My Critical Reflection of Module 2

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.