Brown, A. R. (2015). Engaging in a sound musicianship. In G. McPherson (Ed.

), The Child as Musician: A handbook

of Musical Development. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 208-220.

Engaging in a sound musicianship

Andrew R. Brown

Abstract
Our contemporary sound world is ever expanding, driven largely by advances in modern
technologies that continue to expand a childs ability to engage with music. This chapter will
explore how musical practices have responded to the changing technocultural context and
describes conceptual frameworks designed to assist with understanding these practices. The
chapter outlines modes of creative engagement that provide a guide to the range of musical
activities that a child can undertake. It explores contexts for meaning that highlight the value
of undertaking activities across private, social and cultural settings. In the final section
discusses four perspectives of a sound musicianshipsonic, psychological, embodied and
culturalthat define particular dimensions of a childs musicality and highlight the types of
skills and understandings that can be developed through their engagement with music.

Keywords
Music, sound, musicianship, engagement, education, meaning, creativity, psychology,
embodiment, culture, musical development.

Introduction
A child born today may well live to the end of the century. For these children, this century
the world presents a range of opportunities and challenges for music making. These include
the forces of globalization that increase access to a variety of musical heritages through
enhanced travel and the distribution of audiovisual materials over the internet. The efforts of
science continue to expand what we know about the physics of sound, the operation of the
musical mind, how to monitor our expressive bodily gestures and physiological responses.
Digital technologies allow us to amplify our musicality through new mobile devices and
apps, and social networking technologies enable fluid communication about music and how it
relates to our life and culture. Some of these trends have only become apparent in recent
decades, and there will certainly be more change ahead for todays young musician. As
Robinson (2009) reminds us,

Brown, A. R. (2015). Engaging in a sound musicianship. In G. McPherson (Ed.), The Child as Musician: A handbook
of Musical Development. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 208-220.

Children starting school this year [2009] will be retiring in 2070. No one has
any idea of what the world will look like in ten years time, let alone in 2070.
There are two major drivers of changetechnology and demography These
driving cultural and technological forces are producing profound shifts in the
world economies and increasing diversity and complexity in our daily lives,
and especially in those of young people. (pp. 17-19)
This chapter helps readers navigate these changes. It outlines modes of creative engagement
that provide a taxonomy of musical activities that a child can undertake. Second, it describes
contexts for meaning which highlight the value of creative activities when undertaken in
private, social and cultural settings. Third, four perspectives of a sound musicianshipthe
sonic, psychological, embodied and culturaloutline various dimensions of a childs
musicality and highlight the types of skills and understandings that can be developed through
meaningfully engaging with music.
These connections between technology and culture are deep and impossible to disentangle.
This is why the contemporary context can be described as a technoculture; the culture that
emerges from the impacts of mechanization and computation (Green 2002, Sangesa, 2011).
These various frameworks interlock to provide a robust foundation on which musical
practices can be understood in our current technocultural context.

Music and technoculture

Children in the developed countries today live in a technoculture. In a world saturated with
digital technologies where information and entertainment alike are largely mediated by
computing technologies. With touchscreen mobile devices for accessing the internet, children
can play games and make video calls to their grandparents. Access to these experiences is
often time limited and they are interspersed with more traditional and physical interactions.
But this does not reduce the significance or pervasiveness of digital experiences.
One effect of these technological interactions is increased access to media other than text.
Digital devices have microphones, cameras and gesture sensors. These allow the capture,
manipulation and transmission of multiple and integrated media forms; including drawings,
photos, videos, audio recordings, andof coursemusic. It is not that these media types did
not exist prior to the emergence of the technoculture, but resistance of analog media to
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Brown, A. R. (2015). Engaging in a sound musicianship. In G. McPherson (Ed.), The Child as Musician: A handbook
of Musical Development. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 208-220.

integration and transmission provided a degree of friction in earlier eras that moderated their
cultural influence.
Children today have tools that provide an increasing capacity for media creation. Easy and
inexpensive apps for mobile devices and expanding storage and sharing facilities play a part
in allowing the current generation of children to be more focused on generating content than
on consuming it. Moreover, as this content expands across media forms it is not dominated,
as in the past, by textural literacy as the means of expression. As Lessig (2008), the notable
lawyer and theorist of digital culture, notes: These other forms of creating are becoming an
increasingly dominant form of writing. The internet didnt make these other forms of
writing (what I will call simply media) significant. But the internet and digital
technologies opened these media up to the masses (p. 69). On a positive note, music is one
of the media that is elevated by digital infrastructure and it is already evident that the access
to music creation with digital tools is moving composition (music production) forwards from
being only a minority activity to being almost as accessible as performance and consumption.
An obvious challenge for the development of a child as musician in a technoculture is how to
incorporate digital literacy and competency into musical studies. It is also clear that the
impact of digital technologies will vary between musicians, like any other element. However,
there are a growing number of musicians for whom working with music technology is a core
skill. In particular for those musicians whose instrument is the computer and where the
creative workflow from conception to distribution is digital. Hugill (2012) has identified this
particularly contemporary form of practice as requiring a [d]igital musicianshipa different
kind of artistry [that] is largely a disembodied form of knowledge made evident through a
set of technical skills and critical judgments (p. 52).

And, as if the reforms of human creative activities werent enough to navigate through,
computing technologies can make their own claims on creative agency as a result of
automated and adaptive processes programmed into them. Presently these are not convincing
claims, but they may be important philosophically. Musical instruments have always
amplified human musicality, but smart digital music systems can enable new levels of
scaffolding for inexperienced musicians and provide creative leverage and collaborations for
the experienced. In the same way that a Google web search enhances a persons capacity for
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Brown, A. R. (2015). Engaging in a sound musicianship. In G. McPherson (Ed.), The Child as Musician: A handbook
of Musical Development. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 208-220.

research, so an interactive music system enhances a persons musical expression. Scholars

have highlighted a future life with intellectual prostheses of this kind for some decades
(Perkins 1993, Clarke, 2008). But, like a fish in water, these capabilities may simply be
second nature, perhaps invisible, to musicians of the future.
So what are some of the effects of the technoculture on the child as musician? One effect is
increasing diversity and complexity in available music, there is an expansion in the range
musical styles and genres that children are exposed to or can learn to master. Also expanding
is the range of methods for accessing musical experience and the varied contexts in which
music is encountered. In particular mobile and networked technologies provide an almost
endless variety of music to listen to and apps to make music with.
As the range of musical practices expands through internationalization and technological
development, new musical opportunities are opened up. These include access to musical
genres from all over the world with their particular traditions, instruments and sounds. They
include new musical practices enabled by technologies, such as DJing, chip tunes, glitch
music, live coding and more. While musical genres share many common elements, each
musical practice has its own ecosystem of knowledge and skills, its own definitions of quality
and virtuosity, and its own cultural habits and conventions. Add to these the rich history of
music making in the West, such as classical and popular musics, jazz and the 20th century
avant-garde that we are already familiar with, and the diversity is great indeed.
The expectations around musical experiences for 21st century children expanded well beyond
instrumental performance or concert attendance. Digital technologies have allowed them to
increasingly emphasize a broader range of tasks including creation and production,
distribution and promotion, and analysis and review. As music and other arts are framed as
part of the creative industries, the expectations for musicians to understand aspects of
business, law and economics intensify and there is greater recognition of music careers
beyond composing and performing. This trend is underscored by books on music careers like
those from Cann (2007), Beeching (2010), and DEith (2013).

Reframing musical experience

In the face of the challenges of an expanding array of musical experiences and expectations
driven by changes in technology and culture, the ways in which we think about engaging
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Brown, A. R. (2015). Engaging in a sound musicianship. In G. McPherson (Ed.), The Child as Musician: A handbook
of Musical Development. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 208-220.

with music are adapting. Robinson (2009) suggests that the key to managing this situation is
a shift focus from particular aspects of the field on to the childs interests and capability; to
create links with their aptitude and passion. While motivation and amplification of capacity is
certainly key to engagement and learning, I suggest, that this alone may be too abstract to
help reorient understanding of musical experience and development. To achieve this
reorientation, I suggest that we reframe our thinking about music around more generalized
descriptions of music activities, what I call modes of engagement, to help focus our
developmental efforts in a new direction, and to frame the selection and pruning of musical
experiences based on relevance and context.

Modes of creative engagement

Engagement involves immersion in a dynamic process of interpretation and action. The
modes of creative engagement outline different classes of creative behaviors. They are
articulated here as types of actions undertaken during creative practice. These modes have
been derived from studies of expert musicians (Brown, 2003) but have been shown to be a
useful guide to understanding childrens experiences (Hirch, 2011). A well-rounded musical
life includes all the modes of creative engagement and a broad range of developmental
activities should enable children to encounter them.
A child or adolescent can be engaged with music by:
Attending paying careful attention to creative works and analyzing their
representations
Evaluating judging aesthetic value and cultural appropriateness
Directing crafting creative outcomes and leading creative activities
Exploring searching through artistic possibilities
Embodying being engrossed in fluent creative expression
The order of the modes as listed does not imply a particular hierarchy, rather individuals can
encounter modes in any order and shift between modes during a single creative activity. It is
for pragmatic reasons that the modes are described as activities, this makes it straight forward
to talk about a child being engaged in a particular mode.
As well as being activities, these modes of engagement also relate to different
phenomenological experiences that include, or promote, varying degrees of intuitive and
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Brown, A. R. (2015). Engaging in a sound musicianship. In G. McPherson (Ed.), The Child as Musician: A handbook
of Musical Development. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 208-220.

analytic knowledgeand working styles (Spinoza et al., 1997). As a result, the modes of
engagement promote a broad range of musical experiences and understandings without being
tied to particular musical genres, repertoire or technologies.
As a phenomenological category engagement with creative activities has similarities to the
notion of flow. The state of flow is described by Csikszentmihalyi (1992) as one in which
people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; flow is a type of
optimal experience. This is clearly a high bar for any experience to aspire, and is certainly a
desirable target for a child engaged in music making. It also raises an important point
concerning the modes of engagement.
As the term is used here, engagement is measured by degree. Ranging from short periods of
attention and action through to the flow state and the mastery of a skill. Engagement is not
seen as a binary state where a child switches between being engaged or disengaged, but
rather engagement is viewed as a continuum which increases as a child is drawn further into
an experience and develops expertise. It follows, then, that it is possible to be simultaneously
engaged to varying extents in more than one mode. It is also common that within one task a
person switches between modes, perhaps quite frequently.
However, despite the fluidity and flexibility of these ways of engaging, most musical tasks
tend to favor one mode of engagement in particular. For example, listening to recorded music
is most likely to engage someone in attending, even though a listener may also be writing a
review which would lead them toward evaluating, or they may dance to the music or play
along with it that would lead them toward embodying.
These tendencies for correlations between activities and modes of engagement allow the
modes of engagement to be applied to activity planning and participatory experience. Taking
on board the suggestion, made earlier, that a well-rounded musical life involves access to
each of the modes of engagement, an activity plan or a review of a childs musical activities
can be interrogated to see the extent to which each of the modes of engagement are likely to
be, or have been, part of their experience. Modifications can then be made to musical tasks, if
required, to rebalance access to the modes of engagement.

Brown, A. R. (2015). Engaging in a sound musicianship. In G. McPherson (Ed.), The Child as Musician: A handbook
of Musical Development. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 208-220.

The Meaningful Engagement Matrix

Engagement with music can be experienced in different contexts. In particular the difference
between private and public contexts is seen to be significant and has been implicated the
development of personal identity (e.g., Ruud 1997, Connell & Gibson 2013). In his work on
meaning and music education, Steve Dillon (2001, 2007) highlighted three contexts and the
opportunities for meaning they provide.

Personal the intrinsic enjoyment of creative activities

Social the development of artistic relationships with others

Cultural the feeling that ones creative actions are valued by the community

The modes of engagement and contexts for meaning can be combined to form a meaningful
engagement matrix (MEM), as shown in figure 1. The matrix results in cells where modes of
engagement and contexts for meaning intersect. For example, conducting a choir rehearsal
provides meaningful engagement in the directing+social cell of the matrix. It creates an
opportunity for the conductor to exercise musical leadership, to feel a sense of
accomplishment at assisting others in their musical expression, and to develop friendships
with the members of the ensemble. A young child playing alone at home with a xylophone or
iPad music app can experience meaningful engagement in the exploring+person and the
embodying+personal cells of the matrix. The child can experience the pleasure of sound, they
can marvel at their ability to have agency in the world, and to develop coordination between
their physical actions and visual and sonic acuity.

Figure 1. The meaningful engagement matrix (MEM).

Brown, A. R. (2015). Engaging in a sound musicianship. In G. McPherson (Ed.), The Child as Musician: A handbook
of Musical Development. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 208-220.

The meaningful engagement matrix has the capacity to act as a visualization tool for
categorizing and examining musical practices. Activities or experiences can be plotted on the
matrix allowing areas of concentration or absence to become visible.
Just as musical activities can be seen to promote particular modes of engagement, so to they
can be classified according to the context in which meaning arises. As a demonstration of
this, figure 2 has a variety of music activities plotted on the MEM. The addition of contexts
for meaning as a second dimension helps to further differentiate musical activities (and their
associated experiences) to provide a useful map of experience that can help guide thinking
about a childs or adolescents musical life.

Figure 2. The MEM with exemplary musical activities in each cell.

For more detail about the notion of meaningful engagement and discussion of its basis in
philosophical and psychological literature see other publications by Brown and Dillon (Dillon
2001, Brown 2003, Dillon 2007, Brown & Dillon 2012, Brown 2014).

A sound musicianship
Along with rethinking the categories of activity that define childrens engagement with
music, it follows that our understanding of musicianship be broadened as well. During the
20th century the focus of musicianship was on the development of aural and notational skills
required by Western instrumental and vocal repertoire. Despite musicianship being narrowly
defined in some quarters, it has long been understood amongst musicians that the skills and
abilities required to be an active creative artist were many and varied. Musicianship,
understood more broadly, extends even beyond the actual practice of music making and

Brown, A. R. (2015). Engaging in a sound musicianship. In G. McPherson (Ed.), The Child as Musician: A handbook
of Musical Development. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 208-220.

appreciation to include interpersonal and entrepreneurial expertise that assists artists to

operationalize their talents within society. Around the turn of the century this socio-economic
perspective gathered momentum through the redefinition of the creative arts as the creative
industries (Caves, 2000). The positioning of music as part of the creative industries has had
its advocates and its skeptics. Because of this controversial history the concept of creative
industries could not be considered a broadly accepted framework suitable for the
contemporary reconceptualization of musicianship.
Our understanding of musicianship should evolve to accommodate changes in musical
practices arising from globalization and technology. A review is important because the way
we understand musicianship informs the way they guide the development of children as
musicians. Concepts of musicianship shape the kind and range of activities that are seen as a
valid part of a musical life and provide horizons and boundaries for the knowledge and
understandings that are considered necessary in being a musician.
I propose the concept of a sound musicianship that adopts a humanistic perspective on music
but also considers the broader physical and cultural contexts within which people make and
experience music. A sound musicianship does not limit itself to notational literacy that
decontextualized aural competencies, but embraces the broader demands of musical activities
relevant to the child or adolescent living in a technoculture. These demands include
developing skills and understanding that include sound making techniques, an understanding
of music perception and contextualized aural awareness, the acquisition of appropriate motor
skills for gestural expression, and awareness of the role of music in the community and ones
interrelatedness with others through music.
As a way of reframing our thinking about musicianship, four distinct perspectives will be
discussed; music & sound, music & cognition, music & the body, and music & cultural.
These perspectives respect the multi-dimensional nature of music and highlight important
aspects of the lived experience of musical experiences. Music is a sonic art form and,
therefore, understanding the characteristics of music as sound is fundamental to musical
awareness. Musicians employ both their cognitive and bodily capabilities to make and
experience music, therefore the psychological and embodied aspects of musicianship both
need attention. Music is, along with other art forms, a cultural expression. It has social and
community dimensions and there is an economy and an industry that surrounds it.
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Brown, A. R. (2015). Engaging in a sound musicianship. In G. McPherson (Ed.), The Child as Musician: A handbook
of Musical Development. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 208-220.

Appreciating and navigating these cultural considerations is a critical part of operating in the
world as a musician. In the sections that follow, each of these four perspectives on
musicianship will be examined in more detail.

Music and sound

Understanding music as sound involves exploring music from a scientific angle, particularly
in terms of understanding music as acoustical vibrations, audio recordings and digital
representations. Music and sound is also central to hearing and listening, although aural
training and awareness will be considered more fully from the perspective of cognition and
interpretation in a later section.
Musical acoustics is concerned with the motion of sound in physical materials and in the air.
The vibrations of acoustic instruments and voices produce sounds, organized and expressed
as music by musicians. Given the generality of these phenomena they form a critical aspect
of every persons musicianship. Being aware of how sounds are produced and how materials
effect sound production can assist musical expression. Principles of the physics of sound, in
particular the harmonic series and the temporal aspects of periodic motion, are fundamental
to understandings of timbre, pitch, harmony, pulse and meter that appear across all music
systems.
Musical sounds are heard and felt by musicians. Therefore, being aware of how hearing and
perception operate to filter and transform sound is useful. A reengagement with the purely
sonic within musical discourse was driven in the second half of the 20th century by
experiments in electronic music, experimental endeavors in composition by the likes of John
Cage and Pierre Schaeffer that focused on sound objects and their organization, and the
concerns about acoustic ecology and increasing awareness of the natural sound world lead by
R. Murray Shafer, Hildegard Westerkamp and others.
For over a century sound recording has transformed musical practices. The ability to store
and manipulate sound is fundamental to music making in a technoculture. A musicianship
training that includes sound recording practices would prepare children with technical,
aesthetic and industry skills. Increasingly sound recording and distribution processes are
digital. It follows that an awareness of how sound is stored as digital data and how this
enables transformation, replication and communication of music can assist musicians to
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Brown, A. R. (2015). Engaging in a sound musicianship. In G. McPherson (Ed.), The Child as Musician: A handbook
of Musical Development. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 208-220.

appreciate the possibilities and limitations of digital audio. For a musician engaging with
music expressed in digital form, fluency with these processes would be a critical part of their
musicianship. As Borgo (2012) points out, digital musicianship in the 21st century is more
than simply literacyrather, in an age where knowledge is expressed as data we are entering
an era of musical data virtuosos.
The skills of musicianship also relate to instrument making; whether or not those instruments
are acoustic, digital or both in combination. Instrument making is often included as part of a
childs musical experience as a way of encouraging them to play with sound and better
appreciate sound making devices. Often this aspect of musicianship is ignored in later music
education, only to come back into focus for those adults who regain an interest in instrument
design and construction. This need not be the case. There is good reason to continue
instrument-making practices as part of developing sound musicianship. It can continue to
underscore the relationship between technologies of sound making and the skills of
controlling them for musical expression. In a techoculture the opportunities to develop
software instruments and musical apps has re-energized instrument making, albeit in a new
way.

Music and cognition

Music occurs in the mind. It occurs through our interpretation of heard sounds and in our
imagination. We respond to music intellectually and emotionally. As well, we develop mental
models, or theories, of musical patterns and how musical practices and processes are
organized. All of these and more are subjects of a psychological perspective on musicianship.
In the past century, there have been significant developments in the study of human
cognition, and the psychology of music more specifically (Deutsch, 1999). It is now quite
clear what an important role the mind plays in understanding musical patterns and structures.
In more recent times neuroscience research has added to the data about how our mind
functions during musical activities. All this information can inform our appreciation of how
we are musical beings and about our musical tendencies, capacities and limits. This
knowledge can certainly inform definitions of musicianship and can assist in shaping the
ways we assist children to develop it.

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Brown, A. R. (2015). Engaging in a sound musicianship. In G. McPherson (Ed.), The Child as Musician: A handbook
of Musical Development. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 208-220.

Aural training and awareness has played, and will continue to play, a significant role in
musicianship. How a mind interprets the sound stimulus it receives is a complex and
marvelous phenomenon. Musicianship includes the ability to identify elements such as notes
and other sound objects, to stream these into coherent parts and voices, to chunk them over
time into phrases, riffs, and patterns, to identify subtle changes in timbre, pitch, volume and
location, and to aggregate of all this (and more) into an expressive and meaningful whole.
Aural training has traditionally included identification, memorization, transcription, and
theorization. There seems good reason to continue these activities as part of developing the
child as a musician, so long as the content is relevant to the childs musical interests or future
and the sonic materials are authentic and contextualized. In addition to aural awareness being
based in features of musical repertoire, these skills can be enhanced by carefully attending to
any sonic context. This was an important insight in the development of soundwalks and ear
cleaning exercises during the 1970s that emphasized how aural acuity should be exercised in
any place and at any time, not just in musical settings.
Emotional response to music and sounds is another important aspect of music and cognition,
as highlighted by Schubert and McPherson (this volume). According to Sloboda (1985),
musics emotional factor is transcultural. It seems unlikely that music could have
penetrated to the core of so many different cultures unless there were some fundamental
human attraction to organised sound which transcends cultural boundaries (p. 1). There are
two ways in which music and emotions are linked, and understanding the sometimes subtle
distinctions between them is important. Music can elicit emotions, and music can express
emotions. When music moves us it is eliciting emotions in us, and there can be a number of
reasons for this. These may have to do with considerations within the music, such as its
expressive nature or its impressive construction, or it may be a result of external associations
indicated by the lyrical content of a song, or triggering memories of events of people the
music reminds us of.
On the other hand, when we make a claim about music expressing emotions we usually mean
that music expresses sadness, happiness, exuberance, pensiveness or otherwiseeven if it
does not make us feel that way. Schubert and McPherson (this volume) attribute these
emotional impressions to a balancing of schematic and veridical processes that varies with
different stages of a childs musical development. Meaning that emotional reading of musical
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Brown, A. R. (2015). Engaging in a sound musicianship. In G. McPherson (Ed.), The Child as Musician: A handbook
of Musical Development. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 208-220.

stimulus may be due to sonic qualities, such as tempo or texture, that seem to align with
particular emotional states. Or it may be that the music has characteristics that have become
synonymous with an external referent, such as particular event, person or mood, with
associated emotive associations. These links tend to be personally or culturally bound.
Developing an understanding of how musics internal features and its external referents have
emotive effect is an important factor in a musician harnessing these for their expressive
potential.
The emotive power of music and of musical experiences also plays a role in the link between
music and wellbeing, and in therapeutic applications of music. These connections with
health, in particular metal health, also extend into the sociocultural aspects of music explored
in a later section.
Many more topics central to cognitive psychology are also relevant to musicianship. These
include interpretation, representation, memory, and learning. Music psychologists have
studied not only how we perceive music as sound, but how we represent and read it as
notation. Memory plays an important part in how our musical expectations arise, how we can
play or sing a tune without reference to a score, and how training memory through repetition
has a significant role in developing musicianship.
Some psychologists are quick to emphasize that the contemplation of representations in the
mind does not necessarily explain all our behavior (Brunswick, 1952, Gibson, 1966). Whilst
others caution that we are not simply cognitive beings, but rather our minds and body act
together to produce musical competency. In his book on situated cognition, Clancey (1997)
reminds us that:
All human action is at least partially improvisatory by direct coupling of
perceiving, conceiving, and movinga coordination mechanism unmediated
by descriptions of associations, laws or procedures. This mechanism
complements the inferential process of deliberation and planning that form the
backbone of theories of cognition based on manipulation of descriptions (p. 2)
With this in mind, the next section examines how human movement and gesture contribute to
the physicality of music making and experience.

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Brown, A. R. (2015). Engaging in a sound musicianship. In G. McPherson (Ed.), The Child as Musician: A handbook
of Musical Development. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 208-220.

Music and the body

From the embodied perspective, human movement and music are intertwined. This is clearly
evident in the way musical sounds are produced through physical gestures and how people
are compelled to move to music they hear or imagine. The most prominent example of
embodied musicianship is performance capability. However, musicianship can be expressed
in many ways, including thorough singing, tapping a pulse or rhythm, conducting an
ensemble, playing an instrument, or dancing to music. Performance gestures and motion
synchronization can be associated with many musical elements including pulse, pitch or
volume contour, emotive intensity, rise and fall of expectation or intensity, and so on.
In acknowledgement of the coupling of sound and motion, many music activities emphasize
participation through singing, playing, and moving. The developmental interaction between
mind and body is a deliberate part of many early childhood music programs, of music
education methods such as Dalcroze Eurhythmics, and of many community and therapeutic
music activities. Research, as well as experience, suggests that there is significant value in
gestural participation in music making for the development of embodied cognition, that
movement is a valid indicator of musical understanding, and that these tendencies transcend
cultural contexts (Davidson, 2012, Luck & Toiviainen, 2012).
The relationship between music and the body extends beyond the connection between
movement and sound. It relates to a sense of intuitive or embodied knowledge and
understanding. This is often developed through repeated action to the point where responses
become unconscious or automatic. Embodied musicality involves a tight interaction between
thought, action and environment. Competency emerges through processes of feedback and
adjustment during practice. Embodiment, when understood this way, is concerned with being
a musician. It emphasizes musicianship beyond competency and deliberate effort, but strives
for fluency and virtuosity.
With a focus on developing embodied expertise through repetition and reinforcement Davies
suggests (1998) that there are degrees of understanding which might be attained only
through years of hard work and there are kinds of music which yield their richest rewards
only to listeners so prepared (p. 80). This certainly seems true and reinforces the notion that
the development of musicianship is iterative and developmental. Its also certain that these

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Brown, A. R. (2015). Engaging in a sound musicianship. In G. McPherson (Ed.), The Child as Musician: A handbook
of Musical Development. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 208-220.

rewards will also be conferred to modes of engagement other than listening and to musical
genres other than the Western classical cannon that Davies focuses on.
A final aspect of embodiment that needs to be emphasized is that musicians are situated in an
environment. An awareness of the environment and the skill of interacting with that
environment to musical ends are important aspects of an embodied musicianship. An
environment may include natural or man-made structures. The ways in which musical
instruments are fashioned from pieces of wood and from electronic components are examples
of effective utilization of environmental resources. A situated view of embodiment can also
manifest itself in how sounds are positioned in space, either physically in the world or
through virtual positioning via loudspeakers. An embodied musicianship includes both an
awareness of the surround sound context and an ability to construct one as a creative act. One
musical practice where situated embodiment is particularly evident is eco-composinga
practice which emphasizes the design of musical experiences via the construction of sonic
ecologies and interactive environments (Keller, 2012). Typically eco-composition uses sound
recordings of the natural world and combines them with other materials in an immersive
soundscape experience.
Developing a childs embodied awareness of musical contexts is critical, but can extend
beyond the physical environment to include the socio-cultural environment. This perspective
of social and cultural competency is the topic of the next section.

Music and culture

Culture includes the social, political and economic context in which we make music (and do
everything else). It includes the accumulated ideas, customs and social behaviors of a
community. Musical culture includes previous musical actions, accumulated expertise and
innovations and a communitys musical conventions, wisdom and habits. Culture is both a
source of inspiration and an object of study for the child as musician. As they mature it can
become a foil against which to rebel in order to articulate an individual identity and make a
unique contribution thus influencing cultural evolution.
Understanding the cultural functions and roles that music serves in a community enhances
musicianship. Music can also be used to mediate and facility relationships between people in

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Brown, A. R. (2015). Engaging in a sound musicianship. In G. McPherson (Ed.), The Child as Musician: A handbook
of Musical Development. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 208-220.

a society. The culturally-aware musician understands why musical practices act to reinforce
or disrupt these social structures.
Music notation systems are a significant artifact of musical culture. They are used to record
and transmit music ideas and creations. Understanding these notations allows children to
access this history and participate in musical communities. There is a range of notational
literacies, each with a community with various geographic or stylistic traditions. There are
also many aural musical traditions, and the increased ubiquity of sound recording is playing a
role in preserving and sharing these traditions.
Another feature of musical culture is commentary and critique. In an age of pervasive social
media, there are more opportunities than ever for people to share ideas and opinions about the
music they encounter and about their music making activities. When formalized, these
conversations amount to music criticism. A sound musicianship should include the ability to
think critically and communicate articulately about ones own music and that of others.
One of the larger impacts of globalisation is increased access to musical cultures from around
the world. Migration and travel mean that these encounters may not only be with the artifacts
of those cultures but with the musicians making them. This increased access and the diversity
of multicultural communities presents ethical and educational challenges and opportunities.
Cultures are not only geographically defined, but also exist within particular demographic
and interest groups. Of particular interest, for readers of this volume, is the identification of
distinctive childrens and youth musical cultures with their own conventions, social relations
and sound (Emberly, 2012). This suggests that for the child as musician there exists
opportunities to not only learn the ways of musical cultures they encounter but to become
culture creators within their own peer group.
Another meeting place in which particular musical cultures can develop is the internet. The
online space enables a freeing up of geographic-centrality in cultural discussions and
supports the coming together of like-minded musicians and audiences. Online spaces have
become sites for music production and distribution, and these are often disruptive to
established production and business models as new technologies and evolving online
practices reshape musical practices. There is also an argument that online platforms promote
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Brown, A. R. (2015). Engaging in a sound musicianship. In G. McPherson (Ed.), The Child as Musician: A handbook
of Musical Development. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 208-220.

a participatory culture often called user-generated content, driven by the democratization of

music production through the use of digital media tools (Jenkins, 2009).
The cultural impacts of our technoculture are also felt in the dissolution of musics
boundaries as a disciplineparticularly its blending with visual media practices. The
interoperability of digital data between media forms and the convergence of media tools to a
singular computational platform has meant that previous cultural distinctions between art
forms have dissipated and new inter-media forms have emerged. As a result, the child today
might be less likely than in any previous generation in the Western world to see music as
separate from other art forms. This questions the very notion of musicianship as sonic
capability alone. Challenging us, again, to reconsider the range of skills and sensibilities that
might come together in a childs unique creative output.
Finally, cultures and societies include economic and organizational structures that support, or
suppress, musical activities. The recasting of the creative arts as the creative industries in the
early years of the 21st century drew this fact into sharp relief. As a result, the contemporary
musician is characterized not only as artist but also as entrepreneur. With this shift comes an
expansion of the definition of musicianship to explicitly include aspects of project
development and management, economics, marketing, law and career planning.

Musical Diversity and Identity

As we are well aware, musical features and functions can vary from one style to another and
differ between cultures (and within subcultures). As a result, there is not just one kind of
musicianship. The range and variety of skills and abilities involved can be as varied as are
musicians themselves. As well, each musical style has its own array of skills and knowledge,
habits and tools. Making decisions about which skills and knowledge are relevant to any
particular childs musicianship will depend on the particulars of their personal circumstances
and interests.
Allowing for diversity in the ways that a child can be a musician is quite consistent with
observations of the diversity of musicianship in experts. Marcus (2012) observed this
diversity in his investigation of musical expertise where he noticed enormous variations
between experts and in their expertise. Some could read music, many couldnt. Some could
play blisteringly fast, others not. Some had an encyclopedic knowledge of the history of the
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Brown, A. R. (2015). Engaging in a sound musicianship. In G. McPherson (Ed.), The Child as Musician: A handbook
of Musical Development. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 208-220.

music that preceded them, others only had an intuitive notion of the music they themselves
wanted to create (p. 161).
Allowing for diversity, however, is not the same as saying all sets of musical skills and
knowledge are of equal value. Rather, the benchmark for the utility of a set of musical skills
is a childs ability to operate effectively in a chosen musical context. There will be many
abilities and understandings that are shared between musical styles and roles, allowing for per
learning and for the transference of competencies from one musical domain to another. What
should be avoided, however, is the imposition of the competency values from one style or
culture onto musicians wishing to operate in another. This would be both unfair and
unproductive. As each child engages with meaningful musical activities they develop their
particular musicianship as a part of their individual identity.

Conclusion
The 21st century is well upon us and the globalised technoculture in which we find ourselves
calls for a re-examination of the musical life of todays child whose musical activities may
continue into the 22nd century. It is also timely that we take the opportunity to revisit the
frameworks that guide childrens music activities and our thinking about them. This chapter
presents several frameworks that may assist us to meet these challenges.
The modes of creative engagement outline the range of musical activities that a child can
undertake. The contexts for meaning highlight the value of these activities when undertaken
in private, social and cultural settings. The four perspectives of a sound musicianship outline
various perspectives on musicality and highlight the types of skills and understandings that a
child can developed through meaningful engagement with music.
The meaningful engagement matrix brings together the modes and contexts to provide a
conceptual landscape on which to map the childs musical activities. Doing so will assist to
better understand the extent of the childs musical experiences and highlight ways of
extending or rebalancing their musical lives.
The view of musicianship presented here is intentionally broad. It considers the sonic,
cognitive, embodied and cultural aspects of musicianship. The child as musician may develop
these skills and understandings through an equally broad range of musical activities and
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Brown, A. R. (2015). Engaging in a sound musicianship. In G. McPherson (Ed.), The Child as Musician: A handbook
of Musical Development. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 208-220.

experiences that cover different modes of engagement. However, each childs musical profile
will be a unique and personal one, which can arise by prioritizing aspects of musicianship
relevant to the childs cultural context and personal interests.

Reflective Questions
1. What are new opportunities and challenges faced by the child musician today
compared to previous generations?
2. How might you define the term technoculture?
3. What are activity descriptors for the five modes of engagement?
4. What are the three contexts for meaning that are part of the meaningful engagement
matrix?
5. How might your understanding of musical development be shaped through a
consideration of the four perspectives of a sound musicianship proposed in this
chapter?

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