Finding Voice : Developing Student Autonomy from Imitation to Performer Agency

This chapter explores how my own artistic research has informed my practice, not only as a musician, but also as a teacher in higher music education (HME). In my ongoing PhD project, I have investigated how a personal expression, or voice, emerges from a process initiated by transcription and imitation. I have used an analytical perspective, informed by embodied cognition, and built around the concepts of voice and affordance to try to clarify these processes. I have transcribed 13 albums by the iconic country harmonica player Charlie McCoy. Based on these transcriptions, I have analyzed McCoy’s playing style, notably charting his musical idiolect. From my analysis, I found a number of licks and strategies which he often employs. The licks are, I argue, important features of McCoy’s idiolect.
With McCoy’s licks as a point of departure, I have created my own variations of these. This method of deliberately transforming my voice is my way of finding out who I am, and who I want to be, as an artist. Starting with transcriptions gave me a view of the state of the art of country harmonica playing. The next phase of my PhD project has been to implement the knowledge I gained through artistic research, on my instrumental teaching in HME. In order to investigate this further, I have sought to initiate similar processes of formation of voice in my students. I have created a single subject course for harmonica students, where the aim is to explore the process of transcription leading to a formation of an original, unique voice. In the chapter I will present examples from my own artistic study, as well as examples from my study with my harmonica students in HME.