Experimenting music

During the process of experimenting with music, you should document processes, including musical decision-making, the application of findings to your work and personal reflections in your journals.

The report for this assessment task is derived from journal entries as it details the musical decision-making in the rationale and the development of the work as part of the commentary. Developing effective documentation and journal habits early in the course will enable students to have a large body of work from which to draw and curate their experimentation report and excerpts. With time, you will have comprehensive notes and evidence that shows the development of musical works.

Some guiding questions below to guide your planning:

• What was my musical goal in my work process today?

• What knowledge and findings from my source material was I using to experiment with?

• What musical conventions, stylistic elements performance techniques have I applied?

• What challenges did I encounter during my work?

  • Challenges can be technical, creative or even practical. The reflective process is critical to experimentation with musical material. Ideas that are trialed and discarded help to inform further direction. Developing consistent habits of experimentation by listening, extracting, applying and trialing new ideas, and also documenting these processes, will allow you to articulate your creative process.

• What new findings did I discover during the experimentation process today?

• What are my goals going forward?

  • What did I learn during my process today?

  • What do I want to develop further?

  • What will I use/apply from this music-making/research in the future?

  • What are my next steps?

A guided steps and questions below may be a good starting point for you to plan and log your experimentation process.

Step 1: Selecting material

• You should state the musical material that you have selected to analyze and investigate

• What is the context for this piece? (must be local and/or global)

• Explain in detail where this piece of music comes from. (historical, cultural, and social context should be considered)

• What is it about this piece that interests you?

Step 2: Analyzing material: Focusing on the "what"

When experimenting with music, you are expected to use research to draw out stimuli and material for further development. The analysis in this stage is about uncovering musical aspects that are significant to your practical work and extracting that information for extended, practical application.

Inquiry questions may include, but are not limited to, the following:

• What are the musical structures and form of the piece of music?

• What media or musical instruments are used in the piece?

• Explain the musical and/or production elements and compositional devices that define the piece of music.

• Explain the function of musical and/or production elements.

Step 3: Identifying and explaining how you plan to use a specific musical focus from your investigation in your experimentation

(The musical focus could include, but is not limited to, a convention, idea, stimulus or technique.)

Development questions that will inform the commentary may include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Describe the musical focus you will develop within your experimentation. How is the selected focus used in the source material, and what are the musical and extra-musical findings that are relevant to the experimentation?

• How does this convention relate to your own musical practice?

• What skills and techniques will you work on during the experimentation?

• Self-analyze: What was successful in the experimentation, what further research do I need to do in order to develop my experimentation and what are my next steps?

Curating material for assessment

Developing a rationale and commentary

To develop the rationale and commentary for your report, you will draw on your journal notes from:

• investigating

• analyzing music

• collecting musical findings

• selecting a musical focus for you experimentation.

As the commentary is developed from curated journal work, you should ensure that you included:

• commentary on your creating process

• integration of selected musical material and findings that informed musical experimentation.

Integrating source material with the rationale and commentary

An important part of articulating the rationale and commentary for the experimentation is connecting musical material to a written discussion. With a limited word count, you need to think about the essential aspects of a musical analysis, the key findings that inform your work, and how to identify and connect or integrate musical conventions and ideas or stimuli with the practical experimentation.

Below are suggestions for a model exercise on writing a rationale and commentary.

Rationale

a) Introduction and brief description of the stimulus, area of inquiry and context for the project

b) Explanation of musical focus (convention(s), style, technique(s))

c) Proposed experimentation

Commentary

d) Description of the process with reflection on challenges and successes

e) Summary of outcomes

When selecting material for submission, consider how effectively the following key points have been addressed:

• Criterion A: Rationale and commentary for musical experiments in creating

• Criterion C: Rationale and commentary for musical experiments in performing

An effective rationale justifies the selection of source material, as well as the identification of context and areas of inquiry. You should extract or curate information from your journal and develop succinct, detailed explanations of your experimentation process and how you have developed the identified musical focus over the three submitted extracts. For clarity, when including notated excerpts in the commentary, the selected passages should be embedded within the text and cited appropriately.

Guidance on selecting the three related excerpts

The final submission for the experimentation report should clearly demonstrate how practical work has developed. In order to support the submission of curated work, the following considerations may be helpful:

• The work should demonstrate development of a single musical project that is clearly connected to the source material analyzed and discussed in the report.

• The three selected examples are clearly related to each other; each example leads to the next example and is a continuation of the work.

• The three excerpts show a progression of musical decision-making. Each excerpt connects to the other in musical content and is a progression of the previous excerpt.

• There should be enough research and practical development between the selected examples to evidence critical evaluation and musical decision-making.

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