Gunn-Hilde Erstad Haugen
When the body doesn't play along
Can musicians achieve and maintain peak performance by learning relevant anatomy and movement theory?
You can observe many similarities between a professional musician and a professional athlete. Both have sacrificed countless hours to develop skills that involve complex physical movements. They push their abilities to the next level, acquiring extreme motor skills with precision and high speed. This takes continuous practise that demands discipline and motivation. Like elite athletes, professional musicians must maintain their skills at peak form, endure many hours of solitary, repetitive practice, constantly self-evaluate their performance, and subject their public performance to close scrutiny (Kenny, 2011, p. 51). Musical performance, at its best, is indicative of the upper limits of human physical and mental achievement (Williamon, 2004).
But most of the similarities stop there. While athletes focus on how to use their body and mind in the most efficient way, obtaining strict diets, sleep, and recovery time, most musicians’ practice without ever knowing what muscles are being activated to create the movement they use to produce sound, increase rapidity and obtaining general surplus in their performance. While athletes and their support system learn about muscle function, muscle fatigue, musculoskeletal disorders, and prevention advice, musicians most often are left to struggle with this by themselves (Bergeron et al., 2015; Stanhope, 2015), resulting in the fact that physical and mental health problems among musicians are frequent and above the general population, especially among female performers.
This autoethnographic, interdisciplinary study looks at a new approach to music performance called Timani to investigate how knowledge of relevant anatomy and movement theory can affect performance and the musician's mental and physical health. This study will also look at the bodily difference between the sexes in the hopes to shed new light on why there are so few female instrumentalists in popular music and why female musicians struggle more with their health than their male colleagues. The aim is to achieve new knowledge about sustainable, healthy, and including music performance that can benefit musicians that want to achieve and maintain peak performance.
I am also a member of Rendevouez Point which you can check out on Spotify.
Bodil Kvernenes Nørsett
PhD. Candidate through public cooperation with Ansgar University College.
My doctoral research explores qualitative assessment practice of the popular vocal performance examination in higher popular music education (HPME).
Assessment, in general, is a powerful tool for learning and learning processes, and in higher music education, assessment literacy should be actively developed by the students. Assessment of learning, for learning, and as learning is overarching concepts used in education. This qualitative study investigates challenges for students, teachers, and assessors by three HPME institutions in Norway, focusing particularly on the assessment of the live popular vocal performance examination. Concerns are:
- The philosophical and structural settings that determine vocal assessment in HPME.
- Assessment as learning for the popular vocal students, and how the performance examination can contribute to preparing them for the future as performers and artists.
- The language and the terms used by students, teachers, and examiners when it comes to describing the vocal delivery in popular vocal performance.
I am an Authorized Complete Vocal Teacher and teach popular vocal courses, music history, music education, and music entrepreneurship courses for undergraduate music students at Ansgar University College.
Research groups:
- Popular Music Studies Research Group, UiA
- Performing Popular Music Studies Research Group, UiA
Network Groups:
- Agder Vokalforum
- Norsk Stemmepedagogisk Forum/EVTA (European Vocal Teacher Association)
- Foreningen for norske kordirigenter (FONOKO)
Matthias Jung
PhD Research Fellow
After his studies of popular music and electronic media, Matthias has worked in audiovisual projects, audio labs as well as educational and cultural programs. Being thrilled by combining these areas of work, he went to Australia, where he was part of the German Film Festival team in Melbourne. After that, he worked for Soundtaxi, a production music library as well as IOSONO, where he was concerned with the workflow and DSP of a reverberator for 3D audio. During that time, he was regularly involved in international training programs of the Goethe-Institut and foreign ministry of Germany and engaged in consulting pop music related processes.
Before coming to Kristiansand, Matthias worked for Berlin's music academy designing training programs for young artists and engineers in cooperation with a set of universities in Germany. Most recently he was heading the curation team of Most Wanted: Music conference and Hybrid Music Lab - both centred around the topic of music technology.
Vegard Kummen
With a background in music production, performance, and teaching, Vegard researches online music-making communities and unconventional usage of technology for producing songs. His work explores the potential imports from these to the fields of electronic music education, record production, and creativity. The ongoing research project considers the constraints and affordances of chipmusic media, instruments that bridge the gap between music production and hacking culture in the act of music-making. Looking at the community’s learning practices and creative processes, the study aims to shed light on their potential value to musicians and educators.
Under his artist moniker “Kubbi”, Vegard has created and performed chipmusic since the mid-2000’s and wrote his MA “The Discourse and Culture of Chip Music: Studying the Methods and Values of the Chipscene” in 2018. As a sort of continuation of this, the PhD project puts chipmusic under the lens of education research, drawing upon data from a set of qualitative methods and a foundation of autoethnographic reflections and literature review. The resulting monograph will look to provide new perspectives on how we learn producing inside and outside our technologies as well as how our creativity and learning are informed or staggered by limitations.
Gjennomførte prosjekter
Kari Laura Iveland
Disputerte 19. april 2024 med avhandlingen "Lyrics, Voices, and the Stories they Tell"
Erik Kimested Pedersen
Disputerte 15. mars 2024 med avhandlingen "De Frie Ledetoner - En kunstnerisk kreativ undersøkelse av utvidet funksjonalisme i jazzimprovisasjon"
Eirik Sørbø
Disputerte 10. mars 2023 med avhandlingen
Zachary James Bresler
Disputerte 08. mars 2022 med avhandlingen: Immersed in Pop! Musicological Inquiries into Immersion and Interactivity