Digital Research Framework for Musicologists

I am developing a Research proposal aimed at creating a Digital Research Framework and Toolset for contemporary Musicologists. The proposed mode of research for a master’s degree in Musicology is the collection and review of data, field research, composition, written work, social performance and mixed digital and analog media in the music landscape. This research mode it’s would follow the principle and tools of musicological research. The purpose of this research is to identify if the hypothesis that substantial change in the contemporary music landscape for creators and consumers of music is such that the approach, methods and tools available to a musicologist need to be evolved, and secondly what that framework would look like.

Aims and Objectives

The most significant progress in the recent history of music has to do with listening and re-composition. How we listen to, and recompose music could be, for the first time in centuries, every bit as important to its history and evolution as what the composer intends when writing it. Additionally, music in the ‘age of the cloud’ brings a fragmentation to the process (and persons) composing music. This area of global collaboration, design and publishing of music changes music, through cross pollination is a new phenomenon fuelled by the digital age. This proposal seeks to demonstrate if this hypothesis can be proved and the potential outcome of the research if successful, would be a tangible set of research techniques, enabled, in part, by a digital framework, that allows musicologists to address the broad, global, and every growing nature of the music landscape that is no longer confirm by physical geography.This aim is made from a series of objectives that provide smaller proof points that will underpin the research's purpose.

• Review the landscape of current musicological frameworks and the effectiveness and efficiency in a contemporary setting
• Identify areas of the music landscape that are under served as a result of the hypotheses made
• Develop insights to the reasons and dynamics of the challenges
• Develop an initial model and partial toolset based on a design thinking approach and democratisation of music research
• Conduct a field research program to test its efficacy focussing on a particular musicological topic
• Review and assess the likelihood of success of developing a cloud-based, AI driven, digital framework.