The Social Life of Tunes: Representing the Aesthetics of Reception

Abstract

I report on two years of participant observation of traditional musicians in Dublin, Ireland. In Irish traditional music, players from all walks of life gather at pub sessions to play tunes together. Due to the ethos of traditional music, the representation of tunes is a constant aesthetic concern. Drawing on the aesthetics of reception, I show how arriving at the proper ''text'' of a tune poses unique challenges. Rather than simply reading notes on sheet music, traditional musicians must imaginatively read the creative text on a ''virtual space'' to create art. Making music involves a nuanced process of learning, knowing, and retaining a tune. The tune is not a static entity but one dynamically shaped by its social context and provenance. The social life of tunes suggests that technologies ought to support the practice of practicing seamlessly across the performance-oriented session and the solitary pursuit of skill, while allowing novices a way to conceptualize the historical flexibility of the tune. I will outline a new agenda of surveilling tradition to represent the aesthetics of reception. With the burgeoning interest in the collaborative work of tradition, this work provides new perspectives into the creative processes involved in representation.

TuneTracker

“…TuneTracker is motivated by a two year ethnography of trad musicians in Ireland examining the role of technology in learning the tradition [21]. That field work showed that a common barrier today's amateur musician faces is a misunderstanding of how one ought to properly find and integrate various representations of a tune [17].…”

“…Perhaps the most passioned responses came from musicians who believed that TuneTracker would engender a new kind of amateur player, one who disregards the process of traditional music [21]. Without generalizing, professionals expected that amateurs would not see TuneTracker as a tool, but as a substitute or shortcut to becoming a traditional musician.…”

“…In fact, as past work attests, music playing in an Irish session is tightly structured and follows a strict moral order [6,2]. In the past, sessions were a rich training ground for budding musicians to learn the tradition-the practice of listening, playing, and sharing tunes with each other [21]. Seasoned traditional musicians regard sessions not only as places for performance, but as loci for active practice.…”

“…Request permissions from permissions@acm.org. and social [21]. Tunes aren't just about the notes but about one's relationship with people, places, and events.…”

“…On the other hand, such artifacts may threaten the ethos of traditional music. In this paper, drawing from a two-year ethnography in Ireland [21], we describe our attempt to balance these two concerns in creating and deploying a system called TuneTracker. This paper makes two contributions:…”