Examining meaningful engagement: Musicology and virtual music making environments

Abstract

The metaphor of ‘Islands’ can be used to describe present and virtual music making contexts in the twenty-first-century. The solid foundation of established islands of musical knowledge and traditional contexts for making music that exists in a sea of human values and practices can be seen against virtual islands that rise out of the sea and disappear depending on the tide. This paper suggests that virtual and present islands can be bridged and understood by using musicological methodologies. The study builds on an ongoing examination of meaningful engagement in the production of music curriculum and experience design of music software learning environments. It examines the adaptation of musicological strategies for research in these fields. The study reports upon the use of musicological analysis of music making processes and communities as it is applied to music making using software/computer instruments in community music projects. Primarily the paper describes how musicological and ethno-musicological research strategies have been adapted to observe, evaluate and create meaningful and engaging environments for music learning that enable interactive engagement. The paper serves as a preliminary methodological meta study that examines a series of music projects involving youth community music and the effects of music making on social and cultural inclusion and the creation of musical environments utilising improvisation on a computer network. This project presents a ‘contemporary musicianship’, which embraces the computer as instrument, the network as ensemble and cyberspace as venue. These virtual islands are explored using musicological strategies for musical analysis in software design and ethno-musicological methods for ethically observing and documenting multi-cultural and urban Indigenous music communities. Musicology provides a bridge between our understanding of music making on present and virtual islands.

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