From Field to Archive: A Preservation-Centered Workflow for Multimodal Music Collections

Abstract

Recent advances in field recording technologies have enabled unprecedented spatial, sonic, and visual capture of traditional music. However, the lasting value of these audiovisual materials depends on both fidelity and the robustness of archival preservation. This paper presents a preservation-centered workflow bridging multimodal music field recording and sustainable digital archiving. Building on prior recording methodologies [14] and current practices from the Music and Sound Cultures (MaSC) research group at New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD), the study examines an Archival-Ready Submission Workflow that prepares audiovisual materials for long-term preservation, including the recompilation of technical and ethnographic metadata and the systematic generation and organization of master files and rendered derivatives. This methodology aims to facilitate collaborations with institutional partners such as libraries, and to create digital music collections that support both long-term archival preservation and research corpora development for Music Information Retrieval (MIR) and other multidisciplinary music analysis.

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