Posting #3

I haven't done a whole lot of research on this project yet. But, since I used to be a part of the music culture/subculture, I have a lot of insight on this particular culture.

I have not interviewed any informants in my subculture, but I will interview some within the next few weeks. Some of the questions I will ask them will be about things such as how music has changed over the years, why do typical music teachers have their students watch musicals, how is music distributed across the world, how do they think music is changing today, etc. These are just a few of the questions I want to ask my informants about how the music culture/subculture is portrayed today.

I plan on going to my cultural site within the next week or two, hopefully Friday or Saturday if possible. After some of the in-class discussions and exercises we have done, I have a bunch of expectations and questions about my culture/ subculture. I expect the choir room to be full of music, a piano in the corner of the room, a tv and vcr for when they watch musicals, costumes and props in the back room, the air smelling like febreeze, room decorated with things involving musical notes or music in general, music stand in front of the room, the music to have a sort of old and used up feeling to it because it's been used so much. These are just a few of the sensory details I expect to see and feel when I go back into the music culture/subculture.

I haven't really attempted any academic research as of yet. All I've really done is think about what culture I want to study and focus on what I want to learn about my particular culture since I know so much about it already from being an insider for so many years of my life.

I consider there to be a difference between academic and non-academic research. Academic research would be when you are doing research that relates to your assignment and benefits your learning, such as internet research, fieldnotes, magazine articles, interviews, etc. Non-academic research would be research that has nothing to do with the assignment and does not benefit your learning experience at all. Examples of this would be having someone interview for you, take fieldnotes and do internet research for you, read articles to you, etc. These types of things you can still learn things from, but you don't get the full experience and it is not considered academic because it is not benefiting you as a student because you're not the one doing the assignment or the work.