Autoethnography. That is the term used to describe the researching method as outlined in the title. Breaking the words apart, auto = personal experiences, ethno = cultural experiences, and graphy = an approach to research and writing that seeks to describe and systematically analyse.[i]

Those who are doing a doctorate in music performance would probably sympathise with my foiling with the word: it is understood as one involving themselves and their performing skills into the research inquiry, but how? What is there to be done? This blog will look at some of the forms of autoethnography, and see how these can be applied to all different types of music research, whether that be performances, composition, or music and cultural history.

Just briefly, how autoethnography as a method came to be was a reaction to challenge and response to canonical ideas about what research is and how they should be done.[ii] Autoethnographers aims to provide alternative perspectives into looking at wider issues relating to identity, culture, society, and politics, offering stories rather than theories, and unheard voices rather than selectively told trajectories. Thus, this is a good reminder that the forms of autoethnography differs from project to project depending on how much emphasis one places on the study of others (whether that be people or materialistic sources), and how much emphasis is placed on ourselves and our interaction with others.

There are many forms of autoethnography, and an extensive read about these can be found in the article ‘Autoethnography: An Overview’ by Caroyln Ellis, Tony E. Adams & Arthur P. Bochner.[iii] Here I outline three types and brainstorm on situations in which these could be performed in music research.

1. Reflexivity, a deep reflection on both one’s unique experiences and the universal within oneself.[iv] Reflexive ethnographies is a documenting a change over time of how a researcher doing the research. Suppose your research enquiry is about finding solutions to reduce hand injuries, and one of your case studies is on learning to play Liszt’s La campanella. Applying reflexivity means to document the learning process. This could involve video-recording, taking notes of where and what the challenges are, and the kinds of strategies you exploited to overcome those challenges. After weeks of practice, you record your performances of the piece, on different pianos, maybe. Essentially it is writing down what we do intuitively as musicians and the efforts we put behind-the-scenes. Note: the researcher and the musician exists as two separate entities: the musician does their own thing, and the researcher observes and analyses.
2. It is hard, and I would say impossible to completely obviate the researcher identity when being the musician, and vice versa. Often, one’s experience includes a recounting of learnt and processed data, and this aligns closer to the concept of Layered accounts. In layered account researchers enter into the state of ‘emergent experience’ of doing and writing research. Back to La campanella. Suppose that whilst you were learning the piece on the piano, you came across this diary belonging to a pupil of Liszt, which had some advice about how you can play the jumping leaps in the right hand. You tried it, liked some of it, and adapted it. So, the research process in Layered accounts includes reflexivity amongst reacting to other sources gathered.     
3. The third type, which I have done little of in my doctoral project but am aiming to do more in research to come is interactive interviews. Interactive interviews provide an “in-depth and intimate understanding of people’s experiences with emotionally charged and sensitive topics”.[v] It is very similar to what one would do if they are interviewing participants, except there is a collaborative element to it, a conversation, a relationship building, an interaction. Say that you get to have a few lessons with an accomplished pianist who played the world’s fastest La Campanella. You explore a few passages together to find solutions to overcome challenges in fingering and wrist motions, and discuss how these changes could have short and long-term effects on repetitive strain injuries. Ok, that might not be the best example to demonstrate my point, as the topic in discussion would not have been too emotionally charged or sensitive. But you can begin to see how this kind of approach is really useful if you were invested in a music-therapy or psychology topic.

We are coming to the end of today’s post and I have not even talked about the validity of doing autoethnography. Auto-ethnographic results may be insightful, but can it really be measured against and be used to make critical arguments if the evidence themselves are concreted on personal experiences and beliefs? I agree that autoethnographic methods alone will not satisfy the criteria of academic research, and plenty of music research do without autoethnography. Yet consider this, if musicians are choosing to be silent about their own practical and musicianship skills in academic research, who will make them heard?

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[i] Ellis, C. (2004). The ethnographic I: A methodological novel about autoethnography. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press

[ii] Spry, Tami (2001). Performing autoethnography: An embodied methodological praxis. Qualitative Inquiry, 7(6), 706-732

[iii] Ellis, C., Adams, T. E., & Bochner, A. P. (2011). Autoethnography: An Overview. Historical Social Research / Historische Sozialforschung, 36: 4(138), 273–290. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23032294

[iv] Adams. T, 2014, Autoethnography (Understanding Qualitative Research). Oxford: Oxford University Press

[v] Ellis, C.; Kiesinger, Christine E. & Tillmann-Healy, L. M (1997). ‘Interactive interviewing: Talking about emotional experience’. In Rosanna Hertz (Ed.), Reflexivity and voice (pp.119-149). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 121

Further readings:

Hackett, P. M. W., Schwarzenbach, J. B., & Jürgens, U. M. (2016). Autoethnography. In Consumer Psychology: A Study Guide to Qualitative Research Methods (1st ed., pp. 87–90). Verlag Barbara Budrich. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvddzsrf.19

Poulos. C, 2021, Essentials of Autoethnography. American Psychological Association

Wyatt, J. (2017). On a Mission: A Manifesto for Autoethnography. International Review of Qualitative Research, 10: 1, 81–84. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26372242