Identify some of the research techniques employed in practice based

research and how they might be used with reference to popular music
performance.

Throughout history, music performance has been an interesting topic for research,
although somewhat controversial due to the subjective component of arts and
music appreciation. Since music itself is an artistic practice, its existence is
symbiotic with both performance and emotion, and different techniques can be
used to approach music performance as research material. Thanks to musics
inherent link with human expression, with the context that surrounds and nurtures
it, and also thanks to its timelessness, it has been approached using many different
research techniques that explore and elicit several characteristics that contribute to
the broadening of our knowledge and understanding of music, by employing
methods that suit the different matters that may be of the researchers interest, and
that can be subject of further approaches by future readers.

Several examples can be brought to support these claims, such as Emiel

Janssens Right pedal using: taming the soul of the piano, which was an
interesting analysis of piano technique that was aimed towards the implementation
of pedal techniques that were originally used for fortepiano. His approach led him
to study different books on piano technique, making a bibliographic review of the
different ways in which said literature studies the subject of pedal use, and then
utilized them in different fortepianos and pianofortes. He also interviewed a piano
technician who helped him analyze the way in which each technique made a
mechanical difference that affected the sound in different ways. Janssens
research was possible thanks to the use of techniques such as contextual inquiry,
interviews, play-testing, and mainly research in action.

Another example of practice-based research is Combining Coco, arranging for Het

Coco Collectief. It was a Masters project from singer Jannelieke Schmidt from the
Royal Conservatoire The Hague, in which she proposes a manual with practical
tips for people who want to get started in writing vocal arrangements, and she did
so by arranging several songs for her ensemble of 5 sopranos and 1 pianist. She
achieved her objectives by adhering to a set of arranging principles: technical
adequacy, artistic value and popular acclaim. She registered the corrections made
during rehearsal sessions, integrating practice to process.

Dimitrios Verdinoglou, from the Conservatory of Amsterdam, developed his

research around how to perfect his own solo improvisations through the study of
his musical influences (classical, jazz and free improvisers) and their possible
combinations, in his project titled In search of a personal style of spontaneous
improvising. The author created exercises to solve the problems he encountered
during the process and recorded each one of his study sessions in order to identify
his own progress. Self-observation, contextual inquiry, historical investigation and
analysis were his main research tools.

I have also been engaged in practice-based research when I wrote my monograph

to obtain my degree in Music from Universidad Pedagogica Nacional in Colombia. I
analyzed the technical and performance contributions that can be made possible
when studying several songs by American composer Andy McKee that use
alternate tunings on the guitar. My main objective was to explore the different
complications that a guitarist may face when approaching a musical piece that
takes them out of a comfort zone called standard tuning. For this, I analyzed 3
songs by McKee with 3 different approaches to guitar tuning, from an aesthetical,
performance and technical point of view, and by utilizing my own experience as a
classical, finger style and electric guitarist in the exploration, practice and
performance of the three pieces. I also wrote a historical overview of the guitar and
the establishing of the standard tuning and its adherence to western temperament.
As a research tool, I used self-observation and monitoring of the learning process
to great results and creating enough interest in the topic for future students to
further the research.

Research in music has gained more and more strength over the years thanks to
the interest that musicians have developed and nurtured in their own and others
creative processes, but also due to the lack of funding that arts programs receive
due to the relevance that modern society has sadly taken away from them.
Research will always be relevant to the academic community because of its
importance in furthering intellectual growth of their participants. Due to this, as
artists, we are called to take that academic approach towards the knowledge of our
disciplines, and it has allowed us to discover new possibilities, to improve and
expand our views on our own creations, and to dissect the way our creativity is put
to work in such a wonderful way when we are making something that modern
society has deemed irrelevant. We are engaged in a lifelong struggle to place arts
in our current context on the place it should be, which is the tool that allows the
strengthening of our human component, the exploration of our human potential, the
influence in our daily lives of something more than making ends meet.

A scientific approach to the arts has allowed us to elicit their importance in the
development of humanity, intelligence and creativity, in the closing of gaps that
politics and lack of education have created, and in providing a way to nurture the
strengths of our children, and revolutionizing an education system that hasnt
evolved with the times. Music performance is one of the most relevant aspects of
the arts because of how inherent music is in human beings, and how exposed we
all are to it. Almost any research method known can be applied to explore the
contributions that music performance can give a musician, arranger, composer or a
member of the audience, because almost everything that mankind does has a
depth that transcends the so-called simplicity of performing music for an
audience. As performers, composers, arrangers, listeners, our psyche, our context,
our creative processes, our educational background are all affected and affect the
performance itself, and that human and creative conundrum is what makes
performance research relevant.

Juan Carlos Prada Goyeneche

Bogot, Colombia.

Literature

Borgdorff, Henk. The debate on research in the arts

Kershaw, Baz. Practice as Research through Performance

Lpez-Cano, Rubn; San Cristbal, rsula. Artistic Research in Music: Problems,

Methods, Experiences and Models