1 Investigating music-making practice

My research study was to be an exploration of connection: why and how humans affectively connect to their music-making; and why—and how—they may not affectively connect to other forms of music-making [63, p. 1; 34, p. 14; 15; Damon & Hart in 67, p. 264]. In the first year of my doctoral journey, I envisaged I would compare and contrast my experience of instrument-based music-making, with digital virtual-based music-making as I progressed through five (5) stages of cultural production, that is, through the initial conceptualization stage, the pre-production, the production, the post-production, and the distribution stages of cultural production. My early investigation illuminated six (6) broad elements of music-making praxis to be used as the basis of comparison and analysis: site, musical style, technology, workflow, listening, and selfFootnote 1 [89, 93, 44, 63].

I decided to commence with a style of music I had a long-term affective connection with as a consumer but had never attempted to create in a production: psychedelic music. It was a style of music, which traditionally drew on acoustic instruments, analogue, and early digital production processing. However, contemporary digital and digital virtual technologies now afford many options in the recreation of this musical style [93, p. 13]. I had access to appropriate sites and technologies and therefore considered this particular music-making project would afford me the opportunity to compare and contrast my process and engagement in instrument-based music-making, with digital virtual-based music-making. I was also curiously excited as to what final psychedelic rock project artefact would emerge.

1.1 The research study

As I progressed in the research study, my reflective process illuminated how I engaged in the broad elements—and stages—of practice. Early in the research project, I had made the assumption that I considered and engaged in the elements of my practice—site, musical style, technology, workflow, listening, and self in quite a linear manner—progressing sequentially through the five (5) stages of cultural production, that is, through the conceptualization stage, the pre-production, the production, the post-production, and the distribution stages of cultural production. However, through rigorous observation and reflective practice, I started to realize the complexity of creative practice and the discriminatory process I as the creative practitioner was actually engaging in. I observed that no two practice sessions included the same creative discriminatory steps and the same mediums and materials, in the same sequence. Access to an extensive range of technologies afforded me—as a creative practitioner—a far greater array of options within my practice relative to what previous generations of DIY project studio practitioners had access to [93, 42, 89]. As more options existed, more decisions were required regarding the elements of technology, workflow, site, and musical style [44, p. 91]. As I engaged with the elements of style, site, technology, and workflow across all stages of creative practice, I observed the almost continuous presence of the elements of self and listening at most junctures of the discriminatory process. As Moffat asserts, creative music-making practice is a multimodal process, demanding a unique blend of faculties, abilities, senses, approaches, and methodologies at different stages of practice (61, p. 27). It became increasingly obvious to me as the observer; listening and self were the primary elements in the creative practice process as I—as the practitioner subject—discriminated between available elements during the practice session. At each decision-making juncture, I observed I interpreted the value of a choice of several options relative to the desired direction of the creative work overall. I made a decision to apply a specific option, and not the other options. I observed I considered all of the elements in that decision-making process, recycling back and forth across the stages of practice and elements. Two points were illuminated: (1) the creative practice discrimination process was circular in nature and not linear as I had initially assumed; and (2) the process in making a decision was a “unique” subjective process by the practitioner subject. They considered a “unique” set of elements, interpreted these and made a decision, at any moment in time. As the contemporary practitioner, I was listening and interpreting within each and every practice experience as a unique subjective person, with a unique perspective, desiring to make a unique expression. Such uniqueness affords a practitioner’s individuality in their creative practice [75; p. 53]. Engaging in such a rigorous observation process of my creative practice was an enlightening exercise. Understanding decision-making in contemporary practice to be such a highly complex process was liberating for me as a creative practitioner. It afforded me the opportunity to study my practice at every step, investigating at a microlevel the process I am ordinarily immersed in, in a state of unconscious flow.

1.2 Practice-making, meaning-making, and self-making

As the research study progressed, the rigour of the exploration and investigation significantly deepened, with an extensive amount of conscious, deliberate and systematic reflection and analysis occurring. Initially, insights about my particular practice included the number of elements in the music-making process which needed to be considered; the interdependency—and spiral relationship—of these elements [41, p. 46]; the concept of hybridity and convergence in this rapidly developing creative environment; the significance of listening and self in music-making practice; the value of music [74]; and the connection humans feel while consuming music [21, 20, 4]; and exploring self, namely, identity, motives, values, and aesthetic experience in general [28, 29, 60, 1, 7], and specifically related to music-making practice. Out of this journey, a more focused question emerged: How do the interdependent tenets of hybridity and convergence, agency and subjectivity afford—or inhibit—one’s authentic connection to contemporary DIY music-making practice?

1.3 A significant event

As I descended further into my doctoral research study, what I knew as my natural process of music-making started to fail me. Despite following the stages of practice and preparatory rituals as I had always done, I observed I was not connecting to the project. The creative process was feeling very structured and systematic. I observed I was not getting into a state of flow as I would usually [15]. I was creatively blocked. I wondered what could have been at the root of this creative block. Perhaps it was due to not having an acoustic instrument in my hands and creating from a clear thematic idea (often expressed in a lyric)? Perhaps it was due to what I was now seeing as two conflicting roles of auto-ethnography? Perhaps the dual roles of the subject, creative practitioner, observer, data scriber, literature investigator, reflector, and analyser were—for me—at odds with each other? I attempted to manage the requirements of my formal research study: observation, recording data, reflective practice, and the creative process. But this attempt had little immediate impact. I observed my levels of anxiety increased within me at each milestone of the doctoral study. Csikszentmihalyi highlights anxiety as having a detrimental effect on one’s creative flow in practice—of one being in the moment [14, pp., 49–54]. “When a person is bombarded with demands which he or she feels unable to meet, a state of anxiety ensues” [14, p. 50]. Anxiety is well documented as impacting the human experience. Isen [46, p. 548] investigated the effect of positive and negative affect on the decision-making process. Isen found negative effect “in the form of anxiety or arousal (sometimes referred to as ‘emotion’), or ‘high drive’… narrows the focus of attention, impairs cue utilisation, and can impair performance as a result” [46, p. 553]. Perhaps trying to create cultural production within the context of a higher degree research study was in itself an anxiety inducing circumstance? It was at this point I questioned my motive to practice. What was my motive for this particular creative project I had chosen to pursue?

1.4 A new era of self-making and creative practice

Hartley refers to the inhabitants of the DIY cultural domain as DIY citizens: “DIY citizenship harvests the same fields as DIY culture, but is not confined to spectacular subcultures or youth activism. It’s just as likely to occur among – for instance – suburban woman who have leisure to stay at home and browse the internet and who, it transpires are busy inventing senses of themselves..” [35, pp. 111–112].

Kuznetsov and Paulos and Prior refer to these inhabitants of the DIY cultural domain as the new amateurs. The new amateur seeks a wide range of interests with engaged commitment [48, 72, 73]. Interests are as wide and as varied as one can imagine. Of the more popular trends televised on commercial networks are real estate-based activities such as renovation and landscaping; sport-based activities including team and solo rock climbing, abseiling, mountain biking, and parachuting, to name but a few; leisure activities such as camping, trekking, and travelling; and creative activities. Popular examples of creative activities include art and craft-based activities such as drawing, sculpture, pottery, and glass blowing; fashion-based activities such as clothes and jewellery design and making; food-based activities such as cooking and cake decorating; IT games-based activities such as playing—solo, team, and competing—and design; drama-based activities such as scriptwriting, acting, prop design and construction, and musical theatre; and music-based such as instrument making, song writing, production techniques, and music-making. Having interviewed hundreds of people over a number of years regarding their creative activities, Csikszentmihalyi and Robinson found people engaged in such creative activities as listed above “because they enjoy what they are doing to the extent that experiencing the activity becomes its own reward” [16, p. 7]. However, the activities I have referred to here are somewhat traditional types of creative activities. Cultural consumption and production have continued to change significantly in the new millennium. Creative activities—creative practice—are no longer restricted to these types of activities [88, p. 4]. “An expanded and extreme set of creative practices is subverting well-understood categories of the arts and culture, collapsing the borders between traditional and the innovative, …… the everyday and the celebrity, the professional and the amateur” [36, p. 158]. In analysing a range of contemporary creative practice, Haseman found the following five (5) characteristics worthy of a millennia definition: creative practices involve interactivity; creative practices are intrinsically hybrid; creative practices embrace new sites and forms of cultural production; creative practices are orientated towards multiplatform, cross-promotional means of distribution; and creative practices are not approached as if they are commercially irrelevantFootnote 2 [36, pp. 167–169].

Csikszentmihalyi and Robinson found millennia practitioners engaged in creative activities for intrinsic motives [16, p. 7]. McRobbie progresses the conversation, finding creative practitioners using their “creative work as an expressive extension of self” [57, p. 103]. Sullivan suggests that more contemporary creative practitioners consciously engage in art practice to make social and cultural comment about their environs. “Many artists these days do not confine their practice to a singular exploration of a signature style”, instead preferring “to use their skill in methods and media to address broader questions of human and cultural concern” [86, p. 97]. The practitioner is engaging in practice as an embodied self within a cultural context. Taylor and Littleton narrow their view to subjectivity: “creative work is a means of Self-actualisation”—a medium for the creative practitioners to discover themselves, on the path to realizing their full potential [88, p. 31]. In terms of the range of creative practice, music-making is acknowledged in research as being significant in terms of the development of self. Hargreaves et al. [34] discuss how music facilitates self-expression and development, allowing the self to transform and construct new identities. Frith [27, p. 124] argues that “(m)usic constructs our sense of identity through the direct experiences it offers of the body, time and sociability, experiences which enable us to place ourselves in imaginative cultural narratives.” Bennett concludes that “music is produced and consumed by young people in ways that both inform their sense of (S)elf and also serve to construct the social world in which their identities operate” [5, p. ii].

1.5 Studying my creative practice

I focused on observing and recording my actions and behaviours during my creative music-making practice sessions. Essentially, what was I doing?; how was I doing it?; in what order was I doing it?; and what circumstances were present at the time? However, this developing observational discipline was soon integrated into other areas of my life. I observed I listened to recorded music for many hours every day. I considered the purpose—if any—of these non-music-making listening sessions. Initial focus questions included what was I listening to; when was I listening to it; for what purpose was I listening to it; and to what level was I listening to it? It was at this point my investigations into the act of listening, reflective practice, and Self deepened significantly. Initially I considered these everyday music listening sessions to be idle listening periods which accompanied other non-music-making tasks such as updating computer programs and third-party plug-ins, searching for relevant literature and reference material, attending to reflective journal notes, and developing concepts into Heuristic images. However, I observed a pattern of engagement in these everyday tasks—essential tasks on a doctoral research study journey—in my studio, just prior to a music-making practice session commencing. I considered the co-incidence of these sessions happening with such regularity. Were these listening sessions in fact idle listening sessions? Questions to facilitate my deepening inquisitiveness arose. Was there any particular criteria I had for selecting the recorded music to listen to in these non-music-making sessions? Was it chosen for its self-behaviour-changing capacity? Was it perhaps calming music? Was it chosen perhaps to distract and entertain self during predominantly mechanical tasks? Was it selected merely to act as a background companion for self—company—rather than being alone in a quiet isolated space? Was the music selected as part of a psych-up ritual prior to commencing a music-making session? Or, perhaps the selected recorded music was in some way my engaging in research, listening to potential exemplar references which could potentially guide and/or influence my pending practice session?

1.6 Musicking

Referred to by Small [84] as musicking, everyday music-making includes the participation and consumption of music in any environment or context. Listening in this form may be active or passive. Batt-Rawden and DeNora note western people have over the past few decades developed their musical agency, now using Music & Sound to actively manipulate behaviour in everyday contexts [3, p. 292]. Music-making resides in most cultures and societies around the globe in some form. Most religious rituals have some form of repetitive melodic or harmonized chant, with participants reciting prophetical language endorsing the values and beliefs of that culture. The instrument is the voice—externalized or internalized—incorporating the musical qualities of duration, pitch, dynamics, and timbre. The musical style is akin to acapela, even though the motive of the practitioner is neither to entertain, nor engage in an activity of pleasure. It is for many cultures and religions, an everyday ritual. The production and consumption of music in this context is an embodied affective experience, possibly providing an aesthetic experience [74, p. 41].

1.7 Music & Sound

Over the course of my research study, I started to observe the more frequent use of the terms Music & Sound as one phrase.Footnote 3 As a musician and an audio engineer, this should not have surprised me; but I noted to self, I had rarely ever used these two terms in unison. Both music and sound are forms of energy, which move through space as soundwaves, over time. As such—unlike many other forms of creative practice—Music & Sound soundwaves are not tangible. Unlike a sculpture, a consumer cannot see Music & Sound, nor touch it.Footnote 4 Unlike a painting, Music & Sound is transient, moving across time. Soundwaves can be recorded and visually represented using contemporary digital virtual technologies. Music & Sound can be stored on tangible mediums such as vinyl long play albums, compact discs, or personal mobile devices for distribution purposes and can be played back at ones’ convenience. Music & Sound is most commonly received as an auditory experience, via the act of listening. However, consumption is not just an auditory activity. Consumption of Music & Sound is an embodied experience, drawing on biological, psychological, and cognitive faculties to make meaning of the experience [8, p. 52; 31, pp. 145–146]. It is a rational and extra-rational experience [50, p. 472]. It is also highly likely the consumption of Music & Sound is an affective experience and likely an aesthetic experience. The consumption of Music & Sound is very much a subjective experience. Tagg [87] highlights that such subjective development in humans begins prior to birth, at about minus (−) 4 months. Development of a baby’s auditory capacity occurs from the time humans depart the womb [87, p. 1]. From birthFootnote 5, we embark on our journeys as listening consumers: engaging in and creating Music & Sound; and training our ears every day to make meaning in the many and varied contexts we are placed in.

In an urban environment with inhabitants, technologies (e.g. modes of transportation) and buildings are sites of practice. When a person enters a site, they are engaging in these soundscape compositions whether they are consciously aware of the surrounding environment or not. Schwarz in his 1940 study referred to his recordings as sound ethnographies; Demers termed these cosmopolitan soundscapes [19, p. 12]. Within this school of thought, urban dwellers’ engagement with Music & Sound is an everyday occurrence. Contemporary academics such as Bennett [4, 5] and DeNora [20] refer to these everyday experiences of Music & Sound as soundtracks to our lives. In a sociological approach to Music & Sound, a retail outlet is a site of practice. When a retail outlet has music or sound playing and a person enters that site, they are engaging in that Music & Sound—consuming music—whether they are consciously aware of that Music & Sound, or not.

Similarly, in an ecological approach to Music & Sound, a natural environment with local insects, birds, and wildlife is a site of practice. When a person enters that site, they are engaging in the sound, whether they are consciously consuming the sound or not [52, p. 11]. This style is often referred to as nature recordings. Schafer [81] coined the term soundscapes to describe such sound experiences. Some artists such as Australian Anton Hughes [45] composed music as an integral part of these nature recordings, contributing to a subgenre of new age relaxation soundscapes.

2 Re-interpreting my Music & Sound-making practice

2.1 Meaning-making and self-making

As part of my research journey, I needed to define how and why I connected to certain forms of music-making and not others. In order to narrow my focus, I engaged in two activities: a reflective account as to how my music-making practice evolved and a thorough examination of my values.

2.1.1 How my music-making practice emerged

My music-making evolved from the age of 10. I had a guitar in my hands, learning to play a range of guitar-based musical styles, including pop, folk, country, rock, R + B, and blues, to name a few. I approached learning an instrument in an experiential social learning model, relying on mimicking and anecdotal tips and tricks through relatives, neighbours, and local casual instrumental teachers [32, p. 50]. Anecdotal teachings, mimicking, and self-directed guitar instruction books and chords charts made up the primary sources guiding my development of practice and knowledge over many years. Listening to the radio and the limited records (45 s and albums), I had access to, provided me motivation, and references of style and aesthetics of a performance and production. As a result of this pathway of learning, I acquired a fragmented understanding of the homogenous musicological elements of duration, pitch, dynamics, and timbre and basic signal flow for rudimentary production recordings. I was particularly drawn to folk-based and country-based artists of the era,Footnote 6 and therefore, the form and structure of the songs I was playing adhered to traditions within those musical styles. The guitar as a roots-based instrument in that era was used primarily to create and communicate narratives of everyday life.

The guitar is a physical instrument, crafted of natural mediums such as wood and manufactured products such as wire and steel. The instrument—unlike the piano which adorned my rumpus room—was light enough to pick up with one hand and yet large enough as a small boy to need to embrace the instrument in order to strum the strings and reach over to press the strings down on the neck. As a result, the resonance generated from the instrument was felt through my body—my chest, stomach, arms, legs, and head. The instrument is versatile, able to be played soft enough to play after a long day, reflecting and soothing a tired or heavy soul. However, an acoustic guitar could also be played loud enough to wake a family and annoy the neighbours: It can be amplified and projected down the valley and beyond. As an instrument, it can be held, strummed, plucked, finger-picked, lightly stroked, caressed with one’s palm, banged, pulled on, strangled, and bent to make an array of sounds on the sonic scape. It is a very versatile instrument—my instrument of choice. As my guitar neck hand developed—for me, my right hand—I ventured into learning additional chords to the initial open chords I acquired. I approached this is a very systematic manner, learning bar chords with the root note on the 6th string, on the 5th string, and on the 4th string. I did not have immediate strength in my hands, but I experimented and practiced until my right-hand strength developed. I had considered I had achieved this goal when I could hear each of the strings cleanly resonate.

As time passed, I became more encouraged to progress my technical agency, embracing applied theoretical knowledge,Footnote 7 and physically by consciously, deliberately, and systematically improving the strength and stretch of my hands and fingers. I then spent the next several years developing these aspects of my music-making practice, eventually realizing a level of flow in my playing. In line with the traditions of the roots-based musical styles I embraced, I followed the traditional musical structures and forms of those styles in creating my own pieces. While initially I was employing trial and error—real-time auditioning—to create compositions,Footnote 8 I developed over time my ability to inner audition and know what harmonic, melodic, and rhythmic element options I could discriminate between away from—or without playing—the instrument. The degree of rational and extra-rational faculties I employed—namely, memories and imagination—was primarily to create the lyrical narratives and the overall arrangement of the song. The structure and form maintained respect for the traditions of those musical styles. By this stage of my development, I was considered by peers to have a level of routine expertiseFootnote 9 and often invited for social jam sessions by neighbours and friends from school. In this era, everyday consumption of music—musicking—was not commonplace. It was however for me, as I explored a range of musical styles and songs to expand my performance repertoire. I approached music-making practice as a craft-based practice, effectively assigning a task of what I was next to achieve. My approach was very systematic—a competency outcome approach to learning an instrument. As my technical functional agency developed, I sought to learn other functional tasks of what was effectively a sequential delineated recording process: production, pre-production, and post-production skills. In that era of music-making, such experience was gained through experimentation with the increasing number of technologies accessible for domestic useFootnote 10 or through local recording studios often located in a space at the rear of a local music store. I do recall I had an attitude of respect for the professionals who engaged in the music-making production process and me desiring an opportunity to join a traditional type studio to learn one of the many delineated recording process specialist roles as a trade.

2.1.2 Becoming conscious of my values

As a secondary step to better understand how and why I connected to certain forms of music-making and not others, my associate supervisor suggested I might consider increasing my self-awareness and explore my values for practice. I did this by developing several iterations of a personal Charter of Values [70] over 2 years of my doctoral journey. This process reminded me of my prime motive for music-making: to authentically express an experience, in order to gain greater understanding of that experience. In this moment, I realized the technological motive of my planned creative project—comparing and contrasting instrument-based music-making with digital virtual-based music-making was insufficient. The prime motive for creative practice was noted as “a medium for the creative practitioners to discover themselves” [88, p. 31]. I needed to connect with a more congruently aligned purpose—motive—than merely pursuing what had become quite a technology-centred project, recreating a psychedelic rock-styled production. Over several months, I refined my focus, illuminating a more aligned purpose: a period of life which involved a number of significant events which had had a major influence in the direction of my life. I felt there was benefit from my revisiting and—in some cases—re-expressingFootnote 11 these narratives. But how? I initially contemplated writing songs—lyric-based narrativesFootnote 12—about the experiences in a confessional folk style-type concept album [85]. But as my investigation in this research study deepened, I found self drawn to a soundtrack style of music-making. Perhaps I could consider composing a Music & Sound narrative of these significant events? However, without lyrics to base my narrative upon, how was I intending to use Music & Sound objects and events to represent my narrative, to afford my affective connection to the particular creative practice, and to express my subjective voice? In many ways, a Music & Soundtrack is not dissimilar to a Music & Soundtrack which may accompany a movie [51, p. 9]. However, in my case, there was to be no visual “movie” support of the narrative. The entire narrative was to be provided by the Music & Soundtrack. As I considered this, I had an epiphany regarding the practical application. Within a contemporary music-making environment [a digital audio workstation (DAW)], producing Music & Sound for film requires a fundamental different approach to producing music as song. Music as song is generally instrument-based, with each track contributing to the functional—homogenous—areas of rhythm, harmony, and melody of the composition [63]. In contrast, Music & Sound for film generally follows the functional tasks of dialogue/ADR, Foley, atmospheric, composition, and effects [17]. While each function contributes to the overall composition, the way a practitioner approaches composing Music & Sound for film is different—functionally—to the way a practitioner would approach composing a 3-min pop style song [9, 10, 11, 12, 64, 65, 37].

2.2 Hybridization of approaches

My initial research problem commenced within a more traditional definition of music-making. As described in the previous section, I had for the greater part of my life primarily focussed on developing hybridized mainstream pop forms of music which were heavily based on a roots-basedFootnote 13 approach to music-making. Moore uses this as the basis of his analysis of contemporary music-making practice [63]. Immersed within the bias of my own learning and development of music-making from a very young age, I had not considered other approaches to Music & Sound-making outside of a roots-based approach which had been progressively appropriated and integrated into mainstream pop forms of music by music-making practitioners over the proceeding decades [63]. Given my change of focus into Music & Soundtracks—an area I was only superficially familiar with—I actively sought out relevant literature and textural resources. This rigorous investigation revealed a broadening, more divergent context of Music & Sound-making. I did not feel that Moore’s attempt to define and categorize contemporary music-making practice was any longer extensive enough. In addition to both the more informally learnt roots-based and the more formally learnt high arts-basedFootnote 14 approaches to music-making, there was the alternative approach to Music & Sound-making which Landy [49] and Holmes [43] were exploring and describing in far greater detail than Moore’s cursory inclusions.

An electroacoustic and sonic artFootnote 15 approach to Music & Sound-making practice refers to the ingredients used within composition and production as materials, made up of sound objects and sound events. Electroacousticians use sound objects and sound events to represent sonic narratives they desire to express [96, p. 150; 91, p. 143, p. 171]. These productions may or may not include music—compositional pieces inclusive of pitch, duration, dynamics, or timbre—generated by traditional music-making instrumentsFootnote 16 such as roots-based or high arts-based approaches to music-making do [71, p. 11]. Electroacousticians use the additional terms such as mass, spatialization, and sequencing to describe and analyse qualities of their sonic soundtracks and soundscapes, where traditional musical description and analysis no longer suffice [2, p. 194]. Therefore, in these forms of creative practice, the terms music, musical, musicology, and music-making are no longer adequate to define the breadth of contemporary DIY Music & Sound-making practice. In fact, the single term music (and its numerous forms) can be misleading. The broader term of Music & Sound-making has more relevance in this rapidly developing creative environment of contemporary DIY Music & Sound-making practice. Contemporary DIY Music & Sound forms are likely convergent approaches, a fusion of both heterogeneous and homogenous forms. In fact, contemporary DIY Music & Sound-making practice typically now includes multiple forms of Music & Sound-making practice—homogeneous music, heterogeneous sound, and hybridized forms integrating all forms to varying ratiosFootnote 17 [43, p. 163; 91]. Contemporary DIY Music & Sound workflows are now typically conflated, with the stages—and perhaps some elements—of practice that are no longer clearly distinguishable [44, p. 91]. I would argue that the term approach—in contrast to the terms stages and musical styles—has more relevance in the contemporary DIY Music & Sound environment as it more ably describes an orientation of the practitioner towards their practice. This illumination proved to be significant for me and this research study. In contrast, at the commencement of this research study, my vision was to merely attempt to describe my music-making in two differing environments—acoustic instrument-based and digital virtual-based—via stages and elementsFootnote 18 of practice.

2.3 The focus on the practitioner, in practice

In investigating this approaches perspective, I compared and contrasted a roots-based,Footnote 19 a high arts-based,Footnote 20 and an electroacoustic and sonic arts-basedFootnote 21 approach to practice. Using literature, I compared how practitioners in each approach typically engage in various phases of their creative practice. The phases I selected to focus on were the learning phase; the playing—performing—phase; the composing phase; the production phase; and the consumption phase [32, p. 172; 33; 83, p. 5; 67, p. 132, p. 143; 68, p. xviii; 53; 54; 55; 96, p. 150; 50, p. 473; 91, p. 143, p. 171; 92, p. 64; 56, p. 181; 6; 31, pp. 145–6; 8, p. 52; 26, p. 577; 3, p. 292]. The differences were illuminating, highlighting distinct and often opposing orientations of practitioners likely to be operating within the broadening contemporary DIY Music & Sound-making practice field. As introduced, music, both roots-based and high arts-based approaches, is based on a structured—homogenous—process, with many traditions and rules [21, p. 1; 71], while sound mainly occurs in a heterogeneous, extra-rational, imaginal place [96, p. 150; 50, p. 472; 76, p. xi]. Each approach to Music & Sound-making requires a different embodied orientation in order to fully engage in it. Practitioners engaging in homogenous music and practitioners engaging in heterogeneous sound require a different embodied orientation, in order to effectively engage within that Music & Sound form. Zittoun reminds us of the mutual exclusivity of the orientations: To fully engage in imaginal play, our “imagination demands the suspension of the rules” [97, p. 183]. A practitioner therefore can only engage in one approach—music or sound—at any point in time. However, Merriam and Bierema [58, p. 109], Jarvis [47, p. 60], and Sullivan [86] remind us that all practice requires practitioners to engage in multiple orientations across the many phases of practice. Practitioners need “to intervene, interpret, and act upon issues and ideas” during creative practice [86, p. 102]. Engaged in practice, a practitioner has an “urgent need to understand and order the meaning of our experience” and “to integrate it with what we know” [59, p. 73]. The practitioner must therefore engage in multiple orientated experiences in practice, dependent upon the particular phase of practice that are engaged in, at that moment in time. The practitioner therefore must possess developed agency of both rational and extra-rational faculties and technical and extra-technical skills to achieve this. The contemporary practitioner must be adept—flexible and adaptable—to transition between orientations, as the convergent, conflated Music & Sound-making practice process moves spirally, from one approach or phase to another, likely across a range of elements. Therefore, the contemporary creative practitioner must possess developed agency of meaning-making and self-making in order to engage effectively—and efficiently—in the highly complex discrimination process now exists in contemporary creative practice.

2.4 Deriving meaning-making and self-making in practice

As outlined in Section 1.4, Csikszentmihalyi and Robinson [16], McRobbie [57], Sullivan [86], Taylor and Littleton [88], Hargreaves et al. [30], Frith [27], and Bennett [5] acknowledged Music & Sound-making practitioners deriving a range of meaning-making and self-making from the experience of engaging in creative—Music & Sound-making—practice. Further, Small [84] and Batt-Rawden and DeNora [3] found meaning derived by a subject irrespective of their level of proactive engagement or active or passive receptive—consumer—engagement in that Music & Sound-making practice. That is, subjects interpret and derive meaning-making and self-making from the Music & Sound being played, irrespective of whether:

  • The practitioner/consumer is playing it at that moment in time—that is, real-time auditioning (or as Ryan cites Archer, Expressivity: Creator in the moment) [78, p. 80].

  • The practitioner/consumer is re-listening to something they have just composed—that is, re-auditioning it akin to an external observer just after the moment of practice (Archer refers to this as the Perceiver Aesthetic) [78, p. 80].

  • The practitioner/consumer is consuming, that is, in a post-practice analytical, critical, or aesthetic listening session—something which was composed at some point prior—by either themselves or another (Archer refers this as Expression: Symbolic Capture of the Semblance) [78, p. 80; 66, pp. 73–81; 91, p. 30; 13; 24].

This subjective interpretation of Music & Sound is a dynamic process. In the consumption of Music & Sound, subjects interpret meaning based on their rational and extra-rational experience: their environmental circumstances; their cultural and social values, beliefs, and attitudes; their autobiographical life experience; their biological, psychological, and cognitive faculties and capacities; and their affective experience. Within this experience of consuming Music & Sound, the subject derives meaning to inform their developing body of knowledge—experience and understanding [59, p. 73]. This process affords one the opportunity to inform their subjectivity: their self-narrative; their values, beliefs, and attitudes; and their dialogical self. This is likely to be a multi-positional perspective, given the multidimensional—“multi-faceted”—make-up of the embodied self [39, pp., 32–33]. Such multi-positional perspectives manifest within self—and the practitioner self—as inner voices conversing in dialogue of self-knowledge [25, p. 191; 77, pp. 10–11]. This process assists self to discriminate between the likely many and varied options and interpretations available, as everyday processes unfold at any point in time [39, p. 41; 40, p. 201; 26, p. 577]. The scenarios—or “frames”—one is experiencing and attempting to interpret could be either as a result of proactive engagement in creative process or an active or passive receiving process, such as consuming (listening) to Music & Sound practice [25, pp. 192–196]. In either scenario, there is likely to be an inner dialogue, and possibly outer speechFootnote 22, occurring within a subject—the dialogical self—as the practitioner navigates their way through a scenario, negotiating between their multiple voices, from multi-positional perspectives [79]. The Music & Sound source is subjectively interpreted as the receiver hears it. Therefore, a Music & Sound-making practitioner’s interpretation is likely to develop over time as alternative experiences are recalled, and one’s imagination is drawn upon in the holistic processing of meaning-making and self-making. It is possible; a practitioner’s derived meaning of a Music & Sound event or object—progressing from the point of Creator in the moment to the re-auditioned perceiver and to the post-practice Symbolic Capture of the Semblance consumption—may develop to the point where the original intended representationFootnote 23 (imitation or inference) of the Music & Sound event or object is no longer similar [31, pp. 145–147].

3 My Music & Sound-making-centred research study practice

3.1 Discrimination process in my practice

As noted, decision-making in contemporary Music & Sound-making practice is a highly complex process. A uniquely subjective process, a contemporary Music & Sound practitioner, is likely to discriminate many thousands of times across a 3-min composition [96]. A contemporary Music & Sound practitioner discriminates from a diverse set of options—approaches, environments (inclusive of sites and platforms), technologies, and workflows—interprets the potential application and fit in the Music & Sound project at hand, and makes a decision to trial it, accept it, or discard it. The process is further complicated with the likely development of the practitioner’s interpretation of Music & Sound events and objects over time. Even if a decision to accept a Music & Sound event and object for what it represents at that moment in time in a particular creative session, in a separate post-practice analytical, critical, or aesthetic listening session, that interpretation may be found to no longer align to the aesthetic overall. The practitioner may therefore reject that previously made decision and begin the discrimination process for that Music & Sound event and object again.

From my extended observations of practice over the past 4 years of this doctoral research study journey, discrimination happens many tens of times—and in a number of creative sessions, several hundred times—within each minute of practice. When in a state of flow [15], I liken the multiple discriminations required across a very condensed time period to being akin to Ryan’s description of Archer’s term expressivity [78] and Oliveras’ detailing of improvisation [68]. For me, the inner dialogical conversation is intense, asking rhetorical questions; pondering the fit of a particular Music & Sound event and object; encouraging self not to settle for near enough; discarding the considered Music & Sound event and object; motivating self to keep up with my search for a better fitting sample; searching in my database for another/other sample/s; auditioning a number of potential Music & Sound events and objects external of the DAW in Mac’s Finder; narrowing the selection of Music & Sound events and objects; moving these into the DAW and auditioning them within the composition; moving the chosen sample forward or backward along the track relative to the arrangement; trialling layering of several Music & Sound events or objects in order to realize a specific textural aesthetic; being pleased—to varying degrees—with the outcome; etc. There were many instances where this example of a discrimination process occurred within a 1-min period of my creative practice.

Engaging in highly complex improvisational processes across many decades as a musician performer (lead guitarist), engineer, learning and teaching practitioner, competitive national motocross racer, sports car driving enthusiast, creative writer, and songwriter has afforded me development of advanced discriminatory agency while maintaining states of flow. It was what I—prior to this doctoral journey—referred to as being in a stream of consciousness. One is immersed in the moment, accessing muscle memory conditioned through many hours of deliberate practice [22], fully immersed in the act of practice, listening to one’s dialogic self and multi-positional perspectives [94], connected—at one—in practice [68], demonstrating expert performance [22, p. 988; 21]. In line with my other stated experiences, at the outset of this doctoral research study journey, I trusted I had well-developed agency to be able to demonstrate expert performance across most aspects—stages, phases, and elements—of acoustic/analogue music-making practice. I had hoped that I would discover the key to unlock within me a similar level of agency within the digital virtual music-making environment, within a relatively short time. However, it was not until engaging in rigorous investigation as part of this doctoral research study had I considered the extent of agency required of contemporary Music & Sound practitioners in contemporary—conflated and hybridized—practice. I have learnt along this journey that decision-making in contemporary Music & Sound-making practice is a highly complex process. The approaches to contemporary Music & Sound-making practice differ greatly—“roots-based”, “high arts-based”, and “electroacoustic and sonic art-based” approaches to production, as well as musicking drawn on different faculties and combinations of rational and extra-rational response. Contemporary Music & Sound-making practice is truly a convergent—hybridized—form of Music & Sound-making practice. As this paper reveals, at the outset of this doctoral research journey, I had what I now would have considered to have been a very superficial understanding of contemporary Music & Sound-making practice. I now understand the discipline from a far broader perspective and acknowledge contemporary Music & Sound-making practice to be a highly complex process. Each contemporary practitioner has at any moment in time a diverse range of options open to them to choose between, as they traverse across—cycle back and forth through—the phases of practice process. I found, despite my years of experience and developed discriminatory agency—decision-making—in my Music-making practice and despite my years of experience as a senior lecturer, and an internationally recognized role as a learning and teaching practitioner, in Higher Education Creative Media and Music & Sound, I was ill-equipped to fully understand and engage in contemporary Music & Sound-making practice.Footnote 24 Therefore, I believe there is merit in outlining and sharing with aspiring practitioners my observations, which have subsequently been developed as a framework: a framework which informs my discrimination process in Music & Sound practice.

The framework developed progressively over the duration of this research study as a way to keep my practitioner self on target and focussed within the creative practice session, that is, in a state of flow. In Section 1.3, I described how my creative practice stalled early in this doctoral journey. At that time, I found that I was challenged realizing a state of flow within my creative practice, with constant interruptions by my researcher self attempting to observe my creative practitioner self within practice and then wanting to scribe notes. The dual responsibility of subject and observer in an auto-ethnographic research study motivated me to examine my work environment. I considered how I could realize a more effective work flow, by verbalizing the discrimination process, while I was in practice and recording that narration into an audio device, which I then analysed in a session after the practice session had ended. It was out of this dual role workflow that the framework started to emerge. The framework developed across a 2-year period of my doctoral research journey, affording me more focus and greater intention during a practice session. This facilitated my maintaining a state of flow for a relatively longer period during creative practice, with a higher effectiveness and efficiency of discrimination as my doctoral journey progressed.Footnote 25

As this framework was being developed, I had the opportunity to informally share aspects of my framework to a number of entry level higher education music production learners. I was interested to know whether providing them a holistic conceptual understanding of the broad contemporary Music & Sound discipline would afford them greater agency in the contemporary Music & Sound-making practice project they were engaging in. I acknowledge that this informal interaction was not conducted as part of a rigorous research study and was therefore flawed. However, I anecdotally observed by my providing the aspiring practitioners the concept of, and particular aspects of, this Framework, they were able to use this developing tool to progress their creative projects with more focus and intention. From my perspective as an experienced senior lecturer in Creative Media, guiding the development of aspiring practitioners’ technical and extra-technical agency is a key role for contemporary learning and teaching practitioners. I believe aspiring practitioners need to be guided in order to progress their creative—Music & Sound-making—projects. They need to develop their subjectivity and agency, affording them greater ability to navigate their way in the highly complex process of discriminating more effectively and efficiently, within practice. I am therefore confident from the positive anecdotal feedback I received from this informal interaction that this more than justifies the time investment of this line of inquiry as a formal research study. I also trust my experience in HE Creative Media leading aspiring music production learners; a practical textbook is needed. As a result of my research study, I am clear that few—if any—contemporary Music & Sound literature or texts have captured and describe in sufficient practical terms, from a practitioner’s perspective, the new broad field of Music & Sound-making.

3.2 Part 2 of my doctoral research study

In the following section, I outline what represents the part 2 of my research study. The focus of part 2 is the practical creative project: an authentic, subjective, auto-ethnographic Music & Soundscape. It is a Music & Soundscape, a composer’s subjective representation of any aspects of their life. I now refer to such a Music & Soundscape as a self-scape. A self-scape may be composed of any combination of approach to contemporary Music & Sound-making, drawing on a “roots-based”, “high arts-based”, “electroacoustic and sonic art-based” or a hybridized approach to production. I decided to organize my composition within the DAW session unlike any workflow I have previously used for either 3-min pop songs or sound for film projects. I divided the DAW into the following sections:

  • Section 1: environmental/situational considerations [90, 11]

  • Section 2: homogenous—musicological—considerations [91]

  • Section 3a: heterogeneous—spatial considerations [91]

  • Section 3b: heterogeneous—visceral orientations [38, 9, 82]

In my perspective, the emergent self-scape workflow worked effectively and congruently, for my engagement in authentic practice.

3.3 My world view

Before I delve into the process of the framework, I do need to make the following clear. My world view is that of phenomenology: specifically, existential phenomenology. Reflecting on my life across numerous disciplines, I recognize I am the archetype who has to experience activities in life, rather than just theorizing about it at arm’s length. Irrespective of my creative, sporting, or professional endeavours of learning and teaching, I learnt early in my life that I need to experience something to understand it. Grace and Ajjawi state: “In existential phenomenology the focus is on individual’s experiences of being-in-the-world” [30, p. 198]. In experiential phenomenology, professional practitioners tend to be less interested in the philosophy of phenomenological method than its practice and application [30, p. 198]. An auto-ethnographic methodology has allowed me to immerse into, and study my own practice, describing the sociocultural activities and patterns. At the core of my world view is self, with the aim of practice being the self-referential drive to increase one’s self-knowledge and become more self-aware. This goal has crystalized as I progressed in this doctoral research study journey.Footnote 26 Central to this informed process is continuous rigorous reflective and reflexive practice [1, 78, 7, 28, 36, 50, 60]. This process is spiral and reflective in nature, rather than a sequential process aimed at only realizing a product as an outcome [29].

3.4 My holistic framework

My holistic framework informs my discrimination process in my Music & Sound practice. Emerging from this investigation was the development of clarity regarding my own biases and limitations of Music-making practice, the discipline, and the field. These investigations also revealed the limit of my agency as both a practitioner and self. As the research study progressed, I developed insight, awareness, understanding, and experience as self and practitioner self. I observed myself becoming freer in practice, free to interpret as I wanted to, and free to express my “unique” voice.

I describe my approach—a framework of sorts—of the considerations and factors in my decision-making process as the practice progresses. I start holistically—that is, at a macro level—and become more specific as I progress up the positive upward spiral of engagement in practice. In this process, I continue to develop my agency, subjectivity, and discriminatory choices, as I realize a creative artefact more deeply textured, with closer alignment to my initial intended narrative and aesthetic. As a result, the artefact progressively, more eloquently—affectively and aesthetically—expresses my multi-positional voice/s as a creative expression. Within this transformational process, my observations reveal I experience increasing levels of authentic connection to the broader contemporary Music & Sound-making process—to that akin to flow [15], expressivity [78]; improvisation [68], or stream of consciousness. I have observed during my Music & Sound-making practice—irrespective of the approach—I am immersed in the moment, accessing muscle memory conditioned through many hours of deliberate practice [22], fully immersed in the act of practice, listening to one’s dialogic self and multi-positional perspectives [94], discriminating from a diverse set of options such as approaches, environments (inclusive of sites and platforms), technologies, and workflows, interpreting the potential application and fit in the Music & Sound project on hand and making a decision to trial it, accept it, or discard it many times per minute of practice. In these moments, I observed I am affectively connected—at one—in practice [68], demonstrating expert performance [22, p. 988; 23), as I have experienced in my other authentically connected—states of flow—life experiences.

As part of this emergent process, I observed the steps I progressed through on my doctoral journey, in realizing what I consider to be authentic practice. These were developing my identity via rigorous—conscious, deliberate, and systematic—reflective, and reflexive practice; refining a personally aligned Charter of Values over many stages of the journey; focusing in on and developing the desired narrative and aesthetic of the creative piece, using a variety of mediums; embodying that experience or re-experience within my being using a number of modalities; and ongoing observation that self was authentically—congruently—aligned to the project and practice throughout the process. By following these steps, I observed the following benefits in my Music & Sound-making practice:

  • I enjoyed the creative practice process more than I had previous to this doctoral journey (self).

  • I engaged in longer, more consistent dynamic flows of practice than I had previous to this doctoral journey (self; technical and extra-technical agency across all elements).

  • I had a heightened—deepened and focused—sense of auditory discernment than I had previous to this doctoral journey (listening—technical and extra-technical agency—and self).

  • I felt a more intense affective connection to my developed Music & Sound-making practice than I had previous to this doctoral journey (self).

  • My discrimination process exponentially developed across my Music & Sound-making practice than was present previous to this doctoral journey, irrespective of the primary approach of practice: roots-based; high arts-based, electroacoustic and sonic arts-based or hybridized forms (technical and extra-technical agency across all elements; rational and extra-rational agency of self).

I observed my creative—Music & Sound-making—practice was more inextricably linked to the development of meaning-making and self-making. Each form of “making”—meaning-making, self-making, and practice-making—informed the other forms in a continuous positive upward spiral of authentic practice-making. At each stage of the process, I observed I was increasing my self-knowledge—clarity of understanding through experience—and self-awareness. I observed as I progressed on this emergent journey that I was unearthing and effectively engaging in multiple i-positions and voices.

However, an emergent goal of this doctoral journey was the development of a framework for aspiring Music & Sound-makers to better position themselves in this highly hybridized era of contemporary practice. I understood the extensive amount of literature I had to immerse myself in and digest, in order to better understand this highly hybridized contemporary Music & Sound-making context. I felt a motive to demonstrate the utility of my doctoral journey—experience and observations—for the benefit of others in my industry and field. I understood practice—particularly Music & Sound-making practice—was highly subjective and unique. I observed that my discriminatory process across different practice sessions differed for any number of reasons, reinforcing the subjective and uniqueness of each creative practice session. I saw therefore little point in describing in detail one my discriminatory processes in one of practice sessions as a model for aspiring Music & Sound-makers to better position themselves in this highly hybridized era of contemporary practice.

What I did however recognize were some macro universals which I followed in every session which unequivocally afforded me greater focus and intention within the discriminatory process in practice. I believe the result of this heightened focus and intention was greater effectiveness and efficiency of practice. In consciously considering—and reviewing—these creative practice framing universals prior to commencing each creative practice session, I was able to enjoy the benefits in my Music & Sound-making practice as outlined above. As mentioned, I believe these macro framing universals can be of value to aspiring Music & Sound-makers to focus their creative practice sessions, most notably, and provide more effective and efficient discriminations in practice. I have named these macro framing universals as “informing my discrimination process in practice”.

3.5 Informing my discrimination process in practice

I observed there are seven initial considerations I clarify within self in order to orientate and focus my creative project, prior to commencing practice:

  1. 1.

    The central motive of all practice I engage in is authentic practice.Footnote 27 As briefly described above, the steps to authentic practice are conscious, deliberate, and systematic. Following these steps will inform meaning-making, self-making, and practice-making. To choose to not engage in these steps will likely offer an alternative journey of practice other than authentic practice.

  2. 2.

    My specific motive of each piece is informed by narrative and aesthetic. My creative production artefact usually delivers a message or an observation I desire to voice.Footnote 28 An example of an observation could be the recently publicized Australian social phenomenon of an increase in mental health within the demographic of male adults.

  3. 3.

    I then decide on the medium or mediums to best represent my subjective and creative needs for the project. In general, this is Music & SoundFootnote 29 but may become more specific in terms of being more centred towards a “roots-based”, “high arts-based”, “electroacoustic and sonic art-based” or a hybridized approach to production.

  4. 4.

    I consider the likely form which will best represent my intended narrative and aesthetic: a literal form or abstract form of a creative production artefact. Within the outlined Music & Sound approaches to production, there is a wide range of form potentially.Footnote 30 The form of a creative project—literal or abstract—requires differing degrees of agency of a practitioner for them to effectively and efficiently engage in that projectFootnote 31: rational and extra-rational agency (structured and imaginal responses) and technical and extra-technical agency (hard and soft skills). As outlined in Section 2.3, the various approaches to production rely on differing faculty development during the highly complex discrimination process. The contemporary Music & Sound practitioner must be self-aware of and intentionally have developed their levels of agency across all aspects of practice in order to be adept—flexible and adaptable—to transition between orientations, as the convergent, conflated Music & Sound-making practice process moves spirally, from one approach or phase to another.

  5. 5.

    In order to effectively plan the contemporary Music & Sound-making project—with the potential of drawing on a broad range of alternative Music & Sound events and objects—I needed to conceive a way to categorize these elements in a more effective and useful way for my practice. I chose the following categories: environmental/situational considerations [90; 11]; homogenous and heterogeneous considerations [91]; and hybridization [92]. These categories afforded me broader classifications of the essential elements of contemporary Music & Sound-making practice: situation-based, musicological, and spatial and/or visceral orientations [38, 9, 82]. The environmental/situational elements include diegetic or situational sound as described by Schafer [81], Madsen [52], Demers [19], and Chion [10] most notably including the pulse of the environment or situation. The musicological elements are described by Vella with Arthurs [91] as sound events. They include Graham’s [31] concept of representation in the compositional and production process: to replicate, to mimic/imitate, and to infer. The heterogeneous elements include what Schaeffer [80] and Vella with Arthurs [91] refers to as sound objects. These are any sonic textures such as non-diagetic sound [95, 10] and often abstract sonics specifically for spatiality [96, 2, 76] and/or affective—visceral—response [82].

  6. 6.

    The sixth step consideration is the practical options of the categorized elements. Specifically, the Music & Sound sources and the technologies used in the Music & Soundscape production process of the final artefact. Sources and technologies include analogue, acoustic, digital, digital virtual, and hybridized options.Footnote 32 My practical approach is to be able to create and replicate whatever I do in the studio, on stage, and vice versa. Young [96] introduces the terms materials, tools, and structures to better describe the Music & Sound elements of contemporary practice, rather than relying on the musicological terms of time (duration), space (pitch), dynamics (contrast, velocity), and timbre (tone, variety, colour) [71] which have limited validity within much heterogeneous approaches. More specific to heterogeneous forms, Young proposes the terms: mass, spatialization, and sequence [96]. As a soundscape project, new workflows emerged: environmental/situational considerations; homogenous – musicological – considerations; heterogeneous—spatial considerations; and heterogeneous—visceral orientations. In my perspective, the emergent self-scape workflow worked effectively and congruently, for my engagement in authentic practice. In terms of audio, I also rely on Owsinski’s [69] terms of spectral, dynamic, time-domain, and interest to further describe the processural elements of contemporary Music & Sound-making production.

  7. 7.

    Finally, the seventh initial consideration is that of location options: site and workflow [44].

That is, what site is to be used in the Music & Soundscape production process and what is the expected workflow of the final artefact.

Within the positive upward ascending spiral of practice, the practitioner engages through the phases of practice. That is, the learning phase; the playing—performing—phase; the composing phase; the production phase; and the consumption phase.

As mentioned, at the core of my practice is self, with the self-referential drive to increase one’s self-knowledge, and become more self-aware. As part of this process, I observed the steps I journeyed through on my path to sustainable authentic practice. These were identity, values, narrative, embodiment, and authenticity. What I observed in dynamic flows of practice, my practice was inextricably linked to the development of meaning-making and self-making. Each form of making informed the other forms in a continuous positive upward spiral of authentic practice-making. At each stage of the process, I observed I was increasing my self-knowledge (clarity of understanding through experience) and self-awareness. I observed I was unearthing multiple i-positions and voices.

Along the process, I found I was developing the textural layering of the composition, developing and embellishing the congruent alignment of what I had intended—desired—initially as my narrative and aesthetic. The self-soundscape was emerging as a hybridized contemporary cultural production artefact. Additionally, perhaps more significantly, as a result of the continual practice, I observed I was developing agency and subjectivity, affording my practitioner self to refine my clarity in the discrimination of options and combining of options I had access to. This include, but was not restricted to:

  • sources, technologies, sites, or workflows

  • greater self-awareness, through

  • heightened listening capabilities (internalized and externalized)

I experienced being more consistently affectively and aesthetically connected to all approaches of contemporary Music & Sound-making practice, irrespective of the sources, technologies, sites, or workflows. For me, contemporary Music & Sound-making practice has become a dynamic development of sustainable authentic practice (SAP).

3.6 The result of informing my discrimination process in practice

The Music & Sound cultural production artefact has continued to develop over the course of my doctoral journey. The artefact now aligns to a soundscape rather than a roots-based production I had first imagined at the commencement of my doctoral journey [81]. The aim of my soundscape project is to represent a number of significant events which occurred across the first 20 years of my life. The soundscape combines elements of “electroacoustic and sonic art-based”, “high arts-based”, and “roots-based” approaches to production as well as what could be seen as character traits of musicking. It is truly a convergent—hybridized—form of contemporary Music & Sound-making practice.

Entitled “The Dark Years”, the emerging composition is an example of an authentic, subjective, auto-ethnographic Music & Soundscape, a musical and sonic self-portrait painting of sorts, which represents my memories—re-experiences and re-interpretations—of 19 significant events which occurred during this highly formational period of my life. Integrating an electroacoustician’s approach to my Music & Sound-making practice, I am now using Music & Sound objects and events to represent my narratives of the re-experienced memories of the significant events. I now acknowledge I connect to Music & Sound holistically—rationally and extra-rationally—drawing upon biological, psychological, and cognitive faculties and affect. It is an embodied experience. While I understand written forms of narratives enhance my affective connection, no longer is my approach to Music & Sound-making necessarily limited to lyric-based musical forms. Engaging in this creative practice journey—as part of an arts-based research study—has been a cathartic process. The process has informed my meaning-making, informing the development of my identity—self-concept, self-image, self-esteem, and sense of “who I am”—as a creative practitioner and as a person.Footnote 33 I believe, this yet to be completed research study has already indicated the co-constituted nature of self, meaning-making, and Music & Sound-making. Specifically, how one’s Music & Sound-making practice, as one of three interdependent tenets, informs and is informed by meaning-making and self-making.

3.7 My desired research study outcome

I trust my personal research study journey will provide insight and contribute to the literature. In general terms, how the interdependent tenets of hybridity and convergence, agency and subjectivity afford—or inhibit—one’s authentic connection to contemporary DIY Music & Sound-making practice. Specifically, I would hope to present a summary of a broader range of technical and extra-technical skills and rational and extra-rational agency required of the contemporary DIY Music & Sound-making practitioner. With the innumerable hybridized forms of homogenous and heterogeneous approaches to Music & Sound which now exist, contemporary DIY Music & Sound-making practitioners now require a broader range of technical and extra-technical skills and rational and extra-rational agency in order to maintain their industry discipline currency. Greater options in practice are a by-product of developed agency, providing the practitioner a broader range of opportunities to sustainably, authentically engage in their creative practice. I believe as a practitioner develops their agency across the three (3) tenets of practice-making, meaning-making, and Self-making agency, they are afforded greater potential to consistently and congruently—affectively—connect to a broader interpretation of Music & Sound-making practice. With congruent affective connection, the creation of more authentic cultural production artefacts should—I believe—be more abundant.

4 Conclusion

Contemporary DIY Music & Soundscapes represent the interpretations of the subjective practitioners’ multi-positional perspective. These creative productions are informed and guided by the multiple i-positions of the dialogical self, expressions of the practitioners’ multiple voices. These contemporary DIY cultural productions therefore offer great subjective uniqueness given the innumerable combinations of the elemental differences, which exist between contemporary DIY practitioners and their practice. The emergent cultural production artefacts should exemplify a broader interpretation of Music & Sound-making practice: their authentic, subjective, auto-ethnographic Music & Soundscapes. I hold the opinion a broader view of contemporary DIY Music & Sound-making practice should be encouraged, challenging and facilitating the ongoing expansion of creative practitioner’s agency and subjectivity. Reflecting on my 4-year research study journey, I believe what severely limited my authentic engagement—my affective connection—to Music & Sound-making within virtual digital-based environments was my NOT having adequately developed agency of both rational and extra-rational faculties and technical and extra-technical skills. Notably, I reflect I was NOT adept—flexible and adaptable—to transition fluidly between orientations, as the convergent, conflated Music & Sound-making practice process moved spirally, from one approach or phase to another. However, more significantly, I do not believe my situation is isolated. While not within the scope of this doctoral research study, my many anecdotal conversations with practitioners—peers and aspiring practitioners—has revealed a general lack of understanding of the highly complex field of convergent and conflated contemporary Music & Sound-making practice. I believe a rigorous investigation of contemporary Music & Sound practitioners’ perspectives would benefit the field and discipline greatly.

Given personal development of self is a central motive as to why humans engage in creative practice, I believe providing aspiring practitioners a more holistic perspective of contemporary Music & Sound-making practice can only increase their understanding of the field and discipline. This should afford them the opportunity to develop required agency to more fully engage their unique subjective positions, in order to more authentically engage in—be affectively connected to—contemporary Music & Sound -making practice. Additionally, I believe the macro framing considerations—“informing my discrimination process in practice”—can be of value to aspiring Music & Sound-makers to focus their intent in readiness for and across their creative practice sessions: most notably, their discrimination process. As a result, I trust these practitioners may also enjoy some benefits in their Music & Sound-making practice such as greater enjoyment; more consistent dynamic flows of practice; heightened—deepened and focused—sense of auditory discernment; a more intense affective connection to their practice; and, overall, a more heightened discrimination process, irrespective of the musical style and the approach of practice. If this occurs, I would expect to hear more contemporary DIY Music & Sound practitioners—irrespective of their prior experience—expressing their authentically connected voices in unique auto-ethnographic Music & Soundscapes of their everyday lives.