The Music Practitioner: Research for the Music Performer

Useful work has been done in recent years in the areas of music psychology, philosophy and education, yet this is the first book to provide a wide assessment of what practical benefits this research can bring to the music practitioner. With 25 chapters by writers representing a broad range of perspectives, this volume is able to highlight many of the potential links between music research and practice. The chapters are divided into five main sections. Section one examines practitioners use of research to assist their practice and the ways in which they might train to become systematic researchers. Section two explores research centred around perception and cognition, while section 3 looks at how practitioners have explored their everyday work and what this reveals about the creative process. Section 4 focuses on how being a musician affects an individuals sense of self and the how others perceive him or her. The essays in section 5 outline the new types of data that creative researchers can provide for analysis and interpretation. The concluding chapter discusses that key question - what makes music affect us in the way it does? The research findings in each chapter provide useful sources of data and raise questions that are applicable across the spectrum of music-related disciplines. Moreover, the research methodologies applied to a specific question may have broader application for readers wishing to take on research themselves.