. an alternative way of playlist generation, which gives more control to the user, is that of using user specified high-level concepts as for example party- music or music for workout. inside the simac project methods are explored to arrive at such a functionality. a playlist could then be easily compiled by selecting tracks with the according label. the bottleneck here is the labelling of the tracks, which might be a lot of work in a big collection. since the labels are personalized and may only have validity for the user who invented them, there is no way to obtain them from a centralized metadata service. instead the user can try to train the system to automatically classify his tracks and assigning the personalized labels. for this process semantic descriptors are needed that help in distinguishing whether a track should be assigned a certain label or not. it depends of course very much on the nature of the label to identify descriptors that are significant for this distinction. in any case, the complexity descriptors certainly have a potential to be useful here, as can be seen from the examples at the beginning of this section. . . song retrieval for song retrieval there are different possibilities in a music database. the most obvious one is the direct specification of parameters by the user. since the complexity descriptors consist of only one value per track, they can be used very easily in queries. the user can specify constraints only for those facets he is interested in and narrow down the set of results. this way it is very straightforward to find music that, for example, does not change much in loudness level over time, or contains sophisticated chord patterns. a second way of querying is the so called query-by-example approach. the user presents one or several songs to the database and wants to find similar chapter . music complexity as a semantic descriptor ones. so, as explained for the visualization using similarity measures, here the complexity descriptors can easily be integrated into the computation again. the weighting and/or the tolerance for the different descriptors could be specified by the user directly, extracted from the provided example, or taken from a pre- computed user profile. such a user profile would be established by monitoring the user’s listening habits (i. e. songs he/she has in his/her collection; songs he/she listens to very frequently, etc.) as in the recommender application developed in the simac project. finally, we can think of a music recommender that does not even need an example song. if the user’s common listening behaviour is known it should be possible to establish a “complexity profile”. this can be understood for example as a histogram for the complexity values where either the number of tracks or the listening frequency is monitored. from such a histogram it should be possible to identify the user’s optimal complexity level in berlyne’s sense (see figure . on page ). tracks matching this level could then be selected as recommendations for the user imitating the recommendations of friends with a similar musical taste. it should be stated that complexity is of course not the only criteria that should be used here, but according to berlyne and others plays an important role for potential preference. some experiments on this relationship are reviewed in section . . chapter review of former work after the subject of our research has been explained and specified, and the in- tended applications have been described we will now have a closer look at the work that has already been done in this area. we will first review several ex- perimental findings in the context of berlyne’s theory of arousal potential. then we address different complexity facets where former work is already available. these are melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic complexities. finally, we take brief look at two alternative concepts of complexity. . the preferred level of complexity we pointed out in section . that according to berlyne’s theory of arousal poten- tial [ber ] the level of perceived complexity of a piece of music can be associated with the preference for it. our research is not intending to provide evidence for the validity of this theory. rather than exploiting the psychological aspects be- tween perceived complexity and preference, we focus on the development of a computational model of complexity for music. however, the former aspect plays an important role in the motivation for our research. hence, we want to give some room here to report about studies that have been published on the matter. . . psychological experiments berlyne himself conducted several studies during the s and s ([ber ], [ber ], and [ber ]) on the connection between arousal potential and hedonic chapter . review of former work value (liking) of artistic stimuli. he has considered not only auditory, but also visual and combined stimuli in his experiments. he has found strong evidence for the existence of the inverted-u relationship as depicted in figure . on page which led to his theory of arousal potential. as mentioned above he identified different types of variables to contribute to arousal potential ([ber ] pp. – ): � intensive variables (e. g. pitch, color, energy) � affective variables (e. g. anxiety, pain, gratification) � collative variables (e. g. novelty, surprisingness, complexity) berlyne considered the collative variables the most important ones of the three types. with respect to music complexity in particular, heyduk in [hey ] reports about an experiment with four custom-built piano compositions of different com- plexity levels. complexity was varied in two facets: chord structure and syncopa- tion. he found strong evidence for berlyne’s theory by analyzing the ratings for preference and complexity given by a group of subjects. while berlyne used the term arousal potential for the combination of different factors determining preference, heyduk follows the terminology of walker [wal ] and talks about psychological complexity. it is important to note the distinction to a pure stim- ulus complexity here. the latter would be fixed and objective, very much like the kolmogorov complexity mentioned in section . . . the former includes the latter, but is also determined by attributes like novelty, uncertainty and arousal properties. it is a subjective property, because it only becomes manifest in the encounter of an individual with the stimulus. steck and machotka [sm ] conducted an experiment using random se- quences of sinusoidal tones as stimuli. all tones were equally loud and had equal duration within one “composition” of approximately s length. dif- ferent levels of complexity were constructed by varying the tone duration (and thus the tone rate) from s down to ms. the analysis of preference ratings from subjects revealed a clear inverted-u relationship on the objective com- plexity levels. however, when presenting only subsets of the test samples which were taken from adjacent complexity levels, again an inverted-u relationship was found within each subset. even more interesting is their observation that the chapter . review of former work relative position of maximal preference inside each subset was fixed. that means the preferred level of complexity was not absolute, but relative for the presented stimuli. hargreaves and north point to two potential problems with respect to berlyne’s theory: the influence of the listener’s mood and intention when se- lecting music, and the dependence on the appropriateness of the music for the listening situation [nh a]. it seems obvious that the same listener will prefer different types of music whether he is driving a car, relaxing on the sofa, or dancing in the club. so when they asked subjects to rate the preference for the music in a cafeteria, they indeed found an inverted-u shaped relation between complexity and preference. however, the effects were mediated by musical style. organ music of the same complexity level as new age music was liked less in this listening situation. in another study [nh b] they show that preference and pleasantness of music have to be distinguished. preference and arousal potential were again found to relate through the inverted-u curve in this study. but north and hargreaves argue that a subject with an antipathy against brass music for instance will not be pleased by this music, whether it matches the optimal com- plexity level or not. in this sense, optimal complexity only provides the potential for a maximum of pleasure a subject might experience, but does not determine it completely. conversely, a subject might find pleasure in listening to music that does not possess the optimal level of complexity. however, pleasure would reach a maximum when the right level of complexity and a general liking coincide in a piece of music. a quite recent study by orr and ohlsson [oo ] addressed the dependency of musical expertise on preference. they used natural stimuli, bluegrass and jazz solos, at different complexity levels, which were purposely performed and recorded for their experiments. four different groups of subjects were asked to rate perceived complexity and liking for the stimuli. one group consisted of subjects with no musical training, a second one was composed of subjects with moderate training in music, the third and fourth group consisted of professional jazz and bluegrass musicians. the results reported by orr and ohlsson indicate two things. first, it seems that the significance of complexity for preference decreases with increasing musical expertise, unless complexity itself is learned as an aesthetic criterion. this can be seen from the fact that for the group of professional jazz musicians an inverted-u relationship could not be identified. for chapter . review of former work the professional bluegrass musicians the inverted-u relationship only appeared for their ratings of bluegrass music. the authors interpret this effect insofar as complexity might represent an explicit aesthetic criterion in bluegrass music, which has been learned by the professionals. the group of untrained subjects was the one where the inverted-u became apparent the most for either musical style. the moderately trained group revealed this effect only in case of the bluegrass samples. so secondly, the importance of optimal complexity seems also to depend on the music style. we have reviewed so far only psychological studies using selected stimuli where the complexity was purposely varied in a controlled test environment. it is also interesting to consider studies that where conceived the other way around, that means observing preference indicators of real music and then relating these with complexity estimations. . . musicological studies eerola and north [en ] report about their analysis of beatles songs, all written by and for the beatles in the years between and . from midi- transcriptions of the songs they extracted the melodies and analyzed the melodic complexity with their expectancy-based model (see section . ). a highly sig- nificant increasing trend was found for melodic complexity over the time period. secondly, the authors compared the complexity values with indicators of com- mercial success of the songs and albums. the chart position and the time in the charts were both negatively correlated with melodic complexity. so the higher the complexity, the less popular were the songs. although this is a clear sign of relevance between complexity and popularity, the authors point out that other factors of social, cultural, or commercial kind certainly have an influence as well. since they were not considered in the study, care has to be taken in drawing con- clusions. however, they make reference to simonton [sim a], who also found a clear connection between melodic complexity and popularity. his results stem from an extensive study of , melodic themes of classical music. a study by parry [par ] comes to similar conclusions. he analyzed the melodic and rhythmic complexity of songs that were listed in the billboard modern rock top within the period from january to june of . the complexity was estimated using midi transcriptions of the songs and is based on a very basic self-similarity measure. as indicators for the chart performance chapter . review of former work the number of weeks in the charts, average weekly change in rank, peak ranking, and debut ranking were considered. parry found the number of weeks in the charts being positively correlated with both, rhythmic and melodic complexity. the former was also positively correlated with the peak ranking. for the aver- age change in rank a negative correlation was found with melodic complexity, indicating that higher melodic complexity inhibited rapid changes. the debut ranking revealed no statistically significant correlation with the two complexity measures. . . conclusion as a conclusion we can say that a certain relationship between preference and complexity of music cannot be denied. based on the rather scarce evidence the correlation, however, seems to be not as simple as we could guess from berlyne’s theory. other factors, as mentioned, also show effects and might under certain circumstances completely overrule the influence of complexity on preference. it should therefore not be expected to have found the holy grail of music recom- mendation with the usage of complexity descriptors. on the other hand, the reported findings clearly prove the relevance of complexity in music listening, especially for non-expert listeners. providing complexity descriptors for music therefore should be able to enhance human interaction with music collections, which is the goal of the research presented here. . existing models for melodic complexity . . the implication-realization model already back in eugene narmour proposed a model for melodic complex- ity. this implication-realization model, as he calls it, is extensively described in [nar ]. the model hierarchically builds up larger structures from smaller elements and thus possesses different levels. the predictions are most clearly specified on the lowest level, which is the tone-to-tone level. any melodic inter- val that is perceived as being “open” (incomplete sounding) is said to create an implication on the listener’s side. that means it raises certain expectations in the listener about how the sequence is supposed to continue. figure . illus- chapter . review of former work figure . : illustration of the implication-realization process (from [sapm ]). trates this process for the tone-to-tone level. the first interval implies a second one to follow, while the relative thickness of the arrows indicates that different continuations can be implied with different strength. factors that contribute to closure (i. e. the opposite of openness) at the single-interval (tone-to-tone) level are [sapm ] � a longer duration of the second tone than the first one (e. g. eighth note followed by quarter note) � a higher stability of the second tone in the established musical key (e. g. ti followed by do) � a stronger metrical emphasis of the second tone (e. g. at the first beat of a measure). frequent realization of these expectations reveals a low level of complexity; fre- quent disappointment reveals a high level of complexity, because the structure of the melody is hard to decode. it has to be pointed out that the development of this model was guided by gestalt principles only, implying validity completely chapter . review of former work independent from the listener’s cultural or musical background. narmour him- self states about the principles that they are “innate, hardwired, bottom-up, brute, automatic, subconscious, panstylistic, and resistant to learning” (as cited by [sapm ]). . . enhancements of the model the ir-model inspired many experiments. it was reduced by schellenberg to its basic principles. he proved experimentally that his simplified version had the same explanatory power as the original [sch ]. eerola and north report in [en ] about an experiment where they assessed an enhanced version of the ir-model. they point out that the traditional information theorist view of complexity does “not address the role of the listener’s perceptual system in organising the structural characteristics of music”. therefore they propose an expectancy-based model (ebm) to estimate complexity. their model for melodic complexity is also inspired by narmour, but they include some additional fea- tures derived from a symbolic representation of the music. in their evaluation they found that tonality (modified by metrical position and tone duration), the intervallic principles registral direction and intervallic difference, and the rhyth- mic principles syncopation and rhythmic variability showed significant capability in predicting listeners’ complexity judgements. comparing the prediction ac- curacy of this model with an information-theoretic and a transition probability model([sim b]), they found it to be the best one. eerola, toiviainen, and krumhansl conducted experiments showing, how the accuracy of the model can be further improved by taking a larger melodic context into account [etk ]. since the focus of the original model is limited to two notes at a time only, it neglects the impact of the longer-term melodic evolution (e. g. repetition of motives) on the listeners’ predictions of continuation. however, their modifications were aiming more towards a real-time modelling of listeners’ continuation predictions than towards a more accurate estimation of the overall complexity. chapter . review of former work . . conclusion as a conclusion we can say that the problem of melodic complexity is mostly solved already. with the extended model from eerola we already have an auto- matic complexity estimation for melodies that fits our needs. eerola even made the implementation of his and several other models available in the midi toolbox for matlab [et ]. however, there is one problem here. the model, as well as all the other variants presented in this section, requires an accurate symbolic representation of the melody in order to arrive at valid results. usually, digital music files do not have this symbolic description attached to them. the key problem thus remains in the automatic extraction of the melody from the audio stream in order to apply the existing complexity model in a second step to the transcription. but current methods are still far from reaching such transcrip- tions from arbitrary music tracks with a sufficient accuracy. the best algorithm for melodic pitch tracking in polyphonic signals in ismir contest achieved only an average accuracy of % [gso+ ]. this figure does not even include note segmentation. however, only a few wrong notes in the melody completely mislead the complexity estimation. so unfortunately it is currently not possible to apply the existing models directly in the application context of our research. . measures for rhythmic complexity . . the ps-measure shmulevich and povel introduced in [sp ] the ps-measure for rhythmic com- plexity. they state, with reference to [ess ], that a listener tries to establish an internal clock, when hearing rhythmic music. according to this clock the listener then segments the rhythm pattern and tries to code the segments. so a rhythmic pattern will appear complex, when either the induction of the internal clock is weak or absent, or when the coding of the segments is difficult. so, the algorithm combines the two aspects for the complexity estimation. the clock induction strength is a weighted combination of the number of clock ticks that coincide with silence and with unaccented events. this shows already, that a rather high abstraction level is assumed here, since the clock grid is assumed to be known and the musical events have to be classified into accented, non-accented, and silent ones. chapter . review of former work the coding complexity is estimated by assigning different weights to four different types of segments that can appear when splitting up the sequence of events according to the clock grid. the segment types are empty segments, equally subdivided segments, unequally subdivided segments, and segments beginning with silence. an additional weight exists that is added, when two consecutive segments differ from each other. the coding complexity is then simply the sum of all the weights for the whole sequence. it must be noted that the clock induction strength and the coding complex- ity when computed this way tend to give higher complexity ratings to longer segments, because there is no normalization. this might be appropriate when isolated rhythm patterns are evaluated, since a longer pattern is supposed to have a higher complexity potential than a short one. however, for complete music tracks some adaptation would be in need. although rhythm pattern ex- traction might seem an easier task to solve compared with melody extraction, to date universal methods providing sufficient precision are still lacking (a recent review can be found in [gd ]). the problem is that even the correct localiza- tion of rhythmic events, which is already a challenge, still does not suffice for the application of the ps-measure. in addition these events have to be seen in relation to the rhythm grid, which also has to be established first from the audio file. . . danceability recently, jennings et al. published an article on musical genre classification [jim+ ]. what makes this article stand out is the fact that the authors used, exclusively, a feature which has not been considered in music information re- trieval research so far. they refer to it as the “detrended variance fluctuation exponent”, since it originates from a technique called “detrended fluctuation analysis” (dfa). the technique was introduced by peng et al. [pbh+ ] and is intended for the analysis of chaotic time series. it was first applied by peng in a biomedical context on nucleotide and heartbeat rate time series. other applications include financial time series (as reported in [aus ]). the method intends to identify the scaling behaviour of a time series. this is best explained by considering an unbounded time series (i. e. with no upper limit for its values). if we plot a portion of such a series over the time axis, we will need chapter . review of former work a certain range r of values on the y-axis in order to visualize all the elements falling into the temporal segment t . imagine now that we are zooming in on the plot. this zoom can be expressed as a factor on each axis, for example we can say that the new portion has . times the length of the previous one, such that τ = τ / . in this case we can expect that the range of values on the y-axis has changed as well, from r to r . by taking the quotient log(r /r ) log(τ /τ ) we obtain a scaling exponent α. this exponent can be calculated for different time scales (i. e. for different values of τ and τ ). if we systematically increase or decrease the time scales and for each step calculate the scaling exponent, we obtain a function α(τ ). from this function we can get an insight into the scaling properties of the time series. for example the scaling can be stable (constant level of α) or it might expose irregularities. also the general level of α is significant. for white noise it is . , for pink noise it is . , and for brown noise it is . . α levels below . indicate that the signal is anti-correlated ([mat ] pp. – ). however original the descriptor of jennings et al. might be, it is not obvious how it relates to the rhythmic complexity we are interested in. since their paper focusses on genre classification this aspect was not directly considered. but they state that the strong periodic trends in dance music (as techno or brazilian forró) make it easily distinguishable from high art music by using this feature, because the average α value is clearly lower for the former. “jazz, rock and roll, and brazilian popular music may occupy an intermediary position between high art music and dance music: complex enough to listen to, but periodic enough to dance to,” they speculate [jim+ ]. hence, we could think of this feature as a measure of “danceability”, which certainly is an aspect of rhythmic complexity. in the next chapter we will look at further details about first experiments with this descriptor. . . conclusion with the ps-measure we are facing once more the problem that an existing model for complexity cannot directly be utilized for the intended applications. as with the melodic complexity models already, we again are left with incompatible representations of the music. namely, the symbolic, abstract rhythm pattern is needed as an input for the model, and the digitized waveform is what we have at hand in the audio file. chapter . review of former work the dfa exponent on the other hand is a feature that can directly be applied to the audio file and does not rely on the extraction of other mid- or high-level descriptors as a preprocessing step. although its validity has not been proved and it certainly does not cover all aspects of rhythmic complexity, it appears to be an interesting and very feasible approach. . harmonic complexity . . preference rule system the theory of harmony in music has a very long tradition already. still, in con- trast to melodic complexity, no dominant and well-studied models for harmonic complexity could be identified by the author. research has been done on the expectations evoked in listeners by harmonic progressions especially on the field of classical music [sch ]. it turned out, that listeners usually predict a chord that results from a transition considered as common in the given musical con- text. yet, to our knowledge no tests have been carried out that correlated the perceived harmonic complexity with the fulfilment or disappointment of these expectations. temperley supposes that the scores computed with his preference rule system could reveal an estimate for the tension in music ([tem ] section . , pp. – ). the mapping of achieved scores would go from incompre- hensible (breaking all rules) over tense to calm, and finally to boring (all rules obeyed). although he does not use the term complexity, this basically reflects what we are looking for. he names four different aspects of this harmonic com- plexity: . the rate at which harmonies change. . the amount of harmonic changes on weak beats. . the amount of dissonant (ornamental) notes. . the distance of consecutive harmonies in a music theoretical sense. however, his system does not only need a transcription of the chords, it assumes also that the metrical grid is known. so since this high level information is not available in our case, the direct application of temperley’s system is not feasible. chapter . review of former work furthermore, the fourth point has to be addressed carefully when extending the scope from classical music to the different types of modern popular music. temperley himself considers this tension estimation to be consistent only for particular styles (see [tem ] figure . p. ). he also refers to lerdahl, who in [ler ] proposed an even more high-level approach to the estimation of tension taking also larger structural levels into account. but since the application of temperley’s model is already problematic with musical audio signals, lerdahl’s proposal appears even less feasible. . . rewriting rules a different approach is taken by pachet, who proposes the application of rewriting rules [pac ]. he addresses the effect of harmonic surprise in jazz music. his argument is that the “rich algebraic structure underlying jazz chord sequences” has to be considered when talking about expectation and surprise. his model is based on two ingredients, a set of typical patterns, which he relates to the characteristics of the musical style, and a set of rewriting rules, according to which a given chord sequence can be transformed. the basic idea is that even a chord sequence that has never been heard before might not be so surprising to a listener who is familiar with these two sets that are sufficient to generate it. instead of manually creating the two sets, pachet applies machine learning techniques in order to obtain them. he uses a string compression algorithm [zl ] in order to extract the typical patterns. in order to find the rewriting rules he then uses a table method and utilizes the likelihood of occurrence of a hypothesized rule as a basis for finding the best rewriting rules. although he is not directly aiming at a complexity estimation, the idea is not too far from our needs. a highly predictable (little surprising) chord sequence could be identified with a low harmonic complexity and vice versa. . . conclusion the two ideas for harmonic complexity estimation presented above have two drawbacks. first, as with the melodic complexity models already we here again need a transcription of the chords first before we can start to analyze the com- chapter . review of former work plexity. we can find many approaches towards chord extraction from musical audio (see e. g. [kla ], [bel ]), but so far there are no satisfying solutions. sec- ondly, either one of the cited methods seems to be appropriate only for a limited set of musical styles, the preference rule system more for classical music with traditional rules from harmony theory, the rewriting rules more for jazz music where a diverse set of chord extensions is very common. so none of them is optimal as a general approach to harmonic complexity, because we want to deal with many different musical styles at the same time. . other related work in this section we want to take a short look at other approaches to music com- plexity that take a slightly different angle in addressing the topic. . . information-based complexity pressing in [pre ] gives a very short outline of three different types of complex- ity, which he names hierarchical, adaptive, and generative or information-based complexity. referring to music the first is focussing on the structure of a com- position. pressing mentions johann sebastian bach’s kunst der fuge as an example where the composer exploits hierarchical complexity. “[n]otes function as elements of linear processes operating at different time scales, and are at the same time compatible with a vertically-oriented chordal progression process.” the second type of complexity refers to the temporal changes in a musical work, including aspects like the adaption to unpredictable conditions, or the anticipa- tion of changes in themselves or in the environment. here, pressing mentions improvisatory performance as an example. the third type, the information-based complexity, is elaborated in some more detail by pressing. it is inspired by kolmogorov complexity, but focuses more on the production of music through a human than on the generation of a string through a computer program. pressing acknowledges that a pure information theoretic measure falls short in measuring music complexity, because it will al- ways rate random sequences as the most complex ones, which does not go along with human perception. he argues that humans process complexity by develop- ing routines and heuristics that try to overcome the limitations of memory and chapter . review of former work attention. his approach to complexity is based on the concept that these routines have different difficulty levels, because some are easier to learn than others. so conversely, the complexity of a stimulus is determined by the difficulty assigned to the routines and heuristics that are needed to produce it. he demonstrates his concept by estimating the complexity of six very short rhythmical patterns. this is achieved by simply applying a processing cost func- tion (cognitive cost) to the symbolic level attribute syncopation on quarter-note and eight-note level. his approach shows some similarity with the coding com- plexity used in the ps-measure for rhythmic complexity (section . . ). again, the sequence of events is broken up into segments (this time according to two different grids) and a cost is assigned to each segment depending on the type of syncopation that can be found. this approach is very interesting, because it seems a convincing combination of information theoretic principles and cognitive effects. however, it is purely theoretical and was not evaluated in any experiment with humans. also there is a crucial point in the identification of the routines and heuristics needed to generate the stimulus, as well as in the assessment of cognitive costs to them. in the case of a complex musical audio signal this is a very hard task to solve. . . complexity of short musical excerpts in [swv ] scheirer directly utilizes the statistical properties of psychoacoustic features of short musical excerpts to model perceived complexity. the excerpts were of only s length, so abstract levels, like melodic complexity or even struc- tural complexity, are not accessible. consequentially, scheirer only considers a joint complexity of the excerpts and does not address individual facets. the following low-level features were identified by him experimentally as the most useful ones for the prediction of human complexity ratings: . coherence of spectral assignment to auditory streams . variance of number of auditory streams . loudness of the loudest moment . most-likely tempo . variance of time between beats chapter . review of former work the computation of these features is extensively described in [sch ] (chapters - ). scheirer compared the mean complexity ratings of a group of human listeners to the output of his descriptors. he reports that, by using linear regres- sion techniques on these, they were strongly significant in predicting the rated complexities, roughly % of the variance in the mean complexity ratings was explained by these five features (r = . , p < . ). if we compare this to our idea of different complexity facets, features one and two can be assigned to timbral complexity, feature three to acoustic complexity, and features four and five to rhythmic complexity. however, it is questionable whether this approach is still successful when complete tracks are considered rather than only short excerpts. as scheirer states himself, he is more concerned about complexity as a musical surface feature. he defines the musical surface to be “the set of representations and processes that result from immediate, precon- scious, perceptual organization of a acoustic musical stimulus and that enable a behavioral response”. this musical surface might then help in timbre or genre classification tasks. . summary in this chapter we have seen some evidence for the usefulness of complexity de- scriptors for music. however, to develop a fully operational set of algorithms for automatic complexity estimation from musical audio signals there are still many open issues. while for the melodic and the rhythmic facet tested models exist in the symbolic domain, they cannot be applied directly due to the lack of reliable extraction algorithms. for harmonic complexity only theoretical sugges- tions were found, while the timbral, the acoustic, and the structural facet have not been addressed at all so far. in the following two chapters we will there- fore proceed with a complete set of operational complexity definitions, a report on first results with practical implementations, and the plans for future steps towards a satisfying solution. chapter own approaches in this chapter some of the author’s own work on the topic is described. several of the approaches in section . have not yet been converted into fully functional implementations, but are presented as a guideline for the direction of future research. hence, there is some overlap with the next chapter, which is explicitly dedicated to future work. . operational definitions . . acoustic complexity under acoustic complexity we want to capture two different aspects of a musical audio track: the dynamic and the spatial properties. the former are related to the loudness evolution throughout a musical recording, while the latter corre- spond to the rendering of the auditory scene. from these explanations it is clear already that acoustic complexity is not completely intrinsic to the music, but rather to the recording and the performance. nevertheless, we found it worth- while to include this complexity facet, because digital music tracks only exist as recorded performances of music. so it is not possible to listen to one without noticing characteristics of the other. for electronic music the concepts of “recording” and “performing” have to be understood in a slightly wider sense here. chapter . own approaches dynamic component the dynamic complexity component relates to the properties of the loudness evolution within a musical track. we refer to it in terms of abruptness and fre- quency of changes in dynamic level. also the dynamic range has to be considered here, since a sudden jump by db will be considered more surprising than one by only db. a major design decision for the complexity model is the definition of the time scope. by keeping the frame size small one would find the distinction between dynamically compressed and uncompressed material. the former would have less rapid changes in loudness than the latter and would therefore be con- sidered less complex. with longer windows one could detect fades and dynamic changes between larger segments. the regularity of dynamic changes has to be observed as well. an uncompressed drumloop for example will have many abrupt changes in short-term dynamic level due to the sharp attacks in front of a very low background loudness level. but because of its periodicity these will not be found very complex compared to random (and thus unpredictable) drum hits, if we expect the “good continuation” gestalt principle to hold. the first step towards dynamic complexity computation is the calculation of an accurate estimate of the perceived loudness. psychoacoustics are a well studied field and quite reliable measures exist in the literature for loudness es- timation of isolated sounds, like sinusoids or noise ([zf ],[mgb ]). for the complex sounds that form a musical performance however it is a very compli- cated task. not only temporal and spectral masking have an influence here, but also subjective components play a role [sn ]. finally, the playback level of a digital track can not be known, so the loudness can only be approximated. spatial component for the spatial complexity component we consider only stereo recordings and no advanced multi-channel formats. currently, two channel stereo tracks form by far the majority of items in digital music file databases. a straight-forward example for spatial complexity thus is the disparity of the stereo channels. a quasi mono situation with similar channels reveals less complexity than a recording that has only little correlation between the two channels. but also more advanced aspects are to be considered, such as the movement of the acoustical center of effect within the stereo image, and sound effects changing the spatial impression (e. g. delay and reverberation effects). chapter . own approaches yet, from the computational point of view, these advanced properties are not trivial to measure. while methods exist to calculate the position of a single sound source in space when it is recorded by an array of microphones [syspi ], the identification of the center of effect in the stereo panorama is a somewhat different problem. since usually complex mixtures of sounds are involved in each channel, some kind of source separation technique would need to be applied, but the current state of the art in auditory scene analysis still does not provide the necessary tools for that. the measurement of reverberation on the other hand has a solid tradition in room acoustics. an overview over several measures of spaciousness in room acoustics can be found in [gri ]. usually, these measures take the room impulse response as their input and are thus not suited for a continuous signal. an exception is the interaural difference (iad) introduced by griesinger, which, as he states, can also be computed as a continuous function for music signals. it is computed according to equation . , where l(t) and r(t) refer to the signal in the left and the right channel, and the equalization eq consists of a low frequency enhancement of db per octave below hz. iad = · log ( eq(l(t) − r(t)) l(t) + r(t) ) ( . ) still, it must be stated again that the originally intended use of these measures is somewhat different from our needs. the measures are supposed to reveal information about the acoustic properties of a real room when a sound is played back inside. the two channels in equation . correspond to the signal recorded by two microphones (e. g. inside an artificial head) in the room. we, on the contrary, already have a stereo recording, which was produced with very different techniques, but would simply have to treat it as the recording of the dummy head in a “virtual” room. an extensive discussion of this problem and some experimental results can be found in [mas ]. . . timbral complexity there is no clear and precise definition of timbre that could be regarded as a common agreement on the music analysis field. by the american standards as- sociation ([ass ] p. ) the following statement was released: ”[timbre is] that attribute of auditory sensation in terms of which a listener can judge that two chapter . own approaches sounds similarly presented and having the same loudness and pitch are dissim- ilar.” for our purpose we think of timbre as the entity that is the most tightly knitted with sound production (i. e. the source of the sound and the way this source is excited). however, this concept of source should be considered not in a strictly physical sense here. in the case of a group of violinists playing unison for example we would rather refer to the group as the sound source rather than to every individual violin. we then can derive several specifications of the general ideas of complexity itemized in section . . . this gives us features like the number of distinguishable instruments or sound textures present in the music, the rate at which the leading instruments change, or the amount of modulation of the sound sources. as reported in [hpd ], source separation and instrument recognition systems for arbitrary polyphonic music signals are not yet available. nevertheless, since the exact classification of individual instruments is not necessary for our purposes, machine-learning and clustering techniques might be applicable. aucouturier and sandler report about applying hmms for music segmentation [as ] in a manner that might be useful for timbre complexity estimation as well. if a finite set of timbre states can be assigned to the music, it is also possible to apply techniques from information theory like entropy estimation or compression algorithms. for example the lz algorithm by ziv and lempel [zl ] could be a good choice, since its limited memory buffer resembles in a simplified way human short term memory when processing a musical input [sny ]. . . melodic complexity despite the fact that very well studied models are already available for the assess- ment of melodic complexity based on a symbolic representation, when it comes to musical audio this can be considered the most difficult of the facets. this is due to melody being a very abstract description which is hard to access from the audio signal. as pointed out in section . . there is no extraction algorithm available yet, that can reliably transcribe the melody of any musical audio file. one strategy could be to focus on melody related features that are more feasible to extract and to try then the development of a new model that can ap- proximate melodic complexity based only on these features. a possible candidate would be for example the harmonic pitch class profile (hpcp) [gom ]. how- chapter . own approaches ever, this is not a very straight-forward approach, because the hpcp contains information about all tonal content, not only about the melodic voice. further- more the octave information is lost and to arrive at something close to a note segmentation is still a long way to go from that representation. a valid solution thus would be to focus instead on the melody extraction task and to work to- wards a useable melody transcription in order to be able to apply the already available complexity models. yet, this is a phd topic by itself and will not be addressed within the scope of the research presented here. . . rhythmic complexity for rhythmic complexity we find a similar picture as for the melody facet. with the ps-measure a model exists already that has been assessed at least prelimi- nary. but again, the model operates on an abstraction level which is not easy to achieve when starting from the audio signal. in this case algorithms exist that are already closer to a reliable extraction than in case of melody extraction (e. g. [dbds ], [kla ]), but still the results are not perfect. despite being a high-level concept, the rhythm is not as abstract as the melody. therefore for rhythmic complexity estimation it is more promising to find a circumvention for the explicit and complete transcription than in case of melodic complexity. the danceability descriptor based on the detrended fluctua- tion analysis is one example (section . . ). otherones are the rhythmic features used by scheirer for the complexity estimation of short musical excerpts (section . . ). it seems better to consider the variances in the relative positions of ex- tracted rhythmic events than to rely on their absolute position with respect to a metric grid which also has to be determined first. the extraction is already error-prone and the determination of the grid, based on the extracted events, introduces a second source of error. this second error is much more severe for the complexity estimation, since all events are evaluated with respect to the grid. several wrongly estimated onsets in contrast will not affect the global result so drastically. chapter . own approaches . . harmonic complexity in section . . we discussed already the two drawbacks of the presented methods. as with rhythmic complexity it seems more advantageous to explore alternative options that avoid the need for a precise transcription. a possibility would be the application of the hpcp that we mentioned in section . . . as explained, this feature is strongly related with the harmonic content of the music and therefore an attractive candidate for our purposes. several approaches towards chord seg- mentation and recognition rely on this or similar features (e. g. [fuj ], [se ]). it is also interesting from the perceptual point of view, because the concept of pitch classes (i. e. the association of frequencies with the twelve pitch chroma steps in western music) is an important step in the process of harmonyic percep- tion. a common and important problem (among several others) in chord recogni- tion is the detection of the chord boundaries. however, since we are not inter- ested in a transcription, it might be possible to avoid this step in the harmonic complexity estimation. instead, the harmonic content represented by the hpcp profile could be analyzed continuously. it could be mapped into the spiral array proposed by chew that defines a three-dimensional space of harmonic instances [che ]. the spiral array has the property that the spatial proximity reflects also musical proximity of harmonies to some extent. as the song evolves, the path through this space could be recorded and then analyzed. so the average speed of movement within this space could be taken as an indicator for the harmonic complexity. a second aspect is the clarity of the harmonies that appear in the music. in the context of key estimation gomez defines the tonal strength through the strength of the correlation between the mean hpcp profile for the track and the closest key profile [gh ]. in a similar manner she uses the correlation of instantaneous hpcp-vectors with prototypical chord profiles for a chord strength measure. both measures are related with our concept of harmonic complexity and could be combined with the spiral array approach. chapter . own approaches . . structural complexity musical structure forms one of the highest levels of abstraction in content analy- sis. it is unique compared to the other facets in the sense that all of them are potentially relevant for its computation. we want to refer to structure on a rather macroscopic level (i. e. in terms of intro, verse, and chorus rather than motive or theme). along with our remarks in section . . we can identify attributes of structural complexity such as the number of distinguishable parts, or the level of periodicity of their appearance. it would also be desirable to estimate the dissimilarity of consecutive parts. very contrasting parts following each other would be surpris- ing and thus probably enhance the perceived complexity. once more, we have to face the fact, that before we can perform any structural complexity processing, first the structure itself has to be extracted. various ap- proaches to this problem have been taken and are still explored (see e. g. [cv ], [sbm+ ]). the general purpose solution has yet to be found. . implementations following the review of computing different complexity facets of musical audio, in this section two implementations by the author are described in detail. both have been programmed in matlab and were tested on a large music collection. the evaluation results are reported in section . . . . the dynamic component of acoustic complexity as mentioned in section . . , the computation of instantaneous loudness is a key issue for estimating the dynamic component of acoustic complexity. for the reason of computational efficiency the implementation described here uses a simplified loudness model that was described by earl vickers in [vic ]. some modifications and additions have been made in order to make the algorithm fit for the desired task. as a first step the algorithm applies a very simplified “b” weighting function to the audio signal in order to account for the human ear’s transfer function. for efficiency reasons this weighting is done by a first-order butterworth high-pass chapter . own approaches filter with a cut-off frequency of hz. so actually only the low end of the weighting function is approximated. in the case of music signals this is tolerable, since they have much more energy in the bass and mid-range compared to the high frequencies. the pre-emphasized signal xpre(n) is then fed into a root-mean-square level detector with an integrated smoothing function. this level detector consists of a running average vms (eq. . ) that is downsampled according to the chosen frame length n . vms(n) = c · vms(n − ) + ( − c) · x pre(n) , with ( . ) c = e − τ fs fs corresponds to the sampling frequency and τ is the time constant for the smoothing ( ms in this implementation). the downsampling is done according to equation . . we chose a framesize of ms corresponding to n = for a sampling rate of . khz. this time span roughly resembles the energy integration function of the human hearing system. vrms(i) = √ vms(n · i + n − ) ( . ) the instantaneous level is then converted to db by calculating vdb = · log (vrms(i)) . ( . ) in order to avoid silence at the end or the beginning of the track to have an effect on the complexity estimation, successive frames with a level below - db are deleted when they appear at either end. afterwards, the global loudness level l according to vickers is calculated. l is a weighted average of all m instantaneous level estimates, where the louder ones are assigned a higher weight: l = m− ∑ i= w(i) · vdb(i) , with ( . ) w(i) = u(i)∑m− j= u(j) and u(j) = . −vdb (j) the emphasis on the loud frames is grounded in psychoacoustic findings. so for example zwicker and fastl [zf ] suggest that the loudness of a dynamically changing sound can be characterized by the loudness level which only % of the chapter . own approaches − − − − − − l o u d n e ss in d b a) heavy metal − − − − − − l o u d n e ss in d b b) pop song − − − − − − l o u d n e ss in d b c) jazz guitar solo − − − − − − time in s l o u d n e ss in d b d) classical symphony figure . : instantaneous loudness (dots), global loudness (grey solid line), and average distance margin (dashed lines) for four example tracks. chapter . own approaches frames exceed. in this implementation a variation of vickers dynamic spread is used as the final dynamic complexity measure. it is simplified in the sense that periodic loudness variation and the suddenness of changes are not considered. instead it comprises basically the mean distance from the global loudness level (eq. . ) so that high values correspond to higher complexity and vice versa. cdyn = m m− ∑ i= |vdb(i) − l| ( . ) figure . shows the computational results of the algorithm for four prototyp- ical music tracks. in figure . a we see a highly saturated heavy metal track with a basically flat dynamic level. the global loudness was estimated as - . db and the average deviation from this level is only . db. figure . d shows another extreme, a recording of classical music that changes in loudness between - db and - db. the algorithm estimates a clearly lower global loudness of - . db and an average deviation of . db. in between there is a pop song (figure . b) moderately varying in loudness with a global level of - . db and an average deviation of . db. the jazz guitar solo from figure . c is recorded at very low volume. the estimated global loudness is only - db. despite some singular drops down to - db due to short pauses between played notes, the average deviation amounts only to . db and is thus considerably smaller than that of the classical recording. . . danceability the implementation described here is following the description by jennings et al. in [jim+ ]. when exact specifications were missing, the author tried to integrate reasonable solutions. the experimental findings obtained with this implementation on a large music database where reported at the th aes convention [sh ]. as a first step the audio signal is segmented into non-overlapping blocks of ms length. for each block the standard deviation s(n) of the amplitude is computed. the values s(n) resemble a bounded, non-stationary time series, which can be associated with the averaged physical intensity of the audio signal in each block (see figure . ). in order to obtain the unbounded time series y(m), chapter . own approaches . classic . in te n si ty ( n o rm a liz e d ) techno . time in s pop figure . : excerpts from the time series s(n) for three example pieces from different musical genres. s(n) is integrated: y(m) = m∑ n= s(n) ( . ) this integration step is crucial in the process of dfa computation, because for bounded time series the dfa exponent (our final feature) would always be when time scales of greater size are considered. this effect is explained in more detail in [pen ]. the series y(m) can be thought of as a random walk in one dimension. y(m) is now again segmented into blocks of τ elements length. this time, we advance only by one sample from one block to the next in the manner of a sliding window. there are two reasons for this extreme overlap. first, we obtain more blocks from the signal, which is of interest, since we will obtain better statistics from a larger number of blocks. secondly, we avoid possible synchronization with the rhythmi- cal structure of the audio signal, which would lead to arbitrary results depending on the offset we happen to have. however, performing the computation in this chapter . own approaches manner the number of operations is increased enormously. from each block we now remove the linear trend ŷk and compute d(k, τ ), the mean of the squared residual: d(k, τ ) = τ τ− ∑ m= (y(k + m) − ŷk(m)) ( . ) we then obtain the detrended fluctuation f (τ ) of the time series by comput- ing the square root of the mean of d(k, τ ) for all k blocks: f (τ ) = √√√√ k k∑ k= d(k, τ ) ( . ) as indicated, the fluctuation f is a function of τ (i. e. of the time scale in focus). the goal of dfa is to reveal correlation properties on different time scales. we therefore repeat the process above for different values of τ that are within the range of our interest. jennings et al. [jim+ ] use a range from ms (τ = ) to s not specifying the step size in their paper. relating these time scales to the musical signal they are reaching from the beat level through the bar level up to a level of simple rhythm patterns. the dfa exponent α is defined as the slope on a double log graph of f over τ (eq. . ) as shown in figure . for the three example tracks. it therefore makes sense to increase τ by a constant multiplication factor rather than a fixed step size. apart from giving equally spaced supporting points on the logarithmic axis it also reduces the computational operations without affecting the accuracy gravely. we chose a factor of . giving us different values for τ covering time scales from ms to . s. for small values of τ an adjustment is needed in the denominator when com- puting α (see [bgh+ ]) giving us the following formula for the dfa exponent: α(i) = log (f (τi+ )/f (τi)) log ((τi+ + )/(τi + )) ( . ) as τ grows, the influence of the correction becomes negligible. in case that the time series has stable fractal scaling properties within the examined range, the double log graph of f over τ is a straight line making α(i) a constant function. we find a constant value of . for a completely random series (white noise), a value of for a series with /f -type noise, and . for a brown noise series (integrated white noise) [pen ]. chapter . own approaches . . . . − . − − . . time scale in s lo g ( f ) classic techno pop figure . : double logarithmic plots of mean residual over time scales. . . . . . . time scale in s d f a e xp o n e n t α classic techno pop figure . : dfa exponent functions for the three example tracks from figure . . chapter . own approaches for music signals normally we do not have stable scaling properties (see figure . ). unlike heart rate time series, for example, there is much more variance in α(i) for music. nevertheless, we can find that music with sudden jumps in intensity is generally yielding a lower level of α(i) than music with a smoother varying series of intensity values. thus, music with pronounced percussion events and emphasized note onsets shows lower α values than music with a more floating, steady nature. there is also a relationship between strong periodic trends and the α function. figure . shows the evolution of α over the different time scales for three musical pieces. as can be seen, the dfa exponent varies significantly within each single piece. the most stable scaling behavior is found for the classical piece at short time scales, in contrast, the pop piece shows an intermediate, and the techno piece shows a high instability. this is due to the presence of a strong and regular beat pattern in the two latter cases (see figure . ). in the techno piece the periodic beat dominates the intensity fluctuation completely since intensity variations on larger time scales are negligible in comparison. this strong periodic trend de- teriorates the scaling properties of the series and causes α to drop significantly. towards larger time scales however, the influence of the periodic intensity varia- tion fades off and α raises back towards its normal level. in the pop music piece there is also a regular beat, but it is less dominant than in the techno piece. as can be seen in figure . , there are also some noticeable changes in intensity on a larger time scale. still, α is clearly decreased by the periodic trend. towards larger time scales, we can observe the same effect as in the techno piece. for the classical piece no dominant, regular beat pattern can be identified in the time series. thus, the scaling properties are not affected in the corresponding range. but in contrast to the other two examples the series reveals a larger scale pattern in some parts, which can also be seen in figure . . this causes α to drop in the upper range. in order to arrive at an indicator for the danceability and thus a certain aspect of the rhythmic complexity the α values have to be further reduced. while differ- ent ways are thinkable to do this, in the first implementation simply the average α level was computed for each track. a high value refers to a high complexity (not danceable), a low value refers to a low complexity (highly danceable). chapter . own approaches . evaluation the evaluation of complexity descriptors is not easy. the ideal condition for eval- uation is of course a solid ground-truth annotation against which the performance of the extraction algorithms can be measured. unfortunately these ground-truth annotations are rather troublesome to come by. especially for complexity we have the problem that, other than for genre or tempo for example, available an- notations usually do not cover this issue. the manual annotation of one’s own testing material needs a lot of time and resources and might not be feasible in some cases. the two descriptor implementations described above were evaluated by sub- jective means on the basis of a large music collection. this was done by randomly picking tracks at different complexity levels and judging the danceability and the dynamic complexity in direct comparison by listening. a formal user study hwas not been carried out yet. for the danceability descriptor a more objective evaluation was done. gen- eral statistical methods and machine learning methods were applied in order to explore relations between the semantic labels, or certain artists and the dfa ex- ponent. the rationale behind this is to prove a systematic variation of the dfa exponent subject to certain semantic attributes assigned to the music. more details about the methodology and the findings are provided in the following sections. . . the dataset the two descriptor implementations described above were computed on a large music collection. a data set of tracks from mtg-db [ckf+ ], a digital music collection from the mtg lab, was used in the experiment. each track refers to a full piece of music. the dataset also contained annotated semantic labels for each item, which were obtained from music experts and afficionados, and had been manually assigned to the tracks. in our experiments we used the artist names and also “tone” labels consisting in abstract attributes that are associated with the music, such as “rousing”, “sentimental”, or “theatrical”. the list of “tone” labels is composed of a total of different entries. in the statistical analysis only a subset of labels were considered, because the chapter . own approaches figure . : top-eight labels with the highest number of assigned artists. remaining ones appeared less than times each. it must be noted that these labels are originally assigned to the artists and not to the individual tracks. therefore a certain degree of fuzziness has to be accepted with these descriptions when working on the track level. the data set contained very different, mostly popular styles of music from a total of different artists. a maximum of labels were assigned to a single artist, while the average was labels per artists. figure . shows a bar plot of the eight labels that were assigned to the highest number of artists. the average number of artists sharing a label was . . . results by manual random checks it was found that the complexity estimations at the extreme ends were the most consistent ones. comparing the tracks from these regions with each other and with the intermediate ones the underlying concept of the descriptors immediately became apparent. this effect can be easily seen in figure . , where the highly danceable techno music tracks can be almost perfectly separated from the non-danceable film score tracks only by consid- ering their average α value. for the dynamic complexity the low end contained tracks that were either highly saturated or simply low quality recordings, while at the other end we found mostly high art music recordings and professionally mas- tered tracks. the fine grain ranking within a local region however did not appear chapter . own approaches figure . : α-levels for techno (o) and film score tracks (x), unordered. comprehensible in many cases. this was especially noticeable in the very dense area of intermediate values. so rather a coarse classification into – complexity levels than a continuous ordering of the entire collection was achieved. this is a comfortable number of discrete classes for a semantic descriptor considering human memory capabilities. the results of the statistical tests for the danceability descriptor sustain the findings from manual random evaluation. strong coherence of high statistical significance was found for several of the “tone” labels that are semantically close to the concept “danceable” or “not danceable” respectively. for example the labels “party/celebratory” and “energetic” in the context of music have a clear relation with danceability, whereas “plaintive” and “reflective” appear more appropriate descriptions for music that is not well suited for dancing. the results reveal a consistency on a high abstraction level even exceeding the aspect of danceability. figure . shows how the distribution of some labels on the deciles starting from the lowest to the highest α values in the collection. a strong skew is apparent here with certain labels being highly over-represented either in the highest or the lowest deciles. chapter . own approaches clinical hypnotic detached wintry wistful t ra ck s in d e ci le party/celebratory romantic reflective plaintive ominous decile number intimate autumnal figure . : distributions on deciles for the twelve labels with most significant deviation from equal distribution (solid horizontal lines). the distribution of α values on the whole collection was normal with a mean of . and a standard deviation of . . the tracks assigned to each label were tested for significant deviations from this distribution with the generalized t-test (eq. . ). only those with normal distributions were considered. of these, showed a significantly higher and a significantly lower mean value. − . < . − ᾱlabel√ . + σ label nlabel < . ( . ) the value ᾱlabel is the mean α value for the considered label, σ label is the corre- sponding variance, and nlabel is the number of tracks having this label assigned. table . shows the ten labels that yielded the highest significance in their devi- ation from the global distribution in either direction. when looking at the two lists of labels a certain affinity can be noted in many cases on either side. the group of labels for higher α wakes associations of soft- chapter . own approaches label ᾱ n label ᾱ n party/celebratory . romantic . clinical . wistful . hypnotic . plaintive . energetic . reflective . visceral . calm/peaceful . trippy . autumnal . outrageous . intimate . exuberant . stately . irreverent . gentle . sparkling . elegant . table . : the ten most significantly deviating labels in each direction. ness, warmness, tranquility, and melancholy. for the others we might form two subgroups, one around terms like exuberance and vehemence, the other around tedium and coldness. comparing labels from both lists with each other, we can identify several almost antonymous pairs, for example: “clinical” – “inti- mate”, “outrageous” – “refined/mannered”, “boisterous” – “calm/peacefull”, “carefree” – “melancholic”. in the machine learning experiments two artist classification tasks were tried. it must be stated again here, that the “tone” labels mentioned above originally also belong to the artists and thus only indirectly to the individual tracks. in a two class decision experiment we used frank sinatra tracks and tracks from nine other artists who either had the labels “brittle” or “outrageous” assigned to them. for the artist “sinatra” a total of labels were listed in our data set, among them “romantic”, “calm/peaceful”, and “sentimental”. from the results of the statistical analysis we would expect the sinatra songs to be distributed around a greater value of α than the other ones. the classes should therefore be separable up to a certain degree. it must be noted, that among the nine selected artists we find also assigned labels like “whistful” and “reflective”, which are linked to higher α values as well (see table . ). the classification with a decision table yielded a success rate of %, which is clearly above the % chance level. in a second experiment we used three different classes: tracks composed by henry mancini, tracks composed by bernard herrmann, and tracks chapter . own approaches of dance music with a strong beat. we purposely did not use the labels for selecting the artists in this case. mancini and herrmann were both film music composers, but while herrmann mainly uses ”classical” orchestration, mancini often arranges his music in a jazz–like style. we had to select dance music from different artists, because there was no single one with a sufficient number of tracks in the collection. in terms of the dfa exponent we would expect to find the highest values associated with herrmann’s music, because it is the least danceable in general terms. intermediate values can be expected for mancini’s tracks, since there are many which at least possess a pronounced beat. the lowest values should be found for the dance music, which has strong and regular beat patterns. with a success rate of % the classification reached again clearly above chance level ( %). furthermore the confusion matrix shows exactly the expected situation: predicted class true class herrmann mancini dance herrmann mancini dance while the classes “herrmann” and “dance” are almost perfectly separable, “mancini” takes an intermediate position showing a considerable overlap with both neighboring classes. the decision table identified the optimal thresholds between the classes to be αhm = . and αm d = . . . . concluding remarks summarizing we can say that there a is strong evidence for the danceability descriptor being related with semantic properties of the music tracks it was com- puted on. from our experiments and observations the hypothesis put forward by jennings et al. seems to be valid, and the dfa exponent can be considered a good indicator for the danceability of music. however, this should be seen rather in the broad sense, classifying music into a small number of categories from “extremely easy” over “moderately easy” to “very difficult” to dance to. currently, a fine grain ordering by the dfa exponent inside such a category is not beneficial. due to subjectivity effects such an ordering might not prove useful anyway. by averaging the dfa exponent function we used an extremely chapter . own approaches compact and simple representation in the experiments. it should be possible to improve the results by a more sophisticated reduction of the function α. it can further be concluded from our results, that the dfa exponent shows to be mean- ingful also in revealing even higher level attributes of music. it thus might form a valuable addition for different music classification tasks, like artist identification or musical genre recognition. chapter future work we have seen in the preceding chapters that for a complete solution to the prob- lem of automatic complexity estimation many parts are still incomplete or miss- ing. in this chapter we will describe a more detailed road map of planned and possible future research. in several cases the author already has done initial tests, which can be used as a basis for further exploitation. we will first look at the tasks that are to be covered by the phd thesis and then list a few issues that are out of scope for the thesis, but still worthwhile to be explored scientifically. . phd thesis . . filling the gaps with the algorithms described in section . we already have partly covered two complexity facets: the rhythmic and the acoustic one. nevertheless, the two algorithms are not yet in their final version and might be further enhanced during the research work for the phd thesis. in a similar manner as in section . we will now go through the different complexity facets while putting emphasis on the concrete implementation steps. acoustic complexity the current implementation of the dynamic component already captures a cer- tain part of what was listed as relevant in chapter . lacking so far are the aspect of abruptness in loudness changes and the consideration of periodicities. chapter . future work a possible way to address this would be to perform a linear prediction on the loudness envelope and to estimate the average prediction error as a measure of complexity. also, the derivative of the loudness envelope could be considered for further analysis. furthermore it has to be tested in which way the different values are finally combined, because the goal is only a single number reflecting the dynamic component of acoustic complexity. considering the spatial component we already made reference to griesinger [gri ] and the interaural difference measure (eq. . on page ). a second option is a measure based on the magnitude squared coherence (msc), which is proposed by wittkop ([wit ] chapter ) as a method for diffusiveness estimation of acoustical situations with binaural hearing aids. the msc for a two–channel signal (channels x and y) was originally proposed by allen et al. [abb ] as m sc(f, n) = ( |Φxy(f, n)|√ Φxx(f, n)Φyy(f, n) ) , ( . ) where Φ denotes the smoothed fourier transform of the correlation function , and f and n are the frequency and the time-frame indexes of the short-term spectra derived from the signal. the smoothing is done by a first order low–pass filter along the time dimension. wittkop proposes to collapse the frequency res- olution to critical bands and introduces weighting and transformation functions in order to arrive at a compact and stable long-term coherence estimation. rhythmic complexity with the danceability descriptor we have covered already one part of the rhyth- mic complexity facet. as mentioned, the danceability estimation can still be optimized, especially with respect to the intermediate range. one approach is the optimization of the parameters in the algorithm, mainly the step size and the range of the time scales τ . another option is a more detailed analysis of the α function. instead of simply averaging all the values there might be more in- telligent ways to reduce the representation and arrive at a danceability estimate. also different pre-processing can be considered as an option. the algorithm could be applied in different frequency bands. instead of the intensity envelope, a different time series, which is related to rhythmical events might be used (e. g. the correlation is computed in frequency domain, while the final step, the inverse trans- formation back to time domain, is left out (see [pftv ] pp. – ). chapter . future work the synthesized output of an onset detector). apart from the danceability estimation, which operates originally on a very low abstraction level, it would probably be beneficial to explore approaches that take a simple but perceptually relevant form of a rhythmic transcription as an input. while the ps-measure is demanding already a too abstract representation in form of the notation of isolated rhythm patterns, other methods could be applied on an intermediate level. assuming a reasonably reliable onset detection algorithm as a preprocessing unit it would be interesting to explore the variation of the inter-onset intervals. also an entropy coding method can be applied to the extracted onset series, presumably best after a temporal quantization. recurring onset patterns would then decrease entropy and indicate a lower complexity. timbral complexity entropy coding could also be the solution for the timbral complexity estimation. at least after some initial experiments with unsupervised clustering and hidden markov models, the methods from information theory appeared the most promis- ing in comparison. the key problem here is to find the right audio features and to transform them into a string of discrete symbols from a finite alphabet. since the amount of features that are “somehow related” to timbre is enormous, the difficulty lies in selecting the combination that best resembles the human per- ception of timbre. at the same time the selection should cover all perceptually relevant parts and remain very compact in order to keep the resulting alphabet size reasonable. for the quantization process (which is unavoidable, because the timbre features will be continuous) a hysteresis function has proved to be useful in initial experiments. by having different thresholds for the upward and down- ward transition between two partitions the effect of an oscillation for values close to the borderline is avoided. a systematical problem with timbral complexity is further the one of domi- nant singing voice or speech. in terms of signal analysis a singer who produces different vowels is also producing different timbres. in fact, vowels (or in general phonemes) can only be differentiated by their different timbres. on the other hand, a human listener who clearly perceives the different timbres will not realize it, because he recognizes that they encode speech. we can illustrate this effect, if we think about estimating the timbral complexity of a monotonous voice reading chapter . future work a text and for example of a filtered sawtooth waveform where the filters cutoff frequency is slowly oscillating. a näıve human will tend to attribute the higher complexity to the latter in direct comparison, since the frequent timbre changes in the former are not explicitly recognized as such. for a computer this is difficult to achieve, because instead of speech the former is a sequence of very different, fast changing timbres, whereas the latter is very predictable and only moderately changing. by using a low temporal resolution it can be tried to avoid this effect to a certain degree. however, a true solution would need the identification and isolation of language through the computer even within the polyphonic mix of a musical recording. this is still quite far from becoming feasible. more realistic is at least the automatic distinction between passages with singing voice and those without (e. g. [nw ]). based on this discrimination it could be tried to disregard the timbre changes due to the voice by simply skipping these segments or assigning them a fixed timbre symbol. harmonic complexity for harmonic complexity it is also safer not to rely on a very high level descrip- tion on the input side. although the automatic extraction of chords is making progress (see for example [hs ] or [dc ]) results are still not accurate enough to allow for an automated complexity estimation based on high level musical rules. what seems more appropriate instead is again the application of a com- plexity measure on an intermediate abstraction level. as described in section . the harmonic pitchclass profile (hpcp) seems a good candidate as an audio feature in this context. we can identify two properties of this feature that could contribute to a harmonic complexity estimation. the first one is the clarity of the chords, with a pure triad being of lowest complexity, while extra notes like the seventh or the ninth increase complexity. as mentioned, this could be captured by using correlation or distance measures for the hpcp- vectors and prototypical triad vectors in the line of tonal strength [gh ]. the second property focusses on the harmonic changes for consecutive vec- tors. if the changes are expectable, because the perceived distance between consecutive chords is small this would lead to a low complexity level, whereas harmonic sequences containing perceptually large jumps would be considered more complex. so the difficulty here is the mapping of the hpcp-vectors onto a chapter . future work figure . : construction of the chord spiral from the pitch spiral [che ]. representation that allows for an easy calculation of perceived distances between chords. the spiral array model developed by elaine chew [che ] seems to be an appropriate candidate for this task. although the distances do not perfectly match the perceptual ones in all cases, the model is already coming very close to our needs. especially interesting here is the underlying hierarchical structure. as shown in figure . by starting with a spiral of pitch classes (ordered as in the circle of fifth) a second spiral representing the major triads can be constructed within the first one. this is done by taking the center of gravity of the triangle spanned by the tonic, the fifth and the third as a reference point for the chord. the same can be done for minor triads. chew examined different height gains of the spiral and different weights for tonic, fifth, and third in her dissertation in order to obtain satisfying distances. the important point for our application is that the chord spiral is derived from the pitch class spiral. although we cannot expect to find ideal triads in the hpcp-vector, we still have a pitch class representation of the musical content chapter . future work in this feature. so by calculating the center of gravity for an hpcp-vector in the pitch class spiral we arrive at a certain chord representation. furthermore we can hope, that the distances between these chord representations do relate to some degree with the perceived distances. this way, by calculating the av- erage speed when moving through the spiral, we can have an estimate of the harmonic complexity without the need for an explicit chord recognition or even segmentation. structural and melodic complexity these last two facets of complexity will be treated with low priority only, since both have to rely on the extraction of a very abstract descriptor. particularly for melodic complexity this “preprocessing” step is the most important missing link in the chain at the current state of the art. considering the level of performance of today’s melody transcription algorithms an application of the existing complexity models appears realistic only in several years from now. regarding the extraction of music structure we can hope to arrive earlier at acceptable results. while the number of different parts or the change rate are then very straightforward complexity estimations, the periodicity and the dissimilarity need to be addressed more carefully. for the periodicity again an entropy estimation could be used, but we have to expect very short sequences here. hence, even the number of repetitions might already be a useful indicator. the dissimilarity forms a much harder problem. since the problem of music similarity estimation has not been solved completely (despite a lot of research), also the opposite, the absence of similarity is difficult to quantify. furthermore, for our application an absolute measure would be needed, because finally we want to compare dissimilarities between segments of one track with the dissimilarities between the ones from other tracks. as a workaround it could be considered to simply use the novelty scores from the segmentation process that appeared at the segment transitions. however, the notion of these is somewhat different from the real intention, because then only the local region around the transition and only the features used by the segmentation algorithm would have an influence. chapter . future work . . evaluation strategies one important aspect of any research involving the development of models or algorithms is the evaluation of the achievements. this evaluation can be seen under two slightly different aspects. one is the direct validation of the models’ prediction against a reliable ground-truth. the other is the proof that the ap- plication of the model or the algorithm yields a noticeable benefit in the desired context. as mentioned in section . already it is very costly to obtain a solid ground-truth for all proposed complexity facets. several listening tests with a group of subjects and a sufficient number of tracks would be needed. considering that we are aiming at a complexity estimation for full tracks and not for short excerpts gives rise to even more difficulties, since this prolongs the annotation process. for these reasons, this strategy will only be followed in singular cases during the phd research work. rather the author plans to utilize indirect measurements by using relevant existing annotations together with machine learning as well as statistical analysis methods. as demonstrated with the danceability descriptor this approach can give direct insights into the fitness of a particular descriptor for its application to music retrieval tasks. apart from being more application oriented another advantage is that the potential of the large music collection with its diversity of semantic annotations owned by the mtg can readily be exploited. however, additional listening tests on a smaller scale might be considered. instead of asking the listeners to annotate their complexity impressions there is also the possibility to let them directly evaluate the performance of the algo- rithms. for example clusters of tracks could be built according to the extracted complexity values and the participants could then rate the consistency of the clusters, or the comprehensibility of the underlying concept. while this is a nice way to validate the implemented model it has the disadvantage that further op- timization of the model requires again a listening test in order to know whether a measurable improvement was achieved. chapter . future work . . efficiency aspects the intended application of the descriptors developed in the course of this re- search are about large music collections. this is a point worth mentioning, be- cause for big collections with a large number of tracks the advantages of the de- picted interaction enhancements do “kick in” noticeably. but on the other hand this means that the computational cost for calculating the descriptors has to be reasonable. traditionally file based (off-line) computation opposed to stream based computation always has the advantage that real-time is not the ultimate limit. however, scalability has to be considered when we are dealing with collec- tions that contain a large number of tracks. already a collection with titles would mean more than two full days of “real-time” computing if we assume an average track duration of minutes. hence, computational efficiency is a very relevant issue when the final usability is considered. nevertheless, it will only play a minor role during the research within the phd thesis scope. the main focus lies in providing functioning models rather than speed-optimized imple- mentations. but efficiency will certainly be taken into account when alternative or simplified ways for the computation exist. one example is the danceability computation. as described in section . the computation of this descriptor is relatively costly, because it involves a detrending operation in a sliding window. in order to reduce the number of operations it is therefore worthwhile to investigate whether a bigger hop size than sample still leads to acceptable results. apart from this option it is also of interest to compare the output of the described approach with the one based on a method published by willson and francis [wf ]. they claim that the detrended fluctuation analysis (dfa) that forms the basis of the danceability descriptor is “essentially equivalent” to a special spectral analysis of the signal based on a conventional fourier transformation. since with the fast fourier transform (fft) a highly efficient implementation is at hand, this would mean a much faster computation of the descriptor. another aspect in this context are synergy effects. because we address the different facets of complexity individually, it is possible that in some models the same intermediate step (e. g. a fft or the extraction of a low-level descriptor) is part of the computation. it is therefore useful to identify these commonalities in order to avoid repeated processing. this does not end with the set of complexity chapter . future work facets. in a final application where also other semantic descriptors are involved an intelligent data management can improve the efficiency considerably. however, this already reaches beyond the scope of the phd thesis. . beyond the horizon once a reliable complexity estimation is available there are several ways to pro- ceed. one interesting topic is the learning of user preferences from listening habits or from the compound of a personal music collection. as pointed out in section . already, this could lead to the establishment of user “complexity profiles” cap- turing the preferred levels of complexity for the different facets. with berlyne’s theory [ber ] of optimal arousal potential and the reported experimental find- ings from section . in mind, such a profile could contribute to the prediction of musical preference for new music. in combination with other descriptors a completely automatic music recommendation engine could be developed, which not even needed to be triggered actively by the user. the selection of the appro- priate descriptors (which might very well vary from one user to the other) and their weighting are the key points here. this is one task future research could address. a second aspect is the refinement of the complexity estimations. as stated in chapters and , the models developed in the context of this research are meant to reflect a “common sense” judgement of complexity facets on a rather rough scale, nuances remain unrevealed. however, they also might be useful to consider, for example if a collection is otherwise very homogeneous. future research could try to optimize and enhance the models towards this goal. it is likely though that this optimization is only useful when the (limited) universality constraint is given up or at least relaxed. in order to arrive at a more detailed level of complexity estimations it would probably be necessary to take an individual user’s background into account instead of assuming a generalized one. we would give up the objectivity and comparability of the descriptor. the complexity descriptors of the same track might no longer be the same when computed with complexity models of different users. but on the other hand we could think of virtual music agents, that gather musical knowledge together with the user and adapt their complexity judgements according to his knowledge. they could give truly personalized and individual recommendations. but this chapter . future work approach has little in common with what is the defined goal of the presented research. the complexity models would need to be purposely designed for the adaptation to individual musical experience and knowledge. only a variation of parameters would not do the job here. so this is definitely a task that future research has to take care of. finally, it should be mentioned that complexity models could even be a useful integration within certain algorithms that aim at a high level semantic descrip- tion of a different kind. one example is the music segmentation, which could make use of changes in an instantaneous complexity description. but also for melody extraction the complexity evaluation of different alternatives might make sense when there are several candidates for the continuation. in a viterbi-like manner the algorithm could try to estimate the resulting complexity for different “paths” and give preference to one with a certain level of complexity (e. g. avoid- ing extreme values). similar ideas are thinkable for tempo tracking or chord transcription. in fact, pressing and lawrence [pl ] are using a very similar approach in their auto-notation program “transcribe”. the program tries to visualize a midi or audio input in the optimal way with respect to cognitive criteria such as the cost functions for producing syncopated rhythmic patterns. conclusion in this document the concept of a multi-faceted music complexity descriptor set has been presented. we saw that there are useful applications for this type of descriptors in the field of digital music collection interaction. some psychological and musicological studies have been reviewed that give evidence to the signifi- cance of music complexity with respect to music preference. this alone already makes music complexity an interesting means to navigate through a collection or to select tracks for a user. also other practical aspects speak in favor of the proposed complexity descriptors as their compactness in representation (storage and visualization) and their intuitiveness (querying). by reviewing former research on this field it was shown that no satisfying solution for the automatic estimation of music complexity exists to date. the proposed models for melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic complexity that can be found in the literature rely on an accurate symbolic representation of the music, which is not possible to reach automatically from the musical audio signal at present. while some previous work can be adapted and several related findings can be combined and enhanced, there are still many gaps to fill in order to arrive at a complete and fully functional solution that satisfies our needs. therefore, a set of operational definitions for the different complexity facets has been pre- sented in order to clarify in which direction and by which means the author is working on the topic. preliminary implementations of the rhythmic and the acoustic facet of complexity have been described and experimental results with them were reported. especially for the tested rhythmic complexity measure they appear to be very encouraging. the implemented danceability descriptor re- veals clearly a link to high-level musical attributes, which was demonstrated by statistical analysis and machine learning experiments. in the chapter on future work the next steps that are to be taken were de- picted. the focus will lie on filling in the missing parts, especially regarding conclusion acoustic, rhythmic, timbre, and harmonic complexity. for each of these facets a practical and realistic outline of an algorithmic approach has been given, while experiences from preliminary experiments were taken into account. since the evaluation with an annotated ground-truth is problematic for this descriptor set due to the high cost of manual annotation, a more application driven approach has been given the preference. as in the mentioned experiments with the im- plementation of the danceability measure, the focus will lie more on statistical analysis and machine learning methods than on formal listening tests with a group of subjects. however, in individual cases the latter will also be considered when feasible. also the computational efficiency of the proposed methods will be considered in the future development, since for large collections this point is highly relevant. yet, as we will be able to do only the first steps in this domain, performance in terms of processing speed will take a subordinate position to performance in terms of functionality. list of figures . screenshot from a music browser interface displaying part of a song collection organized by danceability and dynamic complexity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . circle of music complexity facets. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the wundt curve for the relation between music complexity and preference. . . illustration of the implication-realization process (from [sapm ]). . . . . . instantaneous loudness (dots), global loudness (grey solid line), and average distance margin (dashed lines) for four example tracks. . . . . . . . . . . . . excerpts from the time series s(n) for three example pieces from different musical genres. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . double logarithmic plots of mean residual over time scales. . . . . . . . . . . dfa exponent functions for the three example tracks from figure . . . . . . . top-eight labels with the highest number of assigned artists. . . . . . . . . . α-levels for techno (o) and film score tracks (x), unordered. 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[wf ] k. willson and d. p. francis. a direct analytical demonstration of the essential equivalence of detrended fluctuation analysis and spectral analysis of rr interval variability. physiological measurment, :n –n , . [wit ] t. wittkop. two-channel noise reduction algorithms motivated by models of binaural interaction. phd thesis, universität oldenburg, oldenburg, germany, . [ws ] y. wang and s. streich. a drumbeat-pattern based error concealment method for music streaming applications. in proceedings of the interna- tional conference on acoustics, speech and signal processing, orlando, usa, . [wun ] w. wundt. grundzüge der physiologischen psychologie. engelmann, leipzig, . [zf ] e. zwicker and h. fastl. psychoacoustics – facts and models. springer, berlin, germany, . [zl ] j. ziv and a. lempel. a universal algorithm for sequential data compres- sion. ieee transactions on information theory, ( ): – , . [zl ] j. ziv and a. lempel. compression of individual sequences via variable- rate coding. ieee transactions on information theory, ( ): – , . cultural heritage technologies credit: roberto mascaroni www.milano .icom.museum museums and cultural landscapes - july archeomatica international special issue mate and dust level of the work of arts, which is favoured by the urban environment in which the cité de la musique was built. a large part of the collection of keyboard instru- ments and harps, some of which are maintained in working condition, is on public display. this calls for particular at- tention as monitoring the hygrometric conditions is of ut- most importance. t he musée de la musique houses a collection of close to instruments covering a time period stretching over about four centuries and coming from all con- tinents. it has a research and restoration laboratory that combines applied research dedicated to the study and con- servation of musical instruments while also providing ser- vices linked to the collection. the activity of the laboratory falls within the scope of the study of the material and cul- tural object represented by the musical instrument and the values its legacy is leaving. the research conducted there has a concrete application in the conception and implementation of the conservation choices regarding the musée’s collection: pre-emptive or curative conservation, presentation of works of art as part of different exhibitions, and obviously the maintenance of their working order. a material commodity as much as a sonorous object, the musical instrument is both a piece of art and an everyday object, a complex compound of several materials, which has a musical functionality. this immaterial dimension of past and present music conveyed by the actual objects is what makes them singular works of art and inspires research directly connected to the study or conservation of their functionality. the scientific team of the musée consists of people, some of whom work part time. three of them carry out the re- sponsibilities of curators. the laboratory’s team includes a doctor of chemistry, a doctor of physics, a scientific and technical expert, and three curator-restorers, one of whom is exclusively assigned to maintaining keyboard instruments in working order. the team possesses investigation and ana- lytical equipment that allows it to conduct in situ exams in terms of observation (microscope, ultraviolet) as well as elementary analysis (x-ray fluorescence) or mechanical characterisation (modal analysis in real time). today, this team is part of networks made up of national and interna- tional partners with which it carries out numerous research projects. the collection generates daily tasks related to its legacy and intended to ensure the conservation to satisfactory stand- ards of the works of art exhibited in the museum as items in reserve: monitoring the climate, providing technical loan management and pro-active involvement in campaigns for the semi-annual temporary exhibitions. the monitoring of the exhibition condition conducted by the laboratory particularly focuses on controlling the cli- laboratories some aspects of the research in the laboratory of the musée de la musique, paris cité de la musique by stéphane vaiedelich art and technology meet at the musée de la musique à paris. the paper covers some aspects of the research carried out in the laboratory of the museum and focuses on the work of the science team for the study and conservation of musical instruments, both in terms of preventive and curative conservation of the collection museum. fig. - permanent collection, th century space, musée de la mu- sique. the j. couchet e. . . harpsichord from the permanent collection of the musée de la musique is not displayed in a glass case. this attrac- tive presentation is appreciated by the public, though it requires great care in climate and dust control. photo : a. borel, © cité de la musique the laboratory also provides for control of the collection’s sanitary state. if the presence of mushrooms and mould is not really a concern considering the general condition of conservation, the presence of wood-boring insects is a per- manent threat particularly in the exhibition areas. as soon as a suspicion of infestation is detected by the presence of insects in the traps throughout the museum, active anoxic debugging campaigns ensue. in order to use these treat- ments wisely, the laboratory has recently developed a tech- nique using ultrasonic methods of identification of insects cultural heritage technologies inside the wood, which is in the process of being patented. efficient and suited for these objects of national value be- cause it is completely non-invasive, this new technique al- lows us to detect the actual presence of larvae from all wood-boring insect species inside the material. in addition to its pre-emptive conservation action, the labo- ratory is responsible for the interventions performed on the works of art. it thus conducts numerous restorations on the entire corpus each year. these interventions are founded on a deontology that is now widely accepted and relayed on the international level through the setting up of cimcim, a committee of icom (international council of museums) that includes the majority of the most prestigious museums of musical instruments worldwide. these restoration cam- paigns are often correlated to temporary exhibitions or the renewing of permanent ones. when creating a display is their goal, their main features are connected to the composite character represented by the musical instruments. indeed, it is not rare to see, within the same instrument, animal matters (glue, ivory, gelatine, viscera, horn, etc), vegetal matters (wood, liana, resin and natural rubber) or mineral matters such as stones or metals combined. this complex assembling often provides favoura- ble conditions for the rapid deterioration of some materials. this is particularly true of some metals, as soon as they are in contact with wood. this is what happens to the weights added to the keys of keyboard instruments in order to tune them. confined in an environment with an acid ph, it de- composes rapidly while creating sulphates in the process. occupying a greater volume than the metal from which they come from, they cause irreversible cracks in the parts that require a conservation intervention. beyond these tasks related to the conservation of this cul- tural heritage, the laboratory also conducts several research projects seeking a better understanding of the musical in- struments in a systemic approach that associates matters, structures, and historical contexts. studying varnishes and coating the question of the coating of musical instruments is a vast issue because almost all instruments’ bodies are covered with protective coatings. considering the stakes and myths attached to them, the quartet instruments and especially the violin family take on a singular character. until the end of the th century, there is no known historical source, whether from stringed-instrument makers or observers who had direct access to their craftsmanship, that precisely de- scribe the materials, tools and processes used to varnish instruments. however, a sketch of the technical context of the coating practices in europe during that era, particularly the coating composition, can be drawn from indirect biblio- graphic sources. from a general point of view, it seems that the development of alcohol- and petrol-based coating and the abandonment of oil-based coating constituted a tech- nical rupture in the middle of the th century. from the early th century onwards, many stringed-instrument mak- ers and research workers are forced to speculate regarding the coating technique of ancient italian stringed-instrument makers, whose instruments are perceived as far better than the contemporary production at the time. faced with the stakes of the conservation and restoration of these bodies, the laboratory makes it a point to define a methodology of physical-chemical analysis dedicated to the most comprehensive characterisation of ancient varnish of musical instruments . we have offered a sequence of ana- lytical techniques that maximises the quantity of data ob- tained (both on the stratigraphic structure and the organic and inorganic composition) and that appropriately matches the thickness scale of the varnishes and the quantities of matter available for this analysis. we were able to apply this methodology to a wide corpus rather than to one in- strument at a time. directed by the musée de la musique , a multi-disciplinary team was brought together to work on this issue. minuscule fragments of varnish have been taken from these instruments in order to be analysed with infra- red microspectrometry at the lc rmf (laboratoire du cen- tre de recherche et de restauration des musées de france) and on the smis beamline of the synchrotron soleil, with raman microspectrometry at the ladir (laboratoire de dynamique, interactions et réactivité, sous la tutelle de l'université pierre et marie curie et du cnrs), with scanning electron microscopy at the institute for analytical sciences in dortmund, and with gas chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry at the crcc (centre de recherche sur la con- servation des collections). fig. - in situ detection of an infestation the atax system (analyse des traces acoustiques de xylophages – analy- ses of acoustical traces of xylophage) can easily be adapted to several types of wooden objects. the micro sensor is fixed by a completely re- versible interface. signal processing can be performed post-acquisition. the data analysis can be performed in the laboratory, easing the inter- vention on the object. photo : s. leconte© cité de la musique fig. - stratigraphy of a varnish stratigraphy of a varnish and top wood cells from the soundboard of a.stradivarys’ “proviginy” violin, , cremona e. . collection of the musée de la musique, paris. from bottom to top: cellular structure of the wood, typical of conifers; first (white) oil-based layer impregnated in the wood; upper layer (yel- low-orange), a mixture of oil and pine resin containing red pigments. photo : j.-p. echard © cité de la musique archeomatica international special issue beyond the concomitant results and recent development in progress at the museum, this research has shown that the var- nish of five of stradivarius’s instruments all have two similar layers of organic composition. the lower layer features drying oil. the upper layer is an oil-based varnish, a mix of drying oil and pinaceae resin. a common practice in europe, adding resin to oil is the basis of numerous varnish recipes used during the period of the instru- ments under study. such a varnish is sometimes referred to as “amber varnish.” moreover, red pigments (iron oxides, vermillion, cochineal lac- quer), also used in easel paints, have been found in the up- per layer of the varnish of four instruments. according to their composition and pigment concentration, these varnishes are to be connected to the transparent layer of paint in easel paints. they attest to antonio stradivarius’s intention to colour his in- struments during the varnishing phase and thus to bestow it with a decisive role in the visual appearance of the instrument. in addition to these works, a systematic analysis of numerous recipes and treaties has been carried out. this documented information is precious for the entire scientific community as well as for contemporary instrument makers, and it has been centralised in a public database hosted on the cité de la mu- sique’s website. this “vernix” database presently includes over four hundred varnish recipes stretching over centuries. functional modalities, gestures, structures musical instruments hold a function and the musée de la mu- sique when it is both technically feasible and ethically accept- able, maintains the collection’s instruments in working order. this conservation choice does not apply to all corpuses. thus, woodwind instruments, clarinets, oboes and snake flutes for ex- ample, will not be affected. indeed, the breath of the musician, whose average temperature is ° c and which is loaded with nearly % relative humidity, causes an internal constraint that is incompatible with sustainable conservation. indeed, wood, a mechanical sorbent material, if there ever was one, strongly expands under the effect of a hot and humid breath. the in- side hygroscopic gradient causes irreparable cracks in the tube, permanently ruining the instrument and preventing us from any subsequent interpretation and analysis of its functional quali- ties. to overcome this difficulty and offer the best possible ap- proach to the instrument’s functional and musical qualities, the laboratory has recently developed non-destructive and non-in- vasive, acoustic impedance experiments providing understand- ing of and documentation on a large part of these corpuses’ acoustic properties without having to play them. offering large quantity of information, these experiments al- low us to discover the playing modes, instrument tuning, com- patible fingerings, and they also provide information regarding the instrument’s state of conservation such as the presence of leaks in the air column for example. in some cases, it is pos- sible to reconstruct the diameters of the instruments’ axial canals from the results of these measurements without resort- ing to direct metrology measurement, which can sometimes be tricky. essential information that is all at once relevant for musicologists, researchers and makers. in the case of corpuses of struck, rubbed or plucked string instruments, the main problematic lies in the mechanical con- straint that the strings apply on the structure. indeed, amount- ing to kg force for a violin whose mass does not exceed grams, this constraint may amount to several hundred kilos or even several tons in the case of pianos. in this case, the labo- ratory implements several tools and methods of investigation. of course, prior to applying any pressure to these instruments, a preliminary study is initiated. among other things, it is based on an external and internal examination of the structure. to do this, the museum uses radiography as a routine examina- tion, which provides invaluable help. however, visual examination and observation are not sufficient to guarantee the stability of a structure under constraint and the contribution of physics and especially mechanics is essential. this expertise is properly mastered by the museum and it has multiple applications related to the collection. it provides val- uable support in the restoration process. today, thanks to their high-standard multi-disciplinary training, restorers are atten- tive to controlling the consequences of their actions on the works from a conservation point of view as much as from their public perception. this essential approach is complex when it comes to measuring the impact of a restoring intervention on the value of this cultural heritage regarding the musical functionality of an instrument. thus, stabilising fractures in no way guarantees that the structure, the soundboard of a piano or a violin for example, will regain its original vibratory properties. as with any intervention, this one, and particularly its effects on the instrument’s vibratory prop- erties, must be documented. since , the museum has been devel- oping research projects related to this issue and uses calculation and finite element modelling on a regu- lar basis. accompanying the restoration of joannes couchet’s harpsichord, made in antwerp in , is the first experiment conducted by the museum on this topic. a classified national treasure acquired in , this harpsichord is in an exceptional organologic state. originally fitted with a single set of feet, a set of feet and a second keyboard were added in . interestingly enough, this is the only significant change it has thus far undergone. this operation, called "restoration implementation," exclusively oper- ated on the instrument’s exterior. therefore, all the structural parts, bars, reinforcements, and the thick- ness of the soundboard are still well preserved original parts from the th century antwerp workshop. this structural authenticity is one of the reasons why the instrument is fig. - acoustic impedance experimental setup measure of the acoustic impedance of a serpent. the impedance head is placed on the upper extremity of the instrument (on the left of the figure). the acoustic impedance characterizes the “resistance” of the material to the passage of sound. it is defined as the ratio of sound to particle velocity and is frequency dependent. fig. – radiography radiograph of a “selmer” jazz guitar. all the internal components are perfectly distinguishable, in par- ticular the double resona- tor system, patented by mario maccaferri who was responsible for the guitar fabrication in the compa- ny. a weakness, detached adhesives, or a fracture would be immediately dis- cernible. photo : s. vaidelich© cité de la musique cultural heritage technologies abstract experience the musée de la musique has a research and restoration labora- tory that combines applied research dedicated to the study and conservation of musical instruments while also providing services linked to the collection. the activity of the laboratory falls within the scope of the study of the material and cultural object represented by the musical instrument and the values its legacy is leaving. the research conducted there has a concrete application in the conception and implementation of the conservation choices regarding the musée’s collection: pre-emptive or curative conservation, presentation of works of art as part of different exhibitions, and obviously the maintenance of their working order. keywords cultural heritage; restoration and conservation; x-ray fluorescence; radiography; the atax system. authors stéphane vaiedelich responsable du laboratoire musée de la musique avenue jean –jaurès paris tel svaiedelich@cite-musique.fr notes a list of publication related to this topic can be found at www.cite-mu- sique.fr. under the scientific supervision of jean-philippe echard, research engi- neer at the musée de la musique. still played and recorded today. however, it is also at the origin of the instrument’s fragility, and structural reinforcements had to be installed within the harpsichord to enable it to withstand kilograms of pressure applied by the strings. by combining mechanical calculations with the measurements of the vibratory properties through the use of acoustic holographic techniques, it was possible to optimise the number and position of these rein- forcements. thus, the restoration process in respect of deontol- ogy is fully reversible. the reinforcements installed in the structure are not glued to- gether and they maintain the same position simply because of the tension applied by the strings. stabilising the instrument, the calculation has made it possible to only place three rein- forcements in the locations providing the essential mechanical efficiency needed to minimize changes to the vibratory behav- iour of the soundboard. today, it is thus possible to say that the sound produced by the harpsichord is only slightly modified by our intervention. conclusion the scientific team of the musée de la musique conducts applied research projects that are directly relevant to the field of con- servation, knowledge and restoration of musical instruments. the implemented multi-disciplinary perspective applied to mu- sical instruments makes them a unique research focus. directly applied to the collection of which the museum is responsible, the results and publications of this research are all available online, on the cité de la musique’s website. bearing broader is- sues, this research is often conducted in partnership with other institutions interested in research in the cultural heritage. fig. - acoustic holograph of the j. couchet harpsichord the microphone grid is placed over the instrument at a precisely known distance. the experimental setup avoids any contact with the instrument and the experimental conditions are easily reproducible. measures are performed yearly. a difference in the measurements would indicate an evolution of the vibrating structure and would result in a reassessment of the conservation conditions. photo: s. leconte © cité de la musique this paper has been pub- lished in archeomatica issue volume iii issue iv. in the cité de la musique in paris became philarmonie. i w r i t e w h a t i h e a r " : g e n r e i n s e l e c t e d s o n g s b y jane s i b e r r y f r a n c e f l e d d e r u s b . a . , redeemer college, m . m . , the university o f north texas, a t h e s i s s u b m i t t e d i n p a r t i a l f u l f i l l m e n t o f t h e r e q u i r e m e n t s f o r - t h e d e g r e e o f d o c t o r o f p h i l o s o p h y i n t h e f a c u l t y o f g r a d u a t e s t u d i e s (school o f m u s i c ) w e accept tmis thesis as conforming t h e univr/r"§fty of bri%sh columbia july © francine may fledderus, in presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the university of british columbia, agree that the library shall make it freely available for reference and study. i further agree that permission for extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the head of my department or by his or her representatives. it is understood that copying or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. department the university of british columbia vancouver, canada de- ( / ) abstract this dissertation explores the use of genre in various songs by toronto singer-songwriter jane siberry. siberry (b. ) is an innovative rock musician whose oeuvre draws on a variety of popular music genres. selected songs are analyzed in light of their relationship to the genres of folk revival, electro pop, country-pop, cool jazz, and funk. the analysis focuses on the consonances and dissonances a song has with a particular genre. the social meanings evoked by genre adherence and subversion are also addressed. it is argued that while siberry works within contrasting genres, her approach toward those genres is more or less consistent. in particular, siberry treats various musical parameters (form, metre, and instrumentation) in more complex ways than found in conventional approaches to these genres. as such, siberry subverts the expectations associated with a genre in a manner that can be conceived of as that of the rock auteur. the rock auteur is a singer-songwriter or producer (in siberry's case both) who, like the director in film theory, uses continuous themes or technical approaches to create a recognizable personal style that can be found throughout his or her oeuvre. such a distinct personal style appears in both siberry's music and lyrics. the analytical methodology employed in this study consists of three parts. first, an analysis of a genre prototype will reveal both the parameters most characteristic of that genre and the social meanings commonly associated with it. next, a siberry song (both the lyrics and the music) will be analyzed from a transcription of the recording in terms of both its consonances and dissonances with the conventions of the relevant genre. special attention will be paid to the additional levels of complexity siberry consistently employs in her approach to genre. finally, conclusions will be drawn as to how siberry's departure from certain generic conventions affects the social meanings associated with a given genre. table of contents abstract ii table of contents iii list of figures v acknowledgments vi dedication vii introduction chapter one biography of siberry genre and siberry's approach to songwriting recurrent themes and techniques in siberry's lyrics chapter two the folk-revival genre genre in "lajalouse" chapter three the electro-pop genre genre in "goodbye" chapter four the country-pop genre genre in "everything reminds me of my dog" chapter five the cool-jazz genre genre in "maria" chapter six the funk genre genre in "flirtin' is a flo-thing" chapter seven conclusions genre and social meaning works cited discography appendix lyrics of selected songs appendix transcription of "lajalouse" appendix transcription of "goodbye" appendix transcription of "everything reminds me of my dog" appendix transcription of "maria" appendix transcription of "flirtin' is a flo-thing" v list of figures number title page . tonality in "la jalouse" . phrase lengths in "la jalouse" . metre in "goodbye" . tonality in "goodbye" . phrase lengths in "everything reminds me of my dog" . a rythmic acceleration before the phrase "reminds me of my dog" . b rhythmic acceleration after the phrase "reminds me of my dog" . phrase lengths in "maria" . tonality in "maria" . phrase lengths in "flirtin' is a flo-thing" . rhythmic variation of bass vamps in "flirtin' is a flo-thing vi acknowledgments first and foremost i would like to thank jane siberry, not least of all for graciously granting me as much interview time as i needed. i would also like thank the members of my committee for all the effort they put forth on this project. to vera micznik, who was so supportive of my embarking upon a popular music topic and spent a lot of time reviewing the transcriptions. to alan thrasher, who has a deep appreciation of north american popular music and steered me in the right direction when i encountered methodological problems. and to david metzer, to whom i am deeply indebted for his prompt assistance with feedback on countless drafts of my dissertation. in addition i wish to express sincere gratitude to my editors kate willems and especially norman stanfield, who read the complete manuscript, and bill fledderus, who gave me so much encouragement as well as helpful suggestions. thanks as well to john bacon, who lent me his old computer and to keith fredlund, who tirelessly transformed my handwritten transcriptions and alterations into computer notation. any errors in the transcriptions are mine and not his. finally, i would like to acknowledge my family, shara worden, and benita wolters- fredlund for their love, interest, inspiration, encouragement, and prayers. and last but not least, my thanks goes out to the academic community in vancouver, particularly to karen ott vandekamp for leading the way down the narrow path, and to the members of the g.c.f. and g.c.u. for tirelessly reminding me—when i had quite forgotten—of why i began this journey in the first place. vii for benita wolters-fredlund and keith fredlund, whose unwavering support on every possible level enabled the completion of this project. and for bill fledderus, who always finds the time. introduction genre and social meanings in popular music recent writings in musicology, particularly those viewed as "critical musicology" and "new musicology," discuss music in terms of its social and cultural contexts. these studies have countered the formalist perspective that has shaped music scholarship over the last few decades. in that perspective, musical works are viewed as abstract structures, self-contained objects of melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic patterns, that are isolated from the cultural settings in which they appear. a newly-revived interest in cultural contexts has created a significant shift in musicology, encouraging scholars to explore the relationship between music and such areas as race, gender, and sexuality (notes for this chapter begin on p. ). it has also stimulated interest in other repertories, particularly popular music idioms. popular music has long been viewed as inextricably bound to its cultural scene, hence the neglect of the music by scholars adhering to formalist paradigms. these dense ties, however, have now attracted musicologists, who have been intrigued by the rich and broad resonances of popular music with political, social, and ideological issues in society. this dissertation joins the growing field of popular music studies. it focuses on the songs of canadian singer-songwriter jane siberry, examining her negotiation of different genres. many of the leading pop music scholars have focused on genre, including adam krims, who studies rap, and robert walser, who writes on heavy metal. the assumption behind walser's approach to the study of popular music is the idea that music is "a material, social practice, wherein subject positions are constructed and negotiated, social relations are enacted and transgressed, and ideologies are developed and interrogated" (walser , ). to walser, one of the sites in which this negotiation occurs is that of genre. genre has proven a rich field of study in popular music scholarship for four basic reasons. first, comparing one genre to another shows the different ways in which musicians deal with the same musical parameters. contrasting the same musical parameters in different genres lays bare the unspoken assumptions that listeners and critics apply to a genre, assumptions which hide behind the rhetoric or naturalized discourse of each genre. for example, in his distinction: a social critique of the judgement of taste ( ), pierre bourdieu discusses the prestige associated with the art music canon, concluding that culture (in the form of musical works) is used to distinguish different social classes and to disguise the nature of these distinctions by locating them in the "universals" of aesthetics or taste (bourdieu, ). the difficulty or complexity of "high" art is used first to establish as fact its aesthetic superiority to "low" art, and then to "naturalize" the superiority of both the taste and quality of the educated bourgeoisie (bourdieu, ). to further this end, the bourgeoisie has developed a critical industry to highlight the complexity of "high" art (bourdieu, ) in order to draw "masked but satisfactory distinctions" between those who can appreciate it and those who cannot (fiske , ). comparisons between genres unmask such naturalized discourse. for instance, while in the genre of nineteenth-century opera vocal qualities are only considered beautiful if sung with a pure tone and vibrato, jazz idioms, such as the swing genre, counter this, since raspy, straight- tone vocals, such as those of louis armstrong or billie holiday, are considered equally pleasing. secondly, once the aesthetic assumptions associated with a given genre are laid bare, it is again possible to evaluate a text in terms of its relationship to the expectations and social meanings of its own genre. comparisons help us to see a text in its own cultural and social context—not against any broad artificial concept of high or low art. this is especially liberating when it comes to analyzing popular music; for, along with folk and world music, popular music suffers from being measured against the aesthetic criteria of art music. using genre as a methodological approach is fruitful since "discourse communities," or users of a given genre, frequently make judgements (based on genre expectations) about how one text in a genre is preferable to another (paltridge, ). in this way, "genre criticism ensures that a text cannot be condemned for being something that it is not" (madsen, ). rather, a text is criticized in terms of its own aesthetic paradigm, that is, the musical parameters that its own "discourse community" deems to be significant to the genre. thirdly, genre is a site of "pleasure" for the listener. the genre of a given text is constituted by conventions of practice and interpretation. as cultural theorist john fiske explains in television culture ( ), conventions are the structural elements of genre that are shared between a producer and an audience. as such, conventions both embody the crucial ideological concerns of the time in which they are current and remain central to the pleasures a genre offers its audience (fiske , ). literary critic tzvetan todorov sets up the paradigm for how genres evoke pleasure for a listener: because genres exist as an institution, "they function as 'horizons of expectations' for readers and as 'models of writing' for authors" (todorov, ). since a listener comes to a genre with a set of expectations, when these are met the listener experiences the joy of repetition (that is, fulfilled expectations). when the listener comes to a text and his or her expectations are not met, he or she can either be disappointed or delighted by the discovery of an innovative departure a producer has made within a genre. both met expectations and the experiences of innovation have the potential to thrill a listener. indeed, when innovation by a producer is welcomed by an audience, the meeting facilitates change within a generic convention. finally, the study of genre is an avenue to understanding the social meanings of music. once the assumptions naturalized by the discourse of a genre are laid bare, the social meanings that listeners apply to different genres begin to emerge. in his ground-breaking book, running with the devil: power, gender, and madness in heavy metal music ( ), robert walser outlines how social meanings are construed by listeners. he argues that mass-produced musical texts constitute cultural discourses. as he claims, musical genres (such as country pop, cool jazz, folk revival, and funk) function as discourses in that they provoke meanings in listeners (walser , ). because social meanings are associated with a given genre, when a listener hears a song that evokes a genre, he or she will apply the generic meanings onto the song itself. in this way, social meanings are not inherent in a song, but rather may be said to result in part from the genre negotiations between a musician and listener. todorov points out that it is from human discourse that concepts of genre are formed, transformed, and defended. in his words, "genres are nothing other than the codification of discursive properties" (todorov, ). saying that meanings are provoked by the use of genre in a text is not another way of saying that meanings are inherent in a text; because a text is not stable, but contextual. rather than being inherent, meanings are instead formed by listeners through their interaction with genres as employed in specific songs. for a listener, then, interpreting a musical song requires contextuality, that is, linking "the unique relations of a particular linguistic [or musical] use to a particular contextual moment" (fiske , ). this "contextual moment" consists of both a genre and the time in which it is stable. while specific listeners may perceive the meanings of individual texts differently, it is society as a whole that participates in the formation of the meanings associated with genre. because society collectively forms generic meanings, these meanings tend to be stable for longer periods of time than the ideas expressed in isolated songs. as such, genres can be conceived of as currently stable locations or "sites where stable discourses temporarily organize the exchange of meanings" (walser , ). since generic meanings eventually do change, however, specific meanings applied to a genre are only valid in the given historical moment in which the genre is stable, that is, when a "discourse community" agrees upon its meanings. while genres inevitably change with time, then, the fact that terms for them exist "in everyday language" (miller , ) shows that they have a "stabilized-for-now" place in society (schryer, ). during their period of stability, musical genres consistently treat certain musical parameters. because "a society chooses and codifies the acts that correspond most closely to its ideology," the parameters accrue social significance (todorov, ). thus the details of a genre and its very presence or absence among various social groups can reveal a lot about the ideologies of society. it is from the ideologies lurking behind the musical choices of society that social meaning can be interpreted. discussions about social meanings are possible because genres are made up of codes, which are formal characteristics or rules learned by listeners and musicians through experience. walser proposes that since these "codes constitute the musical discourses that underpin genres . . . musical details can be evaluated" and the meaning of a text can be "read" or understood by the listener (walser , ). as such, musical details and structures can be discussed as having discursive meanings (kramer, ). it follows then that the interpretation of meaning for a listener is best understood as a two-part process. delineating musical parameters is necessary to distinguish genres, while the analysis of genre conventions helps a listener to "place the significance of musical details" heard in a text. the challenge in reading a text is to work "between the levels of specific details and generic categories towards social meanings" (walser , ). thus, in order to draw conclusions about social meanings, one must weigh the distinctive components of a text against the meanings affiliated with its genre. because the social meanings affiliated with a genre must be changed collectively by society, they change slowly. therefore one comes to a genre with both past and present semantic associations. thus, instead of a single meaning, clusters of meanings tend to be mapped onto genres. although this mapping might suggest that the range of possible interpretations of a text may be theoretically infinite, certain types of meanings or "related variant meanings" (walser , ) tend to be consistently supported or preferred by specific "discourse communities" negotiating a genre (fiske , ). in practice, then, the genre of a given text both promotes a specific cluster of meanings and establishes interpretive boundaries in a text (fiske , ). fiske is correct in pointing out that, while social meanings are not inherent in a text, "what a text utters determines, limits, and influences the links that can be made between it and its readers" (fiske , ). despite the interpretive boundaries of genre, at the level of the individual text, many meanings remain possible. indeed, fiske points out that "a popular text, to be popular, must have points of relevance to a variety of readers in a variety of social contexts, and so must be polysemic in itself (fiske , ). as such, several different interpretations of a given musical text are possible. on the one hand, literary critic frederic jameson points out that the "master code" or overriding discourse of any narrative works to perpetuate an ideology (jameson , ). on the other hand, a reader from a different socio-historical background reading the same text will often come up with different interpretations of that text, based on his or her own ideological apparatus. indeed, any one reading of a text must be considered conditional, for it is determined by the social conditions of its reading (fiske , ). although the subjective reading of one "discourse community" may differ from that of another, this does not mean that either reading is invalidated. because all interpretive narratives are inherently biased, there is no reason that antithetical readings cannot exist side by side. in practice, however, genres are blurred, and therefore interpretations of a text are more complicated. in specific texts, genres rarely, if ever, exist in pure forms. rather, different genres tend to be combined within a given text, particularly when innovation is sought. in music, artists often attempt to change or expand the criteria of a given genre by obscuring the boundaries between different genres. indeed, generic change is accomplished by adding new elements, excluding certain old ones, or creating new fusions. texts within a genre thus "rarely correspond slavishly" to generic criteria (jameson , ). the fact that it is virtually impossible to find an example of a pure genre is not a weakness of genre studies. on the contrary, the strength of genre theory lies in its capacity to be applied to texts in which the boundaries between genres are fluid. several different genres can be applied to a text to see which one makes the greatest sense of its parameters. often a primary genre exists, but the text contains attributes of one or more other genres. just because certain parameters are transgressed or various genres are mixed, however, does not mean that it is no longer helpful to discuss or conceive of specific texts within the construct of a single genre. jameson argues that, with the intersecting of genres in actual practice, "we need the specification of individual genres today more than ever . . . to map" the social meanings provoked by a specific text (jameson , ). this does not mean, for example, that a hybrid text cannot be analyzed from the different perspectives associated with the two or more genres present in the text; rather, through the lens of a single genre prototype, conclusions about the effect one genre has upon the social meanings associated with another one will become all the more clear. accordingly, the goal of this study is not to find examples of songs that fit most exactly within a genre prototype. on the contrary, it is more interesting to investigate texts which deviate from a genre prototype. assuming that adherence to genre expectations implies a tacit agreement with the social meanings associated with a genre, the range of meanings opens up when an artist departs from a genre prototype. genre and the songs of jane siberry this dissertation examines how individual songs by jane siberry relate to different genres in the realm of popular music. by "genre," i mean specific types of music that can be thought of as a subset of a larger domain. for example, the domain of r&b contains such genres as rhythm and blues, soul, funk, etc. my use of the term "genre," then, is not in the broad sense of a "ballad, dance song, single, album" as employed by popular music scholar richard middleton (middleton , ). what i describe as a "genre," middleton refers to as a "sub-code." "sub- codes" in the idiom of rock for example, would include "rock 'n' roll, beat, progressive," and synth-rock (ibid). the term "subcode," however, is not commonly used in either the literature or "in everyday language" (miller , ). instead of "styles" and "subcodes," therefore, i will be making distinctions between larger domains or idioms and genres (middleton , ). my use of the term "genre" then reflects the everyday usage of the word from the concise oxford dictionary as "a kind or style o f music. the domain of heavy metal, for example, consists of such contrasting genres as "thrash metal, commercial metal, lite metal, power metal, american metal, black (satanic) metal, white (christian) metal, death metal, speed metal, glam metal" (walser , ). each genre is distinguished by a "coherent body of musical signs and conventions," such as form, tonality, and instrumentation; but each also shares the same code (walser , xiv). heavy metal, for example, is united as a discourse via codes of meaning concerning "power" (walser , ). the discourse of metal has historically appealed primarily to teenage boys and empowers them in their struggles to negotiate issues of masculinity, specifically via notions of gender, madness, and control (walser , xvi). in addition to consistent functions and conventions, genres also share the same social contexts. in the s, "lite or "poser" metal, for example, was performed in huge arenas and received radio airplay; while "underground metal" such as "speed" or "thrash" could only be heard in clubs (walser , ). as illustrated in the example of heavy metal, popular music styles change more quickly than those of art music. as such, the paradigm of domain or idiom and genre is a pragmatic way of categorizing the diversity of types that are found under the umbrella term "popular music." indeed, this same generic labeling practice has arisen out of sheer necessity in popular music charts, such as billboard, as well as on the internet or in music stores. when discussing types, the distinction between a general domain and a specific genre can be a site for contestation. walser argues that a domain becomes a genre when its function in language and culture changes from that of an adjective to that of a noun. for example, while in the s the rock press talked about the "heavy metal sound" or playing hard rock in a "heavy metal style," by the s musicians simply played "heavy metal" (walser , ). the issue of whether a type of music is a domain or a genre is somewhat slippery. admittedly, there are no iron-tight categories. indeed, numerous terms could be used to describe the very concept of a set and its sub-sets. in the end, semantic arguments over whether something is called "domain" or "genre" are much less important than the concept of a set and its sub-set. neither are issues of terminology germane to my argument; because in either case the discussed prototypes have distinct characteristics. furthermore, it will become evident that the necessity of discussing idioms and domains in the chapters on jazz and country in no way detracts from their larger resonances with the subsidiary cool jazz and country-pop genres, respectively, as they both pertain to a discussion of social meanings. jane siberry (b. ) is a toronto-based singer-songwriter whose innovative songs present an original voice in popular music. siberry's oeuvre spans the s and the s, which is no small feat in a business of one-hit wonders and flavour-of-the-month promotional tactics. the fact that siberry continues working to this day is a significant achievement in light of her avoidance of formulaic song writing and her embrace of contrasting genres. because of the generic variety in her music, particularly in her albums from the s, siberry's songs resist any overall stylistic pigeonholing and are therefore difficult to categorize and subsequently market. in fact, siberry's personal musical style or "idiolect," which engages such idioms as folk, jazz, latin, r&b, and country, has been labeled by the rock press as everything from rock to pop and new wave to new age (middleton , ). it is my contention, however, that while siberry works within contrasting genres, the ways in which she employs each genre reveal similar patterns. specifically, siberry problematizes various musical parameters (such as form, metre, or instrumentation) to add a level of complexity not normally associated with a given genre. in this dissertation i will analyze the consonances of siberry's songs within established musical genres to investigate the similarities in her approach across genres. the dissonances siberry's songs create with conventional generic expectations will be viewed as siberry's commentary on genre. in this way, the social meanings conventionally associated with contrasting genres are altered with departures from genre expectations. the analytical methodology used here consists of three parts. first, an analysis of a genre prototype will reveal the parameters that are most distinctive in a given genre as well as the social meanings commonly associated with that genre. next, i will analyze both the lyrics and the music of selected songs by jane siberry representing different musical genres. transcriptions of her recordings will be discussed in terms of both their consonances and dissonances with the conventions of each genre. these analyses will reveal how siberry departs from a genre prototype by creating additional levels of complexity, which disrupt generic expectations. finally, i will draw conclusions as to how siberry's departure from certain generic conventions in her compositions shapes the social meanings associated with the genre. the state of popular music studies this project investigates both the musical choices made by siberry and the semantic ramifications of these choices. an emphasis on the music as well as the lyrics of siberry's songs stands in contrast to the focus of most popular music studies. much of the literature does not deal with musical elements such as melody, rhythm, texture, and timbre. as recently as ten years ago popular music scholarship was dominated by sociological approaches that reduced the social significance of a song to the literal meaning of its lyrics. this content analysis took into account neither the meanings evoked by the music itself (via genres), nor the fact that meanings are polysemic, fluid, and varied. there are several sociological approaches (for example, subcultural theory and marxist analyses of music production) that have aided in revealing the cultural contexts in which popular music is made. it seems self-evident, however, that any conclusions drawn about the significance of popular music that do not incorporate an analysis of the musical sounds themselves could be limited. the lack of musical analysis found in sociological approaches to popular music has been due in part to the fact that most sociologists are not trained in musical analysis (frith , ). this remains the case today. for example, neo-marxist sociologists such as simon frith ( ), peter wicke ( ), and keith negus ( ) discuss different styles of music within their socio- economic contexts in an illuminating manner, but rarely analyze the music of individual texts. perhaps this neglect is in keeping with the marxist tendency to "remove agency from the activities of songwriters and fans and place it exclusively in the hands of record industry executives" (bowman, ). the same disregard for the compositional elements of popular music can be found in textual analyses of the lyrics in articles by simon reynolds ( ), holly kruse ( ) and john moore ( ), as well as ethnographic writings by subculturists such as dick hebdige ( ), david muggleton ( ), kai fikentscher ( ), and steve redhead ( ), who discuss underground musical cultures. a similar neglect in discussing musical elements is also found in critical theory approaches. the stimulating writings of john shepherd and peter wicke ( ), for example, apply to popular music the theories of freud, lacan, kristeva, and others. while this work is extremely engaging from a critical perspective, shepherd and wicke do not cite examples of specific songs. as such, the practical applications of their theories to popular music texts are not always clear. elsewhere, feminist critics such as joy press ( ), mary celeste kearney ( ), lucy o'brien ( ), and angela mcrobbie ( ) discuss underrepresented topics concerning women in rock but similarly avoid musical analysis. musicologists such as charles hamm ( and ) and wilfrid mellers ( ) do cite specific songs. indeed, they have a very objective, statistical way of defining which songs and genres are popular. frequently, the most popular songs, however, are not the most important historically. when it comes to cross-over hits, for example, the most popular songs are often those farthest removed from their generic prototypes. for example, pat boone's cover of little richard's "tutti frutti" decidedly sanitized the original song's social meanings (clarke, ). furthermore, mellers and hamm do not analyze musical performances. their comments are based upon published sheet music, which ignores the role of oral tradition and live performance in popular music. indeed, sheet music often bears little resemblance to the recorded version of a song. in this way, musical practice is marginalized. although his book was intended as only a survey, it is significant that hamm does not discuss the jazz and swing contexts of tin pan alley song in the s and s as well as the relationship between the publishing industry and oral cultures. similarly, his focus on structure and harmony make his analyses of rock 'n' roll incomplete (middleton , ). in contrast, ethnomusicologists such as charles keil and steven feld ( ) have created helpful analytic concepts, such as "groove." while the application of that concept is specifically limited to african-american styles, "groove" does provide a potentially useful avenue for analysis. because these scholars are concerned with music as a social practice, however, they themselves do not actually apply analytical paradigms to specific songs. for instance, keil ( ) integrates ethnographic analytic strategies (such as interviews with the producer or audience) with textual analyses, but does not analyze any music. more recently, music theorists have sought to rectify the neglect of compositional qualities by analyzing the musical aspects of popular songs. for example, alec wilder ( ) and allan forte ( ) discuss tin pan alley music; gunther schuller ( ) analyzes jazz; and john covach ( b) investigates progressive rock. these theorists, however, have carefully chosen to analyze popular musical genres that emphasize the musical parameters (for example, harmony) that are fundamental to art music aesthetics. this application of art music theory to popular music succeeds up to a point (to the extent that certain popular music shares specific parameters with art music), but has little application to other genres of popular music, such as dance styles, which emphasize rhythm. furthermore, these theorists tend to give very little social context to their analyses, as if they assume that popular music is as autonomous as art music. their decontextualized discussions thus seem as one-sided as those by scholars who discuss social context exclusively. a more encompassing analytical model can be found in the writings and analyses of proponents of the "new musicology." susan mcclary ( ), for example, discusses both musical language and social context. mcclary's writings, however, never systematically work through an entire musical genre or oeuvre of a performer. instead, she chooses isolated popular pieces (mostly single songs by various performers) as a means to further her feminist arguments. sheila whiteley ( ) similarly analyzes disparate pieces from various genres to illustrate her feminist contentions. to approach popular music in terms of genre is an especially fruitful avenue of investigation because it brings together various analytical models. it can incorporate not only sociological approaches (such as ethnographic interview, marxist structural paradigms, and analyses of lyrics that deal with race, gender, memory, and relationships), but also engage the music itself. scholars such as walser ( ) and adam krims ( ) successfully approach popular music via genre: heavy metal and rap, respectively. they both analyze the musical elements of a popular song within its genre as a socially signifying discourse. their work is therefore unique in their approach to genre. this is particularly evident in contrast to other publications on such specific popular music genres, such as rockwell's brief history of art rock ( ) and rose's subcultural investigation of rap ( ), which neither analyze musical parameters nor discuss generic social meanings. the interpretation of both music and lyrics within the context of genre is a project that has only just begun in popular music. although popular music studies have opened up remarkably in the last several years, it is clear that to find a practical approach to analyzing contrasting styles of popular music, much scholarship remains to be done. toward this end this dissertation will analyze selected songs by jane siberry, representing a range of genres. considering what an active and enduring performer siberry is (her first album was released in and she remains working to this day), there has been relatively little written about her music. as can been seen in the bibliography, the literature consists mostly of short (in some instances, only one-page) interviews (druckman, ) and reviews of albums (stern, ) or concerts (straessle, ), none of which analyzes the music of siberry's songs. there are also short overviews of her oeuvre by adria ( ), gaar ( ), lucy o'brien ( ), and barclay et al ( ), as well as a more extensive interview with siberry by karen o'brien ( )—although this interview is more about feminism than about music. what follows therefore is the first extensive investigation of siberry's music, one that combines musical analysis, ethnographic interview (siberry ), genre studies, and cultural criticism. siberry as a rock auteur as mentioned earlier, it is my contention that throughout siberry's oeuvre there are consistencies in the choices she makes in her negotiation of different genres. in particular, siberry tends to problematize certain musical parameters to create a level of complexity not expected from generic conventions. moreover, the lyrics of songs in different genres return repeatedly to certain topics including art, nature, relationships, miscommunication, isolation, hope, and time. throughout this dissertation it will be argued that in terms of both lyrics and music, siberry's approach to genre is that of a rock auteur. auteur theory originated in s parisian film criticism, which in turn borrowed ideas from literary criticism. this theory viewed the art cinema "director as the creative source of meaning" and approached "the director's output as an oeuvre, a repetition and enrichment of characteristic themes and stylistic choices" (bordwell, ). auteur theory began as a mere politique des auteurs, a policy of favouring particular film directors by essayists in magazines of intellectual film reviews. the most influential of these journals, cahiers du cinema, commenced publication in . by andre bazin, a former graduate student in english literature, assumed the editorship of the magazine and made the director-as-author the central project of the reviews therein. before becoming the editor, bazin had been an influential film critic, calling for "a cinema of authorship" as early as (bordwell, ). the film reviews in cahiers were principally exegetical, showing "how a director's characteristic stylistic and dramatic patterns reflect underlying themes" in the film narrative (bordwell, ). the auteur director was one whose plots were complex, abstract, or non-linear; who used special avant garde film techniques and camera angles; and whose meanings were hidden and difficult to grasp. while cahiers was not the only parisian magazine containing intellectual film reviews, it was certainly the most influential journal in film until the s, firmly establishing auteur theory in film criticism in paris, oxford, and new york city (bordwell, ). rock critics began to draw on basic tenets of auteur theory in the s to further an argument against mass cultural theorists f. r. leavis and theodor adorno, who claimed that popular music was "escapist" for listeners and a mere "culture of profit" for producers. the auteur critics argued that rock did not provide an "escape" for listeners of mass cultural products, like pop music, but rather an "enrichment" via unique products, similar to art music. with such a view it became a given that in order for rock to be art, rather than entertainment, a song—or preferably an album-had to be "illuminating." the listener had to "work" to understand the author's intent, rather than consume passively (frith , ). rolling stone rock critic jon landau defined the work of the listener as "searching," commenting that as a critic his "concern has always been with the search for the author in rock music, the search for the source behind the music, the search for continuity in all of the musician/artist's work" (landau, ). in other words, auteur rock musicians create "complex symbolic structures that relate directly to the musician's own experiences and are a genuine challenge to the listeners" (frith , ). as in film, however, critics arguing for rock as an art form masterminded by an auteur had to circumvent the fact that rock is produced by many people (for example, songwriters, musicians, producers, engineers, record executives, and a promotional staff) rather than by an individual creator. to combat this practical obstacle, landau borrowed the theoretical loophole used in film criticism. like the art film, he claimed, artistic rock was the product of a single auteur, because "the criterion for art in rock is the capacity of the musician to create a personal, almost private, universe and to express it fully" (landau, ). toward this end, it did not matter whether the rock auteur was either a singer, writer, instrumentalist, producer, or engineer. what was important was that the auteur had an artistic vision to whom all the other contributors were subject. like the director in film, the rock auteu/s music represented a unique voice, whose individuality was usually marked by treating musical and poetic parameters in more complex ways than those heard in pop music. the necessity of complexity in the music and lyrics of rock auteurs had a precedent in the protest lyrics of the folk revival. once listeners had experience working through the complexity of folk-revival lyrics they were ready for the musical complexity of folk rock and progressive rock. the transference of discourse from folk revival to folk rock and progressive rock made it easier for the auteur rock advocates to solidify their positions as rock journalists. the logic was that in order to appreciate, for example, the poetry of bob dylan, . . . insight was needed by the listener as well, a notion that suitably flattered the new intelligent rock markets. excellence was increasingly measured in terms of musical, lyrical, and emotional complexity, in terms of artistic qualities that differentiated rock from the banalities of teenage pop (frith , ). compared to folk rock, pop music came to be denigrated by the rock press as drivel for the teenage mass-market. tellingly, it was only after experiencing the sophisticated songs of the folk revival that rock criticism developed aesthetic criteria that explicitly contrasted the ideology of the rock auteur and its audience of urban sophisticates with that of mass music-making for teenagers (frith , ). musicians who became canonized as rock auteurs, then, were not only such folk revivalists as joan baez and bob dylan, who exhibited poetic virtuosity, but also folk rock musicians like simon and garfunkel and the mamas and the papas, who expanded the musical vocabulary of rock. the band most instrumental in solidifying the rock-authorship concept was the beatles. their sgt. pepper's lonely hearts club band ( ) paved the way for increasing levels of compositional complexity that would later inspire the aesthetics of progressive rock. as singer-songwriters, the beatles almost singlehandedly facilitated the incorporation of auteur theory into rock criticism. whereas in early rock 'n' roll, singers such as elvis presley were rarely the authors of their songs, the beatles not only played instruments, they also wrote all of their later songs. as such, it became natural to conceive of the singer-songwriter as the auteur of the music, and the songs as his or her own personal expression. by the s it had become routine to equate art with personal confession. self-consciousness became the measure of a record's artistic status; frankness, musical wit, the use of irony and paradox were musicians' artistic insignia—it was such self-commentary that revealed the auteur within the machine. the skilled listener was the one who could recognize the artist despite the commercial trappings; this became the professional job of record reviewers (frith , ). despite much artistic experimentation in s art rock, it eventually became clear that most rock had not been that illuminating, indeed, most mainstream rock had actually been pop, commodities produced for the mass market via a star system. because many musicians who had been conceived of as rock auteurs had not been committed to creating unique products, they were soon absorbed into the music business machinery along with other pop stars (frith , ). in the end, "rock's claims as art are based not on the cultural form itself but on the achievements of a handful of disparate individuals-artists despite their means of cultural production" (frith , ). as a result, many rock musicians who became millionaires were often viewed as "selling out" by their hometown or initial audiences. it was difficult to believe that rock musicians could be auteurs when they were marketed in the same manner as pop stars. indeed, their commercial success defined them as "popular" musicians. as rock reverted back to being conceived of as a form of pop culture in the s, the discourse of the rock auteur waned. by the s it ceased to be used in the rock press altogether, except in isolated instances. andrew goodwin, for example, defined rock as an "authentic" creation of a defined "author" who possessed "the ability to actually play" an instrument, in opposition to pop as a product manufactured by a conglomerate that acts as the master behind the "puppet" frontmen (goodwin , - ). only non-mainstream artists with a cult following, such as kate bush, could continue to be thought of as rock auteurs. indeed as late as , bush was discussed as an artist who had "expanded the notion of auteur" (kruse , ). the idea of a rock auteur also lingers in some general perceptions. performers, for example, are habitually referred to as "recording artists," rather than entertainers, unrelated to the level of complexity in their product or their level of musicality. furthermore, "those now being inducted yearly into the rock and roll hall of fame, are both authors and performers of a defined repertoire and style" (headlam, ). indeed, now and again the concept of authorship is resurrected (see headlam ) because there remains a stream of rock authors to whom "authenticity" is more important than making money and "selling out." indeed in rock criticism, "authenticity" in an auteur is in part defined by his or her lack of commercial success. siberry is one such auteur. her lack of mass popularity allows her, like kate bush, to retain her status as an auteur in rock discourse. in siberry's case, the term is more applicable than for many other rock performers because she not only writes and plays her own songs, but also produces her own albums. in addition, auteur theory informs siberry's self-conception, then and now. both her music and lyrics are complex. while a discussion of artistic processes riddles the lyrics of her early songs in particular, an auteur paradigm is also evident in the music of siberry's songs. although she is capable of creating consonances with conventional generic parameters (as will be seen in chapter , in her negotiation of the funk genre), siberry makes a point of problematizing certain musical parameters to create a level of complexity not usually expected of most popular genres. as such, siberry has aligned herself with a stream of post-beatles singer- songwriters that value in their songs both innovation and a level of complexity that is antithetical to the accessibility of a three-chord pop style. siberry sheds light on her creative process in the final verse of "seven steps to the wall" from the speckless sky (see appendix , lyric ). in the lyrics of this song she explains: "all my life/where there's white/i have words/so i write/what i hear . . . it is thin/but it's clear." although the imagery here is obviously an allusion to the writing of lyrics on a blank sheet of paper, the idea of "writing what she hears" has a larger resonance with the approach to genre heard in her music. in this regard, the phrase "i write/what i hear" (from which the title of this dissertation is taken) works on two levels. not only does siberry utilize the generic conventions that she hears literally in the air at concerts and on the air in radio, she is also true to a personal vision of creative music-making, as she functions as a singer-songwriter. as such, siberry writes the sounds that she "hears in her head" regardless of conventional generic expectations. thus, as a rock auteur, while siberry utilizes generic conventions, she is not limited to or by them. instead, she subverts listener expectation as she pleases, according to her personal artistic vision; and this is part of what makes her music interesting and complex. siberry's biography as well as her auteur approach to songwriting will be discussed in chapter . to demonstrate elements of continuity and change in siberry's approach to genre, i will analyze in the subsequent chapters five songs by siberry that engage contrasting genres. the first song analyzed in chapter is "la jalouse" from bound by the beauty ( ). while this song is taken from the middle of her oeuvre chronologically, it represents her negotiation of the folk-revival style, which is the genre engaged on her debut album, jane siberry ( ). thus it represents both siberry's roots as a musician and a genre to which she often returns (particularly on teenager and hush). in chapter , "goodbye" from the walking ( ) will be analyzed. this rock/pop song evokes the electro-pop genre, one far removed from her folk-revival roots in terms of form and density. this is the same style employed in her first canadian college-radio hit "mimi on the beach," but here it is done with a more serious tone and in a more complex manner. despite the incongruous relationship between the electro-pop and folk-revival styles, in this track siberry retains key folk-revival parameters, in direct opposition to the aesthetic criteria of the rock/pop genre. the third song to be analyzed is "everything reminds me of my dog" from bound by the beauty ( ), which is siberry's first album to juxtapose contrasting genres within a single recording. bound by the beauty negotiates such diverse domains as latin and folk, to which "everything reminds me of my dog" adds the genre of country-pop. although country-pop is not as far removed from the folk-revival genre as electro-pop, the tongue-in-cheek tone in this song subverts conventional genre expectations as pastiche, an approach not found in "la jalouse." in chapter , "maria", which engages the jazz idiom, will be analyzed. siberry's auteur treatment of cool-jazz parameters departs even more radically from convention than her treatment of folk revival, as if siberry were subverting fundamental practices of the jazz idiom itself. in contrast, in chapter "flirtin' is a flo-thing," which negotiates the genre of funk, conforms more to genre expectations than any of the previous selections. siberry's adherence to conventions here may reflect the fact that funk's generic expectations are based upon african- diaspora aesthetics, a cultural paradigm far removed from folk revival. it seems more likely, however, that siberry conforms to funk conventions as pastiche precisely to highlight her target of certain funk lyrics with her use of tone. again, conclusions will be drawn about the relationship of the cool-jazz and funk genres to the folk-revival genre. finally in chapter , will draw conclusions concerning the consistent musical choices used by siberry in her negotiation of genre throughout her repertoire as well as discuss the implications of siberry's divergence from certain genre expectations. notes for the introduction . the assumption that the european classical or art music canon (from about - ) consists of "transcendent" works—that is, pieces by men such as corelli, bach, mozart, beethoven, brahms, and schoenberg, whose genius is so profound that their music is timeless and universal and transcends the bodily concerns of this world—has been attacked by "new musicologists" such as susan mcclary and robert walser (walser , ). mcclary traces the history of musical autonomy back to pythagoras, pointing out that the music of bach in particular is seen to have "nothing to do with his time or place . . . that his music works in accordance with perfect, universal order and truth" (mcclary , - ). according to walser, however, that the art music canon is nothing more than a construct is made clear by the fact that, despite the vast differences among the works in the canon, they are all seen as interchangeably prestigious. as walser points out, "aristocratic and bourgeois music; academic, sacred, and secular; music for public concerts, private soirees, and dancing—has one thing in common: its function as the most prestigious culture of the twentieth century" (walser , ). walser notes, along with christopher small ( ), that the present-day meaning of prestige, thrust upon works that have been taken out of their original contexts and placed within this construct, "has almost completely effaced original social and political meanings" (walser , ). . in this document i will be differentiating between the terms "pop" and "popular" (although etymologically speaking, the former is merely a diminutive of the latter). i will use the term "popular" to evoke the entire gamut of popular musics (including rock/pop, jazz, r&b, country, folk, punk, rap) regardless of each idiom's actual popularity on a mass level. i will use the term "pop" in reference to the domain of (dance) music that is associated in the rock press with naive lyrics about boy-girl love, as well as crass commercialism, mass consumption, teenage fun, and suave studio techniques (frith , ). . siberry's "negotiation" of a genre refers to how she employs a genre. negotiation connotes everything that is involved in the process of engaging a genre, from approaching its pre-existing conventions before writing a song to adopting them wholesale within a completed song. it also includes the possibility of evoking a genre in a song only partially by alluding to some generic signifiers, but alter other generic conventions in ways that may challenging a listener's expectations. . in literary criticism, the modernist concept of a formally organized "work" has been replaced with the postmodernist concept of a formally organized system of signs called a "text." the text differs from the autonomous work in that it is a semiotic system that exists within a socio- historical context. in any given socio-historical setting, different readers come to a text with different values and perceptions. disparate readers therefore "read" contrasting meanings from the text. a text and its context therefore interact in a dynamic, dialectical way (kent, ). . simon frith frequently talks about "pleasure" in rock music, but richard middleton investigates the use of this term most thoroughly. middleton discusses roland barthes' use of plaisir as repetition and jouissance as disruption, only to conclude that "it seems likely that plaisir and jouissance are actually dialectically intermingled processes;.. . they are continually active, in listening as in life, forever teasing and slipping" (middleton , ). . although he gives no citation, todorov is here borrowing hans robert jauss's concept, which is in turn borrowed from edmond husserl (jauss, ). . "joy of repetition" is a variation of a phrase borrowed from the prince song "joy in repetition." . walser includes art music in his definition of "mass cultural texts." he makes the point that '"classical music' is and always has been commercial" (walser , ). by this statement he means that both popular and art music are mediated by the same mass-market processes. for instance, "heavy metal and classical music exist in the same social context: they are subject to similar structures of marketing and mediation, and they 'belong to' and serve the needs of competing social groups whose power is linked to the prestige of their culture" (walser , ). indeed, in art music "orchestra advertising, music appreciation books, and record promoters campaign to erase historical specificity in order to stimulate consumption" (walser , ). . a text, then, does not contain inherent meanings, but rather merely evokes certain meanings that are ultimately accepted or rejected by the reader, who comes to the text with a priori assumptions. this definition of a text stands in contrast to the structuralist idea of the work, whose meanings are inherent in its stable structures. . while generic meanings can only be formed by society through the acceptance (via purchasing) of individual songs (often via albums), the music industry contributes to generic stability by constantly reproducing clones of songs and artists that imitate what is currently popular (for example, boy bands). macro-deviations from that which currently sells are avoided altogether, while micro-deviations are emphasized as fashionable novelty or individual artistry. therefore, while what is popular changes frequently, in an attempt to control production, the music business hangs on tightly to specific images and genres by promoting only variations on that which it already owns. . an obvious example of a literary code used by both authors and readers is the "once upon a time" structure from which we identify that what follows is a fairy tale. an example from art music of the common practice era is a perfect cadence, which can be thought of as a code signifying repose. . the concept of the text has been applied beyond literary criticism to virtually all areas of culture. a musical piece therefore is just as much a text as a novel. similarly, the person listening to a musical piece is just as much a "reader" as one who reads a novel. a competent reader notices, moreover, that apart from his or her own response to a text, there is an additional interaction between a given text and other texts. "one text is necessarily read in relationship to others and . . . a range of textual knowledges is brought to bear upon it" by the reader (fiske , ). this interaction between a text and its historical precursors and contemporaries is called "paratextuality" (genette, ). genette outlines five different types of interactions, including intertextuality (quoting), paratext (secondary signals or promotional materials), metatextuality (commentary), architextuality (generic allotment) and hypertextuality (transformation). his attention to nuance creates extremely helpful categories (genette, - ). . just as music analysis functions as one discourse representing another (roman numerals for chords or numbers for pitches), so language can represent the meanings provoked by a musical text (walser , ). . a few examples discussing musical meanings negotiated in musical texts include: leonard meyer's emotion and meaning in music; peter kivy's the corded shell: reflections on musical expression; susan mcclary's feminine endings; lawrence kramer's music as cultural practice, - ; robert walser's running with the devil; catherine clement's opera or the undoing of women; christopher small's music of the common tongue; and john miller chernoff s african rhythm and african sensibility. for a summary of more general hermeneutical approaches to music, see beardsley ( ). . my definition of genre is what franco fabbri calls a "system," namely "a certain set of musical events being considered . . . in relation to its sub-sets." in contrast, he defines genres as musical events "considered in relation to other opposing sets" (fabbri, ). these are what i have called "domains" or "idioms." . another name that is sometimes use for the r&b idiom is "soul." more commonly, however, "soul" refers to a specific genre of r&b from the s. the term "r&b" is an abbreviation of "rhythm and blues." when used to refer to the larger idiom, however, the diminutive is almost always employed. "rhythm and blues," on the other hand, denotes a specific genre of r&b from the late s and s. . walser argues further that art or classical music is unified by codes of "prestige" that are associated with contrasting genres (walser , ). similarly, jazz styles are unified by codes of individual improvisational prowess that are affiliated with such genres as dixieland, swing, bebop, cool jazz, hard bop, free jazz, and fusion. . with the use of such contrasting genres, one might wonder why siberry's music continues to be—or ever was initially—discussed in the rock press, rather than magazines specifically addressing folk, pop/rock, r&b, or country. indeed, siberry's music has never exhibited the characteristics of the earliest genre of rock (that is, rhythm & blues), that are generally used by critics as criteria for rock aesthetics. instead, it is my contention that, despite siberry's lack of "blues orthodoxy," her songs are considered rock because they comply with a second criterion of the domain, namely, that rock is art which transcends commerce (martin , ). most rock criticism is based on the premise that rock—since the beatles, at least—is a type of popular music that is artistically superior to pop music, which, in its emphasis on boy-girl romantic love, panders to the teeny-bopper market and is considered at once naive and crassly commercial. while it is self-evident that rock is less innocent than romantic pop music, there is a certain naive romanticism in rock criticism itself that maintains rock's non-commercial status as a criterion defining the genre (stump, ). although with its millionaire supergroups (such as the rolling stones or nirvana) it is clear that rock is just as commercial as pop, the dichotomy between art and commerce is maintained in a mythology particular to rock; namely, that its biggest stars "transcend" commerce by virtue of their status as artists (stump, ). (while jazz criticism also defines itself against a pop other, it maintains the idea that commercial success waters down the purity of jazz as an artform. thus early louis armstrong is preferred to later armstrong's more popular efforts.) . by "complexity" in a song i mean that siberry has added a level of variation, irregularity, or difficulty beyond the generic expectations, which challenges listeners in terms of oral comprehension and performers in terms of facility of execution. . the terminology of "consonances" and "dissonances" with a genre was suggested to me by dr. alan thrasher. . see middleton ( ) for a summary of the various approaches to popular music. . rock critic simon frith comments: critical accounts of popular music still depend on the adorno/benjamin positions. out of adorno have come analyses of the economics of entertainment in which the ideological effects of commercial music making—the transformation of a creative people into a passive mass are taken for granted.... from benjamin have come subcultural theories, descriptions of the struggle for the sign: youth subcultures are said to make their own meanings, to create cultures in their acts of consumption (frith , ). . richard middleton, for instance, cites examples of songs by rock legend mick jagger and country star tammy wynette (particularly, "stand by your man") that are enjoyed by the very same people that disapprove of the less than progressive approach to female characters heard in their lyrics (middleton , ). . indeed, the scholarship of these theorists has only exposed the fact that there is not yet a pragmatic analytical methodology in popular music studies. now that music theorists are involved in popular music studies, the discipline essentially has become divided between two camps: those such as covach ( b), burns ( ), hamm ( ), mellers ( ), forte ( ) or wilder ( ), who apply the analytical techniques of art music to popular song, and those such as hennion ( ) or tagg ( ), who seek other means of analysis, mostly sociological- although tagg's approach is semiological, while hennion's is ethnomusicological. theorists in the latter group do not utilize conventional music theory because they believe that the analytical tools themselves prioritize the parameters emphasized in art music aesthetics over those considered significant in popular music. for example, in art music analysis, harmony, tonality, counterpoint, and form are prioritized over rhythm, timbre, and pitch nuance. the application of art music analysis to popular song thus impoverishes popular music (middleton , ). because the latter faction has eliminated the tools of the former, neither camp has come up with a feasible approach for analyzing the vast majority of popular music styles. . john covach also makes this point (covach a, ). . krims does not make an argument for music as cultural "resistance" in the way that fiske and walser do. the concept of cultural "resistance" comes from subcultural theory (itself based on the writings of walter benjamin). the "resistance" theory is that youth cultures make their own meaning, in effect creating culture in their acts of consumption (frith , ). the possibility of purchasing cultural products with discrimination lies in direct opposition to the writings of another member of the frankfurt school, theodor adomo. adorno assumed that purchasers of mass music were passive consumers, taking pleasure in consumption for its own sake. simon frith points out that a distinction needs to be made between the different ways in which people use culture to "escape." against adorno's idea that consumers use mass cultural products exclusively for a momentary escape from with their isolation, is the possibility of transformation, to use culture in a way that empowers people and brings them together to create social change (frith , ). . there were earlier arguments against mass cultural theory in the s. rock critics such as jon landau and greil marcus postulated that rock 'n' roll music from the s had expressed more than a culture of profit and its listeners engaged in active rather than passive consumption. because there was no distance between the performers and listeners attending rock 'n' roll dances, they formed a "material community" that functioned as folk would. in this way, rock could be viewed as folk rather than pop music and, as such, be redeemed from the mass cultural criticisms associated with pop. when both rock 'n' roll and dance music went out of vogue for the youth culture in the early s, however, it became apparent that a material folk community had never actually existed (frith , ). a better argument for rock as folk music was also made in the s. again it was postulated that rock did not represent a mass cultural product because it was a folk form. in this scenario, however, rock was thought to express the needs and desires of an ideological, rather than material, community. the ideology espoused by rock culture was countercultural—first with the hippies of late s and then in the late s with the punks, britain's angry, unemployed youth (frith , - ). in each instance local musicians expressed the views of their community in opposition to the status quo, which was symbolized musically by the commercialism of the pop music industry. after woodstock (the moment epitomizing hippie countercultural ideology) and the sex pistols signing with a major label (a & m , which led to a tour in the united states), the musicians from their respective communities achieved both commercial success and fame. instead of funneling their money back to their community, however, they left behind those for whom they had once spoken. as such, the musicians became out of touch with the communities they represented; and their music could no longer be considered a "folk" form. indeed, rock music could only ever be considered a folk form before its local musicians became stars and "sold out" (frith , ). rock as a folk form, therefore, could only function as an intermittent theory. . indeed, franco fabbri argues that "attention to the aesthetic poetic factor . . . distinguishes 'art' music from the others, as it distinguishes 'progressive rock' from 'hard rock,' the 'chanson d'autore' from 'pop song'" (fabbri, ). . since rock's auteur ideology had been mapped on to a depiction of the music as a form of "resistance" against a popular other, rock's own commercial success presented a threat to its auteur orthodoxy. . it may seem contradictory that siberry's approach to composition is influenced by both a postmodern aesthetic (in her negotiation of several contrasting genres and her use of parody) and a modernist auteur concept. the fact that she has elements of both approaches in her early and later songs is, i believe, a product of her particular historical situation. in the popular culture of the early s, much "progress" discourse remained in effect, as postmodernist concepts had not yet trickled down into every musical genre. indeed, as is evident in chapter , electro pop's raison d'etre was completely bound up in an excitement over progress via new technology. postmodern ideas finally became entrenched in popular culture by the s (with the rise of grunge). these ideas clearly influenced siberry's approach to genre; however, certain modernist constructs (such as a stubborn uniqueness and a love of complexity) remain with siberry to this day. . rock criticism has traditionally supported innovative musicians and defined its canon in opposition to what it conceives of as simplistic pop drivel. for this reason, even musicians (such as joni mitchell) that have never played rock (in the sense of blues-based music) can be conceived of as part of the rock canon. thus, despite (or perhaps because of) siberry's use of contrasting and non-rock genres, she is conceived of as a rock auteur. chapter biography of siberry siberry has never succumbed to compromise, even if it has meant trading mainstream success for artistic independence. then again siberry-who once actually said, "i'm interested in how to translate polymorphous ideas into the flat medium of a pop song"—wouldn't know how to find her way to the mainstream with a search party and a road map (pevere & dymond, ). according to siberry, being taken out of piano lessons as a child was perhaps the beginning of her career as an innovative songwriter: i started piano lessons when i was four, but my mom pulled me out of the class a year later. piano was my first instrument. as soon as i learned how to climb up on the stool, i was playing it, improvising as i went along. when i took lessons, my teacher gave me songs to learn for the next class. she always scolded me for playing pieces i made up instead of practicing what she wanted me to. for example, i would do my own version of 'edelweiss' from the sound of music, using the piano to create what i imagined to be the sound of flowers. but my teacher didn't value that, so i went home dejected after each lesson. my mom pulled me from the class, which was the smartest thing she could have ever done for me (ouellette, ). continuing to play piano in her parent's house, siberry followed the practice of many other little girls growing up in etobicoke, ontario (a suburb of toronto). what made siberry different from other children was that she played the piano without any supervision, merely improvising as she went along. through the process of trial and error, rather than formal instruction, siberry developed a fascination with singing and harmony. without coaching, siberry felt free to pursue her own musical vision. the solitary nature and single-minded determination of siberry's musical experimentation was evident already at an early age: when i was very young, i had these blue shiny slippers with soft soles and big eyes that rolled. my hands weren't big enough to play the big chords on the keyboard, so i used the slippers to sweep across it. i'd just blow for a half an hour. sometimes it was really abstract, just a collection of sounds. or i'd play the same rhythm over and over because it sounded good to me (ouellette, ). being a shy child, siberry only improvised when no one in her family was in the house. eventually, she wrote down snippets of music with a system of self-invented notation, one she has kept using throughout her career: i have my own script that i use when i'm writing my music down for myself. i developed it out of necessity, so i wouldn't forget melodies when i heard them in my head. my system is faster than standard notation, which i can read and write, though very slowly. in my system, if i want to make a note sound louder, i make it darker. if one note takes a long time to follow another note, i leave a long space. if the second note comes very quickly after the preceding note, then it appears on the paper right after the first. i don't use th notes or th notes. instead, i use dots after all my notes to represent quickness. it's a primitive method, but it's very correct and makes total sense to me (ouellette, ). in high school siberry was required to learn conventional notation to study music theory. she also learned to play the french horn in the school band and taught herself acoustic guitar by studying the leonard cohen songbook. of her adolescence, siberry recalled: "i wasn't a cheerleader, but i wasn't a bookworm, either. i guess i was a sort of normal cigarettes, drugs, and boys type . . . i did a lot of living in my head during my adolescence. yeah, i was lonely, but it was being lonely for myself (fissinger, ). her first complete song ("song to my father" featured on teenager) was written at the age of . this may seem surprisingly late in light of the early age at which she began improvising, but can be explained by siberry's comments about her compositional process: i get the total idea for the songs right away, anywhere. what takes a long time is translating it into music and lyrics. sometimes it's complete and if i only had telepathy i could send the song to someone without putting it into words and music i've done a lot of free recording, which is the way i first started writing. i just put the recorder on and play, and then i listen to it later. i've always done that, since i was young. and i never really finished a song until i was because i could never, never capture it (kelley, ). around the same time, siberry began performing her songs. as she recalled, her early forays into performance were a struggle. when i started playing in public when i was about seventeen i was just so used to sort of'blowing' on piano, as soon as i had to be conscious of it on-stage, i just couldn't make the leap, so people would be very curious, because i sounded like i could hardly play piano-although i could, not too badly (karen o'brien, ). leaving etobicoke to attend guelph university, siberry eventually earned a bachelor's degree in microbiology. her post-secondary education began with studying music, but after a year she switched majors. because she already played by ear, first-year music courses seemed stifling to her (ouellette, ). while in guelph, siberry began to perform in folk clubs. she frequently sang with wendy davis at a local restaurant that hosted folk music, the carden st. cafe, in a duo called "java jive." this group became a trio with the addition of bassist john switzer, who played on siberry's solo albums from to and who co-produced four of her albums (notes for chapter begin on p. ). after java jive broke up in , siberry played at folk festivals in ontario as a solo artist. upon leaving university, siberry became a waitress. although she "could never remember drink orders," she made enough money from tips to finance her first album, jane siberry ( ), and to promote it with a national tour (fissinger, ). the lyrics of this album feature themes that pervade siberry's early work, namely a concern with the artistic process and materialism as well as themes that run throughout her lyrics in general, such as loneliness, time, relationships, and the healing power of nature. her early lyrics are also characterized by the use of humour and fantasy in otherwise realistic narratives. after the release of her self-titled album by the independent label street records, siberry signed a three-album record deal with the then-fledgling american company, windham hill/ a & m . this was before windham hill became known for its new age releases. the company gave siberry much freedom, allowing her to stay based in toronto and record at duke street records as well as to put together her own band (which included switzer on bass, ken myhr on guitar, and al cross on drums) for both live shows and recordings. thus her next four albums were all released by duke street records in canada and windham hill in the united states, employing more or less consistent personnel. siberry's second album, no borders here ( ), accrued college radio success in canada, due in part to the song "mimi on the beach." the success of this single was a surprise, as at seven and a half minutes in length, it goes well beyond the three-minute standard. at this time, however, toronto radio station cfny had a musical format that wholeheartedly promoted punk and new wave music. "more specifically, cfny supported practically anything british. in an attempt to fill their can[adian] con[tent] quotas, they opened the airwaves to a lot of independent music, daring to put adventurous indie cassettes into rotation" (barclay et al, ). so popular was the tune that it was also immediately put in strong rotation on muchmusic, canada's music video television station that was launched the same year (straessle, ). national exposure on muchmusic greatly facilitated siberry's popularity in canada, especially in small towns where radio did not take as many chances on adventurous music as in toronto (barclay et al, ). videos for "you don't need" and "i muse aloud" offered further promotion of the album; and siberry's american performance debut took place at the ritz in new york city in . in the end, siberry's sophomore album sold , copies and won her a casby (the canadian people's choice award) for best female vocalist. what unifies the lyrics of no borders here is the theme of the arbitrariness of boundaries. siberry commented: i often get a sensation of things dissolving, like dissolves in a movie. which means that definitions around things don't exist the way you normally think they would.... i like thinking of dotted lines a lot, or dotted lines that shift back and forth, and things moving. i've always resented any kind of arbitrary boundary. and that comes from language. i mean, the borders to countries were articulated by men and they're not natural boundaries between people. and so i don't think that way, and think of myself not as canadian but just as a type of being, and think of other people that way (kelley, ). the final track on this album, "map of the world (part )," reflects this notion of dissolving with a slow and intermittent vocal that creates a dream-like quality (see appendix , lyric for the lyrics). the tune also initiated a trilogy of songs with the same title, the latter two being found on subsequent albums {the speckless sky and bound by the beauty). what these three songs have in common is the idea of losing oneself in a moment. siberry says of the first song in the trilogy: "in 'map of the world' there are three different spaces, three people describing their universes and somehow they all blend and dissolve into each other and create a fourth map" (kelley, ). her subsequent album, the speckless sky ( ), went gold in canada (that is, a million dollars in sales were made by the manufacturer), selling over , copies. the single "one more colour" was a minor hit, attracting attention in part for the humorous video in which siberry is seen walking a cow. with this album siberry won casby awards for both album of the year and producer of the year. siberry promoted this album by playing in clubs and concert halls throughout the country, the highlight of which was an appearance at expo ' . at the height of her fame in canada, two documentary films about siberry entitled i muse aloud and one more colour were made by cambium productions in . after these two successful albums, siberry signed a record contract with reprise records, a subsidiary of warner brothers, which had to buy out the final album of windham's three-record deal for $ , (druckman , ). warner released all of siberry's subsequent albums from the walking ( ) to maria ( ). that a multinational company like warner was interested enough in siberry to let her remain at toronto-based duke street records shows the extent to which they expected siberry to become a popular success. one reason for such expectations was that siberry's image and music fit into the pop culture ethos of the s. after the commercial success of cyndi lauper and madonna in , record companies were for the first time eager to sign women singer-songwriters with a pop sensibility. companies had figured out a new way to market female performers, borrowing images from punk rather than folk. women in the rock/pop genre thus had the potential to be as popular as male performers. moreover, the success of suzanne vega opened the way for the popularity of singer-songwriters, such as mary margaret o'hara, tanita tikaram, and siberry, who wrote lyrics on unconventional topics. they were all "part of late- s marketing which concentrated on 'quirkiness' or eccentricity" (lucy o'brien, ). working with a major label, siberry's next album, the walking ( ), was highly anticipated. it was promoted internationally with a tour in europe and the united states that included her european debut at the institute of contemporary art in london, england in . adding to the excitement surrounding the album's release was the fact that it was mixed by kevin killen, who was known for his work with such rock auteurs as kate bush and peter gabriel. like bush and gabriel, siberry was marketed and "sold as part of pop's high art" (lucy o'brien, ). critical discussions of this album in the rock press used the discourse of art rock. and indeed, her fourth album was influenced by art rock aesthetics in that it was less dance-oriented and used more complex poetic imagery and forms. there was for the first time little humour in the lyrics of this album, which thematically dealt with the topics of miscommunication and the ending of relationships. siberry commented, "i was trying to get as close to what i heard in my head on to tape. it was draining in that i was breaking up with john switzer at the time and a lot of the songs were about that" (barclay et al, ). because of its introspective and art rock qualities, this album met with less airplay, harsher reviews, and poorer sales than its predecessors. after the commercial failure of the walking siberry made a concerted attempt to simplify her compositional style on bound by the beauty ( ). the phrase lengths of the songs on this album were more regular and the forms were simpler: it was a different stage in my career, where i was examining certain boundaries- pushing them and seeing what they brought.... at a certain point i cleared out all the clutter and didn't even bring my own lighting person. i also didn't wear jewelry for a long time in photos (barclay et al, ). the poetry on this album is more succinct and concrete than that of the walking. the tone of the lyrics is also more hopeful, with a return to the theme of nature and the use of humour heard in "bound by the beauty" and "everything reminds me of my dog," respectively. not surprisingly, this album proved more popular in sales than the walking. to preview bound by the beauty, siberry toured folk festivals in with her guitarist, ken myhr. after its release the following year she went on a -concert tour in japan, australia, new zealand, great britain, the united states, and canada. the image of the "fragile, winsome and whimsical female singer-songwriter" prominent in music marketing the s did not continue as a useful marketing technique in the s (lucy o'brien, ). with the rise of grunge music in the early 's, quirky female performers such as cyndi lauper who "just wanted to have fun" failed to maintain their popularity. by the s the images used to market female musicians had changed from the arty eccentric of the s to that of ironic blues stylists like sheryl crow (ibid). while siberry is not even remotely influenced by the blues, she can be ironic. her next album when i was a boy ( ) was edgier than anything she had released previously. it was also a three-year, trans-continental project. siberry had put together an album-length demo in vancouver in , but the response of warner executives had been, as she put it, "cautious" (ouellette, ). siberry was not satisfied either, because it sounded too much like bound by the beauty. she thus wrote seven new songs and released those on the album. a few months before completing when i was a boy, siberry performed as the opening act for the premiere of mike oldfield's tubular bells ii in edinburgh, scotland. surprisingly, the audience hated her new material: i was dumbstruck. i came back to canada and went up north and cried for two weeks. then something snapped. i took all the power back that i had put outside myself trying to please [others]. the worst show of my life has become the best show because it's given me the ultimate freedom to care only about what i think is really good. how my career does is secondary (barclay et al, ). although the audience response to this concert made warner executives nervous, siberry was determined to release the album as it was. i started taking hold of my creative activities again, because often i would have ideas or i'd like to do this or that but then someone would say, 'no, you can't do your own video because we do it', then they don't do it because you're small potatoes so you end up doing nothing. so i went back into that very healthy state and independent street-style of doing things really cheaply; of taking my power back into my own hands. to go back to where i was when i first was free—you have an idea and you do it. you never have anyone to ask. i've gone through the record company and other directors and people who are really too busy to do their homework or become familiar with your work.... every time i said, 'you do it, you must know better than me', it would backfire and i'd end up with work that wasn't right. so i'd have to redo things and they'd cost more money (karen o'brien, ). when i was a boy differs from siberry's previous albums in three respects. first, many of the new songs incorporate explicitly dance-oriented rhythms for the first time. not surprisingly, this album has been siberry's most commercially successful album to date. in the united states, this is the only siberry album of which most people have heard. the singles "sail across the water," "temple," and "calling all angels" were all minor hits there. second, siberry consciously introduced into her lyrics "universal" themes such as love, religion, and mythology. as she says: people have rejected formal religion and after years of looking for something that fits, they've come round full circle to valuing elements within religion, like symbols, that work on the same level as poetry and music—without taking on board the formal structure itself (karen o'brien, ). third, siberry recorded several of the songs with other recording artists for the first time, namely, with canadians k. d. lang (on "calling all angels") and holly cole (on "the gospel according to darkness" and "an angel stepped down"). in addition to experimenting with new sounds and topics, when i was a boy harks back to practices siberry had embraced at the beginning of her career. instead of producing the album by herself, siberry opted for outside producers, including brian eno, whose association added more than a little prestige. furthermore, at this point siberry left behind such longtime collaborators as ken myhr and john switzer. to promote the album she performed solo, billing the show: "the 'it ain't a concert' concert." in addition to the songs, siberry wrote a number of spoken-word poems and stories, produced her own videos, and emphasized audience interaction. the tour received mixed reviews. many journalists wondered why there had not been more music in the program. "on the heels of her best album, it was an odd way to promote herself, perhaps ensuring that she was eventually destined to operate outside of any commercial expectations whatsoever" (barclay et al, ). after finishing promotions for when i was a boy, siberry was invited by peter gabriel to bath, england to record three songs for gabriel's label, real world records. siberry's presence there with other musicians from around the world was a matter of some prestige. she further built upon her american cult following in when the soundtrack to the movie the crow hit the top of the american album charts. this disc featured a siberry track entitled "it can't rain all the time." that same year siberry also participated on two tracks of the indigo girls' album, swamp ophelia, the follow-up to their most successful album, rites of passage ( ), which had reached number on the billboard album charts. siberry's next album, maria ( ), again branched out artistically, foregoing the use of dance styles and hiring all new personnel who were known for improvisation, including pianist tim ray, who has his own jazz band called blue the orange, and christopher thomas, who formerly played stand-up bass with betty carter. while the lyrics of this album continued to evoke biblical and nature imagery, they also introduced new themes of regeneration and childhood. for example, the album is unified throughout by a recurring motif in the lyrics of "mary had a little lamb." despite touring across canada and the united states with the new band, this album did not sell well (particularly when compared with the sales of her prior album). while the poor sales disappointed warner, siberry herself remained ambivalent. she commented about this album: "in my mind, i'm not working in the commercial realm, so i wouldn't know if i'm making mistakes for radio or whatever. i have a good feel for warmth and to me, that's what radio should be about" (menzies, ). what is and what ought to be are two different things in the music business, however; and when siberry's contract was up in , warner dropped her from their label. siberry had offers from other labels, but instead, like ani difranco, aimee mann, loreena mckennitt, and other contemporary female musicians, siberry chose to embrace artistic freedom and started her own record label, sheeba records, on may . sheeba has released all of siberry's subsequent work to date. since it only took three days to record maria, siberry had left-over studio time and quickly recorded an album of songs she had written as an adolescent, aptly entitled teenager ( ). the lyrics of these songs contain topics typically associated with youth, such as family and first love. they also indicate siberry's early concern with nature, angels, and love lost. the song about a cow, "bessie," is the narrative precursor to "the mystery at ogwen's farm" from jane siberry (see appendix , lyric for the latter). after recording teenager, siberry moved to new york city and recorded a day in the life ( ), an album whose conceit is to sample hours from siberry's busy life in new york city. snatches of various musical works-in-progress are interspersed with telephone calls from musicians patty larkin, k. d. lang, and joe jackson as well as conversations with cab drivers. that same year siberry recorded her new york trilogy of live albums, tree, lips, and child. the christmas release of child ( ) features a collection of traditional christmas songs as well as siberry's own seasonal compositions. after she toured canada, the united states, and europe, sheeba ran into financial trouble, and siberry realized that she could not run a toronto-based company while living as an artist in new york city. accordingly she moved back to toronto, laid off her staff, learned bookkeeping and administrative skills, and got her company in order as a one-woman business. when sheeba was back on its feet two years later, siberry released the other two albums from the new york trilogy. tree ( ) is a collection of the songs that siberry had written for various films, but also features songs with lyrics that continue siberry's concern with nature. lips ( ) in contrast, is siberry's first album that explicitly addresses themes of sex (in "hotel room ") and feminism, in the song "mimi speaks," which is the sequel to "mimi on the beach" from no borders here. siberry's next release hush ( ) could not be more different from lips. hush is a collection of traditional celtic folk songs and american spirituals arranged by siberry. as such, like most of the songs on child, these tunes were not originally written by siberry. nonetheless, the arrangements, using lush layers and synthesizers, are clearly reminiscent of siberry's style from the s. placing traditional music in such a context was completely novel for siberry and perhaps the folk genre in general. siberry's most recent release, city ( ), is a compilation of songs previously-released on other artist's albums. this album includes not only the studio versions of her music for films ("it can't rain all the time," "calling all angels," "slow tango," and "all the pretty little ponies"), but also the songs released on peter gabriel's real world label (such as "my mother is not the white dove" and "harmonix/i went down to the river"). the recording also contains collaborations with such diverse artists as frank london, joe jackson, hector zazou, michael grey, nigel kennedy, takafumi sotoma, morgan fisher, and ghostland. snippets of "when i think of laura nyro" and "the bridge" heard earlier on a day in the life, are recorded in full on this album. the new york trilogy and hush were for a time only available through the sheeba website. all of her albums, however, are now available in certain record stores. siberry's present-day status as an independent musician is actually a return to the street approach of 's jane siberry. since that time changes in technology, marketing, and distribution have made the indie approach even more tenable. for example, in , % of sheeba's record sales were through the internet (varty, ). while she presently employs staff members, siberry was solely responsible for every aspect of production and distribution at sheeba records from to . running a business by herself involved a lot of non-musical work for siberry. she not only retooled her web site, she also stuffed envelopes with electronically-ordered albums and merchandise. as siberry commented, "picking up my own telephone and asking 'where's that t- shirt i ordered?'. . . was a very good thing. i've been too busy to be shy about it, and it's changed me for the better, i think" (varty, ). she added, "not all artists want to be so involved. but a regular record deal seems old-fashioned now somehow" (siberry , ). genre and siberry's approach to songwriting considering the changes that have taken place in the popular music industry in the last two decades, the fact that siberry's oeuvre spans the s, s, and beyond is quite remarkable. siberry's artistic longevity is particularly notable because few of her songs cater to the mainstream pop music format of a three-minute or four-minute song with a catchy bass hook. on the contrary, siberry's songs tend to change key, metre, tempo, and dynamics; contain spoken sections and angular melodies; create multiple-voiced narratives; and address topics other than romantic love. they also use complex formal structures that typically last around seven minutes in length, or even up to minutes long, as with "oh my my" from maria. speaking about the extended song "sweet incarnadine" from when i was a boy, siberry commented: "it is not a song song. it's more of a piece. i get more satisfaction out of those kinds of vehicles to pour myself into than just a song" (ouellette, ). whether shorter songs or longer "pieces," siberry's approach to songwriting has never been dictated by commerce or convention but rather by a personal artistic vision. as she describes it, inspiration arises from a strong personal desire: i write so i'm not bored. i write things that interest me and stimulate me and that i'd like to hear on the radio. i write because i love to and it's so much a part of me that it just makes me feel alive. so i write for myself (kelley, ). adhering to her personal vision has kept siberry from achieving widespread popular success. when asked if she is tempted to write songs that follow generic expectations and are thus more commercially viable, siberry replied: whenever i've tried to be like someone else, i fail. it's happened in the past when i've tried to dance like someone else to look cool or sing like another singer i admire. as a result, i've developed this survival mechanism that prohibits me from trying to emulate another person. it's as if there are chains that wrap around me and force me to do it my own way. it's a mechanism that keeps me true to myself (ouellette, ). while on the one hand being true to herself involves writing music that is challenging for a mass market audience, on the other hand siberry denies writing music that is deliberately complex or draws upon specifically avant-garde tendencies. when i'm composing and i feel my mind kicking in to want to deliberately break rules, i go the other way. i don't like the attitude of breaking rules just for the sake of breaking them. that's when the music becomes clever and leaves you cold. i may be a rule-breaker, but it's only an aside to follow my own vision (ouellette, ). regarding the complexities in her songs, siberry contends that her music is relatively accessible. according to her, the melodies of her music are not angular, but "catchy." despite her use of unusual forms, irregular metres, and uneven phrase lengths, siberry explains: "that's just the way i hear things, musically and metre-wise. it's very natural to me" (kelley, ). if their non-commercial nature and indie production make siberry's songs difficult to market, so too do the variety of genres she has utilized on her albums since . such diversity was not always typical of her recordings. her first (chronologically written) albums, teenager and jane siberry, evoked the genre of folk revival. her subsequent albums from - were even more consistent in regard to genre negotiation, perhaps aided by the continuity in personnel on no borders here, the speckless sky, and the walking. these three albums all used the electro-pop genre. this dense and highly-produced sound (similar to synth-rock) can be heard in the contemporary music of peter gabriel, sarah mclachlan, and prince. as mentioned earlier, siberry's musical affinity with the mainstream of the s is probably what got her a record contract with a multi-national label like warner. at this time she had a lot in common with her contemporaries. indeed, early in her career siberry was compared to such singer-songwriters as kate bush, laurie anderson, and suzanne vega, as well as joni mitchell from the prior generation. while sharing some vocal mannerisms with mitchell (such as her use of range and vibrato), siberry is less confessional in her lyrics than mitchell and other s singer- songwriters. as siberry explains: i always distance the songs. i feel people can tell how personal they are. i've never really enjoyed music that is too direct and too personal. i usually try to distance it from myself enough to be comfortable through having slightly impossible, having unrealistic things happen (kelley, ). as in the songs of bush and vega, the differentiation between siberry and her narrators (sometimes in terms of age and gender) is clear. while siberry's songs are similar in this regard to those of vega, siberry's electro-pop music is far more melodically and formally complex than vega's folk rock. in its use of layered synthesizers and samplers, siberry's music is therefore much closer to that of bush's. siberry was also influenced by anderson's music, specifically her interest in electronic instruments and stylized live performances (using props and choreography). siberry also adopted anderson's use of spoken word sections in her songs from the s: a lot of times if i'm writing a song, there's another element that i want to bring into it that's sort of almost like a tangent but still makes sense with the whole content. it doesn't even make sense to write it into a verse like the one before, so you spin it off into a talking part. then it's well balanced. but i'm definitely careful with the talking on record because i don't think it wears very well (kelley, ). siberry's style from the s, then, can be heard as both drawing upon and paralleling the idioms of a number of contemporary singer-songwriters. in with the release of bound by the beauty, siberry abruptly changed her compositional style to one using sparser lyrics and conventional forms, albeit still more complex than mainstream pop songs. in addition, she also simplified her production style. the dense electro-pop textures were gone and the vocals were no longer multi-tracked as they had been from to . these changes in siberry's personal style again reflected what was occurring in the mainstream. during the late s melissa etheridge, john cougar mellancamp, and others cultivated a more acoustic sound, rejecting the electric guitars prevalent in the stadium rock of the s and the synthesizers that dominated the early s. in a similar vein, bound by the beauty was recorded live in a studio that was built in the middle of an apple orchard and whose sign on the door read: "no computers allowed." as siberry recalls, "there was no fixing mistakes. this was a huge relief, knowing that 'what we'd played was what it would be' and the work would not go on forever towards (perceived) perfection" (siberry , ). a simplification in production style was a wise move for siberry, for her strength both as a recording artist and live performer has always been the intimacy and honesty she projects as a singer. ironically, siberry was reluctant to give up her multitracked vocal style of the early s (druckman , ). she felt the same reservation in the production of the songs on maria, commenting: in many cases, i would have liked to have doubled the vocals because sonically it can be much more exciting to hear. some of the songs could be amazingly arranged with vocals. like to have stacked harmonies on "see the child" would be really exciting. vocals are very pleasing to people—having them come from different sides and doubling them with harmonies—so it was a bit hard to let go of that option; but i didn't feel it was an option (menzies, ). siberry replaced her earlier electro-pop sound with the multiplicity of genres featured on bound by the beauty. this album includes songs negotiating such diverse idioms as country ("bound by the beauty," "everything reminds me of my dog," and "something about trains"), folk ("la jalouse"), and latin ("miss punta blanca" and "are we dancing now? (map )"). after three consecutive albums featuring exclusively electro-pop tracks, such generic diversity on a single album is quite striking. it is almost as if, in deciding to leave the confines of the electro-pop genre, siberry could no longer limit herself to working within a single genre; rather, she seems to take pleasure in juxtaposing contrasting genres. indeed, the light tone on bound by the beauty (which will be discussed further in chapter ) suggests that siberry's approach to genre is one of play. siberry's s output continued to exhibit this generic diversity, going beyond the previously mentioned genres to engage funk, cool jazz, and art rock as well. after the diversity of bound by the beauty, however, her subsequent albums concentrated more on single genres. this is not to say that every song on a given album adheres to one genre; but that there are enough songs on an album to create an overall generic unity. for example, lips includes numerous funk songs such as "freedom is gold," "flirtin' is a flo-thing," "say it," and "hotel rm. ." the funk genre is also clearly demonstrated on when i was a boy in such songs as "temple," "all the candles in the world" and "an angel stepped down." tree focuses on art rock in the choral song "slow tango" and such chamber pieces as "adam and eve" and "burning ship." maria, in contrast, employs the jazz idiom, most overtly in "caravan," "maria," and "lovin' cup". finally, teenager marks a return to the folk revival genre. "let's not talk now," "puppet city," and "we should be there by morning" are even better representatives of folk-revival than the songs from jane siberry. hush and child represent a different type of folk revival in that they contain mainly traditional songs arranged, but not written, by siberry. whereas child is restricted to christmas music, both traditional songs and new ones written by siberry, hush consists exclusively of folk songs. unlike the songs on child, the folk songs on hush are arranged in a non-traditional manner, using electronic instruments and in some cases additional formal sections. having outlined the various genres that siberry has negotiated throughout her oeuvre, it is interesting to hear how siberry perceives her own use of genre: i think there is a subconscious thing that happens. whatever my molecular shape of the day is will give me a predisposition towards a certain shape of music and that's how it happens. now, why i would be a certain shape that day i think is part of a greater design; you know, when you are open to writing music. so it is sort of a subconscious thing that happens; although i have been known to deliberately write a country song for when i'm at a folk festival workshop or just being silly (siberry ). the fact that siberry can "deliberately write a country song" shows that she is familiar enough with the musical parameters associated with a given idiom to be able to write within the confines of a genre. in an interview, siberry agreed that her employment of genre is more intentional when she is thinking about recording or instrumentation. but she was quick to add: "i pretty well just wait until i hear something in my head and then do it. there's a mixture of thinking about it, but i really have come to trust what i hear in my head and not mess with it" (siberry ). in summary, siberry has pursued two different approaches to genre. the first approach is a homogeneous or extended use of one genre that is evident in her negotiation of folk-revival and then electro-pop, heard on the albums from the s. the break with folk revival to employ electro pop represents a further foray by siberry into developing her own personal style or authorial voice. the more siberry broke with the generic expectations of the electro-pop genre, the more her songs were marked by the increasing use of extended forms and unconventional metres. the use in her lyrics of humour and fantasy gradually declined over the span of this early repertoire, while the presence of obscure imagery and concern with the artistic processes gradually increased. the second approach to genre that siberry employed is a heterogeneous juxtaposing of or playing with several diverse idioms (namely, folk, country, and latin), first on bound by the beauty and then subsequent albums. in the lyrics of this later repertoire there is no longer use of obscure imagery. instead, a new realism and economy of words emerges. the use of humour also returned when siberry began to employ contrasting genres. it was as if in these later works siberry let go of the pretensions of seriousness and a concern with art to embrace an aesthetic of play, employing whichever genres she chose and in whatever manner she liked. the chapters that follow discuss these two approaches by analyzing five songs in the chronological order in which siberry has chosen to engage contrasting genres. recurrent techniques and themes in siberry's lyrics as a rock auteur, one can expect from siberry's oeuvre a repetition of characteristic themes and stylistic choices. the latter will be investigated at length in subsequent chapters. the following discussion will focus on recurring techniques and themes found in her lyrics. such a discussion could form a monograph unto itself. these topics will only be reviewed below for the sake of brevity. two particular areas will be discussed: siberry's use of humour and her creation of a multiple points-of-view approach within a song. the most accessible stylistic device that characterizes siberry's lyrics is her use of humour. comic touches in siberry's early work can be found in "the waitress" from no borders here (see lyric in appendix ). in this song siberry plays with the stereotype of the struggling musician or actress who is forced to take a day job as a waitress to pay the bills. part of the stereotype is that, as an artist, the performer conceives of herself as above manual labour and, as such, gives terrible service. siberry, however, inverts this stereotype. instead of doing her job grudgingly, the performer does her utmost to be an excellent waitress. in the chorus, the performer quips: "i'd probably be famous now/if i wasn't such a good waitress," suggesting that her day job has become more important to her than the pursuit of her performance career. in the first two verses the performer describes how keeping the restaurant clean has become more than just a way to pay the bills. clearly, the waitress has taken the maxim 'cleanliness is next to godliness' to heart, so that not only does she "have to clear your table" and "empty ashtrays," but she also becomes convinced that these are a moral imperative: "it's right to keep them clean." the idea that the stereotypical artist, a character often associated with slovenly dress, a messy apartment, and liberal morality, could see cleanliness as a moral directive is used here to comic effect. the narrator further describes how she takes her job home with her to the point that she has "nightmares" about not being able to find the "section" in which she works. she has even become "a drag at parties," because she has to clean up the empty beer bottles or she becomes "upset." since artists generally talk about a day job as a necessary evil that exists to pay the bills, a place they leave without a thought, the idea that it would give the narrator nightmares completely subverts the very purpose of the job. indeed, that a day job could change the way performers function in their leisure activities (where they are "more" themselves than at work- here, at a party) is a cause for both laughter and irony. in the final verse the irony is felt all the more keenly when it becomes clear that the pressure the narrator feels to excel at her day job is not a product of the management but rather is self-imposed. she says "i have to know the regulars/well i don't have to/but i like to know their names." the lyrics of this song are an excellent example of siberry's use of humour. not only is irony present, but also the subversion of conventional pop culture stereotypes. further instances of humour in her later song lyrics can be seen in the discussions of "everything reminds me of my dog" in chapter and "flirtin' is a flo-thing" in chapter . a less accessible stylistic device that characterizes siberry's lyrics is the use of a multiple points-of-view approach. siberry's earliest songs (from teenager and jane siberry) do not employ this technique. rather they form linear narratives. it is only as siberry developed her personal voice using the electro-pop genre that a multiple points-of-view approach began to appear. an example of an early linear narrative can be seen in "above the treeline" from jane siberry (see lyric in appendix ). this song describes the narrator out for a walk with her dog, wolf. they go "across the road" to a "trail that leads up through the forest," and, after pausing at the end of the treeline, finally out onto a snowfield. this physical journey parallels a psychological voyage. at the beginning of the excursion the narrator comments: "i had so many worries on my mind." after walking past the treeline and on to the snowy moon-lit field the narrator gains peace of mind, feeling that "somehow everything is alright." this ode to nature is a topic that recurs throughout siberry's oeuvre. she explains, "i have always been very reverent, with a very devotional nature towards nature. i kneel before the altar of beauty in any form; it could be a tree, or an office tower. but if you find beauty in it, that's my god" (karen o'brien, - ). after foregoing the wordy sentence structures evident in her earliest lyrics, siberry developed a more economical style that characterizes her mature lyrics. this style (evident first in the speckless sky) was based more on a series of images than on any linear narrative. the images consist exclusively of sentence fragments that are so brief that their meaning is not always immediately apparent. indeed, at the height of siberry's early period (on the walking) some of the images used in such songs as "the white tent the raft" and "lena is a white table" are quite obscure. siberry commented upon her attraction to an economy of imagery: "i like the idea of fragments, just caught. i like the idea of a sense of'caughtness' because then you get a sense of a 'before' and an 'after,' so you only have to say a little bit and the rest is inherent around it" (karen o'brien, ). almost as soon as siberry dispensed with linear narratives, she began to experiment using a multiple points-of-view approach. if "mein bitte" from the speckless sky represented siberry's first exploration of multiple voices, by "the bird in the gravel" from the walking (see appendix , lyric ) her use of the technique had reached maturity. siberry's later works have retained the use of multi-voiced narratives. siberry commented on her non-linear approach to telling a story by saying, "not everything that happens to us follows a linear pattern. it's more important to communicate in the nonlinear realm, where there's so much more going on than meets the ear" (ouellette, ). an excellent example of communicating a non-linear phenomenon through a narrative with multiple point-of-view is the moving "grace hospital" (see lyric in appendix ). this song reveals what goes on in the minds of several patients on the seventh floor (the terminal wing) of grace hospital. against the assumption that people in the same hospital, facing an identical illness will be feeling similar emotions and going through a standardized experience of grief, siberry reveals several unique attitudes and personalities. although only the characters of daniel, joe, and mrs. bergman are named, it is clear that there are other characters present at the hospital. first, someone is "walking down the corridor" to get to the end to smoke a cigarette. second, another person is looking out the window at the end of the corridor, imagining the thoughts of "a man in traffic below." third, mrs. bergman represents the elderly person who repeats the same stories to people over and over, without realizing it. her isolation is emphasized by the fact that her thoughts frequently return to the idea of receiving some correspondence in the mail, while her loneliness is accentuated by the fact that her only companion is her dog. fourth, the thoughts of an angry person (perhaps daniel) are revealed, as he reflects bitterly upon the hospital board, the colour green, the mail-hungry mrs. bergman, and her annoying dog. fifth, a picture is presented of an old man who has lost track of time. his condition is so advanced that he is hallucinating (from the morphine) that his (probably deceased) wife is present as a young bride. finally, a character is presented who has hope (drug-induced or not) that he and the others are "gonna kick this thing." the contrasting emotional responses presented through the thoughts of several character vignettes are much more indicative of real human experience than the physical appearance of the patients might suggest. through the use of a multiple points-of-view approach, siberry manages at once to capture the sad, hopeful, strong, and despondent emotional states that lie behind the face of interchangeably-dying patients. in addition to the use of certain stylistic techniques, siberry's song lyrics exemplify the characteristics of a rock auteur in that they exhibit recurring themes. again, it is impossible here to discuss all of the themes that resurface throughout siberry's oeuvre, but the two most important ones are those of human alienation and nature. the former theme will be looked at in the analysis of "la jalouse" in chapter and "goodbye" in chapter . regarding the latter theme, siberry's discussion of nature can best be heard in such songs as "when spring comes" and "the long pirouette" from teenager, the title track from bound by the beauty, and "above the treeline" mentioned earlier. whereas there are themes that remain throughout siberry's oeuvre, there are some that appear only in her early lyrics and others that are heard only in later songs. as mentioned, a critique of commerce and a concern with artistic processes are found in many of siberry's early lyrics. the former is evident in "mein bitte" from the speckless sky (see appendix , lyric ). in this song siberry contrasts the hardworking, but happy carpenter of the verses ("i'm at this workbench every day (i never miss a day)... (i can fix anything that you like)/i'm humming a tune while i wait... in my work i take great pride") with the big-business attitude articulated by the narrator of the chorus. siberry comments upon the differences between the motivations of the two characters. the carpenter is viewed positively by siberry. in fact, she seems to imply that his attitude is the more natural of the two, citing his love of music and by linking his thoughts with nature imagery. in the most melodic section of the song he says: "my shop is a long meadow/in a winding landscape . . . with a few cows/and a babbling brook." the attitude of the big businessman, however, is clearly criticized by siberry. the negativity of this critique is implicit in the obviously jeering tone of the (unnaturally) spoken chorus: "i need more things/i need more money/ don't want to work/want things for free/cut corners here/make more that way/i have no pride." a concern with artistic processes can be heard in "seven steps to the wall" from the speckless sky (see lyric in appendix ). in this song there is a man imprisoned in a room that is only seven square feet large. he paces about wanting "to write something down . . . to sing a song/or paint something." despite the fact that the only thing in the room is a chair and table, the man is still inspired to create, by viewing the sun and dust and hearing choral music in his mind. in the final verse, it becomes clear that not only this man but also the narrator of the song (and perhaps by extension, siberry herself) wants to write something down (see p. ). she says: "all my life/where there's white/i have words/so i write/what i hear." she concludes humbly: "it is thin/but it's clear." interestingly, lyrics with a feminist orientation can be found only very early and late in siberry's career. none of these songs is militant in its rhetorical stance. rather, they merely discuss topics that concern women, such as the socialization of women or the interaction between women and men. in contrast, in siberry's later repertoire, discussions of commerce as well as the artistic process that were so important to her early lyrics completely disappear. instead, songs about love (such as "love is everything" and "sail across the water" from when i was a boy and "up the loggin' road" from tree) and hope (such as "oh my my" from maria and "it can't rain all the time" from tree), which had been absent in her early lyrics, come to the fore. along with recurring lyrical themes, there are rhetorical devices that are used consistently throughout siberry's later song lyrics. the most accessible is the use of concrete imagery that shows rather than tells the listener what she means. instead of stating ideas in a linear manner, a picture is used to describe a concept, moment, emotion, or scene. "at the beginning of time" from when i was a boy (see lyric in appendix ), for example, uses water imagery, that never actually mentions the word "water." the lyrics of this song are set before the beginning of time, but they are not so much concerned with the concept of timelessness, as with the technique of describing a scene through the absence of such concrete references as weather, communication, animals, light, and fear. siberry envisions the moment before time as a group of people "waiting in the darkness," sitting in silence "each in our own boat" without masts. the boats are on the water, which is the only thing present "before there were waves." a final rhetorical device that can be found only in her later repertoire is the use of biblical allusions. an example of a song employing this technique is "caravan" from child (see lyric in appendix ). as in "at the beginning of time," the use of imagery here is concrete, but subtle. the biblical allusion is not employed to preach, but rather as an artistic tool. the song describes in retrospect the journey of two young boys in a caravan. the imagery of "that star" and "kneeling," of the "throne" and "a dream" as well as that of "three wise men" is clearly borrowed from the biblical story of the journey of the magi to bethlehem to see the christ child; but this allusion is never explicitly stated. the use of recurring themes as well as her subtle attention to detail in the use of rhetorical devices (such as concrete imagery and biblical allusions) and stylistic devices (such as humour and multiple points-of-view) in her lyrics marks siberry as a rock auteur. siberry's auteur status is not limited to her poetic inclinations, however. let us now turn to analyses of her music to see how an auteur stance is manifested in her approach to various genres in songs throughout her career. notes for chapter . these include no borders here ( ), the speckless sky ( ), the walking ( ), and bound by the beauty ( ). . a minor hit is one that places in billboards top , as opposed to its top . . after years of playing the folk circuit, suzanne vega's album solitude standing reached number on the billboard pop chart. this was due mainly to the popular success of her single from that album: "my name is luka," a narrative told from the point-of-view of an abused child. . nirvana's nihilistic "smells like teen spirit" from nevermind for example, reached # on the billboard charts in . . see the discography for the full details of the dates and record companies used for each siberry album. . child is the only double-cd release in siberry's oeuvre. . siberry's negotiation of contrasting genres is probably in part modeled on the career of joni mitchell, as singer-songwriter from the prior generation. mitchell began her career in the folk- revival genre with such albums as songs to a seagull ( ) and clouds ( ). after the height of her popularity with the albums blue ( ), for the roses ( ), and court and spark ( ), however, mitchell embraced the jazz idiom. with the hissing of summer lawns ( ), hejira ( ), don juan's reckless daughter ( ), and mingus ( ) mitchell ultimately lost both popular and critical success. on wild things run fast ( ) and dog eat dog ( ) mitchell turned to pop music, again with disappointing reviews compared to her achievements mid-career. it is only with a case of you ( ) that mitchell has returned to both the jazz idiom and critical acclaim. . while siberry uses the spoken word in single sections of certain songs, anderson often has entire songs that are spoken (such as "born, not asked" and "walking and falling" from big science). because anderson came from a performance art background, her music is less influenced by popular song than by the high art canon. indeed, her albums are condensations of far larger works. the fact that anderson had an isolated hit in england with "o superman (for massenet)" was more of a fluke of timing than an intentional pursuit of the mass-music market. . funk is a genre of r&b characterized by prominent up-tempo, syncopated bass vamps, soul vocals accompanied by syncopated (horn) riffs, an emphasis on the downbeat (called "groove," as opposed to emphasizing every beat, as in disco), a single and often complex harmony, an even subdivision of the beat (as opposed to the use of triplets found in jazz and early soul) and lyrics making frequent social commentary, often of a black nationalist nature. . other songs utilizing humour are: "this girl i know" from jane siberry, i muse aloud" from no borders here, and "miss punta blanca" from bound by the beauty. . siberry's ideas here are in harmony with a contemporary school of poetry known as imagism, founded by american poets such as william carlos williams. imagism has been kept alive in the work of siberry's canadian contemporary, the poet and novelist michael ondaatje. in an interview in which he makes explicit his interest in using images as an organizing structure, ondaatje could very well be speaking for siberry: in one mural, [mexican artist diega] rivera shows a factory worker holding a wrench in a certain way. across the room in a linked mural, we see a foreman holding a pencil in a certain way. [likewise] a story can be knit together by images. this seems to me a less didactic method of building a theme (slopen, - ). my thanks to bill fledderus for bringing up this point as well as the quotation, taken from: beverly slopen, "michael ondaatje," publisher's weekly (oct. ): - . . other examples of multiple-voiced lyrics are: "red high heels," and "lena is a white table" from the walking; "all the candles in the world," "the gospel according to darkness," and "an angel stepped down" from when i was a boy; and "hotel room " from lips. . similarly, the theme of loneliness can be found in the lyrics of "the magic beads" and "in the blue light from jane siberry, "the taxi ride" from the speckless sky, and "the valley" from bound by the beauty. the theme of miscommunication is best heard in "ingrid and the footman"from the walking. . a critique of commerce can be heard best in: "marco polo" from jane siberry and "extra executives" from no borders here. a concern with artistic processes is evident in: "writers are a funny breed" from jane siberry, "symmetry (is the way things have to be)" from no borders . here, and "the empty city" from the speckless sky. . these include "puppet city" and "o my sister" from teenager, "mimi on the beach" from no borders here, "adam and eve" from tree, and "mimi speaks" from lips. . the setting of this song could be interpreted not only as the beginning of the world, but also as the beginning of a new life. in other words, "waiting in the darkness/each in our own boat" could be a description of a baby in utero. . siberry recalls earlier using such a "negative" descriptive technique in "one more colour" from the speckless sky: "the speckless sky" is not just the idea of a clear sky. it's more the idea of defining things by the absence of something. so within the song . . . there is the goat-less ledge, the honk-less geese—all sorts of negatives and positives that define each other by not being there (kelley, ). . biblical allusions can be heard in "the valley" from bound by the beauty, "calling all angels" and "an angel stepped down" from when i was a boy, "begat begat" from maria, "are you burning little candle" from child, and "adam and eve" from tree. . indeed, these features are also characteristics of such pop artists as alanis morissette. chapter the folk-revtval genre folk revival is a genre of folk music in which siberry recorded her first self-titled album in . it remains a genre to which siberry frequently returns, as in the example of "la jalouse" from bound by the beauty ( ). before examining siberry's approach to the folk-revival genre, the use of the term "folk revival" requires some explanation (notes for chapter begin on p. ). in popular culture—for example, in the grammy award categories—the repertoire and style characteristics of folk revival are not distinguished from that of traditional folk song (shaw, ). folklore scholarship, however, makes a distinction between the two. traditional folksong is often defined as songs passed on by non-professional musicians through oral transmission, whereas folk revival music is usually performed by professional musicians who read music (stekert, ). the term "folk" is equally problematic. it derives from the german concept of "das volk" which originated with johann gottfried von herder ( - ). herder held a somewhat mystical conception of"das volk" as peasants or uneducated, rural artisans who produced music unaffected by industrialization. he believed that "volkslied" emanated collectively from the spirit of the people. in an attempt to study folk culture as a whole, herder collected books of german song as well as european songs in german translation. his ideas led to widespread folk song collecting in the nineteenth century. for example, in the american folklore society was founded by literary scholar francis james child ( - ) and anthropologist franz boas ( - ). child in particular was renowned for his systematic study and collection of over british folk songs in a five-volume work entitled, english and scottish popular ballads ( - ). these songs, which came to be known as the "child ballads," were highly valued by collectors in both europe and america. based on a combination of herder's ideas and english nationalism, the english folk-song society was founded in . early collector cecil sharp idealized the people he called the "folk," viewing their music as "the product of a highly stable, conservative, and rural society unaffected by industrialization, literacy, or urban tastes" (porter, ). in english folk-song: some conclusions ( ), he linked continuity, variation, and selection as the key features of origin and transmission in folk music. sharp also outlined a theory of english folk song that prioritized modal melodies (gammon, ). these ideas came to define early folk music scholarship. the study of english folk music was further aided by the founding of the international folk music council (heretofore, ifmc) in . this organization was formed in london to study melodic classification, historical sources, and organology in the folk music and dance of europe (porter, ). composer ralph vaughan williams, the first president, introduced cecil sharp's turn-of-the-century ideas into discussions on the nature and role of folk music. after the second world war, however, his purist ideas became increasingly untenable and outdated, due to the influence of radio, records, and, later, television. the second wave of folk revival in england was lead by a.l. lloyd and ewan maccoll, with the encouragement of the american alan lomax, who brought together the two political left-wingers. lloyd tried to understand folk song as a historical process, and combined the ideas of sharp, international folklore scholarship, bartok, and marxist historical writings in his influential book on folk song in england ( ). maccoll was successful at interesting young english musicians looking for an alternative to popular music for performance in folk clubs. at the height of the british folk revival in the s, thousands of folk clubs provided a public platform for traditional performers (gammon, ). lomax was also instrumental in the second wave of folk revival in the united states, along with pete seeger, who founded the folk magazine, sing out. the folk revival in the united states was even more widespread than in england among college students and intellectuals in the s and s, as will be discussed later. by , several countries in western europe had begun to issue recordings of their indigenous traditional music through universities, research units, and major record companies such as rca and victor. frequently the motivation behind this documentation was to assert national identity in the face of american-inspired pop music emanating from urban centres. the attitude that folk music had to be captured before vanishing could also be found in the jemc. for example, by the stated aim of the jemc, recorded by maude karpeles, was to assist "in the practice, preservation, and dissemination of folk music" (porter, ). simultaneously, the colonial need to "save other people's musics before they disappear" found in folk scholarship began to change, as creativity and social consciousness became a part of popular culture in the s (middleton , ). european scholars such as bose began to refer to "folklore" singers, by which they meant the professional disseminators of folk genres as a means for political expression in urban centres. scholars such as boskovic-stulli, gusev, and ffeimann went so far as to concede that this "folkloristic music" need not be negatively compared to traditional folk. they argued that folkloristic music also formed an equally viable tradition, albeit self-consciously arranged for stage performance rather than in an earlier social context, such as singing on someone's front porch. this new practice was simply an old set of musical behaviours adjusted to fit a changed context (porter, ). by the s the need for a greater sophistication in depicting the contexts, uses, and purposes of folk music was recognized as an essential component of ethnomusicology. this discipline sought to determine "what music people were actually singing, and not what music scholars ideally believed them to sing" (porter, ). one of the fruits of this research was that in the ifmc changed its name to the international council for traditional music (ictm) to broaden the spatial and temporal dimensions of the music that had hitherto been studied as folk. it became apparent that, outside of europe, "folk" music was an unused and irrelevant term. indeed, what had been called "folk" was no longer conceived of as communal music that was transmitted orally (porter, ). furthermore, the scholar's role, how he or she affects human subjects in an ethnographic study, became an important aspect of scholarship, as it entered the postmodern period. scholarship turned away from positivistic methods of data collection and analysis of folk song (porter, ). "studies of the internal characteristics of such music, however, cannot provide the whole answer, since concepts of value, context, performance, and use collectively outweigh purely stylistic questions" (porter, ). put another way, in popular culture, the meanings associated with traditional folk music have been appropriated into the folk-revival genre. while this conflation of folk and folk pop has been dismissed by folklore scholars, it remains significant. this is particularly the case when it comes to the meanings being negotiated by the average reader of a folk revival text. for example, the way i will be using "folk revival" here describes exactly the repertoire and aesthetic criteria that mark miller refers to simply as "contemporary folk music" (miller , ) and what douglas white calls "folk and roll" or "pop rock and folk fusion music" (white , ). having said that, and because the term "folk revival" has more specific connotations than the popular use of the term "folk," the former is the one used here. over the years, however, "folk revival" has been used in various ways. folklorist ellen stekert ( ) has conveniently outlined these usages. in the s and s folk revival referred to left-wing political groups who sang at union meetings and hootenannies both protest songs from traditional oral folk culture and new songs, composed by rural singers such as woody guthrie, aunt molly jackson, and leadbelly. new songs were also composed by urban singers or "imitators" such as alan lomax and pete seeger (stekert, ). not surprisingly, during the repressive mccarthy era there was a turn away from protest and politics to collecting and singing traditional rural folk song. traditional folk song was again performed by both urban singers such as john jacob niles, peggy seeger, and burl ives as well as rural singers such as jean ritchie, hobart smith and frank proffitt. throughout the s, adapting traditional folksong to an urban style and audience was undertaken by the next generation of revival singers, who stekert said fostered "the new aesthetic," including joan baez, judy collins, and peter, paul, and mary (stekert, ). for the folk-revival singer-songwriters or "urban pop utilizers," however, expressing oneself through the songs of traditional rural folk was ultimately dissatisfying (stekert, ). singers such as gordon lightfoot, bob dylan, and joni mitchell thus began to write their own songs that were increasingly more concerned with the self than with social protest (whiteley , ). nonetheless, "in the public mind these singer-songwriters became synonymous with the idea of a 'folksinger' " (miller , ). at first the folk-revival songs by these singer- songwriters were written in the image of folk revival from the s and s, but this did not last. after the newport folk festival of , folk revival fell out of public favour, while folk rock rose to prominence with bands such as the byrds, the mamas and the papas, simon and garfunkel, neil young and crazy horse, and buffalo springfield. even from this brief survey, therefore, it is clear that the term "folk revival" has vastly differing associations. the way in which jane siberry negotiates the folk-revival genre in "la jalouse" (and the way in which i will be using this term) is as an "urban pop utilizer." before discussing how well "la jalouse" exemplifies the genre of folk revival, however, we must analyze folk revival as a "genre prototype" to reveal the parameters most conventional in this genre (paltridge, ). first of all, folk revival has intentionally simple musical parameters. the melody covers a small range and usually moves in conjunct motion. it is usually also modal and sung with a straight-tone vocal timbre. unlike traditional folksong, which is performed unaccompanied, folk revival is accompanied by understated acoustic instruments, frequently just a guitar strumming triadic chords to keep the beat (middleton , ). intimately associated with this musical simplicity is a sense of democracy between the singer and audience. this democracy is manifested in the informality of the live performance context of folk-revival. for example, the singer is usually in a small venue with sparse staging, wearing street clothes (as opposed to concert attire). again, it is because egalitarian camaraderie is the aim of folk revival that its performance context is kept informal and intimate. the musical and performance parameters of folk revival are also kept simple to foreground the lyrics, which usually form a narrative (in line with traditional folksong balladry) that often implies either a moral lesson, as in the broadside ballad tradition, or a socio-political one, as in the protest song tradition (middleton , ). more than in early folk revival, however, the romantic idea of the poet as genius was thrust upon the folk-revival singer- songwriter from the s onwards (stratton, ). for these "urban pop utilizers" there is a certain expectation of virtuosity in the lyrics, particularly regarding social content. this virtuosity results in a corresponding reverence for the folk-revival performer. as cultural theorist john fiske points out, "the veneration of the author-artist is a necessary correlative of the veneration of the text" (fiske , ). in performance, therefore, the folk-revival audience is usually seated (that is, not dancing) and listens with careful attention to the poetry of the lyrics. such rapt attention can be found in performances of folk revival because central to the aesthetics of the genre, at least at the height of folk revival's popularity in the early s, is the idea of "authenticity" (middleton , ), namely, that singers through their songs speak a timeless "truth" about the way of life of "the people." audiences continue to believe that folk revival speaks the "truth" about their lives because folksongs are evocative symbols of the past, a time when life was simpler and more honest (bohlman, ). philip v. bohlman suggests that all folk revival is an overt and explicit act of authentication. in fact, he argues that revival is the ultimate collapse of time and space because it fully admits of the efficacy of that collapse for creating contemporary meaning. revival relies heavily on new symbols masquerading as the old.... the revivalist assumes that the audience will simultaneously imagine one set of values, strip those values from the music, and allow new . . . values to assert themselves (bohlman, ). for urban audiences, then, a modal melody with acoustic accompaniment, socially relevant lyrics, and an informal performance setting are among the parameters that signify that what they are hearing is folk revival. genre in "la jalouse" by jane siberry siberry's song "la jalouse" both adheres to, and departs from, the conventions of folk- revival. siberry borrows from the folk-revival genre in her negotiation of music, lyrics, and live staging practice, but breaks away in two specific ways. at the same time, she evokes two further elements that do not overtly suggest folk revival. the creative tension resulting from siberry's loose engagement with folk-revival conventions meets her aesthetic goal of creating a sophisticated play with genre types. before analyzing the dissonances with folk revival, let us look at four factors in "la jalouse" that suggest the folk-revival genre. first of all, the melody of "la jalouse" (see figure . below and appendix , p. ) is consonant with melodic practices of the folk-revival genre. like traditional folksong, the melody is modal in the chorus (a aeolian in section b, mm. to ) and in the verses. in section a, mm. to , the melody begins in d ionian and then changes to d dorian. unlike traditional folksong, the bridge sections (c and d) actually change mode, in this case to d minor in mm. - . modulation is not part of traditional folk song practice; but it is typical of folk revival. for example, modulation is heard in gordon lightfoot's "ribbon of darkness" (fowke, - ) and joni mitchell's "night in the city" (fowke, - ). furthermore, although the melody of "la jalouse" is for the most part conjunct (except for the leap in the head motif), the range is almost an octave and a half (see the transcription in appendix ). this range is larger than that of traditional folk song, but is typical of folk-revival songs such as joni mitchell's "both sides now" (fowke, - ), which has a range of an eleventh. figure . - tonality in "la jalouse" form: a b c a b d a b key: d-d dorian a aeolian d d-d dorian a aeolian d d-d dorian a aeolian secondly, the phrase lengths of "la jalouse" are consonant with the folk-revival genre in that they are typical of the asymmetries found in that style (see figure . below). for example, ian tyson's "four rode by" (fowke, ) and joni mitchell's "both sides now" (fowke, ) each consist of both four- and three-bar phrases. gordon lightfoot's "did she mention my name" consists of four-, six- and three-bar phrases (fowke, ), and leonard cohen's "suzanne" consists of four-, two- and three-bar phrases (fowke, ). these asymmetries are either structural or resulting from the addition of extra beats to the end of a phrase, which is found in the loose sense of timing in both traditional folksong and folk revival. figure . - phrase lengths in "la jalouse" form: a b c a b d a b no. of mm.: furthermore, siberry's subtly changing tempos (for example between sections b and d) successfully creates the organic ebb and flow experienced in both traditional folk song and folk- revival phrasing. for instance, after two -bar phrases of a material in "la jalouse," one expects two more -bar phrases of either ba or bb. and indeed one does get b material; however, it is six measures long. this is too long to fit the established pattern of four and too short to form the conventional group of eight measures. the subsequent bridge material only adds to the conventional ambiguity of phrase length; the c section is five measures long. not only is this too long to be a -bar phrase, it is also asymmetrical. after the repetition of sections a and b, we hear the final bridge (section d). like the b section, section d is again a -bar unit. thirdly, siberry's live staging practice is typical of folk-revival conventions. when i saw her perform in toronto in , she and two other musicians were seated on stools in a small hall wearing street clothes. there was no backdrop on the stage and the audience was seated in close proximity to the performers. furthermore, the audience at the concert of the bound by the beauty tour that i attended was seated and paid close attention to the performance. this was evident in their silence during the songs and their laughter at the humorous stories siberry told between songs. the feeling of camaraderie that night was strong. siberry had a cold, and a couple of times she could not reach some of the high notes. after one such failed attempt, one of the audience members called out in support, "we love you, jane." it was clear from such interactions that siberry had an unusually high level of camaraderie with her home audience that evening. fourthly, the lyrics of "la jalouse" (see lyric in appendix ) are consonant with the conventions associated with the folk-revival genre. like a traditional folk ballad, the lyrics here tell a story with a moral, namely, that extreme jealousy hurts a relationship. but the moral emerges from a much more complex set of lyrics than one would find in traditional folk song, a complexity typical of folk revival. for example, in the lyrics of a traditional folk ballad, the rejected lover laments, whereas in "la jalouse" the lament is inverted as it is the narrator (the "i", not the "you") who broke up the relationship; and although the couple reunites, they remain unhappy. the narrative in "la jalouse" is further complicated by the fact that there is some question as to the identity of the jealous woman of the title. at first it appears that "la jalouse" is the protagonist's lover, ("la jalouse/i told you to go/you trick me with all your lies you . . . drag me into your stinking pit.. . jalouse/don't cry, baby/just get out and never come back"). it is not until after the second verse that it becomes clear that it is the protagonist herself who is the jealous one: "i knocked the table over then i/i grabbed your shoulders then i/i threw you as hard as ever." by not naming or identifying the lover, but referring instead to "the jealous one" the song retains a focus on the narrator and the struggle is basically between the narrator and her jealousy rather than the narrator and her lover. to put it another way, the song seems to set up a "self versus other" conflict, but then flips it into an internal conflict between "me" and "the jealous part of me." part of the complexity of these lyrics is that the narrator conflates her lover and a personification of her jealousy. she is so internally focused that she is blind. this self- centredness is characteristic of jealousy, so perhaps this is the lesson of the narrative. finally, the complexity of siberry's lyrics is evident in the transformation of the narrative from a love-lost ballad into a statement about the nature of jealousy, by focusing on the temporal experience of jealousy itself via memory. in siberry's narrative, the protagonist feels a lack of closure about being jealous of and subsequently unfaithful to her lover. although her past infidelity meant nothing to the narrator, she is still haunted in the present by the jealousy she feels toward her lover. the listener too participates in this present-tense jealousy by re- experiencing it with the narrator via memory. the listener discovers that the jealousy felt by the narrator wreaks havoc in her relationship with her lover. to begin with, her jealousy makes her mistrust her lover ("you trick me with all your lies . . . drag me into your stinking pit"). in addition to casting suspicions in the first chorus, jealousy colours the protagonist's recollections of the past in the second verse. the narrator is torn between thinking good and bad thoughts about her lover. at one moment her lover is her friend ("mon amie") and the next, in a savvy wordplay not unlike she loves me/she loves me not, her lover is her enemy ("mon [sic] contre amie"). the narrator repeatedly tries to dismiss her negative thoughts with "i told you to go." she instead concludes that her lover is her enemy and, in the climax of the song, chooses to remember likewise: "something you said tipped me off to who you were/we were talking in the kitchen/i closed my eyes i put the glass down/i knocked the table over then i/i grabbed your shoulders then i/i threw you as hard as ever." the fact that this past-tense description is the most narrative of the entire song makes it clear these are the memories of the narrator. the blow by blow description of this violent event (emphasized with the repeated phrase "then i"), causes the listener to re-experience the memory along with the narrator and to therefore participate in the act of jealousy itself. the recollection of physical violence shows the extent to which jealousy consumes the narrator. clearly this is not just a song about a woman who felt jealous of her girlfriend ("mon amie"), and now has resolved the situation; but rather one about a narrator whose character is most frequently defined by jealousy. the unresolved nature of the narrator's jealousy is evident even in the final verse of the song. although the couple is back together ("here, have some wine"), the narrator still talks down to her lover, saying, "where would you go anyway," as if she is the exclusive centre of her lover's universe. realizing the inappropriateness of this comment, the narrator abruptly changes the subject. she suggests: "let's talk about old . . . let's review some things." but, as if catching herself idealizing the so-called "good old times," the narrator stops herself mid-sentence and remembers how, in fact, her jealousy has hurt her relationship with her lover. in the final chorus she now sees that it is precisely her jealousy that caused her infidelity. the narrator says: "you made me crazy lose my mind/now i can't remember why." in a small act of redemption the narrator points out that her infidelity did not reflect her lack of love for her lover: "i don't even like the guy," she confesses. so, although the narrator remains the jealous one of the title, she has at least gained some self-awareness by the end of the song, and toward that end (presumably) tells the listener her tale as a moral lesson. siberry commented about the end of "la jalouse:" what i did hear in my head at the end of that song, was a girlfriend of mine and i, we really hit these windows of understanding and then laughed until we couldn't stop. and that's how i wanted to end the song when she says "i don't even like the guy." it's almost like a french farce. so that was very powerful, but it didn't fit in with the song, these windows of understanding (siberry ). by subverting the cliche happy ending, the complexity of the lyrics further exemplifies folk- revival. there are two parameters pertaining to "la jalouse" that allude to the folk-revival genre, but that are not strictly conventional. first of all, the timbre of the vocal is consonant with folk- revival in that siberry utilizes a straight-tone vocal production throughout "la jalouse" and sings in close proximity to the microphone. this method creates the feeling of intimacy so important to folk revival. yet in various sections siberry slips from her chest voice into falsetto —a practice dissonant with folk-revival convention, which uses a full-voiced timbre throughout. breathy vocal production is more typical of jazz singers such as helen merrill than of folk-revival singers. while there are many pop singers who are unable to sing full-voiced in their upper register, siberry is not one of these. for example, a full-voiced approach to the higher notes can be heard in mm. and of "la jalouse" (see appendix ). the occasional breathy tone colour in this song therefore is clearly an intentional vocal device. contrary to timbral expectations found in art music aesthetics, siberry does not reserve her most full-voiced timbre for the violent and angry narrative of section d (see appendix , lyric ). she instead sings with her fullest voice in the first two a sections, those in which the narrator is most conscious of and antagonistic toward her own jealous nature ("lajalouse/i said no/la jalouse/i told you to go"). it is as if a full-voiced tone production is associated with the times when the narrator is grounded and can perceive her relationship with her lover most objectively. , in contrast, siberry saves the sensual, breathy timbre for the sections which have to do with' the narrator giving in to a state of jealousy. first of all, the breathy timbre used in the first and final b sections helps clarify the confusing personification of the narrator's jealousy, as if her "jealousy" was an entity in its own right that sucks the narrator into a downward spiral: ("you trick me with all your lies . . . you drag me into your stinking p i t . . . you made me crazy lose my mind"). siberry describes the complexity of the lyrics here by saying: "i am reminded of. . . lyrically, where she is talking to part of herself on the other side of the table" (siberry ). secondly, the middle b section is sung in a breathy manner to portray the actual process of "jealousy," the narrator's alter ego, seducing the narrator. the narrator says: "something you ["jealousy"] said tipped me off to who you [the narrator's lover] were" [namely, the narrator's "contre amie"]. finally, siberry's breathy vocal production is used to indicate "jealousy" actively at work in the middle of otherwise-narrative phrases. the breathy timbre is employed at the "then i" repetitions to separate them from the rest of the phrases in section d, as if it was "jealousy" who committed these violent acts, and not the narrator herself. similarly, a breathy tone colour is used in the final a section, when the narrator slips into "jealousy"'s trap of remembering the old times as good, when they were not ("let's talk about old . . . let's review some things"). related to the use of a breathy vocal timbre is siberry's breaking up of the vocal line after the revelation of violence in section d. the interruption of the vocal phrase with rests in mm. and to creates the effect of a catch in the voice, as if the narrator is sobbing in remorse. these subtle uses of vocal timbre by siberry are not only helpful in clarifying the obscurity of pronouns used in "la jalouse," but also in colouring the meaning of the lyrics. such a nuanced use of timbre, however, is not conventional to the folk-revival genre. usually folk revival is sung with a consistent tone colour and uninterrupted phrases. individual words are not given colour with the addition of rests. secondly, the instrumentation of "la jalouse" is largely, but not entirely, consonant with the folk-revival genre. the song consists of a single vocal accompanied by what sounds like an acoustic guitar in the foreground of the mix. tellingly, when siberry went on tour to preview this album, she played at several folk festivals in canada and the united states. when i saw her in toronto, she performed with only guitarist ken myhr and piano/accordion player teddy borowiecki. in her rendition of "la jalouse" the latter sat out. the recording done for the album features two other instruments besides guitar: stand-up bass and drums, both unusual in folk revival. these instruments cause a blurring of genres. the bassist often just plays pedal tones, but his presence creates an instrumentation associated more with a small jazz combo than with folk revival. the fact that the drummer uses only brushes further creates an aura of the cool-jazz ballad. indeed, if the guitar had sounded more electric, this song could quite possibly be heard as a jazz quartet. this is perhaps not surprising since the performance context of both the folk revival song and the small-combo jazz ballad share the parameter of the intimate vocal. siberry commented of "la jalouse," one important thing i didn't add to it was samples, because the record was conceived as an acoustic album. the whole record was off the floor. the previous record, the walking, was very heavily manipulated. the overall benign sound of bound by the beauty was not manipulated. i didn't have any samples (siberry ). while both jazz and folk revival are conventionally recorded "off the floor," the instrumentation in "la jalouse" complies with neither genre. rather, it is a hybrid of the two. finally there are two parameters of "la jalouse" that are overtly dissonant with the conventions of the folk-revival genre. the first is form. the form of "la jalouse" has folk- revival elements, but these are problematized with the intrusion of pop music elements. although "la jalouse" is in the form of a folk ballad (that is, it utilizes a traditional verse-chorus structure), it contains not one but two bridges (sections c and d, respectively). the form of "la jalouse" is thus abcabdab (see figure . above). while the presence of one bridge (section d) is typical of the genre of pop music, siberry departs from pop music conventions by inserting an additional bridge (section c) early in the song, before contrast is even required. the presence two bridges (c and d) adds a level of formal complexity not typical of folk revival. the second parameter that is dissonant is the use of mixed metre. although mixed metre is common in traditional folk balladry, it is not conventional to the folk-revival genre. in "la jalouse" the presentation of the mixed metre is particularly odd because all the sections of the song are in conventional / , except for the d section, which alternates between / and / (see appendix ). the metric alternation here coincides with the most narrative and confessional section of the lyrics (that is, the repeated "then i" phrases). the fact that the mixed metre only occurs in a single section, however, is dissonant with both traditional folksong and folk-revival conventions. furthermore, the metric alternation in section d results in an additional measure that artistically replaces the oddity of the earlier five-bar bridge (section c) with a more normative six-bar transition (section d) back to the final return of sections a and b (see figure . above). this artistic working out of compositional "problems" is again atypical of both traditional folk balladry and the folk-revival genre. therefore "la jalouse" contains parameters which have both consonant and dissonant associations with the conventions of folk-revival. the consonant fits with the folk-revival genre, however, are more important signifiers than the dissonant parameters, those that suggest the jazz and pop genres. overall, the folk- revival genre dominates. paramount to evoking folk revival is the complexity of the lyrics, which transforms the narrative from a love-lost moralizing ballad, into a folk-revival statement about the nature of jealousy. the performance context, in which there is a democratization between the audience and performer via the small venue, sparse staging, and informal stage craft, is also of the utmost importance in establishing the feeling of camaraderie conventional in folk revival. the change of mode and especially the intimate vocal timbre in the wide-ranging melody are clear markers of folk-revival conventions as well. in contrast, the two elements in "la jalouse" that less clearly suggest the folk-revival genre are not that noticeable. siberry's instrumentation (which unexpectedly uses jazz bass and drums in addition to the conventional voice and guitar combination) is more prominent than her subtle use of vocal timbre. finally, the parameters that are most dissonant are perhaps those least striking to the average listener. the formal structure is problematized with two pop-derived bridges, and mixed metre in section d. the fact that the irregular phrase length of section c becomes artistically worked out in the subsequent section d would not likely be noticed by casual listeners. all these generic consonances and dissonances lead to one major question: why, with such a close fit with the other folk-revival parameters, does siberry complicate those of metre, form, and to a lesser degree, instrumentation? certainly the song would have been sufficiently interesting without breaking the conventions of folk-revival. the answer, i contend, has to do with siberry's attitude towards genre itself. although as a musician she comes out of the tradition of folk revival, siberry cannot blindly follow the conventions of that genre. she needs to add an additional layer of complexity to the parameters of metre and form. the reason for this need is that from early in her career siberry has understood herself to be a rock auteur. while her music is not blues-based like rock 'n' roll, siberry has chosen to align herself with the rock tradition of the artistic singer-songwriter by consistently adding complexity to certain parameters in the genres she employs. in doing so she creates songs that stand directly opposed to the simplicity of the three-chord pop style, a move also foundational to rock criticism. despite the current conflation of rock and pop, siberry has retained the concept of the rock auteur and continues to write, record, produce, and market her own musical and lyrical materials. she has complete artistic control over her songs and creates new forms within a range of contrasting genres. furthermore, in employing a rock auteur stance, siberry is not as obligated to conform to the generic parameters outlined in the folk-revival prototype as a folk purist would be. having these freedoms does not, however, require flaunting them in every song. and so in the example of "la jalouse," the fit with the stylistic prototypes is quite consistent, with the exception of the parameters of instrumentation, metre, and form. thus, from the example of "la jalouse," it is evident that siberry has a complex attitude towards genre. although she intentionally complicates generic parameters in this example of folk revival, siberry can ultimately convince an audience that they are hearing the folk-revival genre because of the sense of balance in her music and intimacy in her performance. siberry explains, "there's an innate truth, a ferret-, weasel-like wisdom within the inarticulate listener that recognizes balance or not, and . . . there is a bit of truth to the female singer-songwriter" (karen o'brien, ). these nebulous qualities—call them, mood—are evident on the recording of "la jalouse." they are all the more potent live. add to this sense of mood the poignant narrative in the lyrics of "la jalouse," and it becomes clear that siberry is quite capable of creating an overall consonant fit within the folk- revival genre. herein lies her power as a performer to her fans. siberry knows this and has repeatedly named the creation of mood as her prime artistic intention (adria, ). it seems likely that siberry works within and comes from a "discourse community" that embraces folk revival because its audience values the sort of aesthetic values (for example, intimacy) that siberry shares with them. at the same time, however, the employment of contrasting genres on other albums allows siberry to create a variety of musical products while retaining unity within her compositional method. nowhere is this more clear than in her negotiation of the electro-pop genre. notes for chapter . my use of the term "folk revival" is merely a shortened version of such terms as "folk-music revival" (which would include instrumental music such as bluegrass) and "folksong revival" (which refers mainly to the urban revival of sea shanties and folk ballads—often specifically child ballads—as well as new songs). in the past the term "urban" was positioned in front of both of the two latter terms to distinguish this music from traditional rural folk genres. as pockets of undisturbed rural areas have become virtually impossible to find in western europe and north america, however, it has come to be understood in folklore scholarship that almost all folk revival today is urban (thus rendering the adjective unnecessary) in that, traditional or otherwise, it can only be mediated within an urban context. . sharp's theory of folk music is based on a darwinian model, which included concepts of: continuity, that the past and present are lined by the passing on of tradition; variation, that melodies are altered by performers; and selection, that songs are chosen according to communal taste. . although the first revival ( - ) emphasized songs rather than instrumental music, during the first world war many of these early collectors died. in fact, so great was the loss of leadership that, by , the english folk-song society became subsumed by the english folk- dance society, calling itself the english folk song and dance society (gammon, ). . for example, early collectors published more modal songs than major and minor, disregarding what they had notated in the fields (gammon, ). . as discussed in the introduction, genre is a particularly helpful paradigm for making sense of the world (and in this instance, music) in postmodern society. comparing one genre to another clearly shows alternate ways of dealing with specific musical parameters. thus comparing different genres immediately lays bare the unspoken assumptions associated with the meanings of a genre, hiding behind the rhetoric or naturalized discourse of the genre. although genres change over time, the fact that terms for them exist in everyday language shows that they have a "stabilized-for-now" place in the world (schryer, ). negotiating the meanings of a musical genre thus becomes a dialectical process for the reader. delineating musical parameters is necessary to distinguish genres, while the analysis of genre conventions helps a listener to place the significance of musical details (walser , ). . one might ask, with such confusion over the term "folk" and in light of the rejection of the term by folklorists in , why i would invoke the term here at all. the answer is that the term still exists in popular culture (as can even be seen in mark miller's definition). it seems self- evident that carolyn miller is correct to "insist that the 'de facto' genres, the types we have names for in everyday language, tell us something theoretically important about discourse" (miller, ). . the newport folk festival of is traditionally seen as the beginning of folk rock because it is here that bob dylan first performed live with an electric, rather than acoustic guitar. although the audience at the folk festival was outraged and booed dylan offstage, in negotiating the style of folk rock dylan's career improved dramatically. subterranean homesick blues ( ) was the first of dylan's albums to place in the pop charts (shaw, ). . it should be noted, however, that siberry's album, hush ( ), negotiates folk revival in the manner which stekert calls "the new aesthetic." the songs on this album are not newly-written by siberry, but rather are arrangements by her of traditional english folk songs and american spirituals. the fact that these songs are traditional, however, does not mean that they are closer to a traditional folk music performance aesthetic; and the fact that these are only arrangements of traditional folk song makes them no less compositional in scope. for example, "the water is wide" is a folk song with four strophes that begins with a piano and nonsense-vocable introduction that leads into the performance of the first strophe by a single straight-tone vocal accompanied only by piano. so far this is a relatively convincing negotiation of folk revival, but what follows only takes the listener further and further away from the solo performance aesthetic of folk revival. there is a piano instrumental before the second strophe, and when the second strophe begins, not only is there a multi-part harmony in the vocal, but to the piano accompaniment is added a synthesizer wash. following the second strophe, the folk melody is repeated by an oboe as the introductory material (the vocal accompanied by piano) simultaneously returns. in the third strophe the melody is again in the multi-part vocal, but now, in addition to the piano accompaniment, there is an oboe obbligato. another instrumental is heard before the final strophe, which again consists of piano accompaniment, oboe obbligato, and another multi-part vocal. the piece ends with a piano and synthesizer tag, and the last sound heard is a sustained note on the synthesizer. there is perhaps nothing more ideologically dissonant with the "authenticity" of folk song than the sound of a synthesizer; yet this album was not only marketed as a collection of traditional folk song, but also nominated for a juno in the "best traditional solo album" category in . . stekert points out, for example, that early folk-revival singer-songwriters, such as woody guthrie and aunt molly jackson, were celebrated as the living voices of the "noble savage," rather than for their skill as performers or writers of folk song. on the contrary, guthrie and jackson "were unskilled performers both in terms of the traditional aesthetic with which they were raised and in terms of the urban aesthetic within which they were subtly required to produce" (stekert, ). . the notion of "authenticity" that formerly held together contrasting definitions of folk song by folklorists (they could at least all agree that folk was not pop) has since been debunked, as has the notion of "the people" (fiske , ). middleton has summarized the deconstruction of the authenticity myth (middleton , ). the notion of "authenticity" remains, however, because it is a "practical" way of categorizing different types of music in the oral tradition (nettl, ). furthermore, simon frith points out that the "problem" of folk "authenticity" is solved in the experience of the folk festival. the folk fest "offers the experience of the folk ideal, an experience of collective, participatory music making," which makes a concerted "attempt to deny the actual (communal) separation of folk stars and folk fans" (frith , ). . a better example of a siberry song which contains an overall consonance with the conventions of the folk- revival genre is "puppet city" from teenager (see lyric in appendix ). this song consists of a single straight-tone vocal accompanied only by acoustic guitar. the lyrics of this song, addressing the socialization of women in society, also contain the requisite socio-political insight. it is instructive to note, however, that despite the overall consonance of this song with folk-revival conventions, siberry does problematize the parameter of form. the form of "puppet city" is ababa'cab; thus, the conventional stanza-refrain structure is marred by a pop-derived bridge section (c). . the use of french in the lyrics of "la jalouse" creates more than just a savvy word play here (literally, "against friend" as enemy). it also introduces and explains gender ambiguity in the characters. when reading the lyrics, it becomes clear that the female narrator (evidenced by her reference to herself with the title, "la jalouse") cheats on her female lover ("mon amie," who would more correctly be called "ma contre amie") with someone who, not only she does not really like, but who, in addition is a "guy." of course, this nuance of gender is not evident aurally (since ami and amie sound identical). nonetheless, it would not be possible to achieve the same effect using an english lyric, which has gender-neutral nouns. the use of french in the lyrics, along with the breathy quality of the vocal, could also be an allusion to the french torch singer tradition. commenting on the unprecedented use of french in "la jalouse" siberry said, "i was looking for something a little bit softer than the word jealousy . . . maybe i was thinking of something like that from the french tradition." [the french torch song tradition?] " maybe" (siberry ). . in an alternate reading, it could be that the narrator is "tipped o f f to the jealous part of herself and rather than throwing an actual person "as hard as ever," she is really getting rid of the jealous part of herself. . my thanks to serge lacasse for bringing up this last point after a paper i presented at the conference for the canadian chapter of iaspm at the university of western ontario in may . . the following analysis of vocal timbre in terms of breathy/not breathy is a rather simplistic binary approach to timbre. however, in an attempt to expand the limits of timbral representation in western discussions of music, this is a starting place. along with adam krims, i find an analysis like this more "culturally relevant" to listeners than the use of "spectrographs, or other such 'scientific' measuring devices" (krims, ). . while the guitar in "la jalouse" sounds like an acoustic guitar, the song, in fact, uses two different instruments: a classical guitar and a carefully filtered electric guitar. that siberry would alter the sound of an electric guitar by applying a chorus effect in order to make it sound acoustic shows to what extent she has embraced the folk-revival genre over that of folk rock. . while siberry tends to complicate the forms of her songs to create a dissonance with folk- revival convention, there are also examples of folk-revival songs that are consonant with folk- revival formal conventions. "above the treeline" from jane siberry, for example, never veers from the stanza-refrain structure conventional to folk revival (see appendix , lyric ). the form of this song is aabababb'b' (the b' here indicates a half-chorus, and it should be conceded that the second b' has an extended ending or tag). there are other parameters in this song that are dissonant with folk revival, however. the instrumentation, for example consists of not just a single, straight-tone vocal with piano accompaniment, but also synthesizer, bass, and drums. in addition, there are multi-part harmonies used in the b section vocal. this instrumentation is more akin to folk rock than to folk revival. chapter the electro-pop genre this chapter investigates siberry's approach to the electro-pop genre of pop/rock (notes for chapter begin on p. ). the combination of the term "pop/rock" here is, in part, anachronistic. while today there is frequently little distinction made between pop and rock, in the decade preceding the rise of the electro-pop genre, the difference between them was a point of heated contention. with the popularity of electro-pop in the early s, however, the lines between the pop and rock began to blur for the first time since the late s. thus, while it is appropriate to speak of the electro-pop genre as one influenced by both rock and pop, it is also important to note that at its coming of age the old rhetoric concerning the difference between rock and pop was still in the air. even while a new generation of rock critics were embracing and defending what was conceived of as the "new pop" they were in essence bestowing upon pop the authenticity of rock aesthetics (goodwin , ). indeed, from the rock press in the early s a critical discourse began to emerge from the theories of postmodern and poststructuralist french thinkers jacques derrida, michel foucault and jean baudrillard and the english sociologist dick hebdige. clearly for progressive rock, with its obsession with transcendence, performance and authorship, this caused chaos. celebrated instead were disco and pop, musics in which the main component was "the beat".... it was not simplicity that was celebrated, but the whole idea that popular music meant, represented, stood for and conveyed nothing apart from itself. much piffle was also written about the mind/body dimension of the music (body objective—mind subjective) (stump, - ). despite the acceptance of pop by certain rock critics, a discourse that opposes pop and rock remains even today. no rock critic, for example, would even consider calling the back street boys a rock band. similarly, no one would dare to call pearl jam a pop act (despite their obvious popularity). the difference between the two bands is clearly delineated by their respective styles and in how and to whom they are marketed. on the other hand, there are a myriad of bands that straddle this line, who can be heard as either rock or pop. the prevalence of bands representing the middle of the pop/rock continuum today has effected how we (re)categorize earlier bands in hindsight. bands such as abba, who once represented pop music exclusively, have now gained more prestige in rock criticism. indeed, an entry about the band is included in the new rolling stone encyclopedia of rock and roll ( ) after years of being omitted. from the vantage point of s rock criticism, however, siberry's switch in the s to the electro-pop genre from that of folk revival would have seemed like a leap in the wrong direction: from intelligent and artistic to inarticulate and commercial. the "progression" is more logical, however, when viewed through the discourse of the next generation, that of the rock intelligentsia of the s who embraced pop music. these critics argued that just as folk revivalists came to accept folk rock, so should progressive rockers come to accept synth rock. the "authenticity" of a genre did not necessarily change with a switch in technology or instrumentation. an auteur remains an auteur despite a change of medium. a rock auteur's engagement of pop music in the s, then, was no more "selling out" than when folk-revival singer-songwriters chose to embrace folk rock. even for rock critics who accepted pop music, there can be little doubt that while only three years separated siberry's first and second albums, the difference between the two was rather dramatic on first hearing. the juxtaposition of the folk-revival genre heard on jane siberry with that of electro-pop heard on no borders here is indeed arresting. not only is no borders here a completely new (non-acoustic) sonic world for siberry, but it also connotes novel social meanings. after all, no instruments were more antagonistic to the acoustic "authenticity" of folk revival than electronic instruments, especially the synthesizer and drum machine. siberry's foray into pop/rock on no borders here, however, was not a complete change. almost half of the tracks on her debut album used the synthesizer in three basic ways. it is used either for effects (in "the sky is so blue"), as a monophonic line to fill out a harmony (in "above the treeline"), or as a background wash to create sonic filler (in "in the blue light"). in no way does the synthesizer overshadow the acoustic guitar (or piano) that is placed in the foreground of the mix. only the longest song on the album, "the magic beads," uses the synthesizer as both melodic filler between verses and a sustained harmonic wash during the verses, in such a substantial way as to anticipate siberry's exploration of the electro-pop genre on no borders here. the use of the electro-pop genre came to define the siberry's personal sound throughout the early s. siberry created some of her most serious and poignant songs in that genre, but also revealed tracks that are very playful in tone and exhibit humorous lyrics (for example, "i muse aloud" and "waitress"). electro-pop is characterized by heavily over-dubbed production techniques, the use of effects (such as echo, reverb, vocoder, etc.), and the employment of electronic instruments. in particular, the use of the digital synthesizer (such as the fairlight) provided a novel synthetic sound, and quickly became a signifier of modernity in rock music at that time. toronto visual artist and singer-songwriter kurt swinghammer recalls, jane siberry was pretty remarkable for achieving this really state-of-the-art big band—she had a fairlight guy, and any time you saw a tv screen on stage, that was pretty significant at that time; [a fairlight] cost $ , . that was a real achievement, but her records from that period sound really dated because of it; time-capsule type sounds. the drum sounds are very specific, linn drums. but at the time it was very impressive (barclay et al, ). while the incorporation of synthesizers into the world of rock in the s came to signify modernity, this move was rather surprising. for although the incorporation of digital synthesizers is a logical extension of the use of analog synthesizers found in progressive rock (which had its heyday in the years - ), progressive rock had long been defunct by the s. it had been replaced in the s by such guitar-based genres as glam or glitter rock (david bowie) and heavy metal (led zeppelin). these rock genres did not use analog synthesizers because of the association of those instruments with disco. disco is a genre of pop music that was popularized in the late s by such mainstream bands as the bee gees and abba after being watered down of its associations with the black and gay underground. certain rock intelligentsia at the time, however, continued to define rock in opposition to pop music. disco was ridiculed mercilessly in the rock press. the back pages of rolling stone magazine, for example, ran ads for shirts sporting the slogan "disco sucks" (frith , ). in such a climate, one would have expected rock critics and musicians in the s to shrink away from embracing the "inauthentic" synthesizer and its association with disco and an indiscriminating mass audience. what happened instead was that the digital synthesizer, with its user-friendly recording applications, was conceived of, and marketed as, something completely new. the synthetic sound of electronic instruments in the early s came to epitomize all that was chic, urban, and modern—the very latest in scientific and musical progress (middleton , ). in addition, the new sound was employed with a coldness and irony that was a reaction to the personal confession which had come to be conceived of as the self-indulgence of the singer-songwriter tradition. as a result, both disco and progressive rock became affiliated with what was soon perceived as old-fashioned analog technology. the new digital technology supplanted the old analog and thereby dated the older musical styles, despite the common denominators between the respective styles. for this reason, in part, disco and progressive rock were criticized harshly in the rock press (goodwin , ). it was as if these once-modern styles were now perceived as errors in judgement, like buying a beta vcr~a stigma that remains to this day in the case of progressive rock (although there is now a renewed, albeit underground, interest in the older sounds). because synthetic sounds came to be used prominently in various genres produced by the musicians active in both rock and pop in the s, the differences between rock and pop began to blur. lush studio production and the use of synthesizers that had most recently been associated exclusively with pop music (and continued to be so, exemplified in the early s in performers such as chicago, lionel richie, air supply) were suddenly embraced in rock. instead of electric instruments, particularly the electric guitar, which was a signifier of rock, electronically synthesized instruments, such as synthesizers, drum machines, bass, keyboards and even synthesized vocals, were now included in rock. the pervasive use of electronic instruments in the synth rock genre created a sound that was sonically interchangeable with various pop genres. the supposed sonic leap in the mainstream from electro-pop and electro funk to punk, new wave, and synth-rock was at the time more of a hazy continuum. common to all types of popular music in the s [were]: washes of synthetic strings, sudden bursts of synthetic brass, bell-like or chimelike chordal backdrops, metallic-sounding sequenced ostinato patterns, throbbing synthetic bass lines, and the unmistakable synthetic resonance of drum machines or electronic drums (macan, ). the sonic blurring between musical genres aided by the uniform electronic sound created an unprecedented capacity for cross-over success in the early s. an artist like prince, for example, could write and perform songs in such contrasting genres as funk, soul, rap, and house and still be considered a rock star, in part because he could actually play—rather than just sample- -instruments (goodwin , ). while his music usually retained the use of electric guitar, his overall sound was unified by the foregrounding of electronic instruments. indeed, the prevalence of electronic instruments in early s created for the first time in rock history a moment in which one could not hear the difference between rock and pop. while differences between rock and pop were not manifested sonically, they remained in the lyrics. indeed, there was a mixture of lyrical topics in electro pop. as rock radio stations began to incorporate pop songs on their play lists, antagonistic outlooks could be found in electro-pop lyrics. subject matter turned to more mundane topics such as romance and personal relationships as well as to socially conscious lyrics that reflect the political coming of age o f . . . environmentalism, attempts to address problems of urban decay, advocacy of the homeless, etc. (macan, ). as such, vapid love songs (such in reo speedwagon's "keep on loving you," which hit # in ) associated with the pop tradition, were heard alongside the deeper offerings that drew on the singer-songwriter tradition by employing such topics as psychology, religion, mythology, science, feminism, and art. (these topics were addressed in the lyrics of mostly non-mainstream songs by such singer-songwriters as kate bush, peter gabriel, brian eno, laurie anderson, and jane siberry-although peter gabriel's album, so, went to # in the billboard charts in .) even styles affiliated with gay disco were eventually resurrected and played on radio stations that had formerly been reserved for guitar-based rock. (the pet shop boys, for example, had hits with "domino dancing," "opportunities" and "west end girls" in and "it's a sin" and "always on my mind," and "what have i done to deserve this" in , while erasure had hits with "chains of love" and "a little respect" in ). the unprecedented mixing of various musical genres (and their affiliated subcultures) within rock and pop had to do, in part, with the opening up within rock of "intertextuality." to an unprecedented extent, rock now allowed itself to borrow from contrasting subcultures and idioms (reynolds, ). no longer was rock exclusively a guitar-based, working class music. instead it mixed and matched sounds and images from such disparate idioms as r&b (in the funk genre), pop (as represented by the singer-songwriter tradition), and punk. while the use of what has been called "intertextuality" was a mode of irony learned from the "bricolage" in punk, its use in marketing electro-pop videos and stars was largely responsible for the success of the genre (hebdige , ). like punk, music videos from the s were characterized by the juxtaposition of unrelated signs and images. the rise of video, aided by the inauguration of mtv on august , created a new generation of image-oriented electro-pop musicians. while on the one hand the unprecedented emphasis on image opened the doors for a new generation of teenie-bopper heart-throbs (such pop stars as wham and duran duran) and performers with an eccentric, post-punk fashion sense (exemplified by boy george of culture club and cyndi lauper); on the other hand, it also created a space for women such as annie lennox (of eurythmics) and madonna to challenge "romantic myths constructed around the feminine" (whiteley , ). indeed, aided by video, s pop/rock produced a veritable stream of new performers who produced what was for a time considered "new pop." what made this music "new" was not so much its highly produced sound as the unprecedented emphasis on topics outside that of cliche love lyrics. new pop musicians addressed topics other than love or sex, such as hope, feminism, "dreams, obsession, visions, and crime" (reynolds, ). for pop, this concern with novel topics in the lyrics marked a paradigm shift. indeed, in britain, pop music from the early to mid- s "depended mainly on the notion of pop as an 'art' form, rather than, as in previous punk days, rock as a 'folk' form" (redhead, ). new pop eventually spawned the larger marketing category of "adult-oriented pop," but in the early s the synthetic sound of new pop was intimately bound up with the electro-pop genre (reynolds, ). it would be useful to pause here and point out the important consequences that the rise of electronic music had for the entrance of women such as siberry into rock. until the s, women's participation in rock music had been remarkably limited. they were exempt almost altogether from performing in genres such as art rock, glam rock, progressive rock, and heavy metal, being instead relegated to the role of girlfriend or groupie (press, ). in the exceptional instances where women did become mainstream rock performers, they usually only broke through the glass ceiling (an excellent example of this is janis joplin) by assuming the tough-girl role of posturing as "one of the boys" (whiteley , ). my argument here is not that there were no women in rock until the s, but rather that the few who succeeded in rock before this decade formed not a tradition of women in rock, but rather a mere handful of notable exceptions. the number of female practitioners, however, grew throughout the s, until so many women had joined the rock genre that the grappling with "problems of image and representation and a revolt against conventional femininity... was to find its real voice in the s' generation of female rock artists" (whiteley , ). prior to , women often participated in rock by assuming male roles. at this time women could never have found a voice in rock based on the "girl group" model of pre-teen pop or in the tradition of the female country star. even if they were prettily made-up women, such rock musicians as grace slick of jefferson airplane, joan jett, and pat benatar consistently embraced male images of toughness. in the case of chrissie hynde (of the pretenders) androgyny was even espoused. the same toughness was evident in punk performers such as siouxie sioux (of siouxie and the banshees) and even deborah harry (of blondie). it is telling that punk star patti smith quit performing altogether when she became a wife and mother. despite success in punk, music where "anyone could play," smith could not contradict her androgynous image and simultaneously maintain her fame. the sonic blurring of genres in the early s allowed female singer-songwriters, many of whom had apprenticed in folk-revival or punk, to cross over into rock via the virtually- indistinguishable genres of synth-rock and electro-pop. the participation of women in rock increased throughout the decade until the concept of "women in rock" became a veritable trend in the mainstream press (gaar , xi). siberry was a part of this trend, a woman who crossed over from the folk-revival to the electro-pop genre by embracing the new digital technology. before discussing siberry's electro-pop music, a few words about the new technology are in order. electro-pop was defined by the use of heavily over-dubbed production techniques facilitated by digital technology. until the late s, analog synthesizers had been monophonic (they consisted of only one melody per track, with no over-dubbing). by the early s, not only had they become homophonic, but they could also interface with digital technology. this new technology, pioneered by electro-pop musicians such as thomas dolby and edgar froese of tangerine dream, was largely responsible for the synthetic sound of electro-pop (vail, ). the over-dubbing of electronic instruments was greatly facilitated by the digital technology. over-dubbing had also occurred in analog technology, but then each channel (an electric signal path) consisted of separate wire components. musicians had to record one instrument on one track and another on a second track. indeed, every instrument or vocal line was put on a separate track. then a recording engineer had to mix down around synchronized tracks to two stereo tracks, and program volume, tone qualities (equalization and spectrum alteration), spatial effects (echo or reverb, if recorded flat), and stereo positioning. with digital technology, two or more voices, each already with their own distinct tone qualities, could be layered (the digital equivalent of analog over-dubbing) with a harmonizer and sounded from one key depression of a synthesizer, without mixing from tape. furthermore, within this interfacing, midi (musical instrument digital interface) channels could share wiring (vail ). in fact, with the new technology, two or more distinct sounds, each from a different synthesizer, could be layered together and assigned to the same channel. needless to say, the sharing of channels in digital technology became a much more efficient system than over-dubbing separate channels. thus, layering became a more viable sonic option in the s. the technique of layering instruments heard in electro-pop was also frequently evident in the vocals of the genre. even if the vocals were not filtered through a synthesizer as in "mr. roboto" from kilroy was here ( ) by styx, the straight-toned vocals of solo artists were usually digitally processed with a harmonizer to form layered harmonies and/or multiple-voiced (that is, polyphonic) lines. the use of such an electronic processor resulted in an artificial sound. the use of echo also created a spatial effect that added to the effect of density. with analog technology a single singer had also been able to over-dub his or her own vocals on top of each other in harmony without the need for other singers, but this process required an engineer to mix down the separate tracks. the layering of vocals with a harmonizer was not only made more efficient with digital technology but also became a task that many artists eventually performed themselves (without a recording engineer). the facility of recording digitally meant that the electro-pop vocal was more frequently layered than in prior styles. because of the novelty of a vocal sound imbued with so many synthetic effects, the electro-pop genre became associated with artificiality. since the digital technology that created the artificial sound was identified with scientific precision, the genre became affiliated with a lack of emotion and with "objective intellect" (goodwin , ). not surprisingly, many rock auteurs concerned with both scientific and musical progress gravitated to this genre. thomas dolby, for example, had a hit with "she blinded me with science" from blinded by science ( ). performance artist laurie anderson also released her first recordings in the early s in the electro-pop genre. like the styx track mentioned above, anderson sought to highlight the use of technology on her auteur albums. not only were her song lyrics oriented toward science (for example, "big science" and "let x be x" from big science), but the synthetic sound of her songs also emphasized the use of technology. she frequently spoke (rather than sang) her songs into a harmonizer to drastically alter the pitch of her voice. she also used an electric violin "fitted with tape heads, 'played' by a bow strung with pre-recorded tape" (gaar , ). in a "dance" segment of one of her performances she rigged her body with sensors in different places so that she could play a drum machine by touching parts of herself. anderson commented: "half of my time is spent either fixing things or reading manuals . . . because electronics are really my interest" (gaar , ). anderson's attraction to synthetic sounds was also reflected in the clothes she wore, which were often made of shiny materials. in addition, because "objective intellect" (and its association with economic power) had historically been ascribed to men rather than women, anderson wore large suits and ties. siberry also embraced aspects of the electro-pop genre in her performance and composition. she wore shiny synthetic clothing and used synthesizers predominantly on her albums from the s, beginning with no borders here. the shift to synthesizers indicated not only a musical switch from acoustic to electronic instruments but also the embrace of a modern aesthetic characteristic of the electro-pop genre. the change also involved a move beyond the first generation of analog synthesizers, such as those used on her debut album, to digital synthesizers, which enabled the sampling of both musical and non-musical sounds onto a computer. siberry commented, "during my second recording, no borders here a fairlight was brought in for two songs. i was cautious. but i liked the sound of precision. and i loved the 'caught' then 'moveable.' cut and paste" (siberry , ). while siberry was attracted to the precision of the synthesizer, in her embracing of the electro-pop genre she did not emphasize its associations with science, "objective rationality," and emotional control, as anderson had. rather, siberry began to use the synthesizer for the artistic freedom that it provided her, particularly the ability to sample pre-recorded sounds. when asked if she thought that, because the synthesizer was a machine, it was more objective and less personal than acoustic instruments, siberry replied, oh no. not at all. it's a freedom; and sometimes you can have more feel on a synthesizer because you play it yourself. i know exactly how my voice works and i know the sounds that i can create. and sometimes you can have a harder time getting that reediness of an oboe or the right sound from a string player; and a sample will give a closer approximation than a live sound will. so i see it as a freedom (siberry ). siberry's view of technology as a means to artistic expression is echoed by industrial music performer paul schutze. he sees a continuation between the stance of progressive rock and that of s pop/rock, particularly in the figure of the musician/studio producer: these mammoth orchestral samples. that's where the virtuosity comes in. it's not the guitar or the keyboard anymore. the fetishization of equipment's still around. the thing is, the producer's art hasn't yet been admitted to being one of virtuosity.... the extraordinary achievement of prince as both studio wizard and musical miscegenator marks him down as—ironically for his blackness, pop sensibility and unashamed show business obsession—progressive's s dark side. as a devotee of both mechanical sonic contrivance and human visceral response, prince's aesthetics transpose progressive mores to a postmodern plane (stump, - ). both prince's and siberry's use of technology to enable artistic freedom, contrasts with anderson's approach to technology as experimental play. anderson commented: "a lot of my work comes from just playing around with equipment, seeing what it will do" (odintz, ). in contrast, an interest in artistic expression is evident even in siberry's approach to the vocals in the electro-pop genre. siberry consistently tries to downplay the use of technology in her electro- pop songs. instead of foregrounding the synthetic sound of machines and altering her voice, she foregrounds her own vulnerability by insisting upon the very human quality of her vocal. siberry's "humanizing project" is all the more apparent in an electro-pop context, since this pop/rock genre seeks to dehumanize music through the use of synthetic machines, like the vocoder (middleton , ). emphasizing the human aspect of her music is a continuation of the aesthetic of intimacy transplanted from siberry's folk-revival roots. furthermore, unlike anderson's concern with science, siberry's electro-pop lyrics centre on discussions of art and the artistic process. in the s, siberry released three electro-pop albums: no borders here, the speckless sky, and the walking. while no borders here was new-wave oriented in its up-tempo musical energy, ironic humour in the lyrics, and siberry's punk-influenced image (she dyed her spiked hair bright red, ignoring her mother's advice), these parameters gradually faded away in the two subsequent albums as siberry more deliberately aligned herself with the electro-pop stream of rock auteurs. by the time of the walking, siberry's music was characterized by both the parameters defining electro-pop (namely, the heavy layering of synthesized sounds, the use of multi-tracked, straight-toned vocals, and the emphasis on theatrics in her live staging practice) and those associated with the rock auteur. genre in "goodbye" siberry's song "goodbye" from the walking ( ) is an excellent example of how she manages at once to embrace the technology of the electro-pop genre and to retain a folk-like intimacy. thus, while the musical parameters of "goodbye" are generally characteristic of the electro-pop sound, they also manage to clearly assert emotions in a highly technological style. specifically, the recording process, instrumentation, and live staging practice of the song suggest electro-pop, while the vocal production is unconventional, clashing with electro-pop expectations. by using the latest in studio technology, "goodbye" is a typical electro-pop song. for the walking siberry abandoned the live-band recording method of her earliest albums and instead painstakingly sampled parts into a computer layer by layer. as such, the computer was used "as a tape recorder for 'live' playing and also for sequencing from scratch" (siberry , ). the instrumentation of "goodbye" is also conventional with the electro-pop genre. "goodbye" (see transcription in appendix ) consists entirely of vocals and synthesizers, with the addition of bass, drums, and piano from mm. - and guitar from mm. - . the relative brevity of the samples of the acoustic instruments indicates that they are added merely for colour rather than utilized throughout the song as conventional signifiers (of jazz and folk-revival, respectively, for example). in addition, the process of starting with a light texture and adding more and more layers is typical of the conventions of electro-pop production. for example, peter gabriel uses this layering technique in the song "san jacinto" on security ( ) and laurie anderson uses it on "o superman (for massenet)" on big science ( ). the simultaneous use of contrasting synthesizer sounds in siberry's song (bamboo synth, bell synth, water synth, organ synth, and generic synth) is also typical of the practice fostered by the use of digital technology. the live staging practice of "goodbye" is a third aspect of the song that clearly matches electro-pop conventions. when siberry toured with this album, what one saw was not so much a traditional rock concert as a theatrical show with a marked performative aspect, like that of a laurie anderson show. in addition to sporting shiny clothes, siberry wore a head microphone to enable dynamic interactions with the rest of her band (particularly her backup singers), as opposed to sitting by a microphone on a stand and wearing street clothes, as she had with her folk-revival repertoire. not only did this tour contain choreography, but there was also a set. the backdrop on the stage included a laundry line (an important feature of the song "the bird in the gravel") that served many other visual purposes throughout the show. in contrast to these consonances in recording technique, instrumentation, and live staging practice, the vocals of "goodbye" include some use of vibrato, a dissonance with electro-pop conventions. the use of tone colour for dramatic effect in mm - goes against the very notion of "rational intellect" associated with electro-pop. electro-pop songs most commonly distance the vocal sound, to make the timbre less human by altering the vocal track with effects (such as heavy echo, layering, and reverb) or by filtering it through a synthesizer with a vocoder. siberry, however, does none of these things. the prominence of her very human sounding and frail voice is the most striking dissonance with electro-pop conventions. in a genre that emphasizes synthetic sounds, siberry's vocal timbre retains the intimate quality of folk-revival, departing from the aesthetics of electro-pop. furthermore, although one would expect extensive vocal harmonies to showcase the digital technology (particularly since siberry uses this technique elsewhere in her oeuvre, as we shall see in chapter ), there are no vocal harmonies to be found in "goodbye." while the use of harmonized vocals is found on other tracks from this album ("the bird in the gravel"), polyphony can only be heard in section d of "goodbye." the vocal conventions of "goodbye" are thus dissonant with electro-pop conventions in their dramatic use of vibrato, the intimate vocal timbre, and the de-emphasis on layering. while the standardized form of electro-pop rarely deviates from pop conventions (e.g., the music of the eurythmics), siberry's approach to form in "goodbye" is innovative, frequently diverging from formulaic generic expectations. as such, it can be heard as an example of an auteur song whose lyrics and music express complex emotions in innovative ways. the complexity of "goodbye" has similarities to the approaches used by other electro-pop auteurs of the time (peter gabriel, kate bush, the police, among others). although these artists did not shape a distinctive musical style, they shared the common approach of adding complexity to certain musical parameters and were marketed in a similar manner as "new pop" performers. in synchronicity ( ), for example, the police incorporated a rhythmic and metric complexity that is more akin to jazz or ska than to rock. so too in "goodbye," the form, metre, and key are all problematized to fit with the aesthetic of complexity that characterizes the songs of rock auteurs in the s. more specifically, in "goodbye" the form, metre, and key all work together to bring out the shifting narrative voice of the text. to begin with, the form of the song deviates from electro-pop standards. mainstream electro-pop songs typically have a verse (a) and chorus (b) with some kind of shorter contrasting or instrumental material called the bridge (c), combining together in a form like ababcbb. the form of "goodbye," however, is more varied: introduction/aba'ca'cdea"/ coda. even if one were to conceive of the repeated a section in "goodbye" as a chorus structure, the amount of variety in the other sections (except for the repeated c section) is foreign to electro-pop. more unusual yet are the facts that section d consists of an extended vocalization—something which rarely happens in mainstream electro-pop—and that section e is by far the longest section of the song. the use of metre in "goodbye" is related to the form in several ways. the unconventional form is complemented by the free rhythmic feel caused in part by the use of shifting metres. the almost continual expansion and retraction in the beats per measure makes the song seem wave-like. an additional metric flexibility and complexity is caused by the prolonged echo in the bamboo synthesizer, which produces a heterophony that makes hearing the metre difficult. the in-and-out quality of this shifting sense of time (or downbeat) links up well with the formal repetition of the melodic themes. while the form is sectional in nature, the delineation of metre is not (see figure . ). the shifting and flexibility of metres tends to occur within sections rather than between sections, except in the extensive use of / in sections d and e. as seen in figure . , the song's introduction is in / , a metre that remains for the first a section and until the final measure of b (see m. of appendix ), which anticipates the expanded / that characterizes the return of the section a melody. this gradual increase in the length of the metre is short-lived, as there is a return to / in m. of section a. like section b, the c section remains in / until expanding in the final measure (m. )~this time to / . the third statement of section a again contracts from / to / beginning at m. in anticipation of the / return of the second c section. this metric contracting anticipates the shortening of the metre found in sections d and e, which remain firmly in / until the final measure of section e (m. ). the / in this measure leads into the / reprise of section a" (beginning at m. ). for the first time the metre of the chorus shortens with each subsequent measure ( / in m. and / in m. ) as if to anticipate the coda, which ends in / . figure . - metre in "goodbye" form: intro. a b a' c a' c d e a" coda metre: / / / - / / - / / - / / - / / / / - / / - / - / / #ofmm.: what is interesting about this wave-like metrical pattern is that the intensity of the music does not increase where the metre is expanding and where the texture is most layered (as in sections ba' and ca'); rather, the intensity increases as the metre is retracting and the texture (in terms of the number of instrumental layers) is diminishing in sections c, d, and e. in fact, the climax of the piece, beginning on the dramatic downbeat of section d, has the simplest instrumentation of all. there is at this point only a single synthesizer with the vocal, accompanied by a bass and drum that sound on the downbeats of each measure (until section e). the rich sound here is not achieved by adding more and more layers, but rather through increased volume, high tessitura, and an agogic accent. raw emotion breaks through the layers of technology. the intensity is maintained throughout section d by layering a second vocal track on top of the first. the lack of narrative found throughout the lyrics of "goodbye" is characteristic of the electro-pop genre and of siberry's lyrics on the walking and the other electro-pop albums. in this regard siberry's electro-pop songs are unlike her earliest songs, which negotiated the folk- revival genre and used a linear narrative (see appendix , lyric ). the non-linear lyrics of "goodbye" (see appendix , lyric ) enhance the building and release of tension in the music. in each a section the lyrics begin with nature images: "tiny dot" "dry, the sand," and "lonely beach." as each section continues, these landscape images become shaded with storm elements: "waves that sigh," "clouds [that] collect out at sea," and "ceaseless wind." finally, in the b and c sections, sentences connoting inadequacy take shape: "i'm always apologizing," "a thousand pardons trail behind," and "[i] still don't understand." it is not until the end of the final c section that the narrator's sense of loss becomes fully apparent. her unfocussed thoughts and emotion are suddenly clarified when she explains: "i went to say i love you/but instead i said goodbye." at this point, images in words are no longer adequate in describing how the narrator feels. instead, the climactic section d consists of a sample of the sound of a bird flying away and a vocalization that strongly resembles wailing. as mentioned above, it is only in this section that the vocal becomes polyphonic. that a hallmark of the electro-pop genre would be suppressed until just this point creates an emotional effect that could not have been achieved had vocal layering been used throughout the song. just as the sudden appearance of polyphony accentuates the effect, so, too, the wordlessness of the vocalization serves to draw attention to the following section e, the longest and most continuously "wordy" section in the body of the song. the lyrics of section e rip us away from the present-tense seashore setting and into an imagined or recalled scene in a restaurant. this abrupt change in the narrative voice heightens the experience of loss and loneliness. the narrator's sense of isolation is all the more poignant since the conversation the listener hears contains only the protagonist's half. the one-sidedness of the text emphasizes the narrator's self-consciousness about suddenly being alone: the narrator goes to a restaurant and asks for a table. instead of obliging, the waiter apparently rubs in the fact that she is alone (the narrator responds, "no just for one"), and then says that there are no free tables for the narrator. when the protagonist protests: "but i know you do/i can see some from here," the waiter refuses until the narrator recants, saying "ok then say for two." the waiter mockingly asks her if another party will be joining her, and the narrator answers in frustration, "no there's only one/don't you want my business/i will never come back here." it is unclear if the word "here" in this line refers to an actual restaurant, a memory, the relationship the narrator had with her lover, or is a symbol that encompasses all three. in any event, the final a section abruptly leaves off the restaurant narrative and returns to the present (which is evidenced by the return of not only the a theme, but also its associated use of imagery). this time the narrator talks of her "love," whom she calls a "faithless dove." despite the fact that she gave "all the love in the world," her lover was still unfaithful to her. this revelation makes the earlier climax all the more poignant. in fact, the image of the "faithless dove" can be heard as pointing back to of the sample of the bird flying off that was heard at the beginning of section d. the key centres of the piece (see figure . ) are not typical of electro-pop. rather, their careful presentation enhances the meaning of the lyrics. the seashore introduction as well as the first a and b sections are in a major. the second a section again begins with images of "feet" and "sand," but the images become more concrete as the "clouds collect out at sea" like an immanent storm. the storm connoted by this phrase prompts a tonicization of f# minor in m. (see the transcription in appendix , beginning on p. ) that abruptly ends in m. (on the word "sea") with an f chord. the half-tone between f# minor and f major is a rather surprising slippage, but works smoothly via a common tone (a) in the vocal. figure . - tonality in "goodbye" intro. a b a' c a' c d e a" coda a a a a-m bb a-m c f# a a-tit f - - - - - - - - - - - in the c section the protagonist "start[s] to run" only to find that she is not managing to get across the "grey span," despite her apologies. rather, like a runner in a dream who remains stationary, "a thousand pardons trail behind." the urgency of this running image is captured in section c as the tonality rises from the f chord in m. to bb major, thus tonally re-interpreting the once-shocking (since it came from f# minor) f chord as v of bb. the third a section begins with more overt images of a "lonely beach" and "ceaseless wind." the starkness of the beach and the never-ending quality of wind create a sense of panic in the narrator that is demonstrated by the abrupt shift here back to a major from the bb tonality heard at the end of section c (v of bb). as the protagonist cries out, "[i] still don't understand," there is again a tonicization of f# minor, with the final chord slipping to f major (this time f functions as iv of c). the sense of panic continues in the second section c, as we hear the narrator now "run as fast" as she can while her heart experiences "a missed beat/a quickening." this time the melody is surprisingly stated up a full tone (from the initial bb statement), in c major. as the narrator explains the reason for her panic: "i went to say i love you/but instead i said goodbye," the c major tonality moves by step in the bass to f, c/e, and d minor, but then in m. remains on a bb/d chord. instead of modulating to f major, however, we next hear a b diminished/d that does not resolve up a half step to c. in the d section, there is an abrupt change from the b diminished chord to a c# minor chord (one expected c after the bb to b- diminished progression) and the crash of the hitherto unheard bass and drum (m. ). the sound form: key: mm. of wailing in the f# minor vocalization (mm. ff) is accented by the minor second alternation between the c# minor and d# minor chords throughout this c# (as v of f# minor and [iii] of the home key) pedal section. in the subsequent e section, by contrast, the entire restaurant narrative is unified by a consistent use of a major (although chords are often made dissonant through non-harmonic tones). the final a" section also begins in a major, but as the narrator thinks about "all the love" that she gave to her unfaithful lover, the mourning key of f# minor is briefly tonicized, only to resolve again to f major. the coda finally ends with f as the tonic. thus siberry uses the combination of tonality, form, and metre to build up to an intense musical climax in "goodbye." the climax is precipitated by a shift in the lyrics from imagery and a non-verbal wailing, to an extended narrative, and then briefly back to the original use of imagery. while "goodbye" exhibits an overall consonance with the electro-pop genre, particularly in its negotiation of the recording process, instrumentation, theatrical staging practice and non-linear lyrics; the complexity of metre, form, and tonality as well as the mixing of narrative and non-narrative modes in the lyrics are indicative of siberry's auteur approach to pop/rock, one dissonant with electro-pop conventions. indeed, siberry's approach to the electro-pop genre as a rock auteur takes precedence over a consonance with the parameters of the electro-pop vocal. although electro-pop conventions embrace a layering of vocals throughout a song, siberry pointedly saved her vocal polyphony exclusively for the climax of "goodbye." it seems clear that she does not break genre conventions as an end unto itself, but rather deviates from listener expectation according to what she perceives as the musical necessity within a song. furthermore, not only is siberry's vocal unaltered by a synthesizer to create the synthetic sound often associated with the genre, but she also takes pains to foreground the humanity of her voice. in direct opposition to the mechanized and/or echoed sound of electro-pop, siberry asserts the intimacy of her folk-revival beginnings. as indicated in chapter , this same emphasis on artistic license over fidelity to generic conventions was exemplified in "la jalouse," specifically in the parameters of meter and form. it is noteworthy that meter and form are also the parameters in "goodbye" that were dissonant with electro-pop conventions. in "la jalouse," however, the subversion of generic criteria created an even weaker sense of genre cohesion than that in "goodbye." the greater generic flexibility of the electro-pop genre has to do not only with the presence of other rock auteurs writing within the new pop aesthetic, but also with the larger blurring between genres that was prevalent in the early s. notes to chapter . "electro-pop" is a british term, used by such critics as andrew goodwin ( ). its american equivalent is "technopop." i have avoided the use of the term "technopop," which douglas white defines as "pop music with heavy use of electronic instruments," because it could easily be confused with a genre of dance music called "techno," which white defines as "electronic dance music with heavy use of synthesizers and drum machines" (white , ). electro-pop is a genre of pop/rock, while techno is a genre of electronic. . michael jackson, prince, tina turner, pat benetar, the police, robert palmer, the mamas and the papas, don henley, the eurythmics, and dire straits have all received grammy awards in the rock category, but could just as easily be conceived of as pop performers. indeed, such members of the rock and roll hall of fame as elvis presley, the beatles, the beach boys, van morrison, simon and garfunkel, and rod stewart have produced far more pop than rock throughout their careers. . such critics include simon frith, simon reynolds, and andrew goodwin. . after bob dylan's use of the electric guitar in his negotiation of the folk-rock genre, electric guitar came to be considered acceptable in some folk-revival circles—particularly by those interested in the blues tradition. . the continuity of genre found in siberry's electro-pop albums from the s (after jane siberry) forms a marked contrast to her fleeting negotiation of genre in the s. the country- pop genre, for example, can be heard on only a handful of siberry tracks. although such songs as "something about trains" and "bound by the beauty" from bound by the beauty and "up the loggin' road" from tree all clearly evoke country, siberry has other songs (such as "calling all angels" from when i was a boy and "hain't it funny" from a day in the life) that do not contain the necessary country music markers. they were, however, written with the country idiom in mind. . by defunct i mean that progressive rock disappeared from the rock mainstream. of course, progressive rock never totally died. it just went underground as "prog," where it remains to this day. . progressive rock, for example, had "actually bucked, rather than upheld a traditional rockist emphasis on spontaneity and immediacy by this act of supreme aesthetic detachment." what the rock press had called the "frigid calculation" of progressive rock's studio production, in the s became fashionable again (stump, ). similarly, the emphasis on dancing in disco formed a continuum with s pop. . often, musicians supposedly representing contrasting genres sounded quite similar. for example, electro-pop musicians at the time included such bands as depeche mode, eurythmics, wham, and culture club, while electro funk performers included prince, michael jackson, and madonna. punk musicians included patti smith and siouxie and the banshees, while synth rock bands included journey, reo speedwagon, survivor, foreigner, styx, duran duran, and hall & oates. new wave, which included such bands as blondie, devo, and the b- s, was a genre originally associated with the new york avant-garde and american punk music. although new wave was visually influenced by punk, from the beginning the music of new wave was more pop- influenced, particularly in its singable melodies and the use of single rhythmic patterns (which led to the danceability that characterizes pop). some new wave rockers such as elvis costello and the talking heads, for example, based their musical aesthetic on the sound of early s rock by returning to the verse-chorus structure of earlier pop, respecting the -minute boundary of the pop single, and utilizing older instruments such as the vox and farifisa portable organs, gretsch and richenbacker guitars, and vox amplifiers (covach b, ). most new wave bands, however, utilized electronic instruments. indeed, punk bands such as blondie and siouxie and the banshees developed into new wave bands with the addition of a synthesizer to their formerly guitar-based line-up. new wave was thus more musically and lyrically complex than punk, rejecting punk's anyone-can-play ethos. (new wave did, however, embrace punk's inclusion of women as performers rather than mere groupies.) . sampling is the digital recording of sound from a previously-recorded source. for example, rather than playing a bass line live to record it, an engineer will merely lift it from another recording. in this way, an actual bass player need not be hired. further explanations of the digital technology used in electro pop will be addressed shortly. . reynolds is using "intertextuality" here in the sense of cultural theorist john fiske, who defines it as the interaction of a text and its historical precursors and contemporaries (fiske , ). intertextuality is played out in pop music via an ironic mixing of idioms, genres, and styles from various historical eras that originally had nothing to do with each other. literary critic gerard genette calls this type of interaction "hypertextuality" (genette, ). . it is interesting to note, however, that both of these women achieved success as singers backed by male band members, which is the traditional role for the pretty female musician (whiteley , ). . the tough posturing of women in punk and rock was not necessary for the success of women in r&b and pop. aretha franklin, for instance, was a very popular solo artist in the soul genre. franklin's music, however, can be heard as a cross-over from a long tradition of female gospel singers, such as sister rosetta tharpe, clara ward, mahalia jackson, and marion williams. similarly, solo artists such as joni mitchell and carole king achieved success as singer-songwriters in the s without any male posturing. these women, however, began their careers in the folk-revival genre and pop music, respectively, and gained access to cross-over popularity in rock only after their associations with the long traditions of female singers in their respective genres. . in technical manuals for synthesizers, the term "polyphonic" is used to describe the homophonic capabilities of synthesizers, that is, their ability to play chords, beginning in the early s. . a harmonizer changes the pitch of a vocal such that a sung melody could be heard in any range, from soprano to bass. anderson often uses the harmonizer to sound like a man, but a man could just as easily use it to sound like a woman. in addition, anderson frequently utilizes a vocoder, an apparatus that filters the voice through a synthesizer. . at this time suits were also the hallmark of electro-pop musician annie lennox, the lead singer of the eurythmics. again, fashion was more than just something to wear. for example, annie lennox "perceived the suit as an expression of control,... as symbolic of the eurythmic style 'signaling music with irony. there was new technology with drum machines and synthesizers . . . this was a proper production business, hence the suits' " (whiteley , ). the business suit iconography was made even more explicit on an album cover of a band formerly made up members of the human league, a new wave group. calling themselves the british electric foundation, they presented themselves "as suit-wearing executives attending corporate meetings" (negus, ). what informed this shift in fashion in part was the fact that the younger performers and consumers realized that the aging rock audience had been deluded by the ideology of rock as an art form that transcended the music industry. instead of falling for marketing tricks such as the "supergroups" of the early s, this younger generation embraced commodification and the free market. the pluralism of "postmodern pop" replaced a belief in the idea of the rock community (negus, ). . in particular, bamboo synth, bell synth, and water synth are heard from mm. - ; bell synth, water synth, and organ synth at mm. - ; and bell synth, organ synth, and generic synth from mm. - ). each of the adjectives used to describe the sounds of the different synthesizer settings were ascribed arbitrarily by myself and do not reflect any specific settings on a certain synthesizer brand. . such an interaction can be seen in the video by cambium productions, i muse aloud, which shows footage from siberry's the speckless sky tour. . ska is a genre of jamaican dance music characterized by stabbing rhythms and riff structures. it is often associated with skinheads in england in the s. . indeed, the bamboo synthesizer line forms a melodic loop that is repeated several times in the introduction and final a section of the song, regardless of the changes in metre. its characteristic lack of downbeat makes its fit into different metric lengths possible. it should also be noted that it is placed in the background of the mix so as not to disrupt the sense of metre foreground in the other synthesizer lines. . the relationship between the vast amounts of new material and the repeated a section is also cyclical (in that the theme in section a consistently goes away and returns). . "the bird in the gravel," from the walking is a good example of a lyric using multiple points-of-view, as well (see appendix , lyric ). . by "tonicize" i mean that the melody modulates, but this modulation is not confirmed by a perfect cadence. chapter the country-pop genre although the walking ( ) and bound by the beauty ( ) were released only a couple of years apart, their respective songs differed markedly in terms of the density of the texture, obscurity of the lyrics, and formal complexity. the walking marked the culmination of siberry's use of the electro-pop genre and is perhaps her most poignant album to date. this recording differed from her earlier electro-pop albums, however, in that it traded her playful and humorous approach for a serious tone. siberry joked, after the walking i felt i had made a definitive jane siberry record and anything going at all in that direction felt hard and repetitive. so i thought the next best record would be a cover of johnny cash tunes. so, i didn't do that, but to me it was the perfect counterpoint after that record. and i think that that set the tone in me for the next record (siberry ). whereas siberry did not record an album of johnny cash covers, she did turn to the country idiom for the first time on bound by the beauty. indeed, she embraced the musical and lyrical simplicity of the idiom even on those tracks that are not country songs. in this regard the album was closer to the folk-revival genre heard on her first album than any of her electro-pop albums had been. there was also a return in bound by the beauty to humorous songs, such as "miss punta blanca" and "everything reminds me of my dog." despite the differences between siberry's approach to the electro-pop and country-pop genres, however, there can also be found similarities in her attitude toward each (notes to chapter begin on p. ). both genres have produced tracks that are very playful in tone (for example, "i muse aloud" and "the waitress" from her early electro-pop albums and "everything reminds me of my dog" in the country-pop genre). not only are the lyrics of both genres humourous, but the two also contain frolicsome musical subversions of generic expectations. secondly, both genres share a consistency in siberry's vocal tone colour. siberry maintains the timbre of her folk-revival roots in her use of both electro-pop and country-pop, despite the dissonances such an approach creates with the expectations of each genre. finally, both albums exemplify siberry's rock auteur approach to songwriting. in each of the songs discussed so far, siberry's approach to playing with musical parameters is different. "la jalouse" added a level of complexity not affiliated with the genre prototype, while "goodbye" promoted a greater intimacy and musicality than expected in electro- pop. in the country idiom, the way in which siberry alters musical parameters is again distinctive. here, cliche country signifiers are borrowed to create an exteriorized version of country. because siberry's approach to the genre is clearly not one that embraces the "rustic" or "hard core" styles of country, her approach can be thought of as "soft shell" or "pop-like" country (peterson , ). the country tradition has a long history of songs whose rustic elements are watered down in order to cross over to the pop charts. siberry's country songs can therefore be considered in the "country-pop" (white , ) or "countrypolitan" (carlin, - ) style. it is siberry's view of the country idiom as a whole, however, that sets the tone of the song to be discussed. the song takes on the country tradition per se more than simply providing a generic vehicle for the narrative of the lyrics. the new simplicity emphasized in bound by the beauty coincided with a similar movement in the pop/rock mainstream at this time known as 'political pop.' this intelligent approach to songwriting could be heard in the mainstream in the late s via folk-revival singer-songwriters, such as suzanne vega, tracy chapman, michelle shocked, and sinead o'connor and "mature rock" musicians such as bruce springsteen, john cougar mellancamp, and melissa etheridge (whiteley , - ). these successful folk and rock-influenced musicians avoided sentimental lyrics about love and used electrically amplified acoustic guitars that were by this time considered by the rock press more "honest" than impersonal synthesizers (middleton , ). in bound by the beauty, siberry too discarded her synthesizers and returned to acoustic instruments, as discussed in her folk-revival song, "la jalouse." that song, however, is the only folk-revival track on the album. the genre most frequently represented on bound by the beauty is that of country. indeed, siberry felt that the album had an overall country sound. she explained, for example, that the song "something about trains" (see appendix , lyric ) was "something sort-of country, east-meets-west, country & eastern" (liner notes, ). perhaps siberry uses so many adjectives to qualify this song because country is a tradition with a history even longer than that of rock. country music has many genres, including mountain ballads, cowboy songs, string band music, honky tonk, rockabilly, country-pop, bluegrass, new country, etc. "country" was not the initial term used to describe this southern rural music. the pejorative term "hillbilly" was applied to the earliest country recordings from the s. these included british folk ballads, gospel, and sentimental songs by such seminal singers as the carter family and jimmie rodgers. although country lyrics cover a range of topics, they can be divided into two opposing impulses represented by the aforementioned performers, respectively: those which deify home and those which glorify the wanderer (malone , - ). the wanderer trope in particular was popularized in the s in hollywood cowboy films set in the southwest. by this time country had combined musical traditions from the i l l southeast and southwest into a hybrid known as "country and western." the incorporation of western film iconography into the southeastern musical tradition caused this amalgam to become quite seamless by the s (peterson , ). western images such as the ten-gallon hat, bandannas, boots, fringes, as well as south-western "verbal accent, vocabulary, grammar,... working-class identification" and specific performance conventions came to signify country "authenticity" (peterson , ). the diminutive term "country" also came into use in the s as such performers as hank williams, who had previously called himself a "folk musician," tried to disassociate himself from so-called "communist" folksingers singled out during the mccarthy era (peterson , ). rural or "hard core" country music is characterized by unblended harmonies and a nasal vocal timbre that is not formally trained. rather this timbre exhibits a southern or south-western accent and often uses glottal attacks and even yodels. the lyrics of country (since the s) are sung frequently in the first person, as if relating personal experiences, and use rural vocabulary and southern colloquial expressions. although there is an infinite variety of song texts, many dealing with social issues, country lyrics most often focus on relationships, candidly "expressing love's joys and laments" (peterson , ). the texts either uphold small-town morality or discuss the experiences of the lonesome wanderer, who is often a hard-drinking womanizer, a man either lionized or chastised by the narrator (depending upon the narrator's gender). although the lyrical topics of home and wandering represent antagonistic worldviews, the country music business managed to envelop such dichotomies over its long history, particularly through the figure of hank williams, who convincingly personified the moral dualism of love and leaving, cheating and remorse, drinking and sobriety (peterson , ). as with folk, the musical parameters in contemporary "hardcore" country are kept simple. for example, the phrase lengths of country songs are divided into even four-bar phrases. the metre is usually in / , with an emphasis on beats one and three. the rhythms are even as well, with little of the syncopation that characterizes most other styles of popular music. these "hardcore" parameters are also found in country-pop. the instrumentation of "hardcore" country, however, is unique. in addition to the use of drum kit, electric bass, and electric guitar that are conventional to most popular music, contemporary "hardcore" country also employs such traditional country instruments as the dobro or pedal steel guitar, banjo, fiddle, acoustic guitar, or honky-tonk piano. these instruments are associated exclusively with country music in popular culture. as such, their presence in a song is usually a clear marker of the country idiom. in the live staging practice of "hardcore" country, wearing attire associated with western movies (like stetson hats, boots, bandannas, fringes, and the like) is also a clear signifier of the idiom. such "hardcore" signifiers are often avoided in country-pop to de-emphasize the rural features of the idiom. creating a watered-down version of country is remarkably simple because the traditional instruments, western clothes, and rural mannerisms associated with "hardcore" country music are all things that can be used or put on and off at will. in addition, by partaking of country musical and visual cues, a non-country performer can align him or herself with the idiom. nowhere is this more evident than in the career of canadian singer-songwriter, k. d. lang. lang began her musical career in performance art, but when she got bored with that medium she transformed herself into a country singer. nearly everyone who knew lang (who is a lesbian) was surprised by not only her move to engage the conservative genre of country music, but also the manner in which she did so (whiteley , ). lang's use of country signifiers was quite stylized, as if to highlight their "put on" nature. her sawn-off cowboy boots, her lensless, wing-shaped glasses, blouses with rhinestone buttons, and torn stockings suggest... that she was "making herself up".... at the same time, her performances suggest irony and camp and as such, lang's excess of style can be interpreted as a humourous critique of country gender stereotyping (whiteley , ). lang highlighted the fact that her performances of country songs were an act rather than an "authentic" expression of small-town values. she distanced herself from traditional "hardcore" expressions of country by frequently changing her stage persona. despite the critique of country inherent in her image and performance style, however, lang became increasingly successful in that idiom. she recorded collaborations with such country legends as roy orbison, kitty wells, loretta lynn and brenda lee; and in she won a grammy for best country vocal female. in many ways, lang's approach to country was similar to that of contemporary randy travis, who "is among the most successful of the new-country performers because his music at once pays homage to the country past while it often seems to be gently poking fun at its conventions" (carlin, ). after six years of touring, however, lang abruptly left country music, releasing ingenue, an album of jazz ballads. lang's choice to discard country signifiers as quickly as she had taken them up indicates that, unlike travis, she never actually embraced country as a whole but rather merely an exteriorized version of it. her tongue-in-cheek approach can be heard as pastiche. "lang's 'stylizing' of country... focuses attention on both its formal and formulaic features, and her subversion of both the staged and vocal idiom" (whiteley , ). siberry's negotiation of the country idiom is similar to k. d. lang's, in that she borrows certain elements to allude to country music. while siberry does not try to challenge gender stereotypes in the aggressive manner in which lang did, the fact that siberry uses the most cliche signifiers associated with the idiom (such as the pedal steel guitar, an unsyncopated bass line, and a southern accent in the vocal) suggests that she too is engaging them in a winking manner. as with lang's songs, siberry's songs poke fun of country music itself. genre in "everything reminds me of my dog" in her song "everything reminds me of my dog" (heretofore, "everything..."), from bound by the beauty, siberry creates a playful tone by borrowing country music signifiers in order to create a pastiche of the idiom. because her intention is to create a humorous effect rather than evoke "hardcore" country "authenticity," siberry subverts the expectations of the country idiom (peterson , ). accordingly, "everything..." has only three elements that suggest country, but five parameters that are not characteristic of country. nonetheless, because the country-pop genre is convincingly evoked in this song, the subverted expectations remain surprising. first of all, siberry's image for "everything..." has a consonant fit with country-pop conventions. to promote this album siberry planned her first world tour in . she chose not to headline this tour as she had in the promotion of earlier albums, but rather to appear as the opening act for lang, who was at this time already firmly established in the american country music scene. lang was an excellent choice with whom to tour because, as discussed earlier, she had by that time her own tongue-in-cheek approach to country. in fact, it is possible that siberry's approach to country was influenced by lang's model. the tour with lang fell through, however, and in the end siberry headlined a solo tour to promote bound by the beauty. siberry's image on tour was quite altered from what it had been in the early s. instead of the fashion-conscious shiny clothes siberry had sported then, she now wore jeans and a blouse on stage (at least, that is what she wore the night i saw her perform in toronto in ). furthermore, her hair was no longer spiky and dyed red as in the early s, but rather her natural colour, grown longer, and curled in a more conventionally country-pop manner. in this way, her new stage look embraced a dressed-down country image such as that of trisha yearwood, rather than that of a new-wave musician. although siberry's country image was not as stylized as lang's (siberry wore no cowboy boots or stetson hat), it was still strikingly "down- home" compared to other female pop/rock musicians. through her stage image, then, siberry gave signals explicitly related to country conventions. secondly, the instrumentation of "everything..." has a consonant fit with country-pop. the song does not feature "hardcore" fiddles and pedal steel guitars. it rather uses electric bass, drums, piano, and electric guitar, all of which fit with conventional country-pop. while the use of the dulcimer from mm. - (see transcription in appendix , p. - ) is out of place in contemporary country-pop, it does have a connection with old-time country music. during the folk revival, many marginalized traditional country styles experienced a resurgence along with traditional folk song. bluegrass, for example, became more popular, as did attempts to harken back to the nineteenth-century use of the dulcimer in the appalachians (hamm , ). the harkening back to the southeastern tradition of "hillbilly" music with the presence of the dulcimer compliments the lyrics of "everything," since the old-time country instrument is only used in a section containing a flashback in the lyrics (more on this later). the use of the dulcimer in this country-pop song, then, certainly does not lie outside the realm of the larger country music tradition. thus the instrumentation found in "everything..." is similar to that heard in a contemporary country song like "perfect love" from songbook ( ) by trisha yearwood. it too uses electric guitar, bass, and drums, but also adds acoustic guitar (which is comparable to the dulcimer here), steel guitar, and keyboards. not only does the instrumentation of "everything" signify country-pop, but so do the ways in which the instruments are employed. in particular, the use of country music figuration (see appendix ) in the electric guitar signifies country conventions. the types of melodic riffs heard in "everything..." are idiomatic to the country idiom as heard in the chromatic lines in mm. and , the honky-tonk use of seconds in mm. and , and the note bending (i.e., notes approached from below) in mm. and . the use of rockabilly style in the piano, for example in the fills in mm. and as well as the repeated riff (in mm. - and following), is also typical of country. the way in which the i - v bass pattern from mm. - is repeated almost throughout the song with very little variation (except in the c sections) forms an additional consonance with country music. indeed, when there is variation in the bass, such as at mm. , , , , , and , it amounts only to slight melodic elaborations. the harmonic relationship remains the same, as do the rhythms, which are unsyncopated, as consistent with country conventions. thus far we have seen that siberry's image, instrumentation, and figuration all strongly suggest country conventions. these congruencies are offset by five parameters that are not characteristic of the idiom. first of all, the vocal timbre of "everything..." contradicts country expectations. "hardcore" country signifiers such as a glottal attack, nasal tone colour, and yodel are avoided. indeed, siberry sounds as she always does with one notable exception. a southern accent, a "hardcore country signifier," is heard in each statement of the b section, where male vocalists don freed, john switzer, and ken myhr join her in conventional country practice (peterson , ). in each statement of this section the group says "git along little doggie" rather than "get along" (see appendix , lyric ). the use of an american southern dialect by canadians is a clear indicator that the accent is "put on." the fact that the dialect is added in only one section of the song calls attention to the artifice and emphasizes that the tradition is borrowed as pastiche. this intermittent adherence to the country convention amounts to a sly wink at the audience. having knowledge of a tradition but then choosing to take or leave it is a point of contention with "hardcore" country fans, as lang discovered. indeed, in "hardcore" country, performers often put on southern accents as an indicator of "authenticity," regardless of whether they are from the south or not. this sort of artifice makes the country idiom ripe for ridicule by musicians and critics from other genres. secondly, the metre and phrase lengths of "everything..." largely correspond to country generic expectations but do exhibit some significant exceptions. most of the phrases in this song (see figure . below) can be divided into two -bar units, that is, four measures of / , except for the five-bar unit of section d. measures - here form an irregular three-bar unit that does not even get worked out later on since the material never returns. thus it is not until more than half-way through the song that it becomes apparent that both the metre and phrase length clash with the conventions associated with country. therefore there are far fewer deviations from country expectations here than were found in the folk revival example discussed in chapter . figure . - phrase lengths of "everything reminds me of my dog" form: intro. a b a a' b c a' b' d c a a" a a a a'" no. of mm.: there is an additional exception to the square phrasing and metre of country, found in the repeated statements of the b section. added to the four-bar phrase is a one bar tag in mm. and . this irregularity is softened somewhat in the two-bar ending added to the final statement of section b' at m. - . rather than a phrase of + + , the b' section consists of a more normative + + ( +) . similarly, the metre in "everything..." is a consonant / throughout, except for the surprising moments when the metre becomes / in mm. and , the final measure of the first two b sections, and in m. , near the end of the b' section. the surprising effect of this / metric hiccup (in mm. , and ) is clearly intentional, for there is no need for this disruption to exist. the phrase from mm. - , for example, could easily have ended at the end of m. . in fact, it makes more sense lyrically. the / measure of "git a" ends as a sentence fragment. if this "git a" fragment were finished off with "long," the e chord could resolve to the expected tonic (a major). closure here is intentionally avoided, however, to subvert both metric and harmonic expectations until m. . this disruption of metrical regularity exemplifies the rock auteur desire to comment on the country idiom. on the one hand, the drawing of attention to the incessant regularity in the phrase length and metre of the music shows how monotonous country music can sound. on the other hand, the disruption in the metre and phrase length may also be poking fun at country performers (such as hank williams) whose personal lives hardly exemplify the "family values" the country tradition holds so dear. in particular, the hiccup in the / bar evokes the stereotype of the country singer who regularly comes to his gigs drunk (peterson , ). thirdly, the use of rhythm in "everything..." both adheres and subverts the expectations of the country idiom. the straight rhythms particularly in the bass, the emphasis on beats and , and the syncopation found in the piano riff, which consistently emphasizes beat one, are all traditionally found in country. in addition, regardless of whether the rhythms used in the vocal of "everything..." are syncopated or unsyncopated, they also emphasize beats one and three. although there is rhythmic variation in the beginning of each phrase in section a to accommodate the new lyric (for example "everything," "guy in the store," "telephones," "taxicabs," etc.), each ending of "(re)minds me of my dog" is rhythmically identical—even when the melodic entrance is delayed (as in mm. - ). there is a significant rhythmic dissonance in the vocal of this song. siberry employs syncopation and changes in rhythmic density through what adam krims calls "rhythmic acceleration," a technique that is typical of rap but not country. this technique appears occasionally throughout siberry's oeuvre. pvhythmic acceleration refers "to the increase in attack densities and greater variety of rhythmic intervals between rhyming syllables" or, in this instance, between analogous vocal phrases (krims, ). placing an increasing number of syllables into the same temporal and musical space heard previously in a corresponding phrase is a recurring musical joke that siberry enjoys. it seems clear that it is a joke because the technique appears almost exclusively in humorous songs. rhythmic acceleration can be heard most clearly in the third verse of "symmetry (the way things have to be)" in no borders here, (see appendix , lyric beginning at the words "even though"), but can also be found in the second verse of "trumpeter swan" on teenager, and the final verses of "bound by the beauty" and "miss punta blanca" from bound by the beauty. in "everything..." rhythmic acceleration can be found in the melodic phrases that precede "reminds me of my dog," such as "the guy in the store," "telephones," "taxicabs," etc.. for example, while "everything (reminds me of my dog)" in m. has syllables, "smiling at stranger (reminds me of my dog)" in the analogous phrase in m. has five. as can be seen in figure . a, the rhythm does not always accelerate. for example, after m. , the number of syllables decreases from four to three (in m. ). indeed, after a large number of syllables, such as the five heard at m. , there is an even greater shrinkage (for example, the two syllables heard in m. ). the point of this technique is not that the rhythmic acceleration is ever increasing until it becomes frenetic, but rather that there is play with the number of syllables within the same space in analogous phrases of section a. figure . a - rhythmic acceleration before the phrase "reminds me of my dog" syllables: m.no.: figure . b - rhythmic acceleration after the phrase "reminds me of my dog" syllables: m. no.: this same technique is also evident in the space (in the rests) after the "reminds me of my dog" lyric (see figure . b). in verse one there is only one instance of a vocal fill (the "yoohoo" in m. ). in verse two, by contrast the space at the end of every phrase contains vocal fills (from the syllables of "better let them know you're friendly" in m. to the syllables of "don't hit them" in m. ). the rhythmic acceleration climaxes in verse (mm. - ), with syllables heard in both mm. and . to outline systematically every instance of rhythmic acceleration goes against the very spirit of playing with language, rhythm, time, and space. suffice it to say that the rhythmic variety heard in analogous phrases in both of these locations in section a represents a humorous response to the confines of the straight repetition of country. the rhythmic acceleration heard in this song is thus dissonant with country conventions. the lyrics of "everything..." may at first glance appear consonant with country in that they talk about the narrator's dog, a topic almost exclusively associated with that idiom, at least since the traditional cowboy song "git along, little dogies" became a tin pan alley hit for billy hill in the s. historically, however, the southwestern tradition of the lonely cattle rustler singing about a "little doggie" refers not to a dog accompanying the cowboy but rather to "a little orphan calf... [that] often had to be carried across a saddle-pommel by their cowboy foster-fathers" (lomax, ). in its literal discussion of a dog, therefore, this song does not accurately represent the country tradition of the cowboy song. the lyrics of this song are about more than just a dog. when asked what she was thinking of when she wrote these lyrics, siberry commented: i was just thinking about my dog. but after that i realized that it really could have been love or so many things, when you really get into something in your mind or brain, the ability to focus. like when i am mixing a record, anywhere i go i am trying to adjust the balance of the sounds around me. at an intersection i will be bringing down the hum and raising the individual voices, that kind of thing. so everything reminds me of mixing or everything reminds me of my new lover. it is pretty much like rose-coloured glasses. whatever you're really in love with at the time, everything reminds you of that. or you know, when you really have the blues, all you see around you are struggles (siberry ). "everything..." is not a country ballad lamenting lost love; neither is it a homage to family life. in this respect, the lyrics are dissonant with the country idiom. with its catalog of things that remind the narrator of her dog, the song is more like a tin pan alley list song (for example, cole porter's "let's do it, let's fall in love" from , "anything goes" from or "from alpha to omega" from ). list songs do not purport to be filled with deep meaning. accordingly, the lyrics of "everything..." are light and humorous (see appendix , lyric ). first of all, the narrator creates amusing images of her dog as being human. her dog can smile "at strangers," "laugh," use a phone and, by extension, talk ("do you want me to dial the number for you?"). in addition to transferring human qualities onto her dog, the narrator also assigns canine qualities to people. the narrator wants to pat einstein's "fluffy head." she likens the way people dress to dogs "pissing on their favourite tree," the way "golfers teeing off to the way her dog sits by her and "shifts on his paws," and "the blank expression of a little boy with thick glasses who picks himself up from the sidewalk and stands there blinking in the sun" to the expression on the face of her dog. finally, the lyrics indulge in comic hyperbole; for example, that absolutely "everything" in the world could remind someone of their dog or that the narrator calls her obviously friendly dog "ferocious." this latter exaggeration brings up two elements of complexity in the lyrics that are dissonant with country conventions. first, there is no linear narrative, even though the song is narrated as expected, in the first person. the song instead offers a string of non-rhyming images that remind the narrator of her dog. secondly, the point of view from which the lyrics are told seems to vary. at one point there is a feminist critique of how it takes "guy in bars . . . so long to choose the perfect table" as if one identical table is inherently better than another. at other points the narrator seems to be a child, pretending that the tame dog that she is taking for a walk is actually a terrifying creature ("me and my ferocious dog were walking down the street"), when, really, the on-lookers think that he is a "goot doggie!" this scene from childhood does not actually constitute a change in narrative voice but rather a flashback to a childhood memory. that section d is the most linear and narrative section in the song, as well as the only section seven measures in length, sets it apart from the others, similar to the way that a memory is experienced linearly, unlike the multi-tasking of thoughts experienced in the present. that the dulcimer, an instrument used in early country, is found only during this section of the song also seems to give credence to the argument that this section represents a temporal flashback. as the dulcimer is symbolic of an older form of country music, so too is the linear narrative of section d symbolic of a past memory of the narrator. the fact that the dulcimer is heard in open fifths with the vocal also evokes the shape-note musical tradition that is reminiscent of the past. in the context of the lyrics, this musical allusion to long ago resonates with a past memory. this kind of temporal complexity is not conventional to country. finally the form of "everything..." is dissonant with country conventions. like other types of pop music, country tends to contain a structure made up of verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, verse, chorus, chorus, or some such variation. the form of "everything...", however, is more involved, following a design that reads: iabaa'bca'b'dca a"aaa"'. while this structure contains the requisite verse (a), chorus (b), and bridge (c) material, the proportions are unusual in that the individual units are very short (see figure . above). in addition, the a' section preceding the first bridge is split in half (the other half follows the bridge), creating an even shorter sectional delineation than expected. furthermore, there are more statements of the verse than of the chorus. in country-pop it is the chorus that contains the hook and is therefore emphasized. this song lacks a hook (except perhaps for the / "git a" bar), therefore making the chorus less enticing for the listener. this formal irregularity is complicated by repetitions of the bridge, as well as the additional material heard in section d that cannot be accounted for within traditional country forms. the few statements of the chorus along with the presence of an extra inexplicable section would create a surprising effect for the country listener who comes to the song with hitherto unchallenged formal expectations. siberry rejects the lack of formal variety found in the country idiom by juxtaposing cliche generic signifiers with an unexpected formal plan: by presenting more verses (section a) and bridges (sections c and d) and fewer statements of the chorus (section b), siberry subverts country-pop expectations. not only is the form of this song dissonant with country expectations, its complexity also comments upon the overused formal conventions of the idiom. indeed, in each of the parameters of "everything..." dissonant with the traditions of country (namely, the timbre, metre, phrase length, rhythm, lyrics, and form), the deviations create a heightened level of play by the rock auteur, which comments on the pitfalls of conforming to the expectations of country. as in the songs discussed previously, however, the parameters with which siberry creates a consonance are those most important for signifying "authenticity" in the genre. in country-pop, the parameters most significant to an audience as indicators of country are instrumentation, figuration, image, and vocal timbre. it is to each of these criteria (except for timbre) that siberry adheres, creating for her audience a strong overall sense of the country-pop genre, despite the large number of dissonant parameters (including metre, phrase length, rhythm, lyrics, and form). needless to say, like all country-pop, "everything" evokes few conventional "hardcore" country signifiers. in this way siberry's audience easily recognizes the musical parameters of the song as country-pop. a recognition of genre, however, is not the same thing as a recognitiori of the playful tone siberry takes in her approach to the country idiom. it is probably for this reason that siberry originally planned to tour with k. d. lang. the latter's audience was already initiated into the practice of reading texts in a tongue-in-cheek manner, as pastiche. even in lang's absence, however, siberry still playfully engages the country idiom. like a child dressing in adult clothes, so siberry puts on a style not her own. siberry's use of country signifiers in this song does not pay homage to the idiom, in the manner of randy travis. rather she utilizes the signifiers to critique the country idiom musically. siberry uses such a cliche signifier as a southern dialect in the song to point out that, for her, country is an idiom that can be put on and off at will. such an irreverent treatment of "hardcore" country signifiers not only has precedence in lang's approach to the idiom but also seems to line up with a traditional rock view of country music as "sentimental" and "self- pitying," an object worthy of criticism (middleton , ). rather than overt ridicule, however, siberry takes a light-hearted approach to critiquing country music. her overall tone is one of play, rather than ridicule. as such, it would not be surprising if (new) country audiences (those who liked lang's early work, for example) would like the song as much as listeners of pop/rock. while at first it appeared that electro-pop and country-pop have little in common, the two genres are united by similarities in siberry's approach toward them. in both, siberry takes artistic license by subverting genre expectations within the parameters of form and metre. although her approach to each genre is different, her practice of deviating from genre expectation in each instance remains the same. furthermore, contrary to the conventions of both country-pop and electro-pop, siberry retains her folk-revival vocal timbre and the urban intimacy that it espouses. obviously "everything..." is more light-hearted in tone than "goodbye," but nonetheless, siberry's vocal quality itself remains a constant in each genre. in this regard, siberry's approach to electro- pop and country-pop mirror her approach to folk-revival, which also retains an intimate vocal timbre while deviating from genre expectation by complicating musical parameters. one would think that with the shared ideas about "authenticity" common to the genres of country and folk, siberry would have held up country as a desirable genre and the electro-pop style as a synthetic and inauthentic one. on the contrary, however, siberry seems to embrace the use of technology in electro-pop, while mocking the traditional signifiers of country. both siberry's consistency of vocal quality and subversion of generic expectations retained importance in the s, as siberry went on to evoke the genres of cool jazz and funk. chapters and will explore siberry's differing approaches to these two african-american musical genres and the ramifications that this move has had upon her music. notes to chapter . "country-pop" is a genre of country music that combines both pop and country characteristics. this term has been chosen from among many because it is essentially a descriptor that does not connote a particular value judgement. this is important because in both pop and country traditions there are those who dislike the combining of country and pop, as if it were a watering down of the purity of either idiom. most frequently country-pop is employed by "commercial country" artists, such as shania twain, leann rimes, steve earle, and the dixie chicks, who aspire to cross over from country into the pop mainstream. accordingly, this genre is watered-down of its most rural country signifiers. siberry, however, approaches country from the world of pop rather than the other way around. in doing so she follows a long tradition of rock musicians who flirt with country. this tradition, sometimes referred to as "anti-country," is one that includes the cowboy junkies, k.d. lang, blue rodeo, the eagles, bob dylan, and elvis costello. . see malone ( ) for a history of the first years of country music. . although yodeling is originally of swiss origin, after jimmie rodgers used this technique it became popularly associated in america with country music. . the steel guitar is conceived of as a country instrument in popular culture despite the fact that it originated in hawaii in the s and was not popularized in the united states until the s. the dobro was the first steel guitar with a built-in resonator, followed in the s by the electric steel guitar. the "whiny pedal steel guitar" that became popular in the mid- s is the ultimate country music signifier—the country music icon, if you will—defining the country sound despite a revival of the dobro and early electric steel guitars in the s (carlin, ). . whiteley points out that "in the s, country music represented the extolled image of american society, where the woman was sweet and uncomplaining, respectable, white and family-oriented" (whiteley , ). whiteley's thesis is that with her excessive energy and butch persona, lang positioned herself in direct opposition to country music's conventional espousal of so-called "family values." . my use of this term here follows genette's definition of pastiche as an imitation of "a style and the thematic motifs that it involves...[as] a means of actualization~and possibly of derision" (genette, ). concerning its attitude toward the style, therefore, pastiche "prides itself upon paying it the least possible literal allegiance" (genette, ). . lang's acceptance in the american country music industry was evident in her collaboration on "honky tonk angels medley" with such country legends as loretta lynn, kitty wells and brenda lee (on her album shadowland in ) as well as her winning the grammy for best female country vocal for absolute torch and twang in , an album that stayed in the billboard top country albums chart for weeks and was promoted by "a -stop sellout tour." it is interesting to note, however, that despite success on a popular level, the conservative nashville radio community continued to question lang's allegiance to the idiom (whiteley , ). . interestingly, this tour image was already a change from the album picture with mac feri found next to the lyrics of "everything reminds me of my dog," which was taken before the tour with lang fell through (album liner, ). in this picture siberry is standing with an old man in a cap in front of what could be a modern barn, wearing a checked shirt and overalls, the traditional attire used to connote the hillbilly image in "hardcore" country music (peterson , g . ). . the use of the dulcimer here shows siberry's knowledge of the country music tradition. typically, country-pop performers play down their relationship to "hardcore" country by avoiding its signifiers, but siberry does not in this instance. according to richard a. peterson, flaunting an extensive knowledge of country music history is a signifier of "hardcore" country performers, who frequently comment upon their country lineage in concerts and interviews (peterson , ). . it should be conceded that the free use of arpeggiation in mm. - and - , for example, is not typical of the country idiom. it is more like a jazz technique, especially in light of siberry's choice of upper extensions (such as ths, lths and ths) heard in the melody sung over the piano accompaniment. although these instances may seem like another generic allusion that contributes to the polysemic message of the text, the moments pass by so quickly that the new codes barely have time to register as such before hardcore country indicators resume, for example, in the guitar and bass in mm. and . . peterson cites an instance of such outright deception at a country concert he attended at which karon blackwell affected a mississippi accent even though she was born in chicago and worked mostly in california as a jingle singer (peterson , ). . notice, however, that section d remains in an even / . it is as if, when the lyrics form the recollection of a scene from childhood (with the child pretending her dog is "ferocious," when really she is just taking him for a walk), the phrase lengths harken back to a prior era (the folk era) in which uneven phrasing was typical. . this rhythmic acceleration is played out further in a formal design siberry often uses, in which the verses all begin in the same way but become increasingly longer, similar to "the twelve days of christmas." examples of this formal technique are found in "the lobby" from the walking, "see the child" from maria, and "grace hospital" on lips (see appendix , lyric ) as well as the poem "new year's baby" on child. . the list song was more recently popularized (or popularized again) with the success of rem's "it's the end of the world as we know it" from their platinum-selling album document ( ). . it should be added that in the mountain or hillbilly ballads the use of multiple points of view and shifting time was common. these narratives do not make sense in a linear way. it seems unlikely that siberry would be alluding to this trait as a conceit for the entire song, however, because the dulcimer itself is not used throughout. furthermore, as evident in chapter , siberry comes from a more contemporary folk revival tradition that does not conventionally change points-of-view in its narrative. finally, when siberry herself uses multi-voiced narratives in a lyric (in genres other than folk revival), she usually indicates the new voice clearly and/or uses this technique throughout the song (see appendix , lyrics , , and ). . of course, siberry felt a need to turn away from technology later. one might say instead, then, that her faith in technological progress was replaced by a postmodern play with generic pastiche. chapter the cool-jazz genre after toying with the genre of country-pop (among others) on bound by the beauty, siberry turned to jazz on maria ( ) and r&b on when i was a boy ( ) and lips ( ). the departure from country (which, as we have seen, has a close historical link with siberry's folk-revival roots) to r&b and jazz was another stylistic leap for siberry, perhaps even greater than the jump from folk revival to electro-pop had been. while folk and country are both historically associated with rural whites, jazz and r&b are linked with urban blacks. the gulf between country and jazz, however, was not insurmountable for siberry. her experience with electro pop had already given her insight into a genre with an urban pop sensibility. this chapter will focus on siberry's approach to jazz. specifically, siberry's negotiation of cool jazz in the song "maria" from maria will be discussed before turning to her engagement with funk in chapter . siberry's approach to jazz follows the auteur practice of subverting some musical parameters while conforming to others. the ways in which she approaches jazz conventions, however, differ from the approaches taken toward the genres discussed in the other chapters. with the title track from maria siberry alters conventions that are fundamental to jazz, redefining the elements of improvisation, swing, timbre, and tonality to the point that "maria" is not completely successful in evoking the jazz idiom. before discussing how siberry approaches these elements, let us review how each of the components of jazz is conventionally treated. improvisation is often taken to be the common denominator uniting the different styles of jazz, such as dixieland, swing, bebop, cool jazz, hard bop, and free jazz. in order for improvisation to work in a group or band setting, all the players must be privy to the same musical information. one touchstone in jazz is the standard song, which is traditionally either the -bar chorus of a larger verse-chorus structure or a standard -bar blues. before improvising, a soloist needs to know the chord progressions of the song that will be played in order to create a melody that fits with the chord changes. since all jazz players and most jazz fans know the standard songs being played, what makes a solo interesting is how a performer departs from the original melody. in order to facilitate an extended solo, the chord changes of a chorus may be repeated several times. indeed, when one soloist has played over the harmonies a sufficient number of times, another will take over the solo by playing his or her improvised melody over the repeated changes. given that siberry is a pop/rock singer-songwriter and not a jazz musician, it might seem surprising that she would engage a genre steeped in improvisation. yet siberry is no stranger to improvisation. she began her career in the folk-revival style, which, like jazz, is steeped in oral traditions. because of the simple forms used in each tradition, singer-songwriters compose new songs by improvising. as a folk- revival singer-songwriter, siberry has finely-honed improvisational skills. she commented: [maria] was improvised. a lot of jazz players are totally into it [improvisation] and a lot of pop players are not oriented that way. [they work more with] charts, and they are just not used to shifting so quickly. and i improvise very quickly. and it is a different road. it takes training, i think, to be able to improvise (siberry ). not only does siberry have extensive experience with improvisation, she also employs these skills with a great zeal: improvisation is not a big part of the pop world but it's part of my life, and so desperate am i to do it that sometimes i've been known to go to karaoke bars and pick some songs i don't know and then improvise with the words. but it really pisses people off, it doesn't go over big. they want you to sing it the right way; they get really upset.... improvisation is the most exciting thing about music and it does take a lot of trust for some reason.... it's not that i want to do without discipline.... what i do takes a lot of structuring and discipline, and in the writing i'm very disciplined about sorting the wheat from the chaff, keeping stuff that i consider inspired as opposed to the stuff that comes from being clever (karen o'brien, ). this passion for improvisation found a release in maria. siberry incorporated improvisation into every step of the recording process on this album. not only were the songs on maria written with improvisation in mind (for example, there are no complex changes of metre; and the phrase lengths are all symmetrical so as to create forms conducive to improvisation), many were also written via improvisation. for example, the melody of "begat begat" is clearly improvised from the piano riff. furthermore, all the solos were improvised during a live recording, which was a change from siberry's previous practices. because jazz musicians are able to improvise music on the spur of the moment, they are accustomed to communicating musical ideas rapidly. often jazz musicians who have never played together before sound polished on the first take of a jazz standard. there were obviously very few takes of the songs on maria because the whole album was recorded in just three days. recording live was a far quicker process than siberry's usual technique of sampling songs together into a computer voice by voice, section by section, and even phrase by phrase (notes for chapter begin on p. ). this piece-meal procedure can only be achieved over a period of months and even years, as in the case of when i was a boy. on maria there was no sampling or splicing, even when the album was subsequently mixed down (for volume, reverberation, and stereo positioning). the solos that were played live were those that ended up on the album. although recording live decreased the production time of maria, the real allure of jazz to siberry is the interplay she experiences among the musicians. whereas recording samples alone in the studio gave siberry complete artistic control over the music she wanted to make, working communally with skilled musicians ironically achieved the same effect. siberry commented on her earlier studio albums that were recorded layer by layer into the computer: there was a huge freedom there that the technology had given me. it had given me a freedom to create. with maria, it was actually the same phenomenon, but in a different medium. i was able to bypass using the technology to get out what i heard in my head, by surrounding myself with musicians who could play what i heard in my head—so it was really fast—the best of all worlds (menzies, ). siberry's initial attraction to jazz no doubt stemmed from her love of musical freedom. while composition provides a certain kind of outlet for creativity, improvisation adds an element of risk; it takes creativity to a different level. not only does one have to make musical decisions, they must be made spontaneously, at the moment of performance. the motive behind siberry's foray into jazz was not so much an attraction to the sound of jazz as a desire to engage the practice of improvisation that is uniquely idiomatic to jazz. while it is true that all jazz is improvised to some extent, all improvisation is not jazz. a rock guitar solo, for example, might be improvised, but it does not usually contain the swing or colour tones of a jazz guitar solo. to be considered jazz, an improvised solo draws upon particular rhythmic, timbral, and melodic conventions. one of the most important rhythmic concepts in jazz is the elusive concept of "swing." it is perhaps best described by gunther schuller, who calls swing a "forward-propelling directionality" (schuller , ). swing subdivides the basic quarter note pulse into a loose triplet feel. different soloists, such as louis armstrong, charlie parker, and john coltrane, subdivide the beat to different extents. part of the problem in defining swing is that different soloist's rhythmic concepts vary widely. even with this variety of approaches, the practice of swing can be broken down into two schools: hot and cool. founded by louis armstrong, the hot school has a more flexible rhythmic concept, taking liberties with playing ahead of, or behind, the beat. this intentional hesitation in time toys with a listener's expectations of attacks falling directly on the beat. such hot-school players as charlie parker are said to swing "harder" than such cool-school players as lester young. harkening back to bix beiderbecke, cool school musicians have a more relaxed swing feel, playing closer to straight eighth notes. timbre is another characteristic of jazz that can be conceived of as either hot or cool. hot playing can have the round and warm sound of coleman hawkins or the aggressive and brassy sound of dizzy gillespie. usually hot players use a high tessitura. in contrast, cool players, such as gerry mulligan and stan getz, embrace an intimate, mellow, and often breathy tone in a mid to low range. idiomatic to both schools, however, is the desire to muddy up the standardized pure tone, which characterizes western art music, with distinctive timbres (schuller , ). hot vocalists run the gamut from the fuzzy timbre of louis armstrong and the brassy sound of dinah washington to the rich sonority of sarah vaughan. cool vocalists are represented by the breathy approach of helen merrill, the translucent tone of chet baker, and the crisp articulation of chris connor. whether hot or cool, jazz improvisations are characterized by a particular choice of notes and melodic figurations. jazz solos often use the complex harmonies of the chord changes accompanying the songs by emphasizing colour tones in the melodic improvisations. since the bebop era, jazz tends to be characterized by a fast harmonic rhythm and solos in which the musician outlines the chords (or "plays the changes") in angular and disjunct melodies. in a search for alternatives to the western european diatonic scale, jazz musicians have always emphasized non-diatonic tones, such as blues notes (on melodic instruments) or tone clusters (in piano and guitar solos). the incorporation of modality into jazz solos, for example, in with miles davis' kind of blue, is a further product of this quest. modal pieces usually tend to maintain a mode for at least four bars, in contrast to tonal songs, in which the chord changes at least once per measure (porter and ullman, ). genre in "maria" "maria" is more consonant with the sound of the cool school than with that of the hot school. in this song, however, siberry extends her auteur approach by experimenting not with such secondary generic signifiers as metre and phrase length, but rather with concepts fundamental to jazz, including improvisation, swing, timbre, and tonality. accordingly, "maria" does not achieve an overall consonance with the jazz idiom. siberry clearly follows the conventions of jazz in such parameters as instrumentation, melody, metre, and phrase length, but these signifiers are not as fundamental to jazz as swing, timbre, and improvisation are. thus this song is not completely successful at evoking the jazz idiom. as mentioned earlier, many approaches to timbre and swing have been adopted by soloists of the cool school, from bix beiderbecke to chris connor. however, a specific genre of jazz popular in the s, called "cool jazz," cultivated a more idiosyncratic sound. it was characterized by a use of mid- to low-range tessituras, mellow or breathy timbres, and relaxed tempos. the genre was shaped by pieces released off the recording birth of the cool ( ). these songs emphasized unique timbral colouration evoked by such instruments as the french horn, fluegelhorn, and tuba; mid- to low-range instruments, such as the trombone and baritone saxophone; and the innovative arrangement of jazz standards and compositions into intricate formal structures, spearheaded by gil evans. siberry's song, "maria," in many ways evokes the cool-jazz genre. indeed, her experimentation with fundamental signifiers reflects gil evans' approaches to the genre. because siberry does not come from a jazz background, however, her experimentation is less successful than evans'. before looking at how siberry subverts the concepts of swing, timbre, and improvisation, the parameters that conform with genre expectations in "maria" will be discussed. first, the instrumentation of "maria" is highly consonant with the cool-jazz genre. the song features vocal and trumpet soloists with piano, bass, and drums accompaniment. the use of bass, piano, and drums as a rhythm section, with a vocalist and trumpet soloing over top, is typical of the instrumentation found in small jazz combos. the only discontinuity with jazz instrumentation in "maria" is the way in which the drums are used throughout the song. in "maria" the ride cymbal is rarely used, whereas in most jazz since the s it is used continually to keep time (that is, laying out the beat) in a song. instead, the beat in "maria" is kept on the high hat, while brushes are used either on the tom-toms (in sections i and d of the form, which will be discussed later) or the snare (a, b, a', and c). there is also some use of the sticks on the snare (d), usually incorporating cymbal work (i', i", a", and e). the cymbals are used more for effect than keeping the beat. since the drums are in the background of the mix, however, these anomalies do not sound like a glaring dissonance with the conventions of jazz instrumentation. in the vocal and trumpet solos, the use of colour tones and melodic figuration reflects jazz conventions (see the transcription in appendix ). siberry draws upon a variety of colour tones, including blue notes (the use of a flatted third in the shift to a aeolian in m. is striking), ths (mm. , , and ), ths (mm. , , and ), lths (mm. , , , and ), and ths (mm. and ). this prominent use of upper extensions is not unique to siberry's jazz pieces. they can also be found in such songs as "la jalouse" and "flirtin' is a flo-thing." other songs, however, do not use such tones. for example, they cannot be found in "everything reminds me of my dog," which sticks closely to the diatonic harmonic language of the country idiom. the trumpet solos by david travers-smith are even more consonant with cool-jazz conventions than siberry's vocals. in both timbre and inflection travers-smith is clearly influenced by the cool-jazz melodic style spearheaded by miles davis during the s and s. like davis, travers-smith uses colour tones to great effect. the use of ths can be heard in mm. , , , and . some upper extensions are used as passing tones, but most are presented with agogic accents. for example, sustained ths in the trumpet solos can be heard in mm. , , , and and held ths can be found in mm. , , and . typical of cool jazz and davis in particular, travers-smith's solos have spare melodies; nonetheless, his solos parallel siberry's in that he too makes use of a single blue note in m. . thus the melodic approaches of travers-smith and siberry are similar to each other and consonant with cool-jazz conventions. the use of metre in "maria" is also consonant with cool-jazz conventions. most jazz standards are / throughout. "maria" is no exception. given that siberry typically subverts metric uniformity by using mixed metres, the metric consistency found in "maria" is more than a little surprising. it is clear that siberry is making a concerted effort to stay within generic parameters here. she does not throw in a single metric disruption, such as the measure of / heard in "everything reminds me of my dog." the reasons for this conformity to jazz expectations could be that a consistent metre is necessary to facilitate improvisational freedom. it is also possible that siberry has an inherent respect for the jazz idiom like such other rock auteurs as sting, bjork, sinead o'connor, and joni mitchell, who have also turned to jazz (although this seems unlikely as siberry radically subverts other parameters as we shall see). whatever the reason, "maria" remains in / throughout. figure . - phrase lengths in "maria" form: i a b a' c i' i" a" d e no. of mm.: + + + + mm. - - - - - - - - - - the phrases of this song follow the conventional jazz length of four or eight-bar units. "maria" consists of sections made up of eight-bar phrases until the statement of the a" material from mm. - (see figure . above), which adds a four-bar tag. these four additional measures would make for a conventional jazz ending; however, instead of ending the piece, they lead into the all-new material of section d, which also consists of phrase lengths of + measures. again a four-bar tag leads to a new section (e), which, instead of following the new pattern of phrase lengths of + , draws out the lyric (in mm. - and mm. - ) to create an + measure pattern. all these even phrases appear to have been too much for siberry, who in the final measures lays down a three-bar tag. this ending more accurately reflects siberry's auteur penchant for asymmetrical phrasing lengths. the expansions of phrase lengths toward the end of this song—the four-bar additions in section a" and d and the three-bar addition to section e—are rare in conventional jazz composition and improvisation. as mentioned, while a four-bar tag is often added to the end of a piece, it is not usually found midway through a song. this tinkering with phrase lengths, however, is typical of cool jazz, especially in arrangements by gil evans and miles davis. for instance, evans and davis's composition "boplicity" from birth of the cool ( - ) consists of three choruses of the a a b a standard. in the second chorus, the bridge is extended from + to + , with the band playing the first six measures and davis soloing on the last four. in addition, in the first and second choruses, the band's statement of the final a is extended from + to + . the subsequent solos (over the first two a sections of the next chorus) by mulligan and davis, respectively then loose two measures to become + . furthermore, miles davis's arrangement of "deception" from birth of the cool, takes george shearing's original a a b a song "conception" and not only plays with the title, but also adds two additional measures to point up the already unusually long a section. (the b section remains a normative eight measures in length.) "deception" therefore consists of an a section that is measures long, rather than the bars of the original (porter and ullman, ). while the phrase lengths in "maria" depart from standard jazz arranging beginning at the end of section a", the presence of two four-bar tags and one three-bar aligns the song with the cool-jazz genre. while the elongated phrase lengths in the concluding sections of the song are conventional to the cool-jazz genre, the presence of additional sections (d and e) makes the overall form of "maria" dissonant with jazz conventions. typically, jazz forms are kept simple to facilitate improvisation. bebop arrangements, for example, usually consist of nothing more than an introduction (the "head") played by the entire ensemble, followed by several repetitions of a -bar chorus (or a -bar blues) over which soloists improvise, and concluding with a restatement of the introduction (the "out chorus"). the resulting form conventional to bebop is as follows: head, chorus to x, out chorus. while cool-jazz arrangements tend to have more complex introductions (often repeated as a bridge and/or coda) than bebop, they too follow the same basic formal procedure by repeating the body of the song (for example, an a a b a chorus) to facilitate soloing. even if soloists trade off sections (thus not soloing over the whole form or chorus) or obscure the form by soloing over bar lines and into the next section, as in "boplicity," the body of the song is usually stated (and repeated) completely without interruption. "maria" does not follow such a basic design. the form of "maria" is iaba'ch"a"de (see figure . above). on a first hearing, the song appears to follow a -bar abac chorus format. the aba'c initially could be heard as a chorus with an introduction (i) that has a dual function as both an introduction to the song and a transition to the second chorus. it would be unusual, however, to have a contrasting trumpet solo in the b section before a complete statement of the head of the tune (that is, aba'c). in fact, it would be extremely rare to have a trumpet solo during the initial presentation of a melody. furthermore, even if the introduction had served as a transition (i') to another chorus it is unlikely that it would be immediately repeated (i"). finally, when a" returns, it does not lead back to ba'c, the earlier conclusion to the -bar chorus. rather, it is extended by four bars, clearly indicating that a b a ' c had never made up the chorus structure to begin with. the four-bar tag on a" leads to two new sections, each of which are also extended, by four and eleven bars, respectively. because of the sheer variety of the materials found in this song (there are six different sections and their variations), the form of "maria" is best approached as a sectional design. in this regard the song does not conform with the formal conventions of the jazz idiom. yet, as in the songs analyzed in the preceding chapters, the form of "maria" challenges the expectations of another idiom (here jazz); and thus it embraces the complexity favoured by the rock auteur. the lack of a distinct chorus structure here has further ramifications for the practice of improvisation. this unusual form poses challenges for extended improvisation, as no section is repeated identically. the unusual form makes it difficult to hear which sections present the original tune and which are improvisations upon it. it is almost as if siberry is subverting the primary characteristic of the jazz idiom, challenging its parameters to see if improvisation remains possible in the context of a varied form with no repeated section for improvisation. from an analytical perspective, the lack of a repeated chorus in "maria" presents a problem in evaluating the solos. given that "maria" is a newly-composed song, and thus we have no standard with which to compare it, it is difficult to tell what exactly is improvised. one would expect the a section to serve as the main tune or head of the piece, since it is subsequently repeated two times. as such, it appears that this section could serve as the foundation for improvisation. there are, however, few differences between the three statements of section a. indeed, the third statement is almost identical to the first (except mm. - and ). the reason for the unchanged nature of a" could be to avoid formal confusion. the strict repetition of section a mirrors the practice of such jazz styles as bebop, in which the head and the out chorus are traditionally stated identically. without a strict repetition of a, it might not become clear that section a is the allotted head of the tune. one could assume that section i is the head. with a as the head of the tune, it would be possible to view the first repetition of a as a site for improvisation. and indeed in section a' the melodic material is considerably altered. together with the melodic changes comes a temporary tonicization of a major, which justifies the alterations, and gives a new developmental slant to this variation, providing novelty to the repetition. yet, with new chord changes, section a' functions as an entirely unknown section for the improviser; and thus improvisational creativity is hampered. thus, section a does not function as a site for improvisation at all. ultimately, the statements of section a can be heard as the head and out chorus of the tune (a and a") and an altered repetition (a'). while improvisation traditionally occurs in the chorus of a song, in "maria," the introduction is the site of improvisation. it is unusual to find improvisation in an introduction, even if the section later returns. in this song, however, not only is section i repeated as frequently as section a, it is also improvised over by different soloists. it seems that as part of her rock auteur stance siberry decided to differentiate between the head of the tune and the chorus, even though in bebop each of these consists of the same chord changes. as such, the head loses its function as a point of departure for melodic improvisation. in a sense, siberry subverts the very practice of improvisation in jazz by treating the introduction as a primary structural unit and as a site for improvisation. as the site of improvisation, each statement of section i captures a different type of invention. the first statement sounds introductory, not just because it is the opening of the piece, but also because the piano part consists of a repeated riff (which is a compositional device in line with the swing "head chart" tradition). the vocal solo consists of neither a text nor virtuosic scatting. the second statement (!', beginning at m. ) is clearly more improvisatory. in this statement it is the trumpet that improvises new material. travers-smith uses musical gestures that are idiomatic to the cool-jazz genre. although his choice of intervals is not derived from the head of the tune, his rhythms are. like the a section, he emphasizes the downbeat (mm. , , and ) as well as eighth-note pickups (mm. , and ). he also slides into notes from above the desired pitch (in mm. , , ) and alternates short and long durations (mm. , , and ). instead of relinquishing his solo to the vocalist, however, the trumpet player continues soloing in i". it is not unusual for one soloist to take two choruses in a row. in this way, section i is further signaled as the site of improvisation for the song. at the beginning of section i", however, the pianist quits accompanying with the riff and begins interacting with the vocal solo; for siberry has now joined the i" section as a soloist as well, creating two simultaneous solos. indeed, siberry could be conceived of as the primary soloist in i", over the trumpet, which continues to alternate sustained passages with runs. the fact that siberry's solo differs radically from her initial statement of i convincingly demonstrates her ability to improvise in the style of traditional jazz vocalists, such as billie holiday. indeed, siberry's repetition of a single pitch is a technique reminiscent of holiday's improvisational practice. (siberry, however, extends the use of this technique for two phrases in a row). while siberry's solo is not of melodic interest, it does demonstrate rhythmic spontaneity, accenting beats and . indeed, if this, our only clear example of siberry improvising, is any indication, it seems evident that she is capable of improvisation in the jazz idiom. siberry's subversion of jazz formal conventions can be explained by her use of tonality in this song. the way in which the tonal centre is obscured throughout the piece seems to be an attempt to subvert the conventional use of tonality in jazz. as mentioned earlier, the employment of modes rather than the standard use of major and minor scales became prevalent in jazz beginning in the late s. modes offered an alternative to the cycling through keys that had been present in bebop. instead of a fast harmonic rhythm, modal jazz offered players a series of modes. for example, in "so what" from kind of blue ( ) by miles davis, the a a b a - bar chorus consists of eight-bar sections of d dorian as the tonal centre or primary chief mode and one contrasting eight-bar bridge in eb dorian. this example stands in stark contrast to the relatively complex harmonic structures heard in "maria." siberry's song contains modes like other jazz standards, however, the way in which the tonal centres are delineated is quite complex. "maria" begins ambiguously (see figure . below), with the bass alternating between the notes g and d. it is difficult to tell what the tonal relationship of these notes is. is the tonal centre here d dorian or g mixolydian? when the a section tonicizes c major, it seems clear in hindsight that the introduction was in g mixolydian (creating a conventional v - relationship). section b continues with a trumpet solo that seems to connote d aeolian, but the emphasis on g in the bass creates an overall g dorian sound that again affirms the initial reading of g mixolydian in section b. ending the instrumental b section with a d minor chord in m. (a minor v of g dorian), the a section returns, this time in a major, via a cunning reinterpretation of the v of d minor chord (a-c#-e) as the new tonic. the presence of c-sharps in this section, against what had been c-naturals, represents a significant change from the earlier c major statement. this new key raises more doubts of whether or not the tonal centre is g mixolydian, as had been supposed, or d dorian (as postulated by the alternative reading of the introduction). the jarring effect created at the beginning of section a' subsides at m. , when a aeolian and the c-naturals return. the new material of section c seems to favour g mixolydian after all. what follows in this g major section is an alternation between g major and a minor harmonies in each measure over what appears to be a dominant prolongation (d pedal) in the bass. with the return of section i' in m. , we are really back where we began, trying to discern if the tonal centre is g mixolydian or d dorian. the repeated alternations in the bass between g and a in the subsequent repeat of the section (i") leave this ambiguity still open. when section a" returns with its c major statement, the initial reading of g mixolydian as the home key again seems self-evident. this impression is only strengthened when c major (which has a tv - relationship with g mixolydian) continues throughout the new four-bar tag that follows the a statement from measures to . suddenly in this last measure, however, f# (that was earlier foreshadowed in m. ) appears; and, by the beginning of section d, we are back to our second reading of the piece in d. while neither d dorian nor g mixolydian contain an f#, it soon becomes apparent that the mode employed here is d mixolydian. not only is all of section d in d mixolydian, but the remainder of the piece (section e and its tag) is as well. figure . - tonality in "maria" form: i a b a' c i ' i" a" d e mode: d dorian c g dorian a - a aeolian g d dorian d dorian c d mixolydian d mixolydian while hinted at all the way through, it has not become clear until section d that the tonal centre of the piece is d (see figure . ). the tonal ambiguity experienced until this point explains the necessity of the extensive new material in sections d and e. "maria" needs to be end-weighted in d (mixolydian) to confirm the tonal centre (d dorian) of the introduction. in addition to subverting the jazz concepts of improvisation and tonality, siberry plays with the concept of swing in "maria." swing is the characteristic rhythmic feel in jazz created by off-beat attacks. the pickup notes are not eighths as traditionally found in western art music, but rather the last th of a triplet. the consistent employment of the triplet feel or "shuffle beat" in jazz creates a forward propulsion. the difference in the swing feel between the hot and cool schools is that hot jazz heavily accents beats and , while a cooler rhythmic approach can emphasizes either beats and or beats and . an emphasis on beats and , for example, can be found in such songs as gil evan's arrangement of "moon dreams" from birth of the cool (porter and ullman, ). because "maria" is played with even eighth and sixteenth notes, it is not swung in the traditional sense of a shuffle beat. nonetheless, there is a sense of forward propulsion. "maria" thus initially sounds representative of the cool school, with an emphasis on beats one and three; but in actuality the subdivision of the / measure is not into four sets of triplets (or / ). rather, because of the consistently syncopated anticipation of beat three, a lopsided two feel is created. the subdivision of this two feel is not into two sets of triplets as in swing, but rather two sets of eighth-notes grouped into threes, plus two extra eighth notes that by this time feel like an incomplete triplet. at the beginning of each measure in section a, for example, the eighth- note groupings of three can be heard on the texted syllables "ri" and "a" of "maria." the measure continues, however, subverting the "swing" feel that is established with the + eighth- note groupings. the eighth-note subdivisions created in each / bar therefore become + + instead of a normative triplet feel of + + + . when the third eighth-note grouping is cut short, the resulting feel is an emphasis on two beats ( and -and), followed by a quick three (on beat -and). because the third eight-note grouping of three is interrupted, so is the pseudo-swing feel. it seems that there are not four triplets in a measure, but two plus a duple. despite this subversion of the swing feel, the rhythms heard throughout "maria" nonetheless form a loose rhythmic propulsion, a feel that is not found in siberry's negotiation of other genres. this rhythmic drive is heard in both solo lines and the ensemble as a whole. in each statement of the a section, for example, both the vocal soloist and rhythm section anticipate the third beat with an eighth-note pickup that is tied over to beat three, thus not giving an attack on that beat. it is the anticipation of beat three that drives the rhythm forward. the same rhythmic propulsion caused by the anticipation of beat three is also found in: the entire ensemble in mm. - , the piano in the first section c as well as mm. - , and the bass in the statement of section i' beginning at m. . again beat three is not attacked in many of these measures. thus, while the pseudo-swing feel of "maria" is not actually created by triplet subdivisions, a rhythmic propulsion is still created. this propulsion is suggestive of cool-school swing. in cool jazz, the swing feel is highlighted by having the soloists anticipate and delay their rhythms in opposition to the straighter rhythms articulated in the rhythm section. not only is rhythmic propulsion facilitated by a soloist who creates a pattern that attacks ahead of the beat of the accompaniment, but the same propulsion is also felt when the soloist attacks behind the beat in opposition to the rhythm section. while the rhythms in siberry's vocal generally conform to the pseudo-triplet feel (of + + ) that accents beats and -and, there are moments in her solo that highlight beats of and . for example, siberry can be heard anticipating the steady propulsion (of beats and -and) of the accompaniment in beats and of mm. - and - and beats and of mm. and . she also subverts the later emphasis on beats and in the accompaniment via her anticipations in mm. and . finally, her vocal delays attacks by entering behind the rhythm section in mm. - , - , and - . the same cool-jazz approach to swing can be found in the trumpet solos. travers-smith, however, makes more of a point than siberry to emphasize beats and and to subvert the and emphasis of the rhythm section. rhythmic anticipation of beats and -and in the accompaniment can be found as the trumpet soloist emphasizes beats and in mm. , - , , , and ; while delayed attacks can be heard in mm. , , , and - . in "maria," then, the light swing feel of the soloists often works in opposition to the recurring emphasis on beats and in the rhythm section. siberry's subversion of an actual triplet swing feel has a larger resonance with her approach to timbre. as mentioned, the timbre of the trumpet was completely conventional with cool jazz. in addition, both siberry and travers-smith used conventional melodic figuration. siberry's uses of timbre, however, remains dissonant with cool-jazz conventions. as in her engagement with timbre heard in electro-pop and country-pop, siberry retains her folk-revival tone colour in "maria." this choice is particularly striking considering that in her prior negotiation of the latin genre on "are we dancing now? (map ht)" from bound by the beauty she affects a breathy vocal production, not unlike that of jazz singer helen merrill. if siberry had employed such a timbre in "maria" her vocal would have been much more convincing as cool jazz. finally, the lyrics of "maria" are atypical of jazz conventions. usually jazz standards are narratives about love and occasionally drugs or sex. the cool-jazz genre in particular adds elements of detached irony, as in "my funny valentine." the lyrics of "maria," however, neither deal with the topics mentioned above, nor form a linear narrative (see appendix , lyric ). rather, they are sparse thoughts that the narrator has about someone named "maria" ("maria is on my mind"). the identity of maria is even more ambiguous than the tonal centre of the song. is maria a child or a lover ("every time you run, every time you play"), an adult friend or mentor ("every time you sing/every time you pray"), an historical figure ("long ago and far away") or a religious icon ("long ago and here today")? we are never told. perhaps the narrator knows several people who embody each different personal characteristics but all share the same name. the other equally possible option is that one person named maria whom the narrator knows embodies each of these qualities (youth, worship, historicity, and consistency) at once. in any event, the enigmatic quality of the lyrics does tie into a certain sense of elusiveness affiliated with the urbane sophistication of cool jazz. while the use of obscure lyrics here parallels siberry's approach to electro-pop lyrics, the subtleness and lack of narrative in the lyrics of "maria" is different from conventional approaches to jazz lyrics. rather than this being a song about how the narrator feels about maria, it is a song about an altogether mysterious person, who remains unidentifiable. although "maria" differs from the cool-jazz conventions in some aspects of form, tonality, and the lyrics, the song is consonant with the musical parameters of melody, phrase length, instrumentation, and, most notably for siberry, metre. while there are more parameters consonant than dissonant with cool-jazz conventions, this song shows that perhaps siberry is more reluctant to identify herself with cool jazz. that the vocal timbre of "maria" is reminiscent of siberry's approach to folk revival and the form of the song is problematized to reflect her rock auteur desire to alter generic conventions is not surprising. these elements were also evident in "la jalouse," which was, however, more consonant with the folk-revival style than "maria" is with evoking jazz. yet the attempt is clearly perceivable, especially through the introduction of two strong jazz signifiers: the complex harmonies and the cool jazz trumpet sound. perhaps pop audiences who think of kenny g as jazz, would hear "maria" as jazz as well. to those expecting conventional jazz procedures, however, "maria" would perhaps disappointingly contain only jazz inflections. while "maria" may be seen as insufficiently conforming to genre conventions, one cannot help but admire siberry's adventurous approach to composition, her experimentation with fundamental musical parameters, and her fearless exploration of a vast array of contrasting genres. notes for chapter . the only album that had hitherto not been sampled into a computer once the technology was available was bound by the beauty, which was also recorded from live playing. . because siberry's songs are not in the form of a chorus that is repeated in its entirety several times (rather, the form consists of an unsystematic presentation of non-repeating and varied sections), this point is important in establishing the songs on maria as improvisations in the jazz idiom. . for a more thorough definition of the difficult-to-articulate concept of swing, see schuller , - . . colour tones are the notes that define the quality of the chord, for example the rd (indicating modality) and th. in jazz, it refers more often to the upper extensions of triads, namely, ths, llths, and ths. . cool jazz is also sometimes called "west coast jazz" for its many practitioners there. this latter term is a misnomer, however, since many soloists working in the cool-jazz genre did not live in the west. sometimes cool jazz is viewed by critics and musicians as a watered-down version of hot jazz. in part, this sentiment is based upon the fact that this genre sometimes contains the presence of european art music instruments and techniques. miles davis' albums birth of the cool ( - ) and sketches of spain ( ) combine the use of jazz techniques and figuration with such "art music" instruments as french horn and tuba; but davis' other cool jazz albums use neither art music instruments nor extended forms. ultimately, viewing cool jazz as a simplified version of hot jazz insinuates that white practitioners inherently dilute the jazz idiom of its "hot" black characteristics. bebop trumpeter dizzy gillespie, for example, commented that "musically speaking, the cool period always reminded me of white people's music. there was no guts in that music, not much rhythm either" (gillespie and fraser, ). in fact, however, many practitioners of the cool school were well respected black musicians such as lester young and miles davis. while cool jazz may prioritize melody over rhythm, whereas the inverse may be true of hot jazz, both are actually legitimate jazz styles. . the cool-jazz interest in exploring new timbres and writing for a group is also not to be confused with what gunther schuller calls the "third stream genre". this latter type of music, embraced by such composers as schuller, george russell, and harold shapero, quite specifically seeks to combine, or more frequently juxtapose, the jazz and art music idioms in multi- movement suites (porter and ullman, ). . in jazz improvisation, the trumpet and/or saxophone (and/or vocals) play the melody, while the bass, drums, and piano (and/or electric guitar or banjo) accompany as the rhythm section. the association of trumpets and saxophones with jazz is so close that, in popular culture, any track using one of these instruments as the lead is often conceived of as jazz. kenny g.'s music comes to mind here. while this so-called "lite jazz" is not considered a genre of jazz by musicians and critics, cool jazz certainly is. . the use of drums is not notated in the transcription in appendix . furthermore, the piano part notated consists almost exclusively of only the right hand. . "slow tango" (from tree) is another example which use mostly harmonic tones. . while eight-bar units are standard in jazz, there are notable exceptions, such as charlie parker's "koko" (itself based on the changes of ray noble's "cherokee"), which consists of sixteen-bar phrases (porter and ullman, ). . "the smithsonian collection mistakenly says that there are only two choruses. they err as well in saying that the final a of the first chorus is extended to nine-and-a-half bars. the band plays the final eight bars of the first chorus and continues through the first one-and-a-half measures—two if you include the silent beats—of the second chorus" (porter and ullman, ). . typically, both a and b sections of an a a b a form are measures in length. . there are subsequent jazz genres that also extend phrase lengths. antonio carlos jobim's famous a a b a bossa nova song, "the girl from ipanema" from getz/gilberto ( ) has a sixteen-bar bridge with eight-bar a sections, for example. . even a composer like chick corea who is known for his complex compositions uses forms no more complicated than abcad in such songs as "tones for joan's bones," recorded in (porter and ullman, ). . this approach to arranging the form can be heard in gil evans' setting of "donna lee" for claude thornhill's band (porter and ullman, ). . while a a b a forms are far more common than abac forms, the latter do exist. "singin' the blues," a song made famous in by cornetist bix beiderbecke and c-melody saxophonist frankie trubauer, is an example (porter and ullman, ). . it must be conceded that in bebop the head and out chorus are either - or -bar units, rather than just an -bar a section. . there is another possible reason for this near exact repetition of a, namely, that, contrary to her own opinion, siberry is a poor improviser. when given the opportunity of repeated changes in the third statement she does little to depart from the head of the tune in the way that a traditional jazz vocalist such as billie holiday would. siberry's lack of even minor embellishments are perhaps because, unlike conventional jazz singers, she is unable to think of any musical ideas on her feet. as we will see later on, however, this is simply not the case. . it should be noted that this is not an exact transposition; much of the original melody is kept and adapted to a major. . because there is no repetition of sections c, d, or e, it is impossible to discuss these as sites of improvisation. this is not to say that these sections were not improvised in practice (it seems clear from the figuration that the trumpet in sections c, d, and e and the piano in sections a", d, and e were improvised); but rather that, from our limited resources (a single recording with no clearly delineated chorus structure), it is impossible to compare and contrast different improvisational approaches to melody here. . the only factor that disallows section i as exemplifying the allotted site of improvisation is the fact that the harmonies in section i" are somewhat altered from the original statement of i (particularly in mm. , , and ). on the whole, however, the harmonies here are close enough to the original statement to still conceive of this section as i (it is not as if there was a key change), particularly since it is not uncommon for a pianist or guitarist to substitute third-related harmonies as part of the improvisational interplay between the soloists and the rhythm section. . it should be conceded, however, that it is difficult to make any conclusions from only the eight bars heard here. . the fact that modal music was first employed in the cool jazz genre by miles davis on kind of blue ( ) further adds to the consonance of modality and cool jazz (although this relationship is not exclusive. modality can also be found in the hot style of john coltrane). since modes lack leading tones, there can be no perfect cadences in modal music. the lack of full cadences makes it difficult to understand irregular forms in modal music, as we have just seen in the formal analysis of "maria." that this song is modal seems clear, however, because of the prominence of pedal tones in the bass in sections a" and c. . the practice of having a second section a in a key different from that of the first is not unprecedented. the standard "all the things you are" as well as clifford brown's "joy spring" both follow this procedure. these two standards, however, are both in a traditional a a b a form (porter and ullman, ). . "moon beams" was originally written by chummy mcgregor. . there is an additional syncopated pickup in the bass that drives the rhythm forward, but this time the anticipation is on the second beat (in the second measure) of the repeated figure in section e. chapter the funk genre r&b (l^ythrn and blues) is a hybrid idiom, as the name makes clear. (notes for chapter begin on p. ). the term was coined in as an umbrella term for a variety of african-american musical styles, including blues, gospel, and popular vocal groups. billboard first used "r&b" as a replacement for the pejorative term "race records," which had been used since the s. because r&b was an idiom that was marketed primarily to african-americans, it came to include any genre of black popular music (such as rhythm and blues, soul, and funk) that could not "cross over" from the black charts to the white pop charts due to either sexual innuendos in the lyrics or racism within the music business. from the beginning, artists engaging this idiom experienced racial prejudices and marginalization from the pop music industry. in the s, for example, many hits in the rhythm and blues genre did not receive success in the pop charts until covered by white rock 'n' roll singers. elvis presley's "good rockin' tonight" was a cover of roy brown's hit; and bill haley's "shake rattle and roll" was a cleaned-up version of the big joe turner original (romanowski and george-warren, ). still in the s, the funk genre frequently failed to cross over to the pop charts. for example, although parliament's "aqua boogie (a psychoalphadiscobetabioaquadoloop)" reached number one in the r&b charts in , it did not even make the top in the pop charts. the song's highest position there was number . more recently, r&b artists such as prince (despite massive crossed-over success in the pop charts) continue to write certain hits that only make the r&b charts or that do substantially better in the r&b charts than the pop charts. today r&b is seen as an idiom that has brought together a wide variety of musical genres, rather than a strict set of aesthetic criteria. these genres include electric or urban blues in the s, rhythm and blues in the s, soul in the s, funk in the s, and romantic ballads from the s to the present. one important r&b genre, funk, is engaged by siberry. as mentioned in chapter , after releasing when i was a boy, siberry turned to jazz in maria. since that album took such a short time to mix in the studio, siberry ended up having booked more time than she needed. with the extra studio time she recorded teenager, an album that consisted exclusively of folk-revival songs. this release was followed by an eclectic multi- genre studio album (a day in the life) and a trilogy of albums: tree, lips, and child. each of the albums in this new york trilogy was recorded live, as maria had been. the second of these albums, lips, employs the genre of funk extensively. the release of lips ( ) was timely, for it tapped into a late s revival of funk, both in music and fashion. the revival of funk music was inspired in part by the prevalence of funk samples in contemporary hip hop. interestingly, siberry herself did not initially intend to make a funk album: that was another thing on the lips album that i didn't expect to happen: the funk feel to it. that is nothing i have ever been attracted to. but that is sort of what happened with the players; and we went with it.... some of the songs had more funky, you know, guitar solos and that kind of stuff... and i just sort of went with that. but that's how i heard the music (siberry ). in light of siberry's self-proclaimed ambivalence to funk, it is interesting to note that in her approach to the musical parameters of "flirtin' is a flo-thing" from lips she conforms to all the expected conventions of the genre. it is possible that because the aesthetics of funk are so far removed from those of folk revival, siberry did not feel comfortable enough to challenge genre expectations. that seems unlikely, however, because she did feel comfortable enough to critique the genre. the exaggerated tone of "flirtin' is a flo-thing" critiques the machismo lyrics that are conventionally found in much funk. funk is a genre of music that contains a high level of eroticism. at times this has taken on a quality of machismo boasting. lyrics such as "sex machine" or "hot pants" by james brown and "up for the downstroke" by parliament emphasize male (hetero)sexual prowess. the boasting in funk lyrics is not unique to the genre, but rather comes from the larger african- diaspora tradition of toasting. toasting is the west african poetic tradition of boasting about oneself, often in the context of a verbal competition with another poet. in african-diaspora contexts such as reggae and rap, the d. j. usually brags about his or her artistic skill, sexual prowess, or financial success (george, ). funk lyrics did not contain only such sexual display, but they were also connected to s political currents, such as black nationalist sentiments. the emphasis on african- diaspora traits in funk (which will be discussed more thoroughly below) made it uniquely suited as a vehicle for black nationalism. as such, the same funk artists boasting about their sexual prowess, also frequently made overt socio-political comments, for example, james brown's "say it loud, i'm black and i'm proud" or "get up, get into it and get involved" and parliament's "chocolate city." the last of these, for instance, discusses how inner cities across the united states are being taken over by african-americans. whether televised or not, a revolution was already taking place. black nationalism in the united states had a strong affiliation with the nation of islam (not) and the five percent nation in the s, two organizations that placed women in positions of subservience to men. interestingly, the patriarchal nature of s black nationalism often found its way into r&b genres such as funk (decker, ). indeed, funk is a genre that has been associated almost exclusively with male performers, producers, and composers. as such, pro-black stances frequently became tied up in machismo posturing. for instance, the verse of james brown's "funky president (people it's bad)" from reality ( ) begins by commenting on the present-day social scene: "stock market's going up. job's going down/ain't no funkin' jobs to be found." in the chorus, brown's resolution to the problem expresses typical black nationalist rhetoric: people, people we got to get up before we go under. let's get together. get some land. raise our food, just like the man. save our money. do like the mob. put up a fight on the job. but in the bridge of the same song brown suddenly shifts from the political to the sexual (before returning to the chorus), saying: hey, lord. turn up the funk. praise the lord. get sexy, sexy. get funky and dance. love me baby. love me nasty. don't make it once, but can you make it twice? i like it! the lack of female participation in funk is particularly striking when compared to the role of women in hip hop from the s to the present. this genre is just as political and just as male as funk, but women have found a greater role. the practice of toasting, for example, can be heard from such female rappers as queen latifah (in "ladies first" from all hail the queen in ) and lauryn hill (in "everything is everything" from the miseducation oflauryn hill in ). in this regard, it is interesting to see what a woman's negotiation of funk would sound like, particularly that of a white woman, an outsider on two counts. toward that end, "flirtin' is a flo-thing" from lips will be analyzed. as an african-diaspora style, funk engages the aesthetics of west-african music by the african slaves who were forced to come to the new world. there are several musical parameters in funk that have their origin in west africa. first of all, the west african use of timbre was retained in african-diaspora repertoires. in west african musical aesthetics, coloring a sound by "dirtying" the tone is desirable.... many west african instruments that would be pure of sound are modified to make them rattle or buzz when vibrating. for example, the mbira, a hand-held resonating box with metal tines that are played with the thumbs and forefingers, usually produces a clear, pure tone. it is a common practice to loosely attach several beverage bottle caps to the instrument so that its vibration produces a buzzing sound (joyner, ). timbre is also crucial to creating the funk sound. it is characterized by wah-wah guitars and a round-sounding (or "phat") bass, which often uses an idiomatic thumb-popping technique pioneered by larry graham of sly and the family stone (brackett a, ). the timbre of the conventional funk vocal rejects the western european aesthetic of a pure tone in favour of a highly emotional style featuring glissandos, scoops, bends, melismas, and shouts. james brown's vocals, for example, emphasize a speech-like line punctuated by percussive shouts. brown's downplaying of melody makes the presence of horn riffs in his music all the more important, as the horns provide the melody that the vocal shuns. on the other hand, horns are less necessary for a funk song with a more lyrical melodic concept, such as the melismatic gospel-influenced style of stevie wonder. secondly, west african music is characterized by the use of the call-and-response technique (schuller , - ). in this practice a leader usually performs one line, while a group answers in response. the call-and-response singing style was acculturated in such african-american idioms as field hollers, work songs, blues, and gospel. heavily influenced by gospel, funk typically alternates between a vocal soloist and a group. the soloist takes on the role of the west african master dnimmer (schuller , ), telling the group when to enter and indicating what to play (for example, a repetition of the soloist's line or the number of horn shots). in this sense funk is improvisatory. although funk songs consist of only a few sections, the order in which the sections appear is variable in each performance. in funk, the group(s) alternating with the soloist may consist of back-up vocalists, horns, and/or the rhythm section. because of the interplay between these sections, the instrumentation of funk is of primary importance to the genre. a lot of players are necessary to create an energetic soloist-group dynamic; therefore funk bands tend to be large. the instrumentation of funk typically consists of drums, bass, guitar, organ, vocal soloist, horns, vocal group, and sometimes synthesizers. a third west african aesthetic parameter found in african-diaspora countries is that of motoric rhythms suited to dance music. because west african music is primarily used for dance, it has a repetitive rhythmic structure that creates a hypnotic effect. this effect facilitates entering into trance-like states (joyner, ). trance music, as such style have been called, is characterized by a rhythmic pattern that is continuously repeated, often for hours in some african styles. despite this repetition there is also variety created by the interaction of individual parts. seven to eleven instrumentalists each play a different repeating rhythmic pattern and when the separate parts sound together, they create polyrhythms (schuller , ). if an individual player alters his or her rhythms slightly, cross rhythms are often created. the result is variety amongst repetition. in african-diaspora music, leroi jones calls this phenomenon the "changing same" (jones , ). funk music creates the effect of the "changing same" by using extended vamps on a single, complex harmony, including ths, ths, and other harmonic extensions. the harmony contains enough added tones to create an intriguing sonority, but this chord is rarely varied. new vamps come and go (as signaled by the bandleader-cum-master drummer, who is often the lead vocalist), but the chord changes infrequently, if at all. the harmonic repetition of funk is reinforced via even phrase lengths and a constant / metre, which in many cases emphasizes the first beat of every bar (brackett a, ). the repeated emphasis on the down beat in funk creates a "groove" that is highlighted by a syncopated vamp on the electric bass. the degree to which the bass is placed in the foreground of the mix in funk songs was hitherto unprecedented in popular music at the height of funk's popular success in the mid-seventies. despite the consistent harmonies and the extended use of vamps in the bass, funk music is not static. variety occurs, for example, when an old vamp ends and a new one begins. change is also experienced on the timbral level via the "layered riffing" of different instruments, particularly the horns and vocal group (keil and feld, ). that being said, however, it is important to point out that a "groove" exists not to set up variation but rather to enhance repetition (schuller , ). the repetition in funk highlights the relationship between music and the body. in west african culture, music does not exist as an entity separate from daily life as in western art music, which is listened to while sitting contemplatively in a concert hall. on the contrary, west african music is performed for both dance and work. it serves "not only religion but all phases of daily life, encompassing birth, death, work, and play" (schuller , ). in direct opposition to western art music that philosophically embraces "transcendence" from the body, the highly rhythmic music of west africa emphasizes movement and life within the here and now that is the body (mcclary , ). funk took this interactive view of music and the body as its starting point and, from this premise, evolved the concept of "groove," an invitation to move in an eternal present that is reminiscent of trance. because it celebrates dance and the body, the funk "groove" in turn has close associations with arousal and sex. whereas western dance forms control body movements and sexuality itself with formal rhythms and innocuous tunes, black music expresses the body, hence sexuality, with a directly physical beat and an intense, emotional sound—the sound and beat are felt rather than interpreted via a set of conventions. black musicians work, indeed, with a highly developed aesthetic of public sexuality (frith , ). with the loudness of the bass in funk, the sound and beat are indeed felt directly in the body. in turn, sexuality is dealt with quite openly in funk. indeed, the colloquial meaning of "funk" refers to "strong aromas, particularly of a bodily and sexual nature" (brackett a, ). in addition to references to dance and sex, or perhaps because of them, the lyrics of funk are filled with african-american dialect and slang. being influenced by west african trance, funk lyrics build up mantra-like statements rather than form linear narratives. funk lyrics do not tell a story, but rather repeat slogans about dance, sex, the narrator, society, or black power politics. james brown's "say it loud i'm black and i'm proud," for example, manages to embrace several of these topics. genre in "flirtin is a flo-thing" siberry's song "flirtin' is a flo-thing," from lips, conveys the singer's ambivalence to funk. one the one hand, siberry adheres to the musical parameters of funk, while on the other, her lyrics break with funk conventions. in the lyrics of this song siberry engages an appropriate topic with the requisite language, but consciously assumes a tone that not only subverts the conventions of funk lyrics but also challenges the masculine presence in funk, one that may well be a premise of the very genre itself. even before the release of lips, siberry was already thinking of funk in terms of gender, specifically connecting it with masculinity. when siberry released when i was a boy, her first album to experiment with the funk genre (in such songs as "temple," "all the candles in the world," and "an angel stepped down"), she commented: this record . . . is more accessible to the people who drive red camaros. it is also more masculine. before, my work has always had a sense of graciousness and hospitality, like the good mother. i don't think i could be called a female singer- songwriter with this record (arlington, ). siberry's fans might not recognize her as the same singer-songwriter by the release of lips, as she had absorbed wholesale the musical elements of funk. indeed, for the first time siberry seems reluctant to subvert the musical expectations of funk. "flirtin' is a flo-thing," not surprisingly then, has an over-all consonant fit with the funk style, exhibiting six parameters consonant with funk conventions and only two dissonant parameters. siberry's choice to retain genre conventions may in part be due to her unease at moving so far away from the aesthetic parameters of her folk-revival roots. more likely, siberry was influenced by the musicians she was working with at the time. before looking at siberry's negotiation of funk lyrics, we will turn to her engagement with funk musical conventions. first of all, the instrumentation of "flirtin' is a flo-thing" is consonant with the generic conventions of funk in that it uses a large band made up of bass, drums, guitar, keyboard, and three singers. in the vocals, siberry takes the lead, but uses two back-up singers to good effect. no horns appear in this song, which is not surprising, given that the melody is more sung than shouted (particularly in the group vocals). the horns are not as necessary to provide the melodic line as they are in many james brown recordings. indeed, the keyboards fulfill the role of the horns. a piano supplies the harmonic riffs, and a sustained organ rounds out the ensemble sound. secondly, the timbre of the instruments in "flirtin' is a flo-thing" is consonant with funk conventions. the syncopated electric bass sound is "phat" and foregrounded in the mix. the tone of the electric guitar is so fuzzy that it is often difficult to discern the pitch, such as in mm. and (see the transcription in appendix ). the guitar solos also contain the scooping (mm. , , and ), melismas (mm. , - , and ), and bends (m. ) indicative of the funk genre. siberry's vocal solos sound more extroverted than her typically intimate folk revival timbre. she exhibits a sassy tone that contains, on the one hand, the almost speech-like quality (mm. , , , and ) found in the funk style of brown (but without the percussive approach), and, on the other hand, wonder-influenced melismas (m. ) and glissandos (mm. and ). thirdly, the use of the call-and-response technique in "flirtin' is a flo-thing" is consonant with funk conventions. that technique is used prominently between siberry and her back-up singers, especially in the song's two b sections as well as section b' (see figure . above for the form of "flirtin' is a flo-thing"). in the fourth statement of section i (mm. - ) all the vocalists create an active interplay. the group vocal (designated "v. " in the transcription) responds to the vocal soloist (indicated as "v. ") in such a seamless fashion that at times it is difficult to discern one voice from another. in addition to the interaction between siberry and the vocal group, call-and-response can be heard between the various instrumental soloists during their respective sections in the middle of the piece. for instance, repetitions of the i' section feature a dynamic interaction between the bassist and pianist. first the bassist solos in the first statement of section i' (mm. - ) with the piano accompanying. then, in the repeat of section i' (mm. - ), the piano solos with the bass accompanying. fourthly, the presence of the "changing same" in "flirtin' is a flo-thing" is consonant with funk conventions. the repetition of a d minor triad with various harmonic extensions creates a steady harmonic backdrop through most of the song. in section b' (mm. - ), a g pedal sounds, helping to establish the g mixolydian mode. the only moment in which either one of the two tonal pedals is absent is the descending chromatic bass line heard in both statements of section b, which creates shifts between d minor and d dorian. the consistent use of regular phrase lengths (see figure . below) further adds to the "changing same" effect. it is remarkable for siberry that the only alteration from the standard eight-bar phrases in "flirtin' is a flo-thing" is the addition of a single four-bar phrase in section b". embracing such simplicity is contrary to her usual practice. similarly, the unvaried use of / metre throughout the piece (except in m. ) creates a continuity that, while typical of funk, is atypical of siberry's auteur approach to genre. figure . - phrase lengths in "flirtin' is a flo-thing" form: i a i a b i i' i' a b' b" i a b i a no. of mm.: + another source of repetition facilitating the "changing same" in "flirtin' is a flo-thing" is the emphasis on the down beat of every measure, which creates a consistent "groove" throughout the piece. the groove is most apparent in the bass vamps, which are foregrounded in the mix as is expected of the funk genre. while each bass vamp emphasizes the first beat of the measure, there is still rhythmic variety among the different bass vamp patterns used throughout the song (except for sections b' and b"). for example (see appendix ), while the vamp in the first section a (beginning at m. and indicated as "a" in figure . below) is just a melodic variation on the pattern heard in the introduction (beginning in m. ), by the second statement of i (beginning at m. ), the rhythm of the bass vamp (labeled in figure . as "b") is delayed in the third beat. since both vamps "a" and "b" emphasize the d tonic, the chromatic descent of the bass (designated "c") in section b creates variety. the use of steady eighth notes in the bass vamp of this section also creates an entirely new rhythmic feel, one unusual for funk, while retaining the emphasis on the down beat. finally, rhythmic variety is heard in the bass solo (shown as "s") that begins at section i' (starting at m. ) and continues in a more muted fashion with a variation on the "b" vamp under the piano solo. figure . - rhythmic variation of bass vamps in "flirtin' is a flo-thing" form: i a i a b i i' i' a b' b" i a b i a vamp: a a b a c b s b ' a / / b a c b b mm.: the most striking consonance with generic conventions in this song is siberry's approach to form. in all the other songs analyzed previously, form was the musical parameter subverted most consistently and most extensively. the approach to form in "flirtin' is a flo-thing, however, completely embraces funk expectations. "flirtin' is a flo-thing" is built upon only three themes (see the form in figure . above), and so contains a lot of sectional repetition that, while completely counter to siberry's usual practice, remains typical of funk. the frequent repetition of the three sections builds up the continuity or "same" feel enjoyed by the funk listener. in contrast to these consonant parameters, there are two aspects of "flirtin' is a flo-thing" that are dissonant with funk conventions. the first is the lack of a spectacular stage show. although siberry's -piece band for the live recording of this song was large, they did not put on the requisite highly-energetic show. nor was the band dressed in the type of clothing that has come to be associated with funk performance contexts. as mentioned earlier, the late s witnessed a revival of funk in popular culture. intimately associated with this musical revival was a return of the costumes that had been fashionable in the s. these were not the conservative suits of early james brown but rather the flashy metallic and polyester materials, the halter tops, platform shoes, and large sun-glasses associated with such funk bands as parliament. in siberry's band none of the performers wore spectacular costumes but rather street clothes. this visual dissonance aside, the musical parameters of the song are surprisingly consonant with genre expectations. the sarcastic tone of the lyrics, however, creates a second dissonance with funk conventions. before addressing the issue of tone, it should be noted that the lyrics of "flirtin' is a flo- thing" (see appendix , lyric ) are consonant with funk conventions in three respects. first of all, the lyrics use slang phrases and colloquial pronunciations. not only are the 'g's dropped from the ends of such words as, "glowin' ", "burnin'", and "hummin' ", but in the title and first line of the song the "flow" of the slang expression "flo-thing" is spelled in dialect as "flo." the spelling change here is unprecedented for siberry, and as such shows siberry's close attention to the way in which language is conventionally used in the funk genre. secondly, the lyrics of "flirtin' is a flo-thing" make statements rather than form a linear narrative, a practice that was seen earlier in siberry's electro-pop and jazz lyrics. instead of this being a story about a sexual relationship or experience, the narrator merely provides declarations such as "flirtin' is a flo-thing" and "i like to flirt with men." thirdly, sexual metaphors are used in section b ("i like to keep the fires hot/i like to keep the coals a-glowin'/i like to keep the furnace a-burnin'/i like to keep the engine a- hummin' "). the use of sexual metaphors is an old practice in the blues and popular song, especially such r&b genres as urban blues, rhythm and blues, soul, and funk. thus the topic (and imagery) of the song has a consonant fit with the conventional lyrics of funk. indeed, the images of heat ("fires" and "coals") and machines ("furnace" and "engine") could be lifted from any number of brown songs (such as "hot pants" or "sex machine"). although funk lyrics are rarely the stuff of poetry, the metaphors siberry uses in the b section of "flirtin' is a flo-thing" border on cliche. the performance acknowledges as much. their presentation in the second statement at m. , for example, seems to mock the text. indeed, when the back up vocalists repeat the word "hot" three times in a furtive whisper, it is far too corny to be taken seriously, similar to the winking touches heard in "everything reminds me of my dog." the use of trite materials in this section is not indicative of siberry's general approach. hackneyed metaphors are therefore the listener's first clue that the tone in siberry's lyrics may be one of pastiche. certainly it is contrary to that found in conventional funk lyrics. this hunch is born out in the b' section, where the lyrics begin in the list-like fashion seen previously in "everything reminds me of my dog." the narrator tells us seriously: "i like to flirt with men/i like to flirt with women." instead of this revelation striking the listener as sexy, the tone is quite matter-of-fact, as if the narrator is discussing the weather. this blase tone is continued as the narrator says: "i like to flirt with old folks, young folks." just when this list has begun to seem unusually inclusive, the narrator moves into the realm of the absurd, saying: "i even like to flirt with trees/i like to flirt with rocks, bird, bees/i like to flirt with a good plate of linguini/i like to flirt with a good suit, double-stitched, good linen." siberry's lyrics have such an exaggerated quality, it is almost as if she is making fun of the funk genre, as she did in the country song discussed in chapter . by the time the narrator concludes with "i guess that... what i'm gettin' at is/i like to flirt with everything," it is clear that she had never been serious about flirting in the first place; rather, the tone of the lyrics has been playful all along. the narrator's lack of seriousness about flirting being "a flo-thing" has a larger resonance with the complete stop in the "flow" or "groove" heard in m. . the rhythmically-even repetition of the g in the bass has become so incessant by section b" that the sense of down beat is completely lost. the rhythmic delay in siberry's line ("v. ") in m. only adds to the metric disorientation. by the time she begins her melisma in m. it is as if time has come to a complete stand-still. this sense of temporal disorientation is capitalized upon with the switch in metre to / for a single measure (m. ). the stasis felt by the listener here could quite possibly be indefinite; and this experience makes the return of the "b" vamp in m. all the more fulfilling. the suspension of time effectively creates a sense of tension (and finally release). ultimately, however, the halt in the groove serves to draw attention to the sarcastic tone of the lyrics, which criticizes machismo funk texts. with the use of worn sexual metaphors and the hyperbolic length of the list of people the narrator "like[s] to flirt with," siberry is clearly criticizing conventional funk lyrics. the critique of funk manifested by siberry's tone seems to support her earlier statement that funk "is nothing i have ever been attracted to" (siberry ). while at first glance her repeated employment of the genre seems to contradict her ambivalence to funk, her treatment of "flirtin' is a flo-thing" is suggestive. while siberry likes the masculine sound of funk (and therefore returns to it frequently), she is rather turned off by the tradition of machismo lyrics and the lack of a significant female presence in the genre. despite her love-hate relationship with funk, "flirtin' is a flo-thing" does manage to create an overall consonant fit with funk musical expectations. this fit is particularly aided by the parameters of instrumentation, timbre, harmony, and form as well as the employment of "groove" and the call and response technique. furthermore, it seems clear from the example of "flirtin' is a flo-thing" that, while siberry does not come from an african-american musical tradition, she is quite capable of convincingly evoking funk. the fact that siberry avoided subverting the conventional funk form shows that she is capable of sacrificing her usual rock auteur approach to songwriting to conform to generic expectations. indeed, her capacity to create a conventional call-and-response practice and "groove" to evoke funk shows her flexibility as a composer and performer. this is not to say that siberry is a purist. clearly her interest in funk only extends as far as working within it to her own critical ends. the need to alter the metre and phrase length, even just a little bit for fun, found in the interruption of groove in "flirtin' is a flo-thing," has a resonance with siberry's similar approach in country, as discussed in the analysis of "everything reminds me of my dog." siberry's free subversion of the tone of funk lyrics finally represents a critique of the genre. siberry's ambivalence to funk, however, makes her successful negotiation of its complex musical parameters seem all the more impressive and her capacity for generic experimentation all the more boundless. notes for chapter . while "r&b" is used as an umbrella term for african-american music, "rhythm and blues" refers to a specific genre of music that was prominent during the late s and the s (see rye ). my usage here, however, is exclusively as a term for african-american idioms, particularly those that either do not cross over to or appear only briefly in the pop music charts (romanowski and george-warren, ). from to the term "soul" rather than "r&b" was used by billboard to describe popular african-american musical idioms. my use of "soul" here, however, refers to a more specific genre of gospel-influenced music that was popular in the s (romanowski and george-warren, ). . the fact that historically r&b has been a ghettoized idiom has meant that r&b songs have been free to address social issues in their lyrics in a way that more popular black cross-over styles such as motown and disco have not dared to. for example, the double entendre that is generally prevalent in r&b lyrics moved from the traditional realm of sexual innuendo (found in the genre of urban blues) to that of integrationist civil rights references in the soul genre of r&b in the s. indeed, the lyrics of much of this music (for example, "aretha franklin's "respect") contained a sort of triple entendre, addressing issues of gender, sexual relationships, and social rights simultaneously. in the s, the radical stance of the black power movement could be found in certain lyrics in the funk genre of r&b. today such black nationalism is mainly found in types of rap lyrics in hip hop. . funk is a genre of r&b characterized by prominent up-tempo, syncopated bass vamps, soul vocals accompanied by syncopated (horn) riffs, an emphasis on the downbeat (called "groove," as opposed to emphasizing every beat, as in disco), a single and often complex harmony, an even subdivision of the beat (as opposed to the use of triplets found in jazz and early soul) and lyrics making frequent social commentary, often of a black nationalist nature. . even after "i wanna be your lover" hit number in the pop charts in , such prince singles as "uptown" (# , r&b, ) and "let's work" (# r&b, ) placed only in the r&b charts. furthermore, prince songs such as "soft and wet" (# pop, # r&b, ), "i wanna be your lover" (# pop, # r&b, ), and "controversy" (# pop, # r&b, ) did noticeably better in the r&b charts than the pop charts. . with the rise of the hip-hop idiom in the s, r&b began to define itself in opposition to "sampled music." "sampled" music is music that is not recorded live. rather samples can be thought of as sounds (such as voices, instruments, or noise) that are "found." they are usually fragments that can easily be manipulated (for example, a bass riff). samples are stored in a digital instrument (usually a keyboard) called a sampler. from here they can be cut-and-paste into a computer to form a song. in the hip hop idiom, for example, a fragment of music (usually a short melodic pattern or "hook" played on one instrument) is taken by the d. j. from a pre- existing recording and added to his or her new song, creating a background for the lyrics of the rapper. the sampled background music is called hip hop. (hip hop is also a term describing the larger rap culture, however, including break dancing and graffiti.) since sampling does not necessarily require a performer to play an instrument, r&b came to define "authenticity" in traditional terms, such as the capacity of a performer to play an instrument, sing virtuosically, or write songs. in this regard, r&b has come to be seen as a conservative idiom (romanowski and george-warren, ). indeed, unlike in its soul and funk genres, r&b no longer addresses black nationalist issues. these concerns are more frequently heard in rap and hip hop culture. . borrowing funk samples can be seen as a musical homage to the genre by hip hop artists, particularly in light of the fact that rappers such as public enemy, ice cube, lakim shabazz and x-clan have continued to address black nationalist concerns in their lyrics. . african-diaspora is an adjective that refers to black musical idioms and genres based on a west-african musical aesthetic that became altered when transplanted abroad, as slaves were transported from west africa to work in the colonies of various imperialist countries. because slaves ended up in countries other than the united states (including south american, latin america, european countries, canada, and the caribbean) the term african-diaspora is preferred to that of african-american. for a thorough discussion of the relationship between west african music and jazz that is framed in terms of african-diaspora aesthetics (although he does not use this term), see chapter of gunther schuller's early jazz ( ). an example of an african- diaspora characteristic found not only in funk, but also in the blues, reggae, rap, etc. is toasting. . i am using the term "black nationalism" in the manner of jeffrey louis decker, who views it as an ideology that recognizes the official embrace of racism in the united states, both during slavery and in the present (most powerfully represented by the police brutality forced upon rodney king). black nationalism draws upon the iconography of s black power militancy (decker, ) to advocate "the creation of self-sufficient institutions that can empower the african-american community" (decker, ). this empowerment is inspired by the memory of glorious ancient african empires such as egypt "in order to generate racial pride and awareness in the struggle over injustice in america" (decker, ). . the five percent nation is a splinter group from the nation of islam. rather than following the teachings of elijah muhammad like other african-american moslems, five percenters "follow the rival teachings of clarence x, who claimed in the s that god was to be found not in some external or monolithic force (allah) but within the asiatic black man himself (decker, ). . it is telling that given the prominent role of women in the s civil rights and political movements, women were not active as composers or performers in the funk genre. certainly there was a precedence for a female voice from such women as aretha franklin in the soul genre already in the s. soul, however, is linked more with integrationist civil rights than with separatist black nationalism, which is connected to funk. it seems clear the christian tradition of such civil rights leaders as martin luther king was more accepting of female leadership than the islamic tradition of malcolm x. jeffrey louis decker argues that lack of female participation in black nationalism is reproduced in rap music even today. he points out that the marginalization of women in black separatist politics has a long history that spans from malcolm x ( - ) to contemporary rap music, such as public enemy ( -present). while there are many female rap musicians concerned with racial oppression, few of these espouse black nationalist rhetoric. even in instances where women's participation is found in nationalist music, their presence does not change their subordinate position. indeed, the inclusion of sister souljah into the rap group public enemy from - only reaffirmed their stance that the war against racial oppression should be fought by men (decker, ). souljah explains: "where are all the good black men? they are missing in action because we are at war! . . . the number one thing we must do is rebuild the black man" (decker, ). the exclusion of women from leadership positions is also evident in the music of funk. many parliament songs, such as "bop gun (endangered species)" and "up for the downstroke," for example, use female back-up singers; but women are rarely heard singing lead. . of course, these artists do not espouse nationalist rhetoric. rather than develop a feminist critique of african-american musical genres associated with black nationalism, however, this chapter takes as its starting point the lack of female participation in funk. . to hear a black woman engaging the funk genre, see me'shell ndegeocello's plantation lullabies ( ) and peace beyond passion ( ). it should be noted, however, that her music intentionally blurs the boundaries between hip hop, acid jazz, and funk. while "stay" from the latter album sounds like a female version of barry white, "the way" and "leviticus: faggot" are closer to traditional funk. . a scoop is similar to a glissando, but it approaches the note from below, rather than above. . this is not to imply that wonder never uses horns. on the contrary, such songs as "sir duke," "i wish," and "superstition" by wonder all contain horn lines. . like swing, groove is a difficult concept to explain. it is similar to swing in that its rhythms create in a listener a bodily response to the music. keil and feld describe groove as a "vital drive"(keil and feld, ). . siberry's song "freedom is gold" from lips is a good example of a song in the funk genre. it embodies the irresistible urge to dance with its fast, syncopated bass line and exhibits the requisite sassy tone in the lyrics (see appendix , lyric ). the narrator of this song at once combines slang lyrics with a don't-mess-with-me tone, all the while celebrating personal empowerment. while the lyrics of the song reflect the optimistic tone of funk, the "freedom" that the song addresses is obscure enough to be conceived as socio-political, sexual, or artistic liberation. while as a white person siberry is clearly not alluding explicitly to black politics; as a woman, her concern with freedom could be a feminist allusion. since this song was written shortly after she left warner, however, it is likely that the song refers to artistic liberation. . in this recording, the back-up singers are just as foreground in the mix as siberry, creating the necessary balance for the call-and-response interplay. indeed, in the riffs of the a section and the improvisation in the fourth i section (from mm. to ), since siberry takes the lower part, she is often less audible than the two back-up singers with the higher tessitura. . because of the melodic descent and the new rhythmic feel of steady eighth notes, section b could be conceived of as the bridge of the song, while section a is clearly the chorus, and section i, the instrumental. compared to the preeminence of "groove" in the funk genre, however, form is an unimportant parameter. in addition, because of the variety of potential forms of a song (subject to the changing conditions of each performance), form is really not a fixed parameter funk. chapter seven conclusions having analyzed in depth siberry's negotiation of five different genres, conclusions can be drawn about general trends in her approach toward genre. first of all, siberry approaches genre as a rock auteur. since not all musical parameters are altered in the same manner, it is clear that her approach to musical elements is not genetically based. in other words, the fact that a given musical parameter is treated differently in each context shows that siberry looks at individual songs as unique compositions. nevertheless, it is undeniable that, as an auteur, siberry retains genre prototypes in part as a way of manipulating and subverting their expectations in order to add complexity to her songs. the parameters most frequently problematized are metre, instrumentation, and form. with the exception of "maria," all of the songs discussed above incorporate mixed metre in contrast to the expectations of the genre. in the instances of the country-pop and funk genres, the one-measure change of metre hardly seems worth the effort. but this attention to detail conveys all the more siberry's irresistible urge to add dollops of the unexpected. there are also frequent departures from expectations in regard to instrumentation, again with the exception of "maria." while each song adheres to conventional instrumentation, there are either instruments missing or instruments added that are not traditionally found in each genre. for example, "la jalouse" highlights the voice and guitar, but it also utilizes electric bass and drums. "goodbye" employs the usual synthesizers and rhythm section but then includes an acoustic piano. "everything reminds me of my dog" consists of a contemporary country-pop lineup, while interpolating the old-time dulcimer. "flirtin' is a flo-thing" contains conventional funk instruments, but lacks the horn section. again, this variety of instrumentation shows that each song is, in fact, a genuine creation, rather than a faithful reproduction of a genre. a parameter problematized in each of the examples analyzed, with the exception of "flirtin' is a flo-thing," is that of form. "la jalouse" and "everything reminds me of my dog" include two pop-derived bridges each, whereas "goodbye" contains a bridge section as long as all the other sections combined. "maria," in contrast, is sectional in nature and, as such, lacks the traditional chorus structure that facilitates jazz improvisation. while siberry's tendency is to add complexity to the parameters of metre, instrumentation, and form, her approach to rhythm and phrase length varies. for example, in the country idiom syncopation is uncommon, but quite a bit of syncopation is evident at the beginning of each phrase of "everything reminds me of my dog." in "maria," siberry subverts a conventional sense of swing by setting up a pseudo-triplet feel at the beginning of every bar only to break it down at the end of the same. furthermore, while the even phrase lengths of "maria" are completely consonant with the expectations of cool jazz, the asymmetrical phrase lengths of "goodbye" are quite dissonant with the conventions of electro-pop. as these examples suggest, siberry's rock auteur approach is not simply about making popular music more complex—indeed, most rock auteurs express themselves firmly within the boundaries of a genre's conventions. rather, siberry's voice is heard in how she consistently utilizes certain themes in her lyrics and approaches specific musical parameters across contrasting genres. siberry's auteur stance does not simply translate into an intentional subverting of generic expectations. she has said that she does not "like the attitude of breaking rules just for the sake of breaking them" (ouellette, ). the above analyses show many instances in which siberry consistently embraces generic conventions. conformity with generic expectations can be heard clearly in the parameter of tonality. in the genres where tonality is expected (electro-pop and country-pop), she uses major and minor keys. similarly, where modality is a generic option (cool jazz, funk, and folk revival), she uses modes. the ways in which she employs tonality is also often conventional, especially in the country-pop, funk and folk revival examples. in each song discussed (with the possible exception of "la jalouse"), siberry clearly evokes one specific genre, rather than trying to form new and innovative hybrids by mixing and matching different genres (notes for chapter begin on p. ). although none of the songs epitomizes a genre (which is virtually impossible and certainly not the goal of this study), each of them, with the exception of "maria," has an overall consonance with a genre prototype. even "la jalouse," which combines the instrumentation of folk revival and jazz, adheres closely to one genre, folk revival. siberry evokes genre through what can be called primary signifiers, meaning the musical parameters that are easiest for the casual rock listener to hear and recognize. primary signifiers include tonality, live staging practice, and instrumentation. for example, the difference between tonality and modality is something the untrained ear can hear, if not articulate. hearing unusual modes in a pop melody (such as phrygian or lydian) will seem odd to a fan, for whom the melody does not go to where they expected it. hearing the same song in an ionian (major) or aeolian (minor) setting, however, will seem as "natural" as hearing dorian or mixolydian modes in funk. in the country-pop genre, siberry's use of the bright key of a major is consonant with the expectations of tonality, while modality is expected and delivered in the folk-revival song. among the live performance context signifiers, siberry's dyed spiked hair and shiny clothes as well has her use of properties and choreography typifies the electro-pop genre, whereas the donning of street clothes and playing in a small venue with sparse staging suits the folk-revival genre. finally, in terms of instrumentation, the trumpet, piano, bass, drums, and the vocal in "maria" forms a standard jazz quintet, while the use of vocals, electric bass, drums, piano, and electric guitar evoke a contemporary country-pop band. the parameters that are not as obvious to the casual rock listener can be called secondary signifiers. in her auteur approach to different genres, siberry generally manipulates these elements. given that these parameters are not readily grasped by many rock listeners, the subversion of secondary signifiers constitutes only a minor disruption of expectations, leaving the fundamental aspects of genre intact. secondary signifiers include such parameters as harmony, form, meter, and phrase length. because the last three of these all require the ability to perceive metrical and rhythmic structures, they are among the most difficult parameters for the untrained rock listener to associate with a given genre. counting is not something which the average rock listener does when listening for pleasure, so an alteration of the form, metre, or phrase length is unlikely to be detected. even if the casual rock listener does notice an alteration in a secondary signifier, he or she will likely attribute it to a change in the melody or a disruption of the pulse. he or she will be unable to discern the actual harmonic, metrical, or rhythmical origin of the disturbance. furthermore, before the rock listener has even had time to consider what "that" disruption was, it has already passed and been replaced once again by the pleasure of easily-recognizable repetition. by consistently manipulating secondary rather than primary signifiers, siberry is at once able to evoke a genre and play with it in such a way as to achieve the kind of musical interest associated with the rock auteur. part of what makes a singer-songwriter in popular music an auteur is the creation of an individual, personal sound or style, what middleton calls their "idiolect" (middleton , ). this sound depends on the consistent manipulation of the parameters of timbre, lyrics, and melody. a popular singer-songwriter's allegiance to his or her own sound, regardless of which genre is engaged, is key to maintaining fan devotion over time. yet in order to have a lengthy career in popular music, it is necessary to stay relevant. like other rock auteurs such as bob dylan or joni mitchell, siberry has done so by embracing different musical genres. but ultimately, to combat the discomfort of those generic changes, maintaining the individual auteur's unique sound has helped each of these performers to keep their artistic status and musical careers alive. while the parameters of timbre, lyrics, and melody do function as primary signifiers of genre (for example, soul tends to have large-ranging melodies, while funk does not; pop tends to have lyrics about love, while rap does not), they are more frequently associated with an artist's individual sound. because there is such variation within these parameters, even when associated with only one genre, they are perhaps more important as indicators of a specific performer's idiomatic style than as signifiers of genre. for example, will smith and ice t have dramatically different lyrical concerns despite the fact that they are both rappers. similarly, folk revivalists joni mitchell and suzanne vega use melody in greatly contrasting ways. timbre, in particular, is intimately linked with the sound of individual auteurs. upon hearing just a few notes of an introduction or the vocal, the untrained rock listener instantly recognizes who the producer is or who is singing because of his or her familiarity with the auteur's timbre. recognition of a familiar timbre that a rock listener likes, even if heard in an unfamiliar genre, is a source of pleasure. that pleasure is intensified when a rock listener recognizes it across a spectrum of genres, pleasure that may account in part for the long-term success of an artist such as joni mitchell. clearly, siberry's longevity in the music business depends enormously on the consistency of her negotiation of the parameters of timbre, melody, and lyrics. in terms of timbre, siberry generally maintains the straight-tone vocal that is associated with folk revival, even when it is contrary to genre conventions in which she works (as is evident in her approach to the electro- pop genre). this timbre is very intimate, at times even fragile, and foregrounds the humanity of her voice. other timbres are also used—funk mannerisms in "flirtin' is a flo-thing" or breathiness in "la jalouse"—but only momentarily. a consistency in her approach to vocal timbre unifies the entire body of siberry's oeuvre and creates the continuity of her auteur voice. in traversing a variety of musical genres, siberry's melodic style is similar throughout her oeuvre. her melodies tend to move in conjunct motion. rarely does she leap to an interval larger than a fifth. siberry's use of tessitura is also consistent, as is her employment of an overall wide range. she usually begins a melody in her lower register and subsequently works her way up to the highest note of the song. even in a song like "flirtin' is a flo-thing," where siberry alters her step-wise melodic approach to take on the speech-like mannerism of james brown (in section b"), she still makes a point of using a range of almost an octave. siberry creates unity in her lyrics by consistently choosing certain topics, mood, and narrative devices. her songs return to a select group of topics, including an ongoing concern with relationships, isolation, time, and nature. the serious mood of such lyrics is juxtaposed with the humorous or even sarcastic tone in other songs. in regard to narrative devices, siberry embraces different styles of writing throughout her oeuvre, such as a linear narrative, poetic images, and multiple point-of-yiew. rarely are her songs autobiographical, even if they might seem to entertain such an illusion. the voice of the narrator that she employs is usually different from her own. siberry distances herself from her protagonists by using multiple points-of-view or incorporating elements of fantasy or memory in the midst of psychological realism. in each instance, her approach to the lyrics is always more complex than that of a conventional pop song. siberry rarely employs easy rhymes or trite imagery (unless she is critiquing another genre, as in the funk example), but rather favours unique images (such as "lena is a white table") and settings (e.g., "at the beginning of time"). genre and social meaning the introduction of this dissertation discussed how genres evoke meanings and, as such, play a discursive role. as adam krims argues, style, and by extension genre, is "not an objective property of music, but rather a matter of social discussion, behaviour, and negotiation. in other words, it becomes discursive" (krims, - ). based on such a premise, i contend that siberry's use of individual genres shapes social meanings. the remainder of this chapter will consider various types of social meanings produced by siberry's engagement with different genres. what follows is meant to add to an ongoing musicological project that shares with cultural studies the assumption that the "purpose of mapping discourses is not to expose them as 'false,' but rather to show how they are involved in forming various aspects of shared knowledge" (krims, ). one aspect that recurs in most of the siberry songs discussed here is time. indeed, the importance of time underlies the social meanings evoked by many of siberry's songs (see appendix , lyric ). reference in the lyrics to a nostalgic past and the use of memory is common in siberry's renditions of folk revival and country. in contrast, in her approach to the electro-pop and funk genres a belief in technological progress as a hope for the future and a concern with the continual-present is evident. this discussion begins with the genre with which siberry is most intimately connected, folk revival. as mentioned earlier, the musical parameters of folk are traditionally kept simple because the genre rests on the belief that folk is the music of the "people." in conforming to the musical parameters of the folk-revival genre, siberry seems to be embracing the meanings of community and democracy. siberry's embracing of those ideals in "la jalouse," however, is qualified by her willingness to subvert the musical parameters of form, metre, and instrumentation. inherent in her negotiation of folk-revival is a critique of genre. in folk aesthetics "the people" are not contemporary urban sophisticates, but rather rural folk—specifically those from "the olden days," a time that was supposedly simpler and therefore better than the present. even folk revival, a genre of folk geared toward urban sophisticates, is "bound up with rural romanticism, with a search for values and ways which could be opposed to urban corruption, to commerce, to mass music" (frith , ). siberry's response to such an idealized view of the past is to present it as simplistic and deceptive. for example, in "the mystery at ogwen's farm" from jane siberry (see appendix , lyric ), an old farm couple feels a sense of loss for a simpler, earlier way of life when their cow bessie magically flies away. moving beyond such nostalgia, the wife is forced to conclude at the end of the song that the old ways are not conducive to positive change. as relics of the past, she says: "ogwen-we are old . . . [and there is] so much that we don't know." siberry seems to be saying that a view of the past as simpler and better than the present leaves no room for the exciting potential of the future, which is represented by bessie's flight. the idealized past is a creation of the present, one that responds to the needs and anxieties of that time (jameson , ). the notion of a constructed and idealized past is addressed in the lyrics of "la jalouse," which explore that issue in the context of a romantic relationship. in this song the narrator is constantly putting together (her memory of) the past, viewed from the present: is her lover a true friend or her enemy? the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle, but reconstructing the past to be better than it is (let's talk about old...) does not resolve the problems of the present. in fact, as the song concludes, it only functions as a means of avoiding responsibility for problems in the present. by the end of the song the narrator seems to be more able to recognize her faults. she notably does not finish the suggestion "let's talk about old...", perhaps realizing her inclination to misrepresent the past as better than it was and admitting instead that in the past she was "crazy" to be unfaithful. confessing that she can no longer "remember why" she was initially jealous of her lover, the narrator admits that her retaliatory infidelity meant nothing to her: "i don't even like the guy." with these confessional offerings by the narrator, siberry seems to be advocating an honest and introspective construction of the past. in complicating the parameters of timbre and instrumentation and problematizing the form and metre of "la jalouse," she ultimately rejects the code of an idealized past evoked by the folk-revival genre. country also embraces simple musical parameters in an attempt to reflect an idealized rural past. country "authenticity" is very much concerned with bringing a fictitiously reconstructed past into the present. throughout its history, beginning with the image of the old- timer and through the incorporation of hillbilly and western cowboy markers, the country music industry has always utilized rural signifiers (associated with the past) in the present as if to make the argument that rural values have a place in today's urban society (peterson , - ). siberry's play with country signifiers in "everything reminds me of my dog" highlights this long-standing country music practice. it points out that these elements can be "put on" and "taken off without necessarily buying into the small-town values that they evoke. in the song, the narrator transgresses the country code of hiding the contrived construction of rural signifiers. she does this by showing the act of putting on signifiers that are not a part of the culture from which she comes, most blatantly with the phoney rural accent heard only in section b. siberry emphasizes the constructed nature of country signifiers by repeating the "mistake" of using the fake rural accent in several places (the repetitions of section b). to illustrate the humour created by the bringing of an idealized past into the present, the narrator gets caught in the act of reconstructing a false past. a brief memory episode offered by the narrator not only recalls a humorous incident from childhood but also exaggerates the scene. even while the child-narrator pretends that her dog is fierce, she is forced to face the fact that the opposite is true. the neighbours point out that her doggie is "goot" rather than "ferocious." it is telling that this flashback is indicated musically by the presence of a dulcimer, an instrument that was used in old-time country music. siberry's negotiation of country-pop suggests a far more critical view of the genre than that of folk-revival. she seems to be saying that it is misguided for folk revival to construct a view of the rural past that is idealized. it is part of the very tradition of country, however, for musicians to pretend to idealize a rural past when knowing full well that it never was idyllic. siberry parodies this country tradition through a mocking tone that is not present in her negotiation of folk revival. at the same time, however, it is clear that siberry enjoys mocking country signifiers as much as lang did. her foregrounding of its "dress up" nature seems to suggest that the putting on of values that are not your own is alright, as long as you are not actually trying to fool anyone into believing that they were yours in the first place. the put-on must be quite obvious, however, for the audience to get the joke. for siberry, then, the negotiation of country is nothing more than the putting on of generic signifiers, a kind of masquerade. in contrast to the retrospective nature of country and folk, siberry has turned to urban genres that are focused on the present rather than the past. nowhere is the concern with the here- and-now more evident than in the genre of funk, which celebrates the pleasure of a never-ending present in dance and sex through a consistent groove. in following the generic parameters of funk so closely, more so than any other genre, siberry seems to be embracing the funk code of fun and sex right along with legends like james brown. that embrace, however, is broken in live performance by siberry's non-compliant fashion sense (she does not sport the excessive s funk-wear of other parliament- like revivalists) and the relatively low-energy performance of the band. more importantly, the deviation from the groove (via a minor disruption of phrase length and metre) points to a larger subversion of funk codes in the lyrics. siberry makes a concerted effort to mock the machismo posturing that is typical of funk lyrics, such as those by brown. in her hands, that attitude appears as the hollow and exaggerated remnants of the dated gender attitudes of the s. thus, while the music of funk remains a signifier of the eternal present, the lyrics are clearly remnants of the past. to subvert part of a generic code while embracing its primary signifiers is a risky move. the chance of the rock listener missing the irony is quite high when a departure from convention is suggested only by the tone of the lyrics. certainly in the reception of madonna videos that take on pornographic imagery, many reviewers have missed her use of irony (whiteley , - ). siberry's exaggerated lyrics, however, draw clear attention to her critique of conventional funk lyrics. whether or not siberry agrees with a funk code that prioritizes pleasure in an eternal present, she clearly expresses the view that the machismo images in funk lyrics are worthy of ridicule. as in her approach to country, siberry's lyrics in "flirtin' is a flo-thing" are hyperbolic, but the mockery of funk that they imply is harsher than siberry's critique of country. with such a negative view of conventional funk lyrics, it is surprising that siberry repeatedly returns to the genre. siberry's ambivalence to funk can be explained by her attraction to the musical elements of funk (such as the groove, rhythm, or harmonies) and her repulsion from its chauvinist lyrics. while funk is a genre concerned with an eternal present, electro pop looks expectantly towards the future. of all the possible pop/rock genres to choose from after engaging folk revival, siberry's selection of electro-pop was quite a leap. in contrast to the folk emphasis on community, electro-pop foregrounds technology and dehumanizes the participation of those making the music. for example, the singer's voice is often altered (via effects such as echo or equalization or filtered through a harmonizer or vocoder) to seem less human and more mechanical. moreover, the music highlights the latest technologies of the digital synthesizer and sampler. electro-pop practices are based on an unwavering faith in technology as a means toward progress. in the sense that this generic code espouses progress and its underlying assumption of an ever-improving future, this genre is as far away from the embrace of an idyllic past found in folk revival as one could get. the fact that siberry used electro-pop through most of the s seems to show that she had an investment in the ideology of progress. at the very least, siberry found the new technologies useful. it is clear, however, that siberry did not view technology as an end unto itself. unlike the lyrics in songs by laurie anderson that emphasize science or those by styx that emphasize machines, siberry's lyrics focus on relationships. furthermore, while the aforementioned songs reinforce the electro-pop concern with technology by altering the vocals, siberry insists upon the human quality of her vocal in "goodbye" and other electro pop songs. yet, the presence of a vocal unaltered by effects indicates that siberry is at least in part at odds with the electro-pop code of technology as progress, pointing to the idea of the dehumanizing effects of technological progress. in fact, the fragile expression of human pain in the vocal of "goodbye" is made all the more striking because of its electronic setting. the juxtaposition of human feeling in a ballad backed by the mechanical coldness associated with modern synthesizers indicates that siberry was not entirely convinced by the electro-pop belief that technology could better people's lives. foregrounding the human voice over the synthetic background shows that in the competition between humans and technology, siberry has sided against technology. in fact, she seems to be demonstrating that a blind faith in progress is naive. siberry's comment about this naivete is played out in "goodbye" by adding complexity to certain parameters of the electro-pop genre, which is usually simple when not engaged by rock auteurs. siberry's complications of metre, form, and tonality challenge the simplistic notion of the inevitability of technological progress that was indicated in "mr. roboto" by styx, an uncomplicated song that completely embraces electro-pop conventions. by problematizing the musical parameters of electro-pop siberry seems to suggest that we should not fully trust technology to better our lives. indeed, her concern in the vocal with human emotion and in the lyrics with relationships suggests that instead of relying on machines, we should rather turn our attention to the complexity of human relationships and invest time and energy in them. the subjectivity inherent in relationships might hurt us more than the objectivity of emotion-free technology (as can be seen in the narrator's pain arising from the end of a relationship), but it can also ultimately make us more complete and less isolated. a siberry song that explores thoughts about a relationship ("maria is on my mind") is "maria." the identity of the title character, however, is shrouded in mystery. although this song does not exemplify all facets of the cool jazz genre, it does capture one aspect: elusiveness. specifically, the elusiveness of who maria is in relationship to the narrator alludes to the cool- jazz code of urbane sophistication. the cool-jazz genre developed as a reaction to bebop. rather than pursue the heated virtuosity of charlie parker, miles davis decided to embrace a more reserved, urbane elegance. as a result, cool jazz became a genre that took performances of jazz out of "seedy" bebop nightclubs and into the concert halls of university campuses (porter and ullman, ). adding to the suave sophistication of cool jazz was the detached hip-ness of its performers. in contrast to the fiery angles of bebop, cool jazz players emphasized melody and subtle rhythms. this emphasis on subtlety was in turn adopted by college students in the s. for them, to be cool was to be elusive, to be above the crowd, slightly out of reach. cool jazz became "a sort of cachet to sophistication: the esquire man dressed well and acted cool" (porter and ullman, ). indeed, the image of miles davis turning his back to his audience during a solo represents perhaps the most iconic moment of "cool." he projected a sense of something artistic and profound that always remained slightly out of reach. this elusiveness of cool jazz is evoked in the lyrics of "maria," especially in the title character's mystique. throughout the song there is a lack of resolution about maria's identity. several identities are hinted at, but no single one is confirmed. is maria a child or a lover ("every time you run, every time you play"), an adult friend or mentor ("every time you sing/every time you pray"), an historical figure ("long ago and far away") or a religious icon ("long ago and here today")? the listener is never told, but certainly becomes intrigued. the mystique of maria in particular and cool jazz in general has a larger resonance with siberry's ambiguous attitude toward the cool jazz genre itself. on the one hand, in conforming with certain musical conventions of cool jazz in "maria" (in the parameters of melody, phrase length and particularly metre and instrumentation), siberry seems to be espousing the "cool jazz as urbane sophistication" code. the inexplicable lyrics of this song certainly reflect the mystique characterizing cool jazz. on the other hand, siberry also subverts some essential components of jazz. she complicates the tonality and form and correspondingly undermines the practices of improvisation and swing. perhaps siberry here is attempting to emulate miles davis as the ultimate jazz auteur, constantly searching for innovations in the idiom and pushing its boundaries to extremes. indeed, siberry's peculiar retention of the folk-revival timbre suggests an attempt at a sort of generic fusion. similarly, siberry's unconventional use of imagery rather than narrative in the lyrics (reminiscent of her approach to electro-pop) seems to embrace an expansion of generic boundaries. from the discussion of the five songs analyzed here, it is evident that as siberry travels from one genre to another, she does not completely endorse the codes of any particular one. her curiosity regarding contrasting genres, leads her to "try on" various options, so to speak. the fact that she frequently returns to each of the genres discussed here further suggests that siberry feels that each one has something to offer. yet she almost invariably qualifies the meanings that the codes evoke (especially those of funk and country) by problematizing generic expectations. what does tie together her approach to genre is her rock auteur stance, a view that consistently calls for creativity and invention, rather than blindly embracing expectations. in light of this practice, it should come as no surprise that siberry's insistence on a rock auteur stance ultimately caused her to leave warner in pursuit of her own artistic vision. that being said, it is also clear that siberry is not a rule-breaker by nature. she does not subvert genre expectations just because she can, but because she can use her manipulation of musical parameters as social critique. her treatment of funk, for example, was for the most part consonant with genre expectations, yet remained a striking example of pastiche. the auteur role allows her to put into action her vision of popular music. siberry views her role as an artist as being faithful to her own vision or, as she puts it, to what she "hears in her head." the process of writing down what she hears, however, is more than just negotiating genres that are in the air or even writing sounds that subjectively sound correct to her. rather, the pursuit of her own artistic vision involves being true to something larger than herself. when asked about the source of what she "hears in her head" siberry commented, i don't know. inspiration. definitely i see it as a sacred thing. and i do my best not to fool around with it. and that understanding has given me the freedom to say, "i like what i do." and i am not complimenting myself, anymore. this gives the enjoyment back into your own hands. it's not just you anymore, but something larger. then you can enjoy your own work without being arrogant (siberry ). this sort of humble attitude toward her own songwriting is evident in the humanity found in siberry's ballads. it is this human quality that her fans so dearly value. siberry's personable approach gives her entire oeuvre an "authenticity" that enables her to maintain longevity in the ever-changing world of popular music. notes for chapter . similarly, in each song discussed there was a complete consonance with genre expectation in at least one parameter, and in some instances with two or even three. the electro-pop genre was unmistakably evoked with the parameter of performance practice, while siberry's use of key was consonant with the parameter of tonality in country. metre and instrumentation were employed to recall jazz, whereas timbre and performance practice were reminiscent of the folk-revival genre. finally, in funk siberry's use of form, timbre, and modality were all consonant with genre expectations. . my use of the terms "primary signifiers" and "secondary signifiers" should not be confused with middleton's use of the terms "primary signification" and "secondary signification." by "primary signification" middleton is referring to writings on or "words about music" (middleton , ). in contrast, "secondary signification" is the meaning of music or "its content" (middleton , ). in middleton's paradigm, both primary signifiers and secondary signifiers could create "secondary signification." . tonality is inseparable from western culture as a whole, so it is often taken for granted by listeners (until it is absent). western music until recently—and still now in popular music—has been defined from that of other cultures by its adherence to a system of specific keys and modes and their associated harmonies. performance practice and instrumentation, however, are experienced visually (through publicity shots, video, and live performance) in addition to aurally, so they are the most obvious signifiers of genre to the casual listener. . secondary signifiers are therefore rather insignificant to casual listeners. on the other hand, the subversion of secondary signifiers does create novelty and therefore interest for acute listeners. . it should be noted that there are exceptions to the generalization that siberry tends to problematize secondary signifiers, while maintaining continuity in both the primary signifiers and the parameters associated with her idiomatic sound. each of the parameters analyzed in the above songs (tonality, performance style, instrumentation, form, metre, phrase length, lyrics, melody, and timbre) has both a consonance and dissonance with the different genres. for example, while metre and phrase length are problematized in four of the genres analyzed, they are consonant with jazz expectations in "maria." similarly, although siberry complicates the parameter of form in four of the genres, in "flirtin' is a flo-thing" the few sections are repeated frequently, as the funk genre dictates. furthermore, both the primary signifier of tonality/modality and the employment of the lyrics as part of siberry's sound are consonant in four of the genres analyzed. the complex and obscure ways in which the tonal centre and the lyrics are used in "maria," however, are dissonant with generic conventions and ultimately result in the refusal in "maria" to evoke unilaterally the cool-jazz genre. clearly, siberry's embracing of primary signifiers and subversion of secondary signifiers is not an indelible rule, but rather a general approach to her employment of genre. . siberry's concern with time has a larger resonance with her unique approach to metre (the "time" of a song) heard in "la jalouse," "goodbye," "everything reminds me of my dog," and "flirtin' is a flo-thing." . although "the mystery at ogwen's farm" does not specifically allude to the fact that bessie escaped by flight, we know this is the case from "bessie" an earlier song by siberry, eventually released on teenager. . fellow torontonian mary margaret o'hara is another singer-songwriter of that time who worked the psychologically-unstable narrator idea well. see, for example, her miss america ( ). . even while proponents such as karon blackwell are donning the signifiers of country, they are aware that what they are constructing is as false today as it was when the marketing of country began with such "dressed up" stars as louis "grandpa" jones (peterson , ). . my point here is not that country music is inherently inauthentic to either its performers or its audience. rather, that there are instances of country performers, such as louis "grandpa" jones (c. s), minnie pearl (c. s), and karon blackwell (c. s), who are not "authentically" rural in origin or orientation. in such instances, there is a tacit agreement in country music to hide one's urban roots or signifiers. . the resulting ambiguous relationship between country musicians and country music signifiers inherent in such instances is highlighted by the imprecision of the lyrics in another siberry song, "something about trains" from bound by the beauty (see appendix , lyric ). although this song is as much about nature as it is about the conventional country topics of lost love, loneliness, and home, the imagery evoked throughout this song (trains, ironing clothes, the line, dogs) is typical of country music lyrics. the way in which these images are employed, however, is intentionally noncommittal. the song is not about trains and love, but rather is "something about trains . . . something about love/when things go wrong." compared to "something about trains," "everything reminds me of my dog" goes further in its critique of the country-pop genre by explicitly ridiculing the embracing of values that have nothing to do with one's actual world view. here, siberry's larger approach to such instances of country is one of mockery. . not surprisingly, as the implicit faith in progress ended, so to did the prominence of electronic/mechanized sounds in pop music, as well as the genre of electro pop itself. the loss of faith in progress had further ramifications for the way in which rock was marketed. for example, at the fund-raising concert live aid in , the performances of queen, tina turner and david bowie shattered the comfortable teleological economic planning of rock as a source of wealth that had to continually reproduce itself anew to ensure profitability. henceforward, its products could be recycled in true postmodern style, targeted with ever greater precision to ever more specialized markets. by 'products' we refer of course not just to past recordings, but to past artists recording again (stump, ). works cited adorno, theodor. w. 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(oct. ): - . keil, charles. urban blues. chicago: university of chicago press, . keil, charles and steven feld. music grooves. chicago: university of chicago press, . kennedy, lisa. "joni mitchell." trouble girls: the rolling stone book of women in rock. ed. barbara o'dair. new york: random house, , - . kent, thomas. interpretation and genre. toronto: associated university presses, . kerman, joseph. contemplating music. cambridge: harvard university press, . kivy, peter. the corded shell: reflections on musical expression. princeton: princeton university press, . kramer, lawrence. "tropes and windows: an outline of musical hermeneutics." music as cultural practice, - . berkeley: university of california press, , - . krims, adam. rap music and the poetics of identity. cambridge: cambridge university press, . kruse, holly. "in praise of kate bush." on record: rock, pop, and the written word. eds. simon frith and andrew goodwin. new york: pantheon books, . —. 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"honky tonk: the music of the southern working class." folk music and modern sound. jackson: university press of mississippi, , - . mancuso, chuck. pop music and the underground: foundations of jazz, blues, country and rock. dubque, iowa: kendall/hunt publishing, . martin, bill. listening to the future: the time of progressive rock, - . chicago: open court, . —. music of yes: structure and vision in progressive rock. chicago: open court, . mcclary, susan. "the blasphemy of talking politics during bach year." music and society: the politics of composition, performance and reception. eds. richard leppert and susan mcclary. cambridge: cambridge university press, , - . —. same as it ever was: youth culture and music." microphone friends: youth music and youth culture. eds. andrew ross and tricia rose. new york: routledge, , - . —. "this is not a story my people tell: musical time and space according to laurie anderson." feminine endings. minneapolis: university of minnesota press, , - . mcclary, susan and robert walser. "start making sense! musicology wrestles with rock." on record: rock, pop, and the written word. eds. simon frith and andrew goodwin. new york: pantheon books, , - . mcrobbie, angela. "settling accounts with subcultures: a feminist critique." on record: rock, pop, and the written word. eds. simon frith and andrew goodwin. new york: pantheon books, , - . melhuish, martin. heart of gold: years of canadian pop music. toronto: cbc enterprises, . —. oh what a feeling. toronto: quarry press, . mellers, wilfrid. twilight of the gods: the beatles in retrospect. london: faber & faber, . menzies, ian. "the art of jane siberry." canadian musician (december ): - . meyer, leonard b. emotion and meaning in music. chicago: university of chicago press, . middleton, richard. reading pop: approaches to textual analysis in popular music. oxford: oxford university press, . —. studying popular music. milton keynes: open university press, . miller, carolyn r. "genre as social action." genre and the new rhetoric. eds. aviva freedman and peter medway. london: taylor and francis, , - . miller, mark. "contemporary folk music." encyclopedia of music in canada, nd ed. eds. helmut kallmann, gilles potvin, and kenneth winters. toronto: university of toronto press, , - . moore, allan. f. the beatles: sgt. pepper's lonely heart club band. cambridge: cambridge university press, . —. rock: the primary text, developing a musicology of rock. milton keynes: open university press, . moore, john. "the hieroglyphics of love': the torch singers and interpretation." reading pop: approaches to textual analysis in popular music. ed. richard middleton. new york: oxford university press, , - . mowitt, john. "the sound of music in the era of its electronic reproducibility." music and society: the politics of composition, performance, and reception. eds. richard leppert and susan mcclary. cambridge: cambridge university press, , - . muggleton, david. "the post-subculturalist." the clubcultures reader. ed. steve redhead. oxford: blackwell publishers, . negus, keith. popular music in theory: an introduction. cambridge: polity press, . nettl, bruno. folk and traditional music of the western continents, rd ed. englewood cliffs: prentice hall, . o'brien, karen. "jane siberry." hymn to her: women musicians talk. london: virgo press, , - . o'brien, lucy. she bop. new york: penguin books, , - . odintz, andrea. "technophilia: women at the control board." trouble girls: the rolling stone book of women in rock. ed. barbara o'dair. new york: random house, , - . ouellette, dan. "when she was a boy." piano and keyboard (sept./oct. ): - . paltridge, brian. genre, frames and writing in research settings. philadelphia: john benjamins publishing, . paraire, philippe. years of rock music. new york: w & r chambers, . pareles, john and patricia romanowski, eds. rolling stone encyclopedia of rock and roll. new york: summit books, . pattison, robert. the triumph of vulgarity: rock music in the mirror of romanticism. new york: oxford university press, . pavletich, aida. rock-a-bye, baby. new york: doubleday, . peterson, richard a. creating country music: fabricating authenticity. chicago: the university of chicago press, . peterson, richard and bruce a. beal. "alternative country: origins, music, world-view, fans and taste in genre formation: a discographic essay." april . july . <http//people.vanderbilt.edu/ ~stevelee/ country.htm>. pevere, geoff and greig dymond. mondo canuck. scarborough: prentice hall, , . porter, james. "regional studies: europe." ethnomusicology: historical and regional studies. ed. helen myers. new york: macmillan press, , - . porter, lewis and michael ullman. jazz: from its origins to the present. englewood cliffs: prentice hall, . powers, ann. "bohemian rhapsodies." trouble girls: the rolling stone book of women in rock. ed. barbara o'dair. new york: random house, , - . press, joy. "shouting out loud: women in uk punk." trouble girls: the rolling stone book of women in rock. ed. barbara o'dair. new york: random house, , - . prinz, jessica. 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"more than a feeling: jane siberry leads with her heart on when i was a boy." canadian composer a (fall ): . storey, john. an introductory guide to cultural theory and popular culture. athens: university of georgia press, . straessle, carla. "jane siberry." canadian musician (march ): - . stratton, jon. "beyond art: postmodernism and the cast of popular music." theory, culture, & society (feb. ): - . straw, will. '"organized disorder': the changing space of the record shop." the clubcultures reader. ed. steve redhead. oxford: blackwell publishers, . —. "the booth, the floor and the wall: dance music and the fear of falling." popular music - style and identity. eds. will straw, stacey johnson, rebecca sullivan, and paul friedlander. montreal: dufferin press, , - . strinati, dominic. 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"auteurs of soul." high fidelity/musical america edition (september ): - , . weisbard, eric. "smart, lyrical, even genteel, but is it rock?" new york times august , music ar: & . white, allan. the billboard book of gold and platinum records. new york: watson-guptill publications, . white, douglas. dictionary of popular music styles of the world. lawndale: douglas white music research, . whiteley, sheila. the space between the notes: rock and the counter-culture. new york: routledge, . —. women and popular music: sexuality, identity, and subjectivity. new york: routledge, . wicke, peter. rock music: culture, aesthetics, and sociology. trans. rachel fogg. cambridge: cambridge university press, . wilder, alec. american popular song: the great innovators - . new york: oxford university press, . windsheiner, marci and paul mallet. no borders here: the unofficial jane siberry web site. july . july . <www.smoe.org/nbh>. wright, robert a. "dream, comfort, memory, despair: canadian popular musicians and the dilemma of nationalism, - ." canadian music: issues of hegemony and identity. eds. beverley diamond and robert witmer. toronto: canadian scholar's press, , - . york, richie. axes, chops, and hot licks. edmonton: hurtiz, . http://www.smoe.org/nbh discography siberry, jane, . jane siberry, street records srcd - . —, . no borders here, duke street records/windham hill dsbbd . —, . the speckless sky, duke street/windham hill dsbbd- . —, . the walking, duke street/reprise/warner dsbbd- . —, . bound by the beauty, duke street/reprise/warner dsbbd- . —, . when i was a boy, reprise records/warner cd . —, . a collection: - , duke street/reprise/warner dsrmd . —, . maria, reprise cd . —, . teenager, koch records/sheeba records koc-cd / shecd . —, . a day in the life, sheeba records shecd . —, . child, sheeba records shecd . —, . tree, sheeba records she . —, . lips, sheeba records she . —, . hush, sheeba records she . —, . city, sheeba records she . — , . love is everything: the jane siberry anthology. rhino records/warner cd. assorted artists, . "this old earth" ["something about trains"]. the top of the world soundtrack (a peter mettler film). —, . "a long time love song" (with martin tielli of the reostatics). kick at the darkness (bruce cockburn tribute album). intrepid records. —, . "calling all angels." until the end of the world soundtrack (a wim wenders film). warner brothers cd . —, . "slow tango." far away so close soundtrack (a wim wenders film). sbk records. —, . "harmonix/i went down to the river." way down below buffalo hell. real world records. —, . "my mother is not the white dove." arcane real world records. —, . "it can't rain all the time." ne crow soundtrack (an alex proyas film). —, . count your blessings. cbc. —, . "when spring comes." ne hanging garden soundtrack. virgin dpro . —, . "one more colour." ne sweet hereafter soundtrack (an atom egoyan film). —, . "when i think of laura nyro." time and love: the music of laura nyro. astor place recordings/emi blackwood music, inc. —, . sweet relief ii: gravity of the situation, the songs of vic chestnutt. sony. — , , . "all the pretty little ponies." barney's great adventure - the movie soundtrack. lyons partnership records. —, . "calling all angels." pay it forward soundtrack. freed, don, . on the plains. ramsden, david, . quiet please! there's a lady on stage. bob wiseman, . presented by lake michigan soda. indigo girls, . "mystery" and "language or the kiss" swamp ophelia. epic records. frank london, . "shiramami." festival of light. six degrees records. zazou, hector, . "she's like the swallow." songs from the cold seas. sony. kennedy nigel, . "innig." kafka. emi records larkin, patty, . "coming up for air." perishable fruit. windham hill/high street. jackson, joe, . "the bridge." heaven and hell. sony, lang, k. d., . "hain't it funny." drag. angers, darol, . "oh shenandoah." heritage. six degrees records. sotoma, takafumi, . "spade and sparrows." backyard. gemmatika records. fisher, morgan, . "narrow bridge/millennium." miniatures . cherry red records. grey, michael, . "nut brown maid." shambolica. dunaber music. ghostland, . "the kiss." interview with an angel. instant karma. appendix lyrics of selected songs by jane siberry lyric "seven steps to the wall" from the speckless sky seven steps to the wall and turn around seven steps to the window—turn around three steps to the table—step around move the chair 'til it is square and then sit down don't turn around there is a man in a room empty place there's a wall a table and a chair ...his face he wants to write something down he wants to sing a song or paint something lie down and fade away or get up and get away to the beat of the marching feet in the heat of the prison heat there there's the sun through the bars cutting swathes lighting dust i love dust that it's there that it falls he wants to write something down... there there's this choir sometimes hear in my head perfect note that divides all the rest what i face he wants to write something down... seven steps to the wall... there all my life where there's white i have words so i write what i hear ...perfect white ...with no words it is thin but it's clear lyric map of the world (part ) from no borders here wait wait waiting for the lights to change that i may move on move on wait wait waiting for the lights to change that i may move on move on still still the pines that line the road sigh say you have say you have time say you have much more time time time also marbles in the clearing that click and break like toy lightning on the pallet of the (gods) and the pines that surround and make a mumming sound as i fill my sac with glass and my steps divide the clearing in half leaving a single strip in time weight weight it floats nearby silent-staring cold blue cold eyes weight weight it floats nearby sad quotations see-through fingers i only... i wanted... time further down the line further down the line lyric "the mystery at ogwen's farm" from jane siberry ogwen- bessie's gone bessie's gone away i looked in the high meadow for her i think she's gone i looked down by the river and i looked behind the barn ogwen- bessie's gone bessie's gone away i saw this girl down by the fence in the morning mist she was telling things to bessie it looked strange- wonder if... ogwen- bessie's gone bessie's gone away well, maybe it's a blessing what with winter coming on because the man who owns this farm was going to sell her to the yards oh, i hope she really got away ogwen- we are old i guess nothing is ever ours so much that we don't know ogwen- bessie's gone bessie's gone away lyric "the waitress" from no borders here i have to clear your table i wipe it it's right to keep it clean so i clean yes—i clean do you clean? yes—i clean i have to empty ashtrays i empty them it's right to keep them clean so i clean yes—i clean i'm the queen of the clean and i'd probably be famous now if i wasn't such a good waitress i am a drag at parties cuz it upsets me to see so many empties and i have to pick them up or i have to go home but sometimes i have nightmares and the ashtrays are filling up and i can't find my section the bottles are flying through the air like crazy autumn leaves and i can't find my section i lost my section i lost my section i can't find it somebody help me please i am in quicksand i am in mud to my knees help me aaagghh! i have to clear your table excuse me it's right to keep it clean so i clean yes—i clean do you clean? yes—i clean i have to know the regulars well i don't have to but i like to know their names and i know them even better when they're nice to me and i'd probably be famous now if i wasn't such a good waitress. lyric "above the treeline" from jane siberry i went out with wolf tonight, i had so many worries on my mind i was feeling lost, feeling confused, feeling afraid—i wanted to hide but when i got home after work wolf would not let me stay inside so i put on my heavy coat and kerchief and closed the door behind us i followed wolf across the road, he took a trail that leads up through the forest i saw wolfs shadow moving through the trees ahead of me—don't go too fast wolf and finally we got to the other side—it was so still, it was so bright and clear for there stretched before us like a ballroom glove in the moonlight lay the snowfields. it was a starry night and the snow had stopped falling and i feel that i heard someone singing fly us to the moon high above our upturned faces booming in the bright send some good things down on this earth tonight wolf ran out into the glittering fields—i stood and watched him from the treeline the starry heavens danced down on the snow then up again like gateways gathering then somehow i was out there with wolf~i stared at him—he looked so different oh wolf i can't stop laughing but i feel somehow that everything is alright i don't know how many miles we traced across the snow-maybe a thousand i followed wolf in peace and i don't even know if we were breathing and part of me never went home after that night—i think it stayed there but it is in good care beneath the stars above the fields of snow that stretch there lyric "the bird in the gravel" from the walking the master: i was dreaming in the steam room everything looked so clear for a minute and i thought... and the dripping tiles and... and i said i'll confess everything yes, i own this land i own these forests surrounding my...my estate this is my tea coming everything i can—i confess the servant: *bend now i have the bend the best i ever place the tea just so *then release and turn oh no not yet then release and turn turn away then go *better try again looking at me he's wait til tomorrow don't want him to know *next time he orders tea release and turn turn and limp away turn and limp away the maid: *i was walking through the forest on my break today i had this funny feeling something was going to change *i was walking through the dry leaves it was very strange they hadn't changed their colour all the leaves were green *i don't mind when it's over i don't mind when it's all done it's just the moments in between just before it's gone ""something's going to happen something's going to change i know i know i know... the pantry: *and when autumn comes well, there's lots of work to do bill—that means you time to clean the kettles and the pots on the wall pickling and preserving all the vegetables stop kicking the apples are we pickling this year? yes—you know we are *and when autumn comes well, there's lots of work to do bill—that means you time to get the twigs up—you know, all those stick things time to trim back the roses so next year even more grow does it hurt them to do that? does it hurt them? no. (truck driver - francesco) *and when autumn comes well, deliveries start to go here he is now down into the valley to the market he goes down along the tiny road that wind along the vineyards and people lean on their rakes and say hello hello there francesco francesco there hello the bird: (high sustain) a boy coming home from lessons another boy: and those are my swans, believe me... there's no light. and there isn't because... it's so dark because it's so dark because it's so dark. the maid: *i was walking through the dry leaves it was very strange the leaves fell without changing no yellows and no reds * something's going to happen something's going to change and just then as i looked up i remembered what you said *i'm crying because i love you i know that things must change i can't be there when you leave what if you're afraid *you said something about the leaving the moments in between the yawning when the world shifts the clanging of trains *and a dog sits up and growls and a cow begins to bawl and a nun nearby stops to listen cross herself and then move on *i was laughing in the forest i fell down in the leaves and i watched the trees above me crossing in the breeze *i love the bare branches i love the healing bells the bareness in the last sun the greyness and the gold *and a flock of geese flew over and i laughed harder still i laughed til i was heaving then everything was still the servant: *bend now i have the bend place the tea just so *then release and turn oh no not yet turn away and go *better try again he's looking at me wait til tomorrow don't want him to know *next time... time he orders tea release and turn turn and limp away... limp away just go turn away just go just go... just go... just go... lyric "grace hospital" from lips i'm walkin' down the corridor of the seventh floor of the grace hospital. i'm gonna make it to the end. i'm gonna smoke a cigarette. the cigarette is my only friend. i can hear my slippers a-slappin'. i can feel my gown a-flappin'. i've got my whole being set into making it to the end of the seventh floor corridor of the grace hospital. these are my people. hello joe, how ya doin'? don't i take good care of you, joe? mrs. bergman, how you doin'? what? no, i don't have your mail! i'm not the friggin' mailman. i'm going to make it to the end. and when i make it to the end i will smoke my cigarette. they make it very hard to smoke here but i've got it all figured out: they make it hard and that builds up your strength and then they want you to check out. there's a man in traffic below. he's all revved up with nowhere to go. he's cursin' and a-swearin' and watchin' the rain drops roll, roll down his windshield. he's stuck in rush hour traffic and he's sayin', "oh i shoulda bought that farm in the country. i woulda been home by now. i woulda been milkin' cows and sloppin' pigs and sayin' benign things to my benign wife instead of sittin' here lookin' up the tail-pipe of someone i do not even know and probably wouldn't like. and lookin' up at the face at the end of the seventh floor of the grace hospital." i'm walking down the corridor of the seventh floor of the grace hospital. everything's green here, like a green nightmare. they come every thursday morning. they spend an hour in the boardroom making decisions like this, they say: "oh yes. green like the grass! like the trees! that'll make everyone brighten up and feel so happy, make 'em feel so pleased!" well, i'm so pleased that when i get out of here i'm gonna write fuckin' greeting cards tellin' everyone how sweet it is here. green. it just reminds everybody of their own shit and their own puke and oh, the blonde she pats her hair and she tastes aluminum chlorohyderate on her fingertips and oh... "daniell" yes? "would you come into the office please!" i'm walkin' down the corridor of the grace hospital. i'm gonna look out at the rain, at the sweet, sweet rain... there's a man in rush hour traffic below...instead i'm sitting here in rush hour traffic lookin' up the tail pipe of someone i do not know and probably would not even like and watchin' this face at the end of the seventh floor corridor of the grace hospital lookin' out at the goddamn rain. i'm walkin' down the corridor. i'm startin' to get withdrawal but i'm gonna make it to the end. i can feel my gown a-flappin' and i can hear my slippers a-slappin'. hello mrs. bergman. no i don't have the goddamn mail! and if you don't keep your dog tied up, i'm gonna have the dog catcher come. i don't care if you're ninety years old and he's sixteen and you've been together all this time. he's gonna take him away. don't ask me for the mail. "daniel, will you come into the office!" i'm walking down the corridor of the grace hospital. me and my bride. there's gonna be a wedding today. i'm feeling so happy inside. oh me and my rolling bride. here we go hand in hand, needle in arm, she is my only friend. when i get to the end i will look out at the traffic below and i will smile sort of sweetly and tilt my head and everyone will look up and think that i'm lookin' out at the rain as if it's the sweetest thing i've ever seen. the grace hospital is a terminal hospital and everybody knows that and...and maybe that's why the food's so bad and...and can i see your fucking boarding passes please...oh! last night someone came into my room and they took my bag of sugar water and they must have changed it for some strange potion 'cuz now i feel like i'm floatin' on some strange ocean... there's a man in traffic..() instead i'm sittin' here in traffic lookin' up at this white balloon at the end of a liquid string at the end of the seventh floor of the grace hospital. lookin' out at the goddamn rain like it's the sweetest thing that he's ever seen." o i'm gonna save myself... i'm running down the corridor of the seventh floor of the grace hospital. me and my family, come on everybody! we're heading down the runway. we're gonna kick this thing. come on mrs. bergman. there'll be so much mail! i'm taking off of the runway. i'm moving out into the rain. out into the rain. out into the sweet goddamn sweet goddamn rain. lyric "mein bitte" from the speckless sky i want a good deal better if it's free but i charge a lot want more money don't want to work just want more pay cut corners here make more that way (meanwhile...) i work in a large room (i work in a room that's large and bare) i'm at this workbench everyday (i never miss a day) i keep my tools very organized (i have a special place for all my tools) this tinny radio is all i play (i love music) i'm working on this new invention (and i'm really, really excited about it) i think it needs something extra here (in the evenings i read tool catalogues) i'm studying the grain of my workbench (i can fix anything you like) i'm humming a tune while i wait for the answer to appear when i get stuck i go fishing put in the clutch so to speak and glide i coast amongst the rabble and the right words in my work i take great pride (meanwhile ...) i need more things i need more money don't want to work want things for free cut corners here make more that way i have not pride the world is unfair wah... my shop is a long meadow in a winding landscape in a series of elevations with a few cows and a babbling brook i love to do what i love to do this excludes anything i don't like to do the pleasure is in the peace of mind the pleasure is mine . . . mein bitte . . . lyric "at the beginning of time" from when i was a boy at the beginning of time before there were waves we'd sit in our boats we'd float there all day and there weren't any waves cuz there wasn't any wind cuz there wasn't any sun we were waiting for the world to begin we were waiting in the darkness each in our own boat each in our own thoughts sometimes you could hear people talking amongst themselves but... (someone had a boat with wheels and i said you're a bit early but i know how you feel) but mostly it was just silence and the silence only broken by the absence of the clinking of the masts and every now and then a bird would not fly by and someone would look up and say - what wasn't that? we were waiting in the darkness and one night (or was it day?) i was awoken from a dream i was dreaming of someplace like i'd never been and i heard someone say someone's fallen in and they can't swim so i leaned out and i pulled them in and he was holding his head and it was huge and shaped like a fish and he slid down to the crook of the keel and when i was sure he'd fallen asleep i fell back to my reverie we were waiting waiting waiting in the darkness and you know what i miss most about that time? was the quality of blackness it was soft somehow in the absence of fear you could take it into your mouth and send it out through your teeth (my dear) but the silence... oh, if i could go back to those times i'd take that silence there i'd take it into myself and bring it back to you and this is what i'd say waiting in the darkness at the beginning of time before there were waves we'd sit in our boats we'd float there all day (or was it night?) and there weren't any waves cuz there wasn't any wind cuz there wasn't any sun we were waiting for the world to begin we were waiting for the world to begin now?... no. lyric "caravan" from child o - it was a snowy night the caravan traveling across the desert land the stars were hanging heavy in the absence of light and you were there and i and something in our hearts told us to keep on moving because there was something about that star that star... how far is the nearest place to kneel? how far is the nearest throne? how far can you go with only a dream? with only a hope? you take the vision and you hold it steady right ahead of you across the ranges across the plains the desert land the gaze of strangers that is how ...holdit steady there was always someone who would take the children and keep them entertained there was always someone who would lay down their work to play the children's games there was always someone who would know how things worked - they'd say ...there. where? over there. and now as we sit on the steps at the side of the square there are three wise men sitting in their chairs if anyone wants to know which way any of us should go they will hold they will contain they will cup the refrain hold it steady - take the vision - hold it steady right ahead of you right between the eyes. that is how. o - it was a snowy night and our caravan moved along through this yet unholy land - you were there i was there two desert boys - we did not understand we only know that something grand was happening that star ...that night. lyric "puppet city" from teenager i couldn't believe it when you said you didn't care if people used you or people stole from you you said - nothing last forever nothing to do with you then you say come to me if you can be quiet come little one if you can be still you say - there's so much more to do than get caught up on every issue its' puppet city out there truly i couldn't believe it when you said you had no feelings of love or hate or anything dramatic not jealousy or pride you said you'd set these things aside then you say come to me... i couldn't believe it when you said i had been programmed to miss you when you go away to be indignant when you stay away to worry about things the proper length of time well-taught emotionally girl does this - tell her it's wrong that's the thing to do girl does that - tell her it's wrong that's the thing to do if you love them you need them so stop trying to free them that's the thing to do that's not the thing to do i couldn't believe it when you said you needed no one you're a stubborn man i think you're anti social whatever that is you're supposed to care about your brother it's not right to be so cold then you say... lyric "la jalouse" from bound by the beauty ( ) la jalouse i said no la jalouse i told you to go you trick me with all your lies trick me 'til i'm on your side drag me into your stinking pit jalouse don't cry (baby) just get out and never come back la jalouse mon amie mon contre amie mon amie mon contre amie la jalouse i told you to go something you said tipped me off to who you were we were talking in the kitchen i closed my eyes i put the glass down i knocked the table over then i i grabbed your shoulders then i i threw you as hard as ever la jalouse where would you go anyway (here, have some wine) la jalouse let's talk about old . . . let's review some things you made me crazy lose my mind now i can't remember why. i don't even like the guy lyric "goodbye" from the walking ( ) tiny dot strand of sand waves that sigh beneath the hand i stand the singing seashore the earth and you are round i'm always apologizing will i? do you? chime, the feet dry, the sand clouds collect out at sea start to run this pink shell this grey span and a thousand pardons trail behind lonely beach ceaseless wind still don't understand run as fast a missed beat a quickening i went to say i love you but instead i said goodbye i want a table no just for one but i know you do i can see some from here ok then say for two no there's only one don't you want my business i will never come back here oh my love faithless dove all the love in the world.. lyric "everything reminds me of my dog" from bound by the beauty everything reminds me of my dog the guy in the store telephones.. .yoohoo taxicabs if you remind me of my dog we'll probably git along little doggie git along git along little doggie git a... smiling at strangers (better let them know you're friendly) the way people dress reminds me too, pissing on their favourite tree sad things cockroaches and other insects remind me too, don't hit them the blank expression of the little boy with thick glasses who picks himself up from the sidewalk and stands there blinking in the sun if you remind me of my dog we'll probably git along little doggy git along git along little doggie git a... like the man on the subway sitting across from me and every time i looked at him he smiled and by the time i got to the end of the subway line i'd given him at least...oh... cookies guys in bars remind me of my dog the way it takes you so long to choose the perfect table if you remind me of my dog we'll probably git along little doggie git a long git along little doggie git along (me and my ferocious dog we're walking down the street and everyone we meet says "ach yer a goot doogie!...") except when we go for a walk to get the sunday paper i stand there and read the headlines he reads the wind sometimes he hits a funny smell and laughs i hate it when he does that—ifeel so dumb what? what? i say everything reminds me of my dog beautiful things sunsets remind me of my dog—gina go to your window einstein reminds me of my dog—i want to pat his fluffy head this whole world reminds me of my dog my dog reminds me of this whole world do i remind you of a dog? (thump thump) i do? (faster thump) skyscrapers remind me of my dog sitting in the tall grass waiting for a rabbit guy in red cameros too-it's getting to be a habit artists remind me of my dog staking out their originality on the nearest tree old folks remind me of my dog my dog reminds old folks of their dogs (barfy, ruffo, beanhead) gina says i remind her of my dog the way i just did that golfers teeing off remind me of my dog the way he sits my me and shifts on his from paws-what is it you want? look at it, do you want to go for a walk, want a cookie, do you want me to dial the number for you? lyric "symmetry (the way things have to be)" from no borders here ...or say you re in a room and there's a beautiful fire and you're looking out the window but your eyes keep returning to the fire this is what i'm thinking the reason your eyes keep returning to the fire is because it divides your sight into left and right (and dark and light and dark) like a fine dividing wire here's another thing that i noticed last night that when he kissed me over there he usually kissed me over here, too i must have known it in my heart and with my inner sense of art cuz when i kiss him over there i never kiss him over here, too it's the way of the world people do it everywhere if you're going to do it over here then usually they do it over there symmetry is the way things have to be or say you're at a table and you have your forks and knives do you move them around 'til you get them just right? (this is when you're talking to someone) or you work in a nightclub and you notice that even though you try to seat everyone on one side of the room they always spread themselves out evenly from this side to that like atoms in a model it's the way of the world people do it everywhere if you're going to do it over here then usually they do it over there symmetry is the way things have to be or say you're in an airshow and your flying with two other pilots and you want to do it right because you like to do it right and one guy is flying at the tip of your left wring and the other guy's off doing his own thing would it bother you? it bothers me it's the way of the world people do it everywhere if you're going to do it over here then usually they do it over there symmetry is the way things have to be lyric "maria" from maria maria.. .maria.. .maria.. .maria maria is on my mind everything you do, everything you say every time you run, every time you play every time you sing, every time you pray long ago and far away long ago and here today long ago and far away long ago and here today and here to stay. lyric "freedom is gold" from lips nobody ain't telling me what i can or cannot do. freedom is a choice and freedom is gold. taking full responsibility for sinking or swimming. but what are you gonna do about money? well, i can do just fine with less. what if you fail? well, i hadn't thought about that. but i guess as long as it's an interesting ride that's alright. but what if people don't like what you do? fuck 'em? freedom is a choice and freedom is gold. lyric "flirtin' is a flo-thing" from lips flirtin' is a flo-thing i like to keep the fires hot i like to keep the coals a-glowin' i like to keep the furnace a-burnin' i like to keep the engine a-hummin' to take home to my baby. (or not). flirtin' is a flo-thing... i like to flirt with men i like to flirt with women i like to flirt with old folks, young folks i think i even like to flirt with trees i like to flirt with rocks, birds, bees i like to flirt with a good plate of linguini i like to flirt with a good suit, double-stitched, good linen. i guess that what i'm saying what i'm gettin' at is i like to flirt with everything flirtin' is a flo-thing... i like to keep the fires hot... flirtin' is a flo-thing... lyric "something about trains" from bound by the beauty something about trains something about love something about this old earth and the way it looks from up above something about satellites something about down below something about the hissing of that old steam iron as you press your clothes beam it up beam it down across the world from town to town most of the time when i'm walking the line i'm looking at the ground but every time i hear that whistle blowing every time i hear that old b l a c k crow every time i hear that whistle blowing i find myself a'shtvering in m y soul something about love when things go wrong when you can't find the one that you love you keep movin' on you walk the lonely valley you walk the line alone but this old earth is always there you don't feel so alone beam it up beam it down across the world from town to town most of the time when i'm walking the line i'm looking at the ground but every time i hear that whistle blowing every time i hear that old b l a c k crow every time i hear that whistle blowing i find myself a'shtvering in m y soul but you wake up in the middle of the night and a train whistle blows and a dog barks and something's not quite right and a cry is sent up from this earth into the silent sky beam it up beam it down across the world from town to town most of the time when i'm walking the line i'm looking at the ground but every time i hear that whistle blowing every time i hear that old b l a c k crow every time i hear that whistle blowing i find myself a'shtvering in m y soul something about trains something about love something about this old earth and the way it looks tonight the transcriptions in the following appendixes are not meant to be taken as a complete score performance. rather, only what i consider to be the most salient parts are notated. typically, this includes the vocal, harmonies, and the prevalent accompanying instruments. appendix l a j a l o u s e from bound by the beauty ( ) a _-, words and music by jane sibbery transcribed by france fledderus voice s • ja- lou dsus se d i said no- dmin dm guitar s d t • i - lo dsu i ll s f » » s d • i = tol dm d in hr j * - yo u tc ) [ gc dm ^ = ) * • l f \ • a • • j i m — • b you trick me with- amin all your lies emin/a dmin sus trick me *til_ amin cmin sus i'm on_ —j~ gtr. bass add brushes rit. e m i n s u s y o u r s i d e d m i n s u s d r a g m e i n - t o . a m i n y o u r _ stink e m i n i n g pit d m i n sus m m gtr. bass i a bit i l = l b r - b v -*• w • ne - v e r c o m e b a c k a m i n a m i n l a j a - l o u d d s u s se d - f r - s t t % i f *=f= j m p p p l l • » • * d • gtr. bass d a tempo knocked the ta - ble o - ver then i i grabbed your shoul b[? dmin bb • o i i l = | jtf f# gtr. bass j. h $ r "p p ders then i dmin i threw you as hard as_ d e - ver_ a »-t \ \ \ h r p t = m •--tt- gtr. bass a hmm where would you d dsus dmin gtr. bass facet brushes jo p | o \ p w j r gtr. bass go? ah- dm la ja-lou se let's talk a-bout old dmin b let's re - view some things- dm you made me era - zy lose my mind amin dmin emin sus dmin gtr. s - t — r bass i n o w i can't re - m e m - b e r w h y _ a m i n d m i n e m i n sus d m i n i d o n ' t - a m i n s e - v e n l i k e - d m i n % gtr. bass *_ <s>r - p '• _ the gt e m i n sus dn \lf i j \ v nin ^ * ' v f r -"ft ? j ^ \ a appendix g o o d b y e from the walking ( ) words and music by jane sibbery transcribed by france fledderus voice bamboo syn. bell syn. water syn. a v * ti - ny dot a e/gfl strand of_ e sand- —j — - - = voice bamboo syn. bell syn. water syn. ~ - \ waves that sigh fjjmin be e neath d the d hand- a/cj| j ' j e ^ *>: ftj t voice bamboo syn. bell syn. a' chime, the feet- w e: org. syn. water syn. s s ft voice bamboo syn. bell syn. e/g)t dry,. the sand t* tv ' org. syn. water syn. s b : voice i bamboo syn. org. syn. water syn. f=r= j j j j j j j j j j j j j jv j j j j voice bamboo syn. bell syn. start to run dmin this pink shell el, this grey b\>id span and a it * foreground org. syn. voice bamboo syn. bell syn. and a thou - sand par - dons trail f/c be - hind. f org. syn. water syn. a' voice bamboo syn. bell syn. j i n i lone a ly- beach- it » ¥ p i g org. syn. guitar syn. s ^ j l l » [ l t n r i > — - -* voice bamboo syn. bell syn. e/gf f |}min to " . _ j l = = ^ ¥ ^ ¥ ¥ l ¥ j — \ i r • v - - — h — < _zj^ i m — ^ n — i j — p * « , — j — • • org. syn. guitar syn. voice bamboo syn. bell syn. to c i i p r r 't p stand f run as fast a missed beat a quick'-ning i c/e csus /e f c/e it" f f f l mm org. syn. « a fi ' — : d voice bell syn. org. syn. generic syn. f went to say i love you but in - stead i said good-bye b[>/d bdim/d h dmin . u cjjmin djjmin/cjj cjjmin - r t a ? f s p = - — — — - ^ a * i j . * - — j — j — drum bass drum voice bell syn. djjmin/cjj cjjmin djjmin/cjj cjjmin djjmin/cjj cjjmin djjmin/cjj cjjmin djjmin/cjj cjjmin rt j? m _. i_. i ^ ^ j i i_. i org. syn. generic syn. f drum voice voice oh oh-mm oo oo oo i want a da da dee- da da de- da dadee— da da dee_ ji djjmin/cjj cjjmin djjmin/cjj cjjmin djjmin/cjj cjjmin djjmin/cjj cjjmin r l m i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i =e org. syn. generic syn. drum ta d ble no just for one_ esus /d d esus /d but i know- d you * < — = — * * - * _ ...m- m * m do esus /d i can see_ d so from here o - kay then say esus /d d for ^ two esus /d -a m j * — no there's on d ly one don't you want my busi esus /d d o f ness esus /d i will ne - ver come back d here esus /d a " sz voice bamboo syn. bell syn. water syn. l f « t , a e/gf —* i ^ i - v — -*—#- -a • * e n r j l , u voice bamboo syn. water syn. • all the- fjjmin love in the world.. f c o d a r r i f bamboo syn. water syn. p- -*- $ u i * £ d " j bamboo i i . u syn. ^ p *• ^fen • m r — » i ' b • l i — * bamboo syn. appendix e v e r y t h i n g r e m i n d s m e o f m y d o g from bound by beauty ( ) words and music by jane sibbery transcribed by france fledderus high hat snare kick bass v v v \ § ? ^ —i j u j "—-~l isn _ p ^ *a a a a -. r r r f i amin g amin g amin g amin pno. bass h. h. sn. k. b. st (whistled) j\ ? j j = f l bmin/e e bmin/e pno. bass h. h. sn. k. b. ssi r r r solo -a- \ \ \\ ev' - r y - t h i n g re-minds me o f my dog bmin/e e the n n - t r r> pno. gtr. bass h. h. sn. k. b. b i ^ f j l i i guy in the store bmin/e re-minds me o f my dog e p pno. gtr. bass h. h. sn. k b . l l « l _ > it' pno. bass dog_ e cock- roach -es and oth - er in - sects re-mind me bmin/e pno. gtr. bass h. h. sn. k. b. l u l u i r a' too, e don't hit them the blank ex - pres-sion of the lit-tie boy bmin/e pno. gtr. bass h. h. sn. k. b. l l j j \ j l j § \ j with the thick glas - ses who picks him - self up from the pno. bass y ? p "—*h s i w a y it takes y o u s o l o n g to c h o o s e the p e r - f e e t t a - b l e r e - m i n d s m e o f m y d o g i f b m i n / e e pno. gtr. bass h. h. sn. k. b. d = t f i r r b' solo y o u b m i n / e re - m i n d m e o f m y d o g w e ' l l p r o b ' - l y git a - l o n g _ pno. bass h. h. sn. k. b. e r r r i r tutti pno. bass l i t - t i e d o g - g i e git a - l o n g git a - l o n g l i t - t i e d o g - g i e e a e t i i r t « a m i n git a - l o n g _ a m i n pno. bass h. h. sn. k b . -a- a d solo — • — • -a- st i t dulcimer gtr. m e a n d m y fer - o - c i o u s d o g we're w a l k - i n g d o w n the street a n d a m i n e m i n a m i n e m i n a m i n e m i n a m i n e m m bass h. h. sn. k. b. -* -» = £ , tutti dulcimer gtr. bass h. h. sn. k. b. i ev' - ry o n e w e meet says a m i n e m i n . a m i n e m i n a c h y e r a g o o t d o g - g i e a c h y e r a g o o t d o g - g i e a m i n g a m i n g solo * v v v * i a c h y e r a g o o t d o g - g i e d o g - g i e ? a m i n g a m i n g e x - cept w h e n w e g o f o r a e dulcimer pno. gtr. bass h. h. sn. k b . * pno. bass h. h. sn. k. b. s i w a l k to get the s u n - d a y p a - per i stand there a n d r e a d the h e a d - lines ~ he reads the wind j y t j " ' and some-times he hits a fun - ny pno. gtr. bass h. h. sn. k. b. "st s t r t v. pno. gtr. bass h. h. sn. k. b. smell and laughs ^ i hate it when he does that i feel so = s i j j j j i j j r t r t d o g e s u n - sets r e - m i n d m e o f m y b m i n / e , -a- d o g g i n - a g o to y o u r w i n - d o w e i n - stein r e - m i n d s m e o f m y e „ b m i n / e f r t r w o r l d e d o bmin/e re - m i n d y o u o f a pno. gtr. s i bass h. h. sn. k. b. d o g s i t - t i n g in the tall grass w a i t - i n g for a r a b - b i t g u y s in red c a - m a - r o s e b m i n / e r i r r j too it's get - t i n g to b e e a h a - bit ar - tists r e - m i n d m e o f m y b m i n / e * r r t f r i r r f s i d o g s t a k - i n g out their o - ri - g i - n a - li - ty o n e b m i n / e the near - est ) l a « * * shifts o n h i s p a w s b m i n / e r x — — * x — w h a t is it y o u w a n t ? i > pno. gtr. bass h. h. sn. k. b. v tf tt t e t r t r appendix m a r i a from maria ( ) words and music by jane sibbery transcribed by france fledderus voice ah ah_ yeah_ , — . . .. n [ i — p piano bass i i d m i n e m i n d m i n — - ah pno. g s u s ah d m i n g d m i n i %z n c c s u s n c c s u s i i l ^ ~ * $ * ..... ^ ^— — -& p' -a-. — - \ - r-—i g m i n e m i n d m i n a m i n c / g g m i n : l - f : l j r r p"r =t a ' * h d m i n / g d m i n m a - n - a_ d m i n a m a - n - a_ e m a j a pno. pno. l h . bb tpt. ri - a b m i n / d a / c m a - n - a . c-smin b m i n m a - n - a _ a m i n pno. b. r *p r p i r it n - - - a m a - c gsus /c j. ji j = ri - - - a g / c gsus | j j j j ma - sf- i i t - - t — #—m~*l^t» *—% p ri c =#=f a gsus m ma - ri - g / c ) j j ji - a ma - amin/c ri - a is on c - m » my — r a r , =: j • r •* fg, ^ » a h § r = ± = ± mind cmaj $ j . j i i c ^ /a. d a c la da da da da r =^ l j i . s=i if | t ' a #^ or l amin /e j r j j j f = £ ^ s - j oh d i \ \ \ m d- d d ** ev' - ry thing you c d an - . . d d d d- o ev' - ry thing you nin £ sa d y /ftt f -£=f-[ ttf j j j j m m ] = — ev' - ry tin d an j ^ _ d d ne you run ev' - ry tin i d- ne you t pi d — \ ay /a * f —> • r ¥ r | ev' - ry time you si d arr j j j j - i g ev' - ry time you in/e ,> cj pray d , - = *r f ?- r? f nuh nuh nuh d nuh nuh nuh na d/a na na na • i far a - way j . j i j j j j- j long a - go and here to - day long d d a - go and he r p u t he p = ~ d d _: • - — ' ^ far a - way —wt- a - go long d and here to day d pno. i p s ? r tie it it i i : * —;g and here to d stay d pno. yeah yeah oh d pno. pno. pno. l h . bb tpt. $ - u n j ^ d _ ^ . . i - = $ = appendix flirtin' i s a flo-thing from lips ( ) w o r d s a n d m u s i c b y jane s i b b e r y t r a n s c r i b e d f r a n c e f l e d d e r u s organ guitar bass high hat snare kick bass d m i n d m i n d m i n org. gtr. -- m ml crfrffr h. h. sn. k. b. i — * — ^ d m i n l d m i n d m i n l v. pno. org. gtr. flo - dmin -thing. flir - tin' is a d m i n > > > h. h. sn. k.. b. s= £ f— — > _ • i- i * i m v. pno. org. gtr. f l o d m i n thing_ d m i n flir - tin' is a > > > > h. h. sn. k. b " ̂ t- i p — u u i v. v. pno. org. i like to keep the fi - res hot •—*—w- i like to keep the coals a hot dmin a /cft \\ i h . h . sn. k. b. ' j , j , j j j ? j v *—*—*—*—z * v. v. pno. org. — * * * — * - glow - in' i like to keep the fur - nace a - burn - in'. nah nah nah nah ye • glow - in' burn - in' dmin /c b^ o h . h . sn. k. b. j j j " ? t hz •m—*—* *—*—* * i like to keep the e n - g i n e a ah hum - min' hum - min' amin hum - min' fmin/a i j i j i j i • to take home to my ba amin take home to by ba f/a cymbal dminl dmin dminl • « t m • « — j • i i i j —j« j * • » tt-ffl- •>: ; - — - —• - - — r c j d d ' \-d-* * - s—f— •' r u i r r u i - j j x x — > j j -x x x x! x x j j j j } r j * x f j - llf * - — \ - f k * —r r * pno. o r g . gtr. h . h . sn. k. b. dminl> dmin pno. gtr. = £ p h. h. sn. k. b. j j j j r j j j j j j j j j j j dmin dmin — j j j j ^ •>: : r r >. t_jr r - i _ ^ ' r ^ / ^^^^^^^ r - r * x - f l > x x, v x x j x x i x - i • >j x x xj v —* f* -u * x r r r * pno gtr. h. h. sn. k. b. a l l v. oh_ dmin pno. gtr h. h. sn. k.. b. j . flir - tin' is a flo dmin ^ . r * * f « " - • thing- " k * * * v v. pno. gtr. d m i n [ °°) flir - tin' is > > h. h. sn. k. b. x x x if v. flo - dminl t-- - thing dmin flir-tin' is a pno. gtr t i a m tit a h. h. sn. k. b. ^ _x x_ = x x x y; v *: x m - x x _ v. v. good suit i i i | i i j i r # * ¥ * * *t dou - ble stiched good i guess that — * — hmm_ — * — hmm g hmm_ g pno. org. gtr. h. h. sn. k. b. cymbal v. pno. org. gtr h. h. sn. k. b. / l v - l j r i v. v. pno. org. gtr. dmin d m i n t i t t v v t t t t j " w w w w • • • • • • • • • • • • ' h. h. sn. k. b. a — x. v_ ̂ t^- j ^ >j ^ ll ' x_ r< r< \ v. v . pno. org. gtr. ow or ** - h — j - . o h dmi = # = dmi i n =#= i—j" -—t i— i f —s —s i h m i l l h - i r r t== f=l i" r r [ " i — * > x x x —) f > > < s j * x p (lh r * / • < * h. h. sn. k. b. v . v . oh_ o h . oh_ oh_ dmin dminl pno. org. gtr. jjjjjjjjjj j i j j j j j j j j j j j j j i j j j i i i l l l i f * * * * - * ¥ - ¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ * l ¥ t h. h sn. k.. b. " ̂ x - _> x j j i f ~k x x x t~ _ x x _ a dmin flir - tin' is a flo - dmin -thing_ j jjjjjjjjjjj j * v w * — k < — i * - f / p — - u r r * = ^ dmin flir - tin' is a flo dmin thing jp)#- • v if w •« > > j j k. b. ^ * x x x x f / ft—ux r j v. v. org. b u i — -— ti - in' stro n g i l i k e to k e ep the e n - g i n e h u m - m i n ' — t — — pj m b u r n - in gl w t# j "fl j j j j j v •j \ v - x < ii y x > * > h. h. sn. k . . b . v. v. org. e h u m - m i n ' h u m - m i n ' to take h o m e to m y b a = i i j % » ' a - by h u m - m i n ' _ d m i n / a take h o m e to m y b a - a ( a d d ) a ( a d d ) by a it h. h. sn. k. b. >i x * * a—j—j » <̂ >i >i > x *. j j -jj x j j j " x~~ i - x — x x x x" "ix x x x x — x — x — s r - - * f i m • • v c i d m i fli • r - ti m n' is > a fl d m i >=* -thi n g j . ] = # = t u m » i l || i ' i j " f- -•• " j > •fi } * r ' ' = * - f ; - — „ > •fi } ^ i > . —j * * • * r ' ' = * - f ; - — „ j i > " * f - i —i * j pii: - x( ) -i elsevier applied acoustics ( ) - copyright elsevier science limited printed in great britain. all rights reserved oc@ - x/ /% . designing a guitar family graham caldersmith caldersmith luthiers, dryandra street, o’connor, act , australia (received october ; revised version received and accepted february ) abstract when the standard classical guitar is scaled up a musical fourth to a treble guitar, down a musical fifth to a baritone guitar, and down an octave to a bass guitar, design compromises are necessary to maintain playability and favourable tone qulality. the resulting instruments exhibit interesting natural vibration mode and sound radiation physics. the tone qualities of the new instruments suggest relations between the guitar response envelope and human sound perception. translating the principle natural modes of the guitar up or down with string frequencies does not necessarily produce pleasing tone qualities nor optimal playing dynamics. however, designing bracing configurations for both classical and folk baritone and bass guitars to maximise low frequency radiation eficiency does seem to produce new instruments of musical appeal, frequency response records of standard and guitar family variants illustrate the phys- ical behaviour of the difierent designs. experience of musicians with the guitar family instruments indicates that creative new guitar territory is available. keywords: guitar family, natural modes, radiation efficiency, acoustic scaling. introduction archaeological evidence reveals that stringed musical instruments have distinguished early cultures and great civilisations for thousands of years. medieval and renaissance cultures excelled in the rapid evolution and gruhum cddtwmith differentiation of keyboard, bowed and plucked instruments. the guitar continued to develop through this century from the gut strung form of last century to the concert nylon-strung classical guitar, the steel-strung folk and jazz guitars and the electric guitar. each of these have several variations, which of course promote vigorous brand rivalries. at the close of this century there are few cultures that have not incorporated the guitar into their musical lives, and to that extent it is fair to describe this century as the century of the guitar. yet it is equally clear that while the bowed instruments, and other fretted instruments like the lute, mandolin and balalaika evolved naturally into families, this has not happened with the versatile and popular guitar except for the minor usage of the bass guitarron and treble requinto in south american ensembles. the rapid adoption of the electric bass in western popular music is an important musical development but does not signal the emergence of a guitar family. thus an attempt to design guitar family from scientific principles should recognise that the rich ferment of innovation with trial and error which has given us the variety of guitar forms in use today has not yet produced a family of guitars - and there may be good reasons for this. however, scientific understanding of musical instruments is now increas- ing, together with improvements in string technology, and it is reason- able to hope that new knowledge of guitar behaviour and new string types may allow the development of instruments which will add another dimension to guitar music through a guitar family. it is only in recent decades that we have been able to properly under- stand the vibrations of non-ideal bowed and plucked strings’,* and the vibrations of internally damped, radiating orthotropic plates of varying thicknesses. we are now tackling the vibrations of arched and braced orthotropic plates and the way they are coupled to each other and to the enclosed air as well as to the strings that excite them through active bridges. g we are only just beginning to grapple with the way in which these coupled resonators radiate sound and the relation of all these behaviours to the human perceptions of playability and tone quality.’ so an attempt to design a guitar family on scientific principles should recognise the complexity of guitar behaviour, the limits to our current knowledge of it and the unpredictability of the response of musicians and audiences to the tone quality and playabilty of new instruments. consequently, initial designs must be intuitive, but as the prototype instruments are documented for principle mode geometry, frequency response and player reaction, correlations are established between these and the structure of the new instruments. subsequent models can then be designed to embody more desirable features of playability and tone quality. designing a guitar family the guitar frequency response the plucked strings of a guitar vibrate in an harmonic series at , , ,... times the fundamental frequency and they excite the top plate where they pass over the saddle on the bridge. the top plate responds in its natural modes of vibration which are coupled to the air inside the guitar and to the back and sides of the soundbox. most top and back plate modes have nodal regions at the plate boundaries and their mode geometries can be fairly readily envisaged as subdivisions of the fundamental mode displacement designated as ,o. figure shows bracing geometry and lower principle modes of a fan-braced classical guitar, designated l,o; ,l; , ; etc. according to nodal line geometry. the modes appear as peaks in the frequency response recorded with an accelerometer at the driving point and with a microphone m above the top centre of the guitar. in this case the guitar was driven with an alternating force of con- stant amplitude supplied perpendicular to the saddle by a peg glued to the voice coil of a . w minispeaker with the cone removed. the voice coil and peg weighs . g and the response profiles are essentially identi- cal to those produced by other methods of excitation reported by meyer,’ jansson,” richardson” and others. excitation parallel to the saddle transmits a small fraction of string energy to the guitar body. the mode geometries are marginally affected by bracing dimensions and con- figuration while mode frequencies are determined by the net stiffnesses of the top and back, which depend on wood properties, wood thicknesses and brace dimensions: the thicker the wood and braces, the higher the mode frequencies. the fundamental mode ( ,o) couples with the air piston in the sound- hole via the elastic air volume enclosed in the soundbox. this reflex action results in a resonance doublet in which at the lower resonance the air piston moves in antiphase to the top fundamental motion and at high amplitude, dominating the volume flow. at the higher resonance the air piston and the top fundamental move in cophase, maximising volume flow. the physics of this behaviour is interesting’ t’ and explains much of the character of the low frequency range response of the guitar. note the shallow valley in sound pressure between the air and top fun- damental resonances. in some guitars, such as the one illustrated in fig. , the back fundamental mode also couples with the air and top funda- mental resonances through the air volume and produces a resonance triplet: the air mode, where the air piston dominates in the volume flow rate, and the fundamental plate doublet, where the top and back move relative to the surrounding air in antiphase at the lower resonance and in cophase at the higher one. these lowest coupled resonances occur at soboh. fig. . (a) standard classical guitar frequency response and (b) bracing geometry of the standard classical guitar. the guitar is driven at the bridge saddle with a peg glued to the voice coil of a . w minispeaker, cone removed, which excites the guitar with a constant amplitude sinusoidal force swept from khz to kwz. the top trace is the the signal level in db from an accelerometer adjacent to the driving peg, the peaks of which occur at the resonance frequencies of the natural modes of this guitar. this trace may be regarded as an input characteristic of this guitar since it is a meawe of the energy delivered to the guitar by the constant amplitude driving force. the bottom trace is the sound level. recorded by a rni~~ophon~ placed i m above the belly centre; it may be regarded as an output characteristic. the relative heights of the input and output peaks are measures of radiation efficiencies. frequencies where the wavelength in air is larger than the fundamental plate dimensions and they produce sound in the compression~ecompres~ sion cycles of the oscilfatory air flows or ‘near fields’ around the guitar, the sound radiated from the the near fields proceeds in predominantly spherical ‘far fields’, although perturbation from the spherical far field is evident at the antiphase fundamental plate mode. the cross dipole ( ,o) mode is an inpatient sound radiator because the adjacent antinodes move in antiphase and eliminate any net volume flow. the centremost strings, d and c, excite the top near the nodal line of this mode and couple weakty to it. the outermost strings, e and e, are closer to the antinodal maxima and couple more eficiently to the ,o designing a guitar family (b) fig. . ~ contd. mode. overtones of the bass e and a strings deliver energy to this mode but produce little sound output from it. consequently, most string energy is dissipated in internal wood damping in this mode, and probably some into air resistance to the vibrating nylon strings. fortunately this mode occurs in most guitars at frequencies below the fundamental fre- quency of the first string ( hz), but some notes on the second (b) string have first partials which decay quickly with little sound output because they deliver energy to this mode at high rates. the long dipole mode ( ,l) is a net volume producer because the front antinodal zone vibrates with higher amplitude and greater area than the rear antinodal zone. but the strings usually couple weakly to this mode since the nodal line runs nearly through the bridge saddle where the modes are excited by the strings. however the cross tripole mode ( , ) is excited by all strings and is an efficient net volume source since the two outer antinodes vibrate at higher amplitude than the central antinode with which they are in antiphase. further, this mode vibrates in the same net volume phase as the top fundamental at frequencies between their resonance frequencies. the frequency response shows a shallow valley in sound output between the grrrham culdersmith fundamental and tripole resonances, a desirable feature in the interests of sound output in this frequency range. in fact the frequency response indicates that the low range sound produced by a classical guitar is essen- tially due to two plate modes: the coupled ,o top and ,o back modes cooperating with the , top mode, with perturbations due to the weak excitation of the dipole modes ,o and ,l. steel-string (folk) x-braced guitars show low excitation of the cross tripole ( , ) mode and their low range response is essentially due to the coupled plate fundamental modes. above the tripole mode frequency, top and back modes fall more closely together in logarithmic frequency space and begin to overlap into a resonance continuum, the envelope of which characterises the voice of a particular guitar. the radiation efficiency of these higher modes increases as the dimensions of their antinodal zones approach the wave- length in air with increasing frequency. the relationship between the drive point amplitude and the sound radiated demonstrates this effect. the stiffer the bridge relative to the soundboard, the lower the excitation levels of higher modes: the more rigid the bridge, the more nodal it becomes to higher modes. the adjustment of the bridge dimensions for appropriate excitation levels at the bridge driving points is one of the seasoned luthier’s skills. the guitar family the above description of classical and steel-string guitar physics provides a model which can be translated down or up for bass, baritone and tre- ble compasses. in principle, one might aim to keep the lowest natural modes (air; ,o; ,l; l,o; , ) of the new instruments in the same relation to the string frequencies (or compass) as for the standard guitar. this has been the principle of the violin octet project initiated by the violin acoustician carleen hutchins. in that project, the air, and main-wood violin modes (comparable to the air/plate fundamental doublet or triplet of the guitar) are designed to fall close to the frequencies of the two middle strings of the eight instruments of the violin octet. it appears that this straight translation of the natural mode frequencies in the guitar family is neither practical nor desirable. there are good musical reasons for assigning the compasses of the guitar family as follows: ( ) bass: a four-string instrument tuned the same as the string bass and the electric bass, viz. e ( hz), a ( hz), d ( hz), g ( hz), designing a guitar family which is in fact an octave below the four lowest strings of the standard guitar. ( ) baritone: a six-string instrument tuned a musical fifth seven semi- tones) below the standard, so the compass is a ( hz) to a ( hz). ( ) treble: tuned a musical fourth above the standard, so the compass is a ( hz) to a( hz), an octave above the baritone. this configuration of the guitar family has proved conducive to arrangement of existing orchestral, string ensemble and keyboard works as well as new compositions. one of the most effective uses of the guitar family is for the vast string quartet repertoire, where the baritone plays the cello part, the standard the viola part, and the two trebles the violin parts. transposition of orchestral works usually employs the full family and a new composition includes string bass with guitar bass, and two stan- dards. figure shows guitar trek with the classical guitar family. they have performed around australia and in asia and america and have released their second abc classics album containing elizabethan, baroque, classical, romantic, modern and commissioned works (see discography). in folk ensembles the steel-string baritone guitar has proved versatile fig. . guitar trek: timothy kain (head guitar faculty canberra school of music) with treble; carolyn kidd, standard; mark norton, baritone; peter constant, bass. for accompanying other instruments and voice, where its low register provides a satisfying bass line as well as a chordal structure. amplification of acoustic instruments is now an established and sophisticated practice in popular and folk performance, and the fitting of new generation saddle transducers to baritones has produced a striking, rich tonality which brings a new dimension to folk arrangement, of which the canberra group spindl~wood are prime proponents. tony griffiths of spindlewood has featured his baritone in several of his com- positions for the group (see discography). similarly, simon kravis of the eclectic canberra group skedaddl~ has employed his transduced baritone in several modes within the group and supporting other artists. simon has also found fertile ground for the acoustic folk bass, and is using it in several ensembles including the guitar trio totally plucked, playing standard, baritone and bass folk guitars. the emergence of the classical and folk acoustic guitar basses is expanding the territory formerly covered by the string bass and the ubiquitous electric bass. because the treble or melody section of folk ensembles is so abun- dantly catered for by mandolins, mandolas, fiddles, banjos, harps, flutes, whistles, smallpipes, concertinas and harmonicas, the treble folk guitar seems to be redundant at this stage. but it is impossible to predict how various new instruments will serve within the rapidly evolving streams of twentieth century music with increasingly sophisticated transducer/ computerised amplification systems becoming available. principles of design a useful rule of thumb to guide the maker in scaling body sizes of new instruments is derived from the orthotropic rectangular plate equation, which equates the inertial forces experienced by an element of the plate during its oscillations to the restoring forces generated by the plate defor- mation in any of its natural modes. the inertial forces are proportional to the frequency squared and to the plate and brace thicknesses and material density. the restoring forces are proportional to the cube of the plate and brace thicknesses, to four (mostly three) moduli of the plate and brace materials and inversely proportional to the fourth power of the plate dimensions, i.e. the mode frequency is proportional to the plate and brace thicknesses and inversely proportional to the square of the plate dimensions along the grain and across the grain - so to halve the frequency of the natural modes for an instrument tuned an octave lower than the standard, the plate dimensions should increase by a factor of about . if plate thickness and brace sections remain the same. designing a guitar jbmily but, for structural reasons, larger instruments usually have thicker plates and braces, so that plate dimensions need to increase by a factor greater than . to set the principal modes an octave lower. for instance the string bass body is about . times larger than the cello, but its low- est two modes lie relatively higher in its compass - closer to the two top string frequencies than to the middle two. in the guitar family the restrictions on playability require the bass to be only about a factor of . larger than the standard (the guitar bass string length being . times the standard). thus to keep the bass modes close to an octave below the standard, the top thickness and brace heights were made only marginally greater than the . and . mm stan- dard at . and . mm maximum respectively. the acoustic length of the soundboard was increased by continuing the fan braces past the soundhole to the front transverse bar instead of to the waist bar as in the standard classical guitar (see fig. ). this same device was employed in the classical baritone. the principal mode frequencies of several basses and baritone guitars are shown in table . the most recent baritone has modes lying close to a musical fifth below standard. this waistless design also increases the excitation level of the ,l (long dipole) mode, since its nodal line lies forward of the saddle where the strings excite the mode in the rear antinode. this introduces another strong lower frequency fig. . bracing geometry of the classical bass and baritone table principal mode frequencies and ratios of standard and guitar family instruments. fre- quency ratios are relative to caldersmith ‘ standard classical. modes , and , may appear two or three times due to coupling. air o.o- . o.o+o.o . . , classical standards caldersmith ‘ ramirez ‘ ramirez ‘ ramirez ‘ x kohno # smallman ‘ & smallman ‘ smallman ‘ classical trebles long string ‘x . short string ‘ . . short string ‘ , i . philp ‘ . . classical baritones , . . i , , i. . . . , . . . , . , . . . . . . . . . x. . , . , . , , ‘xl . . . . x . . ‘xx #i . . . . ‘ x # . . .x . . ‘ . . . . . x, - . . folk baritone ‘ #i . . . . i i x . .x , . ‘ # x. . . . . . , . classical bass ‘ #i , , . . . . , . ‘ # . . . . . . . . . . & . . & . .oo . . & . . & , . & . .ol , . . . & . . & . . . . . . & . . . .x . . & , . . . , . & . . . . x , , & . . & . . , . , , & , , designing a guitar family resonance triplet into the response of the classical baritone: the ,l top mode couples strongly with the ,o back mode and with the ,l internal air mode. these three peaks augment the shallow valley in sound output between the ,o and , modes in a complex way which exhibits several coupling and radiation features. the frequency response of this most recent baritone is shown in fig. with mode peaks identified. while professional musicians agree that this baritone is the most musically attractive version so far, they debate its projection relative to the earlier instruments. table also includes the lower mode frequencies of the steel-string (folk) baritone guitar. it is braced with the x configuration of the steel string guitar, but the x is shallower than the dreadnought standard pat- tern, and stiffens the top less along the grain as shown in fig. . the symmetrical chevron bracing behind the shallow x allows the efficient excitation of the radiating , mode not usually evident in folk guitars. the result is a strong radiation output over this baritone’s lower mode range, a characteristic suitable for a lower pitched guitar. this feature is shown in the sound level output between the ,o and , modes in fig. . these folk baritone guitars offer a new guitar tonality to folk ensembles and inspire enthusiasm and some confusion from guitarists. the mm string length is not a disorienting change from the mm standard and limits playability minimally. fig. . acceleration level (input) and sound pressure level (output) frequency responses of a classical baritone guitar. fig. . bracing geometry of the folk baritone guitar. the first treble guitars were made with both standard string lengths (tuned up a fourth with thinner strings) and with shorter standard strings. the smalter bodies produced a mode series a little less than a fourth above standard frequencies. it soon became evident that the sharp, cutting tone quality of these instruments was not appropriate to most of the baroque, classical and modern repertoire they were used to play in ensemble. so slacker trebles were made with lower pitched modes, and one even with a standard-sized rear bout which had modes close to standard frequencies, some of these trebles were made with the lattice/carbon fibre braced top (see fig, ). a design pioneered and devel- oped by greg smallman of glen innes, australia. trebte tone quality probably depends not so much on the frequencies of the lower identifi- able modes but on the strength of the starting transients and the partial envelope, or formant, of the sustained tones following the transients~ frequency responses of the tighter trebles (with higher-pitched mode series) show a pronounced broad peak in the - khz band (see fig. ) relative to the standard guitar, a feature which may be responsibie for the ‘sharp, cutting tonality’ attributed to them. the human hearing system is acutely attund to speech formant peaks in this range and is like- wise sensitive to partial envelope formants in this range also. it may be that trebles with modes marginally above the standard mode frequencies designing a guitar ftimil?, fig. . acceleration level (input) and sound pressure level (output) frequency responses of a folk baritone guitar. fig. . bracing geometry of the smallman lattice treble guitar. graham cuilrrsmith ” he fig. . acceleration level (input) and sound pressure level (output) frequency responses of an early treble guitar. produce a tone quality with transients and note formants only a little sharper than standard guitar tone quality, which is a tone quality appro- priate to the treble, however perceptions change with usage, and we may expect treble tone quality to vary in the evolution of the guitar family. the classical and folk baritone tone quality is currently acceptable with a translation of the principal modes down one musical fifth to match the compass, perhaps because classical and folk baritone frequency responses show a fairly flat profile in the - khz band, like the standard, so producing a similar formant character in the partial envelopes. conclusion early experience with instruments of the guitar family has revealed some interesting vibration and radiation physics, and has shown limitations in the presumed principle of translating standard mode frequencies up or down to match different compasses. audiences in several continents have affirmed the musical value of the classical guitar family, and inventive folk musicians and composers have found creative musical territory using the folk baritone guitar. references . pickering n. c., the bowed string. amereon, mattituk, new york, . designing a guitar fhmily . . . . . . . . . . . . gough, c. e., the theory of string resonances on musical instruments. acustica, ( ) . mcintyre, m. e. & woodhouse, j., the influence of geometry on linear damping. acustica, ( ) . rodgers, . e., influence of local thickness changes on violin top plate frequencies, part . j. catgut acous. sot., ( ) ( ) . jansson, e. v., fryden, l. & mattson, g., on tuning of the violin bridge. j. catgut acous. sot., l( ) ( ) . caldersmith, g. w., vibration geometry and radiation fields in acoustic guitars, acoustics australia, ( ) ( ) . thompson, p., thompson, a. & caldersmith, g. w., a pilot study of the identification of preferred violin tone. j. violin sot. am., s( ) ( ) . richardson, b. e., the acoustical development of the guitar. j. catgut acous. sot., ( ) ( ) . meyer, j., quality aspects of the guitar tone. royal swedish academy of music publications, , p. . jansson, e. v., acoustics for the guitar maker. royal swedish academy of music publications, , p. . richardson, b. e., walker, g. p. & brooke, m. synthesis of guitar tones from fundamental parameters relating to construction. proc. inst. acoustics, (l) ( ) . caldersmith, g. w., plate fundamental coupling and its musical impor- tance. j. catgut acous, sot., ( ) ( ) . christensen, . & vistisen, b. b., simple model for low frequency guitar function. j. acous. sot. am., ( ) . discography guitar trek, guitar trek, ii. abc classics, available from abc shop, sydney. face the wind. spindlewood, available from spindlewood music, australia. world busking music. qian lan & simon kravis, available from sk music, o’connor, australia. the glittering star. simon kravis & jane belfrage, available from sk music, o’connor. australia. in search of computer music analysis: music information retrieval, optimization, and machine learning from - in search of computer music analysis: music information retrieval, optimization, and machine learning from - felicia nafeeza persaud thesis submitted to the faculty of graduate and postdoctoral studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the ma degree in music department of music faculty of arts university of ottawa © felicia nafeeza persaud, ottawa, canada, ii table of contents abstract ........................................................................................................................................ vii acknowledgements .................................................................................................................... viii glossary ......................................................................................................................................... ix chapter - introduction and literature review........................................................................ . . general mission statement . . a critical overview of computer music analysis: music information retrieval, optimization, and machine learning ...................................................................................... . . persaud’s five critical issues ......................................................................................... . a sketch of the relationship between computers and music . . composition and performance ....................................................................................... . . applications in music theory and analysis ................................................................ . . . recurrent features: databases ................................................................................... . . . structural models: analysis and counterpoint ......................................................... . . music information retrieval versus optimization ...................................................... . literature review . . david temperley the cognition of basic musical structures ( ) ......................... . . david temperley and christopher bartlette “parallelism as a factor in metrical analysis” ( ) .................................................................................................................... iii . . david temperley music and probability ( ) ......................................................... . . david huron “tone and voice: a derivation of the rules of voice-leading from perceptual principles” ( ) ................................................................................................ . . darrell conklin and ian h. witten “multiple viewpoint systems for music prediction” ( )..................................................................................................................................... . conclusion chapter - music information retrieval .................................................................................. . introduction . . mir overview and applications .................................................................................. . the mir tools . . vocalsearch .................................................................................................................. . . simssa ........................................................................................................................ . . donnelly and sheppard bayesian network algorithm ................................................ . critical analysis . . vocalsearch .................................................................................................................. . . simssa ........................................................................................................................ . . bayesian networks ....................................................................................................... chapter -optimization ............................................................................................................. . preference rules . . metrical structure ......................................................................................................... iv . . contrapuntal structure .................................................................................................. . . tonal-pitch class representation and harmonic structure ......................................... . . melodic phrase structure.............................................................................................. . . parallelism .................................................................................................................... . probabilistic and statistical models . . introduction .................................................................................................................. . . david temperley’s use of bayesian probability .......................................................... . . statistics and harmonic vectors ................................................................................... . . distinctive patterns using bioinformatics and probability ........................................... . critical analysis: optimization . . preference rules: metrical structure ............................................................................. . . preference rules: counterpoint .................................................................................... . . preference rules: tonal-class representation and harmony ....................................... . . melodic phrase structure and parallelism .................................................................... . . probability and statistics .............................................................................................. chapter -machine learning .................................................................................................... . introduction to machine learning . outline of selected tools . . ornamentation in jazz guitar ....................................................................................... . . melodic analysis with segment classes ....................................................................... v . . chord sequence generation with semiotic patterns ...................................................... . . analysis of analysis ...................................................................................................... . summary chapter - conclusion ................................................................................................................ . further temperley research and probability . machine learning as a means to an end . compmusic as an example of intersection . five general areas for improvement in the field . persaud’s five critical issues with solutions bibliography ................................................................................................................................ vi table of figures figure graphic representation of the five critical issues ............................................................................ figure graphic representation of mir………………………………………………………………….. figure graphic representation of optimization ..................................................................................... figure beat hierarchy .............................................................................................................................. figure graphic of five critical issues with solutions ................................................................................ vii abstract my thesis aims to critically examine three methods in the current state of computer music analysis. i will concentrate on music information retrieval, optimization, and machine learning. my goal is to describe and critically analyze each method, then examine the intersection of all three. i will start by looking at david temperley’s the cognition of basic musical structures ( ) which offers an outline of major accomplishments before the turn of the st century. this outline will provide a method of organization for a large portion of the thesis. i will conclude by explaining the most recent developments in terms of the three methods cited. following trends in these developments, i can hypothesize the direction of the field. viii acknowledgements i have appreciated all the help i have had in this thesis writing process. from professors, to friends, to family, everyone deserves a thank you. firstly, i must thank my thesis supervisor dr. p. murray dineen who has guided me throughout this process. his feedback and support has helped me immensely to improve as a writer. i am grateful that dr. dineen has helped me to gain invaluable skills over the last two years in my master of arts. i would also like to thank my committee members, dr. roxanne prevost and dr. jada watson, who have provided amazing feedback and discussion. they have helped me greatly in creating the final thesis. i would like to thank dr. julie pedneault-deslauriers as well for serving as a member of the committee for the thesis proposal. i am grateful to the rest of my professors and colleagues at the university of ottawa for everything i have learned at the university of ottawa. it has helped to guide me in creating this thesis and has helped me improve myself. my friends and family also deserve a thank you for going through sections and drafts throughout this process. a special thank you to my dad, sister and fiancé who went through my first draft. it has come a long way since then. ix glossary algorithm: a set of steps followed in calculations or problem-solving operations to achieve some end result. computer music analysis: analysis of music using a computing software or algorithms. this is a ‘catch all’ term referring to all of the smaller aspects using computers for music analysis including, music information retrieval (mir), optimization, and machine learning. according to a book, entitled computational music analysis, by david meredith, a general definition is “using mathematics and computing to advance our understanding of music […] and how music is understood.” (meredith ) machine learning: teaching of a computer to analyse and find features, so as to gain knowledge of musical conventions. machine learning is a route that is parallel to mir, preference rule systems (prss), and probabilistic models. like a human learning, “a computer learns to perform a task by studying a training set of examples.” (louridas and ebert ) following this, a different example is given, and the effectiveness is measured in several ways depending on the task. music information retrieval (mir): research concerned with making all aspects of a music file (melody, instrumentation, form etc.) searchable. mir will eventually lead to a search engine for music. optimization: a term used in calculus or business that refers to maximizing use of space or resources. resources are still important in the musical sense, but they refer to time and energy. this is done through accessibility and more efficient computer tools and algorithms. examples given below to show that it is possible to optimize analysis by integrating more mathematics and computer tools. piano-roll input: a graphic representation of a score with notes on the vertical axis and timing in millisecond s on the horizontal. preference rule system (prs): a set of instructions for a computer in a hierarchy. these can be created as a system where there are multiple sets with a hierarchy within “criteria for evaluating possible analysis of a piece.” (preface temperley and bartlette ) this is known as a rule- based grammar in manning et al . parallelism rule (as a type of preference rule): the idea that the similar construction of a musical element be regarded as important in a prs.” prefer beat intervals of a certain distance to the extent that repetition occurs at that distance in the vicinity.” (temperley and bartlette , ) probabilistic methods: a method of analysis based in probability. the word “probabilistic” means for an idea to be based on or adapted to a theory of probability, this term encompasses even distant uses of probability in computer models. this is a term used by temperley referring to a computational method that uses probability. chapter - introduction and literature review . overview my interest in computer music analysis stems from my fascination with interdisciplinarity in music analysis. computer music analysis intersects with mathematics, computer science, psychology, and, of course, music. my thesis will take a small sampling of interdisciplinary tools in computer music analysis from music information retrieval (mir), optimization, and machine learning. mir aims to make music searchable, primarily through online databases. optimization encompasses many different tools with the eventual goal to understand human perception of music. machine learning, on the other hand, teaches the machine, often a computer, to perform a task, making the tool itself the end goal. for this thesis, i preface my work with peter manning’s entry, entitled “computers and music,” in the grove dictionary of music and musicians as a way to understand the existing conventions and uses of computers in music prior to the year . manning does not offer a specific definition, but instead discusses the common uses and devices of the computer as it relates to music. he states, “computers have been used for all manner of applications, from the synthesis of new sounds and the analysis of music in notated form to desktop music publishing and studies in music psychology; from analysing the ways in which we respond to musical stimuli to the processes of music performance itself.” (manning et al ). this quote exemplifies how interdisciplinary computer music analysis is. manning’s work touches on composition, performance, and analysis addressing a key critical issue: human error. a computer is only useful because of its human programmer no matter what the application. with every new application of the computer—or tool—there are more issues and limitations. for example, a tool that identifies duple metrical structures cannot identify compound meter and has a margin of error. the idea of the human creation of a computer model, and its limitations, is the focus of my thesis and is explored in three branches of computer music analysis: music information retrieval (mir), optimization, and machine learning. manning’s entry coupled with the literature review provide a foundation on which i build this thesis. . . general mission statement this thesis aims to critically examine specific tools in music information retrieval (mir), optimization –a term referring to improvements in preference rule systems and probabilistic models– and machine learning individually. the exploration of mir, optimization, and machine learning will do two things: act as a survey of the literature and show trends within these subfields. in the conclusion, i show how the three aspects can interact. most branches in computer music analysis run in parallel (meredith ), and few researchers take inspiration from the parallel branches. it is not my intent to show that there is no interaction, but merely to show opportunities for more interaction. to survey the literature, i first look at the developments—prior to the turn of the st century, the period when the field of computer music analysis was born. the background comes primarily from david temperley’s book the cognition of basic musical structures ( ) as well as from works covered in the literature review and the sketch of the computer-music relationship sections. to explore current trends, i restrict myself primarily to the literature from to . these texts build from the turn of the century and show how researchers utilize new technology to push the field further. this area constitutes the body of the thesis and shows where the field has gone and where it is going. additionally, using a critical examination of the literature, i explore recent trends in computer music analysis and offer points of entry for new research. i use models drawn from world music research. i concentrate on the three areas of the field, as mentioned above. this research can be applied to other similar areas like mathematical music theory, which represents basic musical structures in a mathematical form, or computational musicology, which investigates the simulation of computer models in music. . . a critical overview of computer music analysis: music information retrieval, optimization, and machine learning the current state of the field in computer music analysis sees a shifting of positions among the three areas: music information retrieval (mir), machine learning, and optimization. music information retrieval is the most rapidly evolving field of the three; due in large part to developments in and the spread of computers and the internet – specifically an increase in computing capacity. the second field is machine learning; this is similarly due to computing capacity and the internet, but also because of its widespread use in other disciplines, which music researchers are drawing from at greater and greater lengths. the third field is optimization, which has stagnated. however, optimization borrows from other disciplines, and contributes to the advances made by mir and machine learning. as such, we can see that optimization is currently evolving, even if other two fields are moving at a much greater pace. to sketch in greater detail, there are crucial differences and overlapping areas between the three fields that explain their current situations. machine learning is a precise endeavor that aims to create specific tools to meet well-defined goals or serve finite tasks. mir, on the other hand, works with large bodies of data and serves goals that are often ill-defined if not undefined. conversely, optimization is presently in a state of coming together– in fields other than music – and, therefore, would appear not to be advancing as quickly. but, in fact, optimization in its current state is laying a framework for major developments. though there is overlap between mir, optimization, and machine learning, it is limited to a few researchers and projects. examples include the following: darrell conklin using probability and bioinformatics in conjunction with machine learning; giraud et al, who are creating a tool for mir and optimization; and, most notably, compmusic—a database for six subsets of world music—that uses both optimization and machine learning to create an mir database. these will be discussed in the later parts of the thesis. . . persaud’s five critical issues from the critical perspective adopted in this thesis, several issues arise. some of which have been addressed in the literature surveyed. unfortunately, they have not been brought together in such a fashion to yield an overall critical perspective of the current field. to this end, i have isolated five central critical issues, which i address here. during the remainder of the thesis, i make reference to these from time to time, by means of a numbered list set out below and in fig. . i refer to these as persaud critical issues, since, to my knowledge they have not been catalogued in this fashion. persaud’s critical issue . human error. firstly, data entry is still largely human-dependent and with large amounts of data—like with an mir database—a person will often make mistakes. this was discussed by both peter manning in his definition and david huron about the humdrum toolkit. as huron and manning explain, the machine is limited by the programmers themselves. outside of research, artificial intelligence (ai) is being used to complete simple tasks and can learn, by itself, various other tasks. similarly, quantum computers are becoming more common instead of using simple binary code. both of these devices are making their way into day-to-day life and eventually will end up in multidisciplinary research. in terms of what is being used currently, data entry could be improved by the application of machine learning. certain parameters could be handled by machine input rather than human input. these advances are being made elsewhere but have not been seen in the area of music research, except in world music database creation [see conclusion of the thesis]. we need to see more inroads made by machine learning in the analysis of western music and ancient music. human limitations are not only evident in data entry but also in setting parameters, in annotations, and in the creation of algorithms in general (huron ). setting parameters is a vital aspect of optimization. it enables the most accurate analysis of the data provided and, therefore, generate more accurate outcomes. because the parameters are calibrated by humans, there is an implicit limitation. this similar to the annotation of pieces in mir databases and the creation and application of an algorithm in machine learning. persaud’s critical issue . input specification input modes are not well-defined by researchers to be easily understood. to a certain extent, this is a problem of writing and communication, one that arises from research silos. this could be resolved by creating common standards and modes of discourse for describing computer research in music, and specifically the modes of input involved. complementary to input specification due to research silos, input modes change from generic type to type. for example, popular music is not often scored, while ancient music is not performed in its original form. as such, the input for popular music would most likely be an audio file, while for ancient music, an image of a score is more likely. furthermore, the input could differ from a full form, such as all tracks on a song, to a simpler form, such as main melody only. this further complicates the situation. in addition to genre, input modes depend upon translation into computer compatible formats. though an mp audio format is widely available, it is not easily readable for analytical us. as a work around, researchers use either a midi format, or the input is further broken down into tracks. in the study of ancient music, image data cannot be read by a computer and must endure multiple passes of analysis using computer-based algorithms and processes, but this method still yields errors. persaud’s critical issue . no consistent mode of evaluation for non-mir tools music information retrieval evaluation exchange (mirex), is a method of formally evaluating mir systems and algorithms. this does not exist for other branches of computer music analysis like optimization and machine learning. these unknown standards for algorithms and tools result in an end-product that may not have any further use beyond its creation. furthermore, without a widespread knowledge of the tools and algorithms, they cannot be used for mir or other branches of computer music analysis simply due to unknowingness. persaud’s critical issue . the interdisciplinary problem (downie ) the interdisciplinary problem is one that is examined and discussed by stephen j. downie in his article “music information retrieval.” though this is an issue in mir specifically, it extends to other branches of computer music analysis such as optimization and machine learning. it simply refers to the lack of coordination between researchers and research fields when it comes to creating a tool and the different uses of the same terminology. some tools and systems are made overly difficult for someone without programming knowledge, even though the outcomes of the tool would be useful to them. persaud’s critical issue . “what’s the point?” lack of defined goals and frameworks research in computer music analysis often comes as small creations and discoveries rather than a large finished tool. as computer music analysis often concentrates on the method to an output, these smaller steps cannot be used by another researcher until it is completed. furthermore, the specific usage of the individual step is unknown or has very few applications, if any, so the “what’s the point?” argument returns. this argument also does not take into account the full potential of each field and is created by a lack of understanding for the goals of each branch in computer music analysis. figure graphic representation of the five critical issues critical issues . human error -data entry -human limitations . input specification -undefined -generic change -computer compatible . "what's the point?" -undefined goals and framework . the interdisciplinary problem -lack of coordination -terms used differently . consistent evaluative principles -other than for mir . a sketch of the relationship between computers and music . . composition and performance music and computers have a lengthy history that touches on three fields: composition, performance, and music research. to understand the current state of computer music analysis, the history needs to be discussed. in fundamental terms, the above-mentioned disciplines helped shape computer music analysis in terms of composition, computer music was one of the principal areas of early research. one main source for understanding this research was the computer music journal, founded in . this journal examines crossroads between computers and music such as composition with computers, midi, synthesizer theory, and analytical models using the computer (computer music journal). though the material is broad, there have been specific issues that address analytical models included in this thesis. this publication includes articles about compmusic— an organization committed to database creation for world music—, which i will return to in my conclusion. the publication also includes donnelly and sheppard’s “classification of timbre using bayesian networks” which is one of the few instances of cross-branch research. while the original inroads made into computer music composition were slow and burdened by clumsy and awkward hardware, this situation soon changed. curtis roads is a composer of electronic music and an author. his book, composers and the computer, is interview-based to get the composer’s perspective. according to appleton’s review, roads’s main point is that arts and science are becoming closer to create new music (appleton ). furthermore, appleton explains the importance of understanding the means in music creation and the method of computer usage is vital for listening to computer music compositions. “if […] the principles of serial technique are necessary to an intelligent hearing of the works of webern, carter, babbitt, or boulez, then surely an appreciation of the principles of algorithmic compositional techniques and the possibilities of digital sound synthesis are required for the through audition of works by xenakis, chowning, risset, and dodge (appleton , ).” this quote situates the importance of method in music and how the new computer capabilities enhance the composition process. in , a symposium on computer music composition was held and a review was written in the computer music journal. this symposium was a “product of a questionnaire sent in , , and , to over composers experienced in the computer medium” (roads et al, ). the review examines, in a similar manner to roads’ book, what brought the composer to the computer and how they choose to use it. the review states that “articles in computer music journal and other publications point to the broad application of computers in musical tasks, especially to sound synthesis, live performance, and algorithmic or procedural composition” (roads et al , ). music representation languages (mrls) are another important milestone in the history of computer music analysis. an mrl is a type of format that the computer can understand (downie ), and these are vital to composition. an example of this is musical instrument digital interface commonly known as midi. midi revolutionized sound processing by enabling the user to store real input, such as playing on a synthesizer, into movable and changeable blocks of sound easily understood by the computer. it has two-way variability because there is a disparity from the player of an external synthesizer and the producer can move and change the blocks of sound after the player has played (manning et al ). it provides more control to all parties for its end result and midi is now widely used. another significant creation in computer music composition is music notation software. this software, like finale, often include a midi playback. according to manning “it quickly became apparent that major composition and performance possibilities could be opened up by extending midi control facilities to personal computers” (manning et al , ). this new midi playback on music notation software gave the composer the ability to create music digitally with the option to hear what it would sound like. computer music composition, of course, continues today. recent developments include chuck, a programming language specifically for music and is prevalent for laptop orchestra use (wang et al ), and melodic idea generation and evaluation—which is the creation of a motive and the assessment of it (ponce de leon et al ). both tools are used for the creation of musical ideas. chuck, for example, can create a complete piece in real time. though computer music composition is important to the relationship between computers and music, it will not be further discussed in this thesis. the field of computer music analysis has moved away sufficiently to be treated as a separate endeavour, at this point. it should be noted that composition with computers is only one aspect of computer assisted musical creation. according to manning’s “computers and music”, the uses of computers in music can be separated into two branches: performance and music theory. for performance, midi is highlighted as a major development, but more performer-like methods are being developed such as darms (manning et al ). darms is a “comprehensive coding system […] which has the capacity to handle almost every conceivable score detail” (manning et al , ). for current performances, laptop orchestra is becoming more prevalent at universities. though computer use in performance is important, i will not be concentrating on it. . . applications in music theory and analysis music research uses for computers are more complex and have been based around two facets: . the first is identification of recurrent features. recurrent features are an important aspect of analysis as it can show that a set of items is a pattern rather than a coincidence. “one of the earliest uses of the computer as a tool for analysis […] involves the identification of recurrent features that can usually be subjected to statistical analysis.” (manning et al , ). statistical analysis further strengthens a pattern by utilizing quantitative measures. statistical analysis is still present today and will be discussed in chapter . . the second concerns the application of two kinds of “rule-based analysis.” analysis used for generative purposes and analysis used in and of itself or as an analytic method. as manning describes rule-based analysis in general: “rule-based analysis methods presuppose that the processes if composition are bound by underlying structural principles that can be described in algorithmic terms. […] at this level it becomes possible to establish links with computer-based research into musical meaning” (manning et al, ). now i will present examples of both facets. both show, in a simple fashion, the above two ideas and, also, demonstrate the main sources of error and limitation in computer music analysis. . . . recurrent features: databases a major database software for computer music research was the humdrum toolkit created by david huron and its files finished revision in . huron is based at the ohio state university school of music and commonly researches music cognition, computational musicology, and systematic musicology. the humdrum toolkit runs using unix software tools, but it is compatible with previous versions of windows and mac platforms. this database gives the public access to information on scores, and renotes scores in a format that is useable with the humdrum toolkit. it is also possible to import or export files from finale software for scores that are not available in the database. “humdrum” itself is composed of the humdrum syntax and humdrum toolkit. the syntax, like other programming language, enables the user to search for files and other elements using the humdrum toolkit. this programming language, however, must be learned to adequately use the software. the humdrum toolkit is used for recurrent features because of its capabilities. the capabilities of humdrum include searching between sets of pieces for motives, syncopation, harmonic progression, dynamics, pitch, and meter. these elements of music can be searched by genre, by composer, and by any other grouping for an overarching and statistical analysis, therefore, this use for computers in music aligns with manning’s definition in grove. however, some of the above-mentioned elements are more easily found using the humdrum toolkit software than others. firstly, this is due to “the interdisciplinary problem” since some queries need a complex search using programming language. programming knowledge is something that is not consistent between all database users. secondly, human error is always a possibility with a completely manmade database. like all tools, this one is imperfect. huron found three reasons for mistakes when using computers because of “humdrum” (huron ). they are as follows: . errors in actual score . errors in transcription of score . errors by program these errors according to huron, are human. . . . structural models: analysis and counterpoint p. howard patrick in used computers for analysis of suspensions in the masses of josquin des prez. patrick made an important distinction between music theory for the composition student and music theory for the computer rule-based structural model: music theory is often a description, but a computer needs a set of steps to follow. to get the computer to properly parse and identify the data, patrick looked at the errors and changed criteria as needed. (alphonce ) arthur mendel inspired patrick’s study in a seminar by looking for the criteria of structure in josquin’s work. patrick outlined the goal of this project as getting computer programs to print a reduction of a score by, first, going through a succession of tests and then finding the “most consonant pitch” (patrick , ). patrick tested three randomly selected texts to outline the problems that he described as “non-suspensions (patrick , )” and “problem suspensions.” (patrick , ) these errors were due to the computer’s now ‘preconceived’ notion of what a suspension is, but the largest error, as explained by patrick, are the questions that people ask the computer. criticism for this type of analysis is that it only yields a result that can be found by a person doing the research by hand and thus is susceptible to the same kinds of errors humans might make. as stated by patrick, “the limitations of the computer are overshadowed by the inherent limitations of the user.” (patrick , ) this means that the computer can find any these sources of error are paraphrased from huron , solution, but only if it can be fathomed by the user. some larger scale problems are too difficult to solve without help from another source, such as a computer. in this sense, patrick thought the computer-aided analysis route was the most useful. this set the groundwork for development in computer music analysis that do not mimic “research by hand.” . . music information retrieval versus optimization music information retrieval (mir) is interdisciplinary, due to its computer-based information, and originated from the same point as optimization. but, the two fields have different goals. by music information retrieval, i mean the sector of computer music analysis that aims to create a database, either analytical or non-analytical, drawn from characteristics of a musical document such as a score, so as to further research. mir aims to look into musical documents to find features or commonalities between different works of music. mir approaches recurrent features by creating a database with annotations, or another searchable method, so a user can search for a specific feature. optimization, which concerns itself with preference rules, probability, and statistical models, does not detach itself from the human experience. the following quotation demonstrates the distinctiveness of optimization for mir: “computational research in music cognition tends to focus on models of the human mind, whereas mir prefers the best‐performing models regardless of their cognitive plausibility” (burgoyne et al , ). in summary, optimization is tied to music cognition (burgoyne et al ) while mir is not. mir has turned into an ever-growing and prevalent field due to the internet (fujinaga and weiss) and is present in commonly used items like google books (helsen et al ), but it originally came from a small field of research in comparison. according to burgoyne et al, in , c.s. myers studied western folksong using mir, which required tabulation done by hand examining the intervals present in folksongs. similarly, in ethnomusicology a year earlier, , a similar method was used to find features in non-western music to differentiate it from western music (burgoyne et al ). the practice of “finding features” has become a standard use for computer music analysis. these are the earliest examples of music information retrieval even though the term itself was not used until the s. from to the s music information retrieval was ignored, but, “interest grew in computerized analysis of music” (burgoyne et al, ) because of the prevalence and accessibility of computers. the beginning of mir concentrated on methods to input music into the computer (burgoyne et al) such as notational software or standardized audio file formats like mp and midi (fujinaga and weiss). this made it possible for the computer to ‘understand’ the musical items. these methods grew into more complex software applications like humdrum which was discussed in section . . . this history of mir is written in brief, however it gives a basic outline of its developments that is important to the thesis. since, this field re-emgered because of the internet and increasing availability of computers, the tabulations could be done using a software instead of by hand. after creating a form of music that can be understood by a computer, databases, like humdrum, were more easily produced. creating a database of music recognizable by a computer, according to andrew hankinson—a digital humanities and medieval music researcher—, is the first step in a large retrieval system (helsen et al ). large databases of different varieties will be further discussed chapter . . literature review i aim to explore the major works i use for this thesis in the literature review. the order is to mirror the order of the thesis: first optimization then machine learning. mir has a more complicated literature base, so i discuss it in chapter . i commence with david temperley’s works in chronological order because i incorporate their organization tools and major ideas into chapter . parallelism is highlighted because it grows from a single- line preference rule to a multi-level set of ideas. since perception is key to optimization, i include david huron for the link from computers to perception. huron’s paper examines voice-leading rules, which are common knowledge and vital to music theorists, thus act as a stable starting point. the final work is darrell conklin and ian whitten’s paper investigating the multiple-viewpoint system. this article is one of the first that examine machine learning in music and should, therefore, be included. . . david temperley the cognition of basic musical structures ( ) david temperley is centred at the eastman school of music and writes extensively on music theory and music cognition. i will concentrate on specific sections of his book the cognition of basic musical structures ( ), that explain preference rule systems or computational models. temperley outlines the following six preference rule systems in the first half of the book, metrical structure, melodic phrase structure, contrapuntal structure, tonal- pitch-class representation, harmonic structure, and key structure, and the second half explores the expectation of the listener, rock music, african music, composition, and recomposition. the first half of the book is where i will concentrate this review. temperley states that the goal of the book is to explore the “’infrastructural’ levels of music,” meaning the basic building blocks of music perception, because there is very little research on the subject. before presenting the preference rule system (prs), temperley outlines previous research on musical structure as it relates to each section. for example, temperley describes at length the desain and honing model for beat induction in the chapter on metrical structure. the specificities of each section is discussed in chapter of this thesis . he notes that each prs is based on a piano-roll input for the computer. the prs itself is a group of rules the computer follows to narrow a set of possible choices. within each rule there is a preference—hence the name preference rule. the end choice is selected because more rules are preferred in a specific hierarchy. after presenting preference rule systems, temperley describes the tests he goes through to ensure well-functioning systems. meter, unlike the others, has had plenty of research concerning theoretical and computational models. temperley builds upon the lerdahl and jackendoff generative theory of tonal music ( ) by adapting it for a preference rule approach. the meter section takes the well formedness definition from lerdahl and jackendoff where grouping and hierarchy are most important and temperley explains it as “every event onset must be marked by a beat [and] that a beat at one level must be at all lower levels” (temperley , ). this is used in all successive prss. similarly, for key structure there is sufficient research from music cognition and computational methods to improve upon. temperley uses the krumhansl-schumckler key-finding algorithm and discusses problems and solutions. the other four prss take a list of rules and within each have a list of preferences in a specific order, so the computer knows which item is the most important or most common. for example, the phrase structure preference rules (temperley melodic phrase structure chapter pp. - ) comprise of three rules. . gap rule: prefer to locate phrase boundaries at a. large inter-onset intervals and b. large offset-to-onset intervals . phrase length rule: prefer phrases to have roughly notes . metrical parallelism rule: prefer to begin successive groups at parallel points in the metrical structure this is for only well-formed, by the previously mentioned definition, monophonic melodies. for implementation of each of these rules, a formula, score or other quantification is applied. the best “score” is the best analysis for a melody. temperley’s preference rule systems gives me multiple examples of how the computer evaluated different problems which i can then relate to other models for evaluation. in this regard, temperley’s book acts as a springboard for my thesis. it gives important background information in computer music analysis and shows me how temperley’s subsequent work has built upon it. the book will be further discussed in chapter : optimization. . . david temperley and christopher bartlette “parallelism as a factor in metrical analysis” ( ) this text builds upon the previous temperley book by adding further information to the “metrical parallelism rule.” (temperley , ). the “well-formedness rule,” as mentioned in temperley , still applies in this article, as does the need for monophony. the goal of this article is to build upon the book for clarity, accuracy and precision when dealing with parallelism. temperley and bartlette examine the effect of parallelism and realized that the definition must be modified. parallelism is defined as a repetition either of the exact sequence or the contour. the parallelism rule is now redefined to “prefer beat intervals of a certain distance to the extent that repetition occurs at that distance in the vicinity.” (temperley and bartlette , ) this is useful to the thesis because it gives a more inclusive definition to paralellism as a term and a rule and, also, because of the influence it had on the later treatment of parallelism. . . david temperley music and probability ( ) though temperley was content with the book, it seemed like more should be added to the approach because preference rule models could not be applied to “linguistics or vision” (temperley , ix). the goal of the book is to use specific bayesian probability tool, as a link between perception and style. in the perception of linguistics and vision, bayesian probability techniques such as probability of an event following another are more common in computer analytic tools. to quote temperley, “i realized that bayesian models provided the answer to my problems with preference rule models. in fact, preference rule models were very similar to bayesian models” (temperley ,x) meaning that the existing prss can be easily turned into bayesian models. the book shows a new trend in computer music research: probability. it uses the essen corpus, also known as the essen folksong collection, to test for the central distribution of the the essen folksong collection is a set of folksongs from germany, china, france, russia and more collected by helmut schaffrath. http://essen.themefinder.org/ aspects of music (and relies on a method of representation created by lerdahl and jackendoff in , which, by this point, was familiar to music theorist). the book itself touches on rhythm, pitch, key, style, composition, and, like the first computer music analytic tools, error detection in its main chapters. . . david huron “tone and voice: a derivation of the rules of voice-leading from perceptual principles” ( ) i have included this work in the literature review because we must remember that all computer models tie back to perception, in some way, to be correct. it should be noted that huron’s text was also referenced in temperley’s work because the psychological principles behind musical aspects make computational modelling difficult. huron’s work shows the relationship between voice-leading and auditory perception using perception. the article presents a set of the voice-leading rules, then derives them from the perception principles, and finally it makes ties to genre. each voice leading rules is scrutinized under three questions: . what goal is served by the following rule? . is the goal worthwhile? . is the rule an effective way of achieving the purported goal? (huron , ) huron brings up the important concept of culture. with analysis, it remains unknown if these principles of auditory perception are inherent in all people or if they are created by cultures. however, huron notes that “perceptual principles can be used to account for a number of aspects of musical organization, at least with respect to western music” (huron , ) and concludes that six principles in perception account for most voice leading rules in western music. another important aspect brought up is the compositional goals because the composer plays with the perception of the listener. for example, huron mentions “bach gradually changes his compositional strategy. for works employing just two parts, bach endeavors to keep the parts active (few rests of short duration) and to boost the textural density through pseudo-polyphonic writing. for works having four or more nominal voices, bach reverses this strategy” (huron , ). this deceives the listener because a four-voice work may sound more sparse while a two-voice work sounds more dense making these voice-leading rules more like compositional options. . . darrell conklin and ian h. witten “multiple viewpoint systems for music prediction” ( ) darrell conklin concentrates on research in machine learning and music at the university of basque country in spain. this article has been cited in temperley’s works such as the cognition of basic musical structures ( ). the paper takes an “empirical induction approach to generative theory” (conklin and whitten , ) by exploring previous compositions for style and patterns. more specifically, this article uses bach chorale as a starting point for choral music. conklin and whitten describe machine learning, applied to music research, as follows: “machine learning is concerned with improving performance as a specific task. here the task is music prediction” (conklin and whitten , ). since much of machine learning uses context models, but that requires exact matches. music does not always use exact matches because similarity is enough for auditory perception, conklin and witten take a multiple- viewpoint system. each viewpoint is an aspect of music, to derive musical ideas that take style into account. conklin and whitten describe the next steps in this field as: . research on prediction and entropy of music . the creation of “a general-purpose machine learning tool for music” (conklin and whitten , ) for all musical genres their work adds to the thesis by providing the beginning of machine learning. from this, the rest of the accomplishments in machine learning and music can be put into perspective. . conclusion in the introductory chapter of this thesis, i have described my goal: to critically examine aspects of music information retrieval (mir), optimization, and machine learning. between mir and optimization there is a common starting point, but they differ in goal. mir aims to create a database or multiple databases for further analysis while optimization uses a computer model to understand the human perception of a musical structure. machine learning is different than the other two since it concentrates on the creation of a tool and not necessarily the uses. i have surveyed specific literature in the field of computer music analysis for a background and inroad to the research from to . for a historical context, i have brought in manning’s multi-faceted explanation of the relationship between computers and music. this mentions composition, performance, and analysis and displays the many important developments prior to the turn of the century. the developments include music representation languages (mrls)—like midi—and notation software because they created a widespread usage. this literature touches on mir, optimization, and machine learning and, also, exposes some critical issues in computer musical analysis. i have set out a list of five critical issues, that i use to gain critical perspective on the field. the first issue is human error which refers to human limitations and the capacity to make mistakes. this was brought up by both peter manning and david huron. second is input specification, which is a recurring issue since articles do not specify what input is used for a tool. the input is largely genre-based due to availability. consistent evaluative principles are needed for all branches of computer music analysis, so that there is a reliable set of algorithms and methods to be drawn upon. the interdisciplinary problem is an issue with term usage and level differences in tools creation and is evident through all of the authors in the literature review. this is because each author uses their own set of terms based on their usual field of research. “what’s the point?” refers to the lack of reason for a specific tool because, for a branch like optimization, the tools are working towards understanding human perception. this means a specific tool may not have a specific usage at its inception. using this chapter as a basis, i begin my analysis of specific tools in each of the three subfields starting with music information retrieval. chapter - music information retrieval . introduction music information retrieval (mir) is a subsection of computer music analysis that is growing exponentially because of current technology. mir is concerned with examining music, either by locating or by analysing, and often aims to make music searchable. the locating branch is often aimed at examining the metadata of a large set of works. the analysis/production branch concerns itself with a smaller number of pieces but goes into much greater detail (downie ) as is stated by downie: “analytic/production systems usually contain the most complete representation of music information” (downie , ). databases created for mir can be accessible through the internet, so they are used by all researchers if they have the background knowledge needed. the goal of this chapter is to begin a critical comparison of tools and problem-solving methods in mir. this will be accomplished by discussing three projects: a large completed tool, a large tool in progress, and a small tool. these tools are just the “tip of the iceberg” when it comes to mir, but they have been chosen to show different stages within the evolution of a tool. the large completed tool is vocalsearch where song lyrics can be searched to identify their presence in a song. the in-progress tool is a research project called the single interface for music score searching and analysis (simssa). the small milestone studied here is patrick donnelly and john sheppard’s approach to timbre identification using probability. in fact, donnelly and sheppard’s project provide a solution to a specific problem which in turn can provide help to a larger database. this final milestone will show how smaller projects in computer music analysis can help solve larger problems and thus help move the field forward. . . mir overview and applications the purpose of this section is to give a description of major terms in music information retrieval (mir) and to show the different systems at work in mir. i will not be going in depth about all systems, but i would like to show the complexity of mir. i will first explain the two main types of mir systems: locating and analytic/production. then i will outline the different types of data. i will then explain how the different types of musical information fit into each of the data categories and systems. mir examines multiple facts of music information in many different forms. according to j. stephen downie— the creator of mirex and specializing in information sciences at the university of illinois—there are two different types of mir systems: locating and analytic/production (downie ) as mentioned in the introduction. the locating systems are used by people searching for music either as a consumer on a website or as a researcher in a recordings database. a locating system looks at many works, but does not go in depth, and often locates information on the title, composer, performer etc. this type of information is called metadata. an analytic/production system generally looks at a small number of works, but in much greater detail. these systems, for example, can look at audio recordings, pictures of scores, and/or symbolic forms of scores. (i will not go into detail about specific systems at this point since they will be discussed later in the chapter.) the different types of possible data in music, as mentioned above, are metadata, audio, symbolic, and image. metadata is simply data about data, so, in music, this is information about the performers or pieces performed, such as title, composer, etc. audio data is a recording. most commonly, mp files are used for audio data because they are easily read by computers and this is often the data used for popular music. in certain regards, images and symbolic forms are similar; image data refers to images of scores, while symbolic data is a format that a computer can understand, such as a score notated in finale or some other notation file. these different types of data have specific limits and uses. for example, metadata, which was explained above, is used in all search engines that look through bibliographic data. audio on the other hand is not as easy to search but is very easy to obtain in standard mp format. according to burgoyne et al in chapter of the , a new companion to digital humanities, audio data is difficult for feature extraction—when a user aims to identify a particular query—because it comes in the form of large files. historically “query-by-humming” (burgoyne et al ) has been a popular mir for feature extraction if it has been properly annotated. for query-by-humming, a user hums a tune in a microphone and the tune is matched with a piece. this, however, is by no means a complete picture of what audio can be used for. if an audio recording could be transferred to symbolic data, it would be more useful to mir (burgoyne et al ). symbolic data, often is in the form midi or a readable score format, is easily recognizable by a computer and is used for information retrieval, classification, music performance, and music analysis. a symbolic form can retrieve sets of pitches (together making themes), rhythms, harmonic progressions, and more. classification using symbolic formats identifies stylistic “emblems” such as a specific harmonic progression or the usage of specific intervals. this emblem is a defining characteristic. in terms of music performance, symbolic data is also used for expressive timing studies. finally, for music analysis, symbolic format is used for automated analysis (this also overlaps with optimization) and for pitch spelling when midi is used (burgoyne et al ). image data, like audio data, is difficult for a computer to recognize, and at present there is no consistent recognized form for sharing it. a score itself can be transcribed or turned into a midi format but that is time consuming. optical music recognition (omr) was created to solve this issue. omr is a tool that can identify musical characters much like optical character recognition can identify letters in typed images. this renders score images readable by computers (this will be further discussed in the section on simssa, single interface for music score searching and analysis). mir is a multifaceted, multicultural, multidisciplinary tool. there are also seven facets of music information (downie ): . pitch . temporal . harmonic . timbral . editorial . textual . bibliographic in the following graphic, i have given a representation of the overall shape of mir, as it currently stands. the reader will note the breakdown into two large parts, locating and analytic/production, as discussed above. and within these, the reader will find the various of these fields as described above. figure the second row and the last set of facets are the two categories of mir system explained by j. stephen downie in his article. the four types of data are from chapter by burgoyne et al though the graphic looks as if it represents a concrete situation, these lines are blurring due to changes since the turn of the century. these changes are being examined by ismir, the music information retrieval locating metadata bibliographic analytical/product ion audio pitch temporal harmonic timbral image editorial textual pitch temporal harmonic symbolic editorial textual pitch temporal harmonic international society of music information retrieval, and mirex, the music information retrieval evaluation exchange (burgoyne et al ), but, as stated in their names, they only look at mir tools (this is one of my five critical issues). this graphic representation has been included as a comparison point for the rest of chapter two, so i will be referring these types of data (metadata, audio, image, symbolic), facets (pitch, temporal, harmonic, timbral, editorial, textual, bibliographic), and systems (locating, analytical/production). . the mir tools in this part of the thesis i shall look at several tools in mir. some of which are to be used by researchers in mir and others for layperson use. first, i start with vocalsearch, which is now unavailable online but gives valuable information to the thesis. next, i discuss three single interface for music score searching and analysis (simssa) tools: search the liber usualis, cantus ultimus, and electronic locator of vertical interval successions (elvis). finally, i examine a smaller tool which is donnelly and sheppard’s bayesian network algorithm that investigates timbre identification. . . vocalsearch vocalsearch is a web-based tool which was available to everyone and is used to identify unknown songs without metadata (pardo et al ). metadata is the information about the song such as title, artist, album, etc (burgoyne et al ) and, without it, it is difficult to identify a song (orio ). vocalsearch was created by teams from university of michigan and carnegie mellon university (birmingham, dannenbery, and pardo ). i have chosen to include it as a tool that is ‘complete’—as research grows this project may change, but it is a complete database when compared to the tools that follow in my discussion. this tool lets the user search—by humming a segment, by providing music notation, and by providing lyrics—using melodic music indexing and query-by-humming technology. melodic music indexing is a way for the computer to understand the melodic content of a song. a song is annotated with the melodic content; often this is done through midi sequencing. midi is easily understood by a computer because it gives both pitch and duration. when a query is hummed, the computer matches it to the corresponding song. song matching is problematic. often, when a query-by-humming platform does not work, it is because the user did not hum the melody clearly or chose a different song layer, perhaps another instrument or vocal line (dannenberg et al ). the tool must also equalize and understand the query, and, for vocalsearch, this is done using a probability algorithm (birmingham, dannenberg pardo ). the approach measures the similarity between the midi and the sung query for the large database. within mir, vocalsearch builds upon the existing audio data recognition and locating systems. it lets a specific song or number of songs be located using various queries recognized both through a typed search and a hummed audio search. vocalsearch uses usual metadata searches if needed but seems to be more useful for unusual queries like, humming or notational search. the database itself is used for music with a lyrical content, hence the name, but the site is now unavailable, so the data from a user’s perspective is limited. a common issue with a database is that music is constantly being created, but this database of music will keep growing because a user can add songs (pardo et al ). . . simssa as i mentioned above, the in-progress tool is a research project called the single interface for music score searching and analysis (simssa). in this section of the thesis, i describe three simssa projects: “search the liber usualis,” “cantus ultimus,” and “elvis.” these all have different goals and technologies, so including all three gives a well-rounded view of what goes into a tool. . . . search the liber usualis the liber usualis contains valuable information for those working on early music. the text is over pages, so it is difficult to locate the needed information. to solve this problem, simssa decided to render its contents searchable and make it all available online. this tool lets researchers search the text for pitch sequences (either transposed or exact),neumes, contour, intervals, and, of course, text (search the liber usualis website is located at liber.simssa.ca). to do so, simssa has used optical text recognition (otr), sometimes referred to optical character recognition (ocr), and optical music recognition (omr). omr, as previously mentioned, is a computer method involved in “turning musical notation represented in a digital image in a computer-manipulable symbolic notation format (vigliensoni et al ).” using omr with neumes, or square-note notation, is difficult because it is a precursor to standard musical notation. because this notation is a precursor, there is no standard notation software, so the tool must translate the square-note notation to the standardized one. omr must be configured to translate the first notation to the required notation. the translation to standard notation requires computer understanding of eleven neumes. simssa decided to use the ‘music staves gamera toolkit’ as a bank of algorithms to perform an analysis on test pages of the liber usualis. the test pages were manually classified and annotated to double check the output of the algorithms. the algorithms used did the following tasks: created the staff lines, removed the staff, added ledger lines, and classified the types of neumes. when classifying neumes, the algorithm did not work %, so the final version was examined by a human to ensure perfection. these algorithms, however, do not tackle clef recognition and note identification. note identification was made possible using horizontal projection of neumes, but this only worked for a subset of the eleven neumes. in conjunction with the algorithms used prior for determining types and placement of neumes relative to the staff, the starting pitch of the neume was identified using the average size of the neume and its “center of mass (vigliensoni et al , ).” the clef was then identified and each neume was given a pitch relative to the clef. this was possible because the clef is always the first neume-like image in the line. the remaining set of neumes often have multiple pitches, so they were treated as exceptions to the above-mentioned method. these neumes were first split so the resulting output would correctly identify the multiple pitches. in conclusion, a different algorithm from the music staves gamera toolkit was used for each of the procedures, but, together, the algorithms rendered the scores from the entire book searchable. the scores were made searchable using algorithms, then, the text was searchable through otr technology in a simpler fashion to the scores. the “search the liber usualis” project fits in the mir chart above by being analytical and as a tool for locating scores and text. it is analytical because it uses an image of a text and looks at contour and interval, these being elements of analysis and locating because it finds specific ideas based on the searched criteria. this is possible because of the computer’s ability to ‘read the music’ once the algorithms translate it. . . . cantus ultimus the “search the liber usualis” can be seen as an initial test, laying the groundwork for the cantus ultimus. their goals, however, are different. for the liber, the goal was to make it searchable and make it easy for researchers to use the book. with the cantus ultimus, the aim is to preserve the ancient manuscripts digitally before they deteriorate further. the database shows images of the searched score, with typed lyrics, and standard notation on the side bar (cantus ultimus is located at cantus.simssa.ca/). only a few sets of images have been added, but this project is still growing. the cantus ultimus is part of simssa primarily located at mcgill university. this tool builds upon the existing cantus database with more digitized scores and optical music recognition (omr) technology. researchers and plainchant enthusiasts can search through the database by text, genre, office, and by reference to the associated liturgical feast. text queries include lyrics of the chant and the metadata for each. they can also make musical search using “volpiano searches” which are searches using notes specifically. this can either be a normal search where a-b-c would show results for a-b-c, d-e-f, and any other series with the same intervals or a literal search where only a-b-c sequences would be shown (cantus.simssa.ca/). each query can yield multiple results, so, in effect, it is a locating system. the system locates based on notes, and lyrics, but, more importantly, it is an image searching database. the ability to search through images was made possible through omr and ocr with all of the algorithms used in the “search the liber usualis.” . . . electronic locator of vertical interval succession elvis the electronic locator of vertical interval succession (elvis) was created to give counterpoint the attention it deserves. in fact, a presentation on elvis, by christopher antila, won first prize at the montreal digital humanities showcase and is funded by a digging into data challenge award (located at https://elvisproject.ca/). the goal of elvis is to look at musical style in terms of changes in counterpoint (antilla and cumming ). elvis is a set of downloadable scores in a database, a web-based application, and a downloadable tool. these three aspects have taken many people to create it. most of the people, such as ichiro fujinaga and peter schubert, are from mcgill university in montreal, those working on the harmonic side of counterpoint are headed by ian quinn from yale university, and the university of aberdeen has also been involved with this project. but, the software for the downloadable tool, music , was created by myke cuthbert at the massachusetts institute of technology (music ) music is a python based “toolkit for computer-aided musicology” (music ) that allows the user to search though any imported scores using basic programming language. what this means is, by using commands such as if x then y, then a desired output can be found. this works especially well for big data queries in mir (antilla and cumming ). using the elvis database, the scores can be imported and searched using music . the scores in the database can be searched through the elvis website and, using the web app, patterns are located. the downloadable software is a vis, vertical interval succession—meaning a set of harmonic intervals in a particular order—, framework used on music (elvis project). the framework uses n-grams when referring to the number (n) of vertical interval successions. this analysis uses intervals without quality instead of note names to compare many works regardless of key (antilla and cumming ). this software is used on python, a standard programming language, so those with a knowledge of programming commands can get the most out of it. for those who do not have programming knowledge there is a counterpoint web app (counterpoint.elvis.ca). the application for elvis is called the counterpoint web app on their website (elvis project) and is specifically for pattern recognition. this web app continues to use a vis framework, but it is more limited in query possibilities than the downloadable extension for music . getting to the application through the website is problematic because of a broken link or, perhaps, the web application is not finished. as previously mentioned, simssa is building tools and many of the tools are still in progress. music sonification is used in the elvis project to turn the music notation data into sound but can be manipulated by the researcher. accessibility, in this case, was the main concern because not all researchers will have in depth knowledge of recording or sound mixing software. to solve this problem, the elvis team have created a graphic user interface. this is a graphic representation of music and the most useful audio tools for interval analysis. the concentration on interval analysis is because elvis is for contrapuntal analysis and pattern recognition (elvis project). elvis is both a locating and analysis tool. the locating part is from the web app because it only locates patterns. the analytical axis, however, is much more in depth and is available for a wide variety of early music using the vis framework and the programming language. though the intention of the project was for counterpoint alone, the vis framework, music , and the use of pandas libraries—where the scores themselves are kept—make possibilities endless (elvis project). . . donnelly and sheppard bayesian network algorithm donnelly and sheppard—researchers from university of notre dame and montana state university respectively—found that timbre has not been fully explored in mir, so they have modified an existing algorithm derived from bayesian probability networks. this new system of steps identifies different timbres in music. this can be used to establish another way of organizing and searching through music in a large corpus. in donnelly and sheppard’s article, “classification of musical timbre using bayesian networks,” nearest neighbour and vector machine as timbral identification models are compared to this new model. upon comparison to the other models, the bayesian algorithm better differentiates strings, but still has drawbacks. the other models better differentiate between aerophones, like woodwinds and brass, but, together, it appears the models can differentiate all instruments together. this seems to still be useful as a method for categorizing string instruments and, in conjunction with the other tools, can categorize all instruments. the target audience for this method, are researchers and others who want to organize a database using instruments within a musical track. this can grow the locating section for audio as an alternative to metadata, but this would be for smaller tasks examining instruments. this is included as a smaller technology that has capabilities for mir and to show the possibilities for connection between mir and optimization, which is the following chapter. . critical analysis this chapter thus far has explained what each of the tools do. this section examines each tool critically. i discuss the assumptions made, and further extensions of the tool that were not examined in the articles themselves. i go through each of the tools in this order that they were previously presented, so first i examine vocalsearch, simssa—cantus ultimus, liber usualis, and elvis—and finally the bayesian networks presented by donnelley. . . vocalsearch vocalsearch takes audio input, which is difficult because audio input must be taken apart to match a specific line in a song. however, it is not mentioned if a melody sung in a different key from the original will match a song to the input. though melodies are often remembered in the original key, the user may not have the range to do so. also, this article does not mention the matching of a song from the database to a slightly inaccurate input, so it likely would not work in such a case. vocalsearch achieves its goal of being able to reach a large audience using the internet and having multiple ways of searching queries. setting up such a database takes a large body of songs, but to keep a database like this current, new songs must be added regularly. to do this, the makers of vocalsearch have included a function that allows users to add content to the database. there are a few issues with users adding content. as previously stated in the introductory chapter, the errors made by a computer program are due to human error. this human error can be in the programming itself, but more often it is in the input for the program. as mentioned with vocalsearch, there are multiple methods of searching, so the person who inputs a song must enter all correct information. if incorrect information is added, then the tool will not work correctly rendering it inutile. . . simssa simssa has multiple projects, so i will critically analyze each of the projects from simssa. overall, simssa uses scores images and creates databases using omr, otr, and other technologies. . . . search the liber usualis using optical text recognition (otr) and optical music recognition (omr) the liber usualis is searchable. meaning that, by typing in a search bar, matching text or music is highlighted and, by using the colour coating available on the web-based tool, multiple searches can be highlighted at once. this is useful for researchers who need specific information from this + page text. more information on the tool can be found in section . . omr and otr are used when the file format ha come from images and are, therefore, not searchable. these technologies make the document searchable by translating the image data into a format recognized by the computer. for otr, this translates the image of a letter to the letter itself while omr must attach the letter name and the function of note. this increases the margin of error. an issue i have found when using the tool is that coloured highlighting box around the searched content is not completely accurate. with some searched content, the box is around a set of words that do not contain the searched item. also, an assumption made is that the user wants the entire sentence highlighted when searching for a specific word or group of words. this calls into question how otr works because if it turns a text searchable, then it should only highlight what is searched. . . . cantus ultimus cantus ultimus uses digitized scores and omr, to create an interactive and searchable score database. this not only gives a researcher the access to the database, but also lets them search the score in multiple ways. furthermore, the database gives the researcher access to the manuscript image online with the typeface version in the righthand menu. for example, if there are neumes in very small writing on the score image then the right-hand menu will give the modern notation of the score. currently, there are only a few scores or manuscripts, so the obvious improvement is to have more scores. the process to add a score, however, is very long even using otr and omr because all scores should be checked. because the manuscripts have aged, can be faded, or overall difficult for a computer to read, checking is imperative to a proper database entry. what could help are machine learning and optimization models that are discussed in further chapters. . . . electronic locator of vertical interval successions (elvis) elvis gives counterpoint priority in research by combining a database with a web app and music . the database gives the user access to a set of scores while the web app and music lets the researcher search through the scores. the web app is designed for a non- programmer to find recurring patterns, and music has more features and the entire score can be searched using programming language. this tool attempts to cater to both the programmer and the non-programmer by using music , that is based on python—a common programming language--, and the web app. however, the web app only allows the user to find recurring features, so a non-programmer has limited usage with this tool. it is assumed that a non-programmer will only want to use this tool to find recurring features while they could, also, be looking for specific vertical interval successions, or a specific set of notes. . . bayesian networks as previously stated, this model gives timbre attention because it can be used to add in a search. this model is, however, limited in its ability to distinguish between aerophones, but can better differentiate between strings. to approach this problem, the tool must be combined with others to achieve greater accuracy. the goal of this tool is to differentiate between instruments and, eventually, search through a database and render it searchable by instrument. another way to approach this is to look at the metadata which often contains instrument data. using an otr-like algorithm, the metadata can be searched for contributing artists and musicians. this would render a set of works searchable by the contributors which will often contain the name of the instrument each contributor plays and, therefore, the set of works would be searchable by instrument. this approach is useful specifically for works where the contributors’ instrument is unknown, and the unknown instruments are stringed. upon combining this method with other similar methods, the usefulness will increase because all instruments can be identified. chapter : optimization i use the term “optimization” to refer to the increase of output for less time and energy in music analysis—the optimization of effort so as to achieve a result. more specifically, this section will look at preference rule systems (prss) and probabilistic and statistical models. the goal in optimization is to understand and reproduce a human perception of an input. my goal is to show that, by integrating more mathematics and computer tools, analysis can be optimized. this term was inspired by its customary use in the areas of calculus or business, where the optimization of space and resources is described in term of optimization problems. in music, the term pertains to david temperley’s progression in analytical approaches. temperley’s the cognition of basic musical structures ( ) took a preference rule approach to musical elements. for each element, a set of preference rules were outlined for a computer tool to analyze a piece of music for information. following this, temperley took a few of the elements examined in the book and applied a probabilistic approach to them using bayesian probability —a term referring to extensions of the acceptance of bayes’ rule — to match the approach of similar perceptual fields. the book, music and probability, aims to build upon the previous set of preference rules and move further in the research. this is the method of optimization to be addressed here. this section of the thesis will explain a previous way of approaching a problem and explain how a new method has helped to optimize the older one. like both of temperley’s approaches, there will be a section on organization by preference rules and a section examining probability and statistical models. in the preference rule section, temperley’s approach will be bayes’ rule is expressed as follows: p(a|b) = 𝑃(𝐵|𝐴)𝑃(𝐴) 𝑃(𝐵) where probability is p and items a and b are distinct and different. upon acceptance of this theorem, a branch of probability is built called bayesian probability discussed first. following this, other preference rule methods and computer tools will be presented as they relate to temperley’s cognition of basic musical structures ( ). the second section will show various approaches to music analysis that involve different aspects of probability and statistics. some of these approaches, like temperley, use bayesian probability, and others concentrate on statistical analysis. though the two sections are split in this thesis they are related since the hierarchy built in a prs carries through into probability. i have separated them in the thesis to better explain how a newer model has built upon temperley’s work bit they are related. this is represented graphically in figure where the dashed line represents the implicit link between the two main sections, even though they are distinct in their principal focus (i.e. a prs or application of probability). the items under each of the main headings are the topics that are covered in this chapter. bayesian probability can encompass all of the subheadings under preference rules, but harmonic vectors and the application of bioinformatics later in the chapter relate more specifically to other subheadings. this is also represented through dashed lines. figure this is a graphic representation of the aspects of the field i concentrate on. it shows that preference rules and probability and statistics are not completely separate from each other. optimization preference rules metrical structure contrapuntal structure harmonic structure melodic phrase structure parallelism probability and statistics bayesian probability harmoinc vectors bioinformatics . preference rules this section on preference rules will start by outlining david temperley’s preference rule systems (prss) from the cognition of basic musical structures ( ). i concentrate on the first section of the book. temperley uses a piano roll input for the computer and, based on the subsection in question, specific tests are performed to examine the usefulness of the approach. the subsections of this book—metrical structure, melodic phrase structure, contrapuntal structure, tonal-pitch-class representation, harmonic structure, and key structure—will serve as subsections of the following chapter. parallelism is the final subsection in this chapter and it was added because of a temperley and bartlette article, “parallelism as a factor in metrical analysis,” that further explains the importance of parallelism (this article also gives a broader definition to parallelism which is important to further research). for each subsection, temperley’s findings from will be presented followed by the research that has built upon the findings. in this part of the thesis, i take temperley’s model and examine how the next years of research has built upon it. i will present a set of the comparable models and give a brief explanation of the element of temperley the model builds upon. following this section, i will critically examine the newer models and tools through comparison. i begin, however, with temperley’s book the cognition of basic musical structures. . . metrical structure as david temperley explains in the cognition of basic musical structures ( ), the computer must concentrate on that beat induction when examining metrical structure. beat induction is when the computer must understand or tap the beat. in some senses, the term refers to a ‘foot tapping’-like induction, but for the temperley prs it is for inferring meter. the meter is shown in a lerdahl jackendoff graphic model with different hierarchies of beats as shown in figure . this is a metrical grid for / time where the lowest set of dots indicates the eighth note lever (the division of the beat level), the middle set of dots are the main beat ( , , etc.) and the highest level is the strong beat (the downbeat). figure this is a beat hierarchy and described by lerdahl and jackendoff for finding metrical structure, temperley outlines the rules as followed: . event rule: prefer event on a strong beat onset . length rule: prefer long events on strong beats . regularity rule: prefer evenly spaced beats at each level . grouping rule: “prefer a strong beat at beginning of groups (temperley , )” . duple bias rule: prefer duple or triple levels (for example / instead of / ) . harmony rule: strong beats align with harmonics change . stress rule: prefer strong beats with loud events . linguistic stress rule: prefer stressed syllables on strong beats . parallelism rule: prefer the same metrical structure to the same segments what these rules consolidate to is a set of preferences for a computer system to go through to find the “best-fit” for metrical structure. the computer will attempt to fit different meters onto a piece of music and chose a version where the most parameters are preferred. because these are preference rules, in other words the computer does not have to have all of them true when choosing a meter, so the “best-fit” refers to the meter with most of the preferences. tempo is a bottom-up and a top-down process depending on how long someone listens to a piece of music in the same tempo. it is a bottom-up process because we need a few notes to perceive a tempo, but following these few notes it is a top-down process because we apply the tempo we have perceived to the music—as evident through foot-tapping, head bobbing etc. however, if the tempo were to change suddenly for expressivity, a person could catch it quickly. according to desain and honing, “beat induction is a fast process [since] only after a few notes a strong sense of beat can be induced” (desain and honing , ), and, therefore, a computer inducing tempo is a large undertaking. in temperley’s writing he mentions the “most important work in the area of quantization (temperley , )” is a desain and honing study entitled “time functions function best as functions of multiple times.” i mention this article because of its comparative approach and use of much the same rule-based models as temperley. the article is a connectionist approach that uses stationary units and interactive units that change based on the surrounding material. the approach does not keep the length of notes the same but keeps the onset the same, which is problematic for temperley. even though this model offers multiple beats per time interval it cannot handle expressive timing (temperley ) the desain and honing study, “computational models of beat induction: the rule based approach” used a rule-based model for beat induction of musical input and aims to explore the perception of tempo in people and in computers. the goal of this article is to look at rule-based models and provide an understanding of how these models create an initial beat structure. desain and honing examined the contribution and robustness of rules in different rule- based models. the important aspect taken from this article is that models, regardless of year created, can work more optimally with rules taken from other models. this points towards the mixing of rules and ideas which is in fact what temperley has done to create his prs. smith and honing ( ) explains how the problem of expressive timing could be overcome. this study used rhythmically isolated segments –meaning that there was only rhythm as input—to incorporate expressive timing. this accounts for the fact that a person can easily change their original beat structure to incorporate expression. a technique based on morlet wavelengths was used to do so because of its similarity to human hearing and prediction . this remains consistent with the overall goals of optimization, which is to explain with greater and greater efficiency perception and human signal processing. these wavelets, however, are best used for short bursts of input similar to that of expressive timing at the ends of phrases. the article first looks at the analytical techniques and the application of morlet wavelets to create a continuous wavelet (one that uses expressive timing). a wavelet is a representation of the repetitive rhythmic structure, such as a repeated rhythm or time signature. then it puts the rhythmic findings into a hierarchy. following this, the article finds the “foot tapping rate” (smith and honing , ) which is the basic tempo and, finally, the model is complete by showing definition taken from an online dictionary on time frequency. https://cnx.org/contents/skft _l@ /time- frequency-dictionaries https://cnx.org/contents/skft _l@ /time-frequency-dictionaries https://cnx.org/contents/skft _l@ /time-frequency-dictionaries the incorporation of expressive timing (step with step ). overall, this model will provide an accurate analysis of foot-tapping. it will be further discussed in section . . hardesty in goes a different direction in building upon temperley as well as huron and lerdahl and jackendoff’s a generative theory of tonal music ( ). his approach aims to identify rhythmical features and examine music prediction from the rhythmic and parallelism point of view. this will be further discussed in the parallelism section. . . contrapuntal structure as mentioned in chapter with the elvis project, counterpoint often does not get the attention it deserves. temperley examines counterpoint with the goal of understanding the perception behind it. it is worth mentioning that the prs for contrapuntal structure is geared towards a piano roll representation of a piece. temperley uses the concept of “streams” which are a group of ideas in the same voice with minimal white squares. the white squares refer to moments of silence. temperley’s preference rules are as follows: . pitch proximity rule: prefer to avoid large leaps in a stream . new stream rule: prefer the least number on streams . white square rule: prefer the least number of white squares in a stream . collision rule: prefer cases where a square is in one stream . top voice rule: prefer a single voice as the top voice, so there is minimal voice exchange i would like to clarify that a stream does not refer to a phrase because, in contrapuntal structures, a stream can have multiple phrases. for example, one voice in a -part fugue would start with the melody which can be multiple phrases, then the same voice will play contrapuntal variations with multiple phrases; this voice acts as one stream a komosinki article examined analysis of counterpoint for compositional research by using a method called “dominance relation.” this is a method that uses multiple criteria to do analysis like a prs. it specifically looks at first species counterpoint and can produce an output of a composition. because this is a composition tool, i will concentrate on the evaluative module of the method. the model will first always generate the first species counterpoint, but each item is evaluated by the following criteria: . direct motion . a repeated note . a vertical imperfect consonance . a skip . a vertical perfect consonance reached by direct motion . skips by tritone or larger than p except m these criteria are examined through the generated piece and they are all counted. the output produced by a dominance relation will be either “dominated” or “non- dominated.” using rules based upon the counterpoint method of fux (fux ), dominated counterpoint will have another counter point that is ‘better’ and this evaluation will repeat until a final, non-dominated counterpoint is found. this article builds upon temperley’s rules but only in a general sense. temperley’s rules are used to narrow down choices and find the best fit, while this method tests all rules on each counterpoint, and eventually finds the counterpoint that most exemplifies the rules. giraud et al in builds upon research on fugues. the input has the voices in the fugue already separated. this is much the same as temperley’s streams and uses “generic mir techniques” (giraud et al , ). i have decided to put this into the optimization section for two reasons. first, it is an example of work lying between optimization and mir. secondly, it acts more as an optimization tool than an mir tool because of its small scale. the goal is not to create a database. instead, the goal is to be used as an evaluative model for fugues. this tool needs input that is already separated for computer use, so it uses files from the humdrum toolkit because they have been previously separated into voices. this method concentrates on using tools to examine pattern repetitions and gives a complete analysis. it does so by identifying the subject, and countersubject(s), the key for individual occurrences, harmonic sequence, cadence, pedals, and overall structure. giraud et al tested this method on bach and shostakovich fugues. they found that, for some pieces, the analysis was complete and correct, but the method still gets false positives. other results were completely unusable, but these were mostly double and triple fugues. more specifically, if the subject was correctly identified the overall analysis was more correct. like any computer method, this one can be made better and giraud et al makes suggestions on how. to make this optimal, giraud et al suggests that the current method can be combined with probabilistic models. probabilistic models will be discussed in the following section. . . tonal-pitch class representation and harmonic structure tonal-pitch class representation is important to the prs of harmonic structure. the term tonal-pitch class is taken from temperley and i have understood it to mean the set of pitch classes creating a tonal structure (i.e. key area). tonal-pitch class representation is the sorting of the pitches in a piece to a specific key. the preference rules outlined by temperley are as follows: . pitch variance rule: prefer to label such that nearby events within the same key . voice-leading rule: events a half step apart are preferred to be different letter names . harmonic feedback rule: prefer a tonal pitch class where the harmonic structure is good (meaning that there is a logical progression) these rules help to decide a specific key and minimize notes outside of a chosen key. all keys would be tested for a specific idea and the best-fit would be chosen. the prs for harmonic structure builds upon this assignment by adding roots and chords to the piece. these rules create a hierarchy of possibilities for the individual chords and, because the last rule for tonal-pitch representation considers harmonic progression, the progression is relatively accurate. this does not eliminate the analyst, however, because this is not % accurate. the prs for harmonic structure are as follows: . compatibility rule: prefer roots in the following order-> , , , flat , flat , flat , flat , ornamental (all others) . strong beat rule: prefer chords on strong beats . harmonic variance rule: prefer the next root to be on the circle of fifths . ornamental dissonance rule: [ornamental dissonance is “if it does not have a chord-tone relationship to the chosen root] prefer ornamental dissonances where the next or prior note is a tone or semitone away and/or on a weak beat the prs for harmonic structure still considers chords that are not part of the original key, and thus modal mixture and other temporary key changes are possible. this method also considers proximity, so modulation can be addressed. to add to this, de haas et al in created harmtrace which stands for harmonic analysis and retrieval of music with type-level representation of abstract chord entities. this tool is useful for tonal works to separate data using harmonic similarity estimation, chord recognition, and automatic harmonization. to explain further, this tool can recognize chords and show that different aspects of a piece are similar because of the harmonic structure or progression. this tool can do so by taking all the chord possibilities into consideration for the specific beat and extracting the most correct one. (the tool can also harmonize a progression which is useful for the performer, but not within the scope of this paper.) this article was included because it furthers temperley’s prs: it can provide the automatic harmonization and similarity estimation. it does not need the previous tonal-pitch class representation prs to figure out the specific chords. instead it puts the possibilities into a hierarchical structure. the authors claim that this model can be used for mir because it moves beyond theoretical uses and is practical as an internet-based method (de haas et al ). . . melodic phrase structure melodic phrase structure is involved in multiple levels of a piece because melody itself often adheres to specific rules and works with other musical structures such as meter and harmony (temperley ). thus, temperley’s prs must take all of these into account to be accurate. the rules are as follows: . gap rule: prefer boundaries either at time between intervals or at a time at a rest before and interval . phrase length rule: prefer note long phrases . metrical parallelism rule: prefer phrases that start at the same point in the metrical structure the first rule refers to the time that could be between phrases or in a phrase. the gap rule is to make phrase boundaries at a rest or after a longer note value because these are both possibilities. an extension of this model will be discussed in . . parallelism. . . parallelism in the cognition of basic musical structures ( ), parallelism was mentioned and treated, and was revisited in temperlay and bartlette article. parallelism was redefined as follows: a) parallelism: repetition either exact sequence or contour b) parallelism rule: “prefer beat intervals of a certain distance to the extent that repetition occurs at that distance in the vicinity” (temperley barlette , ) this twofold definition kept the existing definition but added contour and sequence in essence. emilios cambouropoulos, from aristotle university of thessaloniki, in explored parallelism and melodic segmentation using a computer. cambouropoulos wanted to incorporate parallelism into this method because it is often forgotten by analysts and has an impact on parsing data. cambouropoulos used the pattern boundary strength profile (pat) and the local boundary detection model (lbdm) to find phrase boundaries that take parallelism into account. pat was first only able to extract patterns that are exactly the same, but cambouropoulos modified it to extract patterns that are similar. the goal of this modification is to provide a more general application of parallelism which is exactly what temperley wanted to do with the modification of his prior definition. cambouropoulos was able to create a basic method for melodic segmentation that incorporates parallelism, but it is not perfect as it does not provide the final segmentation of the piece. as previously mentioned, hardesty in published an article on music prediction and generation for rhythm. this method was based on finding parallelism, lerdahl and jackendoff’s publication –a generative theory of tonal music ( ) –, and the psychological understanding of music. the psychological aspect of rhythm is based on “rhythmic anticipation and parallelism” (hardesty , ). this method was only conducted on binary rhythm where strong and weak beats alternate, so the assumption is that an attack on a weak beat is followed by an attack of the strong beat. the method takes derivation of a rhythm to find the underlying operations to generate rhythms. the goal is to “[define] a collection of rhythmic building blocks (hardesty abstract)” while taking psychological aspects of rhythm and meter and parallelism into account. the result is a hierarchy of rhythms based on duration. an interesting point is that the final outcome can still be the same if the input is different so long as they are derived from the same rhythm. . probabilistic and statistical models though this is a separate section from preference rules, probability and statistics encompasses the same hierarchical structure as a preference rule system. often in computer music analysis, different methods are layered to create an optimal outcome. the incorporation of probability and statistics stems from temperley’s move away from prss to a model that is more similar to other fields studying perception. . . introduction in , the journal of mathematics and music published a special edition examining the first movement of brahms’ string quartet in c minor op. , no. to show different perspectives on computer music analysis (referred to in the article as “computer-aided analysis”). the edition brought to light three major developments i explore further: music information retrieval, optimization, and machine learning. this section, however, will concentrate on optimization in terms of probability and statistics. this will touch on work by david temperley, philippe cathé, and darrell conklin. i will also introduce a method of using probability to assist in mir, introduced in the previous chapter. temperley sought to improve preference rules with bayesian probability because it can do the job of preference rules. preference rules are not used in other perception relation fields, like linguistics, so temperley took their methods and adapted it for music. temperley changed from a preference rule approach to a more generative approach using bayesian probability, which stems from the accepting of bayes rule as correct. this is when the probability of another event happening changes based on the occurrence of a previous event. combining his previous work with that of music and probability ( ), temperley created melisma version . , available online for analysis. philippe cathé located at l’université paris-sorbonne looks primarily at harmonic vectors and uses a computer to perform the statistical analysis. the computer, however, does not perform the analysis itself, but, instead, treats each as a data file. cathé attempts to keep the music in mind by, after the statistical analysis, explaining the interaction between the music and the vectors. with harmonic vectors, the changes can be heard in recordings making the statistical analysis seem more factual. darrell conklin also employed probability, as well as bioinformatics for efficient pattern recognition. finding patterns is an integral part of analysis but becomes subjective when choosing patterns for study. the goal of conklin’s work is to create an algorithm to find the distinctive patterns, which are patterns frequent within the piece, the corpus, and infrequent in a selected set of pieces, the anticorpus. this gives the analyst a set of patterns that may be important. . . david temperley’s use of bayesian probability in the cognition of basic musical structures ( ), david temperley created a set of preference rules inspired a generative theory of tonal music ( ) by lerdahl and jackendoff. similarly, music and probability ( ) takes a generative approach and combines it with bayesian probability. the reason for using probability was to use similar tools to language and vision because preference rules were not being used in these similar domains. bayesian probability is a subset of probabilistic rules where the probability of an occurrence is affected by the occurrence of a previous event. this subsection will concentrate on select chapters from music and probability ( ). the approach to analysis here is to first do a probabilistic analysis of the essen folksong collection to find the probability of various musical building blocks, such as meter, keys—both in monophonic and polyphonic music—, and melodic ideas. this analysis sets the parameters for the computer program, so that the rest of the pieces analyzed will have a higher accuracy. using the essen folksong collection , the parameters are set, and the analysis is completed through a the essen folksong collection is a collection of , folksongs collected by helmut schaffrath. these are located at http://essen.themefinder.org/ http://essen.themefinder.org/ generative process. a generative process works by finding a structure based on the surface content of a work and then generating a surface in multiple choices (keys, meter, etc.). after generating a surface, the program will decide which is the highest probability based on the underlying structure. this simplified method will now be explained for meter, key—both monophonic and polyphonic—, and melodic ideas. meter has been well studied prior to temperley’s work in music and probability ( ), so this model aims to build upon previous models with a generative approach. a ‘metrical grid’ is generated from the piece based on the parameters set from the remainder of the essen folksong collection, but there are many different possibilities of metrical grids for any given piece. as noted above metrical grid refers to the graphic representation of beats, strong beats, and main beat divisions in three levels as shown in figure (section . . ) the following steps are used in creating the optimal grid: . decide time signature: choices between duple and triple meter and the individual time signatures within each category . generate the tactus: this is the middle or second level of beats and is based on the notes that are present (simultaneously with ) . addition of upper level beats: indicates the actual beat division and is the highest level in the metrical grid (simultaneously with ) . addition of lower level beats: indication of the subdivision required for the excerpt. this is the lowest set of points on the metrical grid . generate note onset: solid vertical lines that indicate where the actual notes line up on the metrical grid. (not in figure) after generating many metrical grids, the tool would test the probability of the onset, with the assumption that the grid was correct. it would then multiple the grid by the probability of the grid itself. this would yield a probability value of statistically less than one and the highest scoring grid would be selected. upon testing this model on multiple pieces, temperley compared it to the software that previously used preference rules to find the best fit. the tests showed that the prs was more accurate when compared to the bayesian model. temperley hypothesized reasons for this. the reasons for higher accuracy with the first model is because the perception of rhythm is based on harmony, note lengths, and parallelism as well. longer note lengths most often occur on strong beats such as the beginning of the measure and the bayesian model at the time could not take that into consideration. in creating a computer model that perceives key, the musical facets the mind isolates must be taken into consideration. a key, at least in monophonic pieces, is composed of both pitch proximity and range and temperley poses the question “what kind of pitch sequence makes a likely melody?” (temperley ). this, once again, is a generative process where all keys are tested, but there is no obvious starting point when examining key, so temperley relies upon previous research on key-profile. the key-profiles are heavily based on the krumhansl and kessler experiment. the experiment asked participants to rate the degree to which audible pitches belonged to an established key and, from this, a correlation was created. this experiment was successful in major keys, but minor keys were problematic because there are multiple versions of a minor key. temperley made the needed changes to the established key profiles to incorporate minor keys and began constructing a model using bayesian probability. to construct a generative process for key finding, temperley used the key profiles as a starting point. he did an overall analysis of the essen folksong collection to find a normal distribution, or bell-curve, of the pitches. following this, a pitch is chosen at random from the peak area of the bell-curve to construct a range profile around it, and then, it is combined with a proximity profile. all keys are tested in this way and the key with the highest probability will be chosen as the key for the melody. this same method for key-finding is problematic for polyphony. this approach takes the structure from the surface material, but the surface of a polyphonic piece is dense and contains notes acting as passing or neighbouring tones. when examining a piece, many notes are not the tonic of a scale, so this would skew most computer programs. temperley aimed to overcome this obstacle by segmenting the piece on the assumption that pieces stay in the same key for a little while. this assumption is based on the perception-based concept of ‘inertia’ where there is a lack of movement in an item (larson ). in this case, it means that the key will stay the same for the amount of time affected by inertia. this also helps with the second problem of modulation. modulation occurs when a new key is introduced for an indeterminate amount of time. this is difficult for computer because two, or more, notes act as the tonic at different times in the piece. in the case of polyphony, this is overcome by segmenting the piece into smaller sections, as is already needed to look at polyphonic works. the smaller segments will show a higher probability to one key and a section that modulates will show a higher probability of another key. the segmentation, in turn, will assist in both, identifying modulation and key-finding in polyphonic works. melodic ideas in this case often involve expectation or error detection where the model attempts to answer this question: ‘does this pitch work in this sequence?’ pitch expectation is tested in two ways. the first is if the participant expects a pitch and the second is whether a participant can add a pitch. temperley is concentrating on the first type of test and uses the cuddy and lunney ( ) experiment where participants rated the ‘fit’ of the next note in a corpus, not the essen corpus, from one to seven. the numbers were converted, by temperley, into values to use the probability model. the values were used to test the strength of the fit of the note to explore the capabilities of the computer tool and to examine pitch sequence. here, temperley realized that the parameters work best if they were created by other pieces from the same corpus. the strength of best fit is much higher (from . to . in terms of correlation coefficient), but this shows that the computer tool does not work equally for all music but can give some insight. . . statistics and harmonic vectors harmonic vectors is a newer harmony theory influenced by riemann that aims to take a generative and systematic look at tonality that can be used for statistical analysis (meeùs ). nicolas meeùs used this term from and wrote extensively on it into the twentieth century. my primary source for background information on harmonic vectors is a meeùs article entitled “vecteurs harmoniques.” this takes the motion of scale degrees and systematically sorts them into either dominant (v) or subdominant (sd) vectors. the two types of vector are based on classification of progressions from schoenberg and sadaï, who wrote an extension of schoenberg’s work. the reason for this analysis is the assumption that a chord alone has no meaning but creates its function within a succession of chords; therefore, the meaning is temperley refers to this as either the perception paradigm or the production paradigm generative. these vectors can be graphically represented and can be used for statistical analysis but may not be representative if done on few works (meeùs ). philippe cathé took harmonic vectors and combined it with computer music analysis to dig deeper into a set of works. there are three levels of research with harmonic vectors: finding regularities, finding pendulums, and finding correlations between the other two levels and the music (cathé a). cathé expands on vectorial pairs (meeùs ), an analysis looking at the pairs of side-by-side vectors, and mono vectorial sequences, meaning the same vector repeated, as methods for finding regularities. pendulums help to further differentiate composers based on their vector use. a pendulum is a series of three vectors where the first and third vector are the same and the second vector is different. the final level of research brings back the music and aims to find correlations between the music and vectors found. the goal is to understand why a vector is used (cathé a). these three stages help to further explore a set of works. the application of harmonic vectors for statistical analysis was mentioned and used by both meeùs and cathé. both expressed the analysis in a table of percentages, organized by movement of scale degrees, the types of vector, and level, or with graphic representation, as line diagrams or graphs. the diagrams express the amount of each vector (meeùs ), vector pair, mono-vectorial sequences, or pendulums (cathé a), most often in percentage, and break this down by era and composer. the computer has assisted cathé in the three-level analysis by cutting down on the time and making the output as unbiased as possible. to perform comparisons, cathé uses ‘charles.’ ‘charles’ is a computer program based on microsoft excel that gives proportions vectors (pair, pendulums, etc.) for a certain piece or a set of pieces, or data files. the output is expressed most often in charts or linear graphics. this gives the analyst another method to represent the data and makes comparison easier between eras, composers, and compositions. the idea that works of music taken from different eras sound different is not new. harmonic vectors aims to show this through the change in proportions between eras. each era has a different average of each vector, vector pairs, pendulums etc. that can be identified through larger scale comparative analysis (cathé b) and represented in the form of statistics. in addition to eras, a comparative statistical analysis of harmonic vectors can also be applied to composers and compositions. all composers and compositions are slightly different, so philippe cathé took ten versions of vater unser im himmelreich and compared the usage of harmonic vectors (cathé b). a composer uses different amount of each vector (pair, pendulums, etc.) by piece, but the percentage remains very close (cathé a). this can also be used to show the degree of difference between two composers meaning that a composer’s use of vectors is consistent by composer. . . distinctive patterns using bioinformatics and probability looking for patterns is needed in all analyses and finding patterns that are distinctive is paramount. according to darrell conklin, a distinctive pattern is one which is frequent within the corpus when compared to the frequency within the anticorpus. the algorithm that was created aims to find the distinctive pattern within the corpus to narrow down the possibilities for the analyst (conklin ). the corpus is a specific piece or set of pieces that are examined, so the distinctive patterns found is over-represented in the corpus. the anticorpus, on the other hand, is a piece or a set of pieces, often by the same composer, where the distinctive pattern is under-represented. the frequency needed for distinctiveness, the corpus, and the anticorpus are all determined by the analyst. i will now explain a few applications of distinctiveness. in this section, i will look at two different applications of this method done by darrell conklin. the first is on the essen folksong collection and the second is on johannes brahms’ string quartet opus no. . the reason for choosing conklin’s application is to look at the approach of a researcher who commonly examines music and machine learning (from basque university webstire http://www.ehu.eus/cs-ikerbasque/conklin/) and to further explain distinctiveness with an analysis. both of the analyses use the similar following formula: Δp ≝ 𝑝(𝑃 ⊕⁄ ) 𝑝(𝑃 ⊖⁄ ) = 𝑐⊕(𝑃) 𝑝(𝑃 ⊖⁄ ) ×𝑛⊕ the middle expression (between the two equal signs) refers to the probability of a pattern in the corpus (⊕) or in the anticorpus (⊖). the last expression is used to find the value of Δp, also known as likelihood of p (i(p)). the numerator is the total number of a pattern in the corpus and the denominator is the probability of a pattern in the anticorpus multiplied by the total number of events in the corpus. the first analysis was conducted on the essen folksong collection, the same collection used by temperley in his music and probability ( ), and, more specifically, the shanxi, austrian, and swiss folksongs. conklin was searching for the “maximally general distinctive patterns,” (conklin , ) which are patterns that can be used for classification but are not so general that they occur in almost all pieces. for a pattern to be considered interesting, or frequent, it must be in a minimum of % of the corpus. the likelihood (i (p)), also known as Δ p in later works, must be greater or equal to . this study showed that, for each region, there is a maximally general distinctive pattern that can be used for classification purposes (conklin ). http://www.ehu.eus/cs-ikerbasque/conklin/ the second analysis was on the first movement of the brahms string quartet, opus no , and the anticorpus used was the string quartets no and no . for the best comparison, conklin only uses the first movement of no and no . the goal was to show that the motives forte found in his ariticle “motivic design and structural levels in the first movement of brahms’s string quartet in c minor” ( ) are found as distinctive using this analysis, excluding two motives that cannot be maximally general. this is converse to when david huron revisited the same analysis in , where huron found that only the alpha motive was distinctive (conklin ). i will now outline what was determined by the analysis. the minimum frequency, in this study, for a pattern is and the likelihood of a pattern, renamed to the Δp, is minimum to be considered distinctive. the humdrum kern formats were used for an easily available and computer compatible format. when the analysis was completed, all of forte’s motives, not including the mentioned exception, were labeled as distinctive (conklin ). this shows that the tool can be used to identify likely distinctive motives, but the analyst will still need to analyse the data for a complete picture. . critical analysis: optimization the chapter thus far shows the progression made in research in general and specifically that david temperley made from the cognition of basic musical structures ( ) to music and probability ( ) by exploring the previous research, reasons for looking at probability, and the use of bayesian networks. in essence, the recent research in optimization builds upon what temperley provides or upon developments mirrored by temperley. (temperley has more recent publications, but these will be discussed in the conclusion of the thesis.) . . preference rules: metrical structure the smith and honing use of morlet wavelets was discussed in . . as a method to incorporate expressive timing into beat induction. this method has its limitations. firstly, the method does not work by exposing the tool to the music because the input must be in an isolated rhythm form. this means the tool cannot perform beat induction on a non-separated piece. another issue is the selection of tempo is not as sensitive as needed. this method has made leaps and bounds in testing and creation but cannot currently work as a stand-alone program. and, because of its current limitations, the method cannot be a simple online application at this point, so it is only useful to a small number of people. the first improvement is to make it either a stand-alone program or an addition to another larger tool. as its own stand-alone program, it would have much use to a researcher but may be a teaching aid for a student to learn expressive timing or beat induction. a more wide-spread use of this tool would be in playback software for scores to determine the efficacy of a playback. if the tool could not find the tempo of a piece as played in a playback, then it would show that the playback is not as similar to human playing. however, this tool does help to further the goal of optimization by getting closer to human beat induction. in time, if work on beat induction continues, researchers may understand how people can find the beat and adapt it quickly. . . preference rules: counterpoint the extensions of counterpoint from to have concentrated on the evaluative or compositional side, but they are still useful to analysts. the komosinki article concentrates heavily on composition but it gives an evaluative approach for the generated composition. on a smaller scale this tool is useful for evaluating a first species counterpoint which is taking an opposite direction than temperley. it has been included to show a different use for temeprley’s preference rules. it is useful to an analyst by giving a general outline of evaluative criteria needed by a computer. on its own, it needs to stay with a generative model because of the dominated vs. non-dominated output, but it is a good model for future evaluations of generative models. the tool proposed by giraud et al gives the analyst a strong head start on fugue analysis if the subject is properly identified. this tool is best used on a larger corpus of similar fugues (i.e. by the same composer in the same era) if it were to be combined with probabilistic models. the best probability of subject length, key notes used etc., is found when the corpus is evaluated independently. this was a trend in probability, because probability of certain gestures change based on the composer. this tool would indeed be best used in conjunction with a probabilistic model, but extra work needs to be done to separate a set of fugues into streams or voices. to separate the voices temperley’s preference rules to examine streams can be used if they are indeed one in the same. however, neither of these tools examine fugues with multiple instruments. this is left for further work. . . preference rules: tonal-class representation and harmony harmtrace can estimate the harmonic similarity, recognize chords, and automatically harmonize an input. this tool does not need a set of tonal-pitch class rules or key profiles. instead it uses a hierarchical structure to narrow down its choices. the authors of the article further say that this model can be used for mir because it is practical as an internet-based method. an issue that is not addressed is what kind of input can be used with harmtrace this is one of my five critical issues. if the input needs to be separated in some way then old humdrum files could be used, but if there is an image score input then any clear scan of a score can be used. another common input is a music notation software input (such as a finale file), but these formats are specific to the notation software that is being used. furthermore, an audio file input would be optimal because they are widely available, but this is not practical because no recording is perfect. . . melodic phrase structure and parallelism the pat—pattern boundary strength profile—and lbdm—local boundary detection model—have improved with cambouropoulos’s modifications in , but since then parallelism has not been in the forefront of research. this more generalized application of parallelism is imperative for pieces where a repetition is ornamented or changed slightly, but it is often not considered with analysis tools because they often examine recurring features or one specific task. boundary detection is generally used for parsing data and by incorporating parallelism the boundaries are more accurate. by putting harmtrace and pat/lbdm together, the output could have a higher accuracy and can provide a precise parsing of data as needed for analysis. the final segmentation could be obtained for the pat/lbdm outputs by using the harmtrace harmonic infrastructure. this would be a way to leverage the strengths of both models to provide the user with a more complete outcome. the hardesty tool for examining rhythm has a strong basis in rhythm and music generation. it has further uses in optimization because it incorporates psychological elements, however, the goal is not completely realized. the tool can only process and generate binary rhythm, but, with further research, the tool can come close to the human music prediction. thus, it furthers optimization’s goal in understanding how humans perceive rhythm and can predict it. . . probability and statistics the tools presented in the section on probabilistic and statistical models take three different approaches to using probability and statistics in computer music analysis. temperley looked at bayesian probability, the set of probabilistic principals following the acceptance of bayes’ rule, to incorporate his previous research in prss with cognition in similar fields to music. cathé’s approach aims to always keep the music in mind, so the computer looks at every data file, music in this case, and the analyst makes the final comparisons and assumptions looking at both music and harmonic vectors. darrell conklin takes bioinformatics and probability for finding distinctive patterns, and the method parses music giving the analyst the patterns that may be important. temperley’s use of bayesian probability is to be used in his online database. overall, the generated coefficients can be used in other probabilistic models and in other corpus studies. as was stated by temperley, the coefficients are more accurate when generated for a specific corpus, so for maximal accuracy this should be done. furthermore, these coefficients can be used in any generative theory if they are based on the same corpus. this is also its limitation since re- analysing a set of works when investigating a different corpus is time consuming. this can sometimes defeat the purpose of a computer model as it does not save time and energy. overall these models take a set of data and provide an output of specific generalizations. for example, cathé has generalized the percentage of use for each harmonic vector by composer, meaning that each composer has a distinct percentage. this can be further combined with a study on authorship in . this study was on literary works and measured the specific ratio of simple words such as upon, such etc. the amount some words were used is distinctive to the authors. the poisson process, a specific aspect of probability, was adapted to complete this method. this could potentially be adapted to music where, instead of words, harmonic vectors are used. this application is further discussed in the concluding section of the thesis. chapter - machine learning . introduction to machine learning machine learning can be defined as the process of teaching a computer (the machine) to devise new tasks, and in the case of music, to perform these new tasks on musical works. this has applications for many aspects of computer music analysis, but the focal point of machine learning is the tool itself. the tool or method must provide a relatively accurate output on a first stage analysis so that, in turn, the tool can reliably produce correct output for other pieces. this differs from mir and optimization, because for mir the goal is a database, and for optimization, as i have described it, the goal is to understand and reproduce a human perception of an input. music poses many challenges for any computer-based analytical tool, and, as such, the analysis of full works of music using complex ideas is not common in machine learning. machine learning is used in multiple disciplines. when used for music, the input is often over simplified (widmer ). the field of machine learning as applied to music is still in its infancy. thus, i can only give a cursory overview of some of its developments. (recently, a special issue of the journal of mathematics and music concentrated on music generation in machine learning, but this is an exceptional development.). in this section, i show several emerging possibilities for machine learning as well as precedents. i do so in an introductory manner because the actual processes of machine learning and their application are too complex to be treated exhaustively in a thesis of this scope. (i will discuss the literature of machine learning primarily from the angle of a music theorist although it holds considerable possibilities for other domains such as composition.) unlike previous chapters, the critical analysis for this chapter is in the conclusion of the thesis, since machine learning has importance to computer music analysis as a whole. . outline of selected tools in this section, i aim to expose different tools in machine learning. first, i start with a tool that assists guitarists with ornamentation. the next two sections build upon one another as they are both created by darrell conklin and the second builds upon the first in terms of segmentation. it is also an application of the multiple-viewpoint system discussed in the literature review. the final tool is an analysis of analysis using machine learning. i concentrate on kirlin and yust’s smaller details because it is one of the few machine learning models that directly adds to music analysis. . . ornamentation in jazz guitar i begin with a recent development in the application of machine learning to music. for jazz guitar works, ornamentation is important becauseit is how expression is conveyed, but it is not written in the score. the performer must come up with the ornamentation themselves or go through countless recordings. giraldo and ramírez have attempted to address this problem with machine learning. this tool aims to take an “un-expressive score” (giraldo and ramírez , ) and add expressive ornaments to it. this machine learning tool uses sets of audio input from a professional guitarist as a test set. using a group of ornamentation vectors, the audio input was aligned with the score to create an expressive score of the recording. in effect, a non- expressive score was put together with a set of vectors derived from expressive scores. while the primary goal of the study was to create a machine learning tool, a secondary goal of this tool was to give new guitarists an expressive score to read to help them learn the ornamentation practices. following the use of the test set, the tool was further tested on un-expressive input to get an expressive output. the output of the tool was a generated midi or other audio format recording that combined the un-expressive score with the machine learning ornamentation. the researchers determined that the overall stylistic and grammatical correctness of the tool is a statistical %. this tool does need further work, especially in refining itself as a machine learning tool. in terms of its secondary goal however, it does fill a void in jazz guitar performance. . . melodic analysis with segment classes darrell conklin’s name appears frequently in machine learning as applied to music. his research centres around the problem of music as a multi-faceted entity. the article, entitled “melodic analysis with segment classes” (conklin ), is a stepping stone towards his later research that i will discuss in . . (the basis for this article includes the conklin and whitten article discussed in the literature review). conklin’s article depends upon a concept called “viewpoints.” the idea behind viewpoints is to take a cross section of musical structures and estimate the accuracy of the output. the aim of this study is to “demonstrate how the viewpoints representation for segment classes can be applied to interesting music data mining tasks” (conklin , ). conklin’s method is based on a study of natural language and its segmentation. for data mining, music must first be in a format understood by the computer and it must be hierarchal. accordingly, conklin uses specific hierarchal and searchable terminology. a musical object is a note, a segment is a set of musical objects, and a sequence is a series of many segments in a specific order. melody is a type of sequence: it is a set of notes in a specific order where the order of those sets is specified. segmentation is a fundamental aspect of conklin’s analysis. there were two methods of segmentation tested. the first was phrase boundaries and the second was meter. each test involved segmentation created using a viewpoint based on a set of pitches. the particular expression determined by conklin is as follows: set(mod (intref(pitch,key))). the method succeeded most with phrase and metric segmentation undertaken by beat ( %), note ( %), and bar ( %). (there was also successful interval level ( %) which was not segmented.) as is obvious by the percentages, the most successful was for segmentation by beat. while the immediate task in machine learning is to create a tool, conklin’s secondary task was to discriminate style. the segmental viewpoint by beats can be used in future models for the secondary task. conklin discusses the further work that needs to be done in this regard. firstly, the length of segments must be examined for a corpus, meaning a collection of a style of music. secondly, the problems of the automated segmentation, meaning the segmentation done by the computer, should be compared to human segmentation. . . chord sequence generation with semiotic patterns conklin’s article, “chord sequence generation with semiotic pattern,” addresses the semiotic value in trance music—a type of fast electronic music, like techno, centred predominantly in europe—when the latter is generated by a machine learning model. aspects of the chords in trance music have intrinsic meaning and, therefore, the meaning must be kept to have an accurate stylistic representation of the music. conklin’s model aspires to generate a chord sequence for trance music that keeps the qualities of trance music intact. the semiotic patterns of trance music are defined as a sequence of “paradigmatic units” (conklin , ). according to conklin, the paradigmatic unit is when an idea is given a variable (a letter name) so that a pattern of these variables can be discussed. viewpoints, a statistical model discussed above, is used to map, or create, an output according to a plan. conklin’s viewpoints are based on the following criteria: chord, root, chordal quality, inter- onset-interval (meaning the start and stop points of a particular sound), duration, chord diatonic root movement, chord quality movement, a combination of root and quality. conklin describes the combination of root and quality as “crm. (cross product) cqm.” the cross product is a common vector operation. this combination was chosen to generate the chord, taking into account the intrinsic meaning for trance music. i should note that conklin only used a sampling of trance songs, so the results need to be further examined in terms of a larger trance corpus. the goal in machine learning is the tool itself. conklin states that the best algorithms, like the ones presented and other viewpoints, can be determined for a corpus. to further explain this, important aspects of a corpus can be identified, and the best algorithms can be defined and used like the “crm (cross product) cqm” used for generation in this article. conklin also mentions that this method can be used for analysis. . . analysis of analysis kirlin and yust’s article “analysis of analysis: using machine learning to evaluate the importance of music parameters for schenkerian analysis” aims to get a machine to develop the music theory branch of machine learning. the goal of the article was to create an analysis of a score using a model resembling schenkerian analysis. while this goal was not realized, the article is still noteworthy because of what the researchers explored and the machine learning tool they created. schenkerian analysis involves reducing the work in question by finding patterns of ornamentation and elaboration. this task is difficult to teach a computer without stipulating the exact features to find. kirlin and yust defined eighteen features and then sorted them into categories. these became stepping stones towards creating a machine learning tool. first a hierarchy of notes was created using a tool called a “maximal outerplanar graph.” then the eighteen features were defined as they relate to the left note, middle note, and right note. the middle note has the following six features: • sd-m the scale degree of the note (represented as an integer from through , qualified as raised or lowered for altered scale degrees). • rn-m the harmony present in the music at the time of onset of the center note (represented as a roman numeral from i through vii or “cadential six-four”). for applied chords (tonicizations), labels correspond to the key of the tonicization. • hc-m the category of harmony present in the music at the time of the center note represented as a selection from the set tonic (any i chord), dominant (any v or vii chord), predominant (ii, ii , or iv), applied dominant, or vi chord. (the dataset did not have any iii chords.) • ct-m whether the note is a chord tone in the harmony present at the time (represented as a selection from the set “basic chord member” (root, third, or fifth), “seventh of the chord,” or “not in the chord”). these lists from pages - are shortened versions of the lists presented in kirlin and yust • met-lmr the metrical strength of the middle note’s position as compared to the metrical strength of note l, and to the metrical strength of note r (represented as a selection from the set “weaker,” “same,” or “stronger”). • int-lmr the melodic intervals from l to m and from m to r, generic (scale-step values) and octave generalized (ranging from a unison to a seventh). (kirlin and yust , ) the left and right notes together have the following twelve: • sd-lr: scale degree ( – ) of the notes l and r. • int-lr: melodic interval from l to r, with octaves removed. • inti-lr: melodic interval from l to r, with octaves removed and intervals larger than a fourth inverted. • intd-lr: direction of the melodic interval from l to r • rn-lr: harmony present, as a roman numeral, in the music at the time of l or r • hc-lr: category of harmony present in the music at the time of l or r, represented as a selection from the set tonic, dominant, predominant, applied dominant, or vi chord. • ct-lr status of l or r as a chord tone in the harmony present at the time • metn-lr a number indicating the beat strength of the metrical position of l or r. the downbeat of a measure is . for duple or quadruple meters, the halfway point of the measure is ; for triple meters, beats two and three are . this pattern continues with strength levels of , , and so on. • meto-lr a number indicating the beat strength of the metrical position of l or r as an oridinal variable and treated differently in the algorithm • lev -lr whether l, m, and r are consecutive notes in the music • lev -lr whether l and r are in the same measure in the music • lev -lr whether l and r are in consecutive measures in the music (kirlin and yust , - ) these features are sorted into melodic, harmonic, metrical, and temporal categories as follows • melodic: sd-m, sd-lr, int-lmr, int-lr, inti-lr, intd-lr • harmonic: rn-m, rn-lr, hc-m, hc-lr, ct-m, ct-lr • metrical: met-lmr, metn-lr, meto-lr • temporal: lev -lr, lev -lr, lev -lr (kirlin and yust , ) then these categories are narrowed down and ranked by importance. this yields a hierarchy with harmony at the top, followed be melody, then meter, and finally temporality. the results showed that harmony is the most important marker for the reductions in terms of harmonic context and identification of non-chord tones which is obvious for an analyst, but it is important to have the computer achieve the same outcome. melody is the next most important marker, when harmonic context and non-chord tones do not give enough information about scale-degree progression and interval patterns. following this, meter is applied to anything that is undetermined. though this procedure seems obvious to the analyst, the hierarchy of steps is the most important part to the computer because it gives the computer a specific order to follow. to reiterate, this has not been fully tested, but it is useful for the understanding the creation of a machine learning model. . summary in this chapter, i have shown a few of the recent developments in machine learning applied to music. i have traced the work of darrel conklin in particular, since he is a pioneer in the field and continues to contribute to research. as noted above, i have not included a critical analysis section, because the comments i would have made there are more appropriate to the concluding chapter of the thesis, since they address the current state of the field. chapter - conclusion as noted earlier in this thesis, there are different streams in computer music analysis and i have concentrated on music information retrieval (mir), optimization, and machine learning. these streams often run in parallel because of their different goals. in my concluding chapter i consider some of the most recent developments in temperley’s work, offer methods to bridge the parallels, and present solutions, both general and specific, for the five critical issues mentioned in chapter . . further temperley research and probability following the cognition of basic musical structures ( ) and music and probability ( ) temperley continued his work on borrowing music-like concepts from other disciplines. two articles, “information flow and repetition in music” ( ) and “information density and syntactic repetition” ( ) adapt concepts from other disciplines to further optimization. the first article adapts uniform information density as a methodology, which is probability based, borrowed from psycholinguistics and used to further explain parallelism— when parts of a musical work are repeated in an exact or similar fashion and, thus, can be considered as “parallel.” temperley renamed the concept “information flow for repetition in music” and tested it on the barlow and morgenstern corpus of musical themes . temperley found that in parallel sections of a piece the repetition is often more chromatic, but where this is the case the overall piece has a higher probability of smaller diatonic intervals. thus, the a set of , themes available in print under co-authors barlow and morgenstern juxtaposition of chromatic and diatonic intervals makes the parallelism stand out. temperley also notes that harmony impacts the repetitions. the second article looks even closer at parallelism and information flow. it states that “less probable events convey more information” (temperley and gildea , ). temperley’s conclusion is consistent with what is referred to in the analysis of prose in the “inference in an authorship problem” (monstellar and wallace ). this article explains that specific words indicate more than others about an author. i notice that by potentially using poisson process and negative binomials—two standard concepts in probability and statistics— the specific author of a passage in a multi-author work can be found. this links to temperley because they follow the acceptance of bayes’ rule and are, therefore, part of bayesian probability. temperley’s most recent contributions to the field of computer music analysis is this multi-disciplinary borrowing of research tools. it is the interdisciplinary approach more than any other development that holds greatest potential for the field . machine learning as a means to an end machine learning concentrates on the tool itself. since this is the most recent development in computer research, and touches on artificial analysis, i have left the critique until the conclusion. because machine learning focuses on the tool, it does not have a larger goal other than creating a better tool. this method is best used, in the grand scheme of computer music analysis, as a way to improve and bring other aspects of computer music analysis closer to its goals. . compmusic as an example of intersection some methods of using different streams of computer music analysis have been suggested by the authors cited throughout the thesis, but i would like to add my own suggestion: researchers need to coordinate more closely in developing their work. i believe this will further the goals of mir, optimization, and machine learning. i will focus on “compmusic,” since it brings together several previously unconnected avenues of research. in this regard, it can serve as an example for the rest of the computer music analysis community to emulate. compmusic, also known as computational models for the discovery of the world’s music aims to investigate non-western music. more specifically, “its goal is to advance music analysis and description research through focusing on the music of specific non-western musical cultures” (compmusic project and workshops , ). the research project is supported by the european research council and the coordinator, xavier serra is centred in spain (compmusic website http://compmusic.upf.edu/ ). compmusic has used multiple streams to finish their database within a few years— to . it seeks “to challenge the current western centered information paradigms” (compmusic). it concentrates on five traditions of world music: hindustani, carnatic, turkish-makam, arab-andalusian, and beijing opera (compmusic). music research has traditionally focused on western music, so the researchers for compmusic had to start from very little. because of their short time frame, probability, statistical models, and machine learning were used. within compmusic, machine learning is used to solve specific problems that hinder the progress of the database, such as in the structure analysis of beijing opera (yang ). initially, resources such as probabilistic and statistical models were used to find novel ways to solve specific problems. for example, with maghreb, a moroccan type of music (which is a subset of http://compmusic.upf.edu/node/ arab-andalusian music), annotation was difficult, so a tool was created the fix these issues (sordo et al. ). these methods were then adapted to be used in the database. since combining different approaches in computer music analysis worked well for compmusic, i can foresee that the same could work for an mir project like simssa. to me, it appears that researchers are not sharing their tools and procedures to an optimal degree. this is partially due to a geographic issue, since researcher in mir, optimization, and machine learning seem to be in different parts of the world. if david temperley, darrell conklin, and members of the simssa project, such as ichiro fujinaga and andrew hankinson, were to share their tools and approaches more closely, i believe that there could be many new creative problem-solving methods. one example is the previously mentioned solution to the authorship problem (mentioned in further temperley research). . five general areas for improvement in the field in writing this thesis, i have observed five general areas where improvement can be made. what is needed is the following: first, an institutional critical analysis of the field; secondly, a closer coordination between optimization and machine learning; thirdly, research into authorship; fourthly, exploration into new areas in machine learning; and lastly, closer integration of various mir resources in developing optimization and machine learning. . critical analysis in computer music analysis as a distinct enterprise has not been performed up to this point except for mirex, music information retrieval evaluation exchange. mirex, in brief, is a “framework for the formal evaluation of music information retrieval (mir) systems and algorithms” (downie , ). the goal of mirex is to investigate the specific tools and algorithms that are the building blocks of larger databases. this method isolates approaches that are nearing the end of their life cycle and compares the performance of systems with similar goals. this provides data about the accuracy and projected utility of algorithms to researchers who want to work within mir. mirex, however, only looks at mir tools and concentrates heavily on methods examining audio data. it does not seem to consider specific issues and how they can be solved using other streams in computer music analysis. presumably this limitation will be overcome in the future. . closer coordination between optimization and machine learning. optimization and machine learning have different goals. optimization, as i have defined it, aims to use computers to mimic a human perception in music to understand the brain. machine learning wants to create the specific tool to complete a specific task. however, the end products created by both streams can be used to solve specific problems and tasks in mir as shown by compmusic. . research into authorship. in terms of specific items for research, the areas of authorship and what makes a piece a composer’s own work, has room for growth. this is important for proper identification of a work’s author when it is unknown. this is a common problem with ancient music. fresh research could involve the methods put forth by monstellar and wallace in with recent cathé research on harmonic vectors and their uniqueness to the composer (cathé a), and temperley’s research on information flow (temperley ), bayesian probability (temperley ), and syntactic repetition (temperley and gildea ). . new areas in machine learning. machine learning has concentrated on music generation and, by using probabilistic and statistical analysis, the music generation can improve by keeping high probability events. machine learning can also branch out into more analytical pursuits by mean of analytical algorithms used in optimization to ‘teach’ a computer to do analysis. this could improve the current analysis available in optimization and help to further mimic human perception in the machine. . closer integration of various mir resources in developing optimization and machine learning. i have offered specific examples of optimization and machine learning aiding in the creation of an mir database. however, the opposite development could occur, where mir databases could be used to develop new research tools. in particular, humdrum, an analytical mir tool, has a reserve of files that can be used for both machine learning and optimization. similarly, various corpora of music assembled in mir databases could be used as test sets for the same purpose. . persaud’s five critical issues with solutions this thesis has begun the task of a critical analysis by showing different tools in computer music analysis as a whole. the tools selected are of different ages, sizes, and have different researchers associated with them, but all aim to use the computer as their means to an end. i shall conclude the thesis by returning to a set of five particularly acute problems in the field, which i mentioned in my introduction . human error: the problem of human error can be resolved by the creation of more accurate algorithms—either by using harmonic vectors or one of the many temperley models . specifying input: improvement in specifying input are imperative to the growth of the field. a researcher reading articles or using pre-existing model needs to know what input should be used. this can be fixed by specifying the input in greater detail in articles and by creating genre-specific standards. . consistent evaluation principles: it is necessary to extend principles used for mirex to other branches of computer music analysis. overall, more critical work needs to be done in computer music analysis. having principles or guidelines will assist in this venture. . the interdisciplinary problem of a lingua franca: to solve this problem computer music analysis should create universal or at least common standards and modes of discourse for describing computer research in music. there are standards for mir in terms of research tools, algorithms, and systems but those researchers not working in the area are not aware of them. and because many of the tools and procedures are borrowed from other areas of computer research, they are applied in different ways in specialized music research. . “what’s the point?”-undefined goals. the broader audience needs to understand why computer music analysis is important. this can be overcome by looking at the broader scope of each branch. figure graphic of critical issues with solutions in the end, there are multiple avenues to take when it comes to solving the critical issues in computer music analysis. here, i have briefly given my own solutions to these issues and other critical issues . human error -more accurate algorithms . input specification -greater specification in all writings . "what's the point?" -larger scope . the interdisciplinary problem -common standards and practices . consistent evaluative principles -more critical work in computer music analysis aspects and direction for further research, but i have not explained the importance of computer music analysis. computer music analysis is vital to analysis as a whole because it often adds a quantitative aspect and takes advantage of technology. by incorporating probability and statistics and computational algorithms, the output of the analysis can rely on a mathematical explanation for a qualitative phenomenon. technology is a fast-growing field and its use in music analysis is inevitable. these new software and hardware move from day to day use into research and improve the field. however, like all changes, it has its own limitations and critical issues. thesis limits and problems is what fascinates me for this thesis. my overall conclusion is that researchers need to take a critical stance on the discipline for it to grow quickly and efficiently and is a necessity to further improve music analysis. bibliography alphonce, bo h. . “music analysis by computer: a field for theory formation,” computer music journal , no. : - . antila, christopher, julie cumming et al. . “electronic locator of vertical interval successions. montreal digital humanities showcase uqam. 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. wang, ge, perry r. cook, and spencer salazar. . “chuck: a strongly timed computer music language,” computer music journal , no. : - . yang, yile. . “structure analysis of beijing opera arias” master thesis, universitat pompeu fabra, barcelona (spain). michael j. prerau, ph.d. 	 e x p l o r a t i o n s i n i n t u i t i o n : b r e a k i n g b o u n d a r i e s a n d r e c l a i m i n g v o i c e t h r o u g h a / r / t o g r a p h i c p r o c e s s m i c h a e l t o t h b . m u s . , t h e u n i v e r s i t y o f b r i t i s h c o l u m b i a , a t h e s i s s u b m i t t e d i n p a r t i a l f u l l f i l l m e n t o f t h e r e q u i r e m e n t s f o r t h e d e g r e e o f m a s t e r o f a r t s i n t h e f a c u l t y o f g r a d u a t e s t u d i e s ( m u s i c e d u c a t i o n ) t h e u n i v e r s i t y o f b r i t i s h c o l u m b i a j u l y © m i c h a e l t o t h , abstract for me, the path is now clear—release the deep intuitive feeling first and then reflect and respond through intelligence and internal aesthetics. t h i s t h e s i s o f c r e a t i v e s c h o l a r s h i p is a b o u t p r o c e s s , p e r m i s s i o n , a n d o r i g i n a l v o i c e . i h a v e u s e d i n t u i t i v e m u s i c , p o e t r y , a n d n a r r a t i v e t o create a m u l t i - f a c e t e d t a p e s t r y t h a t e x p o s e s m y l i f e r o l e s , m y f e e l i n g s , m y v a l u e s , a n d t h e g r a y e r , i n - b e t w e e n areas o f k n o w i n g , t e a c h i n g , a n d l e a r n i n g . t h i s p r o c e s s o f r e d i s c o v e r y a n d r e c l a m a t i o n o f v o i c e h a s b e e n o n e o f a r t i s t i c a l l y g i v i n g m y s e l f p e r m i s s i o n t o b r e a k t h r o u g h m y p e r s o n a l m a s k s a n d r o l e s as w e l l as t r a n s c e n d c u l t u r a l p a r a d i g m s t o l o c a t e m y s e l f . t h e m e t h o d o l o g y o f a / r / t o g r a p h y ( s p r i n g g a y , s . , i r w i n , r . l . , w i l s o n k i n d , s. ) w a s c h o s e n as a p a t h t o m a k e sense o f m u l t i - s t o r i e d a r c h e t y p e s a n d m u l t i - l a y e r e d a v e n u e s o f a r t i s t i c e x p r e s s i o n . t h i s p r o c e s s i s r e n d e r e d t h r o u g h c o n c e p t s o f excess, m e t a p h o r , o p e n i n g s , c o n t i g u i t y , m e t o n y m y , l i v i n g i n q u i r y , a n d r e v e r b e r a t i o n s . r e n d e r i n g s e n a b l e a r t i s t s , t e a c h e r s a n d r e s e a r c h e r s t o i n t e r r o g a t e t h e i n t e r s t i t i a l spaces b e t w e e n t h i n g s , f o r e x a m p l e i m a g e a n d w o r k , text a n d a u d i e n c e , r e s e a r c h i n g , p e d a g o g y a n d a r t m a k i n g ( s p r i n g g a y , s . , i r w i n , r . l . , w i l s o n k i n d , s. ). t h e a r t i s t i c e x p l o r a t i o n s a n d c o n s e q u e n t r e n d e r i n g s o f r e v e l a t i o n a n d r e f l e c t i o n o f t h i s o n t o l o g i c a l e x p l o r a t i o n c a n b e l o o s e l y g r o u p e d i n t o s e v e n m a j o r t h e m e s : p e r s o n a l c o n t e x t a n d c o n t e x t f o r m a t i o n h e r o e s r e g r e t s issues w i t h t h e p r e v a i l i n g c u l t u r e n e w b e g i n n i n g s (the importance of) artistic/transcendent/arational spaces reflections and intimate looks into the form and function of educational landscape. the writing and music were then analyzed in light of who i am and what i know. results consisted of a number of conceptual strides forward in both my artistic vision and my teaching. overall, a/r/tography enabled me to gain deeper autobiographical understandings about issues that have shaped my view of the world. from music, poetic and narrative renderings, i learned valuable insights about the real me. i discovered a multilayered individual inside who became re- energized and revitalized about finding my inner voice. from a/r/tographic renderings, i analyzed and reflected on what i learned and unlearned. though there were resolutions, there were also new directions as i explored intuition, broke boundaries and reclaimed voice. i sculpted and embraced stories behind stories about myself. the notion of hero surfaced while regrets brought new narratives. who am i? i am artist, teacher, guitar player, and a/r/tographer. m table of contents a b s t r a c t . i i t a b l e o f c o n t e n t s i v d e m o c d o f p o e t r y , n a r r a t i v e s , s o u n d s c a p e s v i i a c k n o w l e d g e m e n t s i x i've e m ( b r a c e d ) : a p o e m o f i n t r o d u c t i o n . l section i: beginnings • • • t h e f a b l e o f t h e s c u l p t o r ...i s t o r i e s b e h i n d t h e s t o r i e s • • • • t h e m a s t e r s e x p e r i e n c e as l i m i n a l p h e n o m e n o n . t h e s t o r y o f t h e n a i v e a / r / t o g r a p h e r a u t o e t h n o g r a p h y i l a / r / t o g r a p h y t h e i n e v i t a b i l i t y o f t h e o n t o l o g i c a l d a n c e . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . r e f l e c t i o n s i n t h e i n f i n i t e n o w . t h e p o e t a n d t h e p i p e r . section ii: a/r/tographic renderings . . . w h e r e d o i c o m e f r o m / t o ? . d r i v i n g w i t h n o h a n d s . t h e f a b l e o f r e g r e t t h e u n n a t u r a l a c t . i a m g u i t a r . . . i a m s t a r t i n g (to l o s e ) i've ( e m ) b r a c e d iv w h a t d o i e n c o u n t e r ? . m a s t e r f r a m e . b i g p e o p l e how o l d ? . . . . . t h e g o d d e s s o f i n n o v a t i o n • • • • t h e h u s t l e r t h e h i - f i l e s s o n s f r o m t h e p i a n o s u n d a y at t h e a r t g a l l e r y . w h a t d o i create? h i g h w i r e g u i t a r . o n m u s i c c l a s s after a s l e e p l e s s n i g h t h o w d o y o u d e t e r m i n e ? t h i s d a y i n t h e l i f e . , a t r i l o g y o f d e v e l o p m e n t a l s t o r i e s . h e r o e s . section iii: an analysis of the renderings. • • • • • . . •.•. r e f l e c t i o n s o n t h e a / r / t o g r a p h i c p r o c e s s . . . . . . . ' ... t h e o p e n i n g o f t h e g o l d e n f l o w e r — t h e m i r a g e o f e p i p h a n y . . p e r s o n a l c o n t e x t a n d c o n t e x t u a l f o r m a t i o n . . h e r o e s . . . . . r e g r e t s . a n g e r / a l i e n a t i o n w i t h t h e p r e v a i l i n g c u l t u r e . n e w b e g i n n i n g s . ( t h e i m p o r t a n c e of) a r t i s t i c / t r a n s c e n d e n t / a r a t i o n a l s p a c e s . . r e f l e c t i o n s a n d i n t i m a t e l o o k s i n t o t h e f o r m a n d f u n c t i o n o f t h e e d u c a t i o n a l l a n d s c a p e . t h e i n t u i t i v e p r o c e s s a n d e m p a t h y w i t h o u t e x p e r i e n c e section iv: what have i learned/unlearned? t o b e l i e v e i n m y s e l f a n d t h e v a l u e o f m y o w n u n i q u e a r t i s t i c v o i c e . t o w o r k o n r e l e a s i n g c o m p a r i s o n s a n d c u l t u r a l n o r m s a n d m e a s u r e m e n t s o f v a l u e . c o n t e x t u a l s h i f t i n g a n d r e - b u i l d i n g . . . . . . . . t h e s n a k e o f r e g r e t k e e p s a t t a c k i n g . . r e f l e c t i o n s o n t h e e f f e c t o f t h e a / r / t o g r a p h i c e x p e r i e n c e o n m y c l a s s r o o m t e a c h i n g • • • w h e r e t o n o w ? r e f e r e n c e s v i demo cd of poetry, narratives, and soundscapes t r a c k l h o w o l d ? t r a c k d r i v i n g w i t h n o h a n d s t r a c k t h e u n n a t u r a l a c t t r a c k t h e f a b l e o f r e g r e t t r a c k i a m s t a r t i n g (to l o s e ) t r a c k b i g p e o p l e t r a c k o n m u s i c c l a s s a f t e r a s l e e p l e s s n i g h t t r a c k t h e g o d d e s s o f i n n o v a t i o n t r a c k i l o w d o y o u d e t e r m i n e ? t r a c k t h e m a s t e r f r a m e t r a c k t h e h u s t l e r t r a c k i've e m (braced) t r a c k t h u n d e r s t o r m at t h e p o n d ( i n s t r u m e n t a l n a r r a t i v e ) an electric guitar is used to create the rumble of the approaching storm, various birds calling in the trees and bushes; frogs croaking quietly; insects buzzing around; the sizzle of the rain descending, and finally the melody of lightning bolts and thunder. c o l l a b o r a t i v e w o r k : s o u n d s c a p e s f o r t h e p o e t r y o f c a r l l e g g o t r a c k t h e s a m e n o s e t r a c k n o l o c k s t r a c k p i c n i c s t r a c k m y m o t h e r ' s h o u s e t r a c k t h e d i v e r t r a c k o t r a c k l y n c h ' s l a n e acknowledgements i w o u l d l i k e t o t h a n k d r . p e t e r g o u z o u a s i s a n d d r . c a r l l e g g o f o r t h e i r i n v a l u a b l e s u p p o r t a n d e n c o u r a g e m e n t t h r o u g h t h i s w o n d e r f u l p r o c e s s . p e t e r w a s i n s t r u m e n t a l i n c o n v i n c i n g m e t o e m b a r k o n t h i s j o u r n e y a n d c a r l w a s a b e a c o n o f l i g h t , l e a r n i n g , a n d c a l m t h r o u g h o u t . i h a v e g r o w n so m u c h t h r o u g h m y w o r k w i t h b o t h o f y o u . t h a n k y o u . i w o u l d a l s o l i k e t o t h a n k m y w i f e , r o s e m a r y , a n d m y d a u g h t e r , e m i l y f o r t h e i r l o v e a n d s u p p o r t w h i l e i s t r u g g l e d w i t h t h e c h a l l e n g e s o f e a r n i n g a m a s t e r ' s d e g r e e , w o r k i n g f u l l t i m e , a n d t r y i n g t o b e a d a d , a n d a h u s b a n d . b o t h o f y o u r e a l i z e d t h a t t h i s p r o c e s s w a s a great o p p o r t u n i t y f o r m e . l o v e t o y o u a l w a y s . f i n a l l y i w o u l d l i k e t o t h a n k m y m o t h e r , i r e n e f o r h e r l i f e t i m e o f u n c o n d i t i o n a l l o v e a n d s u p p o r t , b o t h o f m y s e l f a n d m y b r o t h e r , l e s . i h a v e b e e n a b l e t o t a k e t h e r i s k s n e e d e d t o r e a l i z e m y s e l f t h r o u g h y o u r n u r t u r i n g l o v e . ix i've (em)braced i've ( e m ) b r a c e d p r a n k s t e r , c o n m a n , l i a r , l o v e r , h u s b a n d , f a t h e r , t ( h ) i n k e r ( e r ) , i m p o s t e r , p r e p o s t e r o u s l y i n g i n j u d g m e n t ! y e t s o m e t i m e s n o t o f t h i s w o r l d a s m y eyes r o l l b a c k w a r d a n d t h e j a w d r o p s . . . m y s t i c s y s t e m i c , p a t h e t i c a n d r e g r e t f u l k e e p e r o f c a r t o o n c o n s c i o u s n e s s , m y feet b l i s t e r o n t h e h y p e r - h e a t e d a s p h a l t o f w e s t e r n r e a l i t y , i n e v e r l e a r n s t i l l m y s t i f i e d b y t h e r a r i f i e d m i r a c l e o f h o p e ( l e s s n e s s ) f r i g h t e n e d c h i l d a n d o l d m a n i a m p e n i s c r o s s e d w i t h p e n a n c e s o n o f z o r r o a n d n o s f e r a t u , ( a n t i ) . . . c h r i s t , i w i s h i k n e w ! s a i n t o r s i n n e r , c e r t a i n l y f o o l o n t h e h i l l o f t h e a c a d e m y o f p o w e r , p o l i t i c s a n d l o s t s o u l s , l i m i n a l t r a n s g r e s s o r i n t h e a p o r i a o f f o u n d a n d l o s t (again) i see t h e o a s i s o r j u s t a n o t h e r m i r a g e ? . . . m e a n w h i l e t h e b u d d h a o f c o m p a s s i o n p o u r s r i v e r s o f tears t h r o u g h m e as i l o o k at p i c t u r e s o f m y d a u g h t e r b e c a u s e s o m e t i m e s i k n o w t o l o o k a b o v e m y s e l f section i beginnings the fable of the sculptor an autobiometaphoric overview of the type and nature of the struggles and successes of my creative life. i h a v e a s c u l p t u r e d o w n s t a i r s . it is a w o r k i n p r o g r e s s . i t r y t o v i s i t it e v e r y n i g h t f o r a f e w m i n u t e s . t h i s s l e e p i n g g i a n t i s , f o r t h e m o s t p a r t , u n f i n i s h e d , w i t h its c h a r a c t e r p a r t i a l l y c o n c e a l e d t o t h e c a u s a l o b s e r v e r . e n t o m b e d w i t h i n a s e a o f m a r b l e , it is a p r i s o n e r o f c i r c u m s t a n c e , w a i t i n g t o b e b o r n . i c a n f e e l t h e e n e r g y f r o m d e e p w i t h i n t h e r o c k a n d o f t e n i i m a g i n e its m u f f l e d , p l a i n t i v e c a l l f o r f r e e d o m , e v e n u p s t a i r s , w h e n i a m e n g a g e d a n d i n t o x i c a t e d b y d o m e s t i c v i g n e t t e s w i t h r o s e a n d e m i l y . l i k e m i c h e l a n g e l o , a n d i n t h e great t r a d i t i o n o f s c u l p t o r s b e f o r e a n d after h i m , i, i n s e r v i c e a n d s e r v i t u d e , s l o w l y c h i p a w a y at t h e s a c r e d r o c k t o release t h e p o o r s o u l . m y h a n d s ache f r o m f a t i g u e a n d p r o d u c t i v i t y is h a m p e r e d b y a b r a i n f i l l e d w i t h d i s t r a c t i n g l i f e - n o i s e - m y d a i l y e x i s t e n c e , s e e m l y , a n e v e r - e n d i n g t u r n s t i l e o f m o r e u n c o m p l e t e d t a s k s a n d o b l i g a t i o n s . y e t , t h e u r g e n c y t o b r e a t h e l i f e i n t o t h e s c u l p t u r e is ever h e i g h t e n i n g w i t h e a c h d a y . i c a r v e best t h r o u g h i n t u i t i o n . t h i s p r o c e s s e m e r g e s i n t h e m o r n i n g w h e n t h e c h a t t e r o f t h e m o n k e y is l o w . t h e t r i c k is t o start m y c a r v i n g b e f o r e i h a v e a c h a n c e t o r e a l l y a c k n o w l e d g e t h a t i a m w o r k i n g . it is i n t h i s m i d d l e s p a c e , b e t w e e n sleep a n d w a k e f u l n e s s , t h a t m y h a n d s m o v e a u t o m a t i c a l l y , w i t h o u t w i l l f u l i n t e n t i o n . a n d s o , t h e s p i r i t s h o w s i t s e l f w h e n r e a d y . a s i w a k e , m y t h o u g h t s a n d a e s t h e t i c j u d g m e n t c o m e i n t o p l a y . t h e y c a n h i n d e r t h e p r o c e s s , b u t i h a v e l e a r n e d t o u s e t h e m t o r e f i n e a n d r e d i r e c t t h e p o w e r o f t h e i n i t i a l l i n e s . f o r m e , t h e p a t h is n o w c l e a r — release the deep intuitive feeling first and then reflect and respond through intelligence and observer aesthetics. t h i s p r o c e s s , w h i c h i h a v e d i s c o v e r e d after m a n y y e a r s o f s e a r c h i n g , y i e l d s m y b e s t l i n e s . i s h o u l d h a v e f i n i s h e d t h e s c u l p t u r e m a n y y e a r s ago, b u t i f a i l e d i n l i s t e n i n g t o m y o w n v o i c e . i f a i l e d t o t r u s t m y s e l f . i p u t i n t e l l i g e n c e a n d t h e p a r a d i g m o f c u l t u r e b e f o r e m y s o u l . i b e l i e v e d i n h e r o e s f o r f a r t o o l o n g . a n d n o w t h e s n a k e o f regret h a s b i t t e n m e . l a s t w i n t e r , r o s e a n d e m i l y left f o r a s h o r t h o l i d a y i n t h e c i t y . e v e r y t e r m , r o s e a r r a n g e s t h i s so t h a t i m a y d e a l w i t h t h e d e m a n d s o f g r a d u a t e w o r k as w e l l as a f u l l - t i m e t e a c h i n g a s s i g n m e n t i n a s e c o n d a r y s c h o o l . t h e s e w e e k e n d s o f i s o l a t i o n h a v e b e e n a b l e s s i n g as it h a s a l l o w e d m e t o c o m p l e t e p r o j e c t s w i t h o u t d i s t r a c t i o n . t h i s p a r t i c u l a r w e e k e n d , h o w e v e r , m y f o c u s w a s s c a t t e r e d a n d rife w i t h d i s t r a c t i o n . i m e d i t a t e d a n d d r a n k m o r e coffee, e m p l o y i n g a l l o f m y h o m e g r o w n t a c t i c s t o f o r c e c o n c e n t r a t i o n . n o n e o f these r e m e d i e s s e e m e d t o i m p r o v e t h e s i t u a t i o n . m y c o n s c i o u s n e s s r e m a i n e d f i l m y a n d u n f o c u s s e d . t h e r e w a s m o u n t i n g stress a n d a n a c i d i c f e e l i n g i n m y s t o m a c h . t h e w e e k e n d h o u r s w e r e v a n i s h i n g q u i c k l y a n d m y i n s p i r a t i o n : a n d p r o d u c t i v i t y w e r e so l o w a t s o m e p o i n t , i r e a l i z e d w h a t w a s t r o u b l i n g m e . t h e r o c k w a s c r y i n g out. i n q u i e t d e s p e r a t i o n , i r a n d o w n s t a i r s , t h i n k i n g t h a t m a y b e a n h o u r ' s w o r k o n t h e s c u l p t u r e w o u l d m u f f l e i t s s o u n d s t o a p o i n t b e l o w t h e t h r e s h o l d o f d i s t r a c t i o n . m y c h i s e l a n d h a m m e r f l e w o n t h e i r o w n a c c o r d as m y p a n i c k e d h e a d r e v i e w e d t h e g r a d u a t e w o r k i'd left u p s t a i r s . w h e n m y m i n d r e t u r n e d t o t h e t a s k at h a n d , i h a d t o d r o p t h e t o o l s a n d r u n m y f i n g e r s o v e r t h e f o r e h e a d a n d b r o w o f t h e e m e r g i n g face i n t h e r o c k . t h e f a m i l i a r i t y w a s at o n c e s o o t h i n g a n d d e e p l y f r i g h t e n i n g . i n t h e w i n k o f a n eye, b e f o r e t h e w o r d s c o u l d f o r m , i r e a l i z e d t h a t t h e p r i s o n e r o f t h e r o c k w a s a r e f l e c t i o n o f m y s e l f . stories behind the stories moving from metaphor to defining my artistic goals, expression, and personal needs. i m u s t confess t h a t i a m n o t a s c u l p t o r i n a t r a d i t i o n a l s e n s e . t h e l i n e s i c u t are n o t c u t f r o m s t o n e , b u t f r o m a h i g h e r set o f v i b r a t i o n s . i a m a s o n i c s c u l p t o r . i c a r v e a n d s h a p e l i n e s o f s o n o r i t y as a m e a n s t o r e p r e s e n t w h a t n a r r a t i v e s s o m e t i m e s f a i l t o r e v e a l . y e t , i p r e f e r t o i n i t i a t e t h i s d i s c o u r s e w i t h t h e m e t a p h o r o f s c u l p t i n g as a m e a n s t o i n f o r m r e a d e r s o f m y p r o c e s s . t h e c r e a t i o n o f m u s i c d i f f e r s f r o m t h e t a c t i l e s e n s u a l i t y a n d t h e v i s u a l i m a g e r y o f t h e art o f s c u l p t i n g . m u s i c p r i m a r i l y f u n c t i o n s at a n o n - p h y s i c a l i s t i c l e v e l o f a b s t r a c t i o n , yet, i n m a n y w a y s , t h e p r o c e s s e s are a l m o s t p a r a l l e l a n d t h e f i n a l p r o d u c t s c a n b e e q u a l l y as m o v i n g . i h a v e t w o areas o f c o n s c i o u s m u s i c a l i n t e r e s t at t h i s t i m e . t h e f i r s t a r e a l i e s i n t h e s c u l p t i n g o f s o u n d s c a p e s . t h e s e c o n d i n v o l v e s t h e s c u l p t i n g o f o r i g i n a l m u s i c a l i d e a s / m o t i f s f o r s p o n t a n e o u s i m p r o v i s a t i o n . s o u n d s c a p e s are v a r i o u s m u s i c a l c o m p o s i t i o n s t h a t s u p p o r t t h e a u t o e t h n o g r a p h i c n a r r a t i v e s a n d p o e t i c r e n d e r i n g s t h a t i, a n d o t h e r s , h a v e w r i t t e n . b y c o m p o s i n g these o r i g i n a l s o n i c b a c k d r o p s , i h o p e t o s e d u c e l i s t e n e r s i n t o a d e e p e r i n t i m a c y as t h e i r h e a r t s a n d m i n d s d a n c e w i t h t h e n a r r a t i v e s . t h e s e c o n d a r e a o f i n t e r e s t , t h e c o n c e p t u a l i z a t i o n o f i d e a s f o r i m p r o v i s a t i o n a n d t h e a b i l i t y t o r e n d e r these l i n e s , h a s b e e n a l i f e l o n g c h a l l e n g e t h a t i h a v e e m b r a c e d . a s i l i s t e n t o m y s e l f p l a y t h e g u i t a r , i h e a r a s o n i c a u t o e t h n o g r a p h i c w e a v i n g o f a l l o f m y past i n t e r e s t s , v a l u e s a n d n e w areas o f i n t e r e s t . a n d , as i n t h e f a b l e o f t h e s c u l p t o r , a p a r t o f m e h a s b e e n c r y i n g o u t f o r y e a r s t o m u s i c a l l y r e n d e r a r e p r e s e n t a t i o n o f t h e r e a l m e . b u t who is the real me? the master's experience as liminal phenomenon creating the hook—connecting my artistic expression with my academic experience. t h r o u g h a series o f u n a n t i c i p a t e d e v e n t s , m y g r a d u a t e w o r k i n c u r r i c u l u m s t u d i e s at u b c h a s b e c o m e t h e v e h i c l e t h r o u g h w h i c h i m o v e f o r w a r d o n t h i s q u e s t i o n o f who is the real me? i n d e e d , t h e m a s t e r ' s p r o g r a m h a s b e c o m e a l e n s t h a t h a s f o c u s e d m y p e r s o n a l , p r o f e s s i o n a l , a n d a r t i s t i c u n f o l d i n g . p a r a d o x i c a l l y , t h i s " l e n s " o f t h e m a s t e r ' s p r o g r a m f u n c t i o n e d i n l i m i n a l r h y t h m s t o u n f o c u s m y p r e s e n t n o t i o n s o f s e l f a n d w h a t i k n o w , t h u s a l l o w i n g f o r a m o r e e x p a n d e d , s t r o n g e r , a n d m o r e a u t h e n t i c n o t i o n o f s e l l t h e o n l i n e e n c y c l o p e d i a , wikipedia n o t e s , " t h e l i m i n a l state is c h a r a c t e r i z e d b y a m b i g u i t y , o p e n n e s s , a n d i n d e t e r m i n a c y . o n e ' s sense o f i d e n t i t y d i s s o l v e s t o s o m e e x t e n t , b r i n g i n g a b o u t d i s o r i e n t a t i o n . l i m i n a l i t y is a p e r i o d o f t r a n s i t i o n , d u r i n g w h i c h y o u r n o r m a l l i m i t s t o t h o u g h t , s e l f - u n d e r s t a n d i n g , a n d b e h a v i o r are r e l a x e d , o p e n i n g t h e w a y t o s o m e t h i n g n e w " ( w i k i p e d i a , ). f o r m e , " o p e n i n g t o s o m e t h i n g n e w " h a s a l l o w e d a r e p a t r i a t i o n o f m y core essence as w e l l as a r e n e w e d t r u s t i n t h e c r e a t i v e p r o c e s s . t h i s p r o c e s s o f r e d i s c o v e r y a n d r e c l a m a t i o n o f v o i c e h a s b e e n o n e o f a r t i s t i c a l l y b r e a k i n g t h r o u g h m y p e r s o n a l m a s k s a n d r o l e s . i h a v e u s e d i n t u i t i v e m u s i c , p o e t r y a n d n a r r a t i v e t o create a m u l t i - f a c e t e d t a p e s t r y t h a t e x p o s e s m y l i f e r o l e s , m y f e e l i n g s , m y v a l u e s , a n d t h e g r a y e r , i n - b e t w e e n areas o f k n o w i n g , t e a c h i n g , a n d l e a r n i n g t h a t p u s h m y r i s k t a k i n g t o t h e r e a l p a r a m e t e r s o f w h o i a m a n d w h a t i t e a c h . t h e t e r m i n t u i t i v e is u s e d t o c o n v e y t h e n o t i o n t h a t these p i e c e s w e r e n o t r e n d e r e d i n i t i a l l y as p a r t o f c o n s c i o u s c o n c e p t u a l i z i n g . t h e y f l o w e d f r o m m e i n a n a t u r a l a n d u n s e l f c o n s c i o u s m a n n e r . t h u s , t h e y are m o r e l i k e a r t i f a c t s o f a l i f e w h i c h c a n i n f o r m t h r o u g h a / r / t o g r a p h i c m e t h o d o l o g y . a r t i s t - p e d a g o g u e b a r b a r a b i c k e l ( ) h a s d i r e c t l y a d d r e s s e d t h e i s s u e s s u r r o u n d i n g a r t i s t i c / i n t u i t i v e k n o w i n g . r e f e r e n c i n g t h e r e s e a r c h of, a m o n g o t h e r s , m i c h e l l e l e b a r o n , h e n r y g i o u x , j e a n g e b s e r , a n d k e n b e i t t e l , b i c k e l s u p p o r t s t h e n o t i o n o f a r a t i o n a l k n o w l e d g e ( b i c k e l , ). a r a t i o n a l k n o w l e d g e is a t h i r d a n d separate p o s i t i o n f r o m t h e c o n v e n t i o n a l d i a l e c t i c i s m o f r a t i o n a l a n d i r r a t i o n a l t h o u g h t . b i c k e l d e s c r i b e s a r a t i o n a l p o s i t i o n i n g as " a f o r m o f k n o w i n g t h a t i n c l u d e s t h e b o d y , t h e e m o t i o n s , t h e s e n s e s , i n t u i t i o n , i m a g i n a t i o n , c r e a t i o n m a k i n g , t h e m y s t i c a l , s p i r i t u a l a n d t h e r e l a t i o n a l " ( b i c k e l , , p. ). t h i s c o n c e p t u a l site o f l e a r n i n g " c a n b e f o u n d i n t h e p r a c t i c e s o f art, m e d i t a t i o n , p s y c h o a n a l y s i s , t h e b o d y , ( a n d ) t h e s e n s e s " ( b i c k e l , , p. ). i n d e e d , b i c k e l ' s d i s c o u r s e o n t h i s t h i r d w a y o f k n o w l e d g e a c q u i s i t i o n reverberates i n c o m p l e t e h a r m o n y w i t h t h e p r o c e s s e s t h a t i h a v e s t u m b l e d u p o n a n d n u r t u r e d o v e r t h e y e a r s . b i c k e l m a i n t a i n s t h a t t h r o u g h a r a t i o n a l o r i n t u i t i v e a r t i s t i c p r o c e s s , o n e m a y f i n d t h e space n e e d e d t o a l l o w a r t i s t i c e x p r e s s i o n , self- a c t u a l i z a t i o n a n d s e l f - r e a l i z a t i o n t o m a n i f e s t . a s a r e s e a r c h e r , i c o n c u r w i t h t h i s f i n d i n g a n d a d d t h a t a r t i s t i c e x p r e s s i o n a n d s e l f - a c t u a l i z a t i o n are i n s e p a r a b l e p a r t n e r s i n t h e p r o c e s s o f a r t s - b a s e d r e s e a r c h . t h e p r o c e s s o f a r t s - b a s e d r e s e a r c h i n e v i t a b l y starts a n d e n d s w i t h t h e p a t h o f s e l f - r e a l i z a t i o n a n d s e l f - a c t u a l i z a t i o n . a r t is b o t h t h e p r o d u c t a n d p r o c e s s o f u n d e r s t a n d i n g o f o n e s e l f a n d t h e w o r l d at l a r g e . t h a t b e i n g s a i d , d i s c o u r s e s s u r r o u n d i n g a r t i s t i c e x p r e s s i o n a n d s p e c i f i c a l l y s e l f - a c t u a l i z a t i o n , w e r e p r o b a b l y t h e l a s t c o n c e p t s t h a t i w o u l d h a v e a n t i c i p a t e d e n g a g i n g i n w h e n i e n r o l l e d f o r g r a d u a t e s t u d i e s . the story of the naive a/r/tographer through storying, i explore the process of finding and interfacing a research methodology with my unfolding vision of research. o r i g i n a l l y , i e n t e r e d t h e m a s t e r ' s p r o g r a m at u b c t o t r a i n m y m i n d t o t h i n k m o r e e l e g a n t l y i n s c i e n t i f i c w a y s . i h a d s p e n t m y l i f e c h e r i s h i n g a r t i s t i c a v e n u e s o f e x p r e s s i o n — a l t h o u g h i h a d n o t b e e n a l t o g e t h e r h a p p y w i t h t h e r e s u l t s — a n d n o w i felt t h a t i n e e d e d t o b a l a n c e m y s e l f w i t h t h e c h a l l e n g e s o f l o g i c a l , s e q u e n t i a l t h i n k i n g . m y f i r s t g r a d u a t e c o u r s e e m b o d i e d a s u r v e y o f r e s e a r c h m e t h o d o l o g i e s . t h e p r o s p e c t o f u s i n g q u a n t i t a t i v e m e t h o d o l o g i e s a p p e a l e d t o m y y e a r n i n g f o r a v e r i f i a b l e a n d r i g o r o u s m o d u s o p e r a n d i w i t h w h i c h t o a p p r o a c h s o m e o f m y r e s e a r c h i n t e r e s t s . a s m y t i m e at u b c p a s s e d , h o w e v e r , i s l o w l y s t a r t e d t o r e c o g n i z e t h e s t r e n g t h o f q u a l i t a t i v e m e t h o d s o f i n q u i r y f o r s o c i a l s c i e n c e r e s e a r c h . t h e c o u r s e s t h a t i t o o k c o n s i s t e n t l y r e i n f o r c e d t h e n o t i o n t h a t h u m a n b e i n g s a n d t h e i r r e s u l t i n g l e a r n i n g a n d t e a c h i n g a c t i v i t i e s are f r a u g h t w i t h c o m p l e x i t y a n d i n c o n s i s t e n c y . w e a l l h o u s e so m a n y d i f f e r e n t d r e a m s a n d n e e d s a n d f e a r s a n d v i e w t h e w o r l d f r o m c o m p l e t e l y u n i q u e v a n t a g e p o i n t s , b a s e d o n o u r e x p e r i e n c e s , c u l t u r e , s p i r i t u a l i t y , a n d g e n e t i c s . t h i s p e r s o n a l h e r i t a g e o f u n i q u e , c o m p l e x c o n t e x t s m a n i f e s t s i t s e l f i n o u r u n d e r s t a n d i n g s a n d i n t e r a c t i o n s w i t h t h e w o r l d . a s i b e g a n t o reflect o n m y o w n p e r s o n a l c o n t e x t u a l p o s i t i o n i n g as a r e s e a r c h e r , i b e g a n t o c o n s i d e r h o w t h i s w o u l d p l a y u p o n a n d c o u l d b e i n t e g r a t e d i n m y r e s e a r c h . i y e a r n e d t o e x a m i n e b o t h m y e x p e r i e n c e s as a t e a c h e r o f y e a r s a n d t h e n a t u r e a n d i n t e r p l a y o f m y o w n f r a m e o f v i e w i n g . m y f i r s t o p p o r t u n i t y t o reflect o n m y e x p e r i e n c e s a r o s e i n d r . c a r l l e g g o ' s class o n n a r r a t i v e i n q u i r y . d r . l e g g o , t h r o u g h y e a r s o f t e a c h i n g , w r i t i n g , a n d r e f l e c t i o n , h a s c r e a t e d a c l a s s r o o m e n v i r o n m e n t t h a t p u r p o s e f u l l y a d d r e s s e s a n d rectifies t h e s o m e t i m e s c o l d , c o m p e t i t i v e a n d s o m e t i m e s n o n - r e f l e c t i v e n a t u r e o f t h e g r a d u a t e c o u r s e e x p e r i e n c e . i n s h o r t , h e creates a w e l c o m i n g , s t r e s s - r e d u c e d e n v i r o n m e n t t h a t p r o m o t e s c o m f o r t , h e a l t h , a n d r i s k - t a k i n g f r o m h i s s t u d e n t s . w i t h i n t h i s c o n t e x t , d r , l e g g o " i n v i t e s " s t u d e n t s t o w r i t e i n a n d t h r o u g h a v a r i e t y o f l i t e r a r y g e n r e s . i n t h i s u n i q u e a n d safe s i t u a t i o n , s t u d e n t w r i t i n g s b l o s s o m l i k e s p r i n g f l o w e r s . a n d , as d r . l e g g o g e n e r a l l y a l l o w s u s t o w r i t e o n a n y subjects close t o o u r h e a r t s , m o s t s t u d e n t s d i g i n t o t h e m s e l v e s a n d a d d r e s s t h e i r o w n p r e s s i n g i s s u e s . w i t h i n t h i s c o n t e x t , i a l l o w e d m y s e l f t o w r i t e p o e t r y a n d s h o r t s t o r i e s . a s i e n t e r e d t h e p r o c e s s , i f o u n d t h a t t h e s a m e t h e m e s e m e r g e d : e d u c a t i o n a l t o p i c s , m u s i c a n d m u s i c - r e l a t e d t o p i c s , r e s e a r c h i s s u e s , a n d a u t o b i o g r a p h i c m a t e r i a l . as i grew in the inherent safety of this experience, i continued to grow in the intimacy of my work and the level of risk-taking. in a jungian-like maneuver, i opted to carve a series of clay figurines as a three-dimensional answer to dr. leggo's class request for posters that displayed some of our writing/learning. i entitled the clay figure presentation: "life archetypes and the understanding that you teach whom you are." a deeper part of me was clearly rising to the conscious surface. the three dimensional poster erupted from my unconscious to demonstrate core archetypal roles or facets of my personality that contributed to the framing of my teaching experience. an upper level of figures represents my masks as musician, meditator, reflective family man, and teacher. this top level was mounted on a platter that could spin around a lower, outer circle of life situations/contexts, thereby symbolizing the multiplicity and "spilling over" of experience. that said, i was hoping to process and visually represent, albeit primitively, the notion that my professional life as a teacher is not separate from the rest of my life--that, in varying degrees, i teach who i am. indeed, "teaching is performative knowing in meaningful relationships with listeners" (irwin, , p. ). and, if i teach who i am, it behooves me, as a dedicated educator, to know myself. my subconscious, intuitive agenda in this course seemed to be an inquiry aimed at this goal. at the end of term, we were required to submit portfolios. as i organized and prepared my portfolio, i decided to support my poetic offerings with music. indeed, i sensed that coupling narrative with music could create a powerful psychological tool for self-reflection and discovery. as a musician, it seemed a n a t u r a l e x t e n s i o n t o s u p p o r t a n d i n t e n s i f y t h e m o o d s a n d s p a c e s t h a t t h e p o e t r y c r e a t e d w i t h w h a t i c a l l e d s o u n d s c a p e s — m u s i c a l v i s t a s t h a t w e r e s p e c i f i c a l l y w r i t t e n t o i n f o r m t h e l i s t e n e r o f s u b t l e t i e s t h a t i s t r u g g l e d t o c o n v e y t h r o u g h p o e t r y . t h r o u g h t h i s i n t e r a c t i v e s y m b i o s i s o f s o u n d a n d w r i t t e n w o r d , i h a d a p o w e r f u l c o m p o s i t e art f o r m i n w h i c h e a c h f o r m e n h a n c e d a n d i n f o r m e d t h e o t h e r . m o v i n g i n t o w r i t i n g p o e t r y a n d p r o s e a l l o w e d m e access t o a n art f o r m t h a t is p o t e n t i a l l y l e s s a b s t r a c t t h a n i n s t r u m e n t a l m u s i c . t h i s c o u p l i n g o f w o r d s a n d m u s i c f r e e d m e t o p r o c e s s , f o c u s , a n d a r t i c u l a t e s p e c i f i c i s s u e s t h r o u g h n a r r a t i v e , w h i l e s i m u l t a n e o u s l y e n a b l i n g m e t o m u s i c a l l y p o r t r a y t h e e s s e n t i a l m o o d s a n d f e e l i n g s t h a t i m b u e d t h e i s s u e s . u n l i k e w r i t i n g l y r i c s , w h i c h o f t e n get i n t o areas o f c o m p r o m i s e w i t h t h e m u s i c , t h e n a r r a t i v e f o r m s e n a b l e d m e t o say w h a t n e e d e d t o b e s a i d . a n d , u n l i k e t h e beat p o e t s o f t h e ' s , w h o r a p p e d t h e i r p o e t r y w h i l e j a z z m u s i c i a n s g e n e r a t e d c o o l , i n t e l l e c t u a l s o n i c b a c k g r o u n d s , t h i s m u s i c w i t h its c o m p o s i t i o n a l a p p r o a c h , s e e m e d m o r e effective a n d s p e c i f i c at s u p p o r t i n g t h e i d e a s t a b l e d b y t h e w r i t i n g . d r . p e t e r g o u z o u a s i s , c h a i r o f m u s i c e d u c a t i o n i n c u r r i c u l u m s t u d i e s h a d o c c a s i o n a l l y v i s i t e d d r . l e g g o ' s c o u r s e o n n a r r a t i v e i n q u i r y . a f t e r s e e i n g m y a r c h e t y p e p r o j e c t a n d h e a r i n g s o m e o f m y s o u n d s c a p e s , h e r e c o g n i z e d t h a t i w a s u n w i t t i n g l y d e v e l o p i n g a h o m e s p u n m e t h o d o l o g y t h a t p a r a l l e l e d t h e t h e o r i z i n g o f a n e w a r t s - b a s e d m e t h o d o l o g y n a m e d a / r / t o g r a p h y . h i s u n q u a l i f i e d s u p p o r t o f m y r i s k - t a k i n g a d v e n t u r e s i n t o t h i s c o m p o s i t e a r t i s t i c f o r m , c o m b i n e d w i t h h i s f r i e n d l y n u d g i n g t o h a v e m e f u r t h e r i n v e s t i g a t e t h e q u e s t i o n s t h a t w e r e g e n e r a t e d t h r o u g h t h e p r o j e c t o f t h e a r c h e t y p e s , c o n v i n c e d m e t o c o n t i n u e t h i s l i n e o f i n q u i r y . i n d e e d , as d r . g o u z o u a s i s d e s c r i b e d a n d d e t a i l e d a / r / t o g r a p h y at o u r w e e k l y m e e t i n g s after c l a s s , i felt as i f i w a s a n a i v e a / r / t o g r a p h e r w h o h a d s t u m b l e d u p o n a p r o c e s s t h a t p a r a l l e l e d t h e f o r m a l w o r k a n d t h e o r i z i n g t h a t h a d b e e n g o i n g o n i n a / r / t o g r a p h y . a / r / t o g f a p h y , as it w a s b e i n g t h e o r i z e d (by r i t a i r w i n , k i t g r a u e r , c a r l l e g g o a n d p e t e r g o u z o u a s i s ) , s e e m e d l i k e a n a t u r a l m e t h o d o l o g i c a l fit f o r m y r e s e a r c h as it a d d r e s s e d t h e gap i n m y a n a l y s i s i n l i g h t o f w h o i a m a n d w h a t i k n o w . . it b e g a n t o u n f o l d w h o i w a s . a / r / t o g r a p h y e m b r a c e s n u m e r o u s n a r r a t i v e t e c h n i q u e s , i n c l u d i n g a u t o e t h n o g r a p h y , a u t o b i o g r a p h y , p o e t r y , a n d c r e a t i v e n o n - f i c t i o n w h i c h it c o m b i n e s w i t h o t h e r a r t i s t i c g e n r e s . i n i t i a l l y , i l o o k e d at t h e m e t h o d o l o g y o f a u t o e t h n o g r a p h y as a m e a n s t o e x p r e s s b u r g e o n i n g n a r r a t i v e a s p e c t s o f m y r e s e a r c h . autoethnography a partial solution t h e a u t o e t h n o g r a p h i c m o v e m e n t e m b r a c e s a n u m b e r o f v a l u e s t h a t r e s o n a t e w i t h m y c o n c e r n o f t h e r e t r i e v a l , r e a s s e s s m e n t , a n d f o r m a l i z i n g o f k n o w l e d g e . t h i s m o d e r n m e t h o d o l o g y , l i k e m a n y s o c i a l s c i e n c e s t h a t h a v e b e e n t h e o r i z e d t h r o u g h t h e tenets o f p o s t - m o d e r n i s m , o p e n l y a d m i t s t h a t p u r e o b j e c t i v i t y (i.e., k n o w l e d g e w i t h o u t c o n t e x t u a l f r a m i n g ) is n o t t r u l y p o s s i b l e . f u r t h e r , a u t o e t h n o g r a p h y e m b r a c e s t h e n o t i o n t h a t r e s e a r c h e r s c a n p a r t i c i p a t e a n d t u r n t h e p r o c e s s o f e t h n o g r a p h i c i n q u i r y i n w a r d o n t h e m s e l v e s . a u t o e t h n o g r a p h y is a n a t u r a l , p o s t - m o d e r n i s t e x t e n s i o n o f its e t h n o g r a p h i c r o o t s . i n i t i a l l y , e t h n o g r a p h e r s , as f r a m e d w i t h i n q u a n t i t a t i v e r e s e a r c h m e t h o d o l o g i e s , r e p r e s e n t e d t h e m s e l v e s as " i n v i s i b l e " o b s e r v e r s w h o d i l i g e n t l y a n d s y s t e m a t i c a l l y o b s e r v e d a n d r e c o r d e d s o c i a l l i f e a n d i n t e r a c t i o n . t h r o u g h a s e r i e s o f m u l t i - l a y e r e d e v e n t s , n o t t h e least o f w h i c h b e i n g t h e r i s e o f p o s t - m o d e r n i s t t h i n k i n g a n d q u a l i t a t i v e r e s e a r c h , e t h n o g r a p h e r s b e g a n t o q u e s t i o n t h e m o d e r n i s t a s s u m p t i o n s o f o b j e c t i v i t y . t h i s w a v e o f t h e o r i z i n g s p a r k e d t h e d e v e l o p m e n t o f a h o s t o f a l t e r n a t i v e m e t h o d o l o g i e s that a t t e m p t e d t o a d d r e s s t h e p r o b l e m s a s s o c i a t e d w i t h o b j e c t i v i t y . a s a r e s u l t , a t t e m p t s at o b j e c t i v i t y i n t h e s o c i a l s c i e n c e s b e c a m e t e m p e r e d b y t h e n o t i o n s o f r e f l e x i v i t y a n d s o c i a l c o n s t r u c t i o n s o f r e a l i t y ( g a i t a n , ). e v e r - b u r g e o n i n g n u m b e r s o f t h e a c a d e m i c c o m m u n i t y a r g u e d t h a t t h e o b s e r v e r ' s s p e c i a l v a n t a g e p o i n t w i t h i n r e s e a r c h o f f e r e d a u n i q u e access p o i n t t o p r e v i o u s l y u n t a p p e d k n o w l e d g e t h a t w a s i n f o r m e d b y t h e o b s e r v e r ' s p a r t i c i p a t i o n a n d e x p e r i e n c e s w i t h a n d w i t h i n t h e a r e a / p e o p l e t h a t w e r e b e i n g r e s e a r c h e d . t h e p r o x i m i t y a n d t h e i n t e r a c t i o n s o f t h e o b s e r v e r w i t h t h e o b s e r v e d b e c a m e v a l u e d a n d n e c e s s a r y a v e n u e s f o r t h e r e s e a r c h e r t o e x p l o r e . a s g a i t a n , ( ) states, " n o t o n l y does c l o s e n e s s n o t h a v e t o r e s u l t i n ' b i a s ' (an e x p r e s s i o n d e r i v e d f r o m t h e b e l i e f t h a t subject a n d object n e e d t o b e k e p t s e p a r a t e ) , b u t it m a y foster a p r i v i l e g e d p o i n t o f v i e w (an ' i n s i d e r ' s ' p e r s p e c t i v e ) t h a t c a n b e o f f e r e d t o t h e r e a d e r so t h a t d e e p e r u n d e r s t a n d i n g i n c o n v e y e d . " ( , p. .) t h e w o r k o f e l l i s ( ) h a s t a k e n t h e l e v e l o f i n t i m a c y a n d r e f l e x i v i t y t o a n e w l e v e l as she seeks t o d e v e l o p a n e t h n o g r a p h y that i n c l u d e s r e s e a r c h e r s ' v u l n e r a b l e selves, e m o t i o n s , b o d i e s , a n d s p i r i t s ; p r o d u c e s evocative s t o r i e s t h a t create t h e effect o f r e a l i t y ; celebrates c o n c r e t e e x p e r i e n c e a n d i n t i m a t e d e t a i l ; e x a m i n e s h o w h u m a n e x p e r i e n c e is e n d o w e d w i t h m e a n i n g ; is c o n c e r n e d w i t h m o r a l , e t h i c a l , a n d p o l i t i c a l c o n s e q u e n c e s ; e n c o u r a g e s c o m p a s s i o n a n d e m p a t h y ; h e l p s u s k n o w h o w t o l i v e a n d c o p e ; . . . . i n s h o r t , t o e x t e n d e t h n o g r a p h y t o i n c l u d e the h e a r t , t h e a u t o b i o g r a p h i c a l , a n d t h e a r t i s t i c text ( , p. . ) a l t h o u g h t h e c o n c e p t u a l tenets o f a u t o e t h n o g r a p h y a p p e a l e d t o m e , i n e e d e d a m e t h o d o l o g y t h a t c o u l d i n c o r p o r a t e a n d v a l u e a n i n t e r d i s c i p l i n a r y a r t i s t i c v e n t u r e as i w a n t e d t o use a n a u t o e t h n o g r a p h i c n a r r a t i v e style w i t h m u s i c . t h u s , i c o n c l u d e d t h a t a u t o e t h n o g r a p h y w a s a p a r t i a l s o l u t i o n as it o f f e r e d t h e i n t i m a c y a n d c a n d o r t h a t i n e e d e d , b u t w i t h a c o n t i n u e d s e a r c h f o r a m e t h o d o l o g y t h a t w o u l d u s e m u l t i - t i e r e d a r t i s t i c e x p r e s s i o n t o i n f o r m . a/r/tography a path to make sense of multi-storied archetypes and multi-layered avenues of artistic expression t h e b r o a d e r m e t h o d o l o g y o f a / r / t o g r a p h y s e e m e d a w i s e r c h o i c e t o f r a m e a n d f o c u s m y r e s e a r c h , as it is l i v i n g i n q u i r y t h a t celebrates m a n y f o r m s a n d c o l l a g e s o f a r t i s t i c e x p r e s s i o n as a m e a n s o f e p i s t e m o l o g i c a l p r o c e s s ( i r w i n ). f u r t h e r m o r e , a / r / t o g r a p h y i s a p r o c e s s / m e t h o d o l o g y t h a t a d d r e s s e s t h e u n i q u e n e e d s o f a r t i s t s w h o are a l s o r e s e a r c h e r s , as w e l l as b e i n g t e a c h e r s — (hence t h e s t y l i z e d a / r / t i n t h e n a m e a / r / t o g r a p h y ) . a l t h o u g h a / r / t o g r a p h y w a s o r i g i n a l l y i n t e n d e d t o assist v i s u a l artists i n a u t h e n t i c a t i n g t h e i r art as p a r t o f t h e i r r e s e a r c h , i t s m e t h o d o l o g i c a l p r o c e s s is b e i n g u s e d f o r a n e v e r - e x p a n d i n g l i s t o f d i v e r s e a r t f o r m s , i n c l u d i n g l i t e r a r y , m u s i c a l , a n d p e r f o r m a t i v e arts. a / r / t o g r a p h e r s refer t o s i x e s s e n t i a l c o n c e p t s t h r o u g h w h i c h t h e a / r / t o g r a p h i c m e t h o d o l o g y is f r a m e d a n d e x p r e s s e d o r r e n d e r e d . t h e s e s i x e s s e n t i a l r e n d e r i n g s o r " a c t i v e m e t h o d o l o g i c a l a g e n t s " ( i r w i n ) i n c l u d e t h e c o n c e p t s o f c o n t i g u i t y , l i v i n g i n q u i r y , o p e n i n g s , m e t a p h o r / m e t o n y m y , r e v e r b e r a t i o n s a n d e x c e s s " w h i c h c a n b e " e n a c t e d a n d p r e s e n t e d / p e r f o r m e d w h e n a r e l a t i o n a l a e s t h e t i c i n q u i r y a p p r o a c h is e n v i s i o n e d as e m b o d i e d u n d e r s t a n d i n g s a n d e x c h a n g e s b e t w e e n a r t a n d text, a n d b e t w e e n a n d a m o n g t h e b r o a d l y c o n c e i v e d i d e n t i t i e s o f a r t i s t / r e s e a r c h e r / t e a c h e r . ( s p r i n g g a y , s . , i r w i n , r . l . , w i l s o n k i n d , s . .) t h u s , t h e a / r / t o g r a p h i c i n q u i r y is d e f i n e d b y i t s p o s i t i o n i n g o f t h e t e x t i n t h e r e s e a r c h . f o r a / r / t o g r a p h e r s , t h e s u p p o r t i n g text is n o t s e p a r a t e f r o m t h e art. i r w i n d e f i n e d t h e c o n c e p t o f c o n t i g u i t y as t h e act o f d o u b l i n g a r t a n d g r a p h y . " v i s u a l / p e r f o r m a t i v e a n d t e x t u a l p r o c e s s e s a n d p r o d u c t s ar e n o t s e p a r a t e a n d d i s t i n c t b u t are i n c o n t i g u o u s i n t e r a c t i o n w h i c h d i s r u p t t a k e n f o r g r a n t e d c a t e g o r i z a t i o n s o f k n o w l e d g e p r o d u c t i o n " ( i r w i n , ). a r t i s t i c r e n d e r i n g s w o r k w i t h a n d t h r o u g h text i n a d y n a m i c , i n t e g r a t e d , p r o c e s s i o n a l d a n c e o f r e v e l a t i o n a n d r e f l e c t i o n . a / r / t o g r a p h e r s are f a s c i n a t e d w i t h i n t e r s t i t i a l s p a c e s t h a t i n c l u d e areas t h a t exist at t h e b o u n d a r i e s o f t h e i r v a r i o u s r o l e s as a r t i s t s , r e s e a r c h e r s , a n d t e a c h e r s , t h e i r p e d a g o g i e s a n d t h e i r a u d i e n c e s ( s p r i n g g a y , s . , i r w i n , r . l . , w i l s o n k i n d , s. ). t h e n o t i o n o f b o u n d a r i e s , t h e b l u r r i n g o f b o u n d a r i e s a n d t h e s h i f t i n g o f b o u n d a r i e s is a n a r e a o f i n t e n s e s c r u t i n y . s p r i n g g a y ' s ( ) r e s e a r c h h a s l e d h e r t o d e f i n e t h e s e v a r i o u s b o u n d e d r o l e s / i d e n t i t i e s as " f r a g m e n t s , (that are) l e a k y , abject, s h i f t i n g , a n d u n s t a b l e " ( s p r i n g g a y i n i r w i n , de c o s s o n , , p. ). f o r s p r i n g g a y , "it is n o t a b l u r r i n g o f b o u n d a r i e s t h a t i b r i n g t o m y a r t - m a k i n g , r e s e a r c h , a n d t e a c h i n g , b u t r a t h e r a b o u n d a r y s h i f t , o n e t h a t is s i t u a t e d i n t h e seam, w h e r e m u l t i p l e i m a g e s , i d e n t i t i e s , a n d w a y s o f k n o w i n g c o l l i d e a n d are i n t e n s i o n w i t h e a c h o t h e r " ( , p. ). t h e f o c u s o n t h e r o l e s a n d t h e i n t e r p l a y b e t w e e n t h e s e r o l e s w e i g h s h e a v i l y o n t h e d i r e c t i o n ( s ) o f t h e e n d e a v o r . s p r i n g g a y ( ) b e l i e v e s t h a t t h i s f o c u s " . . . b e c o m e s a n o n t o l o g i c a l c o m p l e x i t y w h e r e t h e q u e s t i o n s a s k e d are o n e s o f b e i n g : w h o d o y o u t h i n k y o u are? h o w d o y o u k n o w ? h o w d o w e p e r f o r m i n r e l a t i o n t o t h e s e s h i f t i n g b o u n d a r i e s ? " (p. ). the inevitability of the ontological dance the first step in any original, mature, artistic endeavor is to know yourself s p r i n g g a y ' s f u n d a m e n t a l o n t o l o g i c a l l y b o r n q u e s t i o n s rest at t h e c o r e o f a n y e n d e a v o r i n t o t h e arts o r t h r o u g h a / r / t o g r a p h i c p r o c e s s . s i m p l y p u t , as artists a n d h u m a n s , w e m u s t k n o w o u r s e l v e s i n o r d e r t o k n o w . v e x i n g q u e s t i o n s s u r r o u n d t h e i s s u e o f h o w w e i n f o r m o u r s e l v e s o f o u r s e l v e s . o f t e n , t h i s p r o c e s s o f s e l f - r e a l i z a t i o n m a n i f e s t s t h r o u g h a c o m p l e x u n / r a y e l i n g o f r e a l i z a t i o n s , e p i p h a n i e s a n d regrets. o u r o w n i m m a t u r i t i e s a n d s e l f - d e c e p t i o n s as w e l l as e x t e r n a l f o r c e s , act as g o v e r n o r s t o t h e rate at w h i c h w e u n f o l d . d e cosson( ) r e m i n d s o f t h e t h e p i n a r a n d g r u m e t q u o t a t i o n : " w e m u s t l a y i n w a i t i n g f o r o u r s e l v e s . t h r o u g h o u t o u r l i v e s . a b a n d o n i n g t h e p r e t e n s e t h a t w e k n o w " ( p i n a r & g r u m e t , , p. v i i i ) . t h e r e c a n b e , h o w e v e r , n u a n c e s t o t h e p r e r e q u i s i t e s a n d c o n d i t i o n s that m u s t b e e x a m i n e d b e f o r e w e , as a / r / t o g r a p h e r s p r o c e e d i n a c o n s c i o u s effort at a n s w e r i n g o r u n f o l d i n g these o n t o l o g i c a l m y s t e r i e s . f o r o n e , w e m u s t see o r i n t u i t i v e l y sense t h e i m p o r t a n c e o f i n t r o s p e c t i o n . if n o v a l u e o r sense o f g a i n is p e r c e i v e d , it is u n l i k e l y t h e r e w i l l b e a n y g e n u i n e p r o g r e s s . a n d e v e n i f w e sense t h e r e l e v a n c e o f these s o r t s o f q u e s t i o n s / r i d d l e s , w e m u s t h a v e t h e c o u r a g e t o k n o w . w h a t w i l l h a p p e n i f w e are u n c o m f o r t a b l e o r d i s g r a c e d w i t h w h a t w e f i n d ? w h a t i f t h e t r u t h f u l n e s s o f o u r u n f o l d i n g r i p s at t h e v e r y f a b r i c o f w h o w e t h o u g h t w e w e r e ? it is h a r d t o t u r n b a c k . c a r o l y n e l l i s ( ) w r i t e s t h a t r e v e l a t o r y e x p l o r a t i o n generates a l o t o f fears a n d s e l f - d o u b t s a n d e m o t i o n a l p a i n . j u s t w h e n y o u t h i n k y o u c a n ' t s t a n d t h e p a i n a n y m o r e , w e l l t h a t ' s w h e n t h e r e a l w o r k h a s o n l y b e g u n . t h e n t h e r e ' s t h e v u l n e r a b i l i t y o f r e v e a l i n g y o u r s e l f , n o t b e i n g a b l e t o t a k e b a c k w h a t y o u ' v e w r i t t e n o f h a v i n g a n y c o n t r o l o v e r h o w r e a d e r s i n t e r p r e t it. it's h a r d n o t t o feel y o u r l i f e is b e i n g c r i t i q u e d as w e l l as y o u r w o r k . it c a n be h u m i l i a t i n g ( p . ) . w i t h a l l o f these p o t e n t i a l p i t f a l l s , w e , as a / r / t o g r a p h e r s , m u s t b e l i e v e t h a t t h e u n f o l d i n g o f o u r t r u e selves is i n d e e d t h e c o r r e c t p a t h o r at l e a s t t h e p r o c e s s w i l l e v e n t u a l l y m o v e t o w a r d s o m e b a l a n c e o r n e w k n o w l e d g e . a l s o , w e m u s t b e l i e v e w e are w o r t h y e n o u g h t o r i s k l e a r n i n g t h e t r u t h . a s w e l l as s e n s i n g v a l u e a n d h a v i n g t h e c o u r a g e t o h o n e s t l y p r o c e e d , w e m u s t v a l u e o u r s e l v e s . t h a t i s , w e m u s t b e l i e v e , f o r w h a t e v e r r e a s o n s , t h a t o u r s t o r i e s , b e l i e f s , a c c u m u l a t e d e x p e r i e n c e s , a n d acts o f a r t i s t i c e x p r e s s i o n , w a r r a n t t h e p u b l i c act o f u n r a v e l i n g a n d e x p o s u r e . a s w e l l as t h e s e h u r d l e s , t h e e n o r m i t y o f t h e t a s k c a n b e d a u n t i n g : t h e r e are m a n y aspects o f " s e l f t o k n o w . t h e r e are t h e deep c h a s m s t h a t c a n o n l y b e m i n e d t h r o u g h a r t i s t i c p r o c e s s b u t t h e r e a r e , o f c o u r s e , o t h e r " s e l v e s " w i t h i n o u r m u l t i d i m e n s i o n a l p e r s o n a l i t i e s . i n fact, m y c l a y f i g u r i n e a r c h e t y p e s w e r e a n u n c o n s c i o u s o u t p o u r i n g o f the v e r y i s s u e o f o u r m a n y s i d e s / w a y s / v a l u e s o f b e i n g . m y c a t e g o r i z i n g o f these w a y s o f b e i n g i s , f r o m o n e p e r s p e c t i v e , v e r y a r t i f i c i a l . b u t w h a t i n t r i g u e d m e w a s t h e w a y s i n w h i c h t h e a r c h e t y p e s o v e r l a p p e d a n d i n f o r m e d t h e a c t i o n s o f t h e o t h e r s . g o u z o u a s i s ( ) a d d r e s s e s t h e f o l l o w i n g q u e s t i o n : t h u s , o n e m a y c o n s i d e r that t h e s y n t h e t i c , s p l i t b i n a r i e s o f t e a c h e r - a r t i s t , t e a c h e r - r e s e a r c h e r , r e s e a r c h e r - a r t i s t d i s s o l v e i n t o a r e l a t i o n a l , i n c l u s i v e p e r s p e c t i v e o f a n u n d e r s t a n d i n g o f t h e a r t i s t / r e s e a r c h e r / t e a c h e r , m e t a p h o r i c a l l y d e f i n e d b y t h e e s c h e r i n k s k e t c h , " d r a w i n g h a n d s . " t h u s , e a c h aspect o f a r t i s t / r e s e a r c h e r / t e a c h e r s i m u l t a n e o u s l y n u r t u r e s t h e o t h e r - c r e a t i n g a n d b e i n g c r e a t e d i n a n o n g o i n g p r o c e s s o f l i v i n g i n q u i r y (p. ). t h u s , t h e s h i f t i n g a n d b l u r r i n g o f b o u n d a r i e s a n d t h e c o n t i n u o u s c i r c u l a r l o o p o f p e r s o n a l r e f l e c t i o n , r e a l i z a t i o n , a n d r e v i s i o n i n a p u b l i c f o r u m are c r i t i c a l e l e m e n t s t o t h i s a r t i s t i c m e t h o d o l o g i c a l p r o c e s s . b u t as i a l l u d e d t o e a r l i e r , t h e n u a n c e s o f t h i s p r o c e s s generate f o r m e a n o t h e r c o n n o t a t i o n o f t h e n o t i o n o f b o u n d a r i e s . w h e n i a m l o o k i n g at b o u n d a r i e s , i a m n o t o n l y l o o k i n g at b o u n d a r i e s t h a t l i e w i t h - i n m y o w n m u l t i - l a y e r e d p e r s o n a , b u t i h a v e h a d t o l o o k at m y o w n c o n c e p t u a l f r a m i n g . t h e l i m i t s o r b o u n d a r i e s o f m y p e r s o n a l i t y n e e d e d t o b e b r o k e n i n o r d e r t o generate a n o r i g i n a l a r t i s t i c m i n d s e t - o n e i n w h i c h t h e t e n a c i o u s g r i p o f c u l t u r a l n o r m s a n d v a l u e s c o u l d b e r e v i e w e d , a n d , p o t e n t i a l l y a b a n d o n e d . reflections in the infinite now increasing the frequency ofarational transcendence through ritual t h e n o t i o n o f l i v i n g i n q u i r y is a c r i t i c a l p r e m i s e i n t h e m e t h o d o l o g y o f a / r / t o g r a p h y . a / r / t o g r a p h y i s , b y its v e r y n a t u r e , a h o l i s t i c e n d e a v o r t h a t s y n t h e s i z e s n o t o n l y t h e m u l t i d i m e n s i o n a l l i v e s o f a r t i s t s w h o are r e s e a r c h e r s a n d t e a c h e r s b u t it creates a m a r r i a g e b e t w e e n a r t i s t i c p r a x i s a n d t h e o r i z i n g . t h i s p r o c e s s o f l i v i n g i n q u i r y is o f t e n c a t a l y z e d b y t h e n o t i o n o f r i t u a l i z e d p r a c t i c e . a / r / t o g r a p h e r b a r b a r a b i c k e l h a s l i n k e d t h e c o n c e p t o f a r a t i o n a l i s m w i t h a / r / t o g r a p h i c r i t u a l . s h e a r g u e s t h a t t h e c o n t e x t o f a r a t i o n a l i s m c a n b e m a n i f e s t e d t h r o u g h t h e u s e o f r i t u a l . "ritual e s s e n t i a l l y i n c l u d e s a n a r a t i o n a l s a c r e d p r a c t i c e o f t r a n s - e g o i c r e s p e c t / a w a r e n e s s / o p e n n e s s t o t h e c r e a t i v e i n t e r a c t i o n o f p h y s i c a l , e m o t i o n a l , i n t e l l e c t u a l a n d s p i r i t u a l r e a l i t i e s , w i t h i n n a t u r e , c u l t u r e a n d self, f o r t h e p u r p o s e o f t r a n s f o r m a t i o n " ( b i c k e l , , p ) . l i k e b i c k e l , i v a l u e r i t u a l i z e d v i s i t a t i o n s t o t h e site o f t h e a r a t i o n a l t o a l l o w t h e u n k n o w n t o s u r f a c e t h r o u g h m e a n d t h r o u g h m y art m a k i n g . p l a y i n g g u i t a r h a s a l w a y s b e e n a t r a n s c e n d e n t p r o c e s s f o r m e — a n e n t r a n c e p o i n t t o t h e site o f t h e a r a t i o n a l . b u t w h e n i s t a r t e d t h e p r a c t i c e o f m e d i t a t i o n i n , w a s s u r p r i s e d a n d d e l i g h t e d t o f i n d t h a t it t o o k m e t o t h e s a m e a r a t i o n a l space as m y g u i t a r . p r i o r t o t h i s , i h a d b e e n q u i t e d e p e n d e n t o h t h e g u i t a r t o e n t e r t h i s z o n e o f c r e a t i v i t y t h a t i s b o t h i n v i g o r a t i n g a n d g r o u n d i n g . m y m e d i t a t i v e p r a c t i c e , w h i c h is c o n n e c t e d t o t h e v e d i c t r a d i t i o n s o f i n d i a , i s s t e e p e d i n h i s t o r y a n d t r a d i t i o n a n d i s , b y d e f i n i t i o n , r i t u a l i s t i c . s o o n after l e a r n i n g t o m e d i t a t e , i t i e d it i n t o m y m u s i c . i d e v e l o p e d a r i t u a l o f a l w a y s m e d i t a t i n g b e f o r e p r a c t i c i n g a n d e s p e c i a l l y b e f o r e a m u s i c a l p e r f o r m a n c e . it is e x t r e m e l y d i f f i c u l t t o i d e n t i f y w h a t t h i s r i t u a l g i v e s m e a n d m y a r t i s t i c e n d e a v o r s , b u t at t h e least, it p r o d u c e s a c l e a r s p a c e i n m y m i n d so t h a t it b e c o m e s u n e n c u m b e r e d b y t h e n o i s y i n t e r n a l c o n v e r s a t i o n s t h a t rage t h r o u g h a l l o f u s . i q u e s t i o n w h e t h e r t h e a r a t i o n a l p r o c e s s n e e d s t o b e , o r e v e n c a n b e , e x p l a i n e d . it m a y n o t b e p o s s i b l e t o s a t i s f a c t o r i l y t h e o r i z e t h e a r a t i o n a l p r o c e s s t h r o u g h t h e d u a l i s t i c l e n s o f w e s t e r n a c a d e m i c t h o u g h t . p r y e r ( ), b a i ( ) a n d s y n o t t ( ) h a v e a r g u e d t h a t t h e c u l t i v a t i o n o f w e s t e r n t h o u g h t a n d l o g o s h a s g e n e r a t e d a s k e w e d , d i s e m b o d i e d , a n d f r a c t a l sense o f k n o w l e d g e a n d k n o w l e d g e a c q u i s i t i o n . b a i ( ) refers t o a l o s s o f g r o u n d i n g o f i d e a s t o o u r senses t o a p o i n t o f " s e m i - c o n s c i o u s n e s s o r e v e n u n c o n s c i o u s n e s s " (p. ). i n m y e x p e r i e n c e , a r t i s t i c e n d e a v o r i s s o s a t i s f y i n g b e c a u s e it m e n d s t h i s t y r a n n y o f a r t i f i c i a l c o n t e x t s o f c o p i n g . a r t i s t i c e n d e a v o r i s h e a l i n g a n d self- r e v e l a t o r y . m y o w n r e c e n t e x p l o r a t i o n s a n d r e n d e r i n g s o f r e v e l a t i o n a n d r e f l e c t i o n c a n b e l o o s e l y g r o u p e d b y t h e f o l l o w i n g q u e s t i o n s : w h e r e d o i c o m e f r o m ? w h a t d o i e n c o u n t e r ? w h a t d o i create ( i n t h e c l a s s r o o m , t h e a c a d e m y , a n d f o r m y s e l f ? ) t h e s e q u e s t i o n s b e c a m e a p p a r e n t after i h a d s p e n t m a n y h o u r s r e t u r n i n g t o i n t u i t i v e , a r a t i o n a l s p a c e s , i n a n a t t e m p t t o r e c l a i m m y o w n , a u t h e n t i c v o i c e t h r o u g h r i t u a l i z e d a r t i s t i c e n d e a v o r a n d a / r / t o g r a p h i c p r o c e s s e s . s e c t i o n ii o f t h i s p a p e r c h r o n i c l e s t h e r e c l a m a t i o n o f v o i c e t h r o u g h a r t i s t i c r e n d e r i n g s . the poet and the piper t h e p r o c e s s o f r e c l a i m i n g m y v o i c e w a s a i d e d b y a f o r m a l c o l l a b o r a t i v e a / r / t o g r a p h i c p r o j e c t w i t h d r . c a r l l e g g o . u p o n h e a r i n g s o m e o f m y a / r / t o g r a p h i c r e n d e r i n g s o f a m a l g a m s o f p o e t r y a n d m u s i c , c a r l i n q u i r e d i f i w o u l d b e i n t e r e s t e d i n c o m p o s i n g s o m e m u s i c f o r h i s p o e t r y . i m m e d i a t e l y , i j u m p e d at t h e o p p o r t u n i t y t o w o r k w i t h t h i s i n t e r n a t i o n a l l y r e n o w n e d p o e t a n d s c h o l a r o f l a n g u a g e a n d l i t e r a c y . h a v i n g a g r e e d t o t h e p r o j e c t , i w a s i n i t i a l l y o v e r w h e l m e d w i t h c o n f l i c t i n g e m o t i o n s o f h a p p i n e s s a n d a n x i e t y . c l e a r l y , it w a s a great h o n o u r t o h a v e a c h a n c e t o w r i t e m u s i c f o r t h i s p o e t . i h a d t h o r o u g h l y e n j o y e d a n d h a d b e e n m o v e d b y a l l o f c a r l ' s p o e t i c p e r f o r m a n c e s t h r o u g h o u t h i s classes. i a d m i r e d b o t h t h e p o e t r y a n d c a r l ' s w o n d e r f u l d e l i v e r y o f h i s w o r k s . i n these e p i s o d e s o f p e r f o r m a n c e p o e t r y , c a r l c o u l d l i f t t h e w o r d s off t h e page a n d b r e a t h e a n e w d y n a m i c o f e n e r g y a n d m e a n i n g i n t o t h e w o r k s . c a r l m a d e t h e p o e t r y v i b r a t e w i t h l i f e a n d p o i g n a n c y . a n d s o , i w a s e x c i t e d at t h e p o s s i b i l i t y o f a d d i n g a n o t h e r d i m e n s i o n t o t h e p r e s e n t a t i o n o f h i s p o e m s . i w a s , h o w e v e r , a n x i o u s a b o u t h o w c a r l w o u l d react t o m y a r t i s t i c r e s p o n s e t o h i s p o e t r y . w h a t i f i d i d n ' t u n d e r s t a n d w h a t h e w a s s a y i n g ? w h a t i f m y m u s i c e m p h a s i z e d o r t o o k t h e p o e t r y o n a n i n a p p r o p r i a t e t a n g e n t ? a n d so i n e n t e r i n g i n t o t h i s c o l l a b o r a t i o n , i e s t a b l i s h e d a n u n d e r s t a n d i n g w i t h c a r l t h a t h e w a s u n d e r n o o b l i g a t i o n t o e m b r a c e a n y o f m y m u s i c a l o f f e r i n g s . a s it t u r n e d o u t , c a r l h a d a b s o l u t e f a i t h i n m y a b i l i t y . h e n e v e r t r i e d t o e x p l a i n t h e p o i n t ( s ) o f h i s p o e t r y . h e d i d n o t r e a l l y h i n t at a n y d i r e c t i o n t h a t i s h o u l d t a k e w i t h t h e m u s i c . h e d i d , h o w e v e r , a n s w e r s o m e q u e s t i o n s t h a t i h a d a b o u t t h e m , b u t h e e s s e n t i a l l y let t h e p o e m s a n d h i s d e l i v e r y e x p l a i n t h e m s e l v e s t o m e . a n d s o , o u r p r o c e s s w a s e x t r e m e l y s t r a i g h t f o r w a r d . c a r l m a d e a f e w v i s i t s t o m y h o m e s t u d i o a n d s i m p l y p e r f o r m e d t h e p o e m s . i r e c o r d e d a c o u p l e t a k e s u n t i l c a r l felt h a p p y w i t h h i s p e r f o r m a n c e . f r o m t h e p r o c e s s , i r e a l i z e d c a r l h a d c e r t a i n r h y t h m s i m p l i e d i n s o m e o f h i s v a r i o u s p o e m s . t o a s s i s t i n m y p a r t , c a r l a g r e e d t o h a v e a m e t r o n o m e c l i c k i n g s o f t l y i n h i s h e a d p h o n e s . it w a s m y h o p e t h a t t h e c l i c k i n g w o u l d s u p p o r t h i s o w n i n t e r n a l r h y t h m s a n d t h e r e b y h e l p w i t h t h e f l o w o f t h e m u s i c . w e e n d e d u p r e c o r d i n g s e v e n p o e m s . a f t e r n u m e r o u s l i s t e n i n g s t o c a r l ' s p e r f o r m a n c e s , i f o l l o w e d m y i n t u i t i v e p r o c e s s t o generate s o u n d s a p p r o p r i a t e t o m y u n d e r s t a n d i n g . t h e i n i t i a l i d e a s w e n t q u i c k l y b u t r e c o r d i n g t h e s e i d e a s w a s m o r e l a b o r - i n t e n s i v e as i t r a c k e d m y s e l f a g a i n a n d a g a i n t o create s o m e o f t h e m u s i c a l m o n t a g e s . it t o o k a b o u t o d d h o u r s o v e r a t h r e e - w e e k p e r i o d i n a u g u s t . t o m y j o y a n d relief, c a r l s e e m e d d e l i g h t e d w i t h t h e r e s u l t s . b o t h c a r l a n d h i s w i f e , l a n a , felt t h a t i h a d s u c c e s s f u l l y c a p t u r e d t h e s p i r i t o f h i s p o e t r y . t h e s e r e n d e r i n g s are i n c l u d e d o n t h e c d w i t h t h e w o r k i n g t i t l e t h e p o e t a n d t h e p i p e r . s e c t i o n ii a/r/tographic renderings l . where do i come from/to? driving with no hands preamble: driving with no hands is about the time when you are young and on the path. it is a time when you don't know a lot about life, but you know when it feels right. recently i had a marvelous experience that once again reminded me of the feelings that i had so long ago. this unconscious and unsolicited reflection turned out to be a gift, as the return to the "past i" in all its sensory glory helped me reclaim an important part of my personal story that i had dismissed as a sort of mistake/regret. d r i v i n g w i t h n o h a n d s y o u c o u l d n e v e r t e l l f r o m t h e s e o l d m i s m a t c h e d c l o t h e s , w o r n o u t s n e a k e r s , t i r e d d o c k e r s t h a t t h e r e h a d e v e r b e e n t h e p r e s e n c e o f c o o l y o u w o u l d p r o b a b l y n e v e r t h i n k t h a t t h e m e a n d e r i n g r i v e r s o f m y f a c i a l l i n e s f o r m e d n o t f r o m stress b u t r a t h e r f r o m y e a r s o f g r i n n i n g f r o m ear t o ear a n d m y l a r g e t e m p l e v e i n g r e w f o r t h t o s u p p o r t t h e h y p e r - b l o o d f l o w t h a t a c c o m p a n i e s o n l y t h e p u r e s t o f p l e a s u r e s , t h e p l e a s u r e t h a t t e l l s y o u , " y o u are o n t h e p a t h " i t e l l y o u o f t h i s b e c a u s e o f a c h a n g e i n t h e w i n d t h a t ( s o m e h o w ) c a t a l y z e d a b r e a t h - t a k i n g f l a s h w h e r e m y past p u s h e d f o r w a r d t o d a n c e w i t h t h e e t e r n a l n o w f o r as i d r o v e h o m e t o d a y , d e e p i n t h e g r i d a n d l o c k o f t o e a t i n g t h e f u m e s a n d c u r s i n g b u f f o o n s in a p a n i c t o get off t h e t a r f o r d o m e s t i c abyss i n m y l i t t l e h o u s e i n t h e s u b w i t h its ' s b i g e n g i n e t i m e w a r p a n d n e i g h b o r s w h o are w h i t e - r i g h t o f a r n o l d , i w a s a m a z e d t o see t h e s u n b u r s t t h r o u g h t h e h e a v e n s a n d b l e s s a l l t h e p r i s o n e r s o f t h e c o m m u t e and for some reason on this special day t h e s u n c o n n e c t e d w i t h m e so s t r o n g l y t h a t i l o n g e d t o p u l l o u t a c h a i n s a w a n d c u t off t h e e n t i r e r o o f o f m y o l d h o u n d d o g c a r a n d , l i k e b r o t h e r j a k e , w h e n h e s a w t h e l i g h t , i too wanted to jump cartwheels and drive again with no hands f o r it gave m e a f e e l i n g t h a t i h a d f o r g o t t e n - a f e e l i n g so s p e c i a l , so s a c r e d , s o l i f e a f f i r m i n g t h a t i w a n t e d t o w e e p at h o w e m p t y i h a d b e c o m e . . . y o u see... t h e r e w a s a t i m e , s o l o n g ago n o w w h e n i t o o k a s t a n d , c a r v e d o u t a p l a c e , a n d freeze d r i e d t h e g r i n d i n g m e r c i l e s s p e d a n t i c i s m o f t h e o r d i n a r y f o r a c h a n c e t o f o l l o w m y h e a r t a n d feel s o a l i v e , s o r e a l i n t h i s d r a m a o f " p a s t i" a s a y o u n g , n a i v e a n d u n e d u c a t e d m a n , w i t h n o l o c u s o f s u p p o r t , s t a r t e d a h e r o ' s j o u r n e y w h i t t l i n g o u t a strategy a n d p u s h i n g m y w i l l p o w e r i n t o o v e r d r i v e t o s o l v e t h e r i d d l e s a n d b e c o m e t h e p l a y e r i d r e a m e d o f w h e n , as a l i t t l e b o y , i w o u l d p r e t e n d h o u r u p o n h o u r t h a t i c o u l d g u i t a r a n d m u s i c m a k e w i t h t h e best o f t h e m w o r k i n g ever s o h a r d i e v e n t u a l l y c r a c k e d t h e c o d e s a n d b u i l t u p m y h a n d s shaping and molding the sound o f t h e g u i t a r so t h a t it w o u l d o u t s u s t a i n i n g stories o f m y deepest secrets w i t h t h e t o n e s a n d r i c h n e s s o f a f i n e o l d v i o l i n s o i c o u l d j o i n a b a n d a n d c a t c h t h e r o a d , p l a y i n g e n d l e s s s t r e a m s o f r o c k a n d r o l l a n d t h e l a d s i p l a y e d w i t h formed special bonds t h a t w e r e f o r g e d t o g e t h e r f r o m e n d l e s s a d v e n t u r e s o n t h i s r o a d a n d l i k e r e b e l gangs w e h a d o u r c o l o r s a n d o u r a t t i t u d e a n d w o r d s t h a t m e a n t o n l y s o m e t h i n g t o u s f o r it w a s a t i g h t t e a m c i r c l e o f t r u s t a n d s u r v i v a l a n d p r i d e i n o u r s t r e n g t h a n d w e w e r e a f o r c e t o b e r e c k o n e d w i t h l i k e b l a c k b e a r d a n d c a p t a i n k i d d a n d a l l t h e i r s c u r v y m a t e s w e w o u l d s t o r m i n t o p r a i r i e t o w n s a n d p u l l u p t o t h e d o c k s w i t h a l l g u n s f i r i n g a n d w e ' d r o c k a n d r o c k ' t i l w e r a i s e d t h e r o o f j u s t t o p r o v e w e c o u l d a n d after s i x d a y s a n d n i g h t s w e ' d p u l l u p a n c h o r f o r t h e next p o r t o f l i g h t s . . . this carried on for years a n d f o r m e t h e t h r i l l n e v e r e n d e d a n d t h o u g h t h e r e m a y h a v e b e e n b e t t e r p l a y e r s t h a n i c e r t a i n l y t h e r e w a s n o o n e w h o c o u l d s u r p a s s m y p a s s i o n f o r t h e s p o r t as n i g h t after n i g h t i t o t a l l y let go a n d every s i n g l e s h o w w a s a t o n c e a c o m p l e t e r e v e l a t i o n a n d c a t h a r s i s o f m y s o u l t e n y e a r s l a t e r w h e n t h e a d v e n t u r e c a m e t o its e n d a n d i b e c a m e " n o r m a l " a g a i n , it t o o k m e y e a r s t o c o m e off t h e a d r e n a l i n e - i t w a s l i k e h e r o i n a n d f o r l i f e t i m e s after i w a l k e d t h e streets l i k e a p r i s o n e r o f t h e s e t t i n g s u n c r a v i n g t h e r u s h a n d t h e release a n d t h e r e c o g n i t i o n a n d n e v e r s e e m i n g t o s c o r e e n o u g h t o a p p e a s e m y m i n d . . . a n d it n e v e r r e c o n c i l e d it j u s t f a d e d i n t i m e w i t h t h e a v a l a n c h e o f r e s p o n s i b i l i t y t h a t f o l l o w s f i t t i n g i n t o s o c i e t y u n t i l t h i s m o m e n t w h e n i n t h e b l i n k o f a n d eye i w a s t a k e n r i g h t b a c k t o t h e t i m e w h e n i c o u l d f l y a n d d r i v e w i t h n o h a n d s . the fable of regret it came in through the open window a t that t i m e o f e a r l y m o r n i n g r e n e w a l w h e n t h e a i r f e a t h e r i n g y o u r n o s t r i l s a n d w h i s p e r i n g w a r m l y c a l l s f o r m o r e e n g a g e m e n t . y e t y o u i g n o r e it a n d r o l l b a c k t o neverland a l t h o u g h it w i l l n o t b e t h e s a m e e v e n t h o u g h t h e s u n s t i l l sleeps u n d e r s i l e n t w a t c h o f t h e r o u n d , o b s e r v i n g m o o n . and lunar beams twinkle the sheen o n t h e r e p t i l e ' s u n d u l a t i n g b a c k as it silently slips down from the open frame and pulses across the cool tiles i n s e a r c h o f t h e p o s t s t o y o u r b e d , its u n b l i n k i n g eyes a n d s p l i t t o n g u e r a d a r t h e d e s t i n a t i o n w i t h c l e a r i n t e n t i o n a n d s o m e p a r t o f y o u k n e w t h i s w a s c o m i n g . s u b t l e a l a r m s w e r e s o u n d i n g b y y o u o w n p r i m a l / a n i m a l b e i n g a s a n i n e x p l i c a b l e f e e l i n g o f c o n c e r n . y e t w i t h a b s o l u t e a u t h o r i t y , t h e "i" i n " y o u " h a s b e e n t r y i n g t o s u p p r e s s t h e k n o w l e d g e o f it t h e r e , a l t h o u g h y o u are p a i n f u l l y a w a r e t h a t y o u w i l l b e c a l l e d t o p a y t h e p i p e r f o r t h i s c o n s c i o u s s e l f - d e l u s i o n t h a t e v e n t u a l l y w i l l c o l l a p s e i n t o a l a b y r i n t h o f d i s / e a s e a n d d e s p a i r t h e c o l d scales b r u s h a g a i n s t t h e soft h a i r o n t h e b a c k o f y o u r n e c k a s t h e c r e a t u r e r e a d i e s t o b i n d s t i r r i n g y o u r a d r e n a l i n e j u s t i n t i m e f o r a t w i s t a n d p a n i c d o d g e t h a t y o u ' v e s p e n t a l i f e t i m e r e h e a r s i n g a n d s i t t i n g s t r a i g h t u p , f u l l y e n g a g e d , y o u r j o l t e d w a k e f u l n e s s h a s a s p l i t s e c o n d t o r e a l i z e t h e size o f t h e s n a k e b e f o r e it s p e a k s : "i've c o m e t o c o l l e c t a n d t a k e f r o m y o u a l l t h a t is d u e f o r it is m y d u t y t o w r a p a r o u n d a n d suffocate y o u w i t h y o u r o w n t o x i n s f r o m m i s u n d e r s t a n d i n g s . y e s , i h a v e g r o w n l a r g e a n d fat f e a s t i n g o n p l e n t i f u l n u m b e r s o f p r o f o u n d regrets t h a t , l i k e r a t s , h a v e b e e n e n t e r i n g t h e h o l e s i n y o u r s o u l t h a t o p e n a s , i n y o u r m i n d ' s eye, y o u reflect o n y o u r l i f e a n d h o w v e r y c r i t i c a l c h o i c e s a t c r i t i c a l t i m e s h a s p a v e d a r o a d t h a t is n o t l i n e d w i t h g o l d y e s , i h a v e o b s e r v e d t h a t a s y o u h a v e g r o w n o l d e r a n d d e e p e r i n t h e seat o f y o u r t r u e self y o u h a v e a l s o c o g n i z e d t h a t y o u r d e m i s e is r a c i n g t o c a t c h y o u a n d y o u r o w n s t o r y is b e i n g e t c h e d i n s t o n e f o r t i m e e t e r n a l a n d y o u are fast l o s i n g c o n t r o l o f y o u r d e s t i n y a n d e s p e c i a l l y a n y r e s o l u t i o n o f y o u r m e s s y s t o r i e s o f u n r e a l i z e d g l o r y y e s , i a m t h e s n a k e o f r e g r e t w h o l i v e s a n d t h r i v e s o n y o u r f r u s t r a t i o n w i t h t h e f i n i t e aspect o f y o u r s h o r t v i s i t a t i o n into this earthly vessel a n d w i t h y o u r m i s u n d e r s t a n d i n g s o f t h e v e r y n a t u r e o f h u m a n l e a r n i n g ' s . f o r y o u i h a v e a little compassion ( a s t h a t is t h e f a s h i o n ) as y o u r "i" c o u l d h a v e s c a r c e l y k n o w n t h a t , l i k e a w o r k e r i n t h e f i e l d , y o u ' v e s o w n a d e a d l y y e a r n i n g f o r a p a s t r e v e r s i n g i n o u t c o m e . a n d t h e d e e p e r t h e regret, t h e l a r g e r j g r o w a n d b e f o r e y o u k n o w i w i l l t i g h t e n m y g r i p u n t i l y o u r are u n c o n s c i o u s a n d c o n s u m e d b y it." a n d t h e s n a k e ' s w o r d s r a n g t r u e l i k e t h e d e a f e n i n g b e l l s f r o m h e l l ' s hottest c o r n e r s r i n g i n g d i s o r i e n t a t i o n a c r o s s t h e u n i v e r s e o f m y e x p e r i e n c e . h o w c o u l d i t u r n t h i s a r o u n d ? w a s t h e r e s o m e t h i n g so p r o f o u n d t h a t m y t h i n k i n g h a d m i s s e d t h a t w o u l d t u r n a l l o f t h i s a r o u n d i n m y f a v o u r ? "i a m a f r a i d , ' d e a r ' s n a k e t h a t t h e r e h a s b e e n a c l e a r m i s t a k e i n i d e n t i f y i n g f o r it is n o t t w h o m y o u seek f o r t h e t i n m e h a s l o n g a b a n d o n e d r e g r e t s r o l e h a v i n g b o a r d e d u p t h e h o l e s w h e n i c a m e t o see t h a t regret, i n s t e a d o f h a r m i n g m e , is t h e w a y t o m e a s u r e h o w m u c h i h a v e g r o w n o v e r t h i s t a n g l e d a n d t h o r n y p a t h t h a t w e a l l are e n s l a v e d t o e n d u r e t h r o u g h o u r t e n u r e o n t h i s e a r t h . a n d so w i t h a l l t h i s regret c e r t a i n l y y o u c a n see t h a t t h a t t i n m y o w n s p e c i a l w a y , h a s m o v e d f o r w a r d a n d e n c o u n t e r e d i n f i n i t e l y n e w d a y s o f u n d e r s t a n d i n g a n d t h a t w h a t , as a b o y , i h a d o r i g i n a l l y s o u g h t t o p u r s u e h a s l i t t l e t o d o w i t h w h o m i am now. r e g r e t t h e n , f o r m e , is a n a f f i r m a t i o n a n d a m e a s u r e t h a t i n d e e d , i h a v e s u c c e e d e d i n m o v i n g m y s e l f f o r w a r d a n d t r u l y g r o w n t h r o u g h t h e y e a r s . a n d s o , r a t h e r t h a n fear, i c h o o s e t o feast o n regret a s t h e o n l y t r u e test o f m y g r o w t h as a h u m a n . " t h e s n a k e d i d h e s i t a t e a n d i n t h a t s e c o n d o f r e f l e c t i o n a n d h i s b r e a k i n i n t e n t i o n i d r e w t h i s n e w b l a d e t h a t t h r o u g h s h e e r w i l l m y "i" h a d f a b r i c a t e d a n d s w i n g i n g m y s w o r d i n m y e n e m y ' s d i r e c t i o n i s e v e r e d t h e h e a d a n d f r o m m y b e d i d r a g g e d t h e b o d y a n d l i t a f i r e t o c o o k t h e s n a k e a n d d i d m u s i c m a k e f e e l i n g h i g h e r t h a n i h a d i n y e a r s . the unnatural act preamble: a poem about t.v. immersion in the o's tt the unnatural act n o o n e k n e w : it s e e m e d l i k e a b o n a n z a i f y o u l o v e d l u c y l i k e j e a n i e l i k e s a m a n t h a w i t h e m m a a n d (just t h e f l i p o f a s w i t c h ) a t t h e j u n c t i o n o f g r e e n a c r e s i could never resist. i l o v e d t h e i r p e r f e c t i o n , t h e i r u l t r a m y t h i c f e m i n i n e l o o k s w i t h d o e eyes a n d c h e e k b o n e s c h i s e l e d o u t o f g r a n i t e a n d s m i l e s t h a t w o u l d t a k e y o u m i l e s t o a d i s t a n t p l a n e t o f s i r e n - what possible chance did i have, but, again, t o b e a m a n , a p a l a d i n , r e a l r i f l e m a n w a n t e d d e a d o r a l i v e , a c h u c k o r a steve, c l i n t o r g a r y t a l l n e s s a n d s i l e n c e b r i m m i n g w i t h v i o l e n c e a n d f u r y t o o m u c h t o o s o o n t o d e f i n e t h e a m e r i c a n m a l e o n t h e b l a c k a n d w h i t e pages o f h i g h n o o n . o r o u t o f t h e w e s t a n d i n t o a j u n g l e o r l o s t i n s p a c e o r t h e c o u r t s o r t h e f u m b l e o f f a m i l y l i f e , j u s t l e a v e it t o b e a v e r c a p t a i n s k i r k a n d k a n g a r o o , c r u n c h , h o o k a n d c l e a v e r . w i t h r a b b i t s a n d m i c e a n d w o o d p e c k e r s t o o t h a t h a d g r o w n u p i n t h e b r o n x , r i g h t n e x t t o t h e z o o . . . h o w m u c h d i d i l a u g h ? h o w m u c h d o i h a t e h o w d e e p these m y t h s d i d s i n k a n d f o r m u l a t e m y b r a i n a n d assist i n t h e c o n s t r u c t i o n o f b l a c k a n d w h i t e r e d u c t i o n i s m t h a t d r o v e m e a n d a y o u n g n a t i o n o f o v e r s t i m u l a t e d r o m a n t i c s t o r e b e l at t h e a n t i c s o f a w o r l d t h a t w e r e a l l y d i d n ' t k n o w , t u n e o u t a n d o n w i t h t h e s h o w ! i am guitar g u i t a r is n o t a p a s s i n g p h a s e o r p h r a s e o r a n a r t / i n s t r u m e n t t h a t i d a b b l e w i t h it is so b e y o n d t h a t , it t r a n s c e n d s a n y t h i n g t h a t i c a n a d e q u a t e l y d e s c r i b e except t o say, i a m g u i t a r it w i l l n o t go a w a y it r e a l l y d o e s n ' t m a t t e r i f i a m g o o d o r b a d , o r i f y o u l i k e it o r n o t a l t h o u g h b o t h n o t i o n s h a u n t e d m e f o r f a r t o o l o n g . t h e g u i t a r h a s s o o t h e d m e , c h a l l e n g e d m e , d e l i g h t e d m e a n d g r o u n d e d m e t h r o u g h o u t a l l t h e m a n y c h a l l e n g e s t h a t i h a v e e n d u r e d i n t h i s s o m e t i m e s l u m p y , s a d c l o w n p l a n e o f e x i s t e n c e . it h a s s u p p o r t e d m e t h r o u g h v a r i o u s j o b s , b o r i n g r o u t i n e s , m i n d - d e a d e n i n g s i t u a t i o n s , o v e r - w o r k , a n d n e g a t i v e p e o p l e . it h a s l i s t e n e d t o m e t a l k t h r o u g h t h e a c c e l e r a t i o n o f e v e r - c h a n g i n g e x p e r i e n c e s , r e l e n t l e s s c h a l l e n g e s , t h e c o m i n g a n d g o i n g o f r e l a t i o n s h i p s , a n d o f b a l a n c e w i t h i n m y s e l f s o m e h o w it h a s a l w a y s h e l p e d k e e p m e i n c h e c k , t h e m a g n i t u d e o f its e x p e r i e n c e , its p o t e n t i a l a n d i n t e l l e c t u a l a n d e m o t i o n a l p a l e t t e h a v i n g n o w u n d e r p i n n e d m y w h o l e p o i n t o f v i e w , m y e n t i r e v a l u e s y s t e m . a n d so t h e l i n e s b e t w e e n " g u i t a r " a n d "i" h a v e b l u r r e d i a m g u i t a r it w i l l n o t go a w a y , it w i l l n o t go away... if i h a d e n o u g h r i c h e s t o s t o p w o r k , i'd p l a y g u i t a r , m e d i t a t e , a n d b e w i t h m y f a m i l y / f r i e n d s t h a t is m y b o t t o m l i n e , b u t r i c h o r p o o r , i w i l l p l a y ( n o w j u s t ) a l i t t l e e a c h d a y a n d i f t h e a r c h e t y p e o f t r a g e d y r o l l s o v e r m e a n d d e c i m a t e s a l l t h a t i h a v e w o r k e d s o h a r d f o r a n d d e s t r o y s m y f a m i l y , m y c o r e , a n d b r i n g s m e t o m y k n e e s , b l i n d a n d c r i p p l e d i n a p a t h e t i c h e a p o f c r u s h e d h u m a n i t y i w i l l c r a w l o n h a n d s a n d k n e e s t o f i n d m y g u i t a r t o c r y t h r o u g h a n d t h o u g h it w i l l n o t offer s o l u t i o n , it w i l l give s o m e s o l a c e a n d s e l f - r e f l e c t i o n b e c a u s e i a m g u i t a r it w i l l n o t go a w a y it w i l l n o t go a w a y u n t i l i d o i a m starting (to lose) preamble: i tend to go through experiences much later than most people that i know. for example, i didn't start teaching until i was years old. i had my first child at the age of . i took my first master's course at the age of . and now at the age of , well past mid-life, i seem to be having a bit of a mid-life crisis. actually, it's more like a mid-life ripple, but the waters are agitated, nonetheless. this poem addresses the fact that something deep is changing for me. i a m starting (to lose) i am starting (to lose) m y l i f e n o w j u s t as t h e p i e c e s w e r e s t a r t i n g t o c o n n e c t . j u s t as t h e m o a n o f p r i m o r d i a l r e a l i z a t i o n o f b e i n g is r u n n i n g a l l t h e w a y u p t h r o u g h m y v e i n s , t h r o u g h m y h e a d , h e a r t , a n d m i n d . j am starting to lose j u s t w h y i d i d a l l t h o s e t h i n g s ; w h y i n y o u t h i r a i l e d a n d c l a m o r e d so p a s s i o n a t e l y f o r f r e e d o m s t h a t w e r e a l r e a d y s a i d t o b e a n d w h y i c o v e t e d a n d c o n s p i r e d , a d o r n e d a n d d i s p l a y e d a n d d a n c e d t o a m u s i c t h a t s o m e t i m e s o n l y e x i s t e d i n m y h e a d . / am starting to lose a l l m y h e r o e s a s a t i d e o f d e m o c r a t i z a t i o n r o l l s i n a n d l e v e l s t h e p l a y i n g f i e l d i n t o a l i q u i d f l o w i n g m a s s w a s h i n g m e c l e a n a n d f r e e i n g m e f r o m t h e v i c t i m i z a t i o n o f n e e d s t o p r o v e a n d n e e d s t o b e a c c e p t e d . . . as i experience this natural wilt i s t a n d n a k e d a n d n o t c a r i n g d i s i n t e r e s t e d a n d d i s c o n n e c t e d , yet p a s s i o n a t e l y i n v o l v e d . . . h o w c a n t h i s b e ? c h a n g e is i n t h e air... j am becoming t h e f o o l o n t h e h i l l t h e i n v i s i b l e o n e , t h e c r a z y m a n , t a l k i n g t o h i m s e l f r e v e l i n g i n h i s o w n j o k e s y e t , at t h e s a m e t i m e , i a m h e a r i n g n e w s y m p h o n i e s o f l i v i n g a n d c o n c e r t o s i n t h e o n c e c a c o p h o n o u s t u m b l e o f c o n f u s i o n a n d i a m p r e p a r i n g t o b e myself... and i will savour e a c h m o m e n t l i k e a s u m p t u o u s m e a l s e r v e d t o a s t a r v i n g m a n a n d i w i l l b i t e l i f e t o t h e b o n e , t h e j u i c e r u n n i n g d o w n m y face a n d a l l t h e t i m e a c k n o w l e d g i n g t h a t i a m as b a d as i a m g o o d a s i a m g o o d at b e i n g b a d and i will shed this skin of illusion a n d p u n c h t h r o u g h t h i s c o c o o n o n l y t o f i n d m y t r u e s e l f s t a r i n g b a c k at m e . i've (em)braced preamble: this poem, written after my courses, and at a moment of honesty/epiphany, is a comprehensive reflection on all the jam/have been and as such represents a poetic equivalent of an abstract of this thesis i've (em)braced i've ( e m ) b r a c e d p r a n k s t e r , c o n m a n , l i a r , l o v e r , h u s b a n d , f a t h e r , t f h ) i n k e r ( e r ) , i m p o s t e r , p r e p o s t e r o u s l y i n g i n j u d g m e n t ! y e t s o m e t i m e s n o t o f t h i s w o r l d a s m y eyes r o l l b a c k w a r d a n d t h e j a w d r o p s . . . m y s t i c s y s t e m i c , p a t h e t i c a n d r e g r e t f u l k e e p e r o f c a r t o o n c o n s c i o u s n e s s , m y feet b l i s t e r o n t h e h y p e r - h e a t e d a s p h a l t o f w e s t e r n r e a l i t y , i n e v e r l e a r n s t i l l m y s t i f i e d b y t h e r a r i f i e d m i r a c l e o f h o p e ( l e s s n e s s ) f r i g h t e n e d c h i l d a n d o l d m a n i a m p e n i s c r o s s e d w i t h p e n a n c e s o n o f z o r r o a n d n o s f e r a t u , ( a n t i ) . . . c h a r l i e t , i w i s h i k n e w ! s a i n t o r s i n n e r , c e r t a i n l y f o o l o n t h e h i l l o f t h e a c a d e m y o f p o w e r , p o l i t i c s a n d l o s t s o u l s , l i m i n a l t r a n s g r e s s o r i n t h e a p o r i a o f f o u n d a n d l o s t (again) i see t h e o a s i s o r j u s t a n o t h e r m i r a g e ? . . . m e a n w h i l e t h e b u d d h a o f c o m p a s s i o n p o u r s r i v e r s o f tears t h r o u g h m e as i l o o k at p i c t u r e s o f m y d a u g h t e r b e c a u s e s o m e t i m e s i k n o w t o l o o k a b o v e m y s e l f what do i encounter: the master frame preamble: i find it fascinating that our childhood learning, expectations and value structures can either intensify or invalidate our life experience in later years. this notion is examined in a poem that, on the literal level, talks . about me building aplayhouse with my daughter, emily. the master frame e m i l y , w h o is s i x , is h a r d at w o r k h e l p i n g m e b u i l d t h e f r a m e o f h e r p l a y h o u s e a n d b e i n g v e r y k e e n , yet a l l t h e s a m e l a c k i n g r e a l e x p e r i e n c e , w e f o l l o w t h e p l a n s v e r y s l o w l y a n d c a r e f u l l y , c h e c k i n g t h e l a y o f t h e l a n d s h e passes m e t h e w o o d a n d t h e s i d i n g a n d w i t h t h e greatest p a i n s , h o l d s t h e b e a m s s t e a d y f o r t h e m a s t e r f r a m e as i m e a s u r e a n d p e n c i l a n d p o u n d t h e n a i l s i n t o t h e w a l l b o a r d s as w e l l as i n t o the s t o r y b o a r d o f h e r m y t h f o r w e t a l k i n c e s s a n t l y a n d w o r k c o - o p e r a t i v e l y t o r a i s e a s t r u c t u r e a n d a c o h e s i v e e n v i r o n m e n t n o t o n l y out o f w o o d a n d p a p e r a n d n a i l s b u t o f d r e a m s a n d s c h e m e s a n d v a l u e s t h a t o f t e n p r e v a i l i n m y o w n m a s t e r f r a m e f o r t h e o r i g i n a l m a s t e r f r a m e t h a t i b u i l t so l o n g ago h a s s e r v e d m e w e l l as a r o o m w i t h a v i e w w h e r e i've w i t n e s s e d b o t h n i r v a n a a n d h e l l i s h t i m e s , a l t h o u g h its d e s i g n h a s b e e n m o d i f i e d t o r e - a l i g n f o r s i t u a t i o n s t h a t c o m e a l o n g a n d b l o c k t h e s u n a n d b a r m e f r o m g l e a n i n g t h e m o s t o u t o f e a c h a n d e v e r y d a y y o u see, m y o w n m a s t e r f r a m e is s t i l l a w o r k i n p r o g r e s s a n e x q u i s i t e g a m e o f strategy f o r k e e p i n g d r y t h r o u g h a l l t y p e s o f i n c l e m e n t w e a t h e r a n d n o w t h e t i m e i s r i g h t t o t a k e t h e s t r o n g e s t b e a m s , t h o s e t h a t h a v e p r o v e n t h e m s e l v e s a g a i n a n d a g a i n , a n d s h o w t h e m t o e m i l y f o r c o n s i d e r a t i o n i n t h e c o n s t r u c t i o n o f h e r o w n m a s t e r f r a m e a n d so t h i s n e w r i s i n g s t r u c t u r e l o o k s r i g h t f o r e m i l y w i t h great s t r e n g t h a n d d e s i g n so t h a t s h e c a n n o t o u t g r o w it b u t c a n d e c o r a t e a n d e x p o s e it t o t h e s c r u t i n y o f h e r f r i e n d s a n d i n t i m e she t o o w i l l r e v i e w a n d reflect a n d m o d i f y t h i s s t r u c t u r a t s y s t e m i n o r d e r t o k e e p dry... i h e a r d a b o u t a w o m a n w h o g r e w u p i n a h o u s e o f r i c h e s f r a m e d w i t h b e l i e f s o f s u p e r i o r i t y o n l y t o f i n d t h a t a t u r n o f events p u s h e d h e r i n t o a l i f e o f c o n s t a n t s t r u g g l e i n s i d e a n e w d r e a m w i t h a m a n o f m o d e s t m e a n s a n d t h e r e s h e r a i s e d a f a m i l y b u t w a s n e v e r a b l e t o r e t u r n t o h e r o r i g i n a l h o m e f r a m e w i t h its a f f l u e n c e a n d c o n n e c t i o n s a n d as a r e s u l t s h e d i v o r c e d h e r s e l f f r o m h e r v e r y o w n l i f e f o r s h e s a w h e r l i f e a s a f a i l u r e as she c o u l d n o t r e - c o n c e i v e h e r m a s t e r f r a m e t o a c c o m m o d a t e a d i f f e r e n t c o n t e x t a n d s o she i n v a l i d a t e d everything... a n d n o w as i l o o k w i t h w o n d e r a n d a w e a t t h e m i r a c l e o f o u r s i x - y e a r - o l d d a u g h t e r i s h u t t e r at t h e t h o u g h t t h a t w e m a y b e b u i l d i n g a s a n c t u a r y t h a t c o u l d s o m e t i m e i n t h e f u t u r e t u r n i n t o a c e l l i f w e f a i l t o c o n s t r u c t a tale t h a t is w i d e e n o u g h t o a l l o w h e r t o g r o w y e t s t r o n g e n o u g h t o p r o t e c t h e r f r o m t h e e l e m e n t s a s she seeks t o f i n d h e r p l a c e a n d peace i n t h i s w o r l d . big people preamble: i love the layers of meaning that are found within language. as a kid i used to love to listen to mae west or later, john lennon, as they playfully set up word traps constructed out the foibles of the audience's own pre-conceptions and experience. big people t h e b i g p e o p l e i k n o w c o m e i n a l l s h a p e a n d size f r o m ecto t o m e z z o w i t h t i n y w a i s t s o r m a s s i v e t h i g h s r e d , w h i t e a n d b l u e , b l a c k , y e l l o w a n d m e l l o w f u l l o f f i r e a n d w i r e a n d o f t e n t i m e s h i g h e r t h a n y o u o r i w i t h b o t h feet o n t h e g r o u n d a s t h e y j u m p o u t o f b o u n d s . . . * • • '. b i g p e o p l e eat p i z z a , g u a c a m o l e a n d r i c e o r strict p r o t e i n d i e t s f r o m m o r n i n g t i l l n i g h t p r e - f a b n u t r i e n t s f r o m t r a n s - f a t d i n e r s o r n a t u r a l f r e s h s l i c e s o f o r g a n i c t y p e s b i g p e o p l e d r i n k s c o t c h , b e e r , w a t e r a n d p e p s i e a r l g r e y , w i t h m i l k o r glasses o f s h e r r y a n d a l l m a n n e r o f l i q u i d c o l d a n d h o t b u t s o m e t i m e s n o t b i g p e o p l e l i v e i n s p a c i o u s r e f i n e m e n t o r a p a r t m e n t l o f t s o r c l u t t e r e d h o m e s s o m e t i m e s a l l a l o n e i n b a r s a n d a b a n d o n e d c a r s w h i l e o t h e r s l i v e i n t h e i r h e a d s w i t h n o b e d o f s i g n i f i c a n c e a n d n o w a y t o get h o m e b i g p e o p l e o f t e n r u n t h r o u g h t h e c r a c k s f o r t h e b o r d e r s a n d s t a y u p a l l n i g h t t o seize t h e d a y b e c a u s e b i g p e o p l e h a v e great v i s i o n e v e n i f t h e y leave t h e i r glasses at h o m e f o r t h e y p e e r t h r o u g h a l e n s t h a t h a s b e e n g r o u n d a n d p o l i s h e d b y y e a r s o f e p i s o d i c n a r r a t i v e s a n d r e f l e c t i v e c a l l s a n d r e s p o n s e s t h a t t u r n s o u t w a r d i n a n d i n so o u t b i g p e o p l e k n o w y o u a n d m e b e t t e r t h a n m o s t , h a v i n g c l i m b e d t h e m o u n t a i n s t o r e p l y t o t h e h o s t o f u n e n d i n g q u e s t i o n s t h a t f i l l t h e m u p t h e y p u s h f o r a n s w e r s a n d h a v i n g a n s w e r e d t h e p u s h t h e y l i v e i n - d o p p o r t u n i t y t o t h e p o i n t o f f i l l i n g t h i s p o e m w i t h t h e p r e s e n t , f u t u r e a n d past a t o n e d b i g p e o p l e c a n n o t b e b o t t l e d o r l a b e l e d , c a t e g o r i z e d o r d e n i e d d i s m i s s e d , r e - m i f f e d o r q u a l i f i e d e x c e p t b y t h o s e w h o m i s s t h e b o a t a s it leaves f o r a d v e n t u r e i s l a n d s r e m o t e o h h o w i l o v e b i g p e o p l e ! howold? h e r e ' s a l i t t l e n o t i o n t o reflect o n o v e r y o u r a f t e r n o o n t e a , o n t h a t r a i n y d a y w h e n t h e r o a r o f t h e f i r e p l a c e a n d t h e d a n c e o f t h e f l a m e s p u l l s y o u i n . f o r as i w a l k e d m y d o g o n s u c h a d a y c r a z y w i t h r a i n , i c a m e a c r o s s a m o s t s e n i o r g e n t l e m a n w h o , w h e n s e e i n g m e , b r o k e i n t o a fit o f d e e p r e s o u n d i n g l a u g h t e r a n d s a i d , a s w e b o t h s h a r e d a d r o w n e d m o m e n t i n t h i s p a t h e t i c state, " t h i s is r i d i c u l o u s w e a t h e r ! " t o w h i c h h e l a u g h e d e v e n h a r d e r , eyes s p a r k l i n g , a n d as h e p a s s e d , i w o n d e r e d t o m y s e l f h o w o l d are y o u w h e n y o u l a u g h ? b u t r e a l l y , h o w o l d are y o u w h e n y o u l a u g h so d e e p l y t h a t y o u r w h o l e b o d y lets go a n d y o u r eyes d i a m o n d s h i n e a n d t h e l i n e s o f y o u r face t u r n u p w a r d a n d h o w o l d are y o u w h e n y o u n i b b l e t h a t c h o c o l a t e a n d s i p t h e w i n e a n d y o u f i n a l l y g r o k w h a t t h e m u s i c h a s b e e n s a y i n g a l l a l o n g a s it w a s h e s y o u c l e a n w i t h t i d a l f o r c e w a v e s o f e m o t i o n s a n d e p i p h a n y . h o w o l d are y o u w h e n y o u l o s e a l l t i m e at t h e s u n s e t o n t h e b e a c h w i t h t h e b u r s t i n g s i l e n c e b e i n g s p i l l e d b y t h e l a p o f t h e w a t e r s o n t h e l o g s ? h o w o l d are y o u w h e n y o u f i n a l l y c o m e a n d t e l l y o u r l o v e r t h e t r u t h w h a t e v e r it is t o y o u o r w h e n y o u r u n u n t i l y o u ' r e u n d o n e a n d y o u b r e a k t h r o u g h y o u r b a r r i e r s t o ecstasy? w e u n l o c k t h e f o u n t a i n o f y o u t h t h r o u g h o u r c h o i c e o f f r a m e s t o v i e w a l l m a n n e r o f l i v i n g , b o t h past a n d n e w . the goddess of innovation preamble: oh, if only pcould make my muse visit more often. what fun i could have! the goddess of innovation i a m m a k i n g a n i n v i t a t i o n t o t h e g o d d e s s o f i n n o v a t i o n t o stop by for tea a l i t t l e m o r e o f t e n o f c o u r s e she is v e r y b u s y w i t h h e r o w n v a r i o u s a c t i v i t i e s a n d i k n o w s o m e h o w b y s a y i n g i'm n e e d y , i'm b e i n g a l i t t l e g r e e d y f o r t h e m i r a c u l o u s i n s p i r a t i o n s h e is o f f e r i n g a n d i f she does a r r i v e it's u s u a l l y a s u r p r i s e a n d i d o n ' t a l w a y s sense h e r p r e s e n c e j u s t t h a t c o l o r s s e e m b r i g h t a n d t h e f l o w is t o t a l l y r i g h t a n d n e w i d e a s p o p f o r t h f r o m m y essence a n d as w e d r i n k o u r t e a a l l m a n n e r o f a r t i s t r y is i n t u r n affected. w h y w e m u s e a b o u t art, w r i t i n g , m u s i c a n d d a n c e a n d l i f e i t s e l f as a c a n v a s w a i t i n g t o b e p e r f e c t e d a n d as i r e l a x , i k n o w she is r i g h t i j u s t get i n m y o w n w a y f o r t h e t r i c k is t o o p e n t h e d o o r a n d a l l o w h e r t o e x p l o r e w i t h o u t b l o c k i n g o r c o n t r o l l i n g h e r stay a n d that's e a s i e r s a i d t h a n d o n e f o r t h e m i n d ' s r a s c a l m o n k e y f o r o n e is a l w a y s t a l k i n g a n d t a k i n g c o n t r o l b u t t h e g o d d e s s n e e d s p l e n t y o f r o o m t o create s u c h a t u n e t h a t ' s o r i g i n a l a n d f u l l o f s o u l a n d t h e m o n k e y w i l l p r e t e n d t o b e asleep i n o r d e r t o s n e a k a p e e k a t t h e a w e - i n s p i r i n g b e a u t y o f t h e g o d d e s s b u t she c a n sense h i m t h r o u g h h i s p r o c e s s a n d she w i l l fade a w a y g l o w i n g f o r t r y i n g t o c o n t a i n h e r i n l o g i c ' s b o u n d s is as h o p e l e s s as p u l l i n g vegetables o u t o f t h e g r o u n d t o see h o w w e l l t h e y ' r e g r o w i n g b u t i a m a l w a y s t h a n k f u l f o r a n y v i s i t a t i o n , n o m a t t e r h o w s h o r t a n d every d a y i d o r a i n d a n c e s a s a n i n v o c a t i o n t o a b o r t a n y d r o u g h t t h a t m a y o c c u r f r o m b e i n g f a r t o o b u s y t o r e a l i z e a l l t h e e n e r g y a n d b o u n d l e s s f e r t i l e c r e a t i v i t y t h a t c o m e s f r o m a q u i e t t e a w i t h t h e g o d d e s s t h e h u s t l e r (a.k.a.), and what would you do? preamble: this light-hearted narrative deals with the serious issues of teaching ethics and power structures within an educational organization " c o m e i n , m i c h a e l . " a s i e n t e r e d , i w a s s u r p r i s e d t o f i n d b i l l s t a n d i n g u p - a w a y f r o m h i s d e s k . m y h e a r t b e a t d o u b l e d . i a l w a y s f o u n d it h a r d e r t o t a l k t o m y p r i n c i p a l w h e n h e w a s s t a n d i n g , f o r h i s e n o r m o u s l y t a l l f r a m e a n d sheer p h y s i c a l i t y a l w a y s i n f o r m e d t h e o u t c o m e o f o u r c o n v e r s a t i o n s . i n d e e d , i o f t e n felt p a t r o n i z e d i n t h e s i l e n c e b e f o r e t h e w o r d s , l i k e a l i t t l e b o y a s k i n g h i s d a d d y f o r a f a v o r . b u t h e r e w a s a m a n w h o w i l l f u l l y p l a y e d h i s p h y s i c a l c u r r e n c y t o t h e e x t a n t t h a t i w o u l d b u y i n . s o i b r a c e d m y s e l f a n d l o o k e d i n t o t h e h i g h n o o n eyes o f t h i s s u r l y j o h n w a y n e . a n d as i l o o k e d , i r e f l e c t e d o n t h e fact t h a t b i l l , a l t h o u g h h e w a s w e l l i n t o h i s fifty's, w a s s t i l l a k e e n r u g b y p l a y e r , b a r f l y , c h a u v i n i s t , a n d s t i c k m a n w h o s e w o u l d - b e r o l e as a c o w b o y o f t h e n e w f r o n t i e r s p i l l e d o v e r l i k e a glass o f h o m e - b r e w e d w h i s k e y i n t o h i s p r o f e s s i o n a l l i f e . a n d o f t h a t l i f e , b i l l h a d m o v e d q u i c k l y f r o m b e i n g a p . e . t e a c h e r t o a n a d m i n i s t r a t o r a n d , u l t i m a t e l y t o a n a s s i s t a n t s u p e r i n t e n d e n t . b u t d u e t o t h e r e c e n t a n d severe c u t b a c k s i n t h e d i s t r i c t , h e w a s b u m p e d as h i s j o b w a s c o l l a p s e d . a n d s o , l i k e a s l e e p i n g g r i z z l y t h a t h a d b e e n disturbed, bill grumpily accepted the demotion of a principalship at our school. it was either that or face the cold winter of a job search. today, as i entered his office/den, i was in crisis. roger, the head of the p.e. department was emboldened by bill's appointment to our school and thrust a new offensive against me in our long war about evening gym privileges. earlier that morning, in a small committee meeting that was dealing with the timetable, he hissed that basketball games and practices had been booked for all of december and that there would be no room on any evening for a christmas concert. i was too shocked to say "but it's only september-can't you alter the schedule and give me one night?" in reality, the power and finality of roger's tone and trump collapsed any chance of negotiation. i turned to john, our vice principal and whispered, "this is crazy. we have to have a christmas concert!" ron acquiesced silently with his "i'm not getting involved" look and shrugged his shoulders. now, with my visit to bill, i was escalating the issue. as i walked up to his door, i mentally reviewed the points i wanted to make to bill. i started with a story about the long tradition of christmas concerts at our school. but before i had completed the first sentence, bill waved a big paw to cut me off and another to shoo me out, angrily barking that he was going to have to make a decision and that was that! that was that? obviously, john had mentioned the issue to him-which was fine as far as i was concerned. but i wanted a chance to be heard. i wanted to pitch the importance of the concert. did he, as principal, not have to at least give me a little say in this matter? i w a s o n p i n s a n d n e e d l e s f o r t w o d a y s . t h e n , t h e d e c i s i o n c a m e d o w n . i w o u l d get m y c o n c e r t o n its a n n u a l d a t e . o d d l y , i w a s t o l d o f t h i s n o t b y t h e a d m i n i s t r a t i o n t e a m , b u t b y a n u t r a s w e e t r o g e r , w h o c l o s e d b y q u i p p i n g , " n o h a r d f e e l i n g s , e h ? " e v e n t h o u g h i h a d " w o n " t h i s b a t t l e , i felt d r a i n e d a n d a n g r y . w h a t c o u l d i d o t o r e m e d y t h i s s i t u a t i o n ? a n d t h e n it d a w n e d o n m e . it w a s b r i l l i a n t i n i t s s i m p l i c i t y a n d it gave m e a n e w energy. d a w n i n g m y v i r t u a l b o o t s a n d s p u r s , i " r o d e " i n t o b i l l ' s office w i t h a n a c h i l l e s ' h u n c h a n d a d o u b l e - b a r r e l e d a t t i t u d e e a s t w o o d f o r i k n e w t h a t b i l l w a s a b i g f a n o f c o u n t r y a n d w e s t e r n m u s i c . " b i l l , i k n o w t h i s m a y s e e m w i l d , b u t i n o t i c e d h o w r i c h y o u r v o i c e i s . w h a t d o t h i n k a b o u t y o u a n d m e p e r f o r m i n g a s o n g t o g e t h e r ? i t h i n k it w o u l d b e so great t o h a v e y o u s i n g a s o n g i n t h e c h r i s t m a s c o n c e r t . w e c o u l d d o a c o u n t r y s o n g . i n fact, i c o u l d p r o b a b l y p u t a w h o l e b a n d t o g e t h e r t o b a c k y o u u p . t h i n k a b o u t h o w p o s i t i v e l y t h e k i d s w o u l d react at s e e i n g t h e i r p r i n c i p a l s i n g i n g w i t h a b a n d ? " " w e l l , m i c h a e l , i've a l w a y s l o v e d j o h n n y c a s h , " h e e x p l a i n e d . i h a d h i m . " b i l l , t h a t ' s a great i d e a ! w i l l i a m , i n t h e s c i e n c e d e p a r t m e n t is a g o o d d r u m m e r a n d j o h n w a n t s t o p l a y b a s s . i'll p u l l i n m y b r o t h e r so that w e c a n h a v e b l a z i n g t e l e c a s t e r s , a n d , o h y e s , c h a r l i e i n d r a m a c a n p l a y s o m e great h o n k y - t o n k p i a n o . f e v e r i s h l y , i w o r k e d t o a s s e m b l e t h e m e m b e r s o f t h e b a n d . w e h a d a r e h e a r s a l o r t w o t o l o c k i n t o " f o l s o m p r i s o n b l u e s " a n d t h e n i n v i t e d b i l l t o a t t e n d . f o r t u n a t e l y , b i l l s a n g i n t u n e (sort of) a n d , m o r e i m p o r t a n t l y s a n g i n t i m e . i h a d f o o l i s h l y a s s u m e d t h a t h e c o u l d cut t h e g i g . i m a d e a m e n t a l n o t e t o t r i c k f u t u r e a d m i n i s t r a t o r - s i n g e r s i n t o a n i n f o r m a l a s s e s s m e n t b e f o r e c o m m i t t i n g t o a p r o j e c t a n d i t h a n k e d t h e g o d s f o r t h i s c u r r e n t r o u n d o f grace. o n t h e n i g h t o f t h e c h r i s t m a s c o n c e r t , b i l l w a s e x t r e m e l y n e r v o u s . i s e n s e d t h a t h e w o u l d b a c k out. " b i l l , w h y d o n ' t y o u c o m e o u t f i r s t as s a n t a , a n d t h r o w o u t s o m e c a n d y w h i l e t h e b a c k - u p b a n d p l a y s s o m e t h i n g f u n . t h e n , after a f e w " h o - h o ' s " y o u c a n c o m e u p t o t h e m i c a n d s i n g y o u r s o n g . t h e k i d s w i l l l o v e it. a f t e r t h e c o n c e r t i can l e a k o u t t h a t s a n t a w a s p l a y e d b y y o u ! " ( d e s p e r a t e l y , i w a s t r y i n g t o f i g u r e o u t a w a y t o i n c r e a s e b i l l ' s c o m f o r t as i k n e w t h a t t h e s a n t a s u i t a n d b e a r d w o u l d p u l l d o w n t h e i n t e n s i t y o f t h e p e r f o r m a n c e ) . b i l l felt b e t t e r . b i l l ' s m o m e n t c a m e at t h e h a l f w a y m a r k o f t h e s e c o n d set. t h e t e a c h e r b a n d f i r e d u p a n i n s t r u m e n t a l v e r s i o n o f " f o l s o m , " c o m p l e t e w i t h s c o r c h i n g s o l o s . s a n t a b i l l b u r s t i n t h r o u g h a c u r t a i n l i k e a b r a h m a b u l l at a r o d e o . h e r a n i n t o t h e b l e a c h e r s a n d t o s s e d h i s c a n d y c a n e s t o t h e s c r e a m i n g k i d s a n d c a m e c r a s h i n g b a c k t o s i n g h i s s o n g . t h e n , it h a p p e n e d s o m e w h e r e i n t h e s e c o n d v e r s e . b i l l l o s t h i m s e l f t o t h e f u n o f p e r f o r m a n c e . h e s t a r t e d d i g g i n g i n - b l o s s o m i n g r i g h t b e f o r e o u r eyes. t h e c r o w d , w h o h a d p r e t t y w e l l f i g u r e d o u t w h o s a n t a w a s , w e n t w i l d w i t h a p p r o v a l . b i l l , r e v e l i n g i n t h i s n e w f o u n d p o w e r , b e g a n t o i m p r o v i s e a n d t o l d m e t o t a k e a n o t h e r s o l o . w e r o c k e d t h e h o u s e d o w n a n d t h e n h e " r o d e " o u t o f t o w n . b i l l h a d a n e p i p h a n y t h a t n i g h t . i n d e e d , t h r o u g h a c r a z y t u r n o f e v e n t s , t h i s o l d d o g h a d l e a r n e d a n e w t r i c k - t h e p o w e r a n d j o y o f p e r f o r m i n g . t h e b a n d w a s a l s o h a p p y w i t h t h e success o f t h e s h o w . c o n s e q u e n t l y , w e k e p t t h e b a n d t o g e t h e r a n d m a d e c a m e o s at m a n y o t h e r c o n c e r t s . w e e v e n w r o t e b i l l a c a m e o i n o u r m u s i c a l . t h e k i d s at s c h o o l l o v e d it, b u t m o r e i m p o r t a n t l y , b i l l a b s o l u t e l y l o v e d p e r f o r m i n g a n d q u i c k l y r e a l i z e d great v a l u e i n t h e a r t s . i t h i n k t h a t it u l t i m a t e l y o v e r t o o k h i s l o n g - t i m e l o v e o f s p o r t s . m y f r i e n d , m i c h e l l e , w a s a d i s t r i c t l e v e l a d m i n i s t r a t o r at t h e t i m e . m i c h e l l e is a w o n d e r f u l s i n g e r a n d k e y b o a r d i s t a n d h a s a soft s p o t f o r t h e p l i g h t o f m u s i c t e a c h e r s a n d f r a g i l e m u s i c p r o g r a m s . b u t she w a s a p p a l l e d at m y a c t i o n s . "it w a s e t h i c a l l y w r o n g t o m a n i p u l a t e b i l l a n d t h e s c h o o l l i k e t h a t , " s h e c o m p l a i n e d . i felt u n e a s y at t h e s u g g e s t i o n o f c o m p r o m i s e d i n t e g r i t y . i e x p l a i n e d t o h e r t h a t t h e s c h o o l d i s t r i c t ' s ( g o v e r n m e n t i n d u c e d ) f i n a n c i a l h a r d s h i p s p o l i t i c i z e d a l l a c t i o n s . c o n t i n u i n g t h r e a t s t o m y p r o g r a m h a d f o r c e d m e t o c o n s i d e r t h e s e m a n i p u l a t i v e a c t i o n s . b u t i felt u n e a s y at t h e s u g g e s t i o n o f c o m p r o m i s e d i n t e g r i t y . i d i d n ' t l i k e d o i n g t h e m b u t felt t h a t i h a d l i t t l e c h o i c e . i n d e e d , i d i d t h e m t o p r e s e r v e m y p r o g r a m , f o r i b e l i e v e d t h e n a n d n o w t h a t t h e s t u d y o f m u s i c is o f great v a l u e t o s o m a n y c h i l d r e n a n d o n e n i g h t ' s u s e o f t h e g y m w a s r e a s o n a b l e r e q u e s t . w a s i w r o n g i n m y a c t i o n s ? i k n o w t h a t b i l l c o n t i n u e d t o s i n g , a f t e r h e r e t i r e d , a n d h e a l s o t o o k l e s s o n s t o l e a r n t h e h a r m o n i c a . p e r h a p s , i n t h e e n d , b i l l w a s j u s t a n o t h e r s t u d e n t o f m i n e w h o g r e w , a l o n g w i t h m y s t u d e n t s , t h r o u g h t h e p o w e r o f p e r f o r m i n g . c e r t a i n l y , h e l e a r n e d w h a t i w a n t a l l m y s t u d e n t s t o l e a r n , w h i c h is a l i f e l o n g l o v e a n d a p p r e c i a t i o n o f m u s i c . i n t h e e n d , i'm n o t s u r e i f t h e p r e s s u r e o f s u r v i v a l j u s t i f i e d m y r e s p o n s e . i u s e d t h e s a m e t a c t i c f o r o t h e r p r i n c i p a l s after b i l l , t h o u g h i a m n o t p r e s e n t l y d o i n g t h i s . t h i s i s s u e m a k e s m e reflect o n t h e w o r d s o f t h e a m e r i c a n " p h i l o s o p h e r , " t h e o d o r g e i s e l , w h o a l s o e x a m i n e d t h e i s s u e s df a u t h o r i t y a n d i n t e g r i t y : t h e n o u r m o t h e r c a m e i n a n d s h e s a i d t o u s t w o , " d i d y o u h a v e a n y f u n ? t e l l m e . w h a t d i d y o u d o ? " a n d s a l l y a n d i d i d n o t k n o w w h a t t o say. s h o u l d w e t e l l h e r t h e t h i n g s t h a t w e n t o n t h e r e t h a t d a y ? s h o u l d w e t e l l h e r a b o u t i t ? n o w , w h a t s h o u l d w e d o ? w e l l . . . w h a t w o u l d y o u d o if y o u r m o t h e r a s k e d y o u ? ( s e u s s , , p. ) the hi-fi m y f i r s t e x p o s u r e t o m u s i c h a p p e n e d w h e n i w a s f o u r y e a r s o l d . m y f a m i l y h a d j u s t m o v e d t o m o n t r e a l after m a n y y e a r s o n t h e p r a i r i e s . m y d a d w o r k e d f o r t h e f i r e s t o n e r u b b e r & t i r e c o m p a n y . i n t h o s e d a y s , f i r e s t o n e t i r e s t o r e s h a d a r e t a i l a n n e x t h a t d a b b l e d w i t h m a n y v a r i o u s h o u s e h o l d p r o d u c t s - a c o n c e p t t h a t h a s b e e n e x p a n d e d a n d s u c c e s s f u l l y u t i l i z e d i n c a n a d a b y t h e c a n a d i a n t i r e c o r p o r a t i o n . o n e c o u l d f i n d b i g i t e m s , l i k e f r e e z e r s , w a s h e r s a n d d r y e r s as w e l l as s m a l l h o u s e w a r e i t e m s l i k e t o a s t e r s a n d e n t e r t a i n m e n t p r o d u c t s l i k e r a d i o s a n d r e c o r d p l a y e r s . t h e r e w a s e v e n a s m a l l t o y s e c t i o n . m y d a d , as m a n a g e r o f t h i s s t o r e , w a s a b l e t o b u y i t e m s at a s p e c i a l e m p l o y e e d i s c o u n t rate. o n e d a y , h e a r r i v e d h o m e w i t h s o m e h e l p t o l o a d i n a n e n o r m o u s crate. w h a t c o u l d i t b e ? w e a l r e a d y h a d a t v . a s it t u r n s o u t , h e h a d p u r c h a s e d w h a t i r e c a l l as t h e m o s t a d v a n c e d r e c o r d p l a y e r m o n e y c o u l d b u y . it w a s a h u g e , c o m m a n d i n g p i e c e o f f u r n i t u r e a n d a t h i n g o f e n o r m o u s b e a u t y . t h e m a s s i v e r e c t a n g u l a r c a b i n e t w a s m a d e o f a s t u n n i n g l i g h t e x o t i c w o o d t h a t h a d b e e n s a n d e d , v a r n i s h e d a n d p o l i s h e d t o a c c e n t u a t e t h e m u l t i - c o l o r e d g r a i n . m y f o u r - y e a r - o l d b r a i n w o u l d s i n k d e e p i n t o t h e t h r e e - d i m e n s i o n a l h i l l s a n d v a l l e y s o f t h i s w o o d . t h e e n t i r e f r o n t o f t h e c a b i n e t w a s s t r e w n w i t h a w o n d r o u s m u l t i - c o l o r e d s p e a k e r g r i l l c l o t h t h a t h a d g o l d e n t h r e a d s t h a t t i e d t o g e t h e r w i t h t h e g r a i n p a t t e r n s . i n t h e l a t e a f t e r n o o n , w h e n t h e s u n w a s j u s t b e g i n n i n g t o p o u r i n t o o u r l i v i n g r o o m w i n d o w , i w o u l d b e a b l e t o " l o o k t h r o u g h " t h i s g r i l l c l o t h at a c i r c l e a n d a r e c t a n g l e t h a t w e r e n o r m a l l y h i d d e n b y t h e c o l o u r s i n t h e c l o t h . t h e c i r c l e w a s w h e r e t h e e n o r m o u s s p e a k e r w a s a t t a c h e d . t h e r e c t a n g l e b e s i d e it w a s a l a r g e p o r t t o a l l o w b a s s f r e q u e n c i e s t o e m i t - c l e a r l y a r e v o l u t i o n a r y i d e a f o r . . t h e t o p o f t h e r e c o r d p l a y e r o p e n e d u p t o r e v e a l its secrets. i h a d t o s t a n d o n m y t i p t o e s t o l o o k i n s i d e . t o t h e left w a s t h e a c t u a l t u r n t a b l e . b e i n g s u c h a n a d v a n c e d m o d e l , it h a d f o u r s p e e d s e t t i n g s . a l o n g w i t h t h e p o p u l a r - r p m f o r l o n g - p l a y i n g r e c o r d s a n d - r p m f o r s i n g l e s , it w o u l d a l s o p l a y at - r p m f o r o l d e r d i s c s . a n d , it e v e n h a d a - r p m s e t t i n g . i n e v e r s a w a r e c o r d f o r t h a t s p e e d . i o f t e n w o n d e r e d i f it w a s j u s t t h e r e f o r t h e f u t u r e w h e n d i s c s m i g h t d o u b l e t h e i r l o n g - p l a y a b i l i t y . m y f a t h e r e x p l a i n e d t h a t t h e h o o k e d d e v i c e t h a t h o v e r e d above t h e p l a t t e r w a s a f e a t u r e t h a t a l l o w e d the l i s t e n e r t o s t a c k m a n y r e c o r d s so t h a t t h e t u r n t a b l e c o u l d a u t o m a t i c a l l y " d r o p " a n d p l a y a n e w d i s c w h e n t h e f o r m e r d i s c f i n i s h e d . m i r a c l e o f m i r a c l e s , o u r n e w r e c o r d p l a y e r e n t e r t a i n e d u s f o r h o u r s at a t i m e . o n t h e r i g h t h a n d s i d e w a s t h e c o n t r o l p a n e l f o r t h e a m p l i f i e r . a d e c a l o n t h e i n s i d e r e a d " h i - f i " w h i c h m y f a t h e r e x p l a i n e d m e a n t " h i g h f i d e l i t y s o u n d . i w o u l d p u t m y h a n d s o n t h i s a r e a t o feel t h e w a r m t h f r o m t h e v a c u u m t u b e s t h a t a m p l i f i e d a n d s h a p e d t h e t o n e . n o w , as a n a s i d e , i m u s t t e l l y o u t h a t m y m o t h e r c o m e s f r o m t h e v i l l a g e o f m o o r s i d e , j u s t o u t s i d e o f o l d h a m , w h i c h i s , i n t u r n , j u s t a f e w m i l e s f r o m m a n c h e s t e r e n g l a n d . h e r tastes a n d h e r life c o n t i n u e t o b e o n e o f p o l i t e c o n s e r v a t i s m a n d c a r i n g w i t h h e r m o t t o b e i n g " e v e r y t h i n g i n m o d e r a t i o n . " m y f a t h e r , h o w e v e r , i s h u n g a r i a n . h i s f a m i l y i m m i g r a t e d t o t h e c a n a d i a n p r a i r i e s i n t h e late 's after h i s f a t h e r d e c i d e d t h a t t h e p o l i t i c s o f t h e i r h o m e l a n d w a s c h a n g i n g . r e g i n a p r o v i d e d a s c r u f f y , t o u g h existence i n t h e 's, w h a t w i t h t h e g h e t t o i z e d l i v i n g o f s c o r e s o f e a s t e r n e u r o p e a n f a m i l i e s s t r u g g l i n g t o s u r v i v e t h e c r a s h o f t h e e c o n o m y as w e l l as t h e b l i s t e r i n g h o t , d r o u g h t r i d d e n s u m m e r s a n d d e e p - f r e e z e w i n t e r s . u n c l e f r a n k t a u g h t m y d a d t h e r u d i m e n t s a n d r e p e r t o i r e o f v i o l i n p l a y i n g . t h e y o u n g b o y w a s a l s o e n r o l l e d i n a m a n d o l i n o r c h e s t r a , w h e r e , f o r cents a m o n t h , y o u w e r e l o a n e d a m a n d o l i n a n d r e c e i v e d a w e e k l y l e s s o n a l o n g w i t h r e h e a r s a l s o f t h e l a r g e e n s e m b l e . a l l t h r o u g h h i g h s c h o o l , m y d a d a n d h i s b a n d p l a y e d m a n y styles o f p o p u l a r a n d e t h n i c m u s i c f o r a l l t y p e s o f c o m m u n i t y c e l e b r a t i o n s , w e d d i n g s , a n d d a n c e s . c a n a d a ' s e n t r y i n t o w o r l d w a r ii, h o w e v e r , t o o k h i m f a r a w a y f r o m h i s v i o l i n . a f t h e w a r ' s e n d h e r e t u r n e d a c h a n g e d m a n w h o h a d m a r r i e d a n d b r o u g h t h i s e n g l i s h b r i d e b a c k t o c a n a d a . a f t e r h i s r e t u r n , h e d i d n o t p i c k u p t h e v i o l i n f o r f o r t y y e a r s . n o w , w i t h t h e p u r c h a s e o f t h e h i - f i , m y d a d h a d a n o p p o r t u n i t y t o r e - v i s i t t o m u s i c o f h i s y o u t h . o n m a n y a n e v e n i n g , w h e n h e a r r i v e d h o m e f r o m w o r k , m y d a d w o u l d l o a d u p o u r m a g n i f i c e n t n e w r e c o r d p l a y e r w i t h w o n d e r f u l r e c o r d i n g s o f t h e m u s i c o f e a s t e r n e u r o p e . a s w e l l as p l a y i n g t h e w i l d g y p s y m u s i c o f h u n g a r y , h e w o u l d p l a y r u s s i a n gypsy, r o m a n i a n g y p s y a n d j e w i s h f o l k m u s i c . i w i l l n e v e r forget t h e h u g e , i n c r e d i b l e s o u n d t h a t o u r n e w h i - f i c o u l d generate. it w a s s i m p l y o v e r w h e l m i n g . n o t h i n g h a d e v e r s o u n d e d so g o o d , so l o u d a n d s o t h u n d e r o u s . its t o n a l p o s s i b i l i t i e s s e e m e d e n d l e s s . d a d w o u l d s i m p l y c r a n k u p t h e b a s s a n d it w a s as i f t h e b a s s p l a y e r h i m s e l f h a d j u s t e n t e r e d t h e r o o m ! it w a s t h i s h u g e s o u n d , c o m b i n e d w i t h d a d ' s c h o i c e o f p l a y i n g g y p s y m u s i c , t h a t m a d e m e l o s e t o t a l c o n t r o l . t h e p a s s i o n a t e v i o l i n p l a y i n g f l o o d e d t h e r o o m w i t h h e a v y e m o t i o n . it s e e m e d t h a t e v e r y s o n g s t a r t e d w i t h a s l o w , h e a r t - w r e n c h i n g o p e n i n g . t h i s w a s f o l l o w e d b y a g e n t l e a c c o m p a n i m e n t o f m o d e r a t e t e m p o . t h e n , t h e b a n d w o u l d s u d d e n l y start t o a c c e l e r a t e , p l a y i n g faster a n d f a s t e r u n t i l t h e m e l o d y a n d t h e b a n d w o u l d p e a k at t h e c l i m a x a n d c r a s h t o a m o s t s t i r r i n g a n d e x u b e r a n t e n d i n g . s o r r o w , r e v o l u t i o n , a n d t r i u m p h a n t r e s o l u t i o n — t h e h e r o i c e u r o p e a n w a y ! m y e m o t i o n s a n d b o d y w e r e k i d n a p p e d a n d f o r c e d t o r i d e t h i s s o n i c r o l l e r coaster. it w a s as i f t h e m u s i c c o u l d s o m e h o w c h a r g e u p m y w h o l e s y s t e m . p e r h a p s w e c o u l d b l a m e it o n m y g e n e t i c s , b u t , f o r w h a t e v e r r e a s o n , t h i s m u s i c f o u n d its w a y t o t h e v e r y core o f m y b e i n g . it j u s t a b o u t d r o v e m e c r a z y . i w o u l d s l o w l y s w a y t o t h e m o u r n f u l o p e n i n g t h e m e , (there is a l w a y s s o r r o w i n a n y g y p s y p i e c e o f m e r i t ) , a n d t h e n , u n c o n t r o l l a b l y , i w o u l d h a v e t o d a n c e as t h e t e m p o a c c e l e r a t e d . i w a s t r a n s f o r m e d i n t o a m a r i o n e t t e a n d t h e m u s i c w a s t h e m a s t e r p u p p e t e e r . a s t h e b a n d w o u l d r o c k e t t o a " p r e s t o " t e m p o i w o u l d b e f o r c e d t o r u n , n o n - s t o p , i n c i r c l e s t h r o u g h t h e r o o m s o f t h e h o u s e . t h i s c r a z y p u p p e t d a n c e w o u l d c o n t i n u e u n t i l t h e t r i u m p h a n t f i n i s h h a d m e c o l l a p s i n g i n t o a c h a i r , b r e a t h l e s s a n d s w e a t i n g p r o f u s e l y . t h i s e x p l o s i v e release o f k i n e t i c p a s s i o n w a s c o n s i s t e n t l y d r a w n f r o m m e b y t h e h i - f i w i t h its gypsy m u s i c . o t h e r t y p e s o f m u s i c n e v e r t o o k a h o l d o f m e i n t h e s a m e w a y , u n t i l t h e b e a t l e s b r o k e , m a n y y e a r s l a t e r . t h e h i - f i s t a y e d w i t h t h e f a m i l y f o r y e a r s , f a i t h f u l l y s p i n n i n g its m u s i c a l s p e l l s u n t i l m y a g i n g p a r e n t s d o w n s i z e d t o a n a p a r t m e n t . a l t h o u g h it h a d l o n g b e c o m e o b s o l e t e w i t h t h e i n t r o d u c t i o n a n d r e f i n e m e n t o f stereo s o u n d , n e i t h e r m y b r o t h e r , n o r m y s e l f w a n t e d t o let go o f t h e m a g i c m a c h i n e . w h e n it w a s t i m e t o j u n k t h e m a c h i n e , i r e m o v e d t h e t o p f r o m its h i n g e s a n d u s e d it t o b u i l d a b a f f l e f o r m y a m p l i f i e r . i n t h i s w a y i l i k e t o t h i n k t h a t i h a v e a l i t t l e b i t o f t h e m a g i c w i t h m e . c u r i o u s l y , m y p a r e n t s n e v e r , ever b r e a t h e d a w o r d t o m e a b o u t t h i s e x o r c i s m o f f e e l i n g s a n d a d r e n a l , w h i c h c o n t i n u e d , u n a b a t e d f o r y e a r s . i, i n t u r n , n e v e r t o l d t h e m o f h o w i n v o l u n t a r y t h e p r o c e s s w a s . i o f t e n w o n d e r i f m y b e c o m i n g a p r o f e s s i o n a l m u s i c i a n a n d a m u s i c t e a c h e r m a y b e i n p a r t d u e t o t h e s t r o n g s o n i c v o o d o o t h a t t h e h i - f i cast w i t h e v e r y n u a n c e o f t h e g y p s y ' s b o w . lessons from the piano it h a s b e e n six w e e k s n o w , s i n c e e m i l y s t a r t e d g r a d e a n d g r o u p p i a n o l e s s o n s . r o s e m a r y , m y w i f e , u s u a l l y m e e t s e m i l y after s c h o o l . w h a t w i t h f u l l t i m e t e a c h i n g a n d m y c o u r s e at u b c , i c a n o n l y p i c k - u p m y d a u g h t e r o n w e d n e s d a y s . o n t h e s e n i g h t s , h e r m o m u s u a l l y stays late at w o r k a n d t h e n a t t e n d s a w o r k o u t o r d a n c e c l a s s , so it h a s c o m e to p a s s t h a t w e d n e s d a y s p r o v i d e a s p e c i a l t i m e t o g e t h e r f o r e m i l y a n d i. e m i l y h a s s p e l l i n g a n d p i a n o h o m e w o r k a l m o s t e v e r y n i g h t . i n o r d e r t o p r o v i d e a b r e a k i n t h e r o u t i n e a n d t o h a v e m o r e f u n i n t h e l e a r n i n g , i ask e m i l y t e a c h m e w h a t she h a s l e a r n e d o n t h e p i a n o . t h i s t w i s t p r o v i d e s e m i l y a n o p p o r t u n i t y t o v e r b a l i z e h e r l e a r n i n g a n d c r i t i c a l l y o b s e r v e m y r e a c t i o n a n d u n d e r s t a n d i n g o f it. it a l s o a l l o w s h e r a c h a n c e t o e x p e r i e n c e t h e p o w e r o f t e l l i n g s o m e o n e w h a t t o d o , t h e r e b y b r e a k i n g t h e m o n o t o n y o f f o l l o w i n g r u l e s - s o m e t h i n g t h a t m y y e a r o l d h a s t o d o m o s t o f t h e d a y . s o f a r , i've b e e n a b l e t o k e e p u p w i t h t h e c u r r i c u l u m p r o v i d e d t h r o u g h t h e l e s s o n s . e m i l y h a s p r o v e d t o b e a g o o d t e a c h e r , w i t h a k e e n eye f o r t e c h n i q u e . " k e e p a l l y o u r l i n g e r s o n t h e k e y s — e v e n y o u r t h u m b ! " s h e catches m e w h e n i s l a c k . s h e t e a c h e s m e a b o u t f i r e m a n f r e d a n d t h e d i n o s a u r d e n . w e t a k e t u r n s p l a y i n g f a n d d o n t h e p i a n o . a t t h e e n d o f t h e l e s s o n w e close u p o u r b o o k s . o u r n e x t a c t i v i t y w i l l b e a s p e l l i n g r e v i e w o f t h e w o r d s o n t h e f r i d a y d i c t a t i o n . " w h a t does t h i s s p e l l ? " e m i l y h a s n o t i c e d t h e p i a n o m a k e r ' s n a m e o n t h e i n s t r u m e n t . "it says b a l d w i n . b a l d w i n is t h e n a m e o f t h e c o m p a n y t h a t m a d e t h i s p i a n o . y o u c o u l d t h i n k o f t h i s n a m e as a c o m p o u n d w o r d m a d e o f t w o s m a l l e r w o r d s - b a l d a n d w i n , " i a n s w e r . e m i l y beats m e u p s t a i r s t o t h e k i t c h e n t a b l e w h e r e w e p r a c t i c e o u r f r e n c h s p e l l i n g . i l i n g e r b e h i n d , c l e a n i n g u p . e m i l y h a s j u s t s t a r t e d t o c o m p o s e a n d w r i t e s h o r t s e n t e n c e s . s h e w i l l d o t h i s f o r f u n a n d t o get a v e r b a l s t r o k e f r o m h e r p r o u d f a t h e r . t o n i g h t she n e a t l y p r i n t s o u t a t h r e e - w o r d s e n t e n c e f o r m y p r a i s e a n d d e l i g h t . it e v e n i n c l u d e d a n e w w o r d . " h e r e , d a d . " i t o o k the p a p e r f r o m h e r h a n d t o r e a d t h e w o r d s " d a d is b a l d . " " t h a n k y o u so m u c h , " i s a i d , t r y i n g t o k e e p m y face i n a n e u t r a l state o f r e a c t i o n . " w e c e r t a i n l y h a d i n t e r e s t i n g l e s s o n f r o m t h e p i a n o t o n i g h t . " e m i l y s m i l e d , sunday at the art gallery it's s u n d a y a n d o u r l i t t l e h o u s e is f i l l e d w i t h t h e s o u n d s o f y o u n g v o i c e s . e m i l y h a s h a d h e r f r i e n d , t a m a r a , stay f o r a " s l e e p - o v e r . " t a m a r a is t a l l f o r h e r s e v e n y e a r s . h e r f a i r s k i n a n d f r e c k l e s c o m p l i m e n t h e r l o n g , soft, c o r n s i l k h a i r . a p l a c i d d e m e a n o r b e l i e s t h e e n e r g e t i c r a s c a l u n d e r n e a t h . t a m a r a n e v e r s p o k e f o r t h e f i r s t t w o y e a r s o f h e r l i f e - s h e j u s t o b s e r v e d . b u t n o w t h e r e is n o s t o p p i n g h e r , i n e i t h e r e n g l i s h o r f r e n c h . e m i l y w o u l d l o v e it i f t a m a r a w e r e h e r s i s t e r . t h e g i r l s h a d s t a y e d u p late l a s t n i g h t i n g i d d y r e v e l r y . r o s e a n d i h a d h o p e d t h a t t h e y w o u l d s l e e p i n . n o t a c h a n c e ! b y : , t h e y w e r e a l r e a d y d e e p l y at w o r k i n t h e i r p l a y . i a d m i r e h o w c h i l d r e n c a n get t o c l o s e t o e a c h o t h e r i n s u c h a s h o r t t i m e . m y m o m w o u l d d e s c r i b e t h e m as b e i n g " t h i c k as t h i e v e s " f o r it is as i f t h e i r l i v e s d e p e n d o n t h e i r m u t u a l t r u s t t o p u l l o f t h e i r f a n t a s y c o n s t r u c t s a n d c o n s p i r a c i e s o f l i t t l e g i r l a n a r c h y . i t h i n k a b o u t h o w l o n g it t a k e s m e t o f o r m f r i e n d s h i p s n o w . m i d d l e - a g e d p e o p l e a r e , i n g e n e r a l , so c a u t i o u s a n d set. it t a k e s a n i n v e s t m e n t o f t i m e t o p e e l o f f t h e l a y e r s o f p r o t e c t i o n t o get t o t h e i r h e a r t s , w h e r e a s t h e g i r l s i m m e d i a t e l y c o n n e c t . a n d the e x t e n d e d t i m e o f t h i s v i s i t h a s a l l o w e d t h e i r g a m e p l a y i n g t o s p r e a d f r o m t h e d o w n s t a i r s p l a y r o o m t o e m i l y ' s b e d r o o m a n d n o w t o t h e u p s t a i r s l i v i n g r o o m . in fact, i n d o o r tents h a v e b e e n f o i s t e d n e x t t o m y f a v o r i t e c h a i r . l u c y , o u r l i t t l e d o g , searches f o r a b i t o f s o f a t o c u r l u p o n . it h a s b e e n c o n v e r t e d t o a t r e n d y a p a r t m e n t loft f o r a g r o u p o f s t u f f e d t e d d y b e a r s t h a t are w e a r i n g s u n g l a s s e s . t h e t e m p t a t i o n f o r l u c y is u n b e a r a b l e . s m a l l t o y s , l i k e t h e p o l l y p o c k e t c o l l e c t i o n are w i t h i n r e a c h . l u c y l o v e s t o g n a w t h e feet o f f t h e s e l i t t l e d o l l s — t o t h e abject h o r r o r o f e m i l y , w h o s e i m a g i n a t i o n h a s b r e a t h e d l i f e i n t o these s t y l i z e d p o l y m e r s . t h e s m e l l o f f r e n c h toast a n d coffee p u l l a l l o f u s i n t o t h e k i t c h e n . it is m a n g o s e a s o n i n l a n d s f a r a w a y a n d r o s e h a s b o u g h t a case f o r s i x d o l l a r s . w e feast o n m a n g o a n d s t r a w b e r r i e s b e f o r e t h e n e w l y f o u n d r e c i p e f o r f r e n c h t o a s t . r o s e is t r y i n g t o e m u l a t e a r e c i p e t h a t t a m a r a ' s m o m m a k e s f o r h e r . t a m a r a a s k s f o r m o r e . a f t e r b r e a k f a s t , w e a n n o u n c e o u r i n t e n t i o n s t o v i s i t t h e art g a l l e r y w i t h t h e t w o g i r l s . t h e g i r l s c o u n t e r w i t h t h e i r d i s a p p o i n t m e n t t h a t t h e i r g a m e w i l l h a v e t o s t o p . ( a t t h i s p o i n t , t h e g i r l s are r e a d y t o p l a y t h e g a m e f o r e v e r a n d f o r t a m a r a t o p e r m a n e n t l y m o v e i n t o f a c i l i t a t e t h i s . ) t h e y p l e a d f o r t h e g a m e t o c o n t i n u e . w e c o u n t e r b y e x p l a i n i n g t h e s p e c i a l f e a t u r e s o f w h a t t h e a r t g a l l e r y m a r k e t e r s d e s c r i b e as " f a m i l y s u n d a y , " a o n c e a m o n t h event w h e r e t h e g a l l e r y b e c o m e s a " h a n d s - o n " e x p e r i e n c e f o r its y o u n g e r v i s i t o r s . a n d b e s i d e s , w e e x p l a i n , t h e a r t g a l l e r y is o n t h e w a y b a c k to t a m a r a ' s h o m e a n d h e r p a r e n t s are h o p i n g t o see h e r a g a i n . o n c e t h e g i r l s g r o k t h e r e a l i t y t h a t t h e v i s i t h a s a n e n d i n g , w e a l l w o r k at t h e t e d i o u s p r o c e s s o f c l e a n i n g u p a n d g e t t i n g i n t o t h e c a r . t h e c a r r i d e is n o n - d e s c r i p t as w e t r a v e l t o t h e m u s i c a l m u s i n g s o f c h a r l o t t e d i a m o n d w e f i n d t h e p a r k a d e l o c a t e d u n d e r t h e o l d e a t o n ' s b u i l d i n g . t h e b r i g h t s u n s h i n e f a i l s t o o v e r c o m e t h e c o l d c h i l l o f a f e b r u a r y d a y i n v a n c o u v e r . f o r t u n a t e l y , t h e o l d l a w c o u r t s b u i l d i n g , w h i c h n o w h o u s e s t h e art g a l l e r y is o n l y a f e w s h o r t steps away. t h e a r t g a l l e r y is w a r m a n d i n v i t i n g a n d t o t a l l y p r e p a r e d f o r u s . t h e f i r s t f l o o r h a s a s p e c i a l s h o w o n p h o t o g r a p h y . t h e o l d p h o t o s h a v e b e e n f r a m e d a n d h u n g l i k e p i c t u r e s . s o m e p h o t o s are so o l d a n d f r a g i l e t h a t t h e y ar e c o v e r e d w i t h a l i g h t - b l o c k i n g f a b r i c t h a t y o u lift f o r v i e w i n g . it is a w i n d o w t o t h e p a s t - c s a a p p r o v e d t i m e - t r a v e l . o n e p a r t o f t h e e x h i b i t s h o w e d a series o f t h c e n t u r y p h o t o s o f a m o o s e h u n t . a s w e l o o k e d c l o s e r , w e r e a l i z e d t h a t a l l t h e p i c t u r e s i n t h i s s e r i e s w r ere s t a g e d . l i k e a m o v i e set, these e a r l y p h o t o g r a p h e r s h a d c r e a t e d p h o n y b a c k d r o p s t o create t h e i l l u s i o n o f b e i n g o u t i n t h e w i l d s o f c a n a d a . t h e s e c o n t r o l l e d s i t u a t i o n s a l l o w e d t h e p h o t o g r a p h e r s t o u s e t h e i r b u l k y a n d s l o w c a m e r a s w i t h o u t t h e w o r r y i n g a b o u t c h a n g e s i n l i g h t i n g o r w e a t h e r . a p p a r e n t l y , t h i s series a n d o t h e r s l i k e it w e r e u s e d i n b r i t i s h m a g a z i n e s t o i n f o r m b r i t i s h r e a d e r s o f l i f e i n t h e c o l o n i e s . a n art g a l l e r y v o l u n t e e r q u i e t l y w a l k s u p . s h e a s k s , " w o u l d t h e g i r l s l i k e t o m a k e o n e ? " t h e g a l l e r y h a s c r e a t e d a l i t t l e a r e a w h e r e e a c h c h i l d c a n c o n s t r u c t a s m a l l m o d e l o f a p h o t o s h o o t . t h e c h i l d p i c k s a m i n i a t u r e b a c k d r o p a n d f i g u r i n e s f o r t h e t i n y scene. e a c h scene is d e c o r a t e d w i t h t i n y trees a n d t o o l s . it r e m i n d s m e o f t h e scenes t h a t i u s e d t o c o n s t r u c t as a b o y w i t h g r a n t e m m s ' m i n i a t u r e r a i l w a y . t h e g i r l s w o r k f u r i o u s l y at t h e i r c o m p o s i t i o n s . it h a s t o b e j u s t r i g h t , f o r o n c e it is c o n s t r u c t e d , o n e p o l a r o i d s n a p s h o t w i l l b e t a k e n as a s o u v e n i r . t h i s l e a r n i n g / p l a y a l l o w s t h e g i r l s t o e x p e r i e n c e w h a t w e n t i n t o these p i c t u r e s w h i l e r o s e a n d i t a k e t u r n s v i e w i n g h u n d r e d s o f m a g n i f i c e n t p i c t u r e s . i l o v e t h e s t o r i e s t h a t t h e p i c t u r e s t e l l . t h e r e are s o m e w o n d e r f u l p o r t r a i t s o f v a r i o u s c h a r a c t e r s f r o m t h e c a n a d i a n past. g r e a t p o r t r a i t p h o t o s s e e m t o s p i l l o v e r w i t h t h e a t t i t u d e a n d v a l u e s o f t h e p a r t i c i p a n t s . t h e r e v e l a t o r y n a t u r e o f t h e s e p h o t o s r e m i n d s m e o f w h e n , as a y o u n g m a n i w e n t t o t a k e a p i c t u r e o f a f a r m l a b o r e r i n m o r o c c o . h e s t o p p e d m e b e f o r e i c o u l d s n a p a n d t o l d m e t h a t h e d i d n o t w i s h t o l o s e h i s s o u l t o t h e c a m e r a . n o w , m a n y y e a r s l a t e r , i c o n c u r w i t h h i m . if a p h o t o g r a p h e r h a s t h e t a l e n t t o w a i t u n t i l t h e r i g h t m o m e n t , it d o e s s e e m p o s s i b l e t o c a p t u r e m o r e t h a n t h e r e f l e c t i o n o f l i g h t o f a n i n d i v i d u a l . i l o v e t h e " t r u t h " t h a t i f i n d l o o k i n g i n t o t h e eyes o f ' " u n m a s k e d " s u b j e c t s . i n a n o t h e r r o o m o f p h o t o s , l a m i n t r i g u e d a n d d e l i g h t e d t o t r a v e l b a c k t o a m e r i c a i n t h e ' s a n d i n d i a i n t h e late t h c e n t u r y . t h e p i c t u r e s o f west coast f i r s t n a t i o n s p e o p l e s f r o m t h e t u r n o f t h e t h c e n t u r y m a k e m e r u n b a c k t o r o s e t o t e l l h e r a b o u t s o m e p o r t r a i t s o f n a t i v e w o m e n . b u t t h e r e is n o t i m e t o s h o w h e r . e m i l y a n d t a m a r a h a v e b o t h c o m p l e t e d t h e i r m i n i a t u r e p h o t o sets a n d a n art g a l l e r y v o l u n t e e r is t a k i n g a p o l a r o i d o f e a c h c r e a t i o n . e a c h g i r l w a t c h e s t h e m a g i c o f t h e i n s t a n t p h o t o as it c h a n g e s f r o m a r e d d i s h h a z e t o a c r y s t a l c l e a r p i c t u r e i n a f e w m i n u t e s . w i l l s o m e o n e l o o k at these p i c t u r e s w i t h c u r i o s i t y s o m e t i m e i n t h e f u t u r e ? l o o k i n g f o r m o r e a d v e n t u r e , t h e f o u r o f u s e n d u p o n t h e t o p f l o o r o f t h e g a l l e r y . t h i s f l o o r i s d e v o t e d t o t h e w o r k o f e m i l y c a r r . i a m s o p l e a s e d b e c a u s e i r e a l l y h a v e n e v e r t a k e n a g o o d l o o k at h e r w o r k . s o o f t e n , w e m i s s s o m e o f t h e f i n e s t w o r k a v a i l a b l e , j u s t b e c a u s e it is l o c a l . i n a w o r l d o f i n t e n s e m a r k e t i n g , s o m e o f u s h a v e d e v e l o p e d b l i n d e r s a n d f i l t e r s t o w o r k s t h a t are n o t p r o m o t e d i n c e r t a i n w a y s . a s w e a r r i v e b y e s c a l a t o r at t h e t o p f l o o r , w e are g r e e t e d w i t h a n o v e r s i z e d p i c t u r e o f t h e a r t i s t i n h e r l a t e r y e a r s . e m i l y c a r r p r o j e c t s t h e essence o f a s h a m a n o r a b u d d h i s t p r i e s t . h e r eyes are d e e p a n d i n d e p e n d e n t a n d s h i n n i n g w i t h e n e r g y f r o m b o t h t h e p r e s e n t a n d t h e i n f i n i t e . a s w e e n t e r t h e p r e s e n t a t i o n a r e a , t h e s e w o r d s are w r i t t e n o n t h e w a l l : "...enter i n t o t h e l i f e o f t r e e s , k n o w y o u r r e l a t i o n s h i p a n d u n d e r s t a n d t h e i r l a n g u a g e , u n s p o k e n , u n w r i t t e n t a l k " ( c a r r , , p. ). s e e i n g h e r w o r k , y o u k n o w t h a t e m i l y c a r r d i d i n d e e d b e c o m e p r o f o u n d l y at o n e w i t h t h e f o r e s t . i w a s p u l l e d i n t o t h e trees a n d t h e c a n o p i e s o f g r e e n . it m a k e s m e reflect o n p e t e r e l b o w ' s " t h e o r y o f v o i c e " i n l i t e r a r y w r i t i n g ( e l b o w ). e l b o w b e l i e v e s t h a t a w r i t e r m u s t b e t o t a l l y " i n " a n d " o f a n y e x p e r i e n c e i n o r d e r t o w r i t e p o w e r f u l l y a n d c o n v i n c i n g l y a b o u t it. i f i n d m o r e w r i t i n g o n t h e w a l l . " p e o p l e s a i d , " e x p l a i n t h e p i c t u r e s . " b u t h o w c a n o n e e x p l a i n s p i r i t ? " ( c a r r , , p. ) w h i l e these w o r d s t h r o w m e i n t o yet a d e e p e r l e v e l , i see t h a t r o s e h a s o u r e m i l y a n d t a m a r a w o r k i n g h a r d i n t h e h a n d s - o n a r e a . t h e i r c h a l l e n g e is f i r s t t o f i n d , w i t h i n t h e e m i l y c a r r w o r k s , a l a n d s c a p e w i t h s w i r l i n g s k i e s ; t h e n a scene w h e r e trees t h a t create a p a t h a n d f i n a l l y t o d i s c o v e r close u p a n d f a r a w a y v i e w s . t h e n t h e y are a s k e d t o s k e t c h a f a v o r i t e c a r r l a n d s c a p e . t h i s s k e t c h is m o r p h e d i n t o a p a s t e l d r a w i n g t h a t t h e g a l l e r y l a m i n a t e s . e m i l y a n d t a m a r a n o w h a v e t h e r e o w n d i n n e r p l a c e m a t s , a l a c a r r . w e are n o w r u n n i n g o u t o f t i m e . t h r o u g h t h e p e d a g o g i c a l w i s d o m o f t h e art g a l l e r y , t a m a r a a n d e m i l y h a v e b e e n i n t r o d u c e d t o t h e w o r l d o f p h o t o g r a p h i c art a n d t h e s u b l i m e a r t i s t r y o f e m i l y c a r r . r o s e a n d i are b o t h e n e r g i z e d a n d i n s p i r e d . i n t h e c a r a g a i n , t h e l i t t l e g i r l s m u n c h q u i e t l y o n g o o d i e s f o r t h e p i c n i c t h a t w e r a n o u t o f t i m e f o r . w e d r o p t a m a r a off a n d say g o o d b y e . b o t h g i r l s c r y a b i t . it is h a r d t o b r e a k t h e b o n d — t w o v o i c e s as o n e . w e a t t e m p t t o m a k e e m i l y feel b e t t e r b y r e m i n d i n g h e r t h a t she w i l l b e s e e i n g t a m a r a i n t w o w e e k s f o r a t r i p t o t h e b a l l e t . t h e r e is n o c o n s o l i n g h e r w i t h l o g i c . i reflect t h a t e m i l y a l w a y s w r e s t l e s w i t h t r a n s i t i o n s f r o m o n e a c t i v i t y t o a n o t h e r . it s e e m s t h a t w e are a l w a y s i n t e r r u p t i n g h e r . i feel c o m p a s s i o n f o r h e r . it is s u c h a t o u g h l e s s o n . i t h i n k a b o u t o u r f r i e n d s i n a b b o t s f o r d a n d t h e i r n e w b a n n e r t h a t is m o u n t e d o n a d o o r i n t h e i r h o u s e . it s i m p l y a n d p r o f o u n d l y r e a d s : " l e a r n t o l i v e ; l e a r n t o l o v e ; l e a r n t o let g o . " . what do i create? high wire guitar p u t t i n g y o u r f o o t o u t y o u feel t h e w i r e b e f o r e y o u w a l k o n w a t e r a n d t h o u g h y o u are v e r y h i g h i n t h e s t r a t o s p h e r e , t h e r e is n o n e t a n d c e r t a i n l y n o t u r n i n g b a c k , o n l y t u r n i n g i n w a r d as y o u c o m p l e t e l y r e l a x , o h m m a n i p a d m e h u m , a n d u n c o n s c i o u s l y a l i g n a n d p o i s e y o u r m i n d , b o d y a n d s o u l i n a b s o l u t e c o n c e n t r a t i o n t o let o u t y o u r v o i c e f r o m t h e deepest p i t o f y o u r s p i r i t a s o n l y t h e w a y y o u c a n w h i l e t h e rest o f t h e u n i v e r s e l o o k s o v e r y o u r s h o u l d e r s a n d f l o a t s y o u u p i n a s e a o f t e a r d r o p s f r o m t h e b u d d h a o f c o m p a s s i o n a n d i n t h e b l i s t e r i n g w h i r l i n g o f t h e s p h e r e s y o u t u n e i n t o its t a u t n e s s , its f r e q u e n c y a n d t h i c k n e s s u n t i l t h e r e is n o s e p a r a t i o n t h r o u g h s t o r m a n d s t i l l you are... y o u r e x t e n s i o n a n d if a l l m a n n e r o f t h i n g s h a v e l o c k e d t h e m s e l v e s i n t o t h e m o s t s a c r e d p a t t e r n w h e n t h e s u n m a k e s l o v e t o t h e m o o n a n d t h e t i d e s r o l l b a c k w a r d t o r e v e a l a n c i e n t s h i p w r e c k s a n d c i t i e s o f so l o n g ago, yet y o u k n o w a n d t h e h o w l o f t h e w o l f b e c o m e s a n a r i a o f u n s p e a k a b l e b e a u t y . . . t h e n y o u are r e a d y on music class after a sleepless night preamble: teaching beginners' band is a daunting task, even at the best of times. i find that it requires enormous amounts of patience and fast thinking to make it a success. in , after a decade of successful teaching, i now encountered a new set of challenges to my career with the arrival of a baby girl. emily provided us with immeasurable happiness and fulfillment. emily was not able, however, to sleep through the night. she would call out loudly to us for food or attention. friends told us to be happy about this, knowing that the frequent calls probably meant that emily had a very active brain. now i know that many dads can sleep through this kind of sound, but i found that every time emily called out, my adrenal glands would fire and my heart would race, leaving me totally awake. after months of this, both rose and i were wrecks. it started to affect my work. my patience dwindled, as did my energy levels. in this state of exhaustion, i found that the first five minutes of class, when the children are warming up, to be the most challenging. here is a light-hearted poem on the subject of losing your mind before the class has even started. on music class after a sleepless night l a z y s o u n d s , c r a z y s o u n d s , d e e p f r o m a b e d o f m o r n i n g s i l e n c e t h e y b l o o m in a l l shapes a n d s i z e s , s o u n d s o f b r a s s , s o u n d s e l e c t r i c , s o u n d s p a t h e t i c f r o m o l d reeds a n d m o l d y r e e d s a n d m i s - r e a d s o f m u s i c w i t h c a s e s b a n g i n g a n d m u s i c s t a n d s c l a n g i n g a n d y o u n g v o i c e s l a u g h i n g a n d a l l o f t h i s s p e a k i n g t o m e t h r o u g h a l l m a n n e r o f t o n g u e u n t i l . . . t h e g r o w l i n g , h o w l i n g , c r a s h i n g , a n d c l a s h i n g o f these f r a g m e n t s o f f r e q u e n c y a n d e m o t i o n i n t h i s l u m p y s o n i c m a s s h i t s its c r i t i c a l p o i n t o f n o r e t u r n a n d m o r p h s i n t o o n e h i d e o u s m u l t i - t e n d r i l l e d e n t i t y t h a t c o n t i n u e s t o e x p a n d a n d f e e d o f f b l a c k h o l e recesses u n t i l it s u d d e n l y l a s h e s o u t at m e , k n o c k i n g m e senseless w i t h u n b e a r a b l e d i s s o n a n c e a n d d e c i b e l s t h a t m o v e s t o d e s t a b i l i z e m y v e r y f r a m e o f c a l m a n d d e t a c h e d p r o f e s s i o n a l i s m (?) i s c r a m b l e t o p a d m y e a r s a n d g r a b m y b a t o n w h i l e i c a l l f o r t h e f o r c e a n d t h e g o d s o f r e a s o n . w a l k i n g o u t o f m y office i t a p t w i c e o n t h e m u s i c s t a n d , r a i s i n g m y h a n d w h i l e p r a y i n g t h a t t h e a l i e n i n m y r o o m w i l l h e a r m y c a l l a n d sense m y i n t e n t i o n a n d w i l l f a i l t o detect m y b l u f f a n d t h a t m y s h e e r m a g n i t u d e o f c o n v i c t i o n w i l l d i s s i p a t e t h i s e n t i t y b a c k t o a b e d o f s i l e n c e s o t h a t t h e seeds o f f o c u s , c o h e s i o n , g r a c e , a n d b e a u t y m a y t a k e r o o t a n d o n c e a g a i n r e t u r n u s t o a g a r d e n o f s y m p h o n y . how do you determine? preamble: this poem stems from a meeting with a ubc music professor with whom i was having lunch. i recall asking him about a master's program. all his responses indicated that i had asked an "illegitimate" question-one that i should already know the answer to. as i reflect on this incident, i know that i learned a lot. i leaimed that i would never want to speak like this to a student. on the back of my door in my office is written "act neutral on the obvious!" this is to remind me that, regardless of what i think of any question posed to me, i will endeavor to respond in a caring, supportive, and professional manner. after all, it took me years to return to ubc. how do you determine? h o w d o y o u d e t e r m i n e i n y o u r p o s i t i o n o f p o w e r if the question put to you is w o r t h y o f a n a n s w e r ? t h a t is t o say, a s s u m i n g t h a t t h e q u e s t i o n e r is c o m i n g f r o m a space o f c l e a n i n t e n t i o n , h o w d o y o u d i f f e r e n t i a t e b e t w e e n t h e i n s i g h t f u l a n d t h e p l o d d i n g h o w d o y o u (dare) d o . . . i t ? is t h e r e s o m e s p e c i a l h i e r a r c h y , a m a s l o w ' s l i s t t o w a r d s a p e a k e x p e r i e n c e q u e s t i o n t h a t a l l o w s a v a l u e t o b e a t t a c h e d as a n i m m e d i a t e p r e c u r s o r t o t h e a n s w e r ? h o w o f t e n d o y o u h e a r t h e p h r a s e " g r e a t q u e s t i o n " ? h o w is t h a t so? a r e q u e s t i o n s great t h a t h a v e n o a n s w e r ? o r a re t h e y s i m p l y great as segues i n a p e r f o r m a n c e ? l e t m e n o w a s k : h a v e y o u b e e n b e r e t e d after a s k i n g s o m e t h i n g t h a t s e e m e d t o t a l l y r e a s o n a b l e t o a s k ? i h a v e . " w e l l , obviously, y o u w o u l d d o t h i s , " h e b e l l o w e d , h i s t o n e a n d b o d y e n g l i s h d r i p p i n g w i t h d i s m i s s i v e s c o r n . a=b; b=c; therefore, a=c isn't it i n t r i g u i n g h o w t h e w o r d " o b v i o u s l y " cues the questioner t h a t t h e q u e s t i o n is d u m b a n d t h e r e f o r e , t h e q u e s t i o n e r m u s t "obviously" b e d u m b . a n d o f c o u r s e , t h i s p o o r l y c o n s t r u c t e d q u e s t i o n a n d its c r u s h i n g r e s p o n s e l e a d s m e t o m a n y m o r e s i l l y q u e s t i o n s a b o u t t h e r e s p o n d e r , l i k e : w h e r e i n h i s e x p e r i e n c e d i d h e a d a p t t h i s r e s p o n s e ? l e a r n e d o r i n v e n t e d , i a s k ? d i d h i s m o t h e r o r f a t h e r treat h i m l i k e t h i s ? o r i s it a w a y f o r h i m t o f e n d off h i s c o n c e r n s a b o u t h i s o w n i n s e c u r i t i e s i n g e n e r a l , o r p e r h a p s t o v e n t h i s o w n s p e c i f i c a n g e r t h a t w a s g e n e r a t e d f r o m a l l o w i n g h i m s e l f t o b e i n a p o s i t i o n w h e r e h e h a d t o d a n c e w i t h f o o l s s u c h as m e ? c e r t a i n l y , i felt s t u p i d f o r a s k i n g b e c a u s e i h a d f o o l i s h l y a s s u m e d . . . t h a t h e w a s w i s e r t h a n t h a t . this day in the life preamble: one of my continuing goals in this course is to learn how to address educational issues through a relaxed, yet informative narrative style that honors the importance of context in understanding of human issues. "this day in the life" reveals of a lot of my own values and philosophy on the art and science of teaching. the reflections and ruminations are strung together through the "scaffolding" of a typical day. the introduction gives the reader a general feeling of the start of a typical day. the middle of the narrative can be thought of as a reflection of past challenges of the profession. the final portion of the narrative moves into a reflection on the process of mentoring. it's t h e g r e e n - l a b e l e d k e y t h a t o p e n s t h i s d o o r . i h a d t o r e s o r t t o c o l o u r c o d i n g as every a r e a h a s its o w n key. a s i e n t e r t h e p i t c h - b l a c k r o o m , i t u n e i n t o i t s c h a r a c t e r . it feels a i r y , a m b i e n t a n d a l i t t l e c o o l t h i s m o r n i n g i n p a r t i c u l a r . i a m a l w a y s s t r u c k b y its eerie m a g n i t u d e . i n t h e i n t e n s e b l a c k n e s s , i edge t o w a r d t h e f i r s t s t e p . t h e r e are steps d o w n w a r d s i n t o t h i s c h a s m . o n c e i f i n d t h e f i r s t s t e p , i c o n f i d e n t l y d e s c e n d i n t o t h e p i t c h , l i s t e n i n g t o t h e r o o m e c h o b a c k m y soft steps as i f it w e r e g e n t l y c o m p l a i n i n g a b o u t b e i n g s t i r r e d so e a r l y i n t h e m o r n i n g . m o s t o f these m o r n i n g s i n t h e w i n t e r , i s l e e p w a l k d o w n t h e s t a i r s a n d t h r o u g h t h i s c a v e r n o u s b l a c k h o l e as i a l w a y s h a v e f o r t h e l a s t y e a r s . it is j u s t a n o t h e r r o u t i n e t h a t m y s u b c o n s c i o u s l e a d s m e t h r o u g h . i e v e n o n c e t o o k e m i l y t h r o u g h t h i s r o u t e . s h e w a s n o t i m p r e s s e d . b u t o n t h e o d d m o r n i n g , w h e n i a m w i t h m y s e l f , i m a r v e l at m y o w n f e a r l e s s n e s s / f o o l i s h n e s s at s h u f f l i n g b l i n d l y d o w n t h e s e b a n n i s t e r l e s s , o p e n s t a i r s , w h o s e p a i n t e d c o n c r e t e is e q u a l l y as u n f o r g i v i n g t o a f a l l as t h e i n v i s i b l e h a r d w o o d b l e a c h e r s t h a t n e i g h b o r t h e s t a i r s . i s t i l l h a v e t o c o u n t t h e steps t h o u g h , as t h e d r o p f r o m t h e s t step t o t h e f l o o r is a l m o s t t w i c e t h e s i z e - s o m e t h i n g t h a t w e w o u l d n a t u r a l l y a d j u s t t o w h e n w e h a v e s i g h t r e f e r e n c e s . o n c e o n t h e f l o o r , i leave t h e e n o r m o u s u n l i t g y m t o r e t u r n t o i t s e a r l y m o r n i n g s l e e p . s o o n it w i l l b e t e e m i n g w i t h a n a r m y o f b a s k e t b a l l j o n e s a n d i t s a i r w i l l b e d i s p l a c e d w i t h v o l l e y s o f r u b b e r b a l l s t h a t are a i m e d at i t s b a s k e t s . i exist b y a s i d e d o o r , a n d a m o n c e a g a i n o u t s i d e . a f t e r a f e w steps, i e n t e r a n o t h e r s m a l l e r , d a r k e d i f i c e . t h i s r o o m , m y c l a s s r o o m , h a s a f e w n o r t h e r n f a c i n g w i n d o w s t h a t a l l o w i n t h e p r e - d a w n s k y s o n a v i g a t i n g it is m u c h easier. w i t h o u t t u r n i n g o n t h e l i g h t s i u n l o c k m y office, t a k e off m y coat a n d s h o e s a n d p r o p u p m y p o s t u r e o n t h e s m a l l s o f a b y m y d e s k . o m m a n i p a d m e h u m . t h i s office is a t i n y w i n d o w e d r o o m o n t h e s o u t h e a s t c o r n e r o f t h e m u s i c p o r t a b l e . t h e p r e - d a w n l i g h t is so p o o r , t h a t i c a n h a r d l y d i s c e r n t h e c o n t e n t s o f t h e m a n y f r a m e d p h o t o s t h a t f e s t o o n t h e f o u r w a l l s . p i c t u r e s o f m y r o s e a n d e m i l y h a n g n e x t t o p i c t u r e s o f m y g u i t a r c o l l e c t i o n a n d p i c t u r e s o f f o r m e r s t u d e n t s , b a n d t r i p s a n d m u s i c a l p r o d u c t i o n s . t h e y a l l f e e d t h e r o o m e n e r g y a n d a t t i t u d e . e a c h o n e t e l l s a s t o r y i n m y l i f e . o f c o u r s e , t h e r e i s t h e o b l i g a t o r y c o m p u t e r o n m y l a r g e o a k d e s k . n e x t t o it are p i l e s o f m i s c e l l a n e o u s p a p e r s t o b e r e a d a n d t e n d e d t o . it i s m e s s y . i n m y n i n e t e e n y e a r s as a m u s i c t e a c h e r , i h a v e n e v e r h a d e v e n o n e d a y w h e r e i left t h e b u i l d i n g f e e l i n g t h a t i h a d a n s w e r e d a l l t h e v a r i o u s m a i l a n d w a s f u l l y p r e p p e d f o r t h e n e x t d a y . a f t e r so m a n y h o u r s , i j u s t l e a v e . i h a t e t h i s l e v e l o f m e d i o c r i t y , b u t i a m m o r e f e a r f u l o f l o s i n g m y l i f e t o t h i s j o b . i k n o w t h a t t e a c h i n g i s o n e o f t h e greatest a n d m o s t i m p o r t a n t j o b s o n e c o u l d d o . b u t t h r o u g h t h e l e n s o f a m o r e c y n i c a l c o n t e x t , i've w a t c h e d c a r e e r t e a c h e r s p o u r t h e i r s o u l i n t o t h i s l e a r n i n g c o m m u n i t y , o n l y t o f i n d t h e m s e l v e s as s t r a n g e r s t o t h e b u i l d i n g a n d its i n h a b i t a n t s w i t h i n a v e r y f e w y e a r s o f r e t i r e m e n t . t h e s y s t e m g o b b l e s t h e m u p , s q u e e z i n g o u t t h e j u i c e s o f t h e i r i n s p i r a t i o n a n d c o m p a s s i o n a n d t h e n s p i t s t h e m o u t a n d t u r n s a w a y . h a v i n g g i v e n t o o m u c h t o t h e i r j o b s , t h e s e p e o p l e h a v e n o t s t r u c t u r e d a l i f e o u t s i d e t h e s e h a l l s o f l e a r n i n g . t h e y u s u a l l y l e a v e u n d e r s t r a i n e d c i r c u m s t a n c e s a n d t h e y f u n c t i o n l i k e t h e u n d e a d o f t h e s y s t e m . t h e i r t i m e h a d c o m e b u t t h e y resist t h e c a l l . t h e y s e e m c o n d e m n e d t o a t w i l i g h t z o n e o f m e m o r i e s o f t e a c h i n g p a s t a n d u n c o m f o r t a b l e v i s i t s b a c k t o t h e s c h o o l . o f c o u r s e , t h e r e are m a n y t e a c h e r s w h o h a v e c o m p l e t e l y r e w a r d i n g c a r e e r s a n d m o v e o n t o t h e next a d v e n t u r e w i t h grace a n d ease a n d h u m o u r . b u t it i s t h e o d d f e w t h a t leave k i c k i n g a n d s c r e a m i n g t h a t h a u n t m y p s y c h e . o n a g o o d d a y , t h e - k i l o m e t e r d r i v e t o w o r k takes a b o u t m i n u t e s . it's a h a r d d r i v e a n d o f t e n i a m w i t n e s s t o a l o t o f i m p a t i e n c e a n d f r u s t r a t i o n as t h o u s a n d s o f cars o n m y r o u t e squeeze t h r o u g h a b r i d g e a n d a t i n y c o r r i d o r t o m o v e t o w o r k . i p u r p o s e f u l l y a r r i v e at w o r k b e f o r e : a m . t h i s gives m e t i m e t o u n w i n d f r o m t h e c o m m u t e p r i o r t o o p e n i n g t h e r o o m at : am. i n t h e d a r k n e s s , i sit o n m y office c o u c h a n d m e d i t a t e . t r a n s c e n d e n t a l m e d i t a t i o n , o r t m , is t h e s t y l e t h a t i p r a c t i s e . f o r a l m o s t y e a r s , i f a i t h f u l l y m e d i t a t e d t w i c e a d a y . w h e n e m i l y w a s b o r n i n , h a d t o p u t m y m e d i t a t i n g o n h o l d . i n , w a s a b l e t o s q u e e z e i n o n e m e d i t a t i o n a d a y a n d i've b e e n p r e t t y w e l l s t u c k at t h a t a m o u n t . i h a v e a l w a y s r e c e i v e d t r e m e n d o u s b e n e f i t f r o m t h i s e a s t e r n d i s c i p l i n e . i n fact, i w a s s h o c k e d at h o w m u c h t m h a d i n c r e a s e d m y w e l l - b e i n g , m y c r e a t i v i t y a n d m y a b i l i t y t o c o n c e n t r a t e . i n fact, s o o n after i s t a r t e d m e d i t a t i n g , i b e c a m e e v a n g e l i s t i c a n d t o l d a l l m y f r i e n d s t h a t t h e y h a d t o t r y it. t o m y c h a g r i n , n o n e o f m y f r i e n d s f o u n d m u c h v a l u e i n t h e p r a c t i c e a n d a l l s t o p p e d . i d o n ' t k n o w w h y i get so m u c h o u t o f t m b u t after t h e f a i l u r e o f m y f r i e n d s , i h a r d l y e v e r t e l l p e o p l e a b o u t it. i j u s t d o . a f t e r m i n u t e s o f t h e p r a c t i s e , i've left t h e d r i v e t o t a l l y b e h i n d . b e t w e e n : a n d : , t u r n o n t h e l i g h t s , u n l o c k t h e d o o r s a n d b r e w s o m e s t r o n g coffee. s t u d e n t s are i n v i t e d t o c o m e i n f o r e x t r a h e l p at t h i s t i m e . e x t r a h e l p s e s s i o n s a re s p e c i a l f o r t h e " p r o f e s s i o n a l " m e as t h e y are a t i m e w h e n i c a n r e a l l y d i g i n a n d w o r k o n e o n o n e w i t h o u t t h e p r e s s u r e o f t h e class d y n a m i c s . it is a t i m e w h e r e i c a n r e a l l y s u p p o r t a n d m a k e a d i f f e r e n c e . it is a l s o a t i m e w h e n i c a n i n c r e a s e m y r a p p o r t a n d u n d e r s t a n d i n g o f a s t u d e n t . t o d a y , m a r k , a g ra d e b e g i n n e r f r o m a n e a r b y f e e d e r s c h o o l , h a s b o o k e d i n f o r t h e h e l p s e s s i o n . it is n o t t h e f i r s t s e s s i o n . w e h a v e b e e n m e e t i n g q u i t e r e g u l a r l y as m a r k is r e a l l y s t r u g g l i n g . i h a v e l e a r n e d t h r o u g h t h e y e a r s t h a t c h i l d r e n o f t h e s a m e age c a n w i l d l y v a r y i n t h e i r d e v e l o p m e n t . m a r k i s y e a r s o l d , b u t r e a l l y h e ' s j u s t a l i t t l e b o y , w h o is t r y i n g h a r d t o stay a l i t t l e b o y . i n h i s r e g u l a r class h e is a l m o s t a l w a y s off-task s o c i a l i z i n g , m a k i n g f u n n y faces a n d p r e t e n d i n g t o p l a y h i s b a s s g u i t a r . n o w h e is s e r i o u s l y b e h i n d t h e rest o f t h e c l a s s . h e h a s r e l u c t a n t l y a g r e e d t o accept s o m e h e l p . h i s m o t h e r b r o u g h t h i m t o t h e f i r s t s e s s i o n . h e w a s n o t h a p p y . i w a t c h e d t h e d y n a m i c b e t w e e n t h e m o t h e r a n d t h e c h i l d . i s e n s e d t h a t t h e c h i l d is v e r y p o w e r f u l w i t h i n t h a t d y n a m i c . t o d a y is h i s f o u r t h v i s i t . w h e n i d o get h i m f o c u s e d , i f i n d t h a t h e c a n l e a r n t h e m a t e r i a l as w e l l as a n y o n e . w e m a k e s o m e p r o g r e s s a n d h e leaves h a p p y . i w o r r y a b o u t n e x t y e a r . h o w w i l l h e h a n d l e t h e r i g o r s o f h i g h s c h o o l l i f e ? w h e n i h e l p these s t u d e n t s , i a b a n d o n a n y e x p e c t a t i o n s o n h o w t h e l e a r n i n g s h o u l d p r o g r e s s . f o r e x a m p l e , i w i l l c o n t i n u e t o s l o w d o w n m y rate o f t e a c h i n g , e v e n t o p a i n f u l l y s l o w l e v e l s a n d s m a l l steps i f it is r e q u i r e d . i w i l l e n d l e s s l y r e p e a t p r o c e s s e s a n d r e - f r a m e t h e m u n t i l t h e c o n c e p t o r t e c h n i q u e is a b s o r b e d . t h e s t u d e n t ' s o w n a b i l i t y a n d needs d e t e r m i n e t h e rate o f l e a r n i n g a n d t h e a m o u n t o f l e a r n i n g . n o j u d g m e n t is p a s s e d o n t h e s t u d e n t . i t r y t o b e c a l m , easy a n d u p b e a t . a n y " o n e o n o n e " w o r k w i t h a s t u d e n t a l w a y s c h a n g e s t h e d y n a m i c s o f o u r r e l a t i o n s h i p . it i n v a r i a b l y i m p r o v e s it. o n m a n y l e v e l s , m y e a r l y m o r n i n g h e l p s e s s i o n is t h e m o s t f r u i t f u l t i m e o f t h e d a y . a t : , t h e w a r n i n g b e l l s o u n d s . i q u i c k l y r u n t o t h e w a s h r o o m , as t h e coffee w o n ' t let m e c a r r y o n u n t i l : . w e h a v e o n e h o u r a n d s e v e n t e e n m i n u t e classes. t o m e , t h i s l e n g t h o f class is t o o m u c h f o r grade a n d s t u d e n t s . m y f r u s t r a t i o n w i t h t h i s i s s u e gives m e cause t o reflect o n s o m e o f t h e i n t e r n a l p r o c e s s e s o f t h e t e a c h i n g p r o f e s s i o n . t h e i n t e r s e c t i o n o f p o l i t i c s w i t h t h e e d u c a t i o n o f c h i l d r e n w a s s o m e t h i n g t h a t i w a s n o t p r e p a r e d f o r as a n o v i c e t e a c h e r . t h e e d u c a t i o n a l s l o g a n o f o u r p r o v i n c i a l g o v e r n m e n t : " s t u d e n t s c o m e f i r s t , " e v o k e s m i x e d r e s p o n s e s w i t h i n m e . o n e o f t h e e d u c a t i o n a l t r u i s m s t h a t i h a v e d e v e l o p e d is t h a t scarcity evokes political activity. w h e n i e n t e r e d t h e p r o f e s s i o n i n t h e late ' s , i f o u n d t h a t t h e v a r i o u s d e p a r t m e n t s i n t h e s c h o o l w e r e b r o k e n i n t o s e p a r a t e c a m p s a n d e a c h a g g r e s s i v e l y s o u g h t f a v o r w i t h t h e a d m i n i s t r a t i o n i n o r d e r t o g a r n e r m o n i e s t o r u n t h e i r u n d e r - f u n d e d p r o g r a m s . w i t h t h i s i n c r e a s e d p o l i t i c i s m , i n o t i c e d a p r o p o r t i o n a t e decrease i n e t h i c a l a c t i o n . t h e t i m e t a b l e i s s u e w a s d r i v e n p r i m a r i l y b y t h r o u g h t h e n e e d s o f t h e s c i e n c e d e p a r t m e n t . w e h a d b e e n r u n n i n g / - m i n u t e b l o c k s a d a y . t h e s c h o o l at t h i s t i m e w a s n u m b e r i n t h e p r o v i n c e as d e t e r m i n e d b y t h e c o n s e r v a t i v e t h i n k - t a n k — t h e " f r a s e r i n s t i t u t e r e p o r t . " o n e w o u l d h a v e t o d e t e r m i n e t h a t , b y t h e m e a s u r e o f t h e f r a s e r i n s t i t u t e , w e w e r e d o i n g w e l l as a s c h o o l . t h e l a b t e a c h e r s w a n t e d m o r e t i m e t o c l e a n u p after l a b s . t h e i r d e p a r t m e n t h e a d h a d t h e e a r o f a l o t o f p e o p l e a n d s u c c e s s f u l l y s p e a r h e a d e d t h e c o m m i t t e e f o r c h a n g e . i a m s u r e it h a s b e e n g o o d f o r t h e l a b s e s s i o n s , b u t i feel t h a t t h e r e s u l t h a s b e e n d e v a s t a t i n g f o r the a n d y e a r o l d s at o u r s c h o o l . m y sense is t h a t it is j u s t t o o l o n g f o r t h e g r a d e ' s a n d ' s t o sit a n d f o c u s . children need to move. a t least, i n t h e o l d s y s t e m , t h e k i d s r o s e u p a n d m o v e d t o t h e i r n e x t class every m i n u t e s . f u r t h e r m o r e , these l o n g classes h a v e m o v e d l u n c h t i m e s t o . ! t h i s m a k e s t h i r d b l o c k classes u n f o c u s s e d a n d u n r u l y , as p e o p l e are m u c h t o o h u n g r y t o b e p r o d u c t i v e . b e s i d e s p e e r p o l i t i c s , i h a v e e n c o u n t e r e d a n d w o r k e d t h r o u g h a d m i n i s t r a t i v e p o l i t i c s a n d s c h o o l b o a r d p o l i t i c s . i n m y f i r s t y e a r s o f t e a c h i n g , i a c t i v e l y e n g a g e d i n r a p p o r t b u i l d i n g a c t i v i t i e s w i t h m y a d m i n i s t r a t o r s . i s o o n l e a r n e d t h a t m a n y a d m i n i s t r a t o r s h a d c o m e f r o m p e b a c k g r o u n d s . i f e a r e d t h a t i n a f i n a n c i a l s q u e e z e , a d m i n i s t r a t o r s m i g h t c u t p r o g r a m s t h a t t h e y w e r e u n f a m i l i a r w i t h . i n o r d e r t o i n c r e a s e t h e i r u n d e r s t a n d i n g o f t h e v a l u e o f t h e a r t s , i w o u l d f o r m a f t e r - s c h o o l r o c k b a n d s w i t h t h e a d m i n i s t r a t i o n . t h e p r i n c i p a l a n d v i c e - p r i n c i p a l s w o u l d s i n g o r p l a y w i t h m e . i n e v i t a b l y , w e w o u l d p e r f o r m f o r l a u g h s at s c h o o l d i s t r i c t f u n c t i o n s . i f o u n d t h i s strategy t o b e v e r y effective i n r a i s i n g t h e p e r c e i v e d v a l u e o f t h e arts. r i c k m y e r s , o n e o f m y s p o n s o r t e a c h e r s w h e n i w a s a s t u d e n t t e a c h e r , a l w a y s s a i d t h a t i f y o u w a n t t o get access t o p o w e r ( m o n e y ) , b e f r i e n d t h e p a c . r i c k c l e a r l y u n d e r s t o o d t h e r e l a t i o n s h i p b e t w e e n t h e p a r e n t s a n d t h e p r i n c i p a l s . i h a v e n o t a s k e d f o r m u c h f r o m o u r p a c , b u t w h e n i d i d , i l e a r n e d t h e w i s d o m i n r i c k ' s s t a t e m e n t . i n fact, a w o m a n o n t h e p a c n o t i c e d t h a t i h a d n o t b e e n a s k i n g f o r a n y m o n e y . m y r a t o l d m e t h a t it w a s t i m e f o r m y d e p a r t m e n t t o get s o m e f i n a n c i a l s u p p o r t . s h e a s k e d w h a t i h a d d r e a m t a b o u t h a v i n g i n m y b a n d r o o m . i t o l d h e r t h a t i w o u l d l o v e t o get a s m a l l r e c o r d i n g s t u d i o , as i b e l i e v e d t h a t m a k i n g a r e c o r d i n g o f t h e s t u d e n t s w o u l d generate m u c h l e a r n i n g f o r m y classes. w i t h i n t w o m o n t h s , i h a d a f u l l y e q u i p p e d d i g i t a l r e c o r d i n g s y s t e m , c o m p l e t e w i t h m i c r o p h o n e s , cables a n d p r o c e s s i n g e q u i p m e n t . t h e p a c h a d p u t a m a j o r p o r t i o n o f t h e i r f u n d - r a i s i n g m o n e y i n t o t h e project. t h i s w a s a n i n c r e d i b l e w i n f o r t h e m u s i c d e p a r t m e n t , b u t i f o u n d t h e n e x t p a r t o f t h e s t o r y m u c h m o r e c u r i o u s . i n e e d e d a s m a l l s o u n d b o o t h t o h o u s e t h e n e w r e c o r d i n g s y s t e m . m y p a c f r i e n d t o l d m e t h a t s u p e r i n t e n d e n t w o u l d h a v e f a c i l i t i e s c o n s t r u c t t h e b o o t h . i w a r n e d h e r t h a t it m i g h t b e d i f f i c u l t f o r m e t o get t h e b o a r d t o f i n a n c e t h i s . m y r a , h o w e v e r , d i d n o t see t h i s as a p r o b l e m . s h e s i m p l y w e n t t o t h e b o a r d office a n d t o l d t h e s u p e r i n t e n d e n t t o b u i l t it, as t h e p a c h a d a l r e a d y i n v e s t e d so m u c h m o n e y i n t h e p u r c h a s e o f t h e e q u i p m e n t . p e r i o d i c a l l y , m y r a w o u l d p h o n e m e t o ask h o w t h e c o n s t r u c t i o n w a s g o i n g . if it w e r e n o t u p t o h e r s a t i s f a c t i o n , s h e w o u l d m a r c h d o w n t o t h e b o a r d office a n d give t h e s u p e r i n t e n d e n t a h a r d t i m e . a s t h e p r o c e s s w a s n e a r i n g a n e n d , i got a n o t h e r c a l l f r o m m y r a . "is it f i n i s h e d y e t ? " s h e i n q u i r e d . " t h e y t e l l m e it w i l l b e c o m p l e t e b y t h u r s d a y , " i r e p l i e d . "i'll b e d o w n t o see it t h e n , " s h e q u i p p e d . w h e n t h u r s d a y a r r i v e d , t h e r o o m w a s n o t q u i t e f i n i s h e d b u t , t o m y t h i n k i n g , c l o s e e n o u g h . " w e l l , " s a i d m y r a , after r e c e i v i n g t h e r o y a l t o u r , "i m u s t b e g o i n g n o w t o t a k e t h e s u p e r i n t e n d e n t t h i s a p p l e p i e t h a t i c o o k e d f o r h e r . " " w h a t i f t h e p r o j e c t h a d n o t b e e n f i n i s h e d ? " i s h y l y a s k e d . " i n t h a t c a s e , i w a s g o i n g t o " n o r t h s h o r e n e w s " t o h a v e it p r i n t e d t h a t t h e s e a v i e w p a c h a d s p e n t $ , o n e q u i p m e n t t h a t w a s n o t b e i n g u s e d o n a c c o u n t o f t h e s u p e r i n t e n d e n t . " i k n e w t h a t m y r a w a s t e l l i n g t h e t r u t h . t h e s u p e r i n t e n d e n t c o u l d b e d i f f i c u l t at t i m e s , b u t m y r a u n d e r s t o o d h e r a v e r s i o n f o r b a d p r e s s . . in s o m e w a y s , t h e s u p e r i n t e n d e n t d i d n ' t s t a n d a c h a n c e . n e i t h e r d i d t h e t e a c h e r s w h e n t h e y w h e n t h e y t r i e d t o d e f e n d t h e i r i n t e r e s t s w i t h t h e s u p e r i n t e n d e n t . i n a b u d g e t s a v i n g m o v e , t h e s u p e r i n t e n d e n t c a n c e l l e d t h e p o s i t i o n o f d e p a r t m e n t h e a d . t h i s p o s i t i o n w a s n o t p r o t e c t e d i n o u r c o n t r a c t at t h e t i m e . s o , t h e s u p e r i n t e n d e n t p u l l e d b a c k t h e m o n e y f o r t h e p o s i t i o n , a l t h o u g h she f u l l y e x p e c t e d t h e d e p a r t m e n t h e a d s t o c o n t i n u e t h e i r d u t i e s , a l b e i t f o r free. t h i s p o s i t i o n w a s n o t a h i g h l y p a i d o n e . t e a c h e r s , w h o w e r e i n s e r v i c e as d e p a r t m e n t h e a d s , r e c e i v e d a f e w t h o u s a n d d o l l a r s a y e a r i n e x c h a n g e f o r a l o t o f m e e t i n g s a n d w o r k . m y staff, h o w e v e r , w a s v e r y o f f e n d e d b y t h i s s w i f t a n d u n e x p e c t e d a c t i o n . a s a r e a c t i o n , t h e staff v o t e d t o n o t a t t e n d t h e s u m m e r p r o - d a y m o r n i n g i n late a u g u s t - t h e o n e w h e r e t h e y h a d t o l i s t e n t o t h e s u p e r i n t e n d e n t ' s a n n u a l r e p o r t . t h e r e s u l t o f t h i s a c t i o n w a s t h a t s e a v i e w w e n t t h r o u g h m a n y y e a r s o f n o m o n i e s f o r s c h o o l r e n o v a t i o n o r u p d a t i n g . i n s t e a d , it s e e m e d t o t h e staff at sea v i e w t h a t t h e s u p e r i n t e n d e n t t o o k a l l t h e m o n i e s f o r u p g r a d i n g a n d r e p a i r a n d p o u r e d it i n t o n e i g h b o u r i n g c l o v e r b l u f f s h i g h . t h i s s c h o o l h a d a c c e p t e d t h e s u p e r i n t e n d e n t ' s c u t i n d e p a r t m e n t h e a d p a y . t h e r e h a d b e e n n o o v e r t a c t i o n . w a s c l o v e r b l u f f s d e e m e d t h e g o o d e m p l o y e e s a n d t h e g o o d s c h o o l , as t h e s e a v i e w t e a c h e r s s u s p e c t e d ? i w a s r e m i n d e d o f t h i s r e a l o r i m a g i n e d d i s p a r i t y o n e d a y , w h e n i s a w m y f r i e n d , j o h n , a r r i v i n g w i t h a c l o c k f o r t h e s c h o o l . " a r e y o u b r i n g i n g u s a n e w c l o c k ? " i a s k e d , n o t r e a l l y caring f o r a n a n s w e r , b u t r a t h e r w a n t i n g t o c o n n e c t w i t h j o h n . " o h , t h i s i s n ' t a n e w c l o c k , it's f r o m c l o v e r b l u f f s h i g h . " d o e s n ' t c l o v e r b l u f f s n e e d i t ? " i i n q u i r e d . " o h n o , these a n a l o g c l o c k s h a v e b e e n j u n k e d b y c l o v e r b l u f f s . t h e y o n l y use d i g i t a l c l o c k s . " w e w e r e g e t t i n g c l o v e r b l u f f s ' t h r o w - a w a y s . o n a m u c h l a r g e r s c a l e , o u r s c h o o l h a s n o t h e a t r e . t h i s is d e s p i t e a s t r o n g p e r f o r m i n g arts t r a d i t i o n . a b o u t y e a r s ago, a w o n d e r f u l w o m a n n a m e d f a y b i l l i n g s w a n t e d t o b u i l d , as a l e g a c y , a d u a l - u s e c o m m u n i t y / s c h o o l t h e a t r e . t h a t i s , b o t h t h e c o m m u n i t y a n d t h e s c h o o l w o u l d s h a r e t h e f a c i l i t y . t h e s c h o o l w o u l d p r o v i d e t h e l a n d at a s c h o o l site a n d f a y b i l l i n g s w o u l d d o n a t e $ . m i l l i o n d o l l a r s t o c o n s t r u c t t h e f a c i l i t y . o u r s c h o o l n a t u r a l l y l o b b i e d f o r t h e t h e a t r e . n o w i w i l l n o t p r e t e n d t o k n o w w h a t h a p p e n e d i n t h e b a c k r o o m n e g o t i a t i o n s , b u t i k n o w t h a t c l o v e r b l u f f s h i g h w a s c h o s e n b y t h e s u p e r i n t e n d e n t as t h e site f o r t h e t h e a t r e , e v e n t h o u g h it h a d a f u l l y f u n c t i o n i n g a n d great s o u n d i n g t h e a t r e a l r e a d y . i'll n e v e r forget t h e f e e l i n g i h a d as i w a t c h e d t h e m d e m o l i s h t h i s t h e a t r e i n o r d e r t o b u i l d a n e w o n e w h e n s e a v i e w h a d n o p e r f o r m a n c e v e n u e t o d i s p l a y t h e t a l e n t s o f t h e i r k i d s . w e c o u l d h a v e h a d t w o theatres i n s t e a d o f o n e . i n a f i n a l i r o n i c t w i s t , s e a v i e w w a s g i v e n t h e o l d seats f r o m t h e t h e a t r e t h a t w a s b e e n d e m o l i s h e d i n o r d e r t o c o n v e r t t h e d r a m a r o o m i n t o a s m a l l t h e a t r e . c l e a r i n g m y m i n d o f t h e p a s t , i f o c u s o n t h e t a s k s at h a n d . m y f i r s t class o f t h e d a y , w h i c h starts at : am is o n e o f m y f a v o r i t e classes. it is m y r & b ( r h y t h m a n d b l u e s ) b a n d c l a s s . i l o v e t h i s class f o r a n u m b e r o f r e a s o n s , b u t m a i n l y f o r t h e fact t h a t it teaches t h e s t u d e n t s h o w t o p l a y b y ear. e a c h s t u d e n t receives a c d o f r & b m a t e r i a l at t h e b e g i n n i n g o f t h e y e a r . t h e g o a l is f o r t h e b a n d t o f i g u r e o u t w h a t t o p l a y o f f t h e c d a n d t h e n t o go o u t a n d p e r f o r m t h e m a t e r i a l . b e s i d e s p r o v i d i n g e a r t r a i n i n g , t h i s c o u r s e offers o t h e r b e n e f i t s : it i n t r o d u c e s t h e m t o a f r o - a m e r i c a n s o u l m u s i c o f the 's a n d 's; it d e v e l o p s t e a m m e n t a l i t y ; it t e a c h e s t h e g r o u p i n d e p e n d e n c e a n d r e s p o n s i b i l i t y , c o l l e c t i v e d e c i s i o n m a k i n g , h i g h e r p e r f o r m a n c e s t a n d a r d s , a n d it d e v e l o p s l e a d e r s h i p q u a l i t i e s i n s t u d e n t s . t h i s c o u r s e w a s d e v e l o p e d b y m y s e l f t o f o s t e r l e a r n i n g t h a t w a s n o t b e i n g a d d r e s s e d t o m y s a t i s f a c t i o n t h r o u g h t r a d i t i o n a l c o n c e r t b a n d p r o g r a m s . o n e o f t h e t h i n g s t h a t i h a v e l e a r n e d is t h a t children are "able." b y t h a t i m e a n t h a t i f y o u o p e n t h e d o o r s o f e x p e c t a t i o n t o greater l e a r n i n g , c h i l d r e n w i l l o f t e n r i s e t o m e e t t h e c h a l l e n g e . o n e o f t h e g r a t i f y i n g b y - p r o d u c t s o f t h i s c o u r s e is t h e c o l l e c t i v e m a t u r i t y o f t h e b a n d : if, b y c h a n c e , t h e office n e e d s t o s p e a k w i t h m e a n d i a r r i v e late t o c l a s s , t h e class w i l l h a v e s t a r t e d w i t h o u t m e . w h a t a f u l f i l l i n g m o m e n t t h i s i s . t h i s b a n d , a l o n g w i t h m y a f t e r - s c h o o l j a z z e n s e m b l e s , is c l e a r l y o n e o f t h e h i g h l i g h t s o f m y t e a c h i n g e x p e r i e n c e . i t is a l o n g j o u r n e y o f t e c h n i c a l a n d a e s t h e t i c g r o w t h f r o m t h e g r a d e b e g i n n e r s ' b a n d t o these e n s e m b l e s . t h e c o m m u n i t y h a s t h o r o u g h l y e m b r a c e d t h e r & b b a n d . c o n s e q u e n t l y , t h e b a n d i s f r e q u e n t l y a s k e d t o p l a y f o r a s s o r t e d f u n c t i o n s a n d c e l e b r a t i o n s o u t s i d e o f s c h o o l . k e r r y s t a l l i n g , m y s t u d e n t t e a c h e r , is t e a c h i n g t h e s e c o n d b l o c k o f t h e d a y . h e is y e a r s o l d a n d j u s t s t a r t i n g o n h i s j o u r n e y . k e r r y is t h e t h s t u d e n t t e a c h e r t h a t i've s p o n s o r e d . h e is a " n a t u r a l " at t h i s g a m e , w i t h s u p e r i o r k n o w l e d g e o f w i n d i n s t r u m e n t s a n d a n i r r e p r e s s i b l e e n e r g y a n d p o s i t i v e p e r s o n a l i t y . w h e n t h e y s h o w p r o m i s e , s t u d e n t t e a c h e r s c a n b e w o n d e r f u l a i d e s i n g e t t i n g m e a l i t t l e m o r e i n o r d e r . s t u d e n t t e a c h e r s a l w a y s p r o v i d e a n e x c e l l e n t m i r r o r f o r m y s e l f . t h e y m a k e m e u n c o m f o r t a b l y a w a r e o f t h e areas t h a t i n e e d t o w o r k o n . s t u d e n t t e a c h e r s a l s o e v e n t u a l l y p r o v i d e m e w i t h v a l u a b l e c a t c h - u p t i m e w i t h m y w o r k . a n d it is r e a l l y a j o y t o d i s c u s s p e d a g o g y a n d strategy w i t h t h e m . k e r r y h a s c h o s e n t o t e a c h stage b a n d d u r i n g h i s f i r s t w e e k . h i s c o n f i d e n c e a n d l o v e o f t h e m a t e r i a l is o b v i o u s t o t h e c l a s s . t h e y l i s t e n a n d c o - o p e r a t e . t h e class i s , i n g e n e r a l , a s u c c e s s . a f t e r w a r d s , i t a l k w i t h k e r r y a b o u t p a c i n g a n d m o m e n t u m t o k e e p u p t h e f u n a n d get t h r o u g h a l l t h e l e a r n i n g o b j e c t i v e s . h e l i s t e n s c a r e f u l l y . f i n a l l y , i e x p l a i n t h a t a l l t h e c l a s s e s , r e g a r d l e s s o f h o w n i c e t h e y are at t h e b e g i n n i n g , w i l l test h i m t o d e t e r m i n e h i s b o u n d a r i e s . i t e l l h i m t o a v o i d t a k i n g it p e r s o n a l l y a n d that it is j u s t a n a t u r a l n e e d f o r s t u d e n t s t o d i s c o v e r l i m i t s . t w o w e e k s l a t e r , k e r r y t e l l s m e t h a t h e r e a l i z e s t h a t c l a s s r o o m t e a c h i n g is m u c h m o r e a p s y c h o l o g i c a l " g a m e " t h a n h e t h o u g h t a n d t h a t h i s m u s i c a l k n o w l e d g e is n o t t h a t i m p o r t a n t . i t e l l h i m t h a t b o t h p s y c h o l o g i c a l a n d m u s i c a l k n o w l e d g e are b o t h i m p o r t a n t a n d t h a t h e b r i n g s a l o t t o offer t h e k i d s . s e c r e t l y , i a m v e r y h e a r t e n e d b y h i s e p i p h a n y so t h a t w e c a n m o v e a n d d i s c u s s p s y c h o l o g i c a l i s s u e s a n d strategies. getting into the water week one i c a n feel y o u t h i n k i n g t h a t i'm j u s t a n o t h e r o l d f o o l a n d that i c a n n o t m a t c h y o u r k n o w l e d g e b a s e a n d y o u r y o u t h f u l age a n d y o u r p a s s i o n f o r y o u r a r t a n d y o u r h u m o u r a n d y o u r e a r r i n g t h i s g i g w i l l b e easy, y o u a s s u m e m u s i c h a s b e e n y o u r l i f e ; y o u r c a l l i n g s o it s h o u l d b e n o t h i n g at a l l t o get t h e k i d s t o f a l l i n a n d t o w h i s p e r t h e i r w h i m t h a t y o u , l i k e h i m , w o u l d b e t h e i r t e a c h e r o f c h o i c e b u t t h o u g h y o u b r i s t l e w i t h c o n f i d e n c e a n d t h o u g h i w h i s t l e at y o u r t e c h n i q u e y o u d o n o t yet u n d e r s t a n d t h a t s t i l l w a t e r s r u n d e e p a n d t e a c h i n g is m u c h m o r e c o m p l e x t h a n f i r s t a p p e a r s a n d j u s t as a v i r t u o s o m u s i c i a n c a n s e d u c e y o u i n t o b e l i e v i n g t h a t s o m e t h i n g i n c r e d i b l y h a r d is a c t u a l l y easy, d o n ' t b e f o o l e d b y t h a t a p p a r i t i o n f o r y o u are l i k e a s w a n t h a t h a s n e v e r s e e n w a t e r a n d n e v e r f l o w n s o u t h f o r t h e w i n t e r a n d t h o u g h y o u m a y b e g e n e t i c a l l y p r e - d i s p o s e d n o t h i n g w i l l r e p l a c e g e t t i n g w e t a n d i n t o t h e w a t e r week two w h a t h a p p e n e d ? d i d n ' t i e x p l a i n ? w a t c h c a r e f u l l y n o w w h o is t o b l a m e ? t h a t t h e t i m i n g i s off a n d y o u ' r e n o t f o l l o w i n g y o u r v e r y o w n p l a n a n d t h e c h i l d r e n are r e - d i r e c t i n g y o u r objectives a n d y o u are p l a y e d i n t o t h e i r h a n d a n d get y o u r h e a d u p ! d o n ' t y o u see? w h a t h a s t r a n s p i r e d i n t h e class a s y o u w a x e d p o e t i c a b o u t y o u r p a s t ? y o u m u s t l e a d , b u t n o t t o o s l o w l y o r t h e class w i l l t o t a l l y p u l l y o u d o w n , n o t h i n g p e r s o n a l , t h e y ' l l d o it at a n y r e h e a r s a l t o a n y c o n d u c t o r t h a t f a i l s t o k e e p m o v i n g f o r these k i n e t i c b e i n g s c a n h a r d l y k e e p s t i l l so y o u b e t t e r b e o n t o p o f y o u r g a m e a n d u s e y o u r s m a r t s a n d w i l l a n d g u i d e t h e t r a i n b e f o r e it d e r a i l s week three w h a t is t h i s t h a t y o u ' v e f o u n d ? w e m a y h a v e c o m m o n g r o u n d a f t e r a l l a s y o u n o t i c e h o w e a s i l y i step i n a n d steer y o u a w a y f r o m a d i s a s t r o u s f a l l a n d n o w y o u are s t a r t i n g t o see t e a c h i n g r e q u i r e s subject k n o w l e d g e b u t j u s t as m u c h it n e e d s strategy a n d i n t u i t i o n a n d s u b t l e t y t o f l y a n d i n s p i r e r e s p e c t f u l l y a n d n o w i sense a c h a n g e i n t h e g a m e y o u ' r e w a t c h i n g a n d t a l k i n g a n d g l e a n i n g m y i d e a s a n d i t o o a m o p e n t o y o u f o r y o u h a v e m u c h t o t e a c h m e as w e l l s o let u s w o r k as o n e t h e o l d a n d t h e y o u n g a n d t a p o u t t h i s t i m e f o r a l l its w o r t h t o p l a y i n o n e o f t h e greatest s h o w s o h e a r t h t h e t h i r d b l o c k o f t h e d a y is m y b a n d class o f g r a d e 's. i h a v e s c h e d u l e d a test f o r t h i s b l o c k . i'm i n i t i a l l y i n t e r r u p t e d b y a v i s i t f r o m a p e r s o n f r o m f a c i l i t i e s . t h e c h i l d r e n set u p t h e i r i n s t r u m e n t s a n d f u r i o u s l y p r a c t i s e t h e test p i e c e w h i l e i s a y h e l l o t o c r a i g . i've k n o w n c r a i g f o r a n u m b e r o f y e a r s . c r a i g is a s m i l i n g , m i d d l e - a g e d t r a d e s m a n w h o is o f t e n a s s i g n e d r e p a i r a n d r e s t o r a t i o n j o b s at o u r s c h o o l . d u e t o c u t b a c k s , h e u s u a l l y d e l i v e r s m a i l a n d p a r c e l s f o r t h e s c h o o l d i s t r i c t , b u t t o d a y h e is b u s y m e a s u r i n g o u r w i n d o w s i n t h e m u s i c p o r t a b l e . h e w i l l b r i n g t o c l o s u r e a subject o f stress f o r m e . t w o y e a r s ago, o n e o f t h e n a r r o w m u s i c p o r t a b l e w i n d o w s w a s b r o k e n b y t h i e v e s w h o p r o c e e d e d t o steal a n u m b e r o f i n s t r u m e n t s . a l t h o u g h f a c i l i t i e s i n s t a l l e d a m o t i o n s e n s o r t o c a p t u r e a n d d e t e r f u t u r e b r e a k - i n s , i a s k e d f o r s o m e s u b t l e w h i t e b a r s t o b e p l a c e d a c r o s s t h e w i n d o w s i n s u c h a w a y as t o b l o c k e n t r y . t h i s m e a s u r e is b e i n g i m p l e m e n t e d j u s t at t h e r i g h t t i m e as i h a v e h e a r d t h a t m u s i c r o o m s i n s u r r e y a n d b u r n a b y h a v e b e e n r o b b e d . a f t e r a n s w e r i n g c r a i g ' s d e s i g n q u e s t i o n s , i m o v e q u i c k l y t o start t h e c l a s s . i a m t h w a r t e d a g a i n as h a l f a d o z e n g r a d e s t u d e n t s r u n u p t o m e . t h e y are a l l f i l l e d w i t h r e a s o n s w h y t h e y s h o u l d n ' t b e t e s t e d t o d a y . s o m e s e e m l e g i t i m a t e a n d h a v e b r o u g h t n o t e s f r o m h o m e . o t h e r s are l a c k i n g t h e d o c u m e n t a t i o n a n d ar e b e g g i n g f o r s p e c i a l t r e a t m e n t . t h i s is r e a l l y h a r d f o r m e . t o r e d u c e t h i s k i n d o f n e g o t i a t i o n , i p e r e n n i a l l y r e v i e w a h a n d - o u t e n t i t l e d " t e s t s a n d t e s t p r o t o c o l . " t h i s is t o m a k e a f l a w e d p r o c e s s as f a i r as p o s s i b l e . tests and test protocol . f i v e t o s e v e n d a y s n o t i c e o f a t e s t w i l l b e g i v e n . . t e s t s w i l l o n l y b e o n m a t e r i a l s t u d i e d i n c l a s s . . t e s t s a r e o u t o f m a r k s a n d a r e b a s e d o n t h e p l a y i n g o f c o r r e c t : n o t e s , r h y t h m , a r t i c u l a t i o n , d y n a m i c s , a n d t o n e , t u n i n g , p o s t u r e , a n d a p r o j e c t i o n o f t h e u n d e r l y i n g e m o t i o n a l m e s s a g e i n t h e p i e c e , ( i e - t h e " s p i r i t " o f t h e p i e c e ) . . i f y o u w a n t h e l p o r a n o p i n i o n o n h o w y o u w o u l d b e g r a d e d , p l e a s e a r r a n g e a m e e t i n g w i t h m r . t . n o l a t e r t h a n h o u r s p r i o r t o t h e t e s t . m r . t . w o u l d b e h a p p y t o a s s i s t y o u ! . y o u m a y h a v e t w o " t r y s " i n a r o w a t t h e m a t e r i a l . . i f y o u a r e s i c k , y o u m u s t p r e s e n t a h a n d w r i t t e n n o t e f r o m y o u r p a r e n t / g u a r d i a n . t h i s n o t e m u s t i n c l u d e a s i g n a t u r e a n d a p h o n e n u m b e r . m r . t w i l l p h o n e h o m e ! . i f , f o r s o m e r e a s o n , y o u a r e p r e s e n t , b u t a r e u n p r e p a r e d t o p l a y t h e t e s t , ( e g - f o r g o t i n s t r u m e n t , f o r g o t m u s i c , f o r g o t r e e d s , c o r d s , e t c . o r a r e s u d d e n l y f e e l i n g p o o r l y ) , y o u w i l l l o s e m a r k s f o r e a c h c o n s e c u t i v e d a y t h a t y o u d o n o t p l a y t h e t e s t . . t h o s e i n d i v i d u a l s w h o " s k i p " t h e c l a s s o n t h e d a y o f t h e t e s t , w i l l , i n a c c o r d a n c e w i t h s c h o o l p o l i c y , r e c e i v e a n a u t o m a t i c " o " o n t h e q u i z . b e r e a d y t o p l a y o n t h e a s s i g n e d t e s t d a y . p l e a s e d o n o t a s k f o r a t i m e e x t e n s i o n , o r a r e t e s t . i t ' s n o t f a i r t o t h e o t h e r s . r e m e m b e r - a n y o n e w h o p r a c t i s e s m i n u t e s a n i g h t , d a y s a w e e k w i l l h a v e l i t t l e t r o u b l e m a i n t a i n i n g a f i r s t c l a s s m a r k i n t h i s c o u r s e . g o o d l u c k ! m r . t . a s i r e v i e w t h i s l i s t , i a m s t r u c k at t h e n u m b e r o f i s s u e s a d d r e s s e d as w e l l as t h e g e n e r a l c o m p l e x i t y o f t h i s f o r m . it is r e a l l y t h e a n t i t h e s i s o f m y t e a c h i n g s t y l e . i n m y h a n d o u t s , i s t r i v e f o r c l a r i t y a n d s i m p l i c i t y . h e r e , i h a v e f a i l e d . i n fact, i a m r e m i n d e d o f a n e p i s o d e e n c a p s u l a t e d b y g a r y l a r s o n i n t h e " f a r s i d e " c a r t o o n s . i n t h i s p a r t i c u l a r c a r t o o n , a n o l d , e x p e r i e n c e d e l e m e n t a r y s c h o o l t e a c h e r h a s w r i t t e n o n t h e b o a r d a l i s t o f d o ' s a n d d o n ' t s - m u c h l i k e t h i s o n e . i n t h e c a r t o o n , t h e l i s t is e n d l e s s a n d a b s o l u t e l y r i d i c u l o u s i n d e t a i l . it is a n e x t r e m e l y f u n n y a n d a b s u r d c a r t o o n w h o s e p o t e n c y is d e r i v e d f r o m s o m e c o n n e c t i o n t o t h e t r u t h . o v e r t h e y e a r s o f t e a c h i n g , t h e o l d t e a c h e r h a s h e a r d j u s t a b o u t every excuse a n d w i t n e s s e d j u s t a b o u t every p o s s i b l e s l i p i n b e h a v i o r . t h e r i d i c u l o u s l i s t is h e r a t t e m p t at class c o n t r o l . m y h a n d o u t h a s t h e sense o f a l e g a l d o c u m e n t . u n f o r t u n a t e l y , i h a v e f o u n d t h a t at every test, the g r a d e 's h a v e a r a s h o f s i c k n e s s ( a l t h o u g h t h e y are w e l l e n o u g h t o a t t e n d s c h o o l ) a n d a n e p i d e m i c o f f o r g e t f u l n e s s . w h a t is e v e n m o r e f r u s t r a t i n g is t h a t t h e s t u d e n t s w i l l a g g r e s s i v e l y a r g u e f o r t h e i r " r i g h t " t o n o t b e t e s t e d . s o , i n o r d e r t o p r o t e c t m y s e l f f r o m b e i n g a c c u s e d o f b e i n g u n f a i r , i h a v e c o n s t r u c t e d t h i s p r o t o c o l . t h i s c l a r i f i e s t h e " r u l e s " a r o u n d t e s t i n g . i n e v e r s p r i n g tests o n t h e m . i e n c o u r a g e s t u d e n t s t o see m e t o p r e p f o r t h e tests. i t a l k a b o u t w h a t i a m m a r k i n g o n i n great d e t a i l w i t h v o l u n t e e r s p l a y i n g a m o c k test. c h i l d r e n c a n b e e x c u s e d f r o m tests, b u t a n o t e m u s t a c c o m p a n y it. f i n a l l y , i u s e a n a u d i o t a p e t o r e c o r d t h e test d a y s so t h a t i c a n e x p l a i n i n d e t a i l t o u p s e t s t u d e n t s a n d p a r e n t s t h e areas o f c o m p e t e n c e a n d t h e areas t h a t n e e d m o r e w o r k . h a v i n g s a i d a l l t h i s , m o s t o f t h e s t u d e n t s receive f i r s t class m a r k s i n m y b a n d c l a s s e s . b y g r a d e , m o s t s t u d e n t s c a n guess w i t h i n h a l f a m a r k , w h a t a n y s t u d e n t p e r f o r m a n c e w i l l b e w o r t h . i u s e t h i s s y s t e m f o r e v e r y c l a s s , w i t h t h e e x c e p t i o n o f t h e r & b c l a s s . i n t h i s s e n i o r c l a s s , i a l l o w t h e c h i l d r e n t o c o n t r i b u t e t o t h e f i n a l g r a d e t h r o u g h p e e r - e v a l u a t i o n . p e e r s d e t e r m i n e t w o m a r k s - a n effort m a r k a n d a s k i l l s o r r e s u l t - b a s e d m a r k f o r every s t u d e n t i n t h e c l a s s . i d o t h e s a m e f o r e a c h s t u d e n t . t h e p e e r - assessed m a r k s are a v e r a g e d o u t so i e n d u p w i t h a class p e r s p e c t i v e o f e a c h s t u d e n t ' s effort a n d a r e s u l t s m a r k . t h e s e t w o m a r k s are a d d e d t o g e t h e r w i t h m y a s s e s s m e n t o f e a c h s t u d e n t ' s effort a n d r e s u l t s m a r k . t h e average o f t h e s e f o u r m a r k s gives m e a f i n a l m a r k f o r t h e i r r e p o r t c a r d s . i n u s i n g t h i s s y s t e m , i a c k n o w l e d g e t h a t it w e i g h s h e a v i l y o n effort. b u t i w a n t t h e s t u d e n t s t o t a k e t h e r i s k s n e e d e d t o m e e t t h e c h a l l e n g e s o f t h e c o u r s e a n d c o n s e q u e n t l y g r o w as m u s i c i a n s . l e a r n i n g t o p l a y b y ear is a v e r y u n n e r v i n g p r o s p e c t f o r m a n y s t u d e n t s . i b e l i e v e as a m u s i c e d u c a t o r t h a t children must move from being "paper" dependent to becoming explorers of sound who are open to other systems of learning music. t h i s i s h o w m u s i c o r i g i n a l l y a n d o r g a n i c a l l y c a m e t o b e a n d s t i l l i s t h e m o d u s o p e r a n d i f o r a l o t o f t h e w o r l d . t h e class e n d s a n d it is l u n c h t i m e . i c o l l e c t m y l u n c h f r o m m y office a n d start t o m a k e m y w a y t o t h e staff r o o m . a s i o p e n m y d o o r t o l e a v e m y office, m y eye c a t c h e s s o m e o f m y o w n g r a f f i t i . t h e c h i l d r e n c a n ' t see it, b u t i c a n ' t m i s s it w h e n e v e r i l e a v e m y office. a t t h e t o p o f t h e d o o r , s c r a w l e d i n b l a c k m a r k e r i s "learning should be fun!" t h i s s i m p l e p h r a s e e l o q u e n t l y d e s c r i b e s t h e p i v o t a l c o n c e p t o f m y t e a c h i n g p h i l o s o p h y . i b e l i e v e t h a t c h i l d r e n l e a r n faster a n d r e t a i n m o r e w h e n t h e r e is j o y a n d p a s s i o n a t t a c h e d t o t h e l e s s o n - r e g a r d l e s s o f t h e c o n t e n t . i m p l i c i t i n t h a t s t a t e m e n t i s t h a t t h e r e i s a n u n d e r l y i n g r h y t h m a n d m o m e n t u m t o a n y g o o d t e a c h i n g . i b e l i e v e t h a t e v e n s o m e o f t h e d r i e s t t o p i c s c a n b e r e - f o r m a t t e d t o b e d e l i v e r e d i n m o r e m e a n i n g f u l w a y s t o c h i l d r e n . a s m y eyes s c a n d o w n w a r d o n t h e d o o r , t h e n e x t s c r a w l c o m e s i n t o v i e w . it r e a d s : "act neutral on the obvious."this c r y p t i c message i s w r i t t e n t o h e l p m e k e e p p r o f e s s i o n a l at p o i n t s w h e n i c o u l d l o s e it. o n e o f t h e w a y s i c a n l o s e m y p r o f e s s i o n a l edge i s b y a s s u m i n g e x p e c t a t i o n s o f b e h a v i o r s t h a t i h a v e n o t a d d r e s s e d i n class. s o m e t i m e s i n t h e past i w o u l d f i n d m y s e l f s u r p r i s e d at acts o f t o t a l l y i n a p p r o p r i a t e b e h a v i o r o r t h e l a c k o f t h e m o s t f u n d a m e n t a l s o c i a l s k i l l s o f c e r t a i n s t u d e n t s . i w o u l d f i n d m y s e l f w a n t i n g t o r e s p o n d t o these o b v i o u s l y i n a p p r o p r i a t e a c t i o n s b y s a y i n g , " y o u s h o u l d k n o w better...." n o w , i n t h e s t c e n t u r y , w i t h a d i v e r s e m u l t i - c u l t u r a l c l i e n t e l e t h a t o f t e n c o m e f r o m c o m p r o m i s e d f a m i l y s i t u a t i o n s , i t e n d t o act i n a v e r y n e u t r a l m a n n e r t o e v e n t h e m o s t o u t l a n d i s h acts o f i n a p p r o p r i a t e n e s s a n d c a l m l y e x p l a i n o u r s c h o o l ' s e x p e c t a t i o n s — h e n c e , " a c t n e u t r a l o n t h e o b v i o u s . " a s i a m l e a v i n g m y office, t w o s t u d e n t s e n t e r t o ask a q u e s t i o n . a s t h e y l e a v e , t h e y s p o t o l d p r o m o p h o t o s o f t h e b a n d s t h a t i p l a y e d w i t h i n m y p r o f e s s i o n a l d a y s . t h e y l a u g h c r a z i l y w h e n t h e y f i n d m e w i t h l o n g h a i r a n d r o c k attire. t h e e x p e r i e n c e o f p r o f e s s i o n a l p l a y i n g h a s b e e n a n i n v a l u a b l e t o o l i n m y a r s e n a l o f t e a c h i n g strategies. m y e n t i r e m u s i c a l c a r e e r h a s b e e n a h y b r i d affair. a l t h o u g h i h e a r d a l o t o f m u s i c at o u r h o u s e w h e n i w a s g r o w i n g u p , i w a s n o t m o t i v a t e d t o l e a r n m u s i c u n t i l t h e b e a t l e s h i t t h e a i r w a v e s . t h i s l e d t o a - y e a r j o u r n e y i n t o r o c k , b l u e s , r & b a n d p o p m u s i c . w h e n i c a m e o u t o f p r o f e s s i o n a l p l a y i n g t o a t t e n d u b c ' s s c h o o l o f m u s i c , i e n d e d u p w i t h a degree i n c l a s s i c a l m u s i c . a s i w a s u n f a m i l i a r w i t h t h i s g e n r e , i m a j o r e d i n m u s i e o l o g y s o t h a t i c o u l d g a i n a w i d e h i s t o r i c a l p e r s p e c t i v e . n o w i a m v e r y t a k e n w i t h j a z z m u s i c a n d i a m s t u d y i n g it at h o m e . i h a v e t a k e n these v a r i o u s genres a n d m o l d e d a t h r e e - w a y s y s t e m f o r m y t e a c h i n g . i t e a c h c l a s s i c a l m u s i c , j a z z a n d r & b . a n d s o , after t h e j u n i o r y e a r s o f g e n e r i c s k i l l b u i l d i n g , grade s t u d e n t s a u d i t i o n f o r t h e o r c h e s t r a c l a s s , t h e v a r i o u s j a z z e n s e m b l e s o r t h e r & b c l a s s . m y s t u d e n t t e a c h e r a n d i h e a d u p t o t h e c a f e t e r i a . w e h a v e a b o u t m i n u t e s t o eat b e f o r e w e m u s t d r i v e t o o u r f i r s t feeder s c h o o l . i t r e m e n d o u s l y e n j o y m y p r e c i o u s t i m e w i t h t h e staff u p s t a i r s . it is " a d u l t " t i m e i n a d a y s a t u r a t e d w i t h y o u n g s t e r s . t h e r e is a w o n d e r f u l a r r a y o f c h a r a c t e r s at t h e t a b l e . k r i s t y is t h e l i b r a r i a n a n d r o b e r t teaches e n g l i s h . h a r r y u s e d t o b e a n e d i t o r a n d b o o k p u b l i s h e r i n a n o t h e r l i f e . d o u g is w o r k i n g p a r t - t i m e as a c h e m i s t r y t e a c h e r so t h a t h e c a n c o m p l e t e h i s m a s t e r s ' degree at r o y a l r h o d e s . r i g h t n o w , i l i k e t o sit n e x t t o b r i a n , o u r d r a m a t e a c h e r . h e a n d i are g o i n g t h r o u g h a t e a c h i n g r i t e o f p a s s a g e - t h e " h i g h s c h o o l m u s i c a l " a n d w e n e e d t o b e c l o s e f o r o u r o w n p r e s e r v a t i o n . a t t e m p t i n g t o m o u n t a p r o f e s s i o n a l b r o a d w a y m u s i c a l t h a t w a s n o t d e s i g n e d i n a n y w a y f o r h i g h s c h o o l o r a m a t e u r a c t o r s , m u s i c i a n s , o r t e c h n i c i a n s is p o t e n t i a l l y a n e x t r e m e l y s t r e s s f u l s i t u a t i o n . it is f i n a n c i a l l y s t r e s s f u l a n d p e d a g o g i c a l l y s t r e s s f u l . i n fact, o n e c o u l d l a u n c h a n a r g u m e n t t h a t it is a v e r y u n s o u n d a c t i v i t y f o r a n y m u s i c s t u d e n t t o a t t e m p t . s o m e s c h o o l s , h o w e v e r , h a v e l o n g - s t a n d i n g t r a d i t i o n s o f h i g h s c h o o l m u s i c a l s . m y s c h o o l h a s b e e n p r o d u c i n g t h e m s i n c e it o p e n e d i n t h e e a r l y ' s . w h e n i s t a r t e d i n , w e p r o d u c e d f o u r m u s i c a l s i n f o u r y e a r s . a f t e r t h a t , i s u c c e s s f u l l y a r g u e d t o h a v e a m u s i c a l e v e r y o t h e r y e a r a n d a b a n d t r i p o n t h e off y e a r s . a l t h o u g h t h e m u s i c a l s are a great e x p e r i e n c e f o r t h o s e o n stage^ it is a l o t o f u n r e w a r d i n g w o r k f o r t h e p i t m u s i c i a n s . s t u d e n t s s p e n d u n t o l d h o u r s s t r u g g l i n g w i t h p a r t s t h a t r e q u i r e e x a c t i n g a n d e x p e r t r e a d i n g s k i l l s . o f t e n , t h e b r a s s p a r t s r e q u i r e p l a y e r s w i t h e x c e e d i n g l y h i g h r a n g e . a r i d a n i r r i t a t i n g f e a t u r e f o r a m a t e u r s is t h e c o n s t a n t t r a n s p o s i t i o n s o f s o n g s i n t o v e r y d i f f i c u l t k e y s i g n a t u r e s . t h e m u s i c is l e a s e d t o u s o n a m o n t h - t o - m o n t h b a s i s . it is e x p e n s i v e t o lease a n d so w e w i l l h a v e h a d access t o t h e m u s i c f o r a b o u t m o n t h s , p r i o r t o s h o w t i m e . a t least i n t h e o r i g i n a l s h o w s , t h e m u s i c i a n s w e r e w e l l p a i d f o r t h e i r efforts. m a n y n e w y o r k p r o s s p e n t t h e i r careers i n t h e c a v e r n o u s h o l e s o f t h e b r o a d w a y t h e a t r e s . i n l i e u o f m o n e y , b r i a n a n d i h a v e c r e a t e d o t h e r " w i n s " f o r t h e m u s i c s t u d e n t s . w e p u t t h e m u p o n stage. w i t h t h i s a p p r o a c h , f r i e n d s a n d p a r e n t s c a n see t h e b a n d s t u d e n t s . t h e m u s i c i a n s are a l s o f e a t u r e d w i t h i n d i v i d u a l p i c t u r e s a n d w r i t e - u p s i n t h e p r o g r a m m e . t h r o u g h these m e a n s , t h e s t u d e n t m u s i c i a n s f e e l m u c h m o r e i n c l u d e d i n t h e p r o d u c t i o n . t h i s y e a r , w e are p r o d u c i n g " s o u t h p a c i f i c " o n e o f m y strategies f o r i m p r o v i n g t h e b a n d ' s p e r f o r m a n c e a n d h e l p i n g t h e d a n c e r s a n d s i n g e r s is t o r e c o r d t h e i n s t r u m e n t a l p a r t s o f t h e m u s i c as s o o n as t h e b a n d c a n get t h r o u g h it. i j u s t f i n i s h e d r e c o r d i n g t h e b a n d . n o w t h e s i n g e r s w i l l h a v e " b e d " t r a c k s t o s i n g a n d p r a c t i s e w i t h a n d t h e d a n c e r s w i l l b e a b l e t o a d j u s t t o t h e b a n d t e m p o s a n d i n t e r p r e t a t i o n o f t h e m u s i c . t h e m u s i c i a n s a n d i w i l l c r i t i c a l l y r e v i e w t h e r e c o r d i n g a n d w o r k t o f i x p r o b l e m s . if t i m e p e r m i t s , w e w i l l d o a s e c o n d r u n o f r e c o r d i n g . p r i o r t o t h a t , o n s p r i n g b r e a k , i w i l l r e c o r d t h e s i n g e r s so t h a t t h e y m a y h a v e a g o o d m i r r o r o f t h e i r p e r f o r m a n c e t o a n a l y z e i r e h e a r s e t h e m u s i c a l o r c h e s t r a u n t i l it h a s a c t u a l l y t r a n s c e n d s w h a t w e t h o u g h t w e c o u l d a c h i e v e . o n t h e l a s t w e e k o f r e h e a r s a l s , i m a k e s u r e t h a t e v e r y o n e h a s t h e s p e a k i n g cues f o r s t a r t i n g e a c h m u s i c a l p a r t w r i t t e n i n t h e i r m u s i c . t h e n i ask a b a n d m e m b e r ( u s u a l l y t h e d r u m m e r ) , t o c o u n t i n t h e c u e s . w i t h t h e d r u m m e r s t a r t i n g e a c h n u m b e r , i h a v e l i t e r a l l y h a n d e d o v e r t h e m u s i c a l t o t h e s t u d e n t s . n o w t h e r e is n o rteed f o r a c o n d u c t o r . i f i n d t h a t t h i s f i n a l step h a s s o m e r i s k s , b u t b y p u l l i n g t h e t e a c h e r out o f t h e e q u a t i o n , t h e m a t u r i t y o f t h e b a n d m e m b e r s b l o o m s l i k e t u l i p s o n a s p r i n g day. s e n i o r s t u d e n t s c r a v e a c h a n c e t o l e a d b y t h e m s e l v e s . a n d s u c c e s s f u l r i s k t a k i n g i n l e a d e r s h i p at t h i s age, i b e l i e v e , c a n b e a l i f e - a l t e r i n g e x p e r i e n c e . i j u s t stack t h e d e c k a b i t , as i t r a i n t h e o r c h e s t r a so t h o r o u g h l y , t h a t t h e y a u t o m a t i c a l l y p l a y e v e r y t h i n g w i t h m y exact i n t e r p r e t a t i o n o f t h e m u s i c . s t i l l , t h e r i s k s a n d r e s p o n s i b i l i t i e s t o c o m e i n c o r r e c t l y a n d o n t i m e are s t i l l r e a l . a n d a l t h o u g h i a m i n t h e t h e a t r e , i a m n o t w i t h i n easy f o r a n y c r i s i s as i a m u s u a l l y m i x i n g t h e b a n d o n t h e s o u n d b o a r d at t h e f r o n t o f t h e h a l l . o u r l a s t p r o d u c t i o n step w i l l b e k n i t t i n g t h e m u s i c i a n s , a c t o r s , d a n c e r s , s i n g e r s a n d t e c h n i c i a n s i n t o o n e p r e s e n t a b l e p r o d u c t . t h i s is c a l l e d " r u n n i n g t h e m u s i c a l . " w h e n y o u r u n a m u s i c a l , c e r t a i n e n e r g y a n d r h y t h m e m a n a t e s f r o m t h e a m a l g a m o f t h e v a r i o u s p a r t s . t h i s f l o w a n d f o c u s w i l l m a k e o r d e s t r o y a m u s i c a l . d r o p s i n p a c i n g a n d e m o t i o n j u s t create a n o t h e r " b a d " s c h o o l m u s i c a l t h a t e v e r y b o d y p o l i t e l y suffers t h r o u g h . g r e a t f l o w a n d e n e r g y c a n t a k e t h e m u s i c a l b e y o n d t h e e x p e c t a t i o n s o f a n y h i g h s c h o o l p r o d u c t i o n . a n d so b r i a n a n d i e n d u p t a l k i n g a b o u t d e t a i l s o f t h e m u s i c a l b e f o r e k e r r y a n d i h u r r y t o t h e c a r t o get t o o u r feeder s c h o o l . t o d a y , w e t e a c h t h e a f t e r n o o n b l o c k at e c o l e p a u l j o n e s . t h i s is o n e o f t h r e e f e e d e r s c h o o l s t h a t i s e r v i c e i n t h e a f t e r n o o n b l o c k . w h e n i i n i t i a l l y s t a r t e d w o r k i n g t h i s j o b , s e a v i e w , w a s a g r a d e - s c h o o l . u n l i k e m a n y o t h e r d i s t r i c t s , t h e r e w a s n o w i l l t o s u p p o r t b a n d p r o g r a m s at a n e l e m e n t a r y l e v e l . s o , b e g i n n i n g b a n d w a s t a u g h t at g r a d e i n s e a v i e w , a p p r o x i m a t e l y years ago, t h e d i s t r i c t r e m o v e d t h e g r a d e 's f r o m t h e h i g h s c h o o l a n d p u t t h e m b a c k i n t o t h e e l e m e n t a r y s c h o o l s . i w a s v e r y c o n c e r n e d a b o u t t h e f u t u r e o f t h e m u s i c p r o g r a m at s e a v i e w . i b e l i e v e t h a t s t u d e n t s n e e d t o start l e a r n i n g a m u s i c a l i n s t r u m e n t b e f o r e p u b e r t y . c o n s e q u e n t l y , i h a v e b e e n d r i v i n g t o t h e f e e d e r s c h o o l s ever s i n c e t h i s c h a n g e . it is t i r i n g b e i n g i t i n e r a n t after a l l t h e s e y e a r s , b u t i h a v e l e a r n e d , i n m y d i s t r i c t , t h a t i f i d o n ' t l o o k after a n d l o b b y f o r m y p r o g r a m , it w i l l q u i c k l y d i s a p p e a r . t h e b e g i n n e r b a n d classes are t h e m o s t c h a l l e n g i n g p a r t o f t h e d a y . t h e y d e m a n d e n e r g y , o r g a n i z a t i o n a n d i n f i n i t e p a t i e n c e . i m u s t c o n t r o l t h e c l a s s , b u t at t h e s a m e t i m e o p t i m i z e t h e f u n so t h a t t h e c h i l d r e n w i l l sense v a l u e i n l e a r n i n g a n i n s t r u m e n t a n d c h o o s e t o c a r r y o n t o s t u d y it at h i g h s c h o o l . m y classes are v e r y h i g h p a c e d . i n j a n u a r y , i start t e a c h i n g t h e m r o c k a n d r o l l c l a s s i c s f r o m t h e ' ' s . t h e k i d s l o v e s o n g s l i k e " l a b a m b a , " " t e q u i l a " a n d " t h e l o c o m o t i o n . " if i c a n get t h e k i d s t o " r o c k " i u s u a l l y c a n expect a g o o d n u m b e r t o c o n t i n u e i n g r a d e at s e a v i e w . a t : o ' c l o c k i h a v e a b o u t m i n u t e s d o w n t i m e b e f o r e i start m y after- s c h o o l j a z z i m p r o v i s a t i o n e n s e m b l e s . i h a v e a j u n i o r a n d a s e n i o r e n s e m b l e . i r u n these after s c h o o l b a n d s as e n r i c h e d p r o g r a m s f o r g i f t e d l e a r n e r s . m y a p p r o a c h t o m a x i m i z i n g t h e l e a r n i n g success o f m y p r o g r a m is as f o l l o w s : . t h e b u l k o f t h e s t u d e n t s l e a r n i n t h e c l a s s r o o m s e t t i n g . i pace m y y e a r l y o u t c o m e s o n t h e l e a r n i n g r h y t h m s o f e a c h class so t h a t t h e b u l k o f t h e s t u d e n t s s u c c e e d t o a c h i e v e m y d e f i n e d o u t c o m e s . . c h i l d r e n w h o c a n n o t m e e t t h e r h y t h m o f t h e c l a s s l e a r n i n g are i n v i t e d f o r c o n t i n u e d b e f o r e - s c h o o l p r i v a t e h e l p f r o m m e . . s t u d e n t s w h o c l e a r l y n e e d c h a l l e n g e b e y o n d t h e c l a s s r o o m are i n v i t e d t o m e e t t h e c h a l l e n g e o f l e a r n i n g j a z z i m p r o v i s a t i o n i n a n e x t r a - c u r r i c u l a r s e t t i n g w i t h o t h e r g i f t e d s t u d e n t s . a n d s o , t h r o u g h these b e f o r e a n d after s c h o o l s e s s i o n s , i feel t h a t i've m a d e s o m e i m p r o v e m e n t o n t h e b u l k l e a r n i n g f o r m u l a o f p u b l i c e d u c a t i o n . a l t h o u g h i d o n ' t get p a i d f o r these s e r v i c e s , i sleep b e t t e r at n i g h t k n o w i n g t h a t t h e r e i s o p p o r t u n i t y f o r m y s t u d e n t s t o e i t h e r c a t c h u p o r b e c h a l l e n g e d t h r o u g h m u s i c p r o g r a m . t h e j u n i o r a n d s e n i o r a f t e r - s c h o o l j a z z e n s e m b l e s are t r e m e n d o u s l y r e w a r d i n g f o r m e . i l o v e t e a c h i n g at a n " a d v a n c e d " l e v e l . t h e s e s t u d e n t s r e c e i v e college l e v e l t h e o r y . it i s r e a l l y n i c e t o b e t e a c h i n g a n d p l a y i n g w i t h o u t t h e i s s u e s o f d i s c i p l i n e . t h e s e n i o r j a z z e n s e m b l e w i t h its h a r d b o p a n d " k i n d o f b l u e " r e p e r t o i r e h a s b e c o m e a f a v o r i t e i n o u r d i s t r i c t f o r r e c e p t i o n s a n d g a t h e r i n g s t h a t r e q u i r e m u s i c t h a t creates a p l e a s a n t a m b i e n c e . t h e s e e n s e m b l e s t a k e u p m y a f t e r - s c h o o l t i m e f o r t w o d a y s a w e e k . o n o t h e r d a y s , after s c h o o l , i a t t e n d m a s t e r ' s c l a s s e s , r e h e a r s e f o r t h i s y e a r ' s m u s i c a l , o r w o r k o n o u r y e a r l y b a n d t r i p . t h i s e n d s t h e day. m y h e a d s w i m s f r o m m u l t i - t a s k i n g . t h e s u n i s s e t t i n g a n d i'm o f f f o r t h e f i n a l l e g o f m y w o r k d a y , t h e - k i l o m e t e r b a t t l e h o m e . s o o n i'll b e : d e e p i n t h e g r i d a n d l o c k o f t o e a t i n g t h e f u m e s a n d c u r s i n g b u f f o o n s i n a p a n i c t o get o f f t h e t a r f o r d o m e s t i c abyss i n m y l i t t l e h o u s e i n t h e s u b w i t h its ' s b i g e n g i n e t i m e w a r p a n d n e i g h b o r s w h o are w h i t e - r i g h t o f a r n o l d . . . . . . a n d i w i l l start t h e n e x t p a r t o f m y d a y - t h e o n e w i t h m y f a m i l y . i l e a v e m y w o r k at w o r k u n t i l i r e t u r n o n c e a g a i n i n t h e p r e - d a w n h o u r s t o d e s c e n d t h e l o n g g y m b l e a c h e r s t a i r s a n d start a n o t h e r d a y . a trilogy of developmental stories the story of "the blues brothers—a musical" c h a r l i e p h i l l i p s a n d i h a d p l a y e d t o g e t h e r i n a l o t o f b a n d s w h e n w e w e r e m u c h y o u n g e r . n o w , as p r o f e s s i o n a l e d u c a t o r s , w e w e r e o n c e a g a i n w o r k i n g as a t e a m . t h i s t i m e it w a s i n t h e r o l e s o f m u s i c t e a c h e r a n d d r a m a t e a c h e r . i h a d a l r e a d y b e e n t e a c h i n g m u s i c at sea v i e w f o r f i v e y e a r s p r i o r t o c h a r l i e b e c o m i n g t h e d r a m a t e a c h e r . d u r i n g t h i s t e n u r e , i h a d e s t a b l i s h e d m y s e l f i n m y r o l e a n d m y p e r s o n a l p r i o r i t i e s , i n t e r e s t s a n d p a s s i o n s w e r e s t a r t i n g t o s u r f a c e i n t h e p r o g r a m . o n e t r a d i t i o n t h a t i h a d t o d e a l w i t h w a s a c o m m u n i t y e x p e c t a t i o n f o r a m u s i c a l . i w a s n o t v e r y k e e n o n m u s i c a l s , b u t as a n e w t e a c h e r , i w a s q u i t e c o n c e r n e d w i t h l o c a l p o l i t i c s a n d p o l i c i e s . c o n s e q u e n t l y , i h a d , i n p a r t n e r s h i p w i t h t h e p r e v i o u s d r a m a t e a c h e r s , p r o d u c e d " f i d d l e r o n t h e r o o f , " " t h e s o u n d o f m u s i c , " " g r e a s e " a n d " b y e - b y e b i r d i e . " w i t h c h a r l i e t a k i n g o n t h e p o s i t i o n o f d r a m a t e a c h e r , i k n e w t h a t i w o u l d h a v e t o b e c o m e i n v e n t i v e i n m y a p p r o a c h t o t h e m u s i c a l . c h a r l i e w a s a m o d e r n v i s i o n a r y w h o p o s s e s s e d o l y m p i a n e n e r g y a n d d e d i c a t i o n t o h i s j o b . i k n e w t h a t h e h a d n o t i m e f o r " o l d " b r o a d w a y m u s i c a l s t h a t t e n d e d t o r e p r e s e n t v a l u e s a n d s e n t i m e n t s o f t h e past. i a l s o k n e w t h a t c h a r l i e w a s c r a z y a b o u t r h y t h m a n d b l u e s - u r b a n a f r o - a m e r i c a n s o u l m u s i c f r o m t h e ' s - so m u c h s o , t h a t i h a d c o n n e c t e d h i m w i t h a " b l u e s b r o t h e r s " t r i b u t e b a n d . c h a r l i e l o v e d t o p e r f o r m o n h i s h a m m o n d b o r g a n w i t h a b a n d t h a t p a r o d i e d t h e c o m e d i e s t o r y o f t h e m o v i e t h a t s t a r e d j o h n b e l o u s h i a n d d a n a c k r o y d . " h o w a b o u t c r e a t i n g " t h e b l u e s b r o t h e r s — a _ m u s i c a l , " i s u g g e s t e d , p u t t i n g i n t o m y v o i c e a p o s i t i v e s p i n . " w e c o u l d w r i t e o u r o w n s c r i p t o v e r a b a c k g r o u n d o f f a m o u s r & b s o n g s . w h y , y o u c o u l d e v e n p l a y t h e b i n t h e m u s i c a l ! " t h e c r e a t i v e p o t e n t i a l o f t h i s s i t u a t i o n w a s w a y t o o great f o r a c h a m p i o n e d u c a t o r l i k e c h a r l i e t o p a s s o n . "i w a n t t o a d d j o h n p e p p a r d t o t h e t e a m , " h e s a i d . j o h n w a s a y o u n g s o c i a l s t u d i e s t e a c h e r at t h e s c h o o l . j o h n l o v e d c h a r l i e ' s e n e r g y a n d v i s i o n a n d t r i e d t o m o d e l h i s style after c h a r l i e . " j o h n h a s b e e n t a k i n g c o u r s e s o n h o w t o w r i t e s c r e e n p l a y s f o r t e l e v i s i o n , " c h a r l i e c o n t i n u e d . "i w i l l w o r k w i t h h i m o n t h e s c r i p t . i w i l l a l s o b e t h e p r o d u c e r a n d set d e s i g n e r . m i c h a e l , y o u , o f c o u r s e , w i l l b e t h e m u s i c d i r e c t o r . " c r e a t i n g t h e m u s i c a l w o u l d b e c h a l l e n g i n g . u s u a l l y t h e s o n g w r i t e r s a n d l y r i c i s t s c o m p o s e s o n g s t h a t are g e n e r a t e d f r o m a l i b r e t t o o r text. t h e p u r p o s e s o f t h e s o n g s are m a n y . f o r e x a m p l e , t h e s o n g s c a n d e s c r i b e w h a t h a s p a s s e d i n t h e a c t i o n o r w h a t e m o t i o n s t h e s i n g e r o r t h e g r o u p is e x p e r i e n c i n g . s o n g s c a n a l s o m o v e t h e p l o t f o r w a r d b y d e t a i l i n g w h a t w i l l h a p p e n next. w e h a d a u n i q u e s i t u a t i o n i n t h a t t h e s o n g s a n d t h e i r l y r i c s t o r i e s w e r e a l r e a d y c o m p o s e d . f u r t h e r m o r e , t h e r e w a s n o i n t e n t i o n a l t h e m a t i c l i n k a g e b e t w e e n t h e s e r & b h i t s . o u r f i r s t step w a s t o c o m p i l e a n u m b e r o f o u t s t a n d i n g r & b h i t s . i d u g t h o u g h m y c d ' s a n d c o n s t r u c t e d a n a n t h o l o g y t h a t i n c l u d e d a r t i s t s l i k e w i l s o n p i c k e t t , s a m a n d d a v e , a r e t h a f r a n k l i n , j a m e s b r o w n , s m o k e y r o b i n s o n , t h e f o u r t o p s , t o n a m e a f e w . j o h n t o o k t h i s c o l l e c t i o n a n d n o t a t e d t h e t h e m e s o f t h e l y r i c s f o r e a c h s o n g . t h e n , b y l u c k a n d c r e a t i v i t y , h e w a s a b l e t o see a p o t e n t i a l " c o h e r e n c e " i n a n u m b e r o f t h e s o n g s . t o h i s c r e d i t , j o h n , w i t h c h a r l i e ' s s u p p o r t , c o n s t r u c t e d a f i n e l i b r e t t o . t h e s t o r y e n d e d u p b e i n g s t r o n g i n itself, w i t h n o c o n n e c t i o n , except i n n a m e t o t h e o r i g i n a l " b l u e s b r o t h e r s " m o v i e s c r i p t . o n c e j o h n h a d n a r r o w e d d o w n t h e l i s t t o t h o s e s o n g s t h a t w o u l d b e i n t h e m u s i c a l , it w a s m y j o b t o t r a n s c r i b e a l l t h e p a r t s o f a l l t h e s o n g s a n d t h e n t e a c h t h e m t o m y stage b a n d . t h i s r e p r e s e n t e d a l o t o f w o r k . f o r t u n a t e l y , i h a d a s t u d e n t t e a c h e r . i r e c a l l c o u n t l e s s h o u r s i n m y s c h o o l office t r a n s c r i b i n g . i u s e d h e a d p h o n e s as i f o u g h t t o b l o c k o u t t h e s o u n d s o f t h e classes w h i l e t h e s t u d e n t t e a c h e r t a u g h t . t h e p a r t s w e r e a l l h a n d w r i t t e n . a s i f i n i s h e d e a c h s o n g , i w o u l d t h e n p r o c e e d t o t e a c h t h e m t o m y s e n i o r stage b a n d c l a s s . t h e class s e e m e d v e r y i n t e r e s t e d i n t h e m a t e r i a l a n d it w a s a n easy fit f o r t h e i n s t r u m e n t a t i o n as m o s t r & b r e c o r d s u s e h o r n s as w e l l as g u i t a r , d r u m s , b a s s a n d k e y b o a r d s . w e h a d s o m e r e a l " f i n d s " i n o u r c a s t i n g . a l t h o u g h w e t h o u g h t w e k n e w a l l t h e a c t o r / s i n g e r s i n t h e s c h o o l , w e w e r e d e l i g h t e d t o d i s c o v e r a y o u n g l e a d i n g m a n , j a m e s o l e n . j a m e s w a s a f o o t b a l l p l a y e r , w h o h a d n o t w o r k e d w i t h t h e f i n e a r t s d e p a r t m e n t . t h e r e w e r e t h r e e c o m p o n e n t s t o t h e c a s t i n g c a l l s . t h e f i r s t c o m p o n e n t w a s a d r a m a t i c r e a d i n g . t h e s e c o n d c o m p o n e n t w a s a d a n c e n u m b e r . f i n a l l y , t h e s t u d e n t h a d t o s i n g a s o n g . w e w e r e s h o c k e d t o d i s c o v e r t h a t j a m e s s o u n d e d e x a c t l y l i k e t h e y o u n g m a l e s i n g e r w h o s t a r e d i n t h e r & b m o v i e " t h e c o m m i t m e n t s . " w e p a i r e d u p j a m e s w i t h a n o t h e r s t r o n g s i n g e r , l u k e g o o d a l l . t h e t w o m a d e a m a g i c a l t e a m . o t h e r c h a r a c t e r s q u i c k l y f e l l i n t o p l a c e . t h e d r a m a w a s s t a r t i n g t o t a k e s h a p e . a n o t h e r h u r d l e t o j u m p w a s t h a t o f s e c u r i n g a t h e a t r e . u n f o r t u n a t e l y , o u r s c h o o l d i d n o t h a v e a p r o p e r t h e a t r e . w e h a d a l a r g e g y m t h a t h a d a stage at o n e e n d . c h a r l i e w a s n o t h a p p y w i t h t h i s v e n u e . e v e r s i n c e h e s t a r t e d t e a c h i n g , c h a r l i e h a s a l w a y s t r i e d t o e n v i s i o n b i g g e r a n d m o r e e x c i t i n g l e a r n i n g e x p e r i e n c e s f o r c h i l d r e n . s o it d i d n o t c o m e as a s u r p r i s e t o l e a r n t h a t h e h a d t a l k e d t h e o w n e r o f t h e p a r k r o y a l c i n e m a s i n t o l o a n i n g u s o n e o f h i s t h r e e c i n e m a s t o r e h e a r s e a n d f o i s t t h e p r o d u c t i o n . n o w w e h a d a s c r i p t , m u s i c , cast o f a c t o r s , a n d a p e r f o r m a n c e v e n u e . w e set u p a n i n t e n s i v e p r a c t i c e s c h e d u l e t o k n i t t o g e t h e r t h e i n d i v i d u a l w o r k o f t h e a c t o r s , d a n c e r s , a n d b a n d . p u t t i n g a s h o w t o g e t h e r so t h a t it h a s a n e n e r g y a n d a p u l s e o f its o w n is a c h a l l e n g i n g p r o p o s i t i o n . it is h a r d e n o u g h t o d e v e l o p t h e s t u d e n t s t o a q u a l i t y l e v e l e i t h e r i n s i n g i n g , d a n c i n g , a c t i n g , o r p l a y i n g , b u t it is a d a u n t i n g t a s k t o p u t t h e i n d i v i d u a l p a r t s t o g e t h e r i n s u c h a w a y t h a t t h e o v e r a l l s u m o f e n e r g y s u r p a s s e s t h e t o t a l o f t h e i n d i v i d u a l p a r t s . w i t h t h i s s h o w , o u r l e v e l o f success s h o c k e d a l l o f u s . t h e m u s i c a l d i d l a u n c h a n d d e v e l o p a n energy o f its o w n . b u t t h e r e w a s a n o t h e r f a c t o r f o r s u c c e s s t h a t w e u n d e r e s t i m a t e d . w e h a d n ' t r e a l l y c a l c u l a t e d t h e u n i v e r s a l a p p e a l o f r & b m u s i c . w e d i s c o v e r e d b o t h t h e p a r e n t s a n d t h e s t u d e n t s l o v e d t h i s m u s i c . n o t o n l y d i d w e h a v e a s o l d - o u t r u n at t h e p a r k r o y a l c i n e m a , b u t , a l s o , w e e n d e d u p t a k i n g t h e p r o d u c t i o n d o w n t o w n a n d h a v i n g a s u c c e s s f u l r u n at t h e v o g u e t h e a t r e . t h e t r e m e n d o u s success o f t h i s e x p e r i e n c e s p u r r e d t h e t e a c h i n g t e a m t o b e g i n a r u n o f o r i g i n a l m u s i c a l s w h e r e i n t h e m u s i c as w e l l as t h e l i b r e t t o s w a s c o n c e i v e d b y t h e t e a m . m y w o r k m o v e d t o i n c l u d e c o m p o s i t i o n as w e l l as b a n d d i r e c t i n g . b u t greatest i m p a c t o n m y p r o g r a m a n d m y c a r e e r c a m e f r o m a v i s i o n o f c r e a t i n g a class d e v o t e d t o a c u r r i c u l u m o f r & b m u s i c . the story of the creation of the rhythm and blues class a f t e r a s u m m e r o f r e f l e c t i o n o n t h e success o f " t h e b l u e s b r o t h e r s - a m u s i c a l , " i d e c i d e d t h a t i w a n t e d t o s w i t c h t h e f o c u s o f m y s e n i o r stage b a n d c l a s s . i h a d b e e n q u i t e f r u s t r a t e d w i t h t h e s t a n d a r d fare o f h i g h s c h o o l b a n d m u s i c . i felt t h a t it w a s s t a i d a n d t i r e d a n d h o p e l e s s l y o u t o f date. i d e c i d e d t h a t i w a n t e d t o t e a c h a class a b o u t r & b m u s i c . t o u n d e r s t a n d t h e r e a s o n i n g b e h i n d t h i s u n d e r t a k i n g b e y o n d t h e o b v i o u s success o f t h e m u s i c a l , i m u s t r e v e a l s o m e m o r e o f m y v a l u e s a n d r e f l e c t i o n s as a m u s i c i a n , e d u c a t o r a n d h u m a n . t h e f o l l o w i n g is a n e x c e r p t f r o m a n e s s a y o f m i n e t h a t w a s w r i t t e n as p a r t o f a n a s s i g n m e n t f o r a c o u r s e o n a c t i o n r e s e a r c h . the making of music has always held a very special place in my life. it has provided continuous challenge and rewards. moreover, it has been a place of sanctuary and self-expression. from an early age, music making has consistently grounded and revitalized my spirit. in fact, it has been a world unto itself-a world of never ending joy, adventure, and learning. it has given me a platform to launch my priorities, my values and my point of view. it has allowed me a level of self-determination that would be hard to obtain in the real world. it is because of this rich, fulfilling, and multi-faceted experience that i determined i would spread this joy to others-i would become a teacher. teaching my beloved subject in the public high school system was, initially, afar cry from my previous experience with music. in my naivety, i had not considered the non-musical issues, such as class control, dealing with parents, principals and school-based politics in general. fortunately, over the years, i have developed strategies and learned skills that have helped me overcome these impediments. in fact, my program has become quite successful. one area, however, where i have only experienced limited success is in adjusting to the limitations of the curriculum-a curriculum that for the most part, tends to support the music from a past colonial culture. the band music curriculum in north american public schools has been dominated by the concert band genre and its associated repertoire. this is an old genre with roots in the british military tradition. the genre includes marches, anthems and a generous borrowing of repertoire from the classical and jazz idioms. today's band teachers have virtually all grown up under the auspices of this system. their values and formative notions of pedagogy have been influenced by this system. consequently, band programs in north america have been structured to deliver and maintain this style of music. so pervasive is this genre, one finds that high school jazz bands, who actually play a more modern and indigenous style and repertoire, are reduced in importance and viewed in schools as an add-on or adjunct to the concert band experience. junior and senior concert bands are considered the pre-eminent bands in many schools. the concert band approach, though it is thorough, sequential and grounded in a good technical pedagogy, might benefit from a revitalization of the curriculum by some of the advances, both musically and technologically, of today's world. the main area of contention seems to be the repertoire itself. in my experience, concert band repertoire does not connect with young performers. it does not move them emotionally and, in general, the students do not connect with the underlying messages or the pulse of this music. this detachment seems quite reasonable if one accepts the notion that music is one of the great purveyors and representatives of culture. concert band music, for the most part does not reflect the culture of today. few people, if any, in today's society listen to concert band music. one cannot find a "concert band" section in most cd stores. students never enter my classroom listening to concert band music. i suggest that, for the most part, music teachers are teaching a historical form that is detached from the world, as we know it now. it comes as no surprise then that students are not reaping the wonderful rewards of playing music-the rewards that have consistently nourished and sustained my interest and drove me to teaching in the first place. t h e c r e a t i o n o f a n r & b c o u r s e i n i t i a l l y s e e m e d t o b e a s o l u t i o n t o m y i s s u e s w i t h t h e c u r r i c u l u m as it w a s b e i n g t a u g h t i n m o s t h i g h s c h o o l s i n b r i t i s h c o l u m b i a . i h a d l e a r n e d t h r o u g h t h e m u s i c a l t h a t t h e c h i l d r e n l o v e d r & b m u s i c . a l t h o u g h it is s t i l l n o t c o m p l e t e l y a c u r r e n t g e n r e , it is m u c h c l o s e r t o t o d a y ' s m u s i c t h a n a n y c o n c e r t o r stage b a n d r e p e r t o i r e c o u l d h o p e t o b e a n d it uses b r a s s , s o t h a t it c a n b e o p e n t o l o t s o f m y s t u d e n t s . w h e n i d e c i d e d t o i m p l e m e n t t h i s i d e a , i ' k n e w t h a t it w a s c r i t i c a l t h a t i e n l i s t s o m e o f t h e great s i n g e r s f r o m t h e m u s i c a l . w i t h o u t t h e i r l e v e l o f t a l e n t , i d i d n o t t h i n k t h a t i c o u l d l a u n c h a n y k i n d o f p r o g r a m t h a t c o u l d p u b l i c l y p e r f o r m . a s fate w o u l d h a v e it, j a m e s o l e n , o n e o f t h e t w o stars o f o u r s h o w , h a d a s p a r e b l o c k t h a t c o i n c i d e d w i t h t h e f l e d g l i n g r & b c l a s s . f u r t h e r m o r e , t w o m o r e f e m a l e s i n g e r s f r o m t h e m u s i c a l w e r e also a b l e t o a l t e r t h e i r t i m e t a b l e s t o a l l o w t h e m t o j o i n . t h e class c o u l d f l y ! i w a n t e d t h i s class t o p a r r o t a l o t o f t h e e x p e r i e n c e s a n d m e m o r i e s t h a t i h a d as a p r o f e s s i o n a l m u s i c i a n . w h e n i p l a y e d w i t h b a n d s i n v a n c o u v e r n i g h t c l u b s , f o r e x a m p l e , w e c o u l d n o t w a i t f o r t h e m u s i c o f t h e c u r r e n t r o c k a n d p o p h i t s t o b e p r i n t e d . i n s t e a d , w e l e a r n e d a l l t h e m a t e r i a l b y ear. if w e h a d t r o u b l e , w e w o u l d h e l p e a c h o t h e r . a l s o , t h e s h o w h a d t o b e t i g h t a n d p r o f e s s i o n a l , as t h e r e w a s m u c h c o m p e t i t i o n f o r t h e g i g s . a s is o f t e n t h e c a s e , t h e r e w e r e m a n y m o r e b a n d s i n t h e a r e a t h a n t h e r e w a s w o r k . o f c o u r s e , w e h a d t o l o o k g o o d as w e l l as s o u n d g o o d . a l t h o u g h n o t h i n g w a s r e a l l y c h o r e o g r a p h e d , w e s t i l l m o v e d o n stage a n d r o c k e d h a r d . w e h a d t o c o n n e c t w i t h t h e a u d i e n c e a n d t a k e t h e m o n a m u s i c a l a d v e n t u r e every n i g h t . s o n g l i s t s w e r e c a r e f u l l y c o n s t r u c t e d a n d t h e r e w e r e n o d e l a y s b e t w e e n s o n g s , o r w e w o u l d l o s e t h e d a n c e r s a n d t h e a t m o s p h e r e t h a t w e w e r e t r y i n g t o create. f i n a l l y , t h e r e w a s a s p e c i a l b o n d t h a t f o r m e d b e t w e e n t h e b a n d m e m b e r s . a l l o f u s w a n t e d t o s u r v i v e a n d s u c c e e d i n t h e b u s i n e s s . i r u n t h e class w i t h m u c h o f t h e a t t i t u d e a n d t e c h n i q u e s t h a t w e r e e m p l o y e d d u r i n g m y p r o f e s s i o n a l t e n u r e . t h e c o u r s e is a c c e s s e d t h r o u g h a u d i t i o n s . it is d o m i n a t e d b y g r a d e n a n d gradei m u s i c s t u d e n t s , m o s t o f w h o h a v e w o r k e d w i t h m e s i n c e g r a d e b e g i n n e r b a n d a n d h a v e g r o w n t h r o u g h t h e h i e r a r c h y o f l e a r n i n g i n t h e s e a v i e w m u s i c p r o g r a m . a t t h e f i r s t class o f e a c h s c h o o l y e a r , e a c h s t u d e n t receives a c d o f a p p r o x i m a t e l y s o n g s . o n e o f t h e o u t c o m e s o f t h e c o u r s e is f o r e a c h s t u d e n t t o l e a r n t h e i r p a r t f o r e a c h o f t h e s o n g s . w e g e n e r a l l y t r y t o t a c k l e a n e w s o n g every class o r t w o . s t u d e n t s i n i t i a l l y w o r k o n t h e a s s i g n e d s o n g at h o m e , a n d p r o d u c e a s h o r t set o f n o t e s d e s c r i b i n g w h a t t h e y w e r e a b l e t o t r a n s c r i b e . i c o l l e c t t h e s e n o t e s . t h e y r e p r e s e n t t h e effort m a d e b y e a c h s t u d e n t t o d e v e l o p t h e i r e a r s . t h e effort is a c k n o w l e d g e d - n o t w h e t h e r t h e notes are r i g h t o r w r o n g . w e t h e n l o o k at t h e s o n g c o l l e c t i v e l y , i n class. p e o p l e b r e a k u p i n t e a m s t o d i s c u s s t h e i r r e s u l t s a n d c o m e t o a c o n s e n s u s o n h o w t h e s o n g w i l l b e p l a y e d . t h e s o n g is t h e n r e h e a r s e d . v o c a l s are a d d e d ; h a r m o n i e s a n d d a n c e m o v e s are c o n s t r u c t e d . w h e n t h e s o n g j e l l s , it is a d d e d t o a r o t a t i n g p l a y l i s t o f s o n g s t h a t t h e s t u d e n t s p l a y e a c h c l a s s . . t h e c o r r e c t a t t i t u d e is e m p h a s i z e d . s t u d e n t s m u s t b e p u n c t u a l a n d r e a d y t o w o r k i n a m a t u r e a n d s e r i o u s m a n n e r . o f t e n t h e r e w i l l b e " d o w n t i m e " w h e r e o n e s e c t i o n o f t h e b a n d h a s t o fix a p r o b l e m . t h e rest o f t h e b a n d m u s t act m a t u r e l y a n d n o t j a m o r d i s r u p t t h e f e w w h o n e e d h e l p . t h e t o u g h e s t p a r t o f t h e m u s i c i s t o p l a y it w i t h e n o u g h c o n c e n t r a t i o n a n d f e e l i n g . d u e t o t h e d e c e p t i v e l y s i m p l y f o r m a n d s t r u c t u r e o f t h e m u s i c , s t u d e n t s i n i t i a l l y get l u l l e d i n t o b e l i e v i n g t h a t t h e m u s i c is v e r y easy. t h i s r e s u l t s i n a b r e a k i n c o n c e n t r a t i o n a n d a d r o p o f t h e " g r o o v e " a n d f e e l i n g o f t h e s o n g . b e g i n n i n g r & b p l a y e r s d o n o t a l w a y s r e c o g n i z e t h a t t h e f e e l i n g o f t h e s o n g is n o t r i g h t . i w o r k h a r d t o s u p p o r t t h e m t o r e a l i z e w h e n t h e y h a v e l o s t t h e " g r o o v e . " b a n d m e m b e r s are a c t i v e l y e n c o u r a g e d t o get t o k n o w a n d , p e r h a p s , b e f r i e n d o t h e r b a n d m e m b e r s . t h e a m o u n t o f i n t e r n a l c o h e s i o n s e e m s t o d i r e c t l y i m p r o v e t h e l e v e l o f p e r f o r m a n c e . t o s u p p o r t t h i s n o t i o n , t h e b a n d o f t e n h a s d i n n e r s t o g e t h e r after gigs a n d g e n e r a l l y t a k e s a b a n d t r i p e a c h y e a r . s t u d e n t s m u s t b e r e a d y t o p a r t i c i p a t e i n these e x t r a - c u r r i c u l a r a c t i v i t i e s . m y r o l e is o n e o f f a c i l i t a t o r . i h a v e n o d e s i r e t o p o l i c e t h e b a n d ' s b e h a v i o r , as d o i n g so w o u l d t h r o w t h e class i n t o a t r a d i t i o n a l f r a m e a n d t h e o b j e c t i v e s o f d e v e l o p i n g l e a d e r s h i p , m a t u r i t y , a n d c r e a t i v e p r o b l e m s o l v i n g c o u l d b e p l a c e d i n j e o p a r d y . t o s u p p o r t t h e n o t i o n o f t e a c h e r as f a c i l i t a t o r a n d t e c h n i c a l a i d , e a c h s t u d e n t a l o n g w i t h t h e i r p a r e n t s s i g n a c o n t r a c t o f u n d e r s t a n d i n g a n d c o m m i t m e n t . t h i s c o n t r a c t is as f o l l o w s : r &b expectations the r&b band isa very special class at sea view. the rewards derived from this class are not often available in a regular high school course. students will need to demonstrate maturity. enthusiasm. and a strong commitment to the band and it's goals and repertoire in order for the class to be successful. this will be displayed in the following manner: . students will work hard at their song parts at home. . students will have a song prepared (in writing) for each class. . students will play the songs by memory. . students will make themselves available for the various extracurricular performances. . students will take each class seriously . students will be punctual and set up quickly. . once class has started/students will only play and focus on this year's repetoire of music. .students will always play the music with as much energy, spirit, and "soul" as possible. .students will befriend and respect other band members to create a cohesive "team" environment. . students will assist each other in the learning of new songs. i, ,have read and understand the expectations for the r & b class, and am prepared to do my best to follow these rules. i know that this course requires consistent maturity and focus on my part. i realize that forcing mr. t. to constantly police my behaviours is counter- productive to the class and that failure to meet these expectations may result in a loss of the right to attend and be in the class. signature of student. signature of parent after reading the expectations a s e c o n d e d u c a t i o n a l c h a l l e n g e f o r t h e r & b c l a s s i s t h e m u s i c a l t h a t w e p r o d u c e e v e r y s e c o n d y e a r . o n t h e s e y e a r s , w e p u s h h a r d t o get t h r o u g h o u r b a s i c r e p e r t o i r e i n o r d e r t o m a k e r o o m f o r i n - c l a s s r e h e a r s a l s o f t h e m u s i c f o r t h e p r o d u c t i o n . t h i s " h a r d " r e a d i n g p r o v i d e s a b a l a n c e t o a l l t h e " e a r " w o r k o f t h e f a l l t e r m . p e r f o r m i n g f o r t w o w e e k s i n t h e m u s i c a l is a v e r y r e w a r d i n g e x p e r i e n c e , b o t h m u s i c a l l y a n d s o c i a l l y f o r t h e s t u d e n t s . t h i s e d u c a t i o n a l project is a l o c a l s u c c e s s . w e s e e m t o p r o v i d e t h e u l t i m a t e " c r o s s o v e r " m u s i c f o r m a n y e v e n t s . p a r e n t s are e s p e c i a l l y w e l c o m i n g t o t h i s g e n r e . i k n o w t h a t t h e r & b b a n d h a s b e e n p i c k e d o v e r o t h e r s c h o o l b a n d s f o r events s i m p l y b e c a u s e t h e m u s i c is e n e r g e t i c , d a n c e a b l e a n d f u n . a s a r e s u l t , w e u s u a l l y p l a y f o r l a r g e c r o w d s at b o t h n o r t h a n d w e s t v a n c o u v e r c a n a d a d a y c e l e b r a t i o n s . p r i v a t e b u s i n e s s e s , w h e n t h e y ar e h a v i n g a c e l e b r a t i o n , w i l l o f t e n p a y u s t o p e r f o r m . t h e m u s i c f e s t i v a l at k e r e m e o s , a . k . a . " m u s i c u n d e r t h e k . " h a s a s k e d u s t o b e p a r t o f t h e e n t e r t a i n m e n t p a c k a g e f o r t h e f e s t i v a l - a f e s t i v a l t h a t w e u s e t o a t t e n d as i n t h e r o l e o f s t u d e n t s . b e s i d e s t h e a p p r e c i a t i o n f o r r & b m u s i c a n d t h e l e g a c y o f g o o d r & b p l a y e r s a n d s i n g e r s t h a t t h e p r o g r a m h a s t u r n e d o u t , t h e r e as w e l l exits a n a l u m n i b a n d , k n o w n as t h e r & b c o n s p i r a c y . t h i s b a n d p e r f o r m s at v a r i o u s p r o f e s s i o n a l r & b c l u b s i n v a n c o u v e r . t h e o n l y a r e a o f s k e p t i c i s m s e e m s t o e m a n a t e f r o m s o m e t r a d i t i o n a l c o n c e r t b a n d t e a c h e r s w h o , f o r a m y r i a d o f r e a s o n s , q u e s t i o n t h e v a l i d i t y o f t h i s p r o g r a m . the story of the r&b conspiracy it h a d b e e n a y e a r s i n c e m y f i r s t g r o u p o f r & b class s i n g e r s h a d g r a d u a t e d f r o m s e a v i e w . m o s t o f t h e s t u d e n t s w e r e a t t e n d i n g v a r i o u s l o c a l p o s t - s e c o n d a r y i n s t i t u t i o n s . t w o s t u d e n t s , s h e i l a i r v i n g a n d c y n t h i a s w a n s b u r g h e a c h i n d e p e n d e n t l y v i s i t e d t h e f o l l o w i n g y e a r . b o t h g i r l s b e m o a n e d t h e fact t h a t , u p o n g r a d u a t i o n f r o m sea v i e w s e c o n d a r y , t h e y h a d l o s t t h e i r a v e n u e o f m u s i c a l e x p r e s s i o n . t h e sea v i e w r & b b a n d c l a s s h a d b e e n a n i m p o r t a n t a n d v a l u e d e x p e r i e n c e , b u t n e i t h e r h a d b e e n a b l e t o f o r m o r c o n n e c t w i t h a b a n d s i n c e t h e y h a d g r a d u a t e d . i s t a r t e d r e f l e c t i n g a b o u t t h i s i s s u e a n d t h e fact t h a t i w a s n ' t p l a y i n g e i t h e r . i n fact, it h a d b e e n a d i f f i c u l t t r a n s i t i o n f r o m p l a y i n g s i x n i g h t s a w e e k t o a f u l l - t i m e t e a c h i n g j o b w h e r e i n y o u r h a r d w o r k w a s n o t o f t e n n o t i c e d . i h a d b e e n u s e t o a l o t o f r e c o g n i t i o n a n d status. n o w , as a t e a c h e r , i m a d e m o r e m o n e y a n d h a d m o r e s e c u r i t y , b u t i h a d t o g e n e r a l l y p a t m y s e l f o n t h e b a c k f o r m y effort a n d r e s u l t s . m y o l d f r i e n d a n d m e n t o r , c h a r l i e p h i l l i p s , w a s r e a l l y m i s s i n g p l a y i n g t o o . s o t o m e e t these v a r i o u s n e e d s , i p u l l e d s e v e n p e o p l e t o g e t h e r . t h r e e f o r m e r s e a v i e w s i n g e r s w o u l d f r o n t t h e b a n d : s h e i l a i r v i n g , c y n t h i a s w a n s b u r g h a n d d o n n a l e e . t h e d r u m m e r ' s c h a i r e v e n t u a l l y f e l l a n o t h e r s e a v i e w a l u m n i — c a s e y w h i t e . c h a r l i e p l a y e d h a m m o n d b o r g a n a n d i p l a y e d g u i t a r . t h e g r o u p a d d e d o n l y o n e n o n - s e a v i e w p e r s o n — p e t e r b o y c h u k o n b a s s g u i t a r . it w a s a n o d d m a t c h i n g o f t w e n t y - y e a r o l d s w i t h f o r t y y e a r o l d s , b u t it w o r k e d . t h e " k i d s " b r o u g h t i n e n e r g y a n d i m a g e a n d t h e " o l d g u y s " b r o u g h t i n s t a b i l i t y a n d d e p t h o f m u s i c a l e x p e r i e n c e . u s u a l l y a n age gap o f t w e n t y y e a r s p r e c l u d e s t h e success o f a g r o u p , b u t b e c a u s e w e h a d b e e n t h e i r t e a c h e r s , w e h a d a l r e a d y e s t a b l i s h e d a g o o d r a p p o r t . t h e b a n d s t a r t e d o u t s l o w l y , p l a y i n g free gigs a n d events f o r t h e w e s t v a n c o u v e r c o m m u n i t y a n d s c h o o l d i s t r i c t . a s o u r p r o f e s s i o n a l i s m s t a r t e d t o e m e r g e , w e a b l e t o start p l a y i n g t h e l o c a l p r o f e s s i o n a l r & b a n d b l u e s r o o m s i n v a n c o u v e r . p r e s e n t l y , t h e b a n d p l a y s o n c e o r t w i c e a m o n t h at t h e b a c k s t a g e l o u n g e ( a r t s c l u b t h e a t r e ) , the f a i r v i e w p u b , o r o n o c c a s i o n at t h e y a l e . it i s h a r d t o b e l i e v e t h a t w e h a v e b e e n t o g e t h e r f o r a l m o s t n i n e y e a r s . w e h a v e c l e a r l y g r o w n i n t o a q u a l i t y l o c a l act t h a t h a s a f o l l o w i n g . a s a t e a c h e r , i feel v e r y p r o u d o f t h i s p r o f e s s i o n a l u n i t . i see t h e y o u n g p e o p l e i n m y b a n d c o m p l e t i n g m y e d u c a t i o n a l v i s i o n — t h a t m u s i c c o u l d b e a r e w a r d i n g h o b b y t h a t it c o u l d b e s u c c e s s f u l l y i n t e g r a t e d i n t o t h e f r a m e w o r k o f t h e i r b u s y p r o f e s s i o n a l l i v e s . heroes preamble: heroes is a collection of narratives, poems, and reflections on the pervasive issue of heros and hero journeys. f u r t h e r m o r e , w e h a v e n o t e v e n t o r i s k t h e a d v e n t u r e a l o n e , f o r t h e h e r o e s o f a l l t i m e h a v e g o n e b e f o r e u s . t h e l a b y r i n t h is t h o r o u g h l y k n o w n . w e h a v e o n l y t o f o l l o w t h e t h r e a d o f t h e h e r o p a t h , a n d w h e r e w e h a d t h o u g h t t o f i n d a n a b o m i n a t i o n , w e s h a l l f i n d a g o d . a n d w h e r e w e t h o u g h t t o s l a y a n o t h e r , w e s h a l l s l a y o u r s e l v e s . w h e r e w e h a d t h o u g h t t o t r a v e l o u t w a r d , w e w i l l c o m e t o t h e c e n t e r o f o u r o w n e x i s t e n c e . a n d w h e r e w e h a d t h o u g h t t o b e a l o n e , w e w i l l b e w i t h a l l t h e w o r l d ( c a m p b e l l , , p . . ) h e r o e s : w h o are t h e y ? i n t h e f i r s t d e c a d e o f t h e s t c e n t u r y , t h e w o r d " h e r o " is b e c o m i n g a n o v e r u s e d w o r d . it is o n t h e edge o f j o i n i n g a h o s t o f o t h e r w o r d s t h a t , i n o u r w o r l d o f i n c e s s a n t s p i n a n d h y p e r b o l e , are l o s i n g t h e i r o r i g i n a l m e a n i n g a n d f o r c e . c o n s t a n t m e d i a use o f w o r d s s u c h as " a w e s o m e , " " l e g e n d a r y , " " v i s i o n a r y , " " m y t h i c , " o r " t r a d i t i o n , " t o n a m e a f e w , h a v e h a d t h e i r v a l u e i n c u l t u r a l c u r r e n c y m a d e a l m o s t m e a n i n g l e s s . i n p a r t , t h e y h a v e b e e n d r a i n e d o f t h e i r p o t e n c y b y t h e i r u s e t o d e s c r i b e t h i n g s t h a t t h e y are not. d e s p i t e t h i s , t h e p h e n o m e n o n o f " h e r o " is s t i l l r e a l a n d p o w e r f u l . t o s o m e extent, t h e n o t i o n o f h e r o h a s a n d w i l l a l w a y s h a v e . a n i m p o r t a n t r o l e i n t h e h u m a n d r a m a . w h o q u a l i f i e s as a h e r o ? i n t h e above q u o t a t i o n , j o s e p h c a m p b e l l w a s i n t r i g u e d w i t h t h e h e r o w i t h i n e a c h p e r s o n . h e w a s a l s o i n t r i g u e d w i t h e x t e r i o r h e r o e s t h a t h a v e a c t e d as m o d e l s f o r g e n e r a t i o n s o f c u l t u r e s t h r o u g h o u t t h e w o r l d . h i s e x t e r i o r w o r k f o c u s e d o n m y t h s a n d l e g e n d s . o f t e n , i n m y f o r m a t i v e y e a r s , i l o o k e d o u t s i d e o f m y s e l f f o r h e r o i c i n s p i r a t i o n . i s o u g h t o u t a n d m o d e l e d m y s e l f after o t h e r s , w h o m a n i f e s t e d a d e e p r e s o n a n c e w i t h m y o w n core v a l u e s a n d d r e a m s . t h e r e f o r e , m y a p p r o a c h t o t h i s p i e c e is f r a m e d b y t h e f o l l o w i n g d e f i n i t i o n : h e r o e s are p e o p l e w h o i n s p i r e m e t o r e a c h d e e p e r , t o f l y h i g h e r , m o v e t o a m o r e v i s i o n a r y state a n d , s u b s e q u e n t l y , l i v e a r i c h e r l i f e . i n s h o r t , m y h e r o e s are p e o p l e w h o h a v e c a t a l y z e d a shift o f m y t h o u g h t s a n d v a l u e s . t h e y are p e o p l e w h o h a v e u l t i m a t e l y c h a n g e d m y p a t h . w i t h i n t h i s c o n t e x t , i a m i n t e r e s t e d i n t h e f o l l o w i n g q u e s t i o n s f o r r e f l e c t i o n : • w h o are o r h a v e b e e n t h e h e r o e s i n m y l i f e ? • w h y d o i see t h e m as h e r o e s ? • h o w d i d t h e y r e s o n a t e w i t h m e • h o w d o t h e y l i v e t h r o u g h m e ? • h o w d o t h e y i m p a c t o n m y t e a c h i n g ? • a m i m y yet m y o w n h e r o ? • w h a t is t h e r o l e o f p r e s e n t d a y h e r o e s f o r m e ? a s a h u m a n w h o h a s b e e n o b s e s s e d w i t h t h e b e a u t y a n d p o t e n t i a l o f m u s i c a n d g u i t a r p l a y i n g , i h a v e h a d m a n y h e r o e s . o n e m a y argue t h a t t h r o u g h t h e c u l t u r e o f h e r o a n d m y t h , t h e t r a d i t i o n o f g u i t a r is k e p t a l i v e a n d p a s s e d o n t h r o u g h s u c c e s s i v e g e n e r a t i o n s o f y o u n g s t e r s . o n e n e e d o n l y p e r u s e t h e m a g a z i n e r a c k s t o f i n d m a g a z i n e s d e v o t e d t o i c o n s o f b o t h m u s i c a n d g u i t a r p l a y i n g . t h e n o t i o n t h a t m u s i c i a n s w h o p l a y g u i t a r c o u l d b e s o m e h o w b i g g e r t h a n life—that t h e y c o u l d k n o w t h i n g s a n d h a v e i n s i g h t s a n d w i s d o m t h a t w e h a v e yet t o f i n d — i s j u s t a c c e p t e d as p a r t o f t h e g u i t a r / m u s i c c u l t u r e . i sense t h a t t h i s i l l u s i o n s t e m s f r o m t h e i n h e r e n t s p i r i t u a l p o t e n c y o f t h e m u s i c itself, f o r t h e p o w e r o f m u s i c o n s o m e o f u s is i m m e n s e . m u s i c c a n i n s p i r e , g r o u n d a n d b a l a n c e u s . it c a n s u p p o r t h e a l i n g a n d r e f l e c t i o n . it c a n l e a d t o n e w a v e n u e s o f d i r e c t i o n . t h e r e f o r e is s e e m s n a t u r a l t o d r a w s p i r i t u a l a s s u m p t i o n s a b o u t it. i a t t e m p t t o express s o m e o f these n o t i o n s i n t h e f o l l o w i n g p o e m , e n t i t l e d magician/musician. magician/musician preamble: sometimes, but not often, i have witnessed a musical performance that is so breath -taking and deep and transcendental in nature, that i start wondering where the line lies that separates musicians from magicians and shamans. it is at times like these, the artist/hero says exactly what needs to be said at a level that profoundly resonates my core. these events, although they are very infrequent, are so overwhelming that, like an opiate, i immediately crave more. the other issue that enters my mind is the possibility that in fact there is no magic at all and that i've been duped by slight of hand into believing that there is more than meets the eye. certainly in my life story(s), i always seem to be craving a deeper understanding than seems possible. the following poem follows a vivid memory of one of the first vancouver concert performances of the jazz/fusion guitarist/magician mike stern. stern was a member of the michael brecker band at the time. the performance was at the commodore ballroom in the late 's. m a g i c i a n / m u s i c i a n it w a s i n t h e a i r a s s o o n as t h e y c o u n t e d o u t a n d f r e e d t h e f i r s t s o u n d s y o u k n e w , b u t c o u l d n ' t e x p l a i n t h e f e e l i n g t h a t w r a p p e d a r o u n d y o u l i k e a w a r m b l a n k e t a n d c o n v i n c e d y o u t h a t t h e c o n v e r s a t i o n b e t w e e n t h e i n s t r u m e n t s w o u l d s p i n a m a r v e l o u s s t o r y f i l l e d w i t h p a s s i o n , i n t r i g u e , c a r i n g a n d h u m o u r w i t h e a c h s o l o i s t b r i n g i n g h i s s p e c i a l t w i s t t o t h e e p i c b y t a k i n g h i s o w n p o e t r y a n d w e a v i n g it i n t o t h e s o n i c f a b r i c o f t h e w h o l e w h i c h t h r o u g h t o n a l a l c h e m y w o u l d c o n v e r t s i m p l e s o u n d s i n t o a n a r r a t i v e so i n t e n s e a n d b u r s t i n g w i t h r e s o n a n c e t h a t t h e s t o r y w o u l d a c t u a l l y g r i n d t o a p l a c e s o d e e p , yet c l e a n s i n g that the audience would b e left i n s i l e n c e at t h e e n d a n d f o r c e d a g a i n t o w r e s t l e w i t h e n o r m o u s q u e s t i o n s o f p u r p o s e o n e o f t h e p l a y e r s h a d s p e c i a l gifts, a n o r i g i n a l a n d s t u n n i n g c o m b i n a t i o n o f y e a r s o f t e c h n i q u e w i t h s e r i o u s r e a d i n g a n d c r i t i q u e o f a u t h o r s o f m u s i c p a s t a n d t h i s m e l d e d w i t h f r a m e s o f h e r o i c v i s i o n a n d t e n a c i t y t h a t r i p p e d f o r t h f r o m h i s b e i n g as a t o r r e n t i a l o u t p o u r i n g t h a t s t a r t e d s l o w l y , c r e e p i n g i n t h e b a c k p o r c h a n d e d g i n g ever so c l o s e l y a n d h e c a p t u r e d t h e s m e l l o f t h e r a i n j u s t b e f o r e t h e b r e a k a n d h e m a d e m e s h i v e r i n a n t i c i p a t i o n o f t h e f i r s t t e n u o u s d r o p s a n d i w a s s u r e t h a t i c o u l d see t h e t h u n d e r g r a y a n d b l a c k c l o u d s c i r c l i n g a b o v e h i s h e a d as t h e i n t e n s i t y o f h i s p l a y i n g h e r a l d e d a n e x p l o s i o n o f t o r r e n t a n d c u r r e n t a n d t h e a u d i e n c e s c r e a m e d f r o m t h e r e s o n a n c e o f t h i s tale o f e p i c r o m a n t i c i s m a n d j u s t w h e n w e t h o u g h t t h a t t h e j o u r n e y w a s c o m p l e t e t h e s o l o i s t t o o k u s t o a n e w l e v e l o f f r e s h t e r r a i n a n d t o n e w w o r l d s o f u n d e r s t a n d i n g a n d t h e a u d i e n c e e x p l o d e d a n d rose t o t h e i r feet as t h e y a s t h e y s t r a i n e d t o see h i m p u s h h i s h e a d a b o v e t h e t h u n d e r c l o u d s t o t h e d e a f e n i n g s i l e n c e a b o v e t h e w h i t e n o i s e w h e r e h e w a s h e d u s c l e a n a n d g r a c e d u s w i t h a c h a n c e t o t r y a g a i n . growing up under the glow m y f i r s t e n c o u n t e r w i t h " h e r o e s " w a s n o t t h r o u g h m u s i c . i n s t e a d t h e y c a m e t h r o u g h t w o s o u r c e s , t h e t . v . a n d c o m i c b o o k s . i w a s l o o k i n g f o r a m a l e m e n t o r t h r o u g h w h o m i c o u l d m o l d m y s e l f . m y f a t h e r , a l a s , w a s n o t t h i s p e r s o n , a l t h o u g h i w o u l d h a v e l o v e d f o r h i m t o b e . w h e n i w a s g r o w i n g u p , m y f a t h e r w a s c o n s u m e d w i t h d i s c o v e r i n g h i s o w n p o t e n t i a l a n d r e a l i z i n g h i s o w n m y t h . i w a s j u s t v i e w e d as s o m e t h i n g h e c r e a t e d t o please a n d o c c u p y m y m o m . a s m y f a t h e r h a d l i t t l e i n t e r e s t i n m e , h e r a r e l y i n t e r - a c t e d w i t h m e f o r a n y k i n d o f p l a y o r l e a r n i n g . w h a t i d o r e m e m b e r is t h a t every n i g h t , w h e n i w a s g r o w i n g u p , m y f a t h e r w a t c h e d t . v . f r o m t h e m o m e n t d a d a r r i v e d at h o m e u n t i l b e d t i m e , t h e t u b e s h o n e f o r t h , d e l i v e r i n g its messages t o b o t h h i m a n d t h e h o u s e h o l d . i w o u l d sit b y h i m i n silence and watch and absorb a world-view and set of ethics generated by the entertainment industry. i witnessed an unending parade of heroes and goddesses from all periods of history. i summate this experience in "the unnatural act," a poem that i wrote in august, . think that no one in the early 's really understood the impact that such an immersive t.v. experience would have on children. it seemed to be accepted as another technological miracle. (i personally am still saddened by our culture's acceptance of the programming of our children. in the video, super-size me, the author states that children are exposed to approximately , messages of consumerism per year. these messages tell children what is good, bad, and cool and what they need to buy.) the unnatural act (a poem about t.v. in the 's) no one knew: it seemed like a bonanza if you loved lucy like jeanie like samantha with emma and (just the flip of a switch) at the junction of green acres j could never resist. i loved their perfection, their ultra mythic feminine looks with doe eyes and cheek bones chiseled out of granite and smiles that would take you miles to a distant planet of siren- what possible chance did i have, but, again, to be a man, a paladin, real rifleman wanted dead or alive, a chuck or a steve, clint or gary tallness and silence brimming with violence and fury much too soon to define the american male on the black and white pages of high noon. or out of the west and into a jungle o r l o s t i n s p a c e o r t h e c o u r t s o r t h e f u m b l e o f f a m i l y l i f e , j u s t l e a v e it t o b e a v e r c a p t a i n s k i r k a n d k a n g a r o o , c r u n c h , h o o k a n d c l e a v e r . w i t h r a b b i t s a n d m i c e a n d w o o d p e c k e r s t o o t h a t h a d g r o w n u p i n t h e b r o n x , r i g h t n e x t t o t h e z o o . h o w m u c h d i d i l a u g h ? h o w m u c h d i d i h a t e h o w d e e p these m y t h s d i d s i n k a n d f o r m u l a t e m y b r a i n a n d assist i n t h e c o n s t r u c t i o n o f b l a c k a n d w h i t e r e d u c t i o n t h a t d r o v e m e a n d a y o u n g n a t i o n o f o v e r s t i m u l a t e d r o m a n t i c s t o r e b e l at t h e a n t i c s o f a w o r l d t h a t w e r e a l l y d i d n ' t k n o w , t u n e o u t a n d o n w i t h t h e s h o w ! i l o v e d these t . v . s h o w s as a b o y . t h e c o w b o y / w e s t e r n s a n d d i s n e y r e v i s i o n i s t h i s t o r i c a l d r a m a s s u c h as davy crockett s p u r r e d a l l t h e b o y s t o b e c o m e y o u n g c o w b o y s . i h a d a n a r s e n a l o f v a r i o u s t o y g u n s a n d r i f l e s t o f i g h t t h e b a d g u y s . t h e y w e r e t h e o n e s w h o w e r e s c u r r i l y d r e s s e d , u n s h a v e d , a n d m e a n . t h e i r s i d e k i c k s w e r e o f t e n cast as o v e r w e i g h t , b a l d i n g , d i m - w i t s w i t h f u n n y v o i c e s . i a l s o h a d a t o y b o x f i l l e d w i t h h a t s o f every s t y l e . i h a d t o h a v e t h e r i g h t h a t i n o r d e r t o l a u n c h i n t o these i m a g i n a r y r o l e s . o f c o u r s e , i h a d t o b e t h e h e r o i n t h e b l a c k a n d w h i t e m o r a l i t y p l a y s o f m y i m a g i n a t i o n . t h e b a d g u y s a l w a y s w e n t d o w n a n d i, as s y m b o l o f t h e g o o d , s t r o n g , c l e a n , a n d h a n d s o m e , a l w a y s w o n . t h e b o t t o m l i n e p l o t o f g o o d o v e r e v i l w a s p l a y e d o u t w i t h s l i g h t v a r i a t i o n s f o r y e a r s . b u t w h a t h a p p e n s if, after a l l t h i s i n d o c t r i n a t i o n a n d p r a c t i c e , y o u d o n ' t m e a s u r e u p as a h e r o ? w h a t i f y o u ' r e n o t h a n d s o m e a n d y o u h a v e n o cleft i n y o u r m o u n t i e j a w . w h a t i f y o u are s h o r t e r t h a n six feet? w h a t i f y o u h a v e b r i g h t r e d h a i r ? w h a t i f ( p e r i s h t h e t h o u g h t ) y o u are n o t a t o u g h f i g h t e r b u t r a t h e r a s e n s i t i v e d r e a m e r ? another source of angst for me was the indoctrination of american standards of female beauty. the objectification of women and valuing women for what they looked like as opposed to who they were as people was a terrible lesson to be taught. for years i dated women with high cheekbones and thin waistlines. i felt trapped by these standards of beauty that were planted so deeply into my psyche. the power of the t.v. heroes faded, however, when the "british invasion" hit the radio airwaves in early . the heroes of the sound waves i had a long distance bonding with many of the music icons of the ' s . this new source for external heroes and mentors commenced with the north american break through of the beatles in the early months of . the beatles introduced anew vitality to the entire world of pop.and with this vitality came a new relevance for young people. we all grew up with the beatles as they themselves grew and moved from the simplicity of "i want to hold your hand" to the sophistication of "a day in the life." i recall eagerly anticipating each of the later beatles' albums so my friends and i could listen to the lyrics. these cryptic messages constantly exposed me to concepts that were experientially way beyond my reach. the lyric heroes-bob dylan and john lennon post-modernism meets the sonic landscape. other artists as well as the beatles became intensely personal and reflective and relevant. it appealed to the young who were wrestling with narrow stereotypical life opportunities and values that had been generated from the needs for security and stability by the previous generation-one who had survived the great depression and w o r l d w a r ii. pop music went from pat boone to bob dylan i n the b l i n k of an eye. m a n y lyricists joined the new wave, moving away from cliches and naivety to profound essays on values, change, the need for refection, a sense of place and personal growth. dylan's lyrics i n like a rolling stone (wissolik, r . d . , m c g r a t h , s., colaianne, a . j . , ) touched some of these subjects. m y sense is that this song is about a woman who was raised i n wealth and enjoyed this distinction. h e r wealth provided her with great enjoyment, but seemed to shield her from growing up and into the w o r l d . w h e n she tumbles into a new context, she is forced to re-evaluate and work w i t h the very people that she looked down upon. it represents an incredible change from the "boy meets g i r l " simplicity of only a few years earlier. after detailing the young woman's fall from both grace and innocence, dylan essentially asks what w i l l happen next and how w i l l one deal w i t h it. this level of "reality" i n song lyrics—one that captured the grayness and complexity of l i f e - captured the imaginations of all who heard it. other artists reflected on spirituality and alternate philosophies. j o h n lennon, of the beatles, was one of the best examples of pop artists who wrote on such issues. j o h n wrote about the tibetan book of the dead i n the song, tomorrow never knows. h i s lyrics center on the acceptance of the natural end of our life journey. j o h n works hard to re-frame our t h i n k i n g to complement the process as "love is all and love is everyone" (womack, k . , davis, t . f : [eds.], .) these lyrics, unlike t h e street w i s d o m o f b o b d y l a n , t o o k y o u n g e r p e o p l e t o e s o t e r i c a d v e n t u r e s i n e a s t e r n m e t a p h y s i c a l p h i l o s o p h y . i n t h e s t r e a m - o f c o n s c i o u s n e s s f l o w o f "i a m t h e w a l r u s , " l e n n o n b l e n d e d e a s t e r n s p i r i t u a l l e a r n i n g a n d d r u g - b a s e d h a l l u c i n a t i o n s / r e a l i z a t i o n s w i t h a d y l a n e s q u e c r i t i q u e o n e n g l i s h s o c i e t y a n d s e x u a l n o r m s . l y r i c a l l i n e s l i k e "i a m h e as y o u are h e r as y o u are m e a n d w e are a l l t o g e t h e r " are j u x t a p o s e d w i t h " c o r p o r a t i o n tee s h i r t , s t u p i d b l o o d y t u e s d a y m a n " a n d r e f e r e n c e s t o " l u c y i n t h e s k y , " o r l s d ( w o m a c k , k., d a v i s , t . f . [ e d s . ] , .) t h e l y r i c s are as b o l d as t h e s t r e a m o f c o n s c i o u s n e s s style. b y t h e late ' o's, l e n n o n h a d a r r i v e d at a s p e c i a l a r t i s t i c p l a c e , w h e r e i n h e c o u l d v o i c e a n y o f h i s t h o u g h t s i n a n y l i t e r a r y s t y l e , a n d t h e w h o l e w o r l d w o u l d l i s t e n a n d t r y t o m a k e m e a n i n g f r o m it. jimi hendrix and the guitar heroes a l o n g w i t h l y r i c s , t h e m u s i c a l s o r e f l e c t e d t h e h u g e c h a n g e s a n d g r o w t h t h a t a c c o m p a n i e s a n y m a j o r s o c i e t a l p a r a d i g m b r e a k t h r o u g h . i n t h i s c o n t e x t t h e r e w a s n o t h i n g i n s t r u m e n t a l l y t h a t b e t t e r d e m o n s t r a t e d t h e c h a n g e o f v a l u e s t h a n t h e g u i t a r p l a y i n g . u s i n g a n e w a m a l g a m t h a t c h a n n e l e d t h e p a s s i o n a n d v o c a b u l a r y o f t h e b l u e s t h r o u g h t h e f i l t e r o f p o p a e s t h e t i c , t h e g u i t a r p l a y e r s b e c a m e t h e h i g h " p r i e s t s " o f r o c k . t h e b l u e s h a s a l w a y s b e e n a n a n t i - r e l i g i o n i n t h e s o u t h e r n states. it w a s g e n e r a l l y v i e w e d as t h e " d e v i l ' s m u s i c , " p r o b a b l y b e c a u s e it t o o k as m a n y c o n v e r t s as t h e t r a d i t i o n a l c h r i s t i a n r e l i g i o n s . j i m i h e n d r i x , f r o m seattle ( v i a n e w y o r k a n d l o n d o n ) a n d a n u m b e r o f e n g l i s h g u i t a r i s t s s u c h as e r i c c l a p t o n , j e f f b e c k , a n d j i m m y p a g e , a b s o r b e d a m e r i c a n b l u e s a n d f u s e d it i n t o a h i g h - p o w e r e d a v a n t - g a r d e style t h a t e n t h r a l l e d m i l l i o n s o f t e e n a g e r s . i w a s o n e o f t h o s e teenagers. a l t h o u g h i w a s n o t t h e r e w h e n a l l t h e y o u n g t o r o n t o n i a n s w o r e t h e i n f a m o u s " c l a p t o n is g o d " b u t t o n s , i d i d f u l l y u n d e r s t a n d t h e m e s s a g e , as t h e r e i s a u n i q u e p h e n o m e n o n t h a t o c c u r s w h e n b l u e s i n f u s e d s o l o s are p l a y e d w i t h excessive p a s s i o n . it s e e m s t h a t t h e r e is a b r e a k i n g p o i n t w h e r e t h e p a s s i o n p u s h e s t h r o u g h t h e d o o r s o f n o r m a l c y t o a l a n d o f t h e l o t u s . t h a t is t o say, t h r o u g h t h e i n t e n s i t y , a s p i r i t u a l edge arises a n d t h e m u s i c starts t o s o u n d l i k e a h y m n . a l l p a t h s e v e n t u a l l y l e a d t o g o d ? i h a v e o f t e n w o n d e r e d i f t h e m u s i c o f t h e ' o's o f f e r e d a p a t h t o f i l l t h e v o i d t h a t w a s b e i n g g e n e r a t e d b y t h e f a i l u r e o f t h e c h u r c h at t h e t i m e . c l e a r l y , i w a s o n e o f t h e n e w c o n v e r t s . i n t h e w i n t e r o f - , m y h e r o e s , e r i c c l a p t o n a n d j i m i h e n d r i x , p l a y e d i n m y h o m e t o w n . t h i s w a s t h e f i r s t t i m e t h a t i h a d a c t u a l l y seen h e r o e s o f m i n e i n f l e s h a n d b l o o d . t h e e x p e r i e n c e c h a n g e d m y d i r e c t i o n o f g u i t a r p l a y i n g a n d m y l i f e f o r e v e r . i s t a r t e d t h e l o n g j o u r n e y o f t r y i n g t o p l a y i m p r o v i s e d g u i t a r l i n e s t h a t w o u l d generate t h e t r a n s c e n d e n t a l m o o d s o f m y h e r o e s . t h e w o r k o f h o n i n g t h i s s k i l l c o n t i n u e s t o d a y a n d h a s i n s p i r e d t h e f o l l o w i n g p o e m . high wire guitar preamble: taking improvised solos is one of the scariest and most thrilling things that i know. from my context, it is an act of vulnerability, truthfulness and, ultimately, heroism. and it is very similar to walking a tightrope. how does one prepare? the obvious answer is to practice, but there is much more to it. with one slip you can crash and the whole edifice of emotion, intellect, soul, and aesthetic tumbles down. but when you make it.... high wire guitar p u t t i n g y o u r f o o t o u t y o u feel t h e w i r e b e f o r e y o u w a l k o n w a t e r a n d t h o u g h y o u are v e r y h i g h i n t h e s t r a t o s p h e r e , t h e r e is n o n e t a n d c e r t a i n l y n o t u r n i n g b a c k , o n l y t u r n i n g i n w a r d as y o u c o m p l e t e l y r e l a x , o h m m a n i p a d m e h u m , a n d u n c o n s c i o u s l y a l i g n a n d p o i s e y o u r m i n d , b o d y a n d s o u l i n a b s o l u t e c o n c e n t r a t i o n t o let o u t y o u r v o i c e f r o m t h e deepest p i t o f y o u r s p i r i t a s o n l y t h e w a y y o u c a n w h i l e t h e rest o f t h e u n i v e r s e l o o k s o v e r y o u r s h o u l d e r s a n d f l o a t s y o u u p i n a s e a o f t e a r d r o p s f r o m t h e b u d d h a o f c o m p a s s i o n a n d i n t h e b l i s t e r i n g w h i r l i n g o f t h e s p h e r e s y o u t u n e i n t o its t a u t n e s s , its f r e q u e n c y a n d t h i c k n e s s u n t i l t h e r e is n o s e p a r a t i o n t h r o u g h s t o r m a r i d s t i l l you are y o u r e x t e n s i o n a n d if a l l m a n n e r o f t h i n g s h a v e l o c k e d t h e m s e l v e s i n t o t h e m o s t s a c r e d p a t t e r n w h e n t h e s u n m a k e s l o v e t o t h e m o o n a n d t h e t i d e s r o l l b a c k w a r d t o r e v e a l a n c i e n t s h i p w r e c k s a n d cities o f so l o n g ago, yet y o u k n o w a n d t h e h o w l o f t h e w o l f b e c o m e s a n a r i a o f u n s p e a k a b l e b e a u t y . . . t h e n y o u are r e a d y working with heroes in real time a reflexive narrative on charlie phillips, a man in motion, and a true archetype of energy, commitment and vision m y f i r s t a t t e m p t s t o p u b l i c l y l i v e a n d t e l l m y s t o r y c a m e t h r o u g h t h e p e r f o r m a n c e o f m u s i c . i p l a y e d i n f u l l t i m e b a n d s f r o m u n t i l . it w a s s i m p l e a n d n a t u r a l m u s i c , w i t h t h e biggest t h r i l l b e i n g t h e i m p r o v i s a t i o n o f s o l o s i n t h e s p i r i t o f m y i d o l s . i h a d n e v e r b e e n h a p p i e r . it w a s t h r o u g h m y m u s i c t h a t i m e t a n d w o r k e d w i t h a m a n w h o p r o f o u n d l y i n s p i r e d a n d c h a n g e d m e . c h a r l i e p h i l l i p s w a s t h e s o n o f a n e n g l i s h f a m i l y t h a t l i v e d a n d w o r k e d i n o w e n s o u n d , o n t a r i o . t h e f a m i l y o w n e d a n d o p e r a t e d m o v i e t h e a t r e s a r o u n d t h e o w e n s o u n d r e g i o n . c h a r l i e ' s f a t h e r w a s t h e p r o j e c t i o n i s t . c h a r l i e s a w every m o v i e t h a t c a m e t h r o u g h t o w n a n d e v e n h a d t h e l u x u r y o f p r i v a t e s c r e e n i n g s o f t h e c a r t o o n s . c h a r l i e g r e w u p i n a c o n t e x t t h a t h a r d w o r k w a s t h e n o r m . i r e m e m b e r c h a r l i e t e l l i n g m e t h a t h i s w h o l e f a m i l y , i n c l u d i n g h i s g r a n d p a r e n t s w o u l d g a t h e r r e g u l a r l y at h i s d a d ' s m o v i e h o u s e . a s s o o n as t h e p a t r o n s f r o m f r i d a y ' s f i n a l s h o w left t h e t h e a t r e , t h e e n t i r e f a m i l y w o u l d r u s h i n a n d u n s c r e w a n d r e m o v e a l l t h e seats i n t h e t h e a t r e . w h i l e f a m i l y m e m b e r s c a r r i e d o u t t h e last seats, o t h e r f a m i l y m e m b e r s w o u l d w a s h a n d t h e n r e p a i n t t h e e n t i r e f l o o r . t h i s is n o t a n easy o r f u n j o b . t h e p o p a n d p o p c o r n a n d o l d g u m s t i c k t e n a c i o u s l y t o t h e f l o o r . b u t as p a i n t w i l l n o t a d h e r e t o a d i r t y s u r f a c e it w a s a n e c e s s a r y t a s k . i n t h e e a r l y m o r n i n g , as t h e p a i n t d r i e d , t h e seats w e r e b r o u g h t b a c k i n a n d r e m o u n t e d i n the t h e a t r e . t h e t h e a t r e w o u l d b e c o m p l e t e l y c l e a n a n d r e a d y t o f u n c t i o n i n t i m e f o r t h e s a t u r d a y m a t i n e e . n o f a m i l y m e m b e r s l e p t at a l l . they simply worked into the next day and kept going. furthermore, no one complained. this is but one example to demonstrate boyhood experience that helped charlie to develop a heroic frame of l i v i n g . i met charlie when i was an immature year-old who was trying to put together a rock band. m y friend and bass player, w i l l bronson, suggested that we audition a h a m m o n d b- organ player who managed the bicycle shop where w i l l worked. w h e n i met charlie, who was years old, the mythic proportions of the man's skills, life experiences, energy and work ethic overwhelmed me. here was a man who was l i v i n g a life-not just dreaming about it, ast was. charlie was a university student at this time. h e had left owen sound to attend s i m o n fraser university. p r i o r to that, he had been on the canadian national s k i team. a s well as this achievement, charlie had developed a passion for aircraft and flying, and had earned his private flying license. but n o w the focus was on academics. in true " p h i l l i p s " style, his approach to higher education was completely over the top. the year i met charlie, he was studying at two schools at.-the same- time. he was enrolled at u b c for a teaching certificate and he was finishing his masters degree i n community development at the university of western washington. he also taught a remedial reading class at s f u . h e worked on the weekends as manager of the "peddler" shops. w h e n he decided to j o i n us, he was maintaining a primary relationship. a s a student, he d i d not have a lot of money and so he rode his bike everywhere (including up the s f u h i l l once a week). one of his secrets to his ability t o work so much was that his hard driving psyche was connected with a fantastic metabolism that allowed h i m to r u n at full e n e r g y w i t h o n l y f o u r h o u r s o f s l e e p a n i g h t . h e c l a i m e d t h a t t h i s a b i l i t y w a s l i n k e d t o h i s w o r k i n g class b r i t i s h h e r i t a g e . i h a d n e v e r m e t a n y o n e , b r i t i s h o r o t h e r w i s e , l i k e h i m . b e s i d e s h i s i m p r e s s i v e p h y s i c a l gifts, c h a r l i e ' s c h a r a c t e r v a l u e s w e r e c l e a r l y d e f i n e d a n d o p e r a t i o n a l . w h e n c h a r l i e m a d e a p r o m i s e t o y o u , it w a s a l w a y s k e p t . h e w a s a l w a y s o n t i m e a n d a l w a y s c h e e r f u l a n d f o c u s e d . c o m m i t m e n t w a s a n i m p o r t a n t n o t i o n f o r c h a r l i e . a l l p h i l l i p s p r o j e c t s w e r e s e e n t o t h e i r c o m p l e t i o n . c h a r l i e d e s p i s e d t h e t h o u g h t o f q u i t t i n g . c h a r l i e ' s style w i t h p e o p l e w a s h i g h l y c h a r i s m a t i c . e v e r y o n e w a n t e d t o w o r k w i t h p h i l l i p s . c h a r l i e h a d t h o r o u g h l y s t u d i e d t h e w o r k s o f d a l e c a r n e g i e . t h i s p r o g r a m gave h i m t h e i n t e r p e r s o n a l s k i l l s t o m a k e e v e r y o n e feel b o t h c o m f o r t a b l e a n d s p e c i a l . m o r e o v e r , it p r o v i d e d t h e t o o l s f o r c h a r l i e t o p o s i t i o n h i m s e l f as a n i n c r e d i b l e m o t i v a t o r - s o m e t h i n g t h a t w o u l d serve h i m w e l l as a t e a c h e r . o n e o f t h e m o s t i n s p i r i n g aspects o f c h a r l i e w a s h i s c r e a t i v e s i d e . h e c o n s t a n t l y t h o u g h t out o f t h e b o x . a s a s e n i o r g e o g r a p h y t e a c h e r , c h a r l i e t o o k h i s class u p g l a c i e r s . h e u s e d h i s o w n s m a l l p l a n e a n d p e r s o n a l l y f l e w e a c h s t u d e n t o v e r t h e n o r t h s h o r e m o u n t a i n s w h i l e p o i n t i n g o u t t h e f e a t u r e s . h e c o n n e c t e d w i t h every s i n g l e s t u d e n t . h e m a d e t h e c h i l d r e n b e l i e v e i n t h e m s e l v e s b y h e l p i n g t h e m r e a l i z e t h a t t h e y w e r e a b l e a n d c r e a t i v e b e i n g s . t h r o u g h e x a m p l e , c h a r l i e l e d t h e m t o t r y h a r d e r , d i g d e e p e r a n d p u l l m o r e o u t o f t h e m s e l v e s . c o n s e q u e n t l y , s t u d e n t s o u t c o m e s s o a r e d u p w a r d s as d i d t h e i r a p p r e c i a t i o n f o r p h i l l i p s . . b e i n g a r o u n d a t i t a n l i k e t h i s f o r c e d m e t o r e - t h i n k a l o t o f m y b e h a v i o r s a n d v a l u e s . i c o u l d n ' t h e l p b u t reflect o n m y o w n issues o f i n d e c i s i v e n e s s , p r o c r a s t i n a t i o n , a n d ineffective c o m m u n i c a t i o n s k i l l s . a n d i c o u l d n ' t h e l p b u t n o t i c e h o w s m a l l m y w o r l d w a s c o m p a r e d t o c h a r l i e ' s w o r l d . a l t h o u g h i k n e w t h a t i c o u l d n e v e r k e e p u p w i t h c h a r l i e , i d e t e r m i n e d t o i n c o r p o r a t e as m u c h o f h i s style as p o s s i b l e . brian fuller, an archetype of intellectual inquiry b r i a n f u l l e r w a s t h e n e x t r e a l - t i m e h e r o t o i n s p i r e m e i n p r o f o u n d a n d e n d u r i n g w a y s . b y m y late ' s , i h a d s u c c e e d e d i n i n t e g r a t i n g i n t o t h e " a " r o o m r o c k m u s i c c o m m u n i t y . t h e " a " r o o m s i n v a n c o u v e r w e r e t h e b e s t p l a c e s t o p l a y . t h e y w e r e p o p u l a r h a n g o u t s t h a t p a i d t h e b e s t m o n e y f o r r o c k c o v e r a c t s . a l t h o u g h i h a d n o t b e e n w i t h a r e c o r d i n g act, i s t i l l felt g o o d a b o u t b e i n g a w o r k i n g p r o f e s s i o n a l . i w a s s u r v i v i n g q u i t e w e l l a n d t h e m u s i c i n d u s t r y is a v e r y t o u g h i n d u s t r y t o b e i n . it is v e r y c o m p e t i t i v e a n d h a s a l o w e t h i c a l t h r e s h o l d . i h a d r e a c h e d t h i s l e v e l o f p r o - l e v e l c o m m e r c i a l r o c k t h r o u g h a l o t o f h a r d w o r k . i k n e w t h a t i h a d t o k e e p l e a r n i n g i f i w i s h e d t o p l a y f o r t h e rest o f m y l i f e . i d e c i d e d t o s t u d y s o m e n e w styles t o i n c r e a s e m y v e r s a t i l i t y a n d t e c h n i q u e . i c a n n o t r e c a l l h o w i got b r i a n ' s t e l e p h o n e n u m b e r . b r i a n is w h a t is k n o w n i n t h e t r a d e as a " l e g i t - p l a y e r . " h i s w o r k c o n s i s t e d o f f r e e - l a n c e u n i o n j o b s , p r i v a t e t e a c h i n g a n d w o r k i n g at t h e n e w v a n c o u v e r c o m m u n i t y c o l l e g e m u s i c d e p a r t m e n t . b r i a n ' s greatest s t r e n g t h s a p p e a r e d t o b e h i s s t r o n g s i g h t - r e a d i n g a b i l i t y , h i s s t y l i s t i c v e r s a t i l i t y , h i s i n n a t e m u s i c a l t a l e n t , a n d a f i r s t rate i n t e l l e c t . h e w a s r e c o g n i z e d as a s e r i o u s a n d gifted c l a s s i c a l p l a y e r , a l t h o u g h a l o t o f h i s c o m m e r c i a l w o r k r e q u i r e d h i m t o p l a y v a r i o u s e l e c t r i c styles. i l l w h e n b r i a n a g r e e d t o give m e l e s s o n s , i r e q u e s t e d a l e n g t h o f h o u r s . t h e f i r s t h o u r w o u l d b e d e v o t e d t o c l a s s i c a l s t u d i e s a n d t h e o t h e r h o u r t o j a z z . i w a s n o t v e r s e d i n e i t h e r style, b u t i felt t h a t i s h o u l d b e . m y e a r l i e s t r e c o l l e c t i o n o f b r i a n i s t h a t o f a s m i l i n g e c t o m o r p h i c m a n w i t h l a r g e g l a s s e s — a q u i e t , b a l a n c e d a n d r e f l e c t i v e m a n w h o m i g u e s s e d t o b e a b o u t t e n y e a r s o l d e r t h a n m y s e l f . b r i a n , h i s w i f e , b a r b , a n d h i s t w o y o u n g c h i l d r e n , l i v e d i n a b e a u t i f u l s e c t i o n o f v a n c o u v e r t h a t w a s p o s i t i o n e d j u s t s o u t h o f c i t y h a l l . i n t h e late 's t h e r e w e r e a n u m b e r o f a r t i s t s w h o l i v e d i n t h i s m a t u r e r e s i d e n t i a l a r e a t h a t w a s n o t e d f o r its quiet streets a n d l a r g e d e c i d u o u s trees t h a t w o u l d r a i n s t o r m s o f c o l o r e d l e a v e s i n t h e f a l l . b r i a n w a s t h e t h i r d s o n i n a l a r g e f a m i l y o f b o y s w h o g r e w i n t h e a c a d e m i c s e t t i n g o f b e r k e l e y c a l i f o r n i a . h i s f a t h e r , d r . j o h n a . f u l l e r , w a s a w e l l - k n o w n s o c i o l o g i s t i n t h e f a c u l t y at t h e u n i v e r s i t y o f c a l i f o r n i a , b e r k e l e y b r i a n a t t e n d e d b e r k e l e y a n d r e c e i v e d a b a i n c o m p a r a t i v e l i t e r a t u r e . h i s areas o f s p e c i a l t y w e r e g r e e k a n d e n g l i s h l i t e r a t u r e . a t t h e s a m e t i m e , h e h a d a l o v e o f m u s i c a n d h a d d e v e l o p e d a h i g h l e v e l o f s k i l l o n c l a s s i c a l a n d t h e n l a t e r o n j a z z g u i t a r . m e e t i n g b r i a n w a s a n o p p o r t u n i t y t o e x c h a n g e i d e a s w i t h s o m e o n e w h o g r e w i n a v e r y d i f f e r e n t c o n t e x t . t o g r o w u p u n d e r t h e s h a d o w o f b e r k e l e y at a t i m e w h e n a l l t y p e s o f n e w i n t e l l e c t u a l p a r a d i g m s w e r e b e i n g c o n s t r u c t e d i s a r a r e o p p o r t u n i t y . a n d , o f c o u r s e , t h e s u m m e r o f l o v e w a s a n d t h e c e n t e r o f t h e n e w u n i v e r s e w a s n e i g h b o r i n g s a n f r a n c i s c o . b r i a n p a r t i c i p a t e d i n t h e n e w m u s i c scene o f t h a t t i m e . u n l i k e b r i a n ' s b a c k g r o u n d , m y b l u e - c o l l a r u p b r i n g i n g h a d a b s o l u t e l y n o ties t o a c a d e m e o r a great c i t y l i k e s a n f r a n c i s c o . m y f a t h e r w a s a s m a r t , c r e a t i v e a n d r u t h l e s s s u r v i v o r i n t h e w o r l d o f b u s i n e s s . m y m o t h e r w a s h o u s e w i f e . n e i t h e r h a d ever g o n e t o u n i v e r s i t y . i h a d a b o u t a y e a r ' s w o r t h o f u n d e r g r a d a r t s c o u r s e s t h a t i h a d c o l l e c t e d . b u t m y i n i t i a l d r e a m s o f h i g h e r e d u c a t i o n e n d e d w h e n t h e u b c m u s i c d e p a r t m e n t i n f o r m e d m e t h a t t h e y c o u l d n o t accept m e f o r g u i t a r s t u d i e s as t h e y d i d n o t c o n s i d e r c l a s s i c a l g u i t a r a s e r i o u s i n s t r u m e n t — a p e r p l e x i n g n o t i o n , as a n d r e s s e g o v i a , t h e i n t e r n a t i o n a l s t a r o f c l a s s i c a l g u i t a r , w a s a l r e a d y a n o l d m a n b y t h i s t i m e . c o n s e q u e n t l y , w h e n i m e t b r i a n , i w a s e x t r e m e l y u n e d u c a t e d , n a i v e f e l l o w w h o w a s l e a d i n g a v e r y n a r r o w l i f e . i l o v e d m y l e s s o n s w i t h b r i a n . a l t h o u g h , h e f o c u s e d o n m u s i c , i l e a r n e d e q u a l l y as m u c h a b o u t l i f e f r o m w a t c h i n g h i m a n d a s k i n g h i m q u e s t i o n s . t h a t is t o say, t h e m u s i c l e s s o n s a c t e d as a n e n t r y p o i n t t o see a b i g g e r w o r l d — o n e t h a t k n e w l i t t l e of. w h a t i d i d n o t r e a l i z e at t h e t i m e w a s t h a t t h e l e a r n i n g o f o t h e r styles o f m u s i c n e c e s s i t a t e d t h e l e a r n i n g o f n e w c u l t u r e s a n d t h e i r v a l u e s , as m u s i c i s , i n g e n e r a l t e r m s , o n e o f t h e m a i n v o i c e s o f c u l t u r e . (i l e a r n e d l a t e r t h a t o n e u s u a l l y n e e d e d t o e m b r a c e c e r t a i n v a l u e s o f a c u l t u r e i f o n e w i s h e s t o c r e d i b l y d i a l o g u e its m u s i c . ) b r i a n , t h r o u g h h i s c o n n e c t i o n a n d h e r i t a g e t o t h e great h i s t o r y o f w e s t e r n t h o u g h t a n d v a l u e s , t a u g h t m e t h e i m p o r t a n c e a n d r o l e o f t h e i n t e l l e c t i n m u s i c t h a t l e d t o , a m o n g o t h e r t h i n g s , a n a p p r o a c h o f i n t e l l e c t u a l s e n s i t i v i t y a n d s u b t l e t y t h a t i h a d p r e v i o u s l y b e e n u n a w a r e of. i n fact, t h r o u g h m y " g y p s y m e e t s r o c k a n d b l u e s " c o n t e x t , i h a d n e v e r r e a l l y r e f l e c t e d o n t h e i n t e l l e c t u a l a p p r o a c h t o m u s i c . t o t h i s p o i n t , m y m u s i c v a l u e d a n d a c c e n t e d t h e v o i c e o f e m o t i o n / h e a r t a n d s p i r i t . t o u s e a v i s u a l art a n a l o g y , i w a s p a i n t i n g s o n i c l a n d s c a p e s w i t h a l l t h e p r i m a r y c o l o r s - m a g n i f i c e n t r e d s , y e l l o w s a n d b l u e s . t h r o u g h b r i a n , i l e a r n e d a b o u t g r a y s , p u r p l e s a n d s h a d e s b e t w e e n t h e o b v i o u s . in o u r c o n v e r s a t i o n s , i l e a r n e d t h a t t h e w o r l d w a s a l o t m o r e c o m p l e x t h a n i w a s a c k n o w l e d g i n g . f o r e x a m p l e , as o u r c o n v e r s a t i o n s e v o l v e d , i b e c a m e a w a r e o f m y t e n d e n c y t o g e n e r a l i z e . b r i a n , h o w e v e r , w a s i n c r e d i b l y r e t i c e n t a b o u t m a k i n g s w e e p i n g s t a t e m e n t s a b o u t a n y subject. i l e a r n e d t h a t i s s u e s h a v e m a n y s i d e s a n d o n e m u s t c a r e f u l l y c o n s i d e r t h i s b e f o r e d r a w i n g a n y c o n c l u s i o n s . b r i a n a l s o m a d e m e c o m f o r t a b l e w i t h t h e n o t i o n that n o t e v e r y t h i n g c a n b e o r n e e d s t o b e e x p l a i n e d . i o w e m y p o s t - s e c o n d a r y e d u c a t i o n t o b r i a n ' s p r o d d i n g . i k n o w t h a t i w a s i n u n d a t i n g b r i a n w i t h a l l m a n n e r o f m u s i c a l q u e s t i o n s . h e felt t h a t i s h o u l d c o n s i d e r a t t e n d i n g v a n c o u v e r c o m m u n i t y c o l l e g e m u s i c s c h o o l as h e e x p l a i n e d t h a t h e d i d n o t feel it w a s p o s s i b l e t o a n s w e r a l l m y q u e s t i o n s i n t h e s h o r t t i m e a f f o r d e d b y p r i v a t e l e s s o n s . b r i a n w a s t h e g u i t a r t e a c h e r at t h e s c h o o l a n d , as s u c h , m y l e s s o n s w o u l d c o n t i n u e , b u t i c o u l d a t t e n d c o u r s e s i n t h e o r y , h i s t o r y , a n d ear t r a i n i n g . i f o l l o w e d h i s r e c o m m e n d a t i o n a n d w a l k e d i n t o t h e w o r l d o f h i g h e r l e a r n i n g a n d e v e n t u a l l y i n t o t e a c h i n g . the impact of my heroes on my teaching a s i h a v e l e a r n e d so m u c h a b o u t t e a c h i n g f r o m so m a n y p e o p l e , i f i n d it h a r d t o l i m i t t h e d i s c u s s i o n t o j u s t t h e i n f l u e n c e o f c h a r l i e a n d b r i a n . w i t h o u t h a v i n g m e t b r i a n , h o w e v e r , i r e a l i z e t h a t i p r o b a b l y w o u l d n o t h a v e b e c o m e a t e a c h e r , as i w o u l d n o t have t h e e d u c a t i o n a l c r e d e n t i a l s t h a t i n o w p o s s e s s . b r i a n i n s p i r e d m e a n d s u p p o r t e d m y e n d e a v o r s t o g a i n a degree t h r o u g h a d u a l t r a c k s c h o o l . i e n d e d u p e m e r g i n g as a b a n d i n s t r u c t o r t h a t felt e q u a l l y c o m f o r t a b l e t e a c h i n g c l a s s i c a l , j a z z , o r p o p m u s i c . t h i s s t r e n g t h o f d i v e r s i t y h a s f o r m e d t h e b u i l d i n g b l o c k s o f m y p r o g r a m at s e a v i e w w h e r e i n s t u d e n t s h a v e t h e c h o i c e t o f o l l o w a c l a s s i c a l , j a z z o r r & b p a t h . b r i a n a l s o n u r t u r e d t h e d e v e l o p m e n t o f m y o w n a b i l i t i e s o n m y g u i t a r . i s t u d i e d c l a s s i c a l g u i t a r a n d f l o u r i s h e d i n t h e j a z z i d i o m . t h i s h a s a l l o w e d m e t o i n s p i r e m y s t u d e n t s t h r o u g h m y o w n p l a y i n g . i sense t h a t t h e c h i l d r e n k n o w t h a t i a m a " r e a l p l a y e r " as w e l l as a t e a c h e r a n d t h i s gives m e a l o t o f c r e d i b i l i t y . c r e d i b i l i t y t r a n s l a t e s i n t o respect a n d respect t h a t is e a r n e d is a k e y i n g r e d i e n t t o s u c c e s s f u l t e a c h i n g . i a m s u r e t h a t it is i n p a r t t h r o u g h b r i a n ' s e x a m p l e t h a t i h a v e m o v i n g i n t o g r a d u a t e w o r k . a n u m b e r o f y e a r s ago, b r i a n r e t u r n e d t o s c h o o l a n d e a r n e d h i s p h d . h e n o w teaches at u b c i n t h e c l a s s i c s d e p a r t m e n t . it s e e m e d t o b e a n a t u r a l e v o l u t i o n . i p h o n e d h i m w h e n i e n r o l l e d . h e w a s v e r y h a p p y f o r m e . c h a r l i e w a s a h i g h s c h o o l t e a c h e r f o r y e a r s . h e w a s a n o u t s t a n d i n g e x a m p l e f o r m e . h e e v e n c o n v i n c e d t h e w e s t v a n c o u v e r s c h o o l b o a r d t o t a k e a c h a n c e o n m e as a m u s i c t e a c h e r at s e a v i e w s e c o n d a r y w h e r e h e w a s t e a c h i n g . w h e n h e m o v e d o u t o f g e o g r a p h y a n d s t a r t e d t e a c h i n g d r a m a , w e c o - w r o t e a n d p r o d u c e d f o u r o r i g i n a l m u s i c a l s f o r t h e s c h o o l . (see " t h e b l u e s b r o t h e r s - a m u s i c a l . " ) i t r i e d a n d s t i l l c o n t i n u e t o t r y t o i n c o r p o r a t e h i s l e v e l o f c o m m i t m e n t , v i s i o n , a n d e n e r g y t o m y p e d a g o g y . a n d l i k e h i m , i w o r k h a r d t o m a k e t h e c h i l d r e n feel s p e c i a l a n d e m p o w e r e d . on becoming (my own hero?) c h a r l i e a n d b r i a n r e p r e s e n t e d t w o o f m y biggest m e n t o r s . b u t , l i k e every o t h e r h u m a n , i a m c o n s t a n t l y b e i n g e x p o s e d t o n e w i d e a s a n d w a y s o f b e i n g a n d i s t i l l a b s o r b a n d i n c o r p o r a t e i d e a s a n d b e h a v i o r s t h a t c o u l d p o t e n t i a l l y w o r k f o r m e . c o m i n g b a c k t o s c h o o l is a s s i s t i n g t h i s p r o c e s s . i h a v e m e t a n d b e e n c h a l l e n g e d b y a w o n d e r f u l c o m p l e m e n t o f p r o f e s s o r s a n d s t u d e n t s . i t h r i v e o n t h i s . b u t as a n a d u l t m a l e w i t h a f a m i l y , e d u c a t i o n , a n d s e v e n t e e n y e a r s o f t e a c h i n g e x p e r i e n c e , i r e s p o n d d i f f e r e n t l y t h a n i d i d as a y o u n g m a n . i k n o w t h a t these real t i m e h e r o e s p r o v i d e d m e w i t h l e a r n i n g t h a t i w a s n o t a b l e t o g l e a m f r o m m y f a t h e r o r m y h o m e . i s o m e t i m e s v i e w t h e s e r e a l t i m e h e r o e s as s u r r o g a t e f a t h e r s . t h e r e r e a c h e d a p o i n t , h o w e v e r , w h e n i r e a l i z e d t h a t i h a d t o b e c o m e m y o w n m a n . i h a d b e e n v e r y o p e n t o these m e n , b u t it w a s t i m e f o r m e t o b e c o m e m y o w n h e r o . it w o u l d r e q u i r e t w o i m p o r t a n t p s y c h o l o g i c a l s t e p s : f i r s t , i w o u l d h a v e t o l e a r n t o l i s t e n a n d t r u s t m y o w n h e a r t a n d s e n s e s . s e c o n d l y , i n e e d e d t o p a r t i c i p a t e m o r e a c t i v e l y i n t h e r e a l w o r l d . a n d so i c o n s c i o u s l y d e c i d e d t o start s t a n d i n g o n m y o w n a n d d e v e l o p i n g m y o w n sense o f self. t o a n extent, i h a v e i n t e g r a t e d a n d g r o w n - u p . a l t h o u g h i d o n ' t see m y s e l f as a " h e r o , " p e r se, i l i s t e n t o m y o w n v o i c e a n d c o n s t a n t l y w o r k o n b e i n g t r u e t o w h o e v e r i a m at a n y g i v e n t i m e . i p e r c e i v e m y m a s t e r ' s p r o g r a m as a n i m p o r t a n t t r a n s f o r m a t i o n a l act. i h a v e a l i f e g o a l a n d c o m m i t m e n t t o u n f o l d m y p o t e n t i a l p h y s i c a l l y , e m o t i o n a l l y , m e n t a l l y , a r t i s t i c a l l y , a n d s p i r i t u a l l y . b y d e v e l o p i n g m y s e l f t h r o u g h t h e c h a l l e n g e s o f a g r a d u a t e d e g r e e , i a m s t r i k i n g o u t o n o n e o f t h e l a s t n e g l e c t e d f r o n t i e r s . i l o v e it. i w i l l s a v o u r it. i w i l l b i t e t h e e x p e r i e n c e t o t h e b o n e . i n d o i n g s o , i w i l l release t h e h e r o i n m e . p e o p l e say t h a t w h a t w e ' r e a l l s e e k i n g i s a m e a n i n g f o r l i f e . i d o n ' t t h i n k t h i s is w h a t w e ' r e r e a l l y s e e k i n g . i t h i n k t h a t w h a t w e ' r e s e e k i n g i s a n e x p e r i e n c e o f b e i n g a l i v e , so t h a t o u r l i f e e x p e r i e n c e s o n t h e p u r e l y p h y s i c a l p l a n e w i l l h a v e r e s o n a n c e s w i t h i n o u r o w n i n n e r m o s t b e i n g a n d r e a l i t y , s o t h a t w e a c t u a l l y feel t h e r a p t u r e o f b e i n g a l i v e ( c a m p b e l l , , p. .) section iii an analysis of the renderings reflections on the a/r/tographic process a l t h o u g h it e v o l v e d o r g a n i c a l l y , t h e p r o c e s s i n w r i t i n g m y t h e s i s s u r p r i s e d m e i n i t s c o n s i s t e n t , r i t u a l i z e d a p p r o a c h . t h e p o e t r y a n d n a r r a t i v e s a l w a y s c a m e o u t first. i n p a r t , t h i s w a s a c o n s c i o u s d e c i s i o n t o free t h e p o e t r y f r o m t h e a r t i s t i c s h a c k l e s t h a t are i m p o s e d o n s o n g l y r i c s . h a v i n g w r i t t e n n u m e r o u s s o n g s o v e r t h e y e a r s , i w a s c o n c e r n e d t h a t p o e t r y w o u l d b e s u b j u g a t e d t o t h e l i m i t s o f t h e m u s i c a l p h r a s e s . i a l s o f e a r e d t h a t i m i g h t w o r r y m o r e a b o u t i s s u e s o f r h y m e a n d s u c h , r a t h e r t h a n d i g i n a n d w r i t e m y best p o e t r y . i n s h o r t , i w a n t e d p o e t i c c o n t e n t t o t r i u m p h o v e r i s s u e s o f f o r m . a l t h o u g h c o l l e a g u e s i n t h e l a n g u a g e arts m a y d i s a g r e e , i f i n d t h e c r e a t i o n o f m u s i c t o b e m o r e s u p p l e a n d a d a p t a b l e t h a n p o e t r y . f r o m m y p e r s p e c t i v e , t h e p o e t r y d i d n o t i n h i b i t t h e m u s i c as m u c h as it a c t e d as a catalyst f o r s o n i c e x p r e s s i o n . m u s i c a l e x p r e s s i o n — u n l i k e p o e t r y , a h i g h l y c o n c e n t r a t e d a n d , t h e r e f o r e , f r a g i l e art f o r m — s e e m s t o b e a b l e t o effortlessly w r a p a r o u n d a v a r i e t y o f p o e t i c f o r m s a n d i n t e n s i f y t h e p o e t i c c o n t e n t i n s u b l i m e w a y s . i n t e r m s o f r i t u a l i z e d p r o c e s s , i w r o t e a l l t h e p o e t r y i n o u r h o m e s t u d y s p a c e . p r i o r t o w r i t i n g t h e p o e t r y , i w o u l d a t t e m p t t o r e a c h t h e site o f t h e a r a t i o n a l t h r o u g h m e d i t a t i o n . a t best, t h e m e d i t a t i v e p r o c e s s w o u l d t h r o w m e i n t o a state o f p r o f o u n d c l a r i t y o r , at w o r s e , c a l m d o w n s o m e o f t h e n o i s y c h a t t e r i n m y b r a i n . o n e m a y refer t o t h e p o e m , the goddess of innovation, f o r m e t a p h o r i c i n s i g h t s i n t o t h a t p r o c e s s . t h i s p l a c e o f p r o f o u n d s i l e n c e / i n t u i t i v e k n o w i n g w o u l d u s u a l l y p r e d i c a t e t h e e m e r g e n c e o f a t o p i c o r a l i n e o r a h o o k i n t o a p o e m . a t t h a t p o i n t , i w o u l d t r y / n o t t r y t o u n w r i t e / w r i t e a p o e m b y a l l o w i n g as m a n y i d e a s as p o s s i b l e t o s u r f a c e b e f o r e m y a n a l y t i c a l b r a i n b e c a m e a c t i v a t e d . m y r a t i o n a l i n t e l l i g e n c e w o u l d b e v e r y i m p o r t a n t f o r t h e f i n e - t u n i n g after t h e s o u l o f t h e p o e m w a s r e l e a s e d . t o q u o t e m y s e l f f r o m t h e fable of the sculptor,"... t h e p a t h is n o w c l e a r - r e l e a s e t h e deep i n t u i t i v e f e e l i n g f i r s t a n d t h e n reflect a n d r e s p o n d t h r o u g h i n t e l l i g e n c e a n d o b s e r v e r a e s t h e t i c s . " f o r m e , t h e r e w a s a n e e d f o r a r a t i o n a l a n d r a t i o n a l c r e a t i v i t y t o e m e r g e f r o m t h i s p r o c e s s . m y efforts w e r e d i r e c t e d at t a p p i n g i n t o t h e i n t u i t i v e / a r a t i o n a l s p a c e f i r s t , i n o r d e r t o release d e e p e r i s s u e s a n d a l l o f t h e i r r e q u i s i t e p a s s i o n a n d f e e l i n g s . m y r a t i o n a l m i n d t h e n r e v i e w e d , f o c u s e d , a n d c l a r i f i e d t h e s e d i r e c t e d f e e l i n g s . t h e r a t i o n a l r e v i e w a n d e d i t i n g p r o c e s s w o u l d c a r r y o n f o r a p e r i o d o f t i m e . c o m i n g b a c k t o a p o e m at a l a t e r date o f t e n a l l o w e d m e t o see t h e p o e m f r o m a n e w p e r s p e c t i v e . t h e r e w o u l d r e a c h a p o i n t , h o w e v e r , w h e r e t h e p o e m w a s f a i r l y f i n i s h e d . t h a t s a i d , i d o n ' t t h i n k it ever e n d s , b u t i w o u l d t h e n start t o c o m p o s e t h e m u s i c . c o m p o s i n g m u s i c is a p r o c e s s t h a t i l o v e . f i n d i n g t h e " r i g h t " n o t e s t o e x p r e s s m y f e e l i n g s h a s c o n s i s t e n t l y b e e n a f u l f i l l i n g p r o c e s s . i h a d a m a k e s h i f t s t u d i o i n a d o w n s t a i r s r o o m o f o u r h o u s e w h e r e i h a d access t o m y g u i t a r s , k e y b o a r d s , a n d a gs/pro t o o l s s y s t e m t o f a c i l i t a t e t h e c o m p o s i t i o n a n d r e c o r d i n g o f t h e m u s i c . t h e c o m p o s i t i o n a l p r o c e s s p a r a l l e l s t h e w r i t i n g p r o c e s s i n t h a t i w o u l d u s u a l l y m e d i t a t e , r e a d t h e p o e m , a n d t h e n a l l o w t h e m u s i c t o r i s e u p t h r o u g h t h e a r a t i o n a l . o n e o f t h e f i r s t d e t e r m i n a n t s o r u n c o n s c i o u s d e c i s i o n s i w o u l d m a k e w a s t o a d d r e s s t h e m o o d a n d p i c k a n a p p r o p r i a t e t e m p o . o f t e n , i w o u l d n o t b e a w a r e o f t h i s s t e p , h a v i n g a l r e a d y m a d e it at s o m e i n t u i t i v e l e v e l . i n s t e a d , m u s i c w o u l d c o m e o u t o f m y f i n g e r s a n d heart. w h e n t h e p r o c e s s is g o i n g w e l l , it feels l i k e t h e f i n g e r s are p l a y i n g t h e m s e l v e s — i n d e e d , i feel m o r e l i k e a n o b s e r v e r t h a n a w i l l f u l c r e a t o r . a s w i t h t h e w r i t i n g p r o c e s s , m y r a t i o n a l m i n d w o u l d b e u s e d t o reflect u p o n , c l a r i f y , a n d f o c u s t h e m u s i c i d e a s , o n c e t h e i n i t i a l i n t u i t i v e i m p u l s e h a d b e e n e x p r e s s e d . t h e c h a n g e f r o m a r a t i o n a l / i n t u i t i v e p r o c e s s t o r a t i o n a l / c o n t e x t u a l c e n t e r e d t h i n k i n g p r o c e s s is best t h o u g h t o f t h r o u g h t h e a n a l o g o u s m o d e l o f a c o n t i n u u m , w i t h these t w o p r o c e s s e s at e i t h e r e n d . it is c e r t a i n l y n o t a n " e i t h e r / o r " p r o p o s i t i o n . a t a n y g i v e n t i m e , i sense t h a t i a m l o c a t e d i n a d r i f t b e t w e e n these t w o e x t r e m e s . m y m u s i c a l e x p r e s s i o n w a s a l s o subject t o n u m e r o u s r e v i e w s a n d e d i t s . a s i w a s t h e o n l y p l a y e r i n v o l v e d , i h a d t o l a y e r o n i n s t r u m e n t a l a n d v o c a l t r a c k s o n e at a t i m e . a g a i n , e a c h t r a c k r e q u i r e d b o t h i n s p i r a t i o n a n d r e f l e c t i o n . i n g e n e r a l , m y r e c o r d i n g o f s p o k e n p e r f o r m a n c e s o f p o e t r y a n d s t o r i e s w a s a d i f f i c u l t p r o c e s s . p r o f e s s o r l e g g o ' s p u b l i c r e a d i n g s o f h i s p o e t r y h a v e b e e n a c o n s t a n t s o u r c e o f i n s p i r a t i o n . p o e t s e m b r a c e t h e n o t i o n o f p e r f o r m a n c e p o e t r y as a m e a n s t o f u r t h e r release m e a n i n g f r o m p o e t r y . i f o u n d , t o m y d i s m a y , t h a t i h a v e n e i t h e r t h e r e q u i s i t e s k i l l set, n o r t h e t i m b r e o f v o i c e t o d e l i v e r m y p o e t r y t o t h e l e v e l o f s a t i s f a c t i o n t h a t i r e a l i z e f r o m m y m u s i c a l p e r f o r m a n c e s . i w a s t e m p t e d t o ask s o m e o n e else t o p e r f o r m a r e a d i n g o f m y p o e t r y , b u t i k n o w t h a t it is m y p o e t r y a n d t h a t i m u s t l e a r n t o p r e s e n t it. the opening of the golden flower— the mirage of epiphany e a s t e r n m e t a p h y s i c s refers t o t h e n o t i o n o f o p e n i n g t h e g o l d e n f l o w e r . t h i s c o n c e p t is a m e t a p h o r f o r yet a n o t h e r m e t a p h o r a b o u t t h e a w a k e n i n g o f t h e t h i r d eye o r t h e a w a k e n i n g o f e n l i g h t e n m e n t i n oneself. t h e a d v e n t u r e o f a w a k e n i n g t h r o u g h t h e j o u r n e y o f m y m a s t e r ' s degree h a s b e e n i n v i g o r a t i n g yet d i s c o u r a g i n g , e x p a n s i v e yet e m b a r r a s s i n g , f u l f i l l i n g yet e m p t y w i t h u n a n s w e r e d q u e s t i o n s . p e r h a p s , q u e s t i o n s n e v e r r e a l l y c h a n g e . p e r h a p s , it is j u s t t h e s h i f t i n p e r c e p t u a l a n d i n t e l l e c t u a l c o n t e x t t h a t creates a m i r a g e o f e p i p h a n y . i n a h o u s e o f p e r c e p t u a l m i r r o r s , i h a v e m o v e d f o r w a r d , b a c k w a r d , o r s t a y e d i n t h e s a m e p l a c e . a r g u m e n t s c a n b e m a d e f o r a n y o f these p o s i t i o n s . a n u m b e r o f r e c u r r i n g t h e m e s h a v e s u r f a c e d i n m y a r a t i o n a l w r i t i n g s . t h e s e t h e m e s w e r e c h o s e n f o r t h e i r f r e q u e n c y w i t h i n v a r i o u s w r i t i n g s a n d w e r e d u e t o t h e e m o t i o n a l w e i g h t t h e y c a r r y f o r m e . t h e c o n t e n t o f t h e t h e m e s r a n g e w i d e l y as a r t i f i c i a l l i n e s b l u r b e t w e e n m y r o l e s as a r t i s t , t e a c h e r , r e s e a r c h e r . i h a v e s e l e c t e d s e v e n m a j o r t h e m e s t o reflect u p o n . p e r s o n a l c o n t e x t a n d c o n t e x t f o r m a t i o n • h e r o e s ( c r e a t i o n , d e m i s e , a n d p r o b l e m s w i t h ) a n d a s p i r a t i o n s • r e g r e t s • a n g e r w i t h t h e p r e v a i l i n g c u l t u r e • n e w b e g i n n i n g s • t h e i m p o r t a n c e o f a r t i s t i c / t r a n s c e n d e n t / a r a t i o n a l spaces • r e f l e c t i o n s a n d i n t i m a t e l o o k s i n t o t h e f o r m a n d f u n c t i o n o f e d u c a t i o n a l l a n d s c a p e personal context and contextual formation a s e e m i n g l y d i s p r o p o r t i o n a t e a m o u n t o f m y w r i t i n g s e e m s l i n k e d t o a n a w a r e n e s s o f p e r s o n a l c o n t e x t , its c r e a t i o n , a n d r a m i f i c a t i o n s (i.e., the master frame, the unnatural act, the hi-fi, i am guitar, i am starting (to lose), i've (em)braced, a n d the story of finding my path). b y p e r s o n a l c o n t e x t , i refer t o a n o t i o n o f w h o i t h i n k i a m a n d t h e v a l u e s , b e l i e f s , e t h i c s , a n d p r i o r i t i e s — c o n s c i o u s o r o t h e r w i s e — t h a t i h o l d w i t h i n m e t h a t d i r e c t h o w i i n t e r p r e t p h e n o m e n a i n m y l i f e . t h e t o p i c o f p e r s o n a l c o n t e x t a n d c r e a t i o n o f a f r a m e o r l e n s o f r e f e r e n c e is d i r e c t l y a d d r e s s e d i n the master frame. t h e a r r i v a l o f o u r d a u g h t e r , e m i l y , gave m e great cause t o reflect u p o n m y i m p a c t o n t h e f o r m a t i o n o f h e r v a l u e s a n d b e l i e f s . a n d l i k e m a n y f i r s t t i m e f a t h e r s , i w a n t t o d o a g o o d j o b , b u t it is s o m e t h i n g n e w t o m e . a n d b e i n g v e r y k e e n , yet a l l t h e s a m e l a c k i n g r e a l e x p e r i e n c e , w e f o l l o w t h e p l a n s v e r y s l o w l y a n d c a r e f u l l y , c h e c k i n g t h e l a y o f t h e l a n d i a m v e r y c o n s c i o u s t h a t h e r c o l l e c t i o n a n d r e - c o l l e c t i o n o f o u r a c t i v i t i e s w i l l s h a p e h e r . a n d i a m a l s o a w a r e o f t h e t e x t u a l s u b - p l o t i c a n r u n d u r i n g t h e s e a c t i v i t i e s w h e r e i c a n d i s c u s s i s s u e s o f i m p o r t a n c e . s h e passes m e t h e w o o d a n d t h e s i d i n g a n d w i t h the greatest p a i n s , h o l d s t h e b e a m s steady f o r t h e m a s t e r f r a m e as i m e a s u r e a n d p e n c i l a n d p o u n d t h e n a i l s i n t o t h e w a l l b o a r d s as w e l l as i n t o t h e s t o r y b o a r d o f h e r m y t h f o r w e t a l k i n c e s s a n t l y a n d w o r k c o - o p e r a t i v e l y t o r a i s e a s t r u c t u r e a n d a c o h e s i v e e n v i r o n m e n t n o t o n l y o u t o f w o o d a n d p a p e r a n d n a i l s b u t o f d r e a m s a n d s c h e m e s a n d v a l u e s t h a t o f t e n p r e v a i l i n m y o w n m a s t e r f r a m e m y p r e o c c u p a t i o n w i t h h o w o n e l o o k s a n d a g e n d i z e s o r c o l o u r s p h e n o m e n a b e c o m e s s t i r r e d w h e n i a m w i t h e m i l y b e c a u s e it m a k e s m e t h i n k a b o u t h o w l i t t l e m y f a t h e r w a s i n v o l v e d i n m y l i f e . i n d e e d , t h i s a / r / t o g r a p h i c p r o c e s s h a s m a d e m e r e a l i z e t h a t i s t i l l c a r r y f r u s t r a t i o n d u e t o t h e l a c k o f p a r t i c i p a t i o n f r o m m y f a t h e r w i t h m y d e v e l o p m e n t . i n m a n y w a y s , t h e t v w a s m y f i r s t s u r r o g a t e f a t h e r a n d p u r v e y o r o f m y t h , r i t u a l , t r a d i t i o n , a n d v a l u e s . i f i n d it s t u n n i n g l y i r o n i c t h a t i w a s b e i n g s h a p e d b y t h e v a l u e s a n d a g e n d a o f c o r p o r a t e u n i t e d states o f a m e r i c a w h i l e m y r e a l d a d sat a n d w a t c h e d b e s i d e m e i n a n e a r - c o m a t o s e state o f n o n - r e a c t i o n . l a t e r , as a n a d u l t i w o u l d h a v e t o d e a l w i t h a l l t h i s c o m m e r c i a l p r o g r a m m i n g o f m y taste a n d p r i o r i t i e s . it s e e m e d h a r m l e s s at t h e t i m e , b u t u l t i m a t e l y t h e act o f d a i l y t v v i e w i n g r o o t e d w i t h i n m e a c o r e set o f b e l i e f s a n d a p p r o a c h t o l i f e t h a t i h a v e h a d t o s p e n d y e a r s w r e s t l i n g o u t o f m y c o n s c i o u s n e s s . h o w m u c h d i d i l a u g h ? h o w m u c h d o i h a t e h o w d e e p these m y t h s d i d s i n k a n d f o r m u l a t e m y b r a i n a n d assist i n t h e c o n s t r u c t i o n o f b l a c k a n d w h i t e r e d u c t i o n i s m t h a t d r o v e m e a n d a y o u n g n a t i o n o f o v e r s t i m u l a t e d r o m a n t i c s t o r e b e l at t h e a n t i c s o f a w o r l d t h a t w e r e a l l y d i d n ' t k n o w , t u n e o u t a n d o n w i t h t h e s h o w ! ( f r o m the unnatural act) u n k n o w i n g l y , m y f a t h e r a l l o w e d t e l e v i s i o n t o d e v e l o p a s i g n i f i c a n t p a r t o f m y n a s c e n t c o n t e x t u a l f r a m e . h e a l s o p u r c h a s e d , f o r h i s e n t e r t a i n m e n t , a w o n d e r f u l h i - f i d e l i t y r e c o r d p l a y e r . b u t h i s m u s i c o f c h o i c e , t h e w i l d e a s t e r n e u r o p e a n g y p s y a n d o t h e r e t h n i c m u s i c f o r m s , h o o k e d m e o n t h e t r e m e n d o u s m a g i c a l effect t h a t m u s i c c a n h a v e o n m e . m y e m o t i o n s a n d b o d y w e r e k i d n a p p e d a n d f o r c e d t o r i d e t h i s s o n i c r o l l e r coaster. it w a s as i f t h e m u s i c c o u l d s o m e h o w c h a r g e u p m y w h o l e s y s t e m . p e r h a p s w e c o u l d b l a m e it o n m y g e n e t i c s , b u t , f o r w h a t e v e r r e a s o n , t h i s m u s i c f o u n d its w a y t o t h e v e r y c o r e o f m y b e i n g . it j u s t a b o u t d r o v e m e c r a z y . i w o u l d s l o w l y s w a y t o t h e m o u r n f u l o p e n i n g t h e m e , (there is a l w a y s s o r r o w i n a n y g y p s y p i e c e o f m e r i t ) , a n d t h e n , u n c o n t r o l l a b l y , i w o u l d h a v e t o d a n c e as t h e t e m p o a c c e l e r a t e d . i w a s t r a n s f o r m e d i n t o a m a r i o n e t t e a n d t h e m u s i c w a s t h e m a s t e r p u p p e t e e r . a s t h e b a n d w o u l d r o c k e t t o a " p r e s t o " t e m p o i w o u l d b e f o r c e d t o r u n , n o n - s t o p , i n c i r c l e s t h r o u g h t h e r o o m s o f t h e h o u s e . t h i s c r a z y p u p p e t d a n c e w o u l d c o n t i n u e u n t i l t h e t r i u m p h a n t f i n i s h h a d m e c o l l a p s i n g i n t o a c h a i r , b r e a t h l e s s a n d s w e a t i n g p r o f u s e l y , ( f r o m the hi-fi) i am guitar is a p o e m c o n c e r n e d w i t h t h e i m p o r t a n c e o f m u s i c a l self- e x p r e s s i o n at t h e o t h e r e n d o f m y l i f e c o n t i n u u m . it c o m e s o u t o f a d e f e n s i v e p o s t u r e a b o u t m y n e e d / w a n t t o h a v e s o m e d a i l y p r a c t i c e t i m e , h e n c e , t h e m a n t r a - l i k e r e f r a i n t h a t k e e p s b u i l d i n g : i a m g u i t a r it w i l l n o t go a w a y a n d . . i a m g u i t a r it w i l l n o t go a w a y , it w i l l n o t go away... a n d f i n a l l y . . . i a m g u i t a r it w i l l n o t go a w a y it w i l l n o t go a w a y u n t i l i d o t h e p e r s o n a l b e n e f i t s are h u g e . t h e g u i t a r h a s s o o t h e d m e , c h a l l e n g e d m e , d e l i g h t e d m e a n d g r o u n d e d m e t h r o u g h o u t a l l t h e m a n y c h a l l e n g e s t h a t i h a v e e n d u r e d i n t h i s s o m e t i m e s l u m p y , s a d c l o w n p l a n e o f e x i s t e n c e . it h a s s u p p o r t e d m e t h r o u g h v a r i o u s j o b s , b o r i n g r o u t i n e s , m i n d - d e a d e n i n g s i t u a t i o n s , o v e r - w o r k , a n d n e g a t i v e p e o p l e . it h a s l i s t e n e d t o m e t a l k t h r o u g h t h e a c c e l e r a t i o n o f e v e r - c h a n g i n g e x p e r i e n c e s , r e l e n t l e s s c h a l l e n g e s , t h e c o m i n g a n d g o i n g o f r e l a t i o n s h i p s , a n d o f b a l a n c e w i t h i n m y s e l f s o m e h o w it h a s a l w a y s h e l p e d k e e p m e i n c h e c k , t h e m a g n i t u d e o f its e x p e r i e n c e , its p o t e n t i a l a n d i n t e l l e c t u a l a n d e m o t i o n a l palette h a v i n g n o w u n d e r p i n n e d m y w h o l e p o i n t o f v i e w , m y e n t i r e v a l u e s y s t e m . a n d so t h e l i n e s b e t w e e n " g u i t a r " a n d "i" h a v e b l u r r e d t h e p o e m closes w i t h t h e n o t i o n o f r e - c o m m i t m e n t . a n d i f t h e a r c h e t y p e o f t r a g e d y r o l l s o v e r m e a n d d e c i m a t e s a l l t h a t i h a v e w o r k e d s o h a r d f o r a n d d e s t r o y s m y f a m i l y , m y c o r e , a n d b r i n g s m e t o m y k n e e s , b l i n d a n d c r i p p l e d i n a p a t h e t i c h e a p o f c r u s h e d h u m a n i t y i w i l l c r a w l o n h a n d s a n d k n e e s t o f i n d m y g u i t a r t o c r y t h r o u g h a n d t h o u g h it w i l l n o t offer s o l u t i o n , it w i l l give s o m e s o l a c e a n d s e l f - r e f l e c t i o n b e c a u s e i a m g u i t a r it w i l l n o t go a w a y it w i l l n o t go a w a y u n t i l i d o t h u s t h i s p o e m e n a b l e s m e t o r e v e a l a n d e v a l u a t e t h e i m p a c t o f g u i t a r i n m y l i f e w i t h t h e h o p e s o f c o n f e r r i n g t h a t a l l b o u n d a r i e s b e t w e e n m y s e l f a n d t h e i n s t r u m e n t h a v e v a p o r i z e d — w e h a v e e n t a n g l e d t o t h e p o i n t o f o n e n e s s . iam starting (to lose) w a s w r i t t e n a r o u n d t h e m i d - p o i n t o f m y m a s t e r ' s j o u r n e y . w i t h i n t h e p o e m are t h e seeds o f c h a n g e a n d p o t e n t i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n a n d t h e c o n s c i o u s r e a l i z a t i o n t h a t these c h a n g e s w e r e i m m i n e n t . it is i n t e n d e d t h a t t h e t i t l e b e r e a d t w i c e , as i n j am starting, a n d i am starting to lose i n o r d e r t o c o n v e y c l o s u r e as w e l l as n e w b e g i n n i n g s . i start b y q u e s t i o n i n g w h y i d i d t h i n g s i n t h e p a s t a n d i n t h i s s e n s e , c a n b e c o n s i d e r e d a p r e c u r s o r t o t h e p o e m s o f regret (i.e., the fable of regret a n d driving with no hands). i am starting to lose j u s t w h y i d i d a l l t h o s e t h i n g s ; w h y i n y o u t h i r a i l e d a n d c l a m o r e d so p a s s i o n a t e l y f o r f r e e d o m s t h a t w e r e a l r e a d y s a i d t o b e a n d w h y i c o v e t e d a n d c o n s p i r e d , a d o r n e d a n d d i s p l a y e d a n d d a n c e d t o a m u s i c t h a t s o m e t i m e s o n l y e x i s t e d i n m y h e a d . i a l s o e x a m i n e t h e n e e d t o m o v e a w a y f r o m m y h e r o e s a n d m o v e i n t o a state o f a c c e p t i n g m y s e l f . j am starting to lose a l l m y h e r o e s a s a t i d e o f d e m o c r a t i z a t i o n r o l l s i n a n d l e v e l s t h e p l a y i n g f i e l d into a l i q u i d f l o w i n g m a s s w a s h i n g m e c l e a n a n d f r e e i n g m e f r o m t h e v i c t i m i z a t i o n o f n e e d s t o p r o v e a n d n e e d s t o b e a c c e p t e d . . a n d as a r e s u l t o f t h i s n a t u r a l l e t t i n g - g o , i f i n d m y s e l f m o v i n g i n t o a n e w state o f b e c o m i n g . i s t a n d n a k e d a n d n o t c a r i n g d i s i n t e r e s t e d a n d d i s c o n n e c t e d , y e t p a s s i o n a t e l y i n v o l v e d . . . h o w c a n t h i s b e ? c h a n g e is i n t h e air... i am becoming t h e f o o l o n t h e h i l l t h e i n v i s i b l e o n e , t h e c r a z y m a n , t a l k i n g t o h i m s e l f - • . ' r e v e l i n g i n h i s o w n j o k e s y e t , at t h e s a m e t i m e , i a m h e a r i n g n e w s y m p h o n i e s o f l i v i n g a n d c o n c e r t o s i n t h e o n c e c a c o p h o n o u s t u m b l e o f c o n f u s i o n a n d i a m p r e p a r i n g t o b e myself... i've (em)braced is b o t h m y o p e n i n g a n d c l o s i n g p i e c e , a n d i s , e s s e n t i a l l y , a n a r t i s t i c a b s t r a c t o f t h e r e s e a r c h i n t h i s t h e s i s . it c a n b e v i e w e d as a t i g h t l y c o m p r e s s e d p e r s o n a l i n v e n t o r y set o f c o n t e x t u a l s h i f t s — a p a r a d o x i c a l a n d d i f f i c u l t a s s e s s m e n t o f a l l t h e r o l e s a n d a t t i t u d e s a n d t h e m a t i c o b s e s s i o n s t h a t i h a v e a s s u m e d a n d c o n s u m e d . it is b o t h c o n f e s s i o n a l a n d c a t h a r t i c i n is n a t u r e . it is o n e o f t h e latest p o e m s t h a t i h a v e w r i t t e n a n d its s i g n i f i c a n c e l a y s i n i t s h o n e s t y a n d c o m p r e h e n s i v e n a t u r e . f o r so m a n y y e a r s , i h a v e w r a p p e d m y s e l f i n t h e b e l i e f t h a t i e s s e n t i a l l y a " g o o d " m a n , a n d p e r h a p s i a m , b u t t h r o u g h t h i s p o e m i a m a t t e m p t i n g t o e m b r a c e , o r at least a c k n o w l e d g e a l l o f m y s e l f , b o t h g o o d a n d b a d . t h e f i r s t v e r s e l i s t s a series o f p s y c h o l o g i c a l m a s k s t h a t i've w o r n . t h e t e r m (em)braced i m p l i e s t h a t i l o v e d s o m e o f these r o l e s a n d h o w , i n r e t r o s p e c t , i've h a d t o b r a c e m y s e l f i n o r d e r t o a d m i t t o o t h e r r o l e s . t h e m a s k s t w i s t t h e m s e l v e s i n t o s e l f - c r i t i c i z i n g a n d j u d g i n g m y s o m e t i m e s a n n o y i n g p r o p e n s i t y t o j u d g e o t h e r s as w e l l as m y s e l f . i've ( e m ) b r a c e d p r a n k s t e r , c o n m a n , l i a r , l o v e r , h u s b a n d , f a t h e r , t ( h ) i n k e r ( e r ) , i m p o s t e r , p r e p o s t e r o u s l y i n g i n j u d g m e n t ! t h e p o e m a l s o c o n t a i n s a t h e m a t i c o v e r v i e w o f a l l t h e w o r k t h a t h a s s u r f a c e d i n t h e l a s t c o u p l e y e a r s , d u r i n g m y r e t u r n t o u n i v e r s i t y . i n t h e s e c o n d v e r s e , i t o u c h o n t h r e e r e c u r r i n g t h e m e s : t h e i m p o r t a n c e o f t h e a r a t i o n a l , m y p e r s o n a l s t r u g g l e s w i t h w e s t e r n c u l t u r e , c o l o n i a l i s m , a n d t h e n o t i o n o f regret. y e t s o m e t i m e s n o t o f t h i s w o r l d a s m y eyes r o l l b a c k w a r d a n d t h e j a w d r o p s . . . m y s t i c s y s t e m i c , p a t h e t i c a n d r e g r e t f u l k e e p e r o f c a r t o o n c o n s c i o u s n e s s , m y feet b l i s t e r o n t h e h y p e r - h e a t e d a s p h a l t o f w e s t e r n r e a l i t y , i n e v e r l e a r n s t i l l m y s t i f i e d b y t h e r a r i f i e d m i r a c l e o f h o p e ( l e s s n e s s ) t h e t h i r d p a r t o f t h e p o e m sets u p a s e r i e s o f d i a l e c t i c a l b i n a r i e s t o d e m o n s t r a t e t h e w i d t h , b r e a d t h , d e p t h a n d p a r a d o x i c a l m u l t i - d i m e n s i o n a l i t y o f m y c h a r a c t e r . f r i g h t e n e d c h i l d a n d o l d m a n i a m p e n i s c r o s s e d w i t h p e n a n c e s o n o f z o r r o a n d n o s f e r a t u , ( a n t i ) . . . c h r i s t , i w i s h i k n e w ! t h e f o u r t h p a r t o f t h e p o e m c r i t i c a l l y r e v i e w s t h e t h e m e o f m y r o l e as a r e s e a r c h e r a n d e d u c a t o r a n d t h e m i r a g e o f k n o w l e d g e / e p i p h a n y . s a i n t o r s i n n e r , c e r t a i n l y f o o l o n t h e h i l l o f t h e a c a d e m y o f p o w e r , p o l i t i c s a n d l o s t s o u l s , l i m i n a l t r a n s g r e s s o r i n t h e a p o r i a o f f o u n d a n d l o s t (again) i see t h e o a s i s o r j u s t a n o t h e r m i r a g e ? . . . t h e p o e m closes o n a n u p b e a t n o t e t h a t s o m e t i m e s i c a n t r a n s c e n d m y o w n m u d d l e a n d w o r k i n s e r v i c e f o r o t h e r s . m e a n w h i l e t h e b u d d h a o f c o m p a s s i o n p o u r s r i v e r s o f t e a r s t h r o u g h m e as i l o o k at p i c t u r e s o f m y d a u g h t e r b e c a u s e s o m e t i m e s i k n o w t o l o o k a b o v e m y s e l f heroes a n o t h e r p r e v a l e n t t h e m e i n m y w r i t i n g h a s b e e n t h e c o n c e p t o f h e r o e s — t h e i r c r e a t i o n , t h e i r d e m i s e , a n d t h e p r o b l e m s a s s o c i a t e d w i t h t h e c u l t o f p e r s o n a l i t y . t h e c r e a t i o n a n d e u l o g i z i n g o f b o t h g e n d e r s o f h e r o e s c a n b e f o u n d i n t h e p o e m , the unnatural act. a s a c h i l d , i m m e r s e d i n a m i l i e u o f b l a c k a n d w h i t e r e d u c t i o n i s m , a l l s c r e e n starlets b e c a m e g o d d e s s e s o r a r c h e t y p e s o f b e a u t y a n d c h a r i s m a . i l o v e d t h e i r p e r f e c t i o n , t h e i r u l t r a m y t h i c f e m i n i n e l o o k s w i t h d o e eyes a n d c h e e k b o n e s c h i s e l e d o u t o f g r a n i t e a n d s m i l e s t h a t w o u l d t a k e y o u m i l e s t o a d i s t a n t p l a n e t o f s i r e n - what possible chance did i have... i s a w t h e m a l e i m a g e s as d i r e c t e x a m p l e s o f p e r f e c t i o n — i n d e e d , w h a t i n e e d e d t o g r o w t o b e c o m e . t o b e a m a n , a p a l a d i n , r e a l r i f l e m a n w a n t e d d e a d o r a l i v e , a c h u c k o r a s t e v e , c l i n t o r g a r y t a l l n e s s a n d s i l e n c e b r i m m i n g w i t h v i o l e n c e a n d f u r y m u c h t o o s o o n t o d e f i n e t h e a m e r i c a n m a l e o n t h e b l a c k a n d w h i t e pages o f h i g h n o o n . m o s t o f m y l i f e i h a v e t e n d e d t o e m b r a c e v a r i o u s h e r o i c f i g u r e s . e v e n w h e n i r e t u r n e d t o s c h o o l f o r m y g r a d u a t e w o r k , i e m b r a c e d a n e w t y p e o f h e r o — t h e a c a d e m i c h e r o . t h e p o e m big people w a s w r i t t e n after i h a d b e e n i n v i t e d t o a t t e n d a m e e t i n g w i t h t h e a / r / t o g r a p h y g r o u p . i w a s v e r y i m p r e s s e d w i t h t h e p o w e r a n d i n t e n s i t y o f t h e i n t e l l e c t u a l e n e r g y t h a t s u r f a c e d at t h i s m e e t i n g . t h i s p o e m d i r e c t l y t a l k s a b o u t t h e s e n e w m e n t o r s , a l b e i t i n a p l a y f u l s e t t i n g , t h a t m a k e s u s e o f t h e l a y e r s o f m e a n i n g a n d d o u b l e e n t e n d r e s t h a t p o e t i c a l l y exist w i t h i n l a n g u a g e . b i g p e o p l e o f t e n r u n t h r o u g h t h e c r a c k s f o r t h e b o r d e r s a n d s t a y u p a l l n i g h t t o seize t h e d a y b e c a u s e b i g p e o p l e h a v e great v i s i o n e v e n i f t h e y leave t h e i r glasses at h o m e f o r t h e y p e e r t h r o u g h a l e n s t h a t h a s b e e n g r o u n d a n d p o l i s h e d b y y e a r s o f e p i s o d i c n a r r a t i v e s a n d r e f l e c t i v e c a l l s a n d r e s p o n s e s t h a t t u r n s o u t w a r d i n a n d i n so o u t a s t o t h e d i v e r s i t y o f t h e p r o f e s s o r s at t h e a / r / t o g r a p h y m e a n i n g , i w r i t e : b i g p e o p l e c a n n o t b e b o t t l e d o r l a b e l e d , c a t e g o r i z e d o r d e n i e d d i s m i s s e d , r e - m i f f e d o r q u a l i f i e d e x c e p t b y t h o s e w h o m i s s t h e b o a t a s it leaves f o r a d v e n t u r e i s l a n d s r e m o t e o h h o w i l o v e b i g p e o p l e ! a l t h o u g h m y f i r s t h e r o e s w e r e t v s c r e e n a c t o r s a n d m y p r e s e n t h e r o e s are m o r e l i k e l y t o b e f o u n d w i t h i n t h e a c a d e m y , b y far, m y m u s i c a l h e r o - g u i t a r i s t s h a v e m a d e t h e m o s t s i g n i f i c a n t i m p r e s s i o n t o date. a p a r t o f m e h a s a l w a y s w a n t e d t o b e l i e f i n m a g i c a n d i h a v e a l w a y s s a v o u r e d t h e i n - d w e l l i n g o f t h e s p i r i t . i n t h e r e a l m o f m u s i c , i h a v e n e v e r b e e n a b l e t o c l e a r l y d i f f e r e n t i a t e b e t w e e n a f e w b r e a t h - t a k i n g , t r a n s c e n d e n t a l m u s i c a l p e r f o r m a n c e s t h a t i h a v e w i t n e s s e d a n d t h e n o t i o n o f m a g i c . a n d , as i h a v e t r o u b l e s e p a r a t i n g m a g i c f r o m s p i r i t , these h i g h l y i n f r e q u e n t a r t i s t i c p e r f o r m a n c e s r e s o n a t e at s u c h a s u b l i m e l e v e l , t h a t i t s effect o n m e is t h e p r o d u c t i o n o f a n a l t e r e d e x p e r i e n c e . a l l p a t h s l e a d t o g o d b u t s o m e p a t h s are a l i t t l e q u i c k e r . i n t h e s i x t i e s , a l o t o f m u s i c c a m e o u t o f t h e b l u e s . it w a s m o r p h e d i n t o a n e w h y b r i d f o r m w h e n i t ' s b a s i c f o r m a n d v o c a b u l a r y w a s m u s i c a l l y m e l d e d w i t h h i g h - p o w e r e d r o c k a n d r o l l a n d o v e r - t h e - t o p e m o t i o n s . w h e n j i m i h e n d r i x p o u r e d h i s h e a r t o u t t h r o u g h t h i s c o n t e x t , t h e r e s u l t w a s m u s i c / m a g i c t h a t t o u c h e d s a c r e d p l a c e s a n d t o o k a u d i e n c e s t o t r a n s c e n d e n t a l h e i g h t s . t o s o m e e x t a n t , t h i s p s y c h e d e l i c s a c r a m e n t h a s b e e n l o s t as p o p u l a r c u l t u r e h a s m o v e d o n t o o t h e r t o p i c s l i k e p o w e r , m a t e r i a l a c q u i s i t i o n , a n d so o n . a n d , w i t h a g i n g , m y o w n c o n t e x t h a s c h a n g e d . i'm n o t as e a s i l y i m p r e s s e d as i w a s w h e n i w a s y o u n g e r as i a m m u c h b e t t e r at d i s c e r n i n g b e t w e e n a s l i g h t o f h a n d a n d p r o f o u n d e x p e r i e n c e . i n magician/musician, i t a l k a b o u t t h e r e a l t h i n g . i m e n t i o n t h a t e v e n t h e m o o d a n d f e e l i n g w a s different. s o m e t i m e s , o n e c a n sense a s p e c i a l e v e n i n g . it w a s i n t h e a i r a s s o o n as t h e y c o u n t e d o u t a n d f r e e d t h e f i r s t s o u n d s y o u k n e w , b u t c o u l d n ' t e x p l a i n t h e f e e l i n g t h a t w r a p p e d a r o u n d y o u l i k e a w a r m b l a n k e t a n d c o n v i n c e d y o u t h a t t h e c o n v e r s a t i o n b e t w e e n t h e i n s t r u m e n t s w o u l d s p i n a m a r v e l o u s s t o r y f i l l e d w i t h p a s s i o n , i n t r i g u e , c a r i n g a n d h u m o u r e a c h p l a y e r w o u l d c o n t r i b u t e t o t h e c o n s t r u c t i o n o f t h i s a u r a l e d i f i c e o f t h e g o d s : w i t h e a c h s o l o i s t b r i n g i n g h i s s p e c i a l t w i s t t o t h e e p i c b y t a k i n g h i s o w n p o e t r y a n d w e a v i n g it i n t o t h e s o n i c f a b r i c o f t h e w h o l e w h i c h t h r o u g h t o n a l a l c h e m y w o u l d c o n v e r t s i m p l e s o u n d s i n t o a n a r r a t i v e so i n t e n s e a n d b u r s t i n g w i t h r e s o n a n c e t h a t t h e s t o r y w o u l d a c t u a l l y g r i n d t o a p l a c e s o d e e p , yet c l e a n s i n g that the audience would b e left i n s i l e n c e at t h e e n d a n d f o r c e d a g a i n t o w r e s t l e w i t h e n o r m o u s q u e s t i o n s d f p u r p o s e b u t o n e p l a y e r rose a b o v e t h e o t h e r s t o t a k e t h e a u d i e n c e o v e r t h e edge. o n e o f t h e p l a y e r s h a d s p e c i a l gifts, a n o r i g i n a l a n d s t u n n i n g c o m b i n a t i o n o f y e a r s o f t e c h n i q u e w i t h s e r i o u s r e a d i n g a n d c r i t i q u e o f a u t h o r s o f m u s i c past a n d t h i s m e l d e d w i t h f r a m e s o f h e r o i c v i s i o n a n d t e n a c i t y t h a t r i p p e d f o r t h f r o m h i s b e i n g as a t o r r e n t i a l o u t p o u r i n g t h a t s t a r t e d s l o w l y , c r e e p i n g i n t h e b a c k p o r c h a n d e d g i n g ever so c l o s e l y a n d h e c a p t u r e d t h e s m e l l o f t h e r a i n j u s t b e f o r e t h e b r e a k a n d h e m a d e m e s h i v e r i n a n t i c i p a t i o n o f t h e f i r s t t e n u o u s d r o p s a n d i w a s s u r e t h a t i c o u l d see t h e t h u n d e r g r a y a n d b l a c k c l o u d s c i r c l i n g a b o v e h i s h e a d as t h e i n t e n s i t y o f h i s p l a y i n g h e r a l d e d a n e x p l o s i o n o f t o r r e n t a n d c u r r e n t a n d i w a s n o t a l o n e i n r e c o g n i z i n g t h i s m o m e n t . a n d t h e a u d i e n c e s c r e a m e d f r o m t h e r e s o n a n c e o f t h i s tale o f e p i c r o m a n t i c i s m a n d j u s t w h e n w e t h o u g h t t h a t t h e j o u r n e y w a s c o m p l e t e t h e s o l o i s t t o o k u s t o a n e w l e v e l o f f r e s h t e r r a i n a n d t o n e w w o r l d s o f u n d e r s t a n d i n g a n d t h e a u d i e n c e e x p l o d e d a n d rose t o t h e i r feet as t h e y a s t h e y s t r a i n e d t o see h i m p u s h h i s h e a d a b o v e t h e t h u n d e r c l o u d s t o t h e d e a f e n i n g s i l e n c e a b o v e t h e w h i t e n o i s e w h e r e h e w a s h e d u s c l e a n a n d g r a c e d u s w i t h a c h a n c e t o t r y a g a i n . n a t u r a l l y , as a m u s i c i a n , i a m a w o u l d - b e - m a g i c i a n as i a s p i r e t o p l a y at a l e v e l t h a t s u p p o r t s a n a u d i e n c e t o t r a n s c e n d o u r s e e m i n g l y p h y s i c a l r e a l i t y . w h i l e magician/musician is a p o e m f r o m t h e a u d i e n c e ' s v i e w p o i n t , high wire guitar is a v i e w f r o m t h e o t h e r s i d e — t h e f e e l i n g s a n d p r o c e s s t h a t a m u s i c i a n m i g h t t a k e t o m o v e t o t h e n e x t l e v e l . it starts w i t h a m u s i c i a n t a k i n g a n i m p r o v i s e d s o l o . t h e d i f f i c u l t y , p o i s e , a n d a t t i t u d e n e e d e d t o i m p r o v i s e d r a w s a n a n a l o g y t o w a l k i n g a t i g h t r o p e . p u t t i n g y o u r f o o t o u t y o u feel t h e w i r e b e f o r e y o u w a l k o n w a t e r a n d t h o u g h y o u are v e r y h i g h i n t h e s t r a t o s p h e r e , t h e r e is n o n e t a n d c e r t a i n l y n o t u r n i n g b a c k , o n l y t u r n i n g i n w a r d as y o u c o m p l e t e l y r e l a x , o h m m a n i p a d m e h u m , a n d u n c o n s c i o u s l y a l i g n a n d p o i s e y o u r m i n d , b o d y a n d s o u l i n a b s o l u t e c o n c e n t r a t i o n t o let o u t y o u r v o i c e f r o m t h e deepest p i t o f y o u r s p i r i t a s o n l y t h e w a y y o u c a n w h i l e t h e rest o f t h e u n i v e r s e l o o k s o v e r y o u r s h o u l d e r s a n d f l o a t s y o u u p i n a s e a o f t e a r d r o p s f r o m t h e b u d d h a o f c o m p a s s i o n i n a great s o l o t h e r e is a l w a y s a l o s s o f self i n t o t h e t o t a l c o n c e n t r a t i o n o f t h e n o w . a n d i n t h e b l i s t e r i n g w h i r l i n g o f t h e s p h e r e s y o u t u n e i n t o its t a u t n e s s , its f r e q u e n c y a n d t h i c k n e s s u n t i l t h e r e is n o s e p a r a t i o n t h r o u g h s t o r m a n d s t i l l you are y o u r e x t e n s i o n o c o u r s e , t h e r e c a n b e e x t e r n a l o r u n c o n s c i o u s f a c t o r s t h a t c a n l i m i t or a l l o w t h e s u c c e s s f u l c r o s s i n g i n t o t h e i n f i n i t e n o w . if a l l m a n n e r o f t h i n g s h a v e l o c k e d t h e m s e l v e s i n t o t h e m o s t s a c r e d p a t t e r n w h e n t h e s u n m a k e s l o v e t o t h e m o o n a n d t h e t i d e s r o l l b a c k w a r d t o r e v e a l a n c i e n t s h i p w r e c k s a n d c i t i e s o f so l o n g a g o , yet y o u k n o w a n d t h e h o w l o f t h e w o l f b e c o m e s a n a r i a o f u n s p e a k a b l e b e a u t y . . . t h e n y o u are r e a d y regrets a r i s i n g t h e m e i n m y l a t e r y e a r s h a s b e e n t h e r e g u l a r l y o c c u r r i n g i s s u e o f regret. a s is t h e n a t u r e w i t h regrets, these regrets f r e q u e n t l y c e n t e r o n c h o i c e s t h a t i m a d e y e a r s ago t h a t a re n o w i m p a c t i n g o r r e s t r i c t i n g m y p r e s e n t set o f o p t i o n s . t h e y c e r t a i n l y s e e m t o f a l l out o f a m i n d set t h a t f o r y e a r s e m b r a c e d o v e r t h e r o i s m a n d r o m a n t i c i s m . t h e p a s s i n g o f m y f a t h e r i n a u g u s t o f i n t e n s i f i e d t h i s t y p e o f t h i n k i n g . h i s d e a t h c l e a r l y d e l i n e a t e d t h e passage o f t i m e a n d r e m i n d e d m e o f m y l i m i t e d t i m e i n t h i s m a t e r i a l r e a l i t y . i n t h e p o e m the fable of regret, i t r y t o s u b v e r t t h a t t y p e o f t h i n k i n g t o e n a b l e m e t o m o v e o n a n d l i v e i n t h e p r e s e n t . t h e m e t a p h o r o f a s n a k e , a c o l d - b l o o d e d r e p t i l e w i t h a f o r k e d - t o n g u e , a d d r e s s e s m e i n t h i s f a b l e . y e s , i h a v e o b s e r v e d t h a t a s y o u h a v e g r o w n o l d e r a n d d e e p e r i n t h e seat o f y o u r t r u e s e l f y o u h a v e a l s o c o g n i z e d t h a t y o u r d e m i s e is r a c i n g t o c a t c h y o u a n d y o u r o w n s t o r y is b e i n g e t c h e d i n s t o n e f o r t i m e e t e r n a l a n d y o u are fast l o s i n g c o n t r o l o f y o u r d e s t i n y a n d e s p e c i a l l y a n y r e s o l u t i o n o f y o u r m e s s y s t o r i e s o f u n r e a l i z e d g l o r y i a m t h e s n a k e o f r e g r e t w h o l i v e s a n d t h r i v e s o n y o u r f r u s t r a t i o n w i t h t h e f i n i t e aspect o f y o u r s h o r t v i s i t a t i o n into this earthly vessel a n d w i t h y o u r m i s u n d e r s t a n d i n g s o f t h e v e r y n a t u r e o f h u m a n l e a r n i n g ' s . i b a t t l e t h e s n a k e t h r o u g h e m b r a c i n g regret as a m e a s u r e m e n t o f m y p r o g r e s s i n t h i s a d v e n t u r o u s l i f e . i e x p l a i n it t h u s : r e g r e t t h e n , f o r m e , is a n a f f i r m a t i o n a n d a m e a s u r e t h a t i n d e e d , i h a v e s u c c e e d e d i n m o v i n g m y s e l f f o r w a r d a n d t r u l y g r o w n t h r o u g h t h e y e a r s . a n d s o , r a t h e r t h a n fear, i c h o o s e t o feast o n regret a s t h e o n l y t r u e test o f m y g r o w t h as a h u m a n . driving with no hands was w r i t t e n after a r e a l a n d v i v i d l y i n t e n s e e x p e r i e n c e — a f l a s h b a c k o f f e e l i n g s f r o m m y y o u t h t h a t i e n c o u n t e r e d o n e d a y as i d r o v e t h e l o n g c o m m u t e f r o m w o r k t o h o m e . and for some reason on this special day t h e s u n c o n n e c t e d w i t h m e so s t r o n g l y t h a t i l o n g e d t o p u l l o u t a c h a i n s a w a n d cut off t h e e n t i r e r o o f o f m y o l d h o u n d d o g c a r a n d , l i k e b r o t h e r j a k e , w h e n h e s a w t h e l i g h t , j too wanted to jump cartwheels and drive again with no hands f o r it gave m e a f e e l i n g t h a t i h a d f o r g o t t e n - a f e e l i n g so s p e c i a l , so s a c r e d , so l i f e a f f i r m i n g t h a t i w a n t e d t o w e e p at h o w e m p t y i h a d b e c o m e . . . driving with no hands is a c e l e b r a t i o n o f l i f e , y o u t h , a n d n a i v e h o n e s t y . it is a c o m m e n t a r y o n h o w , t o s o m e extent w e a l l get d e r a i l e d a n d d a n c e w i t h regret as w e age w i t h i n t h e p a r a d i g m o f society. t e n y e a r s l a t e r w h e n t h e a d v e n t u r e c a m e t o its e n d a n d i b e c a m e " n o r m a l " a g a i n , it t o o k m e years t o c o m e off t h e a d r e n a l i n e - i t w a s l i k e h e r o i n a n d f o r l i f e t i m e s after i w a l k e d t h e streets l i k e a p r i s o n e r o f t h e s e t t i n g s u n c r a v i n g t h e r u s h a n d t h e release a n d t h e r e c o g n i t i o n a n d n e v e r s e e m i n g t o s c o r e e n o u g h t o a p p e a s e m y m i n d . . . a n d it n e v e r r e c o n c i l e d it j u s t f a d e d i n t i m e w i t h t h e a v a l a n c h e o f r e s p o n s i b i l i t y t h a t f o l l o w s f i t t i n g i n t o s o c i e t y u n t i l t h i s m o m e n t w h e n i n t h e b l i n k o f a n d eye i w a s t a k e n r i g h t b a c k t o t h e t i m e w h e n i c o u l d f l y a n d d r i v e w i t h n o h a n d s . anger/alienation with the prevailing culture driving with no hands t o u c h e s o n m y a n g e r a n d a l i e n a t i o n w i t h t h e p r e v a i l i n g c u l t u r e . i n t h i s p o e m , i refer t o t h e m i n d - n u m b i n g e x p e r i e n c e o f t h e e v e n i n g c o m m u t e h o m e . i r o n i c a l l y , o u r h o m e is s i t u a t e d i n a s u b u r b a n n e i g h b o r h o o d t h a t is c o m p o s e d o f p e o p l e w i t h w h o s e v a l u e s i h a v e n o c o m m o n a l i t y . it is a p s e u d o - s a n c t u a r y , as m y f a m i l y l i v e s t h e r e , b u t w e s t r u g g l e w i t h a n y sense o f i n t e g r a t i n g w i t h t h e c o m m u n i t y . f o r as i d r o v e h o m e t o d a y , d e e p i n t h e g r i d a n d l o c k o f t o e a t i n g t h e f u m e s a n d c u r s i n g b u f f o o n s i n a p a n i c t o get o f f t h e t a r f o r d o m e s t i c abyss i n m y l i t t l e h o u s e i n t h e s u b w i t h its 's b i g e n g i n e t i m e w a r p a n d n e i g h b o r s w h o are w h i t e - r i g h t o f a r n o l d , i w a s a m a z e d t o see t h e s u n b u r s t t h r o u g h t h e h e a v e n s a n d b l e s s a l l t h e p r i s o n e r s o f t h e c o m m u t e a l t h o u g h t h e r e is a c l e a r d i s t a i n f o r m y p r e s e n t l i f e i n t h i s p o e m , m y o w n sense o f a l i e n a t i o n a n d p e r s o n a l r e j e c t i o n c e r t a i n l y h a u n t e d m e d u r i n g t h e f i r s t h a l f o f m y l i f e . it s e e m s d i r e c t l y t i e d t o a s e a r c h f o r p u r p o s e a n d m e a n i n g a n d u l t i m a t e l y t o t h e r e v e l a t i o n o f d r e a m s a n d v a l u e s t h r o u g h a r t i s t i c s e l f - e x p r e s s i o n . i h a v e o f t e n w o n d e r e d w h y i b e l i e v e d t h a t l i f e s h o u l d offer m o r e . r e c i p r o c a l l y , i w o n d e r e d w h y i s h o u l d offer s o m e t h i n g s p e c i a l b a c k t o l i f e t h r o u g h s o m e h e r o i c a c c o m p l i s h m e n t . a n d s o , a l a c k o f a c c e p t a n c e o f l i f e , as it is i n t h i s t i m e a n d p l a c e , a n d a l a c k o f a c c e p t i n g m y o w n n o r m a l i t y h a s b e e n a n o n g o i n g i s s u e . i r e m i n d m y s e l f o f t h e w o m a n i d e p i c t e d i n t h e master frame. i h e a r d a b o u t a w o m a n w h o g r e w u p i n a h o u s e o f r i c h e s f r a m e d w i t h b e l i e f s o f s u p e r i o r i t y o n l y t o f i n d t h a t a t u r n o f events p u s h e d h e r i n t o a l i f e o f c o n s t a n t s t r u g g l e i n s i d e a n e w d r e a m w i t h a m a n o f m o d e s t m e a n s a n d t h e r e she r a i s e d a f a m i l y b u t w a s n e v e r a b l e f o r e t u r n t o h e r o r i g i n a l h o m e f r a m e w i t h its a f f l u e n c e a n d c o n n e c t i o n s a n d as a r e s u l t s h e d i v o r c e d h e r s e l f f r o m h e r v e r y o w n l i f e f o r s h e s a w h e r l i f e a s a f a i l u r e as s h e c o u l d n o t r e - c o n c e i v e h e r m a s t e r f r a m e t o a c c o m m o d a t e a d i f f e r e n t c o n t e x t a n d s o she i n v a l i d a t e d everything... p e r h a p s m y " h o u s e o f r i c h e s f r a m e d w i t h b e l i e f s o f s u p e r i o r i t y , " w a s t h e m e t a p h o r i c c o n t e x t o f t e l e v i s i o n w h i c h r e p l a c e d t h e v a c u u m o f late 'so's s u b u r b a n l i f e w i t h s t o r i e s o f a d v e n t u r e a n d h e r o i c a c c o m p l i s h m e n t . p e r h a p s m y n e e d f o r a s p e c i a l l i f e is a s y m p t o m o f t h e d a m a g e i n c u r r e d b y w a t c h i n g t o o m u c h t e l e v i s i o n at a v e r y i m p r e s s i o n a b l e age. a l l t h o s e c o w b o y s h o w s o f t h e late 's c u t d e e p l y i n t o m y p s y c h e . t o b e a m a n , a p a l a d i n , r e a l r i f l e m a n w a n t e d d e a d o r a l i v e , a c h u c k o r a steve, c l i n t o r g a r y t a l l n e s s a n d s i l e n c e b r i m m i n g w i t h v i o l e n c e a n d f u r y m u c h t o o s o o n t o d e f i n e t h e a m e r i c a n m a l e o n t h e b l a c k a n d w h i t e pages o f h i g h n o o n . a m i, as a g u i t a r i s t , a m e t a p h o r i c g u n s l i n g e r ? d o i seek a d v e n t u r e s a n d p e r f o r m a n c e c h a l l e n g e s o n t h e m u s i c a l f r o n t i e r ? i n t h e last t e n y e a r s , i h a v e w o r k e d h a r d at i n t e g r a t i n g m y s e l f w i t h t h e v a r i o u s c o m m u n i t i e s t h r o u g h w h i c h i c o m e i n c o n t a c t . i h a v e e n j o y e d s o m e s u c c e s s i n c o n n e c t i n g w i t h m y p e e r s , t h e t e a c h i n g staff at w o r k . t w e n t y - o d d y e a r s ago, as a n e w t e a c h e r , i h a d t r o u b l e r e l a t i n g t o o t h e r t e a c h e r s . i h a d b e c o m e a t e a c h e r at s u c h a late age ( ), a n d i c a r r i e d s u c h a u n i q u e p e r s o n a l a g e n d a f r o m y e a r s o f n o n - t e a c h i n g a d v e n t u r e s . c o n s e q u e n t l y , i felt d i f f e r e n t a n d i n d e e d , i w a s v e r y d i f f e r e n t f r o m m o s t o f m y c o l l e a g u e s at t h a t t i m e . o n e c l e a r t u r n i n g p o i n t t h a t a s s i s t e d i n m y i n t e g r a t i n g i n t o t h e t e a c h i n g c o m m u n i t y a n d t h e w o r l d at l a r g e h a s b e e n t h e a r r i v a l o f o u r d a u g h t e r , e m i l y , i n m a y o f . new beginnings t h e n o t i o n o f n e w b e g i n n i n g s is o n l y t o u c h e d u p o n i n t h i s s e r i e s o f p o e m s . t h e s e p o e m s s y m b o l i z e t h e a c t u a l p r o c e s s o f m o v i n g t o a p o s i t i o n o f a c c e p t a n c e a n d c o u r a g e t o r e c l a i m m y o w n , a u t h e n t i c v o i c e . a s i w r o t e t h r o u g h these p o e m s a n d as i w r o t e m u s i c t o e n h a n c e t h e m , m y v o i c e s t a r t e d t o r e - m a n i f e s t itself. b u t t h i s w o r k a n d t h i s d o c u m e n t are m o r e c l e a r l y a b o u t t h e p r o c e s s as o p p o s e d t o t h e r e s u l t s . i h i n t at t h e f u t u r e a n d w h a t i a m t o b e c o m e i n t h e p o e m , / am starting (to lose). i am becoming t h e f o o l o n t h e h i l l t h e i n v i s i b l e o n e , t h e c r a z y m a n , t a l k i n g t o h i m s e l f r e v e l i n g i n h i s o w n j o k e s y e t , at t h e s a m e t i m e , i a m h e a r i n g n e w s y m p h o n i e s o f l i v i n g a n d c o n c e r t o s i n t h e o n c e c a c o p h o n o u s t u m b l e o f c o n f u s i o n a n d i a m p r e p a r i n g t o b e myself... (the importance of) artistic/transcendent/arational spaces m y c o n d u i t t o m y s e l f a n d t o n e w b e g i n n i n g s h a s a l w a y s b e e n t h r o u g h a r t i s t i c / t r a n s c e n d e n t / a r a t i o n a l s p a c e s . o n e o f m y f i r s t p o e m s , how old? a l l u d e s t o t h e t i m e l e s s q u a l i t y o f t h i s site o f k n o w l e d g e . s u d d e n , u n e x p e c t e d t r a n s c e n d e n c e c a n b e v e r y d r a m a t i c . b y u n e x p e c t e d , i d o n o t m e a n t h e t y p e o f a c t i o n s o r r i t u a l s , l i k e m e d i t a t i o n , t h a t are s p e c i f i c a l l y p r a c t i c e d f o r t h i s e x p e r i e n c e . i a m t a l k i n g a b o u t t i m e s w h e n w e are a l l j u s t l i v i n g o u r l i v e s a n d w e m o m e n t a r i l y step o u t o f o u r s e l v e s . f o r e x a m p l e , i have sat o n a b e a c h at s u n s e t a n d t h e s h e e r b e a u t y o f t h e e x p e r i e n c e h a s c a t a p u l t e d m e i n t o a r a p t u r e t h a t m a d e m e feel t h a t t i m e h a d c o m p l e t e l y s t o p p e d , o r t h a t i w a s i n a c o n t e x t b e y o n d t i m e . t h i s p o e m i s p r o p e l l e d b y a s e r i e s o f q u e s t i o n s t h a t l e a d t o e v e r - i n c r e a s i n g l y o b v i o u s c o n n e c t i o n s t o t h e site o f a r a t i o n a l i t y — m o m e n t s i n e v e r y d a y l i f e t h a t m a y go as u n r e c o g n i z e d as t i m e s w h e n w e d i p o u r toes i n t h e i n f i n i t e w a t e r s o f t h e t r a n s c e n d e n t . c o m m e n c i n g w i t h t h e i n n o c u o u s , yet s t r a n g e q u e s t i o n o f h o w o l d are y o u w h e n y o u l a u g h , t h e p o e m asks t h e s a m e q u e s t i o n a b o u t o t h e r c o m m o n e x p e r i e n c e s l i k e t h e c o n s u m p t i o n o f f o o d a n d d r i n k , as w e l l as m u s i c a n d n a t u r e , a n d t h e i n t i m a c y o f l o v e a n d i n t e g r i t y . t h e g o a l is t o m a k e p e o p l e s e n s i t i v e t o these s p e c i a l m o m e n t s i n t h e i r o w n w a y as t r a n s c e n d e n c e is a l w a y s j u s t a step a w a y . w e u n l o c k t h e f o u n t a i n o f y o u t h t h r o u g h o u r c h o i c e o f f r a m e s t o v i e w a l l m a n n e r o f l i v i n g , b o t h past a n d n e w . i n the goddess of innovation, i p e r s o n i f y a n d d e i f y a n d t h e n h o p e t o e v o k e t h e t r a n s c e n d e n t state o f a r a t i o n a l i t y . a n d i f she d o e s a r r i v e it's u s u a l l y a s u r p r i s e a n d i d o n ' t a l w a y s sense h e r p r e s e n c e j u s t t h a t c o l o r s s e e m b r i g h t a n d t h e f l o w is t o t a l l y r i g h t a n d n e w i d e a s p o p f o r t h f r o m m y e s s e n c e f r o m years o f w o r k i n g w i t h i n t h e site o f t h e a r a t i o n a l , i k n o w t h a t t h e p e r s o n a l c o n t e x t u a l f r a m e n e e d e d t o e n t e r t h e site c a n b e c h a l l e n g i n g t o s u s t a i n . a n d as i r e l a x , i k n o w she is r i g h t i j u s t get i n m y o w n w a y f o r t h e t r i c k is t o o p e n t h e d o o r a n d a l l o w her t o e x p l o r e w i t h o u t b l o c k i n g o r c o n t r o l l i n g h e r stay a n d t h a t ' s e a s i e r s a i d t h a n d o n e f o r t h e m i n d ' s r a s c a l m o n k e y f o r o n e is a l w a y s t a l k i n g a n d t a k i n g c o n t r o l b u t t h e g o d d e s s n e e d s p l e n t y o f r o o m t o create s u c h a t u n e t h a t ' s o r i g i n a l a n d f u l l o f s o u l a n d t h e m o n k e y w i l l p r e t e n d t o b e a s l e e p i n o r d e r t o s n e a k a p e e k a t t h e a w e - i n s p i r i n g b e a u t y o f t h e g o d d e s s b u t she c a n sense h i m t h r o u g h h i s p r o c e s s a n d she w i l l fade a w a y g l o w i n g a n o t h e r p o e m t h a t d e a l s w i t h t h i s z o n e o f i n n o v a t i o n is t h e p o e m e n t i t l e d high wire guitar. t h e c i r c u s m e t a p h o r d r a w s i n a l l t y p e s o f s e c o n d a r y a s s o c i a t i o n s w i t h d a n g e r a n d d a r i n g a n d h i g h d r a m a . b u t t h i s p o e m is a l s o f i l l e d w i t h m i x e d i m a g e r y o f s p i r i t u a l i s m . i n i t i a l l y , i refer t o g u i t a r p l a y i n g as w a l k i n g o n w a t e r . i refer t o t h e m a n t r a om mani padme hum t o e v o k e t h e n o t i o n o f c o m p l e t e c o n c e n t r a t i o n , t h e b u d d h a o f c o m p a s s i o n , a n d t h e w h i r l i n g o f t h e s p h e r e s . t h e p i n n a c l e , o r g o l d e n m e a n , a r r i v e s w i t h t h e t w o w o r d s , " y o u a r e . " you are y o u r e x t e n s i o n a n d if a l l m a n n e r o f t h i n g s h a v e l o c k e d t h e m s e l v e s i n t o t h e m o s t s a c r e d p a t t e r n w h e n t h e s u n m a k e s l o v e t o t h e m o o n a n d t h e t i d e s r o l l b a c k w a r d t o r e v e a l a n c i e n t s h i p w r e c k s a n d cities o f so l o n g ago, yet y o u k n o w a n d t h e h o w l o f t h e w o l f b e c o m e s a n a r i a o f u n s p e a k a b l e b e a u t y . . . t h e n y o u are r e a d y f r o m these w o r d s i c o n s t r u c t a t r i u m v i r a t e o f a s s o c i a t i o n s t h a t l i n k s g u i t a r s o l o i n g w i t h t h e c i r c u s as w e l l as w i t h d e e p s p i r i t u a l i s m . i n s o d o i n g , i h o p e t o s i m u l a t e s o m e o f m y p s y c h o l o g i c a l e x p e r i e n c e s o f c r e a t i n g m u s i c o n stage f o r t h e r e a d e r . w i t h t h e d e c l i n e o f t h e i n f l u e n c e o f t h e c h u r c h i n t h e ' s , m a n y y o u n g p e o p l e t u r n e d t o a n i n f o r m a l s p i r i t u a l i t y a n d i d o l a t r y t h r o u g h t h e p o p i c o n s . p e o p l e w o u l d c a r e f u l l y l i s t e n t o l y r i c s as i f t h e r e w e r e m o d e r n s c r i p t u r e s . g u i t a r w i z a r d s l i k e e r i c c l a p t o n a n d j i m i h e n d r i x b e c a m e t h e h i g h p r i e s t s o f t h e m o v e m e n t . t h e r e i n , e x t e n d e d b l u e s b a s e d s o l o s g u i d e d u s t o n e w l e v e l s o f t r a n s c e n d e n c e . a n d s o , t h i s p o e m s t e m s f r o m that a t t i t u d e , w h e r e t h e a c t i o n s o f t h e i m p r o v i s e r m o d e l a s a c r e d r i t u a l w h e r e i n t h e p a s s i o n a n d t h e l i f e f o r c e o f t h e p l a y e r t u r n t h e s o l o i n t o a h y m n o f t r a n s c e n d e n c e . reflections and intimate looks into the form and function of the educational landscape t h e r e are a n u m b e r o f p o e m s a n d n a r r a t i v e s t h a t w e r e c o m p o s e d d u r i n g m y g r a d u a t e w o r k t h a t a d d r e s s e d u c a t i o n a l i s s u e s . t h e s e i n c l u d e t h e f o l l o w i n g p o e m s : on music class after a sleepless night, a n d how do you determine, as w e l l as t h e n a r r a t i v e s , the hustler, a n d this day in a life. on music class after a sleepless night i n v i t e s t h e r e a d e r t o i m a g i n e s o m e o f t h e f e e l i n g a n d a t m o s p h e r e o f a m o d e r n j u n i o r h i g h m u s i c class w i t h t h e a d d i t i o n a l b o n u s o f s e e i n g it f r o m t h e t e a c h e r ' s p e r s p e c t i v e . m a n y p e o p l e h a v e t a k e n b a n d classes w h e n t h e y w e r e i n s c h o o l , b u t f e w k n o w w h a t t h e e x p e r i e n c e is l i k e o n t h e other s i d e o f t h e b a t o n . i i n c o r p o r a t e d r e a l s o u n d s f r o m o n e o f m y j u n i o r c o n c e r t b a n d s t o i n t e n s i f y a n d v a l i d a t e t h e m o o d o f t h e o p e n i n g l i n e s . l a z y s o u n d s , c r a z y s o u n d s , d e e p f r o m a b e d o f m o r n i n g s i l e n c e t h e y b l o o m i n a l l s h a p e s a n d sizes s o u n d s o f b r a s s , s o u n d s e l e c t r i c , s o u n d s p a t h e t i c f r o m o l d reeds a n d m o l d y reeds a n d m i s r e a d s o f m u s i c w i t h c a s e s b a n g i n g a n d m u s i c s t a n d s c l a n g i n g i t a l k a b o u t h o w t h e m u s i c g r o w s i n i n t e n s i t y u n t i l t h e r e is a p o i n t w h e r e t h e o v e r l a p p i n g o f s o u n d is so f r e q u e n t t h a t t h e s o u n d s c o n g e a l o n e e n o r m o u s s t o r m t h a t s e e m s t o h a v e g a i n e d a l i f e o f its o w n . t h e g r o w l i n g , h o w l i n g , c r a s h i n g , a n d c l a s h i n g o f these f r a g m e n t s o f f r e q u e n c y a n d e m o t i o n i n t h i s l u m p y s o n i c m a s s h i t s its c r i t i c a l p o i n t o f n o r e t u r n a n d m o r p h s i n t o o n e h i d e o u s m u l t i - t e n d r i l l e d e n t i t y t h a t c o n t i n u e s t o e x p a n d a n d f e e d o f f b l a c k h o l e recesses a n d s u d d e n l y l a s h e s o u t at m e , k n o c k i n g m e senseless w i t h u n b e a r a b l e d i s s o n a n c e a n d d e c i b e l s t h a t m o v e s t o d e s t a b i l i z e m y v e r y f r a m e o f c a l m a n d d e t a c h e d p r o f e s s i o n a l i s m (?) t r y i n g t o start a class r e q u i r e s p u l l i n g t h e c h i l d r e n o u t o f t h e i r o w n e x p l o r a t i o n s a n d b a c k t o s i l e n c e . t h i s is c a n b e a c h a l l e n g e . s o m e b a n d t e a c h e r s r e s o r t t o a m i l i t a r y - l i k e a t m o s p h e r e w h e r e c h i l d r e n f e a r t h e i r t e a c h e r e n o u g h t o q u i c k l y s h u t d o w n w h e n a s k e d . i a s p i r e t o h a v e , h o w e v e r , a c a l m e r s t y l e , w h e r e i n i foster a m o r e r e l a x e d e n v i r o n m e n t — o n e t h a t c a n s o m e t i m e s l e a d t o e x p l o r a t i o n o r t o o m u c h s o c i a l i z i n g . s o i n m y c l a s s r o o m , b r i n g i n g t h e c h i l d r e n b a c k t o m y m u s i c a g e n d a c a n b e c h a l l e n g i n g . i s c r a m b l e t o p a d m y ears a n d g r a b m y b a t o n w h i l e i c a l l f o r t h e f o r c e a n d t h e g o d s o f r e a s o n . w a l k i n g o u t o f m y office i t a p t w i c e o n t h e m u s i c s t a n d , r a i s i n g m y h a n d w h i l e p r a y i n g t h a t t h e a l i e n i n m y r o o m w i l l h e a r m y c a l l a n d sense m y i n t e n t i o n a n d w i l l f a i l t o detect m y b l u f f a n d t h a t m y s h e e r m a g n i t u d e o f c o n v i c t i o n w i l l d i s s i p a t e t h i s e n t i t y b a c k t o a b e d o f s i l e n c e so t h a t t h e seeds o f f o c u s , c o h e s i o n , g r a c e , a n d b e a u t y m a y t a k e r o o t a n d o n c e a g a i n r e t u r n u s t o a g a r d e n o f s y m p h o n y . t h e n a r r a t i v e s the hustler a n d this day in a life d i g m u c h d e e p e r i n t o t h e p o l i t i c s a n d i s s u e s t h a t i h a v e d e a l t w i t h i n m y t e n u r e as a m u s i c t e a c h e r . t h e l i g h t t o n e p e r m e a t i n g t h e m u s i c a l s o u n d s c a p e o f the hustler softens t h e h a r s h e r r e a l i t i e s o f p o l i t i c s a n d p o w e r i n t h e p u b l i c s y s t e m . t h e d o m i n a n t q u e s t i o n t h a t is p o s e d is w h e t h e r i a c t e d w i t h i n t e g r i t y w h e n i m a n i p u l a t e d m y p r i n c i p a l i n t o v a l u i n g t h e m u s i c p r o g r a m . i n r e f l e c t i o n , i p r o b a b l y w o u l d d o t h e s a m e t h i n g i f t h e s i t u a t i o n c a l l e d f o r it b u t after w r i t i n g t h i s p i e c e , i b e l i e v e t h a t i w o u l d a p p r o a c h t h e i s s u e m o r e c a r e f u l l y a n d s l o w l y . this day in a life c h r o n i c l e s a f i c t i t i o u s d a y i n m y p r o f e s s i o n a l l i f e . a d a y at s c h o o l serves as a s c a f f o l d t o f o i s t a p l e t h o r a o f i s s u e s a n d p o i n t s o f v i e w i h a v e a b o u t m y j o b a n d p r o f e s s i o n . it is a / r / t o g r a p h i c b y d e f a u l t as it i n t e r w e a v e s m y r o l e s as a r t i s t , t e a c h e r a n d r e s e a r c h e r . i n r e v i e w i n g t h i s n a r r a t i v e i t h i n k t h a t it serves t h e p u r p o s e o f p r i m i n g r e a d e r s t o t h e t y p i c a l a g e n d a a n d d e m a n d s p l a c e d o n m u s i c t e a c h e r s . it r a i s e s q u e s t i o n s a b o u t e t h i c s , a n d t h e p u r p o s e o f t e a c h i n g as w e l l as i n v i t i n g t h o u g h t o n h o w m u s i c classes s h o u l d b e s t r u c t u r e d a n d h o w s t u d e n t n e e d s c o u l d b e m e t . it a l s o acts as a s p r i n g b o a r d f o r m a n y o t h e r t o p i c s . the intuitive process and empathy without experience reflections on the collaborative process of the poet and the piper. h o w is it t h a t o n e is a b l e t o s u c c e s s f u l l y c o n s t r u c t m u s i c t o e i t h e r a p o e m , n a r r a t i v e , o r l i b r e t t o t h a t c o n t a i n s subjects a n d f e e l i n g s t h a t are f o r e i g n t o t h e c o m p o s e r ? o r , t o r e p h r a s e , w h a t m e c h a n i s m s are o p e r a t i n g w h e n a w r i t e r / p o e t feels t h a t c o l l a b o r a t i o n w i t h a c o m p o s e r s t r o n g l y c o n v e y s t h e e x p e r i e n t i a l essence o f t h e text e v e n t h o u g h t h e c o m p o s e r h a s n e v e r b e e n t h r o u g h a n y o f t h e p o e t ' s e x p e r i e n c e s o t h e r t h a n r e a d i n g o r h e a r i n g t h e text? c e r t a i n l y , it is a n a c k n o w l e d g e m e n t o f t h e s t r e n g t h o f t h e n a r r a t i v e t o c o n v e y t h e i n t e n t i o n a n d affective a t m o s p h e r e o f t h e subject at h a n d . h a v i n g s a i d t h a t , w h e n i reflect o n t h e l i f e o f c a r l l e g g o , i m u s t c e r t a i n l y a c k n o w l e d g e t h a t i c o m e f r o m a n o t h e r w o r l d o f e x p e r i e n c e . r e g r e t t a b l y , i h a v e n e v e r b e e n east o f q u e b e c c i t y . i h a v e n e v e r b r e a t h e d t h e salt a i r o f t h e east c o a s t — n e v e r m e t its w o n d e r f u l , c o l o u r f u l i n h a b i t a n t s . y e t , t h e r e w a s s o m e i n e x p l i c a b l e l i n k i n g b e t w e e n c a r l a n d m y s e l f . c a r l , a n d h i s w i f e l a n a , w e r e b o t h v e r y p l e a s e d w i t h o u r a / r / t o g r a p h i c c o l l a b o r a t i o n . l a n a felt t h a t i r e a l l y u n d e r s t o o d t h e m o o d s , i d e a s a n d f e e l i n g s c a r l t r i e d t o c o n v e y . t h e f o l l o w i n g d i s c o u r s e is a r e f l e c t i o n o n t h e e v e n t , i n h o p e s o f g l e a n i n g s o m e i n s i g h t i n t o t h e q u e s t i o n o f i n t u i t i v e e m p a t h e t i c c o n n e c t i o n s a n d r e n d e r i n g s a l b e i t w i t h o u t r e a l t i m e e x p e r i e n c e . t h e s e v e n p o e m s t h a t c a r l s h a r e d w i t h m e w e r e t r e a t e d i n d i v i d u a l l y . n o c o n s c i o u s l i n k i n g t h r o u g h m o t i f o r style w a s u s e d . h a v i n g s a i d t h a t , a n u m b e r o f p o e m s w e r e f r o m a p e r i o d w h e n c a r l w a s r e f l e c t i n g o n h i s east coast c h i l d h o o d e x p e r i e n c e s i n n e w f o u n d l a n d , c a n a d a . m a n y o f these a r t i s t i c r e f l e c t i o n s , w i t h t h e e x c e p t i o n o f l y n c h ' s l a n e , s e e m e d t o c a l l f o r a c a s u a l style o f w r i t i n g . t h e s a m e n o s e c a l l e d t o m e f o r a f o l k - l i k e a c c o m p a n i m e n t i n a t w o - p a r t s t r u c t u r e . c a r l t o l d m e t h a t h i s d a d l i k e d c o u n t r y m u s i c . i t h i n k o f s c o t t i s h j i g s a n d reels as b e i n g p a r t o f t h e east coast s u b c o n s c i o u s m u s i c a l / c u l t u r a l m o s a i c . s o , i d e c i d e d t o s p i n a n east coast reel w i t h a t w i s t o f c o u n t r y . i s t a r t e d w i t h a h o o k f o r a c o u s t i c g u i t a r . f r o m t h e r e , it is c o n t i n u o u s l y r e p e a t e d w i t h v a r i o u s i n s t r u m e n t s j o i n i n g i n t o e x p a n d , c o u n t r i f y , a n d v a r i a t e t h e s p i r i t o f t h e h o o k . t h e s k i p p e r ( a . k . a . , c a r l ' s father) h a s c l e a r l y d e f i n e d v i e w s o n a n y n u m b e r o f t o p i c s , b u t o n e v i e w t h a t s t a n d s o u t is h i s d i s t a i n f o r s n o b s . w h e n c a r l refers t o o t h e r t o p i c s o f r a n t , t h e m u s i c m o v e s i n t o a m i n o r s e t t i n g . a f t e r eight b a r s , it r e t u r n s t o t h e h a p p y , d a n c e a b l e f i r s t t h e m e i n a n a / b / a s t r u c t u r e . t h e w h o l e p i e c e , b e i n g i n p a r t , a m i r r o r o f c a r l ' s f a t h e r , a s s u m e s a s t r a i g h t f o r w a r d q u a l i t y — o n e t h a t is d e c o r a t e d w i t h t h e m u s i c a l e q u i v a l e n t s o f b l u e - c o l l a r c u l t u r e a n d v a l u e s . i n r e t r o s p e c t , it w o u l d h a v e h e l p e d t o h a v e m e t s k i p p e r b e f o r e w r i t i n g t h i s p i e c e . w r i t i n g m u s i c f o r p o e m s t h a t a d d r e s s i n n e r f e e l i n g s o r a b s t r a c t i d e a s a l l o w s f o r m o r e f r e e d o m t h a n w r i t i n g m u s i c f o r a p e r s o n t h a t is s t i l l a l i v e . i b e l i e v e t h a t t h e l a t t e r d e m a n d s a c c u r a c y — m u c h l i k e t h e a c c u r a c y s o u g h t b y a h i s t o r i a n . p e r h a p s , i n p a r t d u e t o t h i s , i feel t h e least s a t i s f i e d w i t h t h i s p i e c e no locks v i v i d l y t a k e s o n e b a c k t o t h e h o u s e w h e r e c a r l g r e w u p . u s u a l l y , c a r l r e a d s t h i s p o e m w i t h a l o t o f f r e n e t i c e n e r g y . t h i s h o u s e w a s a v e r y b u s y p l a c e . i t r i e d t o c a p t u r e s o m e o f t h e e n e r g y a n d d r a m a . m y f i r s t step w a s t o create a m o v i n g , t u m b l i n g d r u m p a t t e r n t h a t l o c k s i n w i t h a f u r i o u s l y f r a n t i c b a s s p a r t . if y o u l i s t e n , y o u w i l l h e a r t h e s o u n d o f c a r l ' s m o t h e r s w e e p i n g w i t h a b r o o m w h i c h b e c a m e a m e t a p h o r i c a l c l e a r i n g o f t h e h o u s e f o r t h e n e x t a c t i v i t y i n t h e i r t h r e e - r i n g c i r c u s o f d o m e s t i c i t y . a t r a d i t i o n a l j a z z g u i t a r is u s e d t o f u r t h e r h i g h l i g h t t h e s w i r l i n g e n e r g y . i p u r p o s e f u l l y c r e a t e d a v e r y a b r u p t e n d i n g t o c o n t r a s t w i t h t h e s i l e n c e f o l l o w i n g t h e t r a c k . i w a n t e d t h e l i s t e n e r t o feel a b i t o f r e l i e f w h e n it w a s o v e r . o v e r a l l , i felt f a i r l y p l e a s e d w i t h t h i s s o u n d s c a p e as it s e e m e d t o s u p p o r t c a r l ' s f e v e r i s h r e a d i n g o f t h e p o e m . t h i s p i e c e f u r t h e r c o n v i n c e d m e o f t h e v a l u e o f h e a r i n g p o e t s r e a d t h e i r o w n w r i t i n g s . i n d e e d , t h e act o f p e r f o r m a n c e p o e t r y s e e m s i n i t s e l f a m u l t i - l a y e r e d a n d e s s e n t i a l l y a / r / t o g r a p h i c p r o c e s s . t e x t is c o m b i n e d w i t h o r a t o r y . s o s t r o n g is t h i s a l c h e m y t h a t i f o u n d m y s e l f s e l d o m r e f e r r i n g t o a h a r d c o p y o f c a r l ' s p o e m s . w h e n i w a n t e d t o e x p e r i e n c e h i s p o e t r y , m y r e c o r d i n g s o f c a r l w e r e f a r m o r e s a t i a t i n g t h a n t h e o n e - d i m e n s i o n a l f o r m o n p a p e r . c a r l ' s r e a d i n g s m o v e i n r e a l t i m e . h i s s u b c o n s c i o u s u s e o f m e t e r , p h r a s i n g , d y n a m i c s , t e n u t o , a c c e l e r a n d o , r i t a r d a n d o a n d a r t i c u l a t i o n u n f o l d l i k e a s y m p h o n i c d r a m a . l i s t e n i n g t o t h e s e m u s i c a l e l e m e n t s o f c a r l ' s p e r f o r m a n c e i n t u r n s h a p e d t h e m u s i c a l " n e s t " t h a t i c o n s t r u c t e d f o r t h e p o e m . k n o w i n g t h e w a y t h a t c a r l w r i t e s , i w o u l d a r g u e t h a t h i s p o e t r y i n p a r t i c u l a r s h o u l d b e h e a r d ( t h r o u g h p e r f o r m a n c e ) , r a t h e r t h a n b e i n g r e a d . if i h a d i n i t i a l l y e x p e r i e n c e d t h i s p o e m t h r o u g h m y o w n r e a d i n g o f it, i d o u b t t h a t i w o u l d h a v e a u t o m a t i c a l l y i n t e r p r e t e d t h e p o e m w i t h s u c h v i g o r . picnics c a l l e d f o r a b r o a d e r , i n t r o s p e c t i v e , a n d m o r e m e l a n c h o l y a p p r o a c h . o u r a w a r e n e s s o f l i m i t e d t i m e o n e a r t h i s a r g u a b l y a m o s t d i f f i c u l t t o p i c . w i t h t h i s p o e m , i felt t h a t c a r l ' s u n i q u e f r a m i n g w a s p o i g n a n t a n d c o m p e l l i n g . i w a n t e d t h i s p i e c e t o h a v e a n i n s t r u m e n t a l o p e n i n g t h a t p r e p a r e d t h e l i s t e n e r f o r t h e m e l a n c h o l y a n d c o m p l e x m o o d t h e p o e m g e n e r a t e d . i u s e d a j a z z - l i k e g e n r e i n s t e a d o f a p u r e c l a s s i c a l p i e c e b e c a u s e c a r l l i g h t e n s u p t h e p o e m t o w a r d t h e e n d . i p l a c e d a n i n s t r u m e n t a l s o l o i n t h e c e n t e r o f t h e p o e m f o r r e a s o n s t h a t w e r e t w o f o l d . f i r s t , t o r e i n f o r c e t h e m o o d a n d m o v e m e n t o f t h e p o e m . s e c o n d , t o a l l o w t h e l i s t e n e r t o reflect o n t h e w o r d s s p o k e n t h u s far. l i k e t h e p o e m , t h e m u s i c h a s a n i n e v i t a b l e s w i n g t o it a n d e v e n t u a l l y w i n d s d o w n l i k e a c l o c k . c a r l a n d i a r e b o t h c l o s e t o t h e s a m e age a n d t h o u g h h e w a s c l e a r l y c o g n i z a n t a n d c o n c e r n e d a b o u t t h e f i n a l i t y o f t h e e a r t h l y h u m a n e x p e r i e n c e at a n e a r l y age, i, as a - y e a r - o l d m a n , e m p a t h i z e d o n a l e v e l t h a t p r e v i o u s l y w o u l d n o t b e p o s s i b l e f o r m e . my mother's house d e m o n s t r a t e s a p e r n i c i o u s t h e m e i n c a r l ' s p o e t r y : t h e c o l l i d i n g o f c o n t e x t u a l f r a m e s a n d past r e c o l l e c t i o n s w i t h n e w c o n t e x t u a l a w a r e n e s s o f t h e p r e s e n t . t h e u n d e r s t a n d i n g a n d f e e l i n g s o f c h i l d h o o d e x p e r i e n c e s c a n c h a n g e so d r a m a t i c a l l y as w e go t h r o u g h o u r l i v e s , g a i n i n g n e w e x p e r i e n c e s , n e w u n d e r s t a n d i n g s , a n d , p e r h a p s , n e w l e v e l s o f e m p a t h y a n d c o m p a s s i o n f o r o t h e r s as w e l l as o u r s e l v e s . w i t h t h i s p r o c e s s , i see c a r l l e g g o , t h e p o e t , as m e t a p h o r i c a l l y s i t t i n g i n t h e m i d d l e o f a r o o m o f m i r r o r s t h a t reflect b a c k d i f f e r i n g a n g l e s o f u n d e r s t a n d i n g . p h y s i c i s t s t h e o r i z e t h a t , i f o n e c o u l d accelerate fast e n o u g h , o n e c o u l d b e n d b a c k t h r o u g h t i m e a n d r e t u r n t o t h e p a s t . i n t h i s p o e m , c a r l r e t u r n s t o h i s m o t h e r ' s h o m e a n d d i s c o v e r s t h a t it is v e r i t a b l y u n c h a n g e d s i n c e c a r l g r e w u p i n it. c a r l e x a m i n e s it as a t i m e - t r a v e l e r m i g h t , w h e r e i n h i s p a s t a r c h e t y p i c a l m e m o r i e s o f h i s h o m e p a r a d o x i c a l l y c o n f i r m a n d c o l l i d e w i t h h i s c u r r e n t a d u l t e x p e r i e n c e s o f t h e h o u s e . t h e p a s t l o o k s t h e s a m e , yet d i f f e r e n t , as it is m i r r o r e d t h r o u g h t h e n e w l e n s o f a m a t u r e m a n , p o e t , a c a d e m i c , f a t h e r , h u s b a n d a n d w o r l d t r a v e l e r . i n t h i s r o o m o f m i r r o r s , t h e past l o o k s n e w , t h e p a s t l o o k s o l d , t h e past i n f o r m s t h e p r e s e n t , a n d t h e p r e s e n t i n f o r m s t h e past. t o a c c o m p a n y t h i s m i x o f f e e l i n g s , i w r o t e a s o u n d s c a p e t h a t is v e r y c i r c u l a r , o n e t h a t j u s t k e e p s g o i n g , n o t u n l i k e t h e r e f l e c t i o n s i n a r o o m o f m i r r o r s . it a l s o r e m i n d s m e o f t h e l o n g c a r r i d e s t h a t i t o o k as a b o y e a c h s u m m e r t o t h e s a m e p l a c e . m u s i c a l events h a p p e n i n t h i s p i e c e j u s t l i k e t h e c o m i n g a n d g o i n g o f s c e n e r y a l o n g t h e w a y . w e w o u l d n e v e r s t o p — c a r r i e ' s ( c a r l ' s m o t h e r ' s ) p l a c e n e v e r c h a n g e s — a n d so t h e r e is a b e n i g n , o b s e r v a t i o n a l f e e l i n g t o t h e w h o l e event. w h a t c h a n g e s is r e a l l y i n t e r n a l . a n d so t h e s o u n d s c a p e s l o w i n g v a n i s h e s , its f o l k s y style e m p h a s i z i n g t h e c o n t e n t s o f t h e h o u s e a n d its o w n e r . the diver is a p o w e r f u l piece o f p o e t r y . e v e r y t i m e i h e a r it, c a r l ' s w r i t i n g f o r c e s m e t o e x p e r i e n c e a c o m p l e t e v i s i o n o f t h e s t o r y i n m y m i n d ' s eye. i n t h e b e g i n n i n g , i w a n t e d t o create a c a l m , w a t e r y f e e l i n g -the f e e l i n g t h a t o n e h a s w h e n y o u are s w i m m i n g u n d e r t h e w a t e r a n d r i s i n g u p t o t h e s u r f a c e f o r a i r . t h e n i n t u i t i v e l y , i d e c i d e d t h a t t h i s p o e m w i t h its d r a m a t i c s t o r y , s t o p s , s t a r t s , a n d t r u n c a t i o n o f p r e s e n t w i t h p a s t , r e q u i r e d a l o o s e r , a n d m o r e f l e x i b l e m u s i c a l s u p p o r t . u s i n g d r u m s o r s t r i c t t i m e j u s t d i d n o t s e e m a p p r o p r i a t e . a s i n g l e g u i t a r s e e m e d t h e best c h o i c e . a s i l i s t e n e d t o t h e p o e m , i s i m p l y i m p r o v i s e d m u s i c a l m o o d s a n d t e m p o s . o u t o f t h e s e v e n p o e m s , t h i s p i e c e s e e m e d t o r e l y t h e m o s t o n i m m e d i a t e i n t u i t i v e r e s p o n s e s . t h e r e w a s l i t t l e r e v i s i o n - o n l y t h e o v e r d u b o f w i n d c h i m e s at a f e w c h o s e n s p o t s . i n d e e d , d u e t o s p o n t a n e o u s c r e a t i o n , i d o n ' t r e c o g n i z e m y p l a y i n g at c e r t a i n p o i n t s . i d o n ' t k n o w w h a t i p l a y e d a n d i c o u l d n ' t d u p l i c a t e it a c c u r a t e l y w i t h o u t t r a n s c r i b i n g p a r t s o f it. i c o n t i n u e t o e n j o y t h e p o e m a n d t h e s o u n d s c a p e a n d o f t e n t h i n k a b o u t y o u t h , d a r i n g a n d f o o l i s h n e s s , a n d t h e i r n e e d f o r acts o f f u n d a m e n t a l i s t r e d u c t i o n i s m i n h e r o i s m . t h e p o e m e n t i t l e d o w a s a j o y t o w o r k w i t h . a l t h o u g h c a r l s p o k e v e r y l i t t l e a b o u t w h a t h e h e a r d m u s i c a l l y f o r these s o u n d s c a p e s , i d o r e c a l l h i m m e n t i o n i n g t h e i d e a o f s u r f m u s i c . b u t w h e n i s t a r t e d w o r k i n g o n t h e p i e c e , h i s a l l u d i n g t o a b r o n c o b u s t e r p u s h e d m e i n t o m o r p h i n g t h e s u r f m u s i c i n t o a h o m o g e n e o u s b l e n d o f s u r f a n d c o u n t r y m u s i c w h i c h w a s a s o r t o f l o n e s t a r s u r f . t h e n , i p u l l e d o u t m y telecaster g u i t a r a n d m y s l i d e a n d t r i e d t o m u s i c a l l y e m u l a t e t h e r i d e w i t h its s l o p e a n d b u m p s a n d e v e n t u a l c r a s h . t h i s s o u n d s c a p e is v e r y l i g h t - h e a r t e d a n d w o r k s w e l l f o r m e i n t h e c o n t e x t o f t h e six o t h e r p o e m s . i d o n o t k n o w h o w c o m f o r t a b l e i w o u l d b e i f it w e r e p l a y e d o u t o f t h e c o n t e x t o f t h e c d . t h e r e a d i n g oflynch's lane w a s a p a r t i c u l a r l y p o w e r f u l e x p e r i e n c e f o r m e . c a r l h a s a n e x t r a o r d i n a r y gift o f r e c a l l i n g t h e past a n d p u t t i n g t h e r e a d e r i n t o t h e centre o f t h e e x p e r i e n c e . t h i s is a c h i e v e d i n p a r t t h r o u g h h i s a b i l i t y t o t u n e i n t o s m a l l d e t a i l s w h i c h f o r m o s t o f u s , are l o n g f o r g o t t e n . t h e taste o f t h e f i r s t p o p s i c l e i n s u m m e r , t h e p i n k f l e s h o f f r i e d t r o u t d r a w s o u r a t t e n t i o n t o t h e t h i n g s t h a t s t o o d o u t w h e n w e w e r e y o u n g a n d t h e w o r l d w a s n e w . t h e p o e m is o n c e b o t h o r d i n a r y a n d s u b l i m e l y e x t r a - o r d i n a r y . d u r i n g t h e a u g u s t ( ) t h a t i w r o t e t h e m u s i c f o r c a r l ' s p o e m s , i w a s l o s t i n m y o w n w o r l d o f r e c o l l e c t i o n . m y f a t h e r w a s v e r y s i c k w i t h l u n g c a n c e r . i n d e e d , h e w o u l d d i e j u s t a w e e k after t h e c o m p l e t i o n o f m y c o l l a b o r a t i o n w i t h c a r l . a s i w r o t e t h e m u s i c f o r lynch's lane, c a r l ' s o p e n i n g a n d c l o s i n g l i n e s t h a t s i g n i f y b o t h t h e p e r m a n e n c e a n d i m p o r t a n c e o f c h i l d h o o d m e m o r i e s r e v e r b e r a t e d w i t h t h e i n t e n s i f y i n g p r o s p e c t t h a t m y r e l a t i o n s h i p w i t h m y f a t h e r w o u l d s o o n c o l l a p s e i n t o a s e r i e s o f s p e c i a l m e m o r i e s . a s s u c h , i w a s u n a b l e t o w o r k o n c a r l ' s p o e m w i t h o u t t h i n k i n g o f m y d a d a n d h i s i m m a n e n t p a s s i n g i n t o t h i s f i e l d o f m e m o r i e s . t h e s a n c t i t y o f t h e s e t h o u g h t s a n d c a r l ' s m e m o r i e s f o r c e d m e t o w r i t e m u s i c f r o m t h e p i a n o . i a m n o t a p i a n i s t , a n d s o i w a s f o r c e d t o l o o p t o g e t h e r s m a l l p h r a s e s . t h e t h e m e t h a t e n t e r s at t h e e n d o f t h e p o e m is a m o t i f i c r e p r e s e n t a t i o n o f t h e s p i r i t o f m y f a t h e r as w e l l as t h e s p i r i t o f a l l t h e i m p o r t a n t m e m o r i e s o f g r o w i n g u p . i w o u l d l i k e t o h a v e o r c h e s t r a t e d t h i s s e c t i o n as i e n v i s i o n e d a c e l l o p l a y i n g o r at least d o u b l i n g t h i s t h e m e . j u s t b e f o r e t h e p i e c e e n d s , t h e t h e m e d i s s o l v e s i n t o a p e a c e f u l c o n s o n a n c e - m e t a p h o r i c a l l y e c h o i n g t h e e n d o f m y f a t h e r ' s t r o u b l e s w i t h t h e f i n a l passage. section iv what have i learned/unlearned? to believe in myself and value of my unique artistic voice t h r o u g h t h i s j o u r n e y o f g r a d s t u d i e s , i h a v e b e e n l e d m y s e l f t o r e s u r r e c t m y o w n v o i c e . t h a t i s , h o w e v e r , p r e c i p i t a t e d o n a n u m b e r o f o t h e r f a c t o r s , t h e l e a s t o f w h i c h b e i n g t h a t i b e l i e v e i n m y s e l f a n d i n m y o w n i n t r i n s i c v a l u e as a h u m a n . a s i w a s g r o w i n g u p , h e r o e s a n d h e r o i c artists s e e m e d t o b e v e r y s e l f - a s s u r e d a n d g e n e r a l l y r i g h t a b o u t m a n y i s s u e s . t e l e v i s i o n h e r o e s w e r e a l w a y s b l a c k a n d w h i t e r i g h t . l a t e r , m y m u s i c a l h e r o e s s e e m e d t o b e v e r y c o n f i d e n t . e v e n as a y o u n g , u n k n o w n m u s i c i a n a r r i v i n g i n n e w y o r k , b o b d y l a n ( ) w a s v e r y c o n f i d e n t a b o u t h i m s e l f : "...i h a d a h e i g h t e n e d sense o f a w a r e n e s s , w a s set i n m y w a y s , i m p r a c t i c a l a n d a v i s i o n a r y t o b o o t . m y m i n d w a s s t r o n g l i k e a t r a p a n d i d i d n ' t n e e d a n y g u a r a n t e e o f v a l i d i t y . " (p. ) . s o m e h o w , a l o n g t h e w a y , as a s m a l l b o y , i m i x e d u p t h e n o t i o n o f h e r o w i t h b e i n g a n a d u l t . i n fact, i felt t h a t i n o r d e r t o b e g r o w n u p , y o u h a d t o b e a h e r o o n s o m e l e v e l . w h e n i r e f l e c t e d o n m y s e l f , a n d c o m p a r e d m y s e l f a g a i n s t these h e r o e s , i a l w a y s felt i h a d a l o n g w a y t o go. t h e w o r l d w a s a m y s t e r i o u s a n d c o m p l e x p l a c e . m y t v h e r o e s a n d e v e n m y d a d s e e m e d v e r y c l e a r a n d c o n t r o l l e d , d e c i s i v e a n d r e s o l u t e . t v h e r o e s u n d e r s t o o d t h e w o r l d a n d a l w a y s m a d e t h e r i g h t c h o i c e s . a s i t h o u g h t a b o u t m y s e l f , i c o u l d see h o w u n d e v e l o p e d i w a s ; i c o u l d see t h a t i d i d n ' t k n o w a l o t a b o u t t h e w o r l d , m u c h less l e a d i n a n y w a y . a s i a l w a y s felt u n s u r e , i t e n d e d t o m o v e c a u t i o u s l y t h r o u g h l i f e . i f a i l e d as a b o y t o a c k n o w l e d g e t h a t w h e n i l o o k e d at m y s e l f , i j u d g e d m y i d e n t i t y a n d b e h a v i o r s f r o m a p o s i t i o n o f p r i v i l e g e , i n t h e sense t h a t i c o u l d c l e a r l y see a l l m y f a i l i n g s a n d a l l m y e x p e r i e n t i a l i n a d e q u a c i e s . w i t h o u t t h e c r i t i c a l a b i l i t y t o see t h a t m y h e r o e s s u f f e r e d f r o m t h e i r o w n set o f f a i l i n g s , i felt g e n e r a l l y i n f e r i o r . t h r o u g h t h i s p r o c e s s , i u n k n o w i n g l y c o n s t r u c t e d p s y c h o l o g i c a l b l o c k s a g a i n s t m y o w n s u c c e s s . i h a d f a i l e d t o r e a l i z e t h a t h e r o e s , as i p e r c e i v e d t h e m , d o n o t e x i s t - humans exist, a n d s o m e h u m a n s act i n h e r o i c w a y s . t h e h u m a n c o n d i t i o n is o n e o f f a l l i b i l i t y a n d l e a r n i n g a n d k n o w l e d g e a c q u i s i t i o n o f t e n o c c u r s t h r o u g h a n d i n s p i t e o f m i s t a k e s . y e t s o m e h o w , i c o n v i n c e d m y s e l f t h a t b u r d e n e d w i t h m y o w n f a l l i b i l i t y , i h a d less o f v a l u e t o c o n t r i b u t e t h a n o t h e r s . t h i s m a y , i n p a r t , h a v e a l s o b e e n a r e s u l t o f m y a d o l e s c e n t i n a b i l i t y t o c o n n e c t w i t h m y c u l t u r e . s o m a n y aspects o f m y c u l t u r e d i d n o t a p p e a l t o m e . t h e b l u e - c o l l a r c u l t u r e o f t h e ' ' s s e e m e d n a r r o w a n d j u d g m e n t a l a n d t r y i n g t o fit i n s e e m e d t o k i l l m y l i f e f o r c e . a s i m o v e d i n t o a d o l e s c e n c e , t h e s u b u r b a n l i f e s t y l e t h a t w a s e m b r a c e d b y so m a n y c a n a d i a n s , s e e m e d l i k e a n i m p o s s i b l y s m a l l r e p o s i t o r y f o r m y restless n a t u r e . b u t m y m o m a n d d a d d i d s e e m t o fit i n , as d i d so m a n y o t h e r s , t o t h e p o i n t t h a t i felt o b l i g e d t o a s s u m e t h a t t h e p r o b l e m l a y w i t h i n m e . t h i s c a t a p u l t e d m e i n t o a d e c a d e s l o n g j o u r n e y t o c h a n g e m y s e l f i n o r d e r t o fit i n . to work on releasing comparisons and cultural norms and measurements of value w h y i c o u l d n o t b e l i e v e t h a t i c o u l d b e right—that t h e c u l t u r e c o u l d b e p r o b l e m a t i c , i f n o t l e t h a l f o r s o m e o f its m e m b e r s — s t i l l e l u d e s m e . i n fact, as i g r e w u p , it w a s o b v i o u s t h a t s o m e o f m y n e w m u s i c a l h e r o e s s u f f e r e d b a d l y a n d w e n t g e n e r a l l y u n r e c o g n i z e d f o r t h e i r c o n t r i b u t i o n s . s a x o p h o n i s t c h a r l i e p a r k e r a n d g u i t a r i s t l e n n y b r e a u b o t h l e d a r t i s t i c l i v e s o f a m a z i n g o r i g i n a l i t y a n d a r t i s t i c a c h i e v e m e n t yet b o t h s t r u g g l e d t o s u r v i v e a n d b o t h r e c e i v e d l i t t l e r e c o g n i t i o n r e l a t i v e t o t h e m a g n i t u d e o f t h e i r a r t i s t i c g e n i u s . i d o n o t k n o w h o w m u c h t h i s l a c k o f r e c o g n i t i o n b o t h e r e d p a r k e r o r b r e a u , b u t i a m s u r e t h a t , at l e a s t f i n a n c i a l l y , it m u s t h a v e b e e n a v e r y f r u s t r a t i n g e x p e r i e n c e . t h e s e great artists u n c o v e r e d n e w a r t i s t i c f r o n t i e r s t h r o u g h t h e i r d e d i c a t i o n a n d o b s e s s i o n w i t h t h e i r art f o r m a n d n o t t h r o u g h a n a t t e m p t t o b e c o m e f a m o u s o r f o r f i n a n c i a l g a i n . it s e e m s t h a t a p e r s o n a l c o n t e x t o f a r t i s t i c a c h i e v e m e n t b a s e d o n t h e r e s u l t s o f t h e r e c o g n i t i o n o f t h e c u l t u r e , r e p r e s e n t s a d a n g e r o u s m i n d - s e t . o n e m u s t f o l l o w o n e ' s v o i c e f o r i t s o w n i n t r i n s i c a n d s p i r i t u a l r e w a r d s . if o n e is r e c o g n i z e d p u b l i c l y , s o be it, b u t t h a t c a n n o t b e t h e d r i v i n g f o r c e o f a n y a r t i s t i c e n d e a v o r s . l e o n a r d c o h e n d i s m i s s e s t h e r e l e v a n c e o f t h e c u l t u r e ' s f a i l u r e t o r e c o g n i z e l e n n y b r e a u ' s g e n i u s . i n t h e e m i l y h u g h e s ' f i l m , the genius of lenny breau, ( ) , c o h e n states t h a t b r e a u w a s " b u r n i n g i n t h e f u r n a c e o f c r e a t i o n , " a n d t h a t a l o n e w a s n o u r i s h i n g . h e c o n t i n u e d b y s a y i n g t h a t f o r s o m e p e o p l e t h i s n o u r i s h m e n t is e n o u g h a n d t h a t f o r o t h e r s , "it d o e s n ' t m e a n a t h i n g " ( h u g h e s , ) . contextual shifting and re-building: letting go of heroes: to be my own hero/no one is a hero/everyone is a hero a s i w i t n e s s e d t h i s p e r s o n a l p s y c h o d r a m a u n f o l d , a n d i b e c a m e m o r e i n f o r m e d as t o m y o w n i n t r i n s i c w o r t h , i f o u n d m y s e l f m o v i n g a w a y f r o m t h e c o n c e p t o f h e r o e s . i n e v e r y d a y a c t i v i t i e s , i n o t e d t h a t i w a s n o t r e a d i n g a b o u t t h e m as m u c h o r g i v i n g t h e m as m u c h t h o u g h t . l i v i n g i n t h i s n e w l y " r e n o v a t e d " c o n c e p t u a l s p a c e , i s e e m e d t o h a v e l i t t l e e n e r g y f o r t h e p r o c e s s o f m y t h o l o g i z i n g o t h e r s . i felt r e a d y t o m o v e o n w a r d t o n e w , o r i g i n a l a d v e n t u r e s i n o r d e r u n f o l d as i s h o u l d . b u t t h e c o n c e p t o f h e r o k e p t h a u n t i n g m y p s y c h e . a n d s o , as i i n f o r m e d m y s e l f o f m y s e l f t h r o u g h w r i t i n g , p e r f o r m i n g m u s i c , t e a c h i n g , a n d a / r / t o g r a p h i c p r o c e s s , i d e c i d e d t h a t p e r h a p s t h e a n s w e r f o r m e l a y i n m e b e c o m i n g m y o w n h e r o . t h i s n o t i o n was v e r y h e l p f u l at s h i f t i n g m y c o n t e x t a w a y f r o m z e a l o u s a d m i r a t i o n o f t h e l i v e s o f o t h e r s t o a p o s i t i o n o f o r i g i n a l t h i n k i n g . i n d e e d , t h e i d e a t h a t i w o u l d b e c o m e m y o w n h e r o w o r k e d l i k e a c o m m e r c i a l s l o g a n - s o m e t h i n g fast a n d easy t h a t i c o u l d g l e a n o n t o i n o r d e r t o p r e v e n t t h e n e w w a y s o f t h i n k i n g f r o m s l i p p i n g a w a y . a n d t h i s c a t c h - p h r a s e d i d i n d e e d i n i t i a l l y h e l p m e h o l d o n t o t h e n e w w a y s o f s e e i n g m y s e l f . u p o n d e e p e r r e f l e c t i o n , i t h i n k t h a t t h e w h o l e n o t i o n o f h e r o i s m is so l i n k e d w i t h r e c o g n i t i o n t h a t it b e c o m e s i n a p p r o p r i a t e as a c o n c e p t u a l a i d f o r a r t i s t s . a f t e r a l l , is t h e n o t i o n o f h e r o i s m n o t r e a l l y p a r t o f t h e s c a f f o l d i n g o f o u r c u l t u r e ? o n e c o u l d e n t e r a r g u m e n t s that a h e r o m a y n o t e v e n exist u n t i l t h e s o c i e t y at l a r g e r e c o g n i z e s o n e . t h u s , i f i n d t h a t t h e c o n c e p t o f h e r o i s m is m i r e d i n t h e n o t i o n o f r e c o g n i t i o n . a n d i h a v e l e a r n e d t h a t t h i s h o o k o f r e c o g n i t i o n is a v e r y d a n g e r o u s o n e f o r m e t o e n t e r t a i n . w h e n e m b r a c i n g t h e n o t i o n o f h e r o i s m , i i n t e r n a l l y v a l i d a t e t h e n o t i o n o f r e c o g n i t i o n , i f i n d t h a t i t a k e m y s e l f w o r t h a n d h a n d it o v e r t o t h e c u l t u r e . t h u s , m y o r i g i n a l t h i n k i n g b e c o m e s s u b v e r t e d w i t h a n a g e n d a , h o w e v e r s u b t l e , t h a t i create a n d e x p r e s s m y s e l f , b a s e d o n w h a t m y c u l t u r e a p p r o v e s . a n d s o , t h e a v o i d a n c e o f s e e k i n g r e c o g n i t i o n is a n i m p o r t a n t i d e a t o m a i n t a i n i f i w i s h t o k e e p o n m y a r t i s t i c p a t h . h o w e v e r , t h i s i d e a o f k e e p i n g t h e d e s i r e f o r r e c o g n i t i o n at a d i s t a n c e is v e r y d i f f i c u l t t o i m p l e m e n t b e c a u s e i a m b o m b a r d e d w i t h t h e c u l t u r e c o n s t a n t l y a n d t o a great degree i a m a p r o d u c t o f t h i s c u l t u r e . i n e e d t o f u n c t i o n w i t h a z e n - l i k e d e t a c h m e n t , w h e r e i n i o b s e r v e a n d evaluate i n c o m i n g s t i m u l i , b u t k e e p t h e l o c u s o f c o n t r o l w i t h i n m y s e l f . i h a v e c l a r i f i e d a n d d e v e l o p e d n e w w a y s o f t h i n k i n g a n d f e e l i n g , i f i n d m y s e l f m o v e t o w a r d a b a n d o n i n g t h e h e r o i c n o t i o n . y e t , i s t r u g g l e w i t h t h i s i d e a as w e l l . h e r o i s m , t h o u g h it is h o o k e d w i t h r e c o g n i t i o n , is a l s o c o n n e c t e d w i t h o t h e r p o s i t i v e n o t i o n s , s u c h as n o t i o n s o f h o p e a n d a l t r u i s m , a n d t h e n o t i o n o f r e a c h i n g past n o r m a l b e h a v i o r s a n d c u l t u r a l p a t t e r n s t o create n e w p a r a d i g m s o f b e h a v i o r . c o n s e q u e n t l y , at t h i s j u n c t u r e o f m y t h i n k i n g / w r i t i n g , i a m c o n c e p t u a l i z i n g t h a t " e v e r y o n e is a h e r o . " a g a i n , i a m u s i n g a n a r g u a b l y false g e n e r a l i z a t i o n , b u t it s e e m s t o feel m o r e c o m f o r t a b l e t h a n t h e n o t i o n t h a t t h e r e are n o h e r o e s . p e r h a p s t h i s is i n t e r m e d i a r y step t h a t w i l l e v e n t u a l l y l e a d m e t o t h e n o t i o n t h a t t h e r e are n o h e r o e s . b u t f o r n o w , a r t o g r a p h y h a s t r a n s f o r m e d m e i n t o t h e n o t i o n t h a t " e v e r y o n e is a h e r o . " t h i s c o n t e x t c e r t a i n l y a l l o w s m e t o t a p i n t o h e r o i c e n e r g y a n d p a s s i o n f o r f u t u r e a r t i s t i c e x p r e s s i o n . it a l s o s u p p o r t s m y t e a c h i n g as t h i s c o n c e p t u a l f r a m e s h i n e s a p o s i t i v e l i g h t a n d p o t e n t i a l o n a l l h u m a n s . i w i l l c a u t i o u s l y c o n t i n u e m y m e d i t a t i o n o n t h e r o l e o f h e r o w h i c h i s a r o l e f r a u g h t w i t h p i t f a l l s a n d e q u a l l y a b u n d a n t w i t h e n o r m o u s t r a n s f o r m a t i v e p o w e r s . c a m p b e l l ( ) states, " t h e i m a g e s o f m y t h are r e f l e c t i o n s o f t h e s p i r i t u a l p o t e n t i a l i t i e s o f every o n e o f u s . t h r o u g h c o n t e m p l a t i n g t h e s e , w e e v o k e t h e i r p o w e r s i n o u r o w n l i v e s " (p. ) . t o r e - c l a i m m y v o i c e a l s o m e a n s t h a t i n e e d t o v a l i d a t e m y o w n p r o c e s s a n d r i t u a l s . t h i s f o r m e is l e s s o f a p r o b l e m t h a n r e a l l y a c c e p t i n g w h a t i f i n d w i t h i n m y s e l f . c e r t a i n l y t h r o u g h m y c o u r s e w o r k o n n a r r a t i v e i n q u i r y , i h a v e o n c e a g a i n w a l k e d t h e p a t h o f a r a t i o n a l k n o w l e d g e . a / r / t o g r a p h i c m e t h o d o l o g y h a s s h o w n m e t h a t i n t u i t i o n a n d i n s p i r a t i o n , f o l l o w e d b y r e v i e w t h r o u g h l o g i c a n d r e f l e c t i o n , is t r u l y m y m o d u s o p e r a n d i . w h a t i n e e d t o d o is a t t e n d t o t h e m u s e m o r e o f t e n a n d a v o i d c o g n i t i v e t r a p s t h a t sabotage m y u n f o l d i n g the snake of regret keeps attacking r e - c l a i m i n g m y o r i g i n a l v o i c e h a s i n v o l v e d m u c h p e r s o n a l a n d p r o f e s s i o n a l g r o w t h . it is m y i n t e n t t o c o n t i n u e t o u s e a / r / t o g r a p h i c f o r m s t o r e c l a i m m y v o i c e i n o r d e r t o a v o i d t h e p i t f a l l s o f e x p e r i e n c i n g regret. a s a n a / r / t o g r a p h e r , i h a v e l e a r n e d t h a t m y o w n a u t h e n t i c v o i c e c a n h i g h l i g h t a n d i n f o r m m y f u t u r e . it s e e m s so easy t o w r i t e a d e c l a r a t i o n o f i n t e n t i o n l i k e t h e l a s t p a r a g r a p h , b u t it is h a r d e r t o e n a c t . w h e n i a m h a v i n g a b a d d a y , it i s v e r y easy, e v e n after a l l t h i s w o r k , t o f a l l i n t o a n o f t - r e p e a t e d cycle o f regret t h a t h a s b e e n w i t h m e s i n c e i t u r n e d . f e e l , h o w e v e r , t h a t i h a v e m o v e d f a r e n o u g h f o r w a r d t h r o u g h t h i s p r o c e s s t o s t y m i e f u t u r e cycles. reflections on the effect of the a/r/tographic experience on my classroom teaching w h e n e v e r a p e r s o n a d d s a n e x p e r i e n c e o f l e a r n i n g t h a t e n c o m p a s s e s t h e m a g n i t u d e o f a m a s t e r ' s degree, t h e r e m u s t s u r e l y b e r a m i f i c a t i o n s t h r o u g h o u t m a n y l e v e l s o f t h e i r l i v e s . c h a n g e s a n d g r o w t h b e c o m e f u r t h e r e n h a n c e d w h e n t h e p u r p o s e o f t h e r e s e a r c h t a k e s o n a n i n t r o s p e c t i v e a n d a u t o b i o g r a p h i c e l e m e n t . p e r s o n a l l y , i h a v e a l w a y s felt t h a t i h a v e m o v e d f o r w a r d f o l l o w i n g a n a c a d e m i c e x p e r i e n c e . b u t t h i s a c a d e m i c e x p e r i e n c e feels l i k e t h e biggest step yet i n m y o w n p e r s o n a l d e v e l o p m e n t . i sense t h a t m y t h i n k i n g is m o r e l u c i d a n d f u n c t i o n s at d e e p e r l e v e l s o f s o p h i s t i c a t i o n . f r o m m y c o u r s e s , i h a v e g a i n e d m o r e c l a r i t y o n t h e c o m p l e x i t y o f l i f e a n d h o w p e o p l e d o see t h i n g s d i f f e r e n t l y . t h i s is f o r c i n g m e t o b e m o r e a c c e p t i n g o f o t h e r s as w e l l as m y s e l f . t h e r a m i f i c a t i o n s o f t h e e x p e r i e n c e h a v e affected m y d a i l y c l a s s r o o m a s s i g n m e n t . t h e r e is a n o v e r a l l f e e l i n g o f i n v i g o r a t i o n t h a t i b r i n g t o t h e c l a s s r o o m . m y d e e p e n i n g e m p a t h y w i t h t h e v a r i a n c e o f h u m a n c o n d i t i o n i n c r e a s e s m y a b i l i t y t o k e e p c a l m a n d w o r k t h r o u g h i s s u e s w i t h s t u d e n t s . a s i b e c o m e m o r e c o n n e c t e d a n d c l e a r t h r o u g h t h e a / r / t o g r a p h i c p r o c e s s , i b r i n g m o r e p a s s i o n a b o u t m u s i c a n d a r t t o m y j o b . a n d i h a v e a l w a y s f o u n d t h a t p a s s i o n , t o s o m e extent, r u b s off o n s t u d e n t s . i n d e e d , s t u d e n t s o f t e n w i l l o p e n u p a n d w i d e n t h e i r o w n e x p e r i e n c e , i f a n i n s t r u c t o r is m o t i v a t e d a b o u t t h e subject m a t t e r . i n d e e d , i sense t h a t c l a s s r o o m e n v i r o n m e n t a n d s t u d e n t i n t e r e s t a n d a c h i e v e m e n t c a n b e s o m e w h a t v i e w e d as a m i r r o r o f t h e p a s s i o n , s u b j e c t s k i l l s , i n t e r p e r s o n a l s k i l l s , a n d t h e o v e r a l l e x p e r i e n c e o f t h e t e a c h e r . u l t i m a t e l y , as i l e a r n a n d g r o w , m y success as a t e a c h e r w i l l m o v e t o d e e p e r l e v e l s o f g r o w t h . i n l i g h t o f m y g r o w t h as a / r / t o g r a p h e r , i p l a n t o create a n e w s c h o o l c o u r s e t h a t w i l l i n s p i r e s o n g w r i t e r s , c o m p o s e r s , a n d i m p r o v i s e r s . t h e p u r p o s e o f t h i s c o u r s e w i l l b e t o e n c o u r a g e a n d d o c u m e n t s t u d e n t c r e a t i v i t y . t h e w o r k i n g c o u r s e t i t l e w i l l b e " s o n g - w r i t i n g a n d t e c h n o l o g y . " u s i n g c a r l l e g g o ' s n a r r a t i v e i n q u i r y class as a m o d e l , i w i s h t o create a safe a n d i n s p i r i n g e n v i r o n m e n t f o r s t u d e n t s t o w r i t e / c o m p o s e a n d s h a r e t h e i r c r e a t i o n s w i t h t h e o t h e r s i n c l a s s . a s w e l l , t h e s t u d e n t s w o u l d l e a r n a b o u t t h e r e c o r d i n g p r o c e s s a n d d e v e l o p t h e r e q u i s i t e s k i l l s t o m a k e t h e i r o w n r e c o r d i n g s . c l a s s r o o m t o p i c s m a y i n c l u d e d i s c o u r s e o n t h e a r t i s t i c p r o c e s s , t h e n a t u r e a n d f u n c t i o n o f p o e t r y , as w e l l as t a l k s o n c o m p o s i t i o n a n d m o r e t e c h n i c a l l e c t u r e o n t h e o p e r a t i o n o f t h e r e c o r d i n g e q u i p m e n t . w h e n w e r e a c h a degree o f safety a n d c o m f o r t , w e w i l l s h a r e a n d c e l e b r a t e o u r i n d i v i d u a l a r t i s t i c c r e a t i o n s . i e n v i s i o n a c d / d v d o f s t u d e n t s u b m i s s i o n s at t h e e n d o f t h e y e a r t o celebrate t h e i r l e a r n i n g . i n a s e n s e , i see t h i s c o u r s e as a n e x t e n s i o n o f m y r e s e a r c h as s t u d e n t s b e c o m e e n g a g e d i n t h e a / r / t o g r a p h i c p r o c e s s . where to now? i a m r e v e l i n g i n a n t i c i p a t i o n o f f i n i s h i n g t h i s p h a s e o f r e f l e c t i o n so t h a t i m a y r e t u r n w i t h r e n e w e d v i t a l i t y t o n e w m u s i c a l , p o e t i c , a n d a / r / t o g r a p h i c o u t p o u r i n g s . a s t o m y o n - g o i n g d e v e l o p m e n t as a j a z z g u i t a r i s t , i a m f l u s h w i t h o r i g i n a l i d e a s t o t h e p o i n t that i b a c k l o g g e d i n m y a b s o r b i n g these m o t i f s i n t o m y i n v e n t o r y o f i m p r o v i s a t i o n a l m o t i f s . i a m w i s h i n g t o c o m p o s e a c d o f o r i g i n a l j a z z i n s p i r e d m u s i c . it w i l l b e t h e f i r s t s a m p l e r o f m y w o r k i n m a n y y e a r s . i h o p e t o c o n t i n u e w r i t i n g p o e t r y as t h i s is o n e o f t h e greatest p e r s o n a l b e n e f i t s t h a t i d e r i v e d f r o m t h e m a s t e r ' s e x p e r i e n c e . i n e v e r w r o t e p o e t r y p r i o r t o m y r e t u r n t o s c h o o l . n o w , i a m t a k e n b y a b r a n d n e w art f o r m t h a t i s r i c h i n p o t e n t i a l f o r l e a r n i n g . i m u s t c o n t i n u e t o b e v i g i l a n t o f m y p s y c h o l o g i c a l c y c l e s i f i w i s h t o k e e p t h i s a r t i s t i c t h r u s t g o i n g . f a l l i n g i n t o a v o r t e x o f regret creates i n e r t i a . i m u s t c a r e f u l l y m o n i t o r m y t h i n k i n g p a t t e r n s a n d c o m p i l e a m o r e c o m p r e h e n s i v e l i s t o f p s y c h o - t r i g g e r s a n d c o g n i t i v e e r r o r s t h a t p r o m o t e m y d e s c e n t i n t o i n a c t i v i t y o r u n o r i g i n a l i t y . f i n a l l y , i m u s t c o n t i n u e t o deflate a n d r e s o l v e m y i s s u e s w i t h m y d a d , w h o p a s s e d a w a y i n t h e m i d d l e o f t h i s project. w h e n i f i n d m y s e l f m i r e d i n f r u s t r a t i o n a b o u t o u r r e l a t i o n s h i p , i m u s t r e m i n d m y s e l f o f w h a t i k n o w t o b e t r u e : t h a t m y d a d l o v e d m e a n d w a s v e r y p r o u d o f a l l m y a c c o m p l i s h m e n t s . p e r h a p s , w r i t i n g s o m e m u s i c , p o e t r y , a n d n a r r a t i v e m i g h t h e l p r e s o l v e t h i s t e n s i o n . i a m s t a r t i n g a n e w . ideas s u r f a c e t h a t are t o t a l l y o r i g i n a l as i h a v e r e c l a i m e d m y o w n v o i c e . i m u s t c o n t i n u e t o l e a r n a b o u t m y s e l f a n d s t r i v e t o engage i n t h e a / r / t o g r a p h i c p r o c e s s i n o r d e r e m b r a c e m y o w n u n i q u e n e s s as a h u m a n f o r it is c l e a r t h a t a / r / t o g r a p h y e n a b l e s m e t o g a i n d e e p e r u n d e r s t a n d i n g s a b o u t i s s u e s t h a t h a v e s h a p e d m y v i e w o f t h e w o r l d . i n d e e d , f r o m m y r e s e a r c h , i h a v e g a i n e d i n v a l u a b l e i n s i g h t s a b o u t t h e r e a l m e . f r o m a l l m y m u s i c , p o e t i c a n d n a r r a t i v e r e n d e r i n g s i n a / r / t o g r a p h i c f o r m s , i h a v e d i s c o v e r e d a d e e p e r m u l t i l a y e r e d i n d i v i d u a l i n s i d e w h o b e c a m e r e e n e r g i z e d a n d r e v i t a l i z e d a b o u t f i n d i n g a n d r e l e a s i n g a n a u t h e n t i c i n n e r v o i c e . i r e s o l v e d i s s u e s a n d f o u n d n e w q u e s t i o n s a b o u t m y s e l f . i e x p l o r e d i n t u i t i o n , a n d b r o k e b o u n d a r i e s . i h a v e s c u l p t e d a n d e m b r a c e d s t o r i e s b e h i n d t h e s t o r i e s a b o u t m y s e l f . h e r o e s s u r f a c e w h i l e regrets b r i n g n e w n a r r a t i v e s . w h o a m i? 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( ). reading the beatles: cultural studies, literary criticism, and the fab four. albany, ny: state university of new york press. richard m. sudhalter. lost chords: white musicians and their contributions to jazz, - . new york: oxford university press, . xxii, pp. reviewed by david sager lost chords: white musicians and their contributions to jazz, - is fascinating historical criticism, both extremely well written and well re- searched. it is a work that intends to shed light on white and supposedly "forgotten" players of jazz from the pre-bebop era. its author, richard m. sudhalter, sets out to make clear the enormous contributions and talents of these important white musicians. his intention to do so in a balanced way, so as not to cast aspersions on any black musicians, is not wholly successful. in his introduction, sudhalter asks, "are we entitled to judge another age from the viewpoint of our own, informed as it is by knowledge of the outcomes of past thought and practice?" (xv). the implication, therefore, is that anything discussed shall be viewed in the light which shown during its existence. if jazz grew up in a largely racist world, then there shall be no juggling of social rules to make the story fit our contemporary prefer- ences. doing so would result in an "outcome oriented" jazz historical text, one that would be molded to the prejudices of the author. we are then in- troduced to what sudhalter calls the "noble lie," which basically states that black musicians, having been deprived of the social status that whites were afforded during the early twentieth century, need to be wholly recognized as the true pioneers, creators, and upholders of jazz and its traditions- white musicians are merely imitators. this notion, he says, will become 'junk food history for young minds." what would be much more laudable, according to sudhalter, would be to teach that throughout the history of jazz, we can find both blacks and whites working side by side, often defy- ing social norms of the day. however, sudhalter has some of his own pref- erences and cannot wholly ignore shaping an outcome. to approach a sense of balance, sudhalter has written himself a small provocation at the end of his introduction, encouraging the reader to go back to the music, to investigate and see what it is he is talking about. it is then, after the reader has gone to investigate, that sudhalter believes his mission shall be fulfilled. in nearly pages, sudhalter details and gives an essence of approxi- mately thirty musicians and several sub-genres of early jazz. he does so with enormous zest and clarity, giving the reader a real sense of what these people and styles were about-and they are mostly about music. the book's sections run roughly chronologically. they consist of "the current musicology, nos. - (spring -spring ) © by the trustees of columbia university in the city of new york current musicology sophisticates," which describes the heady music of red nichols, miff mole, and adrian rollini; "the hot lineage," a description of the "austin high gang" and their disciples; and two sections devoted to the "big bands." the second of these "big band" sections is comprised of re- printed interviews that sudhalter conducted with benny goodman and artie shaw. a recurring annoyance for me in lost chords is the frequent compari- son of black and white musicians, apparently designed to shed light on overlooked aspects of white jazz, hence the full title of the work. however, such comparisons often make the black artists in question the subject of embarrassment, and these comparisons, in turn, embarrass me. for in- stance, sudhalter points out white arranger elmer schoebel's thoughtful touches on the new orleans rhythm king's recordings "farewell blues" and "discontented blues." these arrangements, he states, bespeak rehearsal and behind-the-scenes work aimed at achieving a polished and varied band sound. nothing on any record by a black band of the early ' s is anywhere near as aesthetically venturesome. ( ) is the second sentence of this excerpt necessary? couldn't it be left at cit- ing the under-sung talents and achievements of elmer schoebel? the notion of "aesthetically venturesome" seems to imply a classical sensibility -carefully sculpted, varied in tonal colors and dynamics. are these hall- marks found in music that is primarily white? is this a rejoinder to albert murray's insistence that jazz cannot exist without the blues? i am not cer- tain as to why sudhalter must quality the statement racially, for it stands perfectly well on its own. another example is in the chapter on tenor saxophonist bud freeman, where sudhalter discusses the relative merits of freeman, eddie miller, coleman hawkins, and chu berry: chu berry also tended to ride the rhythm, but in a far less elastic manner-and with a heavy tone and legato attack which often cre- ates the impression of a solo being played on ball bearings. ( ) the remarks about "ball bearings" sounds like a put-down. true, chu berry favored the heavier "belly" sound of coleman hawkins as opposed to the lighter approach of eddie miller. but then, wasn't freeman's tone and attack of the heavier type as compared to miller, or for that matter lester young? sudhalter turns the tables at times and quotes from a variety of mrican american musicians who asserted white influences. saxophonist eddie david sager barefield memorized jimmy dorsey's famous "tiger rag" variations and "doc" cheatam recalled the relative merits of not only king oliver and freddie keppard but also of white cornetist/trumpeter louis panico: "what a wonderful player he was" ( ). sudhalter seems to want to show the reader that racial prejudice as it existed in the "real world" did not live in the world of jazz musicians, at least not to a high degree, perhaps in de- fiance of social norms of the day. his underlying point here is that jazz musicians tended and tend to influence each other across all sorts of cultural boundaries. sudhalter does, however, give even-handed treatment to biracial phe- nomena such as the cross influence between the isham jones orchestra and the king oliver creole jazz band. all too often history has relegated players such as trumpeter louis panico, who was featured with the isham jones orchestra, to the "novelty" category of popular music. panico was a highly-skilled player who used "freak" effects such as "baby cries" and "laughing" without descending into caricature. his solos always remained well poised and partially derivative of the hot style played by king oliver. sudhalter offers some remarkable testimony from long-time isham jones manager jim breyley via james t. maher ( ). apparently, the entire jones outfit would frequent the lincoln gardens on the south side of chicago to hear oliver's band. as sudhalter points out, the jones records, such as "aunt hager's children blues," bear this out. also insightful are sudhalter's comments regarding panico's admission to jazz historian john steiner that he was not a true jazzman since he did not improvise. sud- halter reminds us that in the context of an early s dance band, trum- peters regardless of race were "melodic embellishers, rather than impro- visers. for the pre-armstrong new orleans hornmen, as for louis panico, the task was to playa strong, lively melody lead" ( ). he also gives credence to the idea that the ensemble writing style often credited to don redman was perhaps not so much attributable to a black or white precedent, but rather "appears, after a time to have been a matter of independent and spontaneous gravitation toward universally accepted principles of ensemble organization" ( ). sudhalter is probably basing this statement on recorded evidence and perhaps somewhat on "stock" arrangements published during the early s. there were indeed some prominent black arrangers-charles "doc" cooke comes to mind. but be- fore , although there were a large number of black jazz composers, their material had been published as arrangements by white orchestrators. most notably, it is the evidence found on phonograph records that seems to weigh in more heavily on the white side of things, at least within the covers of lost chords. white bands such as the original memphis five seem to have a smoother and more relaxed approach to the music than current musicology do mamie smith's jazz hounds or wilbur sweatman's jazz band. is this because the only black bands invited to record were the ones with greater novelty appeal? this does seem a bit at odds with, or at least complicates, the almost reverse discrimination practiced by record companies that sudhalter describes. apparently the jean goldkette band suffered the fate of "the black band gives us the 'hot' stuff and the white bands will record the straight dance stuff" syndrome ( - ). in a footnote, sudhalter makes the case that bix beiderbecke's devo- tion to the repertoire of the original dixieland jazz band, as shown by his choice of recorded material, would have been "unthinkable" by a black jazzman. for example, louis armstrong did not choose to record material by his mentor king oliver for the hot five sessions ( ). the disparity is noteworthy. but didn't armstrong participate on those oliver dates? in contrast, beiderbecke did not play on the odjb sessions. this does not, however, nullify sudhalter's comparison, which calls attention to the fact that black jazz musicians almost exclusively recorded original material in the s. the book's first section, "in the beginning: new orleans to chicago," contains the most soberly written discussion of cornetist emmett hardy to date. hardy's legend is based purely on anecdotal evidence since he died in , barely twenty-three years old, having never recorded. but those anecdotes are not ones to ignore. testimonials came from the boswell sisters, bandleader and drummer ben pollack, cornetist paul mares, drummer monk hazel, and even bix beiderbecke, who all remembered hardy's music as something wonderful and different from all else. in fact, those who knew hardy generally felt that bix beiderbecke formulated his style with hardy as a model. hazel remembers hardy's "legato style," which sudhalter contrasts with the "raggy" or old-fashioned staccato style of freddie keppard and nick larocca. i can't agree about larocca being "raggy" in his approach; if anything, larocca had fairly smooth execution and played in a somewhat "rolling" manner. still, this chapter is one of thoughtful speculation and research. sudhalter does not, however, refer to something i feel is quite obvious: a "white" new orleans school of cor- net playing not based on the blues and primarily diatonic, with which hardy might be associated. this approach shows up in the early recorded work of stirling bose, sharkey bonano, paul mares, johnny wiggs, and others. it is even the mainstay of a much younger new orleans cornetist, connie jones, who once told me that his playing reminded monk hazel of emmett hardy. righting some errors committed by past chroniclers of jazz, sudhalter turns in a fine chapter devoted to the dorsey brothers. the brothers, es- pecially tommy, have repeatedly been the targets of left-handed compli- david sager ments and misunderstandings by writers such as gunther schuller. sudhalter cites, then quickly rebukes, schuller's remark from the swing era that tommy frequently ran into "note trouble" during his recorded hot choruses of the s. "in truth, few brassmen of the era are as free of such blemishes as tommy dorsey" ( ), sudhalter counters, providing several examples for the adventurous listener to pursue. he cites dorsey as a fine hot trombone soloist, albeit, "not a particularly original one" ( ). we are then shown a comparative table of jazz trombonists who could eas- ily fall into the same category: jimmy archey, claude jones, and sandy williams-all fine jazz players and all black! i agree with sudhalter's sum- mation, but why could he not also list white players, such as ai philburn, joe yuki, moe zudekoff, or even glenn miller? such digs taken at black musicians in order to point out the various virtues of important white musicians grow tiresome over the course of the book. perhaps there have been too many books, articles, and television documentaries that have ig- nored the rich and vital contributions by white players, but turnabout as in lost chords becomes rather tedious and unnecessary. it is tommy dorsey's skill as a hot trumpeter that commands center stage here. in this matter, sudhalter seems to be on very agreeable terms with gunther schuller. both men in a sense give a nod to dorsey's "de- pendable" work on trombone, but rapture is reserved for the hot trumpet work that graced so many okeh recordings of the s. "rough, rugged, passionate, badgering" are the terms used by sudhalter to describe td's trumpet work and some excellent examples are given, ones which, hope- fully, readers will go to the trouble of seeking out-although some (even in this age of almost everything being available on cd) may be quite diffi- cult to find. one of these, the obscure "it won't be long now" is ajewel. tommy's muted horn nearly bursts forth in response to legato phrases sung on a baritone saxophone. at the recording's end it is unmuted for a raw, bluesy statement that sounds like, in sudhalter's words "no other hot trumpet player-white, at least-making records at the time" ( ). the chapter on trombonist miff mole is beautifully written. the sad de- nouement of mole's career is juxtaposed with a vivid account of mole tak- ing the new york music scene by storm in the early s. there are also musical excerpts to read and follow along with while listening to the recordings, such as on page where we are given a "before and after" example of the introduction to "original dixieland one step"-"before" being the standard approach with a two-bar trombone glissando. "after" is miff mole's version taken from a okeh recording. mole's is swift, lithe, and inventive. the example sets up the old cliche about how in the early days of jazz the trombone was "a kind of musical falstaff," contribut- ing crude ground bass figures, comical glissandi, and "lowing cattle current musicology noises." sudhalter is exaggerating here to set up mole's importance. mole indeed was a pioneering force behind the trombone's emergence from the "tailgate" style. however, things were not all that bleak before his ap- pearance. eddie edwards, the man whose glissando provided the "before" example, was actually quite a nimble player. bellowing like a cow or mak- ing broad glissandi were exceptions to his aggressive, single-tongued style. the reader need only sample a title such as "at the jass band ball" or "skeleton jangle" for confirmation. tom brown was also an inventive player of countermelodies, capable of graceful swing. sudhalter puts trombonist honore dutrey in the "tailgate" category. however, close lis- tening to his playing on the king oliver records reveals his parts to be well thought out and smoothly executed. dutrey plays rather long lines similar to published cello parts of the time. sudhalter never mentions white trombonist roy maxon, whose swift, fleet style is heard on records by russo and fio rito's oriole orchestra as early as . maxon was later featured in paul whiteman's orchestra and recorded an impressive solo on that ensemble's victor recording of "mama loves papa." sudhalter does, however, have the right idea. given the extraordinary virtuosity of band soloists like arthur pryor, leo zimmerman, and others during the early s, it is surprising that a miff mole did not come along sooner in jazz, demonstrating a crossover of highly developed technique to this new music. mole's genius is hinted at in a transcription of his solo from the jam session at commodore version of "a good man is hard to find" ( ). sudhalter describes it as being like "a cadenza over a steady pulse, so unre- strained are its phrases by beat or bar line." sudhalter reminds the reader that accurate notation of such rubato playing is no substitute for hearing the performance. the same goes for brad gowans. like many others in this volume, gowans is given long overdue praise. the man whom trumpeter max kaminsky described as "a sweet soul and an extraordinarily talented musi- cian" is otherwise not even a footnote today. a multi-instrumentalist and inventor, gowans is probably best remembered as the valve-trombonist on the stand at nick's in the village, or at eddie condon's first night club. sudhalter pays him fine tribute and includes a transcription from a live recording of the dixieland standard 'ja-da." the transcription re- veals gowan's penchant for using major ninths and thirteenths to striking effect. one very delightful chapter is devoted to guitarists. it begins with a story told by the late george van eps, one of the great performers and in- novators of the jazz guitar from the s through the ' s! van eps re- called being twelve years old when he met his idol, jazz guitar pioneer david sager eddie lang. lang, duly impressed with the lad's prodigious banjo tech- nique, offered to lend young george his gibson l- guitar overnight. sudhalter recounts the story in a charming way, making the reader keenly aware of young van eps's awe of lang and his devotion to playing the in- strument. one can almost feel the excitement in van eps's voice as he tells of building a crystal radio set the mid s and picking up the roger wolfe kahn band over vvjz: 'joe venuti and eddie lang were in that band. even as horrible as the sound was on our little crystal set, i could hear the sound of the guitar. it had a singing quality ... the first time i heard that sound i decided, 'that's for me. that's what i want to do' " ( ). van eps went on to develop the seven-string guitar. other musical temperaments and technical innovations are detailed. carl kress's unusual tuning, george barnes unique style and tempera- ment, and django reinhardt's adaptive use of his injured fretting hand are but some of the fascinating examples. sudhalter writes about texas guitarist bob dunn, who played the "pedal-steel" instrument in the pio- neering western swing band of milton brown. dunn experimented with ways to amplify his instrument and also incorporated horn-like phrasing, chiefly inspired by trombonist (and fellow texan) jack teagarden. sud- halter relates how such pioneering black guitarists such as oklahoman charlie christian, eddie durham, and floyd smith (also from the south- west) most likely heard dunn over the radio. this time the fact is stated simply, without the impression of a backhanded compliment. still, there is the implied documentation of "who came first." black guitarist lonnie johnson also comes under scrutiny. both lawrence cohn, a noted blues historian, and doug caldwell, a contribu- tor to guitar magazine, rank johnson alongside lang as the major guitar innovator of the s. sudhalter for once steps a bit more gingerly and makes his point well, arguing that "such claims seem altogether too inclu- sive in their implications of musical range and depth." johnson was cer- tainly a powerful blues man with a nimble technique and large sound. but according to sudhalter there were problems with being "pattern bound and lacking in harmonic or melodic variety" ( ). in this instance, i agree with sudhalter. i do, however, think he goes a bit overboard in claiming that johnson's contribution to the "star dust" by the chocolate dandies "all but derails the performance." true, it is a bit clunky, but the claim of "wrong accidentals" seems less valid, at least to my ears. innovator and inventor les paul is seen as a true adventurer, a fine player who was in fact an explorer, traveling the country to seek out leg- endary musicians such as new orleans guitarist snoozer quinn. paul, upon hearing about quinn's ability, took off for the crescent city in current musicology search of him. paul found quinn sitting on his front porch! we also see paul taking off from his job in chicago to jump on a greyhound bus to oklahoma city to hear eldon shamblin of the bob wills texas playboys. paul got more than he bargained for by also meeting young charlie christian. paul was also one of the early experimenters in the use of electri- cal amplification for the guitar. whereas players such as george van eps quickly forsook the electrified instrument because it distorted the guitar's natural timbre, paul took the idea and ran with it. paul experimented with radios and movie projectors-anything with an amplifier-to transform the guitar into an instrument that produced a whole array of new sounds. shortly after beginning work on lost chords, sudhalter realized that he was writing "two books in one." one tells several stories "combining biog- raphy, reminiscence, commentary and ... narrative." the other is a tech- nical work with musical examples to help illustrate the "specifics of [white musicians'] achievements." he exhorts the non-music readers to "stay with" him and not let the narrative "become lost in the particulars of music making." perhaps being musically literate i am prejudiced, but i do believe that this kind of illus- tration is most important. what i find disagreeable in the musical excerpts in lost chords is the transposition for the various instruments on which the given examples were played. for example, the transcription of bud free- man's bluebird recording of "the eel," originally played on the tenor sax- ophone in m, is shown in c ( ). similarly, jimmy dorsey's famous "tiger rag" variation is found on page in the transposed key of f. what purpose do these transpositions serve? sudhalter explains that few musicians playing transposing instruments actually think in terms of con- cert pitch while improvising. i suppose a heated discussion could ensue about jazz musicians consciously thinking about chord changes while deep in improvisation mode, but for now it is safe to say that there is no widely- accepted rule on the subject. to me, the importance is where the original sounds. it seems senseless to have an excerpt transcribed unless one can easily go to the piano and reproduce the excerpt. lost chords is an important and even great work. i, for one, have gone back to the music and have become enlightened through some recordings that i somehow missed before. the volume is elegantly written, well re- searched, and above all musical. i found only a few factual errors in the book-for example, on page he quotes from ray lopez who states that blossom seeley did not record until when in fact she did record one side for columbia in -and in any event, sudhalter has made it clear in subsequent correspondence that he is gladly accepting corrections to be used in future printings. david sager where i am disturbed lies in mr. sudhalter's own use of his ground rules. he comes close to successful exposition of neglected white jazz pioneers and then lapses into the very tendency he was trying to avoid- criticizing non-white musicians. will the "noble lie" be righted and will those learning about jazz get a balanced viewpoint? if lost chords makes a lasting contribution to the future of jazz education it probably won't be as a whole work. the enduring value of this book will be what others can glean from it as a research tool, for there is a great deal of valuable and in- sightful material within. but will it teach us that blacks and whites coex- isted peacefully? that richard sudhalter has gone to great lengths to show that jazz musicians have traditionally been the exception to the rule is perhaps the true hallmark of this book. hopefully, someday we will see these rules change.