The practical training of contemporary popular musicians, that is, the preparation of performers, songwriters, and music production personnel for the global popular music industry, is still in its infancy. This article seeks to discuss the specific issue of what musicianship skills should be taught, by interrogating the perceptions of a cohort of students studying for the Bachelor of Contemporary Music degree at Southern Cross University in Australia. Determining appropriate musicianship training programs for musicians in popular music is problematic because of the wide range of genres and professional practices involved in the field. Thus it seems to make good sense to tease out what music students themselves think about their support training needs. This small-scale study of 43 students in the first and second year of their degree shows that performance, composition and music production students have different musicianship-skill learning priorities.

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The Music Archive for the Pacific has been established at Southern Cross University in Lismore, New South Wales, Australia, through the generous donation by Malcolm Philpott of approximately three hundred commercial recordings of mainly contemporary Papua New Guinean music, and other related printed materials.