In the first months of 2007, I began to ask
myself some rather difficult questions, such as:
• Why do people listen to
music?
• Why should I be a musician?
• If there is something truly
important and valuable about music, what is it?
After
time, I began to find
some partial answers, but the best idea that came of it was to
administer a survey about music, to find out what other people
think. The survey would contain both simple questions and
open-ended ones, to give people the opportunity to go into some detail
about how music is important to their lives. For those who were
interested, I would also conduct an hour-long interview, consisting of
three parts:
• A follow-up to the written survey, going into more depth
• A free discussion, including some more esoteric questions
• A listening portion, set up like a "blind taste-test",
where the subject would listen to ten 1-minute excerpts from pieces
(without being told anything about the music beforehand), and tell me
their reaction to each one
To date, I have received about 20 written surveys, and conducted 5
interviews. Indeed, I have been learning a lot about how music
means different things to different people. I am currently
collating the data and will write up my ongoing findings here, along
with some particularly insightful and revealing quotes from the
participants.