Post #5

I have decided to go interview some of my past music teachers and friends that are in the musical choir culture today. My plan is to get all of my interviews done within the next week or so, do some research over my particular subculture from online sources and other sources, such as magazine articles and newspaper clippings, and then, after I have all the research I need, slowly piece all of the information I find together into a mini-ethnography.

I feel like I need to look more into how music is taught in choir compared to when I was in choir last year. I need to look at what is the same and what is different. Plus, I need to look at how the musical choir industry is being affected. Is there more people joining choir or less, and if so why? What are some of the differences between certain choirs? These are just a few things I need to look into more when I am doing my field research.

I need to spend a little more time in my fieldsite, but not a whole lot more. I was in the subculture for eight years, so I have a pretty good feel of what to expect in the culture. But, like I said before, I do need to look at what has changed and how choir is today in terms of number of people and the types of choirs.

I plan on finishing this assignment with good research and field notes. I will do my field research very carefully and slowly so I can get all the sensory details and descriptions that I possibly can. I will research my topic very thoroughly so I can get as much background on my subculture as possible. Then, when I am done doing all my field research and web research, I will do a draft of my mini-ethnography and see how it sounds. Then, after I find out what I need to fix, I will fix my mistakes and make it into a wonderful ethnography. The key to making my mini-ethnography good is time, lots of research, and lots of drafts.

Some questions I will probably have pertaining to upcoming assignments will probably be what do we have to have in this particular paper? What is the page length of this particular assignment? How many sources do we have to have? How detailed do we have to be when describing our subcultures? How is this paper different from the last? What activities will we do to help us prepare for these assignments? How will these activities benefit us when we write our papers? These would be the kinds of questions I would ask Dr. Disarro when it comes to the class and the upcoming writing assignments.