While the concept of affordances has been applied in music research, it has not been satisfyingly developed regarding musical instruments. The resulting vagueness restricts the potential of the concept to guide exploration, discussion, and development of new approaches towards musical learning. Also, the concept of affordances comes with strong ontological claims and thus prompts the researcher to be careful when merging it with other theoretical domains or applying it in empirical studies. Consequently, the present article aims at contributing to a conceptualization of affordances of musical instruments by highlighting and discussing components that are necessary to consider in such a project. The first part consists of an overview of key elements of ecological psychology and more recent theoretical contributions, which are of relevance to the aim of the article: Material Engagement Theory, Skilled Intentionality Framework, and Sensorimotor Contingency Theory. A brief review of examples on how the concept of affordances has been applied in music research is presented. The main section of the article discusses four components, vital to further theoretical developments on affordances of musical instruments: the musical niche, spatial networks, sensorimotor relationship, and the amodal nature of affordances. Central to the argument is an understanding of affordances as relational, limited in scope and bound up with the physical interaction between musician and instrument. Accordingly, it is proposed that analytical focus in studies of musical instruments should be the sensorimotor relationship, spatiotemporally unfolding through a musical event. The article is concluded with comments upon educational implications of the presented perspective and suggestions on further research on the topic.

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The present article explores meaning in relation to musical learning. One starting point is the assumption that a meaningful music education is strongly related to the social domain of music-making. The aim of this article is to provide analytical tools to understand how meaning is negotiated within instrumental music tuition. Our interest lies in formal higher music education, an arena where the social dimension tends to be rather obscure, in contrast to the genre of Swedish folk music, which is our empirical context. There is a strong case for revaluing the social dimension in the study and creation of a meaningful music education. In line with this, our analytical framework draws primarily upon theories of situated cognition, situated learning, and communities of practice. In particular, our analytical focus is negotiations of meaning, which are understood as constituted by two reciprocal processes of participation and reification. Meaning negotiation can be defined as a process that is incomplete, ongoing, and open-ended. Since negotiations of meaning refer to a larger picture, they become a useful point of interest in understanding the dynamics between a single learning situation, the educational framing, and the wider musical world of the learner. We exemplify how this analytical perspective can be applied by referring to our ongoing research project, which investigates trajectories of learning within different communities of Swedish folk music. We focus on two analytical nodes that have bearing across the communities and serve as locus points for ongoing meaning negotiations: (i) the identity of spelman and (ii) the approach to notation. With these two examples, we hope to show the potential of the framework. We also present methodological considerations that come from applying the proposed analytical tools in our study. Using an ethnographic approach, we lean toward the ideas of “messy research,” musical research sensibilities, and stepwise-deductive induction. In the final section of the article, we elaborate on the educational implications that follow from a perspective that takes meaning as its point of departure.

Stefan Östersjös bok Listening to the Other analyserar vad som karaktäriserar musikers lyssnande. Diskussionen drivs framåt av en rad konstnärliga projekt. Dessa finns presenterade i form av filmklipp vilka utgör en lika betydelsefull del av publikationen som själva texten.Jag läser boken som en del i ett pågående perspektivskifte gällande förståelsen av musikaliskt skapande. I mitten av 1980-talet skrev musiketnologen John Baily ett bokkapitel i vilket han påpekar att västvärlden sitter fast i uppfattningen att musik enbart är en ljudande konstform. Denna uppfattning, menar Baily, beslöjar stora delar av det komplexa fenomen som musikaliskt skapande utgör. Baily (1985) sökte nya perspektiv genom att sätta sig in i andra musikaliska traditioner än den västerländska konstmusiken. Detsamma kan sägas om Östersjös arbete. Bokens första kapitel introducerar läsaren till författarens musikaliska värld. Texten rör