Faculty of Education - Theses

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"A terrible honesty": the development of a personal voice in musical improvisation

McMillan, Rosalind ( 1996-06)

Australia mostly with a focus on the performance of African-American music or jazz. In this majority of these the emphasis is on the performance of those styles which were conceived and developed up to the end of the 1950s and the beginning of the free jazz era. However, there is one course which, although it is rooted in African-American music, promulgates the notion that Australian students in the 1990s should endeavour to develop a personal musical “voice”. This is Improvisation Studies, a three year degree program at the Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne, Australia. This study sought to clarify what was meant by a personal voice by monitoring the development of selected students. Given that the notion of a personal voice as an outcome is a novel one, the study adopted an investigatory discovery-based approach. This required intensive study of selected students on the grounds that the development of a personal voice manifests itself in different ways. A second major purpose of the study was to investigate factors which affected the development of the personal voice. Key factors included the ways in which the VCA course encouraged the development of this voice, as well as the characteristics that students brought to the course and which possibly reflected their musical educational background.