Investigating a rock band engaged in group composition
Frederick A Seddon, Michele Biasutti · 2008
This observational case study investigated a rock band as they group composed a song during four, two hour composition sessions. During these sessions the musicians were videotaped as they interacted with music composition software to construct musical loops that were subsequently combined to provide a track. When completed, this backing track represented the overall structure of the new song. Qualitative analysis of the videotaped data revealed six themes emerging from the musician’s observed behaviours that were subsequently interpreted by the researchers as group composition activities: playing, listening, experimenting, communicating, constructing, and off task. A coding scheme also emerged during the analysis process. This coding scheme was used to time code the videotaped data, which revealed the percentages of time spent by the musicians in each of the group composition activities. Results from the combined qualitative and percentage time analyses indicated the importance of non-verbal communication for this rock band during group composition. Results also suggested differences between non-verbal communication employed by these rock musicians, when compared to non-verbal communication employed by jazz and classical musicians revealed in two prior studies. It is proposed that differences of non-verbal communication between these three groups of musicians are related to issues of group composing versus group performance of pre-composed pieces.