The task for this module was to create an
outline for the professional inquiry we are to undertake in Module 3. I have
chosen to conduct an inquiry into the benefits of technology for the working Musician,
this is a topic that I feel is important in a Musician’s professional practice
and career development as it can help make tasks easier and more efficient.
I
found this module very challenging for several reasons; Firstly, I made a
fairly serious error in confusing the terms Qualitative and Quantitative. I
started to base my inquiry plan on using a survey resulting in a large data set
with a possibility of results that could be led by the questions in my survey. This
is not the preferred kind of data set I would need to conduct my inquiry as I
am looking for personal experience and more detailed information that I could
use to develop my own professional practice. I decided to change my inquiry to
a focus group as this allows me to get more detailed answers from fellow
professionals about their own experiences which I can triangulate with my own
ideas and other information from related literature on technology within music.
Another
issue I had was the inclusion of a hypothesis and prediction in my plan, this
implied that I already had an idea of the results I would find. This would be
an unsuitable way to conduct the inquiry as the purpose of the inquiry is for
me to gain information about the use of technology in music and therefore
predicting any kind of outcome would be unnecessary. I have since removed the
above mentioned sections from my plan and instead I have chosen to research
several case studies from well-known artists to analyse the ways they use
technology in their studio recordings and live performances. This would give me
more information to use for the literary aspect of my triangulation.
I
feel I have gained a lot from this module overall, especially in terms of
making me think about my own use of technology in my own practice. I am looking
forward to conducting the professional inquiry, and learning about how other
professional musicians utilise different aspects of technology in their
practice. I have learnt that triangulation of data will play a very important
part of my inquiry, and that comparing data from literature, third parties and
myself will give me a wide variety of material to use as part of my findings. I
am also interested to see if other participants in my inquiry will in turn use
some of the information from the discussion in the focus group to look at their
own professional practice, perhaps even using the information gained to make
changes and improvements in the way they use technology as part of their own
career.
