1 Music Disciplines and Research Methods

In the video above, the two scholars discuss how labels– for performance genres, disciplines of study, and for phenomena we study– can be problematic and complex. These labels can have associations we don’t intend, but can also be useful and even required for communicating information about our methods, backgrounds, and priorities. While many researchers will not fit easily with a specific label, labels for subdisciplines in music often indicate something about the author’s methodology or framework for approaching a problem.

Music as field of study is a bit unusual — because we study the phenomenon of music from so many different areas, musicians and music researchers use a huge variety of approaches to learning and research methodology. In addition to performance and composition, there are many subdisciplines of music studies that are often defined by their research methodologies and the specific research methods and techniques they use. For example:

• Musicology: uses research methods similar to other humanities fields like history, art history, and literature, such as archival research, close readings, and philology.
• Music theory: uses methods most analogous to literature or linguistics to analyze music and theorize about its construction and effects. Often analysis is used along with musicology or ethnomusicology approaches, so that analysis is explained in relation to the original cultural context.
• Ethnomusicology: uses some methods similar to musicology, but also uses methods shared with social sciences, especially anthropology and sociology, including ethnographic methodology. The specific methods might be things like observation and interviews. Traditionally, ethnomusicology referred to the study of non-Western music, but that boundary has blurred as many scholars apply both ethnographic and historical methodologies to all kinds of music.
• Music education: shares methodologies with education since research is often focused on pedagogy. This means relying on methods like case studies, interviews, observations, and other forms of qualitative research, as well as some quantitative methods. There is also overlap with musicology for those who study the history of music education.
• Music therapy: overlaps with methodologies in other health sciences and social sciences fields like psychology and physical therapy, often using experimental study structures.
• Music performance studies: a field of study pursued by research-focused performance, uses “practice-based” research methodolgies found in adjacent fields like theatre and dance to answer research questions through applied application of ideas to performance. To a large extent, performance itself is the research method.

There are also fields like music business, music psychology or cognition, and others that use other disciplinary methods but with a focus on music content.

Because of the variety of interests and approaches in music study, no course can cover all the research methods involved. Since there are other useful courses and resources for many overlapping fields, we will focus on methods and tools that are most music-specific and apply to the programs offered at UWM.