Tuesday, 4 June 2013

then...

"Arghhh so what happened next??" I hear you cry, in anticipation of my crazy story. haha.

So after a very well received gig, toby and I have continued to duet, covering each other for harmonies and so on and so forth. I decided next that one open mic night a week is clearly not enough, as that's just one venue, one venue in Aylesbury I hasten to add. BUT I also had a brief 3 week interlude where I popped back to Disneyland Paris...
 
And don't ask... coz I cant answer that!
 
 

videos from the gig in bicester

Toby and I cover 'be mine' by Robyn.
 
And 'use somebody' by the kings of leon
 
 
Black horse and a cherry tree, by KT Tunstall
 
amongst a few others... :p

What's going on!

Ok, so module 2 has been completed, and we're all on the edge of our seats waiting to hear back if 1- we've passed, and 2- our proposed inquiries have been accepted.
Luckily for me, whether mine has or hasn't, my inquiry has become so relevant to my current life that I'm going to keep you updated anyway :)

So, what on earth has been going on?!
Since my last blog, I believe I was about to do a gig in Bicester with my new guitarist, who I began to work with after we met (networked) at my first gig in a long time.
The gig went fantastically well, we were very pleased with the out come and I managed to get some videos of some of the songs, just for you :p

 
'I'm yours' by Jason Mraz

Wednesday, 15 May 2013

Critical Reflection on Professional Practitioner Inquiry


Appendix F

Critical Reflection Portfolio

 
One of the key things that I have learnt is that to find out what I want to know, I must first realise what I don’t know. Whilst reflecting on task 2d (see appendix 1), I found that there was pattern to my continuous stunting of my career but by realising this I was then able to go about tackling it. I began to look at self esteem and confidence issues and how they may affect the success of a performer. However, this then raised the question of ‘what is success?’ and ‘what does it mean to be successful?’ (see appendix 2)

I got very involved with discussions on the SIG groups and found that everyone has a different opinion of what ‘success’ is (see appendix 3), thus making it extremely difficult to comment on whether a performer is ‘successful’ or not. I needed to change my tactics and to change my negative frame of mind. In my spare time I ran a half marathon, which was a massive achievement for me and left me feeling extremely positive and with that I found that ‘success’ was far too subjective. I decided that to change my life and career now I needed to be proactive, and what it came down to was ‘not knowing’ how to go about beginning a career as a recording singer. I previously felt, like I was sitting on the edge of the BAPP course not being 100% involved, but by making my inquiry completely relevant to my career now and useful to the progression of it, I have now submerged myself completely into the inquiry and my ‘self testing experiment’. To find out what might be useful to me, I first needed to find out what others had done previously, so I conducted some pilot data analysis (see appendix 4). This led me to finding reoccurrences in methods used by other singers, which in turn led me to the inquiry topic ‘Inquiry into the most effective ways of entering the recorded music industry as a singer’.

 After researching codes of conduct (see appendix 5 ), ethics (see appendix 6) and how I might go about collecting data (see appendix 7), I decided that my inquiry was quite feasible and potentially very useful to many, other than myself. I then began to write my proposal plan. My academic advisor, Adesola, pointed out the title words ‘most effective ways of...’ would be a different inquiry altogether, and after considering this, I realised I am investigating the ‘most applied methods’ rather than the ‘most effective’. I altered my inquiry title to ‘Inquiry into the most employed methods for entering the recorded music industry as a singer’, and I now feel strongly prepared and excited to begin my inquiry.




Appendix 3, Extract from Facebook SIG discussion


WHAT does it mean to be successful. what is success to you !????

 
Bobbie Pingram For me it's about achieving my goals. Not a measure comparing myself to other people.

Mimi-Lulabell Whitney Sucess to me is being happy, being happy with life, work, family, friends x

Emily Hunt achieving what I want to achieve and being happy with how I have done it.

Louise Dempster Success is meeting my own goals whether it is professional or personal , being happy and healthy.x

Melanie Brown To me, success is achieving dreams and goals you have set for yourself but most importantly success is being happy and content with your life...:)

Gee Bird would you call amy winehouse then,successful?...

Gee Bird so if u end up happy but with no career or with a great career but not happy...are u still successful??

Bobbie Pingram I'd say you have been successful in one area and not the other. Maybe that's one of the sacrifices of success.

Gee Bird how do you mean? to be successful in one area of your life another must suffer?

Melanie Brown Well from an outsiders point of view you would say yes she was...but then was she happy? As I said before that to me is the most important thing. She was obviously battling with a lot of issues. There has to be a balance between a good career and happiness. Was it that maybe too much success made her unhappy because she didnt know how to cope? I believe it must be about balance like most things in life x

Gee Bird see for me, success falls to career straight away.. but iv always been career minded, if success is what you set out to accomplish...(even if its not what you thought at the beginnning) if you achieve it, then you are a success. She had a massvively successful career. but same question falls to all the huge stars who die young. marilyn monroe, etc.. they were successful, no?

Sunday, 12 May 2013

Change of plan!

basically what happened is, I was sitting here, banging my head against a brick wall thinking 'I have no idea what to do next!!!!'. You see, what was troubling me was that I have my question, but when I looked at task 6b, I thought 'what questions am going to ask towards that if I conduct an interview?' Hmm well it all got very stressful, and then I went to the campus session. Within which, we had enough time to talk through any issues we were having with the course. Rosemary made the suggestion to me that perhaps I don't need to conduct pilot interviews, focus groups, observations and surveys. She suggested that perhaps I only analyse existing data. For example, rather than conducting interviews and observations etc., I only consider what's already been written.  (Rather than trying to interview Lily Allen, I would look only at autobiography and interviews with her, that have already been done.)

I need to find literature regarding getting started in the music industry:

http://musicians.about.com/od/musicindustrybasics/tp/Five-Ways-To-Jumpstart-Your-Music-Career.htm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMXlmn1JzIk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWf9CgJS2gI

Lissie

http://news.qthemusic.com/2010/08/interview_lissie_-_blonde_ambi.html

Justin Bieber

http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.mdx.ac.uk/docview/250027694/13DA198C3B17D9E331B/4?accountid=12441

Articles on becoming a singer:

http://rt5vx6na7p.search.serialssolutions.com/?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&ctx_enc=info%3Aofi%2Fenc%3AUTF-8&rfr_id=info:sid/summon.serialssolutions.com&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:journal&rft.genre=article&rft.atitle=BECOMING+A+COMMERCIAL+SINGER&rft.jtitle=Back+Stage+East&rft.au=John+Henny&rft.date=2008-05-29&rft.issn=1930-5966&rft.volume=49&rft.issue=22&rft.spage=22&rft.externalDBID=BACS&rft.externalDocID=1496128201

changes in the music industry (to digital)

http://www.forbes.com/sites/forrester/2013/02/27/music-industry-stops-losing-money-finally/

http://pandodaily.com/2013/03/13/the-music-industry-has-irreversibly-changed-the-labels-have-not/

http://bloggermouthsocial.wordpress.com/2012/03/05/the-music-industry-then-and-now/

Monday, 29 April 2013

if you do anything today that takes approx. 3 minutes...make it watching this...

 EVERY ONE SHOULD HAVE SEEN THIS, IN LIFE. ITS WHAT ITS ALL ABOUT. beautiful song, beautiful harmonies, just good music

Monday, 15 April 2013

6a


Punch 1998; stated that there are two different types of data collection, qualitative, quantitative. These suggest the difference acquiring quality in depth answers and have lots of simple answers that can then be transformed into numerical data. Punch 1998 (p.19) said the "different questions require different methods to answer them" therefore it's at this point that I need to start discovering what's the best way to answer mine. Blaxter suggested 3 concepts for research, VALIDITY, RELIABILITY and GENERALISABILITY. When I begin to design my inquiry, I need to make sure that what I'm asking is relevant to my topic and the tools I use are useful to my research.
"whether your methods, approaches and techniques actually relate to, or measure, the issues you have been exploring" (Blaxter et al., 2001, p. 221).
Blaxter also suggests the concept of 'reliability'. I need to ensure that the results that I come up with during my research would be essentially the same as if some one else were to look into it using similar tools. The concept of generalisability was suggested by Blaxter, and contests that an inquiry should be relevant for use as a reference in a different context. I think I can achieve this by using effective inquiry tools and showing that the answers I receive are valid and that the methods I used are useful to inquiries in general.

Qualitative research:
written notes,
transcribed audio,
transcribed video
collecting information from peoples memories, description and opinions.

Mason 2002, suggested that within qualitative research, the researcher becomes one of the tools of inquiry and therefore must be constantly aware of their own opinions creeping in. Blaxter et al. 2001 suggest that you must also be aware of the audience that your inquiry is written for.
One criticism of qualitative research is that, due to the detail of the research it is limited t that one area of inquiry rendering it less useful to other situations.
This can be helped by explaining the process in a final report.

Quantitative research:

Surveys

Quantitative research provides lots of data and can be analysed on lots of ways. Making it relevant to other inquiries as it allows space for other interpretations. Fowler says that " the purpose of the survey is to produce statistics, that is, quantitative or numerical descriptions about some aspects of the study population" (2009, p.1)

"quantitative research is quite good at telling us what is happening, and often qualitative studies are better at determining why events occur" (Black, 2002, p. 3).

In order to find the best tools for me to use I need to decide on what I want to find out and work out the bets way of answering those questions. Blaxter et al. 2001, states that questions act as a frame for the inquiry. And I totally agree. Without questions there would be no base to build an inquiry on but this just highlights the importance of choosing the right questions.

MIXED METHODOLOGY- using a qualitative perspective to analyse quantitative research findings, and vice versa

Triangulation - is using a few different tools to test the same issue, in order to find a middle answer. Bell, 2005, said that triangulation "allows the comparison of data and the presentation of more cohesive and considered research findings in social research."

I need to consider the basic layout of the whole process first, in order to make the most effective use of my time and the tool but once I've found 'raw data' I must document it, and categorise it before analysing it, in order to identify patterns in the findings.

PURPOSIVE- using a sample of people who are able to give qualitative answers.
REPRESENTATIVE- using a mixed selection of people quantitative and mixed in order to gain a more scientific answer.

 

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