THE FLAWS
There were a few problems along the way… In fact, there were a lot of problems along the way.
- ‘Normal’ people aren’t musicologists or ethnomusicologists, and they don’t claim to be. But this lack of knowledge left a lot of their responses to chance, I didn’t know what they were going to speak about.
- The experiment really drifted from the original intention (admittedly the end result was interesting and thought-provoking), but it wasn’t nearly as in-depth or academic as Seismographic Sounds.
- The people I was able to interview was limited. It had to people I had access to, and that really depleted the numbers of people I could use. Because of that, many of the opinions given were those of young, university students.
- Because they aren’t musically trained, the reactions ran the risk of being basic, flawed and even at a push insulting. And some of them were.
- The very fact that I chose to create a blog meant I was unable to receate the tone and layout in Seismographic Sounds. Although I tried, it was rather difficult to include as many pictures or font sizes or uneven placing on the page.
But perhaps the biggest flaw was one I brought upon myself:
- The way I chose to interview them. The process began by videoing each participant but as I began to edit these videos I realised I am neither a videographer nor an editor. The videos just looked bad. Then I began to simply ask the participants questions and transcribe their answers, but they all shared my writing style. So finally, I decided to let the interviewees write down their thoughts and simply used this instead (this made it more raw and real – you can really see the difference in their writing styles and outlooks)
- I should have been more driven in my interview questions. The focus of the blog was to recreate Seismographic Sounds WAR section, but to an uneducated reader, this would not be obvious. I should have asked further questions about this topic
THE POSITIVES
No, the blog did not turn out the way that I wanted it to… But there were so many positives to be found along the way.
- People were so much more open to talk than I had assumed they would be.
- People were so much more knowledgeable than I had assumed they would be.
- People were so much more insightful than I had assumed they would be.
- People were so much more accepting than I had assumed they would be.
People are so informed by their own lives that they were able to apply it to the music that they were listening to. It was so humbling to see non-musicians discuss the way in which society views global music.