Week 1

BA3 Dissertation

Having spent some time over the summer thinking about dissertation and possible topics it felt somewhat of a relief to finally be sitting in class discussing the ins and outs of dissertation writing and also to be given the deadlines we are to meet for this class. We were asked to think firstly about choosing our topic and were made aware of how important it is to choose a subject with which we are interested in and with which we can truly engage. Originality, along with the ability to be objective when writing your dissertation seem to also be key. We were asked to consider the merits of previous dissertation titles and how the wording of this question and how well it is addressed within the text of the dissertation will influence the success of the final submission of work.
When studying for HND I became interested in semiotics and enjoyed the discussion of this in the Music History units of the course. The subject of semiotic responses to music raises many questions and I hope to be able to find a unique viewpoint from which to discuss and analyse aspects of this in my dissertation. When writing the Fabbri and Adorno essays for Music History last year I came across a paper by Philip Tagg entitled “Towards a Sign Typology of Music”, in which he discusses the need for further research in to this area and within this puts forward an outline of how connotative signification might be systemised. This paper was delivered in 1991 and is now almost 20 years out of date and much has advanced in this field since. Google scholar lists 22 articles that reference this work and I am currently reading through them in order to find an original angle from which to approach this subject. If a system of connotative signification (however culturally-biased) can be defined I feel it would be interesting to examine if it is possible to determine at what age, if any, we become more aware of or more susceptible to these signifiers, and also, from the point of view of one who is interested in education, if the responses of children who receive extra-curricular musical tuition are more likely to conform with this system, or whether they are able present a more individualistic response to musical stimuli.

Anecdotal evidence that there may be a point of realisation within a child’s formative years to desired semiotic responses to music came recently; Tennessee watched the film “Arachnaphobia” recently. Mid-way through the film she said “Oh now I see! When that music comes on you know the spiders are coming!”

Tagg’s paper, “Music, moving image, semiotics and the democratic right to know.” Also has relevance to this topic and I hope to find a wealth more research to build upon that will allow me to conduct my own original research.

Now all I need to do is find a snappy title, get the go-ahead for my proposal and find an un-biased way in which to collect and analyse empirical data. Easy! In reference to this last point; should the proposal be given the green light, I feel the most difficult thing to achieve in collecting evidence for this research will be finding a way in which a wide age-range of children could respond to a piece of music without biasing their responses (i.e from adult-help, peer-suggestion, range of ability.) Therefore, I intend to liaise with a variety of teachers and educators prior to conducting this research in order to best establish a method to collect data without falling prey to limiting factors that might make the study worthless.