how to write a music research paper

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Researching Music & Musicians

• Getting Started

Understand Your Assignment

Create some research questions to guide your inquiry, brainstorm search terms.

• Know Your Sources
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The content of your paper is dictated by your professor's assignment prompt. Read it carefully, as following the guidelines laid out by your professor is crucial to your success. If the assignment prompt confuses you, consider attending your professor's office hour or emailing them for clarification.  MJC research librarians are happy to help you understand the guidelines laid out in your assignment.

Check out these useful links providing guidance and tips for students tasked with writing about music. These links are meant to serve as a supplement to your professor's assignment prompt and the material in this guide.

• Writing About Music From the Hunter College in New York

Research questions will keep you focused and on task. Sometimes your professor will include specific questions they want addressed within the prompt.  A research librarian can also help you develop questions based on the parameters of the assignment. Below are some generic questions that can help you get started.

• What biographical/historical  information is important to understanding your composer?
• What or who were the musical influences for your composer?
• What education & training did your composer receive?
• What are your composer’s  major works ?
• What is the most significant contribution of  your composer? Why?
• Did  your composer’s music change over time? How? Why?
• What specific musical elements does  composer incorporate into their work? To what effect?
• What styles/themes does  your composer explore?
• What other musicians have been influenced by  your composer

Below are some basic search terms that work well in our databases. A research librarian can also help you identify additional terms supporting your specific assignment.

Music -- History and criticism

Classical music

Music appreciation

Music theory

World music 

Composers and Women Composers

music - Combine this subject term with names of specific artistic movements, geographic regions, time periods, etc. (for example: Rap Music  or Music, Africa)

names of specific composers/musicians 

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Doing Research in Music: Home

• 1. Getting Started
• 2. Preliminary Search
• 3. Determining Research Questions
• 4. Gathering Sources
• 5. Writing & Citing

A step by step guide for writing a research paper in music. 

Use the tabs to the left to get started! 

For the general Music Library Guide, click here: Music Subject Guide

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• Last Updated: Mar 13, 2024 1:38 PM
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Resources for Music History Students

Time to study for that exam time to write a term paper here are some tips to start..

Using words to describe music is not simple, but nothing is more useful in the struggle to understand what we do as musicians.

View full PDF

You're listening to a piece of music and an idea strikes you. You have a question and need to find an answer. Or your professor has assigned a paper. Here's how to start.

In assembling library materials for projects, make sure you can distinguish primary and secondary sources.

Have you ever felt so prepared to write a paper that you're over -prepared?

It's time to insert your own voice into the ongoing conversation about the music that interests you most.

Citations give credit to the people whose work you are using. They also make your own train of thought clear and transparent.

I feel very lucky to have access to the Blumenthal Library, which has an enormous collection and resources for research that a musicology major could only dream of.

Music Composition Techniques and Resources

The following information on music composition techniques is excerpted from Eric Gould ’s Berklee Online course Creative Strategies for Composition Beyond Style .

As a composer, you will find that musical ideas come in various forms. You may be in the car and a rhythm might come to you. A snippet of a melody might occur to you while walking to the laundromat, or you may discover a chord or progression that you like and want to develop further. Any of these starting points can be the beginning of a highly evolved music composition.

Here we will discuss various music composition techniques and resources that will help you get started as you write your own piece of music. 

How to Start a Music Composition

When you’re starting out with a blank piece of staff paper, there are infinite directions that you can go in. This is why you’ll want to begin with some parameters to narrow down those possibilities. Whatever your starting idea is, you’ll have several aspects to consider before embarking on your music composition. Some of the considerations are practical in nature and some are purely aesthetic, but having a grasp on the key issues from the beginning helps ensure the success of a project. 

Let’s establish the things you should consider when kicking off a piece of music:

Why Are You Writing This Piece?

Having a purpose to do a project is one of the best ways to get you to sit in the chair and do the work. It also defines what you’re trying to accomplish musically. Think about how many great pieces of music are about some person, event, or story. When you have a motivating factor, it tends to lend musical clarity as well.

Ask yourself, what is the motivation for writing this piece of music? Is it…

• for your next recording?
• to commemorate something or an event?
• for a tribute?
• for a competition?
• as an exercise or etude?

Understanding how to use a template for the drafting phase can greatly enhance the compositional process. Templates allow you to get to the creative ideas faster by eliminating the steps involved in setting up a score just to record your ideas, and by helping to refine a method for getting to those creative ideas.

Here are three types of music composition templates:

Lead sheets.

• Two staves, with the melody on the top staff
• Harmony and rhythm on the bottom

Small Ensemble

• Three staves
• Horn voicings, or words and melodies on the top staff
• Rhythm section and bass lines on the bottom staves
• If voice and horns, you can use the bottom staves as a lead-sheet sketch

Large Ensemble

• Two grand staffs
• Allows for overlapping voicings or bass lines

Music Composition Software

Software templates are extremely helpful because, with a few clicks in a good software package, you can use the materials from your sketch directly in a score that you can build from the same file. Software templates also allow for easier editing, and allow you to take extensive notes on your piece or sketch as it evolves. Erasing the notes is as easy as selecting and deleting.

Sibelius and Finale

Sibelius and Finale are the two major music composition software programs, and Berklee Online offers courses that will give you thorough instruction on how to use them. 

• Music Notation and Score Preparation using Sibelius Ultimate
• Music Notation and Score Preparation Using Finale

Berklee Online also has courses that will teach you how to use digital audio workstations (DAWs) such as Ableton Live , Pro Tools , Reason , Logic , and Cubase .  

What is the Instrumentation?

Sometimes instrumentation is a practical consideration, and the piece of music is simply adapted to the resources and expertise available to the composer. Many times, however, the decision about instrumentation is part of the aesthetic of the piece. You may want to write a tune for your band to perform. Perhaps a string quartet has asked you to write a piece of music. Maybe a vocalist just wants a tune to add to their repertoire, and all you need to create is a lead sheet. Somewhere down the road, you may get an opportunity to write for a big band or full orchestra.

If you’re an inexperienced composer, you should start off writing for smaller ensembles, and then expand upon the arrangement. For example, you can go from a lead sheet to a quintet arrangement, to an octet, and then to a big band, building upon what you have at each step.

What Key or Tonal Center Will You Start in?  

This decision can be influenced by many factors, including the instruments for which you’re writing.

How Long is the Piece?

Will your piece be a tune, a short arrangement, or an extended composition? You don’t want to start your composing career with a 30-minute-long masterwork. Build toward longer works by first coming up with a good melody, adding an intro and a coda, and then extending the piece. Many times, the length will be dictated by practical constraints like radio airplay, concert length, or budget.

What is the Form?

Defining the form of the music composition beforehand will help you to write the piece. If you know that you’re going to have an intro, bridge, and coda, you will approach the other sections in a way that will prepare for their incorporation into this larger framework. Planning the form in advance of the composition will also help you in deciding the character of the piece, as you will have to think about what will distinguish one section from another.

How will the Harmonic Rhythm Move? Statically or Modally? Are they:

• Long durations (more than one bar)?
• Short durations (one bar or less)?
• All of the above?

What do you want the character of the piece to be?

• Jagged and edgy?
• Traditional?
• Something else?

Do You Have a Time Signature in Mind?

If a song is a waltz, you would write it in 3/4. Funk and dance rhythms are most often in 4/4 time. Afro-Cuban rhythms are typically 6/8, 12/8, or 4/4. Any combination of beats per measure is possible. With compound meters (e.g., 7/8, 7/4, 9/8, etc.) the potential for complexity increases, and this can create a feeling of tension, but these time signatures can be very engaging. The bottom line is whether or not it sounds good!

Harmonic Rhythm

If you’re employing static or modal harmony, choose a chord or two that captures the character of what you’re trying to convey. If it’s a chord progression, decide what the duration of the chords (harmonic rhythm) will be.

Melodic Character

Sing or imagine a few beats that capture the character of what you’re trying to convey. Don’t worry about coming up with the perfect notes, and don’t try to write a piece—just come up with a fragment that has character, understanding that you can adjust it later.

In building the skill required to start from various points, limiting your options allows you to focus more on the process itself. You can transfer what you learned to a larger set of options as you grow. Like any other skill, compositional skills are cumulative—each thing you learn will prepare you for another set of challenges. Also, like any other skill, solid fundamentals are essential to sustained growth.

While this doesn’t mean feeding your musical fragment into your favorite sequencing software, the concept is very much the same. Sequencing involves repeating an idea with some sort of variation, most commonly involving pitch. The most common type of sequence involves simple transposition of the fragment to various starting points either in the key or tonal center or outside of it. If the transpositions occur within the confines of a key, then you will most likely need to change the intervallic relationship of the notes while retaining the basic shape.

Augmentation and Diminution

The value of a rhythmic element or an interval can be either increased (augmented) or decreased (diminished) upon repetition to create a variation. This is another widely used compositional device.

Pitch Augmentation (widening) and Pitch Diminution (contracting)

Likewise, you can widen the intervals within a melodic fragment, creating a sense of drama in the music while varying only one element.

Varied Harmonic Rhythm

One of the most common places for the harmonic rhythm to increase is in cadential passages. Increasing the frequency of harmonic change creates a sense of excitement and anticipation. Likewise, slowing down the harmonic momentum creates a sense of reflection, allowing the composer and listener to dig more deeply into the harmony of the moment. 

I hope you find these music composition techniques helpful as you begin your piece. Keep in mind that there is so much more to learn in my 12-week Berklee Online course, Creative Strategies for Composition Beyond Style . Below I’ve included some resources to help you continue to learn music composition, including music composition books and more music composition courses from Berklee Online.

Music Composition Books

If you want to know how to learn music composition on your own, music composition books are a great place to start. Berklee Press has published several music composition books that will help you learn the basics of music notation. Here are a few music composition books from Berklee Press to check out:

• Music Notation: Preparing Scores and Parts
• Finale: An Easy Guide to Music Notation
• Berklee Contemporary Music Notation

Discover more music composition books from Berklee Press

Music Composition Courses

Berklee Online has more than a dozen music composition courses that will help you take your skills to the next level, all while composing professional work. You can also earn a professional certificate in Music Theory and Composition. Check out the following music composition courses:

• Contemporary Techniques in Music Composition 1
• Jazz Composition
• Music Composition for Film and TV 1
• Music Theory and Composition 1
• World Music Composition Styles

EARN A PROFESSIONAL CERTIFICATE IN MUSIC THEORY AND COMPOSITION

Related Articles

Berklee is accredited by the New England Commission of Higher Education "NECHE" (formerly NEASC).

Berklee Online is a University Professional and Continuing Education Association (UPCEA) award-winner fourteen years in a row (2005-2019).

25 Most Popular Music Research Paper Topics for Writing

Research papers aren't just for history class or the social sciences. Research papers can be assigned in any course, and that includes music class. The world's musical traditions are fertile ground for research, but because we have been conditioned from childhood to think of music as entertainment rather than a subject for academic research, it is often difficult to come up with interesting and effective topics for a music research paper. Fortunately, music research papers are often more fun to write than other types of research paper because they have such a wide range of interesting topics to explore. 

Choose from these stellar popular music research paper topics

Are you stuck looking for a music research topic? Well, you're in luck. We have twenty-five music research paper topics that will spark your creativity and get you started with your next paper. You can pick up one from this list, you can combine several of them, or maybe you will get inspired by this list and come with several topics on your own. In any case, make sure that the popular music topic for your research paper is interesting to you personally, and doesn't just sound potentially easy to write about. 

1. How is music marketed by demographic? Explore the different ways music companies target various demographic groups such as age and gender. 2. How does the categorization of music affect consumer purchasing decisions? Examine how the emphasis on genre either enhances sales or limits consumer interest. 3. Does the album have a future in the streaming era? Consider whether the album can survive in an era when singles are streamed in customized playlists. 4. How has music changed over the past half century? Explore some of the major themes and developments that have shaped popular music since the dawn of the rock-n-roll era. 5. Research the most influential musicians of a specific era. By comparing and contrasting the careers of key figures from a particular era, you can pain a picture of a moment in time. 6. What makes music "classical"? How we define "classical" music says a lot about power and privilege. Explore who decides and what criteria get used. 7. Does music have an impact on our bodies? Research medical evidence whether music can impact human health. 8. Does music have an impact on our mental health? Examine research on the use of music for mental health and therapeutic purposes. 9. Music and children: Is the Mozart effect real? How can music education impact children's academic and social development? 10. Can music education aid in memory training and memory development? Consider the current academic research and evaluate the validity of claims for music as a memory aid. 11. How does music impact dance? Music and dance are inextricably linked. Look at some of the ways that music impacts the development of dance. 12. How does a musician become successful? Examine key routes to success and what a music student can do to set themselves up for a career. 13. What other careers does a music degree prepare a student for? Research how music degrees can set the stage for careers beyond the music industry. 14. How does music impact fashion? Look at how rock-n-roll and hip hop have shaped fashion trends. 15. How is music used in advertising? Look into the reasons that artists are licensing hit singles to sell products and how that impacts consumers' views of music. 16. Classical music vs. rock-n-roll: Which has been more influential? Examine the arguments for both sides and take a position. 17. Look into the sociology of tribute bands and consider the reasons that people would dedicate their lives to imitating other musicians. 18. It is often said that "music soothes the savage beast," and farmers often use music to calm livestock. Is there truth to the notion that music has a positive impact on animals?  Explore the research and draw conclusions.

19. Music has been an important part of war throughout history, both martial music meant to rally the troops and anti-war songs. Examine the role of music in supporting and opposing war. 20. Music vs. poetry: Can song lyrics be considered a form of poetry? Why or why not? 21. How does hip-hop support African American culture and heritage? 22. Is there a problem with the close association of country music with political conservatism? 23. Select your favorite piece of music and research the influences that played a role in its creation and development. 24. Research the processes that archaeologists have used to reconstruct the sound of ancient music. 25. How do covers transform songs? Explore how covers are created now meaning.

After choosing the topic you like the most, save this list or this page to bookmarks for further references. It is good to have a library of resources at your fingertips.

Let experts rock when you are stuck

If these topics aren't enough to get you started, there is another trick to help you succeed. You can always find someone to help you with your research paper. You can contact a paper writing service online like WriteMyPaperHub and ask a professional essay writer, "Can I pay you to write my paper like an expert?" Once you do, a writer will determine what you need for your project and will begin writing a high-quality music research paper that will address your essay topic quickly, effectively, and with exceptional research and writing. You should feel free to take advantage of services like this whenever you get stuck so you can be successful with each and every music research paper.

Learning from the best and the brightest is more than beneficial. You have an opportunity to see how professional writers elaborate on a particular topic, which references they use, how they structure the whole thing. One ordered paper can be an example for your further works for months. Also, it is proven that students these days are overwhelmed with the number of assignments, and due to continuous lockdowns and limitations have less access to libraries and other necessary resources. If you feel like the pressure is too high, don't hesitate to delegate this assignment.

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• Research paper

How to Write a Research Paper | A Beginner's Guide

A research paper is a piece of academic writing that provides analysis, interpretation, and argument based on in-depth independent research.

Research papers are similar to academic essays , but they are usually longer and more detailed assignments, designed to assess not only your writing skills but also your skills in scholarly research. Writing a research paper requires you to demonstrate a strong knowledge of your topic, engage with a variety of sources, and make an original contribution to the debate.

This step-by-step guide takes you through the entire writing process, from understanding your assignment to proofreading your final draft.

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Table of contents

Understand the assignment, choose a research paper topic, conduct preliminary research, develop a thesis statement, create a research paper outline, write a first draft of the research paper, write the introduction, write a compelling body of text, write the conclusion, the second draft, the revision process, research paper checklist, free lecture slides.

Completing a research paper successfully means accomplishing the specific tasks set out for you. Before you start, make sure you thoroughly understanding the assignment task sheet:

• Read it carefully, looking for anything confusing you might need to clarify with your professor.
• Identify the assignment goal, deadline, length specifications, formatting, and submission method.
• Make a bulleted list of the key points, then go back and cross completed items off as you’re writing.

Carefully consider your timeframe and word limit: be realistic, and plan enough time to research, write, and edit.

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There are many ways to generate an idea for a research paper, from brainstorming with pen and paper to talking it through with a fellow student or professor.

You can try free writing, which involves taking a broad topic and writing continuously for two or three minutes to identify absolutely anything relevant that could be interesting.

You can also gain inspiration from other research. The discussion or recommendations sections of research papers often include ideas for other specific topics that require further examination.

Once you have a broad subject area, narrow it down to choose a topic that interests you, m eets the criteria of your assignment, and i s possible to research. Aim for ideas that are both original and specific:

• A paper following the chronology of World War II would not be original or specific enough.
• A paper on the experience of Danish citizens living close to the German border during World War II would be specific and could be original enough.

Note any discussions that seem important to the topic, and try to find an issue that you can focus your paper around. Use a variety of sources , including journals, books, and reliable websites, to ensure you do not miss anything glaring.

Do not only verify the ideas you have in mind, but look for sources that contradict your point of view.

• Is there anything people seem to overlook in the sources you research?
• Are there any heated debates you can address?
• Do you have a unique take on your topic?
• Have there been some recent developments that build on the extant research?

In this stage, you might find it helpful to formulate some research questions to help guide you. To write research questions, try to finish the following sentence: “I want to know how/what/why…”

A thesis statement is a statement of your central argument — it establishes the purpose and position of your paper. If you started with a research question, the thesis statement should answer it. It should also show what evidence and reasoning you’ll use to support that answer.

The thesis statement should be concise, contentious, and coherent. That means it should briefly summarize your argument in a sentence or two, make a claim that requires further evidence or analysis, and make a coherent point that relates to every part of the paper.

You will probably revise and refine the thesis statement as you do more research, but it can serve as a guide throughout the writing process. Every paragraph should aim to support and develop this central claim.

A research paper outline is essentially a list of the key topics, arguments, and evidence you want to include, divided into sections with headings so that you know roughly what the paper will look like before you start writing.

A structure outline can help make the writing process much more efficient, so it’s worth dedicating some time to create one.

Your first draft won’t be perfect — you can polish later on. Your priorities at this stage are as follows:

• Maintaining forward momentum — write now, perfect later.
• Paying attention to clear organization and logical ordering of paragraphs and sentences, which will help when you come to the second draft.
• Expressing your ideas as clearly as possible, so you know what you were trying to say when you come back to the text.

You do not need to start by writing the introduction. Begin where it feels most natural for you — some prefer to finish the most difficult sections first, while others choose to start with the easiest part. If you created an outline, use it as a map while you work.

Do not delete large sections of text. If you begin to dislike something you have written or find it doesn’t quite fit, move it to a different document, but don’t lose it completely — you never know if it might come in useful later.

Paragraph structure

Paragraphs are the basic building blocks of research papers. Each one should focus on a single claim or idea that helps to establish the overall argument or purpose of the paper.

Example paragraph

George Orwell’s 1946 essay “Politics and the English Language” has had an enduring impact on thought about the relationship between politics and language. This impact is particularly obvious in light of the various critical review articles that have recently referenced the essay. For example, consider Mark Falcoff’s 2009 article in The National Review Online, “The Perversion of Language; or, Orwell Revisited,” in which he analyzes several common words (“activist,” “civil-rights leader,” “diversity,” and more). Falcoff’s close analysis of the ambiguity built into political language intentionally mirrors Orwell’s own point-by-point analysis of the political language of his day. Even 63 years after its publication, Orwell’s essay is emulated by contemporary thinkers.

Citing sources

It’s also important to keep track of citations at this stage to avoid accidental plagiarism . Each time you use a source, make sure to take note of where the information came from.

You can use our free citation generators to automatically create citations and save your reference list as you go.

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The research paper introduction should address three questions: What, why, and how? After finishing the introduction, the reader should know what the paper is about, why it is worth reading, and how you’ll build your arguments.

What? Be specific about the topic of the paper, introduce the background, and define key terms or concepts.

Why? This is the most important, but also the most difficult, part of the introduction. Try to provide brief answers to the following questions: What new material or insight are you offering? What important issues does your essay help define or answer?

How? To let the reader know what to expect from the rest of the paper, the introduction should include a “map” of what will be discussed, briefly presenting the key elements of the paper in chronological order.

The major struggle faced by most writers is how to organize the information presented in the paper, which is one reason an outline is so useful. However, remember that the outline is only a guide and, when writing, you can be flexible with the order in which the information and arguments are presented.

One way to stay on track is to use your thesis statement and topic sentences . Check:

• topic sentences against the thesis statement;
• topic sentences against each other, for similarities and logical ordering;
• and each sentence against the topic sentence of that paragraph.

Be aware of paragraphs that seem to cover the same things. If two paragraphs discuss something similar, they must approach that topic in different ways. Aim to create smooth transitions between sentences, paragraphs, and sections.

The research paper conclusion is designed to help your reader out of the paper’s argument, giving them a sense of finality.

Trace the course of the paper, emphasizing how it all comes together to prove your thesis statement. Give the paper a sense of finality by making sure the reader understands how you’ve settled the issues raised in the introduction.

You might also discuss the more general consequences of the argument, outline what the paper offers to future students of the topic, and suggest any questions the paper’s argument raises but cannot or does not try to answer.

You should not :

• Offer new arguments or essential information
• Take up any more space than necessary
• Begin with stock phrases that signal you are ending the paper (e.g. “In conclusion”)

There are four main considerations when it comes to the second draft.

• Check how your vision of the paper lines up with the first draft and, more importantly, that your paper still answers the assignment.
• Identify any assumptions that might require (more substantial) justification, keeping your reader’s perspective foremost in mind. Remove these points if you cannot substantiate them further.
• Be open to rearranging your ideas. Check whether any sections feel out of place and whether your ideas could be better organized.
• If you find that old ideas do not fit as well as you anticipated, you should cut them out or condense them. You might also find that new and well-suited ideas occurred to you during the writing of the first draft — now is the time to make them part of the paper.

The goal during the revision and proofreading process is to ensure you have completed all the necessary tasks and that the paper is as well-articulated as possible. You can speed up the proofreading process by using the AI proofreader .

Global concerns

• Confirm that your paper completes every task specified in your assignment sheet.
• Check for logical organization and flow of paragraphs.
• Check paragraphs against the introduction and thesis statement.

Fine-grained details

Check the content of each paragraph, making sure that:

• each sentence helps support the topic sentence.
• no unnecessary or irrelevant information is present.
• all technical terms your audience might not know are identified.

Next, think about sentence structure , grammatical errors, and formatting . Check that you have correctly used transition words and phrases to show the connections between your ideas. Look for typos, cut unnecessary words, and check for consistency in aspects such as heading formatting and spellings .

Finally, you need to make sure your paper is correctly formatted according to the rules of the citation style you are using. For example, you might need to include an MLA heading  or create an APA title page .

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Checklist: Research paper

I have followed all instructions in the assignment sheet.

My introduction presents my topic in an engaging way and provides necessary background information.

My introduction presents a clear, focused research problem and/or thesis statement .

My paper is logically organized using paragraphs and (if relevant) section headings .

Each paragraph is clearly focused on one central idea, expressed in a clear topic sentence .

Each paragraph is relevant to my research problem or thesis statement.

I have used appropriate transitions  to clarify the connections between sections, paragraphs, and sentences.

My conclusion provides a concise answer to the research question or emphasizes how the thesis has been supported.

My conclusion shows how my research has contributed to knowledge or understanding of my topic.

My conclusion does not present any new points or information essential to my argument.

I have provided an in-text citation every time I refer to ideas or information from a source.

I have included a reference list at the end of my paper, consistently formatted according to a specific citation style .

I have thoroughly revised my paper and addressed any feedback from my professor or supervisor.

I have followed all formatting guidelines (page numbers, headers, spacing, etc.).

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Best 100 music research topics (just updated).

If you are reading this, you are probably looking for the best music research topics for your next essay. Truth be told, choosing the right topic is very important. It can make the difference between a B and an A, or even between an A and an A+. Unfortunately, choosing the best topics is not as simple as you think. Even though the internet is full of music research topics, most of them are plain and, quite frankly, boring.

Your professor wants more than this. Let’s see why you need the most interesting topics and where you can find them. Of course, you are free to use any of our 100 topics for free and even reword them as you see fit. Read on!

Choosing Good Music Research Topics

By now, you are probably wondering why everyone keeps telling you to come up with the best music topics. The truth is that there are many, many benefits to choosing an awesome topic. Here are just some of them, so you can get a better idea of the importance of a great idea:

• Excellent music research paper topics show your professor that you really did your best to get a top grade.
• A good topic is one that you know much about. It should be relatively easy to you to research it and to write about it.
• An awesome topic will pique the interest of your professor and will keep him or her reading. You will often get bonus points for this.
• Great topics make you stand out from your classmates. Your professor will notice you, and the grade will reflect this.

Where Can You Find Decent Music Topics?

Finding amazing music research topics is easier said than done. Yes, the Internet is full of websites that are offering ideas. There are even websites where you can buy bundles of topics. However, the music argumentative essay topics you will get from these websites are not of the highest quality. Most of them are actually quite boring. And remember, you classmates are probably searching for music history research paper topics on the same websites as you do. You want your research topics on music or book review topics to be original, so your professor can have a reason to award your paper some bonus points. The best place to get excellent music topics to write about is this page. The list of ideas is updated frequently, so you can get an original topic for free right now.

Music History Research Topics

Are you looking for the most interesting music history research topics? If you do, just pick one from our list for free:

• How did the Catholic church influence Renaissance music?
• Social issues described in Baroque-period music.
• Analyze the evolution of Romantic-era music.
• How did the Baroque Opera come to be?
• Who invented Medieval music and when?
• Why has western music almost disappear in the last 10 years?
• Analyze the evolution of music in the Classical era.
• Analyzing violin music performance during the Romantic Era.

Music Argument Topics

Are you looking to find an argument and support it? Then you absolutely need to check out our exceptional list of music argument topics:

• Music today is better than music in the 90s.
• The most lucrative career for a musician.
• Music helps you memorize faster.
• The most popular kind of metal music.
• The evolution of blues songs over the last 30 years.
• Music helps children develop faster.
• Hip-hop is a misunderstood music genre.
• Jazz music is not obsolete.

Music Theory Topics

Interested in writing about music theory? Our amazing academic writers have put together a list of music theory topics for you:

• Analyze the most important aspects of modern music.
• Classical music has specific medical applications.
• Hidden symbols in Renaissance-period music.
• The unique features of Baroque-age music.
• Analyze the evolution of music in the Baroque era.
• The best music compositors in the Romantic era.
• Remarkable characteristics of Romantic-age songs.
• The peculiarities of Asian modern music.

Music Industry Topics

Writing about the music industry can be fun and entertaining. Your professor will love it. Pick one of our music industry topics and start writing:

• What do you associate rock music with and why?
• Should the music industry pay songwriters more?
• How does illegal pirating of songs affect the music industry?
• Do music sharing sites help new artists become famous.
• Analyze the evolution of music labels in the US.
• What differentiates a music label from all others?
• Music talent shows and their effects on a musician’s career.
• The difficulties of signing a contract with a major music label in the US.

Research Paper Topics on Music for High School

Are you a high school student? In this case, you will need our research paper topics on music for high school:

• The best compositors of the Baroque Era.
• What differentiates modern music from classical music?
• Notable women in classical music.
• Analyze the evolution of music in the Modern age.
• How was Beethoven’s music influenced by his loss of hearing?
• How would our world be without music?
• Does music cause negative effects on US teens?

Music Thesis Topics

Writing a thesis about music is not easy. In fact, it can be one of the most difficult projects in your academic career. Start right now by choosing one of the best music thesis topics:

• What made a musician stand out in the Baroque Age?
• The most notable musical experiments in the Classical age.
• Comparing Renaissance and Medieval music styles.
• Analyze the evolution of music in the Renaissance age.
• How did royalty in the UK benefit from music in the Renaissance era?
• Discuss a folk song from the Renaissance age.
• Differences between Asian and European classical music.

Music Controversial Topics

Music, like most other disciplines, has plenty of controversial topics you can talk about. Don’t waste any time and pick one of these music controversial topics:

• Does digital music cut the profits of musicians?
• Who owns the intellectual property to a song?
• The difficulties of getting songwriting credit.
• Illegal downloads are changing the music industry.
• Should music education still be included in the curriculum?
• Analyze medieval liturgical music.
• Music should be free for everyone to download and use.

Persuasive Speech Topics About Music

Are you required the write a persuasive speech about music? If you are, you may need a bit of help. Pick one of these persuasive speech topics about music (updated for 2023):

• Music has a significant effect on advertising.
• The changes rap music has brought to the US culture.
• Indie is a term that should not apply to music.
• Metal music should be banned from the US.
• Does listening to music have a great influence on mental health?
• The amazing evolution of music in the Medieval age.
• People should be free to listen to the music they like for free.
• The fashion industry wouldn’t be where it is today without music.

Easy Topics About Music

Perhaps you don’t want to spend 5 or 6 hours writing the research paper . You need an easier topic. Choose one of these easy topics about music and write the essay fast:

• How can one become a symbol of modern music?
• My favorite singer today.
• Which musician from the past would you bring back to life and why?
• Do politics influence modern music?
• Compare and contrast two music genres.
• Analyze the evolution of music in the modern age in the United States.
• The side effects of turning the volume too loud.
• How is classical music used in Disney movies?

Music Education Research Topics

Are you interested in talking about music education? Perhaps you’ll have some suggestions to make after you’ve done the research. Just choose one of the music education research topics below:

• Can E-Learning be applied to music education?
• Can music teachers offer distance learning services?
• The advantages and disadvantages of Zoom music lessons.
• Why are music worksheets so important for high school students?
• How did the Internet change music education?
• Why are modern music studies so important?
• Should we learn more about Asian music in school?
• How can students learn music while respecting COVID19 measures?

Highly Interesting Music Topics

We know you want a top grade on your next music research paper. We advise you to select one of these highly interesting music topics and surprise your professor:

• How did pop music came to existence and why?
• Analyze the history of hip-hop music.
• Compare metal music with classical music.
• Why is rock music so popular in the United Kingdom?
• Which song would best present our species to aliens?
• Compare and contrast Korean and Chinese music.
• Analyze the popular themes of Japanese music.
• The stunning rise of K-pop bands.

Informative Speech Topics About Music

It’s difficult to find good informative speech topics about music these days. If you want to stand out from the rest of your classmates, choose one of our topics:

• Discuss the ideas presented in romantic music.
• What do people who appreciate classic music have in common?
• Analyze the most popular Bach music.
• Describe the role of market music in the Baroque era.
• Analyze the evolution of European music.
• Ways to make classical music popular with teens in the UK.
• Discuss the most popular musical instrument in the Classical age.

Music Essay Topics for College

Are you a college student? If you want an A+ on your next research paper, use one of these music essay topics for college students:

• Does modern music contain medieval themes?
• Analyze a song from the Renaissance age.
• Why is blues music so important for our culture?
• Who invented the blues genre and when?
• Analyze the evolution of American folk music.
• Most popular names in Baroque-age songs.
• Modern interpretations of medieval songs.
• Listening to blues music can lead to depression.

Need some more music history paper topics? Or perhaps you need a list of music related research topics to choose from for your thesis. Our best paper writer can help you in no time. Get in touch with us and we guarantee that we will find the perfect music topic for your needs. You will be well on your way to getting the A+ you need. Give us a try and get an amazing research topic on music in 10 minutes or less!

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Classical Music Research Paper: Tips for Students on Proper Writing

A good research paper on classical music is no different from a written article on any other topic. After receiving the task, it would be best if you started working on a creative project as soon as possible. A common mistake students make is leaving everything to the last minute. As a result, the work is done in a hurry; it is impossible to study the topic deeply enough. This approach to writing can be a direct path for you to get a bad grade. Below we will tell you how to write Classical Music research papers correctly. We will also give some practical tips to help you work on a professional essay.

What Is Research Work?

If you do not know where exactly to start your work, we advise you to get acquainted with ready-made examples. Well-built concert reviews examples will help you figure out which direction to go. The results are performed by professional writers who understand classical music.

How To Write A Research Paper On Music

The first thing you should do after receiving an assignment is to develop a long-term plan for writing an article. It would be best if you started by compiling a list of tasks you will need to complete as part of the work. We advise you to check the schedule and set the dates for each stage of the work. A competent time manager is one of the main criteria for writing quality work. Mark milestones on a calendar. It is convenient to use the calendar on the phone. This way, you can set up notifications and make sure you don't miss anything.

Select The Right Theme

Discuss the scope of work.

The complexity of the research work directly depends on the volume. For students of music schools, the size is often limited to 20-30 pages of printed text. For students of higher educational institutions and colleges, the volume can reach 100 sheets.

Find Sources of Information

You can find essay examples of works on your topic on the Internet. You should not just copy information and add it to your research paper. All submitted content at the university, college, and other educational institutions are checked for plagiarism. If copying is detected, you will put yourself in an embarrassing situation and not get a good mark.

Initially, it is better to seek sources of information in the library. A reference librarian can help you. He will list your books for you that may contain interesting information. It is essential to take new and relevant sources. It is desirable that the book was released no more than 5 years ago.

Another source is the Internet. This is where it will be vital for you to apply your critical thinking skills. There is much information on the Internet, but not all are true and relevant. If you want to add this or that fact to your article, it is advisable to double-check it on several resources.

Map Out Your Thoughts

Start your essay writing with a plan. You should write down the main theses and critical points, and, if possible, write headings for each section. You can take notes in each chapter. The scheme will help to combine all the available thoughts and link them into a coherent article. Always think about the reader—will he be able to understand your arguments?

Write a Draft and Edit It

After this stage, you should take a break. Set aside work for a few days and do other things. This way, you can proceed to the next step with a clear head.

Edit and Check Your Work

The final stage is editing and proofreading a research paper on classical music . You should remember that even professional writers make mistakes. Proofreading will help resolve any problems with grammar, punctuation, and spelling.

You should read the text slowly, delving into all the details and nuances. Only in this way can you not miss even minor errors and typos.

What Sections Should Include Research Work

Research works on music should consist of the following sections:

• Title page;
• List of performers;
• Definitions;
• Abbreviations and designations;
• Introduction;
• Conclusion;
• Bibliography;

Some Tips for Creating a Successful Science Project

We have put together information to help you write a quality research paper on classical music:

• Be sure to check your work for errors. There should be no grammatical, spelling, or stylistic mistakes. They can spoil the impression of even the highest quality work.
• Do not enter beyond the specified volume.
• Most often, the text is printed with one and half intervals and the 14th font.
• Be sure to include the page numbering. It must be in Arabic script. The numbers should be in the upper right corner of the page.
• Add graphics, tables, lists, charts, and other elements to the text. Such a graphic display of information is perceived as much more accessible than plain text. It is better to place photos in the application if you have pictures.
• Use the same style throughout the text.

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Music Research Topics: 40 Topic Examples for Paper or Essay

Music Research Paper Topic Examples

Music is a universal language that transcends borders and cultures, touching the depths of human emotions and shaping societies throughout history.

It is a dynamic field with many facets, making it a fascinating subject for research and exploration.

This article provides a treasure trove of music research topics. Each topic offers a unique lens through which researchers can analyze the art form that harmonizes our world.

40 Topic Examples for Paper or Essay

• The Impact of Climate Change on Coastal Ecosystems
• Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare: Challenges and Opportunities
• The History and Significance of the Suffragette Movement
• Cybersecurity Threats in the Age of Digital Transformation
• The Influence of Social Media on Mental Health
• The Role of Women in STEM: Breaking Barriers
• The Economics of Renewable Energy Adoption
• The Evolution of Urbanization and Its Effects on Society
• The Cultural Significance of Traditional Foods
• The Globalization of Pop Culture: A Double-Edged Sword
• The Ethics of Genetic Engineering and Designer Babies
• The Impact of Mass Media on Political Discourse
• The Art of Storytelling: Its Power in Literature and Film
• Environmental Conservation and Biodiversity Preservation
• The Influence of Music on Emotions and Behavior
• The Role of NGOs in International Development
• The Future of Space Exploration and Colonization
• The Psychology of Addiction: Causes and Treatment
• The Evolution of Artificial Life: From Turing to Deep Learning
• The Importance of Financial Literacy in Modern Society
• The Historical Development of Human Rights
• The Impact of E-Commerce on Traditional Retail
• The Intersection of Art and Technology in the Digital Age
• The Rise of Populism and Its Implications for Democracy
• The Benefits and Challenges of Remote Work
• The Cultural Significance of Festivals and Celebrations
• The Philosophy of Mind: Dualism vs. Materialism
• The Influence of Gaming on Cognitive Skills and Social Behavior
• The Role of Education in Promoting Gender Equality
• The Implications of 5G Technology on Communication
• The Ethical Considerations in Animal Testing
• The Evolution of Language and Communication
• The Impact of Artificial Sweeteners on Health
• The Cultural Exchange in World Literature
• The Challenges of Cyberbullying and Online Harassment
• The Role of Sports in Building Character and Leadership
• The Importance of Early Childhood Education
• The Psychological Effects of Color on Human Behavior
• The Intersection of Religion and Science: Debates and Harmonies
• The Socioeconomic Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic

How to Write a Good Music Research Paper

1. introduction.

Engage the reader with a compelling start. You can use an anecdote, a thought-provoking quote, or an interesting fact related to your music research topic. The goal is to pique the reader’s interest and encourage them to continue reading.

Provide context for your research topic and explain its significance. This is where you introduce the broader issues or themes related to your case and explain why it’s worth studying.

State your primary research question or thesis. This is the heart of your introduction, where you clearly define the specific focus of your research.

Briefly outline the scope of your paper and the topics you will cover. Give readers an overview of what to expect in the coming sections.

Present your central argument or hypothesis. This statement should be concise and clear, summarizing the main point of your research.

2. Literature Review

A literature review is a critical component of research, as it provides an essential foundation for a study. It serves to summarize existing knowledge, identify gaps, and establish the context for the research. 

After reviewing relevant literature, researchers can build on past work, avoid redundancy, and ensure that their research contributes new insights.

It also helps in shaping research questions, theoretical frameworks, and methodologies. A comprehensive literature review adds credibility and depth to research, making it an indispensable step in the research process.

3. Methodology

The methodology section outlines the systematic approach used to conduct the research, ensuring its rigor and applicability.

Data will be collected from a diverse sample of participants through structured surveys and in-depth interviews.

The study aims to recruit participants with varied musical backgrounds, age groups, and experiences to gain a comprehensive perspective.

Quantitative data will undergo statistical analysis, while qualitative data will be thematically coded to unearth patterns and insights.

4. Analysis and Findings

In this section, you present the outcomes of your research, for instance, on the psychological and emotional effects of music.

Your quantitative analysis reveals significant correlations between musical genres and distinct emotional responses.

Notably, participants report should elevate feelings of joy, nostalgia, and relaxation in response to specific genres.

The qualitative findings should enrich your understanding, emphasizing the significance of individual preferences and contextual factors in shaping emotional experiences.

5. Discussion

Here, you interpret the implications of your findings, demonstrating music’s profound impact on emotional well-being and cognitive processes.

The observed correlations between specific musical genres and emotional states underscore the therapeutic potential of music, offering new avenues for stress reduction and memory enhancement.

Mostly, this substantiates your central thesis that music is a potent tool for improving mental and emotional health, supporting the idea that it extends beyond entertainment.

However, it is crucial to acknowledge the study’s limitations, including potential biases in self-reporting and the cross-sectional design.

6. Conclusion

In the conclusion section, the research should shed light on the remarkable influence of music on human psychology.

Your findings highlight music’s significant role in shaping emotional well-being and cognitive processes.

Specific musical genres should evoke distinct emotional responses, indicating music’s potential for therapeutic applications in stress reduction and memory enhancement.

The study should underscore the need for a deeper understanding of the intricate relationship between music and the human psyche.

After harnessing music’s emotional and cognitive effects, you can explore innovative interventions to enhance psychological well-being.

While your research provides valuable insights, it is essential to acknowledge its limitations and encourage further investigation into the multifaceted dimensions of music’s impact on the human experience.

7. References

References validate the credibility and academic rigor of your research. After citing reputable sources, you demonstrate that your work is built on a foundation of established knowledge and research within the field.

References provide evidence to support your arguments and claims. They show that your research is based not solely on your personal opinions but on existing and expert opinions.

Properly citing sources helps you avoid plagiarism, a serious academic offense. Plagiarism involves using someone else’s work without giving them credit, which can lead to academic penalties and damage your reputation.

References serve as a guide for readers interested in delving deeper into the topic. They can use your reference list to access the sources you consulted, promoting further learning and research.

References provide context for your research, allowing readers to see how your work fits within the broader academic conversation. This can help establish the significance of your research.

8. Appendices

Appendices are essential in research to provide additional information, such as raw data, charts, or lengthy explanations, without cluttering the main text.

They enhance comprehension and allow readers to explore details at their discretion.

9. Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments in research papers serve several vital purposes.

First and foremost, they express gratitude and recognition for the contributions of individuals, organizations, or institutions that supported the research.

Acknowledgments enhance transparency by disclosing financial support, resource access, or partnerships. They demonstrate ethical research practices and ensure that potential conflicts of interest are disclosed.

Acknowledgments play a vital role in maintaining research integrity, respecting intellectual contributions, and building a sense of academic community and collaboration.

Josh Jasen or JJ as we fondly call him, is a senior academic editor at Grade Bees in charge of the writing department. When not managing complex essays and academic writing tasks, Josh is busy advising students on how to pass assignments. In his spare time, he loves playing football or walking with his dog around the park.

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How to Write a Research Paper

Undergrads often write research papers each semester, causing stress. Yet, it’s simpler than believing if you know how to write a research paper . Divide the task, get tips, a plan, and tools for an outstanding paper. Simplify research, writing, topic choice, and illustration use!

A research paper is an academic document that involves deep, independent research to offer analysis, interpretation, and argument. Unlike academic essays, research papers are lengthier and more detailed, aiming to evaluate your writing and scholarly research abilities. To write one, you must showcase expertise in your subject, interact with diverse sources, and provide a unique perspective to the discussion. 

Research papers are a foundational element of contemporary science and the most efficient means of disseminating knowledge throughout a broad network. Nonetheless, individuals usually encounter research papers during their education; they are frequently employed in college courses to assess a student’s grasp of a specific field or their aptitude for research. 

Given their significance, research papers adopt a research paper format – a formal, unadorned style that eliminates any subjective influence from the writing. Scientists present their discoveries straightforwardly, accompanied by relevant supporting proof, enabling other researchers to integrate the paper into their investigations.

This guide leads you through every steps to write a research paper , from grasping your task to refining your ultimate draft and will teach you how to write a research paper.

Understanding The Research Paper

A research paper is a meticulously structured document that showcases the outcomes of an inquiry, exploration, or scrutiny undertaken on a specific subject. It embodies a formal piece of academic prose that adds novel information, perspectives, or interpretations to a particular domain of study. Typically authored by scholars, researchers, scientists, or students as part of their academic or professional pursuits, these papers adhere to a well-defined format. This research paper format encompasses an introduction, literature review, methodology, results, discussion, and conclusion. 

The introduction provides context and outlines the study’s significance, while the literature review encapsulates existing research and situates the study within the broader academic discourse. The methodology section elucidates the research process, encompassing data collection and analysis techniques. Findings are presented in the results section, often complemented by graphical and statistical representations. Interpretation of findings, implications, and connection to existing knowledge transpire in the discussion section. 

Ultimately, the conclusion encapsulates pivotal discoveries and their wider import.

Research papers wield immense significance in advancing knowledge across diverse disciplines, enabling researchers to disseminate findings, theories, and revelations to a broader audience. Before publication in academic journals or presentations at conferences, these papers undergo a stringent peer review process conducted by domain experts, ensuring their integrity, precision, and worth.

Academic and non-academic research papers diverge across several dimensions. Academic papers are crafted for scholarly circles to expand domain knowledge and theories. They maintain a formal, objective tone and heavily rely on peer-reviewed sources for credibility. In contrast, non-academic papers, employing a more flexible writing style, target a broader audience or specific practical goals. These papers might incorporate persuasive language, anecdotes, and various sources beyond academia. While academic papers rigorously adhere to structured formats and established citation styles, non-academic papers prioritize practicality, adapting their structure and citation methods to suit the intended readership.

The purpose of a research paper revolves around offering fresh insights, knowledge, or interpretations within a specific field. This formal document serves as a conduit for scholars, researchers, scientists, and students to communicate their investigative findings and actively contribute to the ongoing academic discourse.

Research Paper Writing Process – How To Write a Good Research Paper

Selecting a suitable research topic .

Your initial task is to thoroughly review the assignment and carefully absorb the writing prompt’s details. Pay particular attention to technical specifications like length, formatting prerequisites (such as single- vs. double-spacing, indentation, etc.), and the required citation style. Also, pay attention to specifics, including an abstract or a cover page.

Once you’ve a clear understanding of the assignment, the subsequent steps to write a research paper are aligned with the conventional writing process. However, remember that research papers have rules, adding some extra considerations to the process.

When given some assignment freedom, the crucial task of choosing a topic rests on you. Despite its apparent simplicity, this choice sets the foundation for your entire research paper, shaping its direction. The primary factor in picking a research paper topic is ensuring it has enough material to support it. Your chosen topic should provide ample data and complexity for a thorough discussion. However, it’s important to avoid overly broad subjects and focus on specific ones that cover all relevant information without gaps. Yet, approach topic selection more slowly; choosing something that genuinely interests you is still valuable. Aim for a topic that meets both criteria—delivering substantial content while maintaining engagement.

Conducting Thorough Research 

Commence by delving into your research early to refine your topic and shape your thesis statement. Swift engagement with available research aids in dispelling misconceptions and unveils optimal paths and strategies to gather more material. Typically, research sources can be located either online or within libraries. When navigating online sources, exercise caution and opt for reputable outlets such as scientific journals or academic papers. Specific search engines, outlined below in the Tools and Resources section, exclusively enable exploring accredited sources and academic databases.

While pursuing information, it’s essential to differentiate between primary and secondary sources. Primary sources entail firsthand accounts, encompassing published articles or autobiographies, while secondary sources, such as critical reviews or secondary biographies, are more distanced. Skimming sources instead of reading each part proves more efficient during the research phase. If a source shows promise, set it aside for more in-depth reading later. Doing so prevents you from investing excessive time in sources that won’t contribute substantively to your work. You should present a literature review detailing your references and submit them for validation in certain instances. 

Organizing And Structuring The Research Paper

According to the research paper format , an outline for a research paper is a catalogue of essential topics, arguments, and evidence you intend to incorporate. These elements are divided into sections with headings, offering a preliminary overview of the paper’s structure before commencing the writing process. Formulating a structural outline can significantly enhance writing efficiency, warranting an investment of time to establish one.

Start by generating a list encompassing crucial categories and subtopics—a preliminary outline. Reflect on the amassed information while gathering supporting evidence, pondering the most effective means of segregation and categorization.

Once a discussion list is compiled, deliberate on the optimal information presentation sequence and identify related subtopics that should be placed adjacent. Consider if any subtopic loses coherence when presented out of order. Adopting a chronological arrangement can be suitable if the information follows a straightforward trajectory.

Given the potential complexity of research papers, consider breaking down the outline into paragraphs. This aids in maintaining organization when dealing with copious information and provides better control over the paper’s progression. Rectifying structural issues during the outline phase is preferable to addressing them after writing.

Remember to incorporate supporting evidence within the outline. Since there’s likely a substantial amount to include, outlining helps prevent overlooking crucial elements.

Writing The Introduction

According to the research paper format , the introduction of a research paper must address three fundamental inquiries: What, why, and how? Upon completing the introduction, the reader should clearly understand the paper’s subject matter, its relevance, and the approach you’ll use to construct your arguments.

What? Offer precise details regarding the paper’s topic, provide context, and elucidate essential terminology or concepts.

Why? This constitutes the most crucial yet challenging aspect of the introduction. Endeavour to furnish concise responses to the subsequent queries: What novel information or insights do you present? Which significant matters does your essay assist in defining or resolving?

How? To provide the reader with a preview of the paper’s forthcoming content, the introduction should incorporate a “guide” outlining the upcoming discussions. This entails briefly outlining the paper’s principal components in chronological sequence.

Developing The Main Body 

One of the primary challenges that many writers grapple with is effectively organizing the wealth of information they wish to present in their papers. This is precisely why an outline can be an invaluable tool. However, it’s essential to recognize that while an outline provides a roadmap, the writing process allows flexibility in determining the order in which information and arguments are introduced.

Maintaining cohesiveness throughout the paper involves anchoring your writing to the thesis statement and topic sentences. Here’s how to ensure a well-structured paper:

• Alignment with Thesis Statement: Regularly assess whether your topic sentences correspond with the central thesis statement. This ensures that your arguments remain on track and directly contribute to the overarching message you intend to convey.
• Consistency and Logical Flow: Review your topic sentences concerning one another. Do they follow a logical order that guides the reader through a coherent narrative? Ensuring a seamless flow from one topic to another helps maintain engagement and comprehension.
• Supporting Sentence Alignment: Each sentence within a paragraph should align with the topic sentence of that paragraph. This alignment reinforces the central idea, preventing tangential or disjointed discussions.

Additionally, identify paragraphs that cover similar content. While some overlap might be inevitable, it’s essential to approach shared topics from different angles, offering fresh insights and perspectives. Creating these nuanced differences helps present a well-rounded exploration of the subject matter.

An often-overlooked aspect of effective organization is the art of crafting smooth transitions. Transitions between sentences, paragraphs, and larger sections are the glue that holds your paper together. They guide the reader through the progression of ideas, enhancing clarity and creating a seamless reading experience.

Ultimately, while the struggle to organize information is accurate, employing these strategies not only aids in addressing the challenge but also contributes to the overall quality and impact of your writing.

Crafting A Strong Conclusion 

The purpose of the research paper’s conclusion is to guide your reader out of the realm of the paper’s argument, leaving them with a sense of closure.

Trace the paper’s trajectory, underscoring how all the elements converge to validate your thesis statement. Impart a sense of completion by ensuring the reader comprehends the resolution of the issues introduced in the paper’s introduction.

In addition, you can explore the broader implications of your argument, outline your paper’s contributions to future students studying the subject, and propose questions that your argument raises—ones that might not be addressed in the paper itself. However, it’s important to avoid:

• Introducing new arguments or crucial information that wasn’t covered earlier.
• Extending the conclusion unnecessarily.
• Employing common phrases that signal the decision (e.g., “In conclusion”).

By adhering to these guidelines, your conclusion can serve as a fitting and impactful conclusion to your research paper, leaving a lasting impression on your readers.

Refining The Research Paper

• Editing And Proofreading 

Eliminate unnecessary verbiage and extraneous content. In tandem with the comprehensive structure of your paper, focus on individual words, ensuring your language is robust. Verify the utilization of active voice rather than passive voice, and confirm that your word selection is precise and tangible.

The passive voice, exemplified by phrases like “I opened the door,” tends to convey hesitation and verbosity. In contrast, the active voice, as in “I opened the door,” imparts strength and brevity.

Each word employed in your paper should serve a distinct purpose. Strive to eschew the inclusion of surplus words solely to occupy space or exhibit sophistication.

For instance, the statement “The author uses pathos to appeal to readers’ emotions” is superior to the alternative “The author utilizes pathos to appeal to the emotional core of those who read the passage.”

Engage in thorough proofreading to rectify spelling, grammatical, and formatting inconsistencies. Once you’ve refined the structure and content of your paper, address any typographical and grammatical inaccuracies. Taking a break from your paper before proofreading can offer a new perspective.

Enhance error detection by reading your essay aloud. This not only aids in identifying mistakes but also assists in evaluating the flow. If you encounter sections that seem awkward during this reading, consider making necessary adjustments to enhance the overall coherence.

• Formatting And Referencing 

Citations are pivotal in distinguishing research papers from informal nonfiction pieces like personal essays. They serve the dual purpose of substantiating your data and establishing a connection between your research paper and the broader scientific community. Given their significance, citations are subject to precise formatting regulations; however, the challenge lies in the existence of multiple sets of rules.

It’s crucial to consult the assignment’s instructions to determine the required formatting style. Generally, academic research papers adhere to either of two formatting styles for source citations:

• MLA (Modern Language Association)
• APA (American Psychological Association)

Moreover, aside from MLA and APA styles, occasional demands might call for adherence to CMOS (The Chicago Manual of Style), AMA (American Medical Association), and IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) formats.

Initially, citations might appear intricate due to their numerous regulations and specific details. However, once you become adept at them, citing sources accurately becomes almost second nature. It’s important to note that each formatting style provides detailed guidelines for citing various sources, including photographs, websites, speeches, and YouTube videos.

Tips For Writing An Effective Research Paper 

By following these research paper writing tips , you’ll be well-equipped to create a well-structured, well-researched, and impactful research paper:

• Select a Clear and Manageable Topic: Choose a topic that is specific and focused enough to be thoroughly explored within the scope of your paper.
• Conduct In-Depth Research: Gather information from reputable sources such as academic journals, books, and credible websites. Take thorough notes to keep track of your sources.
• Create a Strong Thesis Statement: Craft a clear and concise thesis statement that outlines the main argument or purpose of your paper.
• Develop a Well-Structured Outline: Organize your ideas into a logical order by creating an outline that outlines the main sections and their supporting points.
• Compose a Captivating Introduction: Hook the reader with an engaging introduction that provides background information and introduces the thesis statement.
• Provide Clear and Relevant Evidence: Support your arguments with reliable and relevant evidence, such as statistics, examples, and expert opinions.
• Maintain Consistent Tone and Style: Keep a consistent tone and writing style throughout the paper, adhering to the formatting guidelines of your chosen citation style.
• Craft Coherent Paragraphs: Each paragraph should focus on a single idea or point, and transitions should smoothly guide the reader from one idea to the next.
• Use Active Voice: Write in the active voice to make your writing more direct and engaging.
• Revise and Edit Thoroughly: Proofread your paper for grammatical errors, spelling mistakes, and sentence structure. Revise for clarity and coherence.
• Seek Peer Feedback: Have a peer or instructor review your paper for feedback and suggestions.
• Cite Sources Properly: Accurately cite all sources using the required citation style (e.g., MLA, APA) to avoid plagiarism and give credit to original authors.
• Be Concise and Avoid Redundancy: Strive for clarity by eliminating unnecessary words and redundancies.
• Conclude Effectively: Summarize your main points and restate your thesis in the conclusion. Provide a sense of closure without introducing new ideas.
• Stay Organized: Keep track of your sources, notes, and drafts to ensure a structured and organized approach to the writing process.
• Proofread with Fresh Eyes: Take a break before final proofreading to review your paper with a fresh perspective, helping you catch any overlooked errors.
• Edit for Clarity: Ensure that your ideas are conveyed clearly and that your arguments are easy to follow.
• Ask for Feedback: Don’t hesitate to ask for feedback from peers, instructors, or writing centers to improve your paper further.

In conclusion, we’ve explored the essential steps to write a research paper . From selecting a focused topic to mastering the intricacies of citations, we’ve navigated through the key elements of this process.

It’s vital to recognize that adhering to the research paper writing tips is not merely a suggestion, but a roadmap to success. Each stage contributes to the overall quality and impact of your paper. By meticulously following these steps, you ensure a robust foundation for your research, bolster your arguments, and present your findings with clarity and conviction.

As you embark on your own research paper journey, I urge you to put into practice the techniques and insights shared in this guide. Don’t shy away from investing time in organization, thorough research, and precise writing. Embrace the challenge, for it’s through this process that your ideas take shape and your voice is heard within the academic discourse.

Remember, every exceptional research paper begins with a single step. And with each step you take, your ability to articulate complex ideas and contribute to your field of study grows. So, go ahead – apply these tips, refine your skills, and witness your research papers evolve into compelling narratives that inspire, inform, and captivate.

In the grand tapestry of academia, your research paper becomes a thread of insight, woven into the larger narrative of human knowledge. By embracing the writing process and nurturing your unique perspective, you become an integral part of this ever-expanding tapestry.

Happy writing, and may your research papers shine brightly, leaving a lasting mark on both your readers and the world of scholarship.

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Home » Research Paper – Structure, Examples and Writing Guide

Research Paper – Structure, Examples and Writing Guide

Table of Contents

Research Paper

Definition:

Research Paper is a written document that presents the author’s original research, analysis, and interpretation of a specific topic or issue.

It is typically based on Empirical Evidence, and may involve qualitative or quantitative research methods, or a combination of both. The purpose of a research paper is to contribute new knowledge or insights to a particular field of study, and to demonstrate the author’s understanding of the existing literature and theories related to the topic.

Structure of Research Paper

The structure of a research paper typically follows a standard format, consisting of several sections that convey specific information about the research study. The following is a detailed explanation of the structure of a research paper:

The title page contains the title of the paper, the name(s) of the author(s), and the affiliation(s) of the author(s). It also includes the date of submission and possibly, the name of the journal or conference where the paper is to be published.

The abstract is a brief summary of the research paper, typically ranging from 100 to 250 words. It should include the research question, the methods used, the key findings, and the implications of the results. The abstract should be written in a concise and clear manner to allow readers to quickly grasp the essence of the research.

Introduction

The introduction section of a research paper provides background information about the research problem, the research question, and the research objectives. It also outlines the significance of the research, the research gap that it aims to fill, and the approach taken to address the research question. Finally, the introduction section ends with a clear statement of the research hypothesis or research question.

Literature Review

The literature review section of a research paper provides an overview of the existing literature on the topic of study. It includes a critical analysis and synthesis of the literature, highlighting the key concepts, themes, and debates. The literature review should also demonstrate the research gap and how the current study seeks to address it.

The methods section of a research paper describes the research design, the sample selection, the data collection and analysis procedures, and the statistical methods used to analyze the data. This section should provide sufficient detail for other researchers to replicate the study.

The results section presents the findings of the research, using tables, graphs, and figures to illustrate the data. The findings should be presented in a clear and concise manner, with reference to the research question and hypothesis.

The discussion section of a research paper interprets the findings and discusses their implications for the research question, the literature review, and the field of study. It should also address the limitations of the study and suggest future research directions.

The conclusion section summarizes the main findings of the study, restates the research question and hypothesis, and provides a final reflection on the significance of the research.

The references section provides a list of all the sources cited in the paper, following a specific citation style such as APA, MLA or Chicago.

How to Write Research Paper

You can write Research Paper by the following guide:

• Choose a Topic: The first step is to select a topic that interests you and is relevant to your field of study. Brainstorm ideas and narrow down to a research question that is specific and researchable.
• Conduct a Literature Review: The literature review helps you identify the gap in the existing research and provides a basis for your research question. It also helps you to develop a theoretical framework and research hypothesis.
• Develop a Thesis Statement : The thesis statement is the main argument of your research paper. It should be clear, concise and specific to your research question.
• Plan your Research: Develop a research plan that outlines the methods, data sources, and data analysis procedures. This will help you to collect and analyze data effectively.
• Collect and Analyze Data: Collect data using various methods such as surveys, interviews, observations, or experiments. Analyze data using statistical tools or other qualitative methods.
• Organize your Paper : Organize your paper into sections such as Introduction, Literature Review, Methods, Results, Discussion, and Conclusion. Ensure that each section is coherent and follows a logical flow.
• Write your Paper : Start by writing the introduction, followed by the literature review, methods, results, discussion, and conclusion. Ensure that your writing is clear, concise, and follows the required formatting and citation styles.
• Edit and Proofread your Paper: Review your paper for grammar and spelling errors, and ensure that it is well-structured and easy to read. Ask someone else to review your paper to get feedback and suggestions for improvement.
• Cite your Sources: Ensure that you properly cite all sources used in your research paper. This is essential for giving credit to the original authors and avoiding plagiarism.

Research Paper Example

Note : The below example research paper is for illustrative purposes only and is not an actual research paper. Actual research papers may have different structures, contents, and formats depending on the field of study, research question, data collection and analysis methods, and other factors. Students should always consult with their professors or supervisors for specific guidelines and expectations for their research papers.

Research Paper Example sample for Students:

Title: The Impact of Social Media on Mental Health among Young Adults

Abstract: This study aims to investigate the impact of social media use on the mental health of young adults. A literature review was conducted to examine the existing research on the topic. A survey was then administered to 200 university students to collect data on their social media use, mental health status, and perceived impact of social media on their mental health. The results showed that social media use is positively associated with depression, anxiety, and stress. The study also found that social comparison, cyberbullying, and FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) are significant predictors of mental health problems among young adults.

Introduction: Social media has become an integral part of modern life, particularly among young adults. While social media has many benefits, including increased communication and social connectivity, it has also been associated with negative outcomes, such as addiction, cyberbullying, and mental health problems. This study aims to investigate the impact of social media use on the mental health of young adults.

Literature Review: The literature review highlights the existing research on the impact of social media use on mental health. The review shows that social media use is associated with depression, anxiety, stress, and other mental health problems. The review also identifies the factors that contribute to the negative impact of social media, including social comparison, cyberbullying, and FOMO.

Methods : A survey was administered to 200 university students to collect data on their social media use, mental health status, and perceived impact of social media on their mental health. The survey included questions on social media use, mental health status (measured using the DASS-21), and perceived impact of social media on their mental health. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and regression analysis.

Results : The results showed that social media use is positively associated with depression, anxiety, and stress. The study also found that social comparison, cyberbullying, and FOMO are significant predictors of mental health problems among young adults.

Discussion : The study’s findings suggest that social media use has a negative impact on the mental health of young adults. The study highlights the need for interventions that address the factors contributing to the negative impact of social media, such as social comparison, cyberbullying, and FOMO.

Conclusion : In conclusion, social media use has a significant impact on the mental health of young adults. The study’s findings underscore the need for interventions that promote healthy social media use and address the negative outcomes associated with social media use. Future research can explore the effectiveness of interventions aimed at reducing the negative impact of social media on mental health. Additionally, longitudinal studies can investigate the long-term effects of social media use on mental health.

Limitations : The study has some limitations, including the use of self-report measures and a cross-sectional design. The use of self-report measures may result in biased responses, and a cross-sectional design limits the ability to establish causality.

Implications: The study’s findings have implications for mental health professionals, educators, and policymakers. Mental health professionals can use the findings to develop interventions that address the negative impact of social media use on mental health. Educators can incorporate social media literacy into their curriculum to promote healthy social media use among young adults. Policymakers can use the findings to develop policies that protect young adults from the negative outcomes associated with social media use.

References :

• Twenge, J. M., & Campbell, W. K. (2019). Associations between screen time and lower psychological well-being among children and adolescents: Evidence from a population-based study. Preventive medicine reports, 15, 100918.
• Primack, B. A., Shensa, A., Escobar-Viera, C. G., Barrett, E. L., Sidani, J. E., Colditz, J. B., … & James, A. E. (2017). Use of multiple social media platforms and symptoms of depression and anxiety: A nationally-representative study among US young adults. Computers in Human Behavior, 69, 1-9.
• Van der Meer, T. G., & Verhoeven, J. W. (2017). Social media and its impact on academic performance of students. Journal of Information Technology Education: Research, 16, 383-398.

Appendix : The survey used in this study is provided below.

Social Media and Mental Health Survey

• How often do you use social media per day?
• Less than 30 minutes
• 30 minutes to 1 hour
• 1 to 2 hours
• 2 to 4 hours
• More than 4 hours
• Which social media platforms do you use?
• Others (Please specify)
• How often do you experience the following on social media?
• Social comparison (comparing yourself to others)
• Cyberbullying
• Fear of Missing Out (FOMO)
• Have you ever experienced any of the following mental health problems in the past month?
• Do you think social media use has a positive or negative impact on your mental health?
• Very positive
• Somewhat positive
• Somewhat negative
• Very negative
• In your opinion, which factors contribute to the negative impact of social media on mental health?
• Social comparison
• In your opinion, what interventions could be effective in reducing the negative impact of social media on mental health?
• Education on healthy social media use
• Counseling for mental health problems caused by social media
• Social media detox programs
• Regulation of social media use

Thank you for your participation!

Applications of Research Paper

Research papers have several applications in various fields, including:

• Advancing knowledge: Research papers contribute to the advancement of knowledge by generating new insights, theories, and findings that can inform future research and practice. They help to answer important questions, clarify existing knowledge, and identify areas that require further investigation.
• Informing policy: Research papers can inform policy decisions by providing evidence-based recommendations for policymakers. They can help to identify gaps in current policies, evaluate the effectiveness of interventions, and inform the development of new policies and regulations.
• Improving practice: Research papers can improve practice by providing evidence-based guidance for professionals in various fields, including medicine, education, business, and psychology. They can inform the development of best practices, guidelines, and standards of care that can improve outcomes for individuals and organizations.
• Educating students : Research papers are often used as teaching tools in universities and colleges to educate students about research methods, data analysis, and academic writing. They help students to develop critical thinking skills, research skills, and communication skills that are essential for success in many careers.
• Fostering collaboration: Research papers can foster collaboration among researchers, practitioners, and policymakers by providing a platform for sharing knowledge and ideas. They can facilitate interdisciplinary collaborations and partnerships that can lead to innovative solutions to complex problems.

When to Write Research Paper

Research papers are typically written when a person has completed a research project or when they have conducted a study and have obtained data or findings that they want to share with the academic or professional community. Research papers are usually written in academic settings, such as universities, but they can also be written in professional settings, such as research organizations, government agencies, or private companies.

Here are some common situations where a person might need to write a research paper:

• For academic purposes: Students in universities and colleges are often required to write research papers as part of their coursework, particularly in the social sciences, natural sciences, and humanities. Writing research papers helps students to develop research skills, critical thinking skills, and academic writing skills.
• For publication: Researchers often write research papers to publish their findings in academic journals or to present their work at academic conferences. Publishing research papers is an important way to disseminate research findings to the academic community and to establish oneself as an expert in a particular field.
• To inform policy or practice : Researchers may write research papers to inform policy decisions or to improve practice in various fields. Research findings can be used to inform the development of policies, guidelines, and best practices that can improve outcomes for individuals and organizations.
• To share new insights or ideas: Researchers may write research papers to share new insights or ideas with the academic or professional community. They may present new theories, propose new research methods, or challenge existing paradigms in their field.

Purpose of Research Paper

The purpose of a research paper is to present the results of a study or investigation in a clear, concise, and structured manner. Research papers are written to communicate new knowledge, ideas, or findings to a specific audience, such as researchers, scholars, practitioners, or policymakers. The primary purposes of a research paper are:

• To contribute to the body of knowledge : Research papers aim to add new knowledge or insights to a particular field or discipline. They do this by reporting the results of empirical studies, reviewing and synthesizing existing literature, proposing new theories, or providing new perspectives on a topic.
• To inform or persuade: Research papers are written to inform or persuade the reader about a particular issue, topic, or phenomenon. They present evidence and arguments to support their claims and seek to persuade the reader of the validity of their findings or recommendations.
• To advance the field: Research papers seek to advance the field or discipline by identifying gaps in knowledge, proposing new research questions or approaches, or challenging existing assumptions or paradigms. They aim to contribute to ongoing debates and discussions within a field and to stimulate further research and inquiry.
• To demonstrate research skills: Research papers demonstrate the author’s research skills, including their ability to design and conduct a study, collect and analyze data, and interpret and communicate findings. They also demonstrate the author’s ability to critically evaluate existing literature, synthesize information from multiple sources, and write in a clear and structured manner.

Characteristics of Research Paper

Research papers have several characteristics that distinguish them from other forms of academic or professional writing. Here are some common characteristics of research papers:

• Evidence-based: Research papers are based on empirical evidence, which is collected through rigorous research methods such as experiments, surveys, observations, or interviews. They rely on objective data and facts to support their claims and conclusions.
• Structured and organized: Research papers have a clear and logical structure, with sections such as introduction, literature review, methods, results, discussion, and conclusion. They are organized in a way that helps the reader to follow the argument and understand the findings.
• Formal and objective: Research papers are written in a formal and objective tone, with an emphasis on clarity, precision, and accuracy. They avoid subjective language or personal opinions and instead rely on objective data and analysis to support their arguments.
• Citations and references: Research papers include citations and references to acknowledge the sources of information and ideas used in the paper. They use a specific citation style, such as APA, MLA, or Chicago, to ensure consistency and accuracy.
• Peer-reviewed: Research papers are often peer-reviewed, which means they are evaluated by other experts in the field before they are published. Peer-review ensures that the research is of high quality, meets ethical standards, and contributes to the advancement of knowledge in the field.
• Objective and unbiased: Research papers strive to be objective and unbiased in their presentation of the findings. They avoid personal biases or preconceptions and instead rely on the data and analysis to draw conclusions.

Advantages of Research Paper

Research papers have many advantages, both for the individual researcher and for the broader academic and professional community. Here are some advantages of research papers:

• Contribution to knowledge: Research papers contribute to the body of knowledge in a particular field or discipline. They add new information, insights, and perspectives to existing literature and help advance the understanding of a particular phenomenon or issue.
• Opportunity for intellectual growth: Research papers provide an opportunity for intellectual growth for the researcher. They require critical thinking, problem-solving, and creativity, which can help develop the researcher’s skills and knowledge.
• Career advancement: Research papers can help advance the researcher’s career by demonstrating their expertise and contributions to the field. They can also lead to new research opportunities, collaborations, and funding.
• Academic recognition: Research papers can lead to academic recognition in the form of awards, grants, or invitations to speak at conferences or events. They can also contribute to the researcher’s reputation and standing in the field.
• Impact on policy and practice: Research papers can have a significant impact on policy and practice. They can inform policy decisions, guide practice, and lead to changes in laws, regulations, or procedures.
• Advancement of society: Research papers can contribute to the advancement of society by addressing important issues, identifying solutions to problems, and promoting social justice and equality.

Limitations of Research Paper

Research papers also have some limitations that should be considered when interpreting their findings or implications. Here are some common limitations of research papers:

• Limited generalizability: Research findings may not be generalizable to other populations, settings, or contexts. Studies often use specific samples or conditions that may not reflect the broader population or real-world situations.
• Potential for bias : Research papers may be biased due to factors such as sample selection, measurement errors, or researcher biases. It is important to evaluate the quality of the research design and methods used to ensure that the findings are valid and reliable.
• Ethical concerns: Research papers may raise ethical concerns, such as the use of vulnerable populations or invasive procedures. Researchers must adhere to ethical guidelines and obtain informed consent from participants to ensure that the research is conducted in a responsible and respectful manner.
• Limitations of methodology: Research papers may be limited by the methodology used to collect and analyze data. For example, certain research methods may not capture the complexity or nuance of a particular phenomenon, or may not be appropriate for certain research questions.
• Publication bias: Research papers may be subject to publication bias, where positive or significant findings are more likely to be published than negative or non-significant findings. This can skew the overall findings of a particular area of research.
• Time and resource constraints: Research papers may be limited by time and resource constraints, which can affect the quality and scope of the research. Researchers may not have access to certain data or resources, or may be unable to conduct long-term studies due to practical limitations.

About the author

Muhammad Hassan

Researcher, Academic Writer, Web developer

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How To Write A Research Paper

Step-By-Step Tutorial With Examples + FREE Template

By: Derek Jansen (MBA) | Expert Reviewer: Dr Eunice Rautenbach | March 2024

For many students, crafting a strong research paper from scratch can feel like a daunting task – and rightly so! In this post, we’ll unpack what a research paper is, what it needs to do , and how to write one – in three easy steps. 🙂 

Overview: Writing A Research Paper

What (exactly) is a research paper.

• How to write a research paper
• Stage 1 : Topic & literature search
• Stage 2 : Structure & outline
• Stage 3 : Iterative writing
• Key takeaways

Let’s start by asking the most important question, “ What is a research paper? ”.

Simply put, a research paper is a scholarly written work where the writer (that’s you!) answers a specific question (this is called a research question ) through evidence-based arguments . Evidence-based is the keyword here. In other words, a research paper is different from an essay or other writing assignments that draw from the writer’s personal opinions or experiences. With a research paper, it’s all about building your arguments based on evidence (we’ll talk more about that evidence a little later).

Now, it’s worth noting that there are many different types of research papers , including analytical papers (the type I just described), argumentative papers, and interpretative papers. Here, we’ll focus on analytical papers , as these are some of the most common – but if you’re keen to learn about other types of research papers, be sure to check out the rest of the blog .

With that basic foundation laid, let’s get down to business and look at how to write a research paper .

Overview: The 3-Stage Process

While there are, of course, many potential approaches you can take to write a research paper, there are typically three stages to the writing process. So, in this tutorial, we’ll present a straightforward three-step process that we use when working with students at Grad Coach.

These three steps are:

• Finding a research topic and reviewing the existing literature
• Developing a provisional structure and outline for your paper, and
• Writing up your initial draft and then refining it iteratively

Let’s dig into each of these.

Need a helping hand?

Step 1: Find a topic and review the literature

As we mentioned earlier, in a research paper, you, as the researcher, will try to answer a question . More specifically, that’s called a research question , and it sets the direction of your entire paper. What’s important to understand though is that you’ll need to answer that research question with the help of high-quality sources – for example, journal articles, government reports, case studies, and so on. We’ll circle back to this in a minute.

The first stage of the research process is deciding on what your research question will be and then reviewing the existing literature (in other words, past studies and papers) to see what they say about that specific research question. In some cases, your professor may provide you with a predetermined research question (or set of questions). However, in many cases, you’ll need to find your own research question within a certain topic area.

Finding a strong research question hinges on identifying a meaningful research gap – in other words, an area that’s lacking in existing research. There’s a lot to unpack here, so if you wanna learn more, check out the plain-language explainer video below.

Once you’ve figured out which question (or questions) you’ll attempt to answer in your research paper, you’ll need to do a deep dive into the existing literature – this is called a “ literature search ”. Again, there are many ways to go about this, but your most likely starting point will be Google Scholar .

If you’re new to Google Scholar, think of it as Google for the academic world. You can start by simply entering a few different keywords that are relevant to your research question and it will then present a host of articles for you to review. What you want to pay close attention to here is the number of citations for each paper – the more citations a paper has, the more credible it is (generally speaking – there are some exceptions, of course).

Ideally, what you’re looking for are well-cited papers that are highly relevant to your topic. That said, keep in mind that citations are a cumulative metric , so older papers will often have more citations than newer papers – just because they’ve been around for longer. So, don’t fixate on this metric in isolation – relevance and recency are also very important.

Beyond Google Scholar, you’ll also definitely want to check out academic databases and aggregators such as Science Direct, PubMed, JStor and so on. These will often overlap with the results that you find in Google Scholar, but they can also reveal some hidden gems – so, be sure to check them out.

Once you’ve worked your way through all the literature, you’ll want to catalogue all this information in some sort of spreadsheet so that you can easily recall who said what, when and within what context. If you’d like, we’ve got a free literature spreadsheet that helps you do exactly that.

Step 2: Develop a structure and outline

With your research question pinned down and your literature digested and catalogued, it’s time to move on to planning your actual research paper .

It might sound obvious, but it’s really important to have some sort of rough outline in place before you start writing your paper. So often, we see students eagerly rushing into the writing phase, only to land up with a disjointed research paper that rambles on in multiple

Now, the secret here is to not get caught up in the fine details . Realistically, all you need at this stage is a bullet-point list that describes (in broad strokes) what you’ll discuss and in what order. It’s also useful to remember that you’re not glued to this outline – in all likelihood, you’ll chop and change some sections once you start writing, and that’s perfectly okay. What’s important is that you have some sort of roadmap in place from the start.

At this stage you might be wondering, “ But how should I structure my research paper? ”. Well, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution here, but in general, a research paper will consist of a few relatively standardised components:

• Introduction
• Literature review
• Methodology

Let’s take a look at each of these.

First up is the introduction section . As the name suggests, the purpose of the introduction is to set the scene for your research paper. There are usually (at least) four ingredients that go into this section – these are the background to the topic, the research problem and resultant research question , and the justification or rationale. If you’re interested, the video below unpacks the introduction section in more detail. 

The next section of your research paper will typically be your literature review . Remember all that literature you worked through earlier? Well, this is where you’ll present your interpretation of all that content . You’ll do this by writing about recent trends, developments, and arguments within the literature – but more specifically, those that are relevant to your research question . The literature review can oftentimes seem a little daunting, even to seasoned researchers, so be sure to check out our extensive collection of literature review content here .

With the introduction and lit review out of the way, the next section of your paper is the research methodology . In a nutshell, the methodology section should describe to your reader what you did (beyond just reviewing the existing literature) to answer your research question. For example, what data did you collect, how did you collect that data, how did you analyse that data and so on? For each choice, you’ll also need to justify why you chose to do it that way, and what the strengths and weaknesses of your approach were.

Now, it’s worth mentioning that for some research papers, this aspect of the project may be a lot simpler . For example, you may only need to draw on secondary sources (in other words, existing data sets). In some cases, you may just be asked to draw your conclusions from the literature search itself (in other words, there may be no data analysis at all). But, if you are required to collect and analyse data, you’ll need to pay a lot of attention to the methodology section. The video below provides an example of what the methodology section might look like.

By this stage of your paper, you will have explained what your research question is, what the existing literature has to say about that question, and how you analysed additional data to try to answer your question. So, the natural next step is to present your analysis of that data . This section is usually called the “results” or “analysis” section and this is where you’ll showcase your findings.

Depending on your school’s requirements, you may need to present and interpret the data in one section – or you might split the presentation and the interpretation into two sections. In the latter case, your “results” section will just describe the data, and the “discussion” is where you’ll interpret that data and explicitly link your analysis back to your research question. If you’re not sure which approach to take, check in with your professor or take a look at past papers to see what the norms are for your programme.

Alright – once you’ve presented and discussed your results, it’s time to wrap it up . This usually takes the form of the “ conclusion ” section. In the conclusion, you’ll need to highlight the key takeaways from your study and close the loop by explicitly answering your research question. Again, the exact requirements here will vary depending on your programme (and you may not even need a conclusion section at all) – so be sure to check with your professor if you’re unsure.

Step 3: Write and refine

Finally, it’s time to get writing. All too often though, students hit a brick wall right about here… So, how do you avoid this happening to you?

Well, there’s a lot to be said when it comes to writing a research paper (or any sort of academic piece), but we’ll share three practical tips to help you get started.

First and foremost , it’s essential to approach your writing as an iterative process. In other words, you need to start with a really messy first draft and then polish it over multiple rounds of editing. Don’t waste your time trying to write a perfect research paper in one go. Instead, take the pressure off yourself by adopting an iterative approach.

Secondly , it’s important to always lean towards critical writing , rather than descriptive writing. What does this mean? Well, at the simplest level, descriptive writing focuses on the “ what ”, while critical writing digs into the “ so what ” – in other words, the implications. If you’re not familiar with these two types of writing, don’t worry! You can find a plain-language explanation here.

Last but not least, you’ll need to get your referencing right. Specifically, you’ll need to provide credible, correctly formatted citations for the statements you make. We see students making referencing mistakes all the time and it costs them dearly. The good news is that you can easily avoid this by using a simple reference manager . If you don’t have one, check out our video about Mendeley, an easy (and free) reference management tool that you can start using today.

Recap: Key Takeaways

We’ve covered a lot of ground here. To recap, the three steps to writing a high-quality research paper are:

• To choose a research question and review the literature
• To plan your paper structure and draft an outline
• To take an iterative approach to writing, focusing on critical writing and strong referencing

Remember, this is just a b ig-picture overview of the research paper development process and there’s a lot more nuance to unpack. So, be sure to grab a copy of our free research paper template to learn more about how to write a research paper.

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216 Awesome Music Topics That Will Inspire Your Thesis

On this page, you will find the ultimate list of 216 brand new, 100% original music topics for high school, college and university students. No, it’s not a trick! You can use any of our topics about music for free and you don’t even have to give us credit. Many of these research topics on music should work great in 2023.

In addition, we have the best step by step guide to writing a research paper right here on this page. Just like the topics, you can read the guide for free. It will help you stay focused on what’s important and ensure you don’t miss any steps. And remember, if you need assistance with your academic writing tasks, our native English-speaking writers are the most reliable on the Internet!

Writing A Research Paper About Music

So, what is music? Music is a form of art that uses sound and rhythm to create an emotional or aesthetic experience. It can be created by combining different elements such as melody, harmony, rhythm and timbre. Music is a universal language that can be found in all cultures and has been an important part of human history for thousands of years. It can evoke emotions, tell stories, and communicate ideas. Music can take many forms, including vocal or instrumental, solo or ensemble, live or recorded, and can be classified into various genres such as rock, pop, classical, jazz, and many more.

But how do you write a research paper about music quickly? Well, we have a great step by step guide for you right here.

Choose a music topic. Select a topic that interests you and that you have enough background knowledge on to research and write about. Conduct research. Use a variety of sources to gather information on your topic, including books, academic journals, online databases, and primary sources such as interviews or musical recordings. Organize your research. Once you have gathered enough information, organize your research into an outline or a mind map to help you visualize how your paper will flow. Write a thesis statement. Your thesis statement should be a concise statement that summarizes the main argument of your paper. Write a rough draft. Begin writing your paper using the information you have gathered and the outline or mind map you created. Focus on creating a clear and coherent argument, and be sure to cite all sources using the appropriate citation style. Help with coursework services can aid you in succeeding with this part. Revise and edit. Once you have completed a rough draft, revise and edit your paper to improve its clarity, organization, and coherence. Check for grammar and spelling errors, and make sure all citations are correct and properly formatted. Create a bibliography or works cited page. Include a list of all sources you used in your research, including books, articles, interviews, and recordings. Finalize your paper. After making all necessary revisions and edits, finalize your paper and ensure that it meets all the requirements set by your instructor or professor. Proofread everything and make sure it’s perfectly written. You don’t want to lose points over some typos, do you?

Easy Research Topics About Music

• The history and evolution of hip-hop culture
• The impact of classical music on modern composers
• The role of music in therapy for mental health
• The cultural significance of jazz in African-American communities
• The influence of traditional folk music on contemporary artists
• The development of electronic music over the past decade
• The use of music in film to enhance storytelling
• The rise of K-pop and its global popularity
• The effects of music on our learning abilities
• The use of music in branding in the fashion industry
• The influence of the Beatles on popular music
• The intersection of music and politics in the 1960s
• The cultural significance of reggae music in Jamaica
• The history and evolution of country music in America
• The impact of music streaming on the music industry

Opinion Essay Music Topics

• Music piracy: Should it be considered a serious crime?
• Should music education be mandatory in schools?
• Is autotune ruining the quality of music?
• Are music awards shows still relevant in today’s industry?
• Should music lyrics be censored for explicit content?
• Is it fair that some musicians earn more money than others?
• Is classical music still relevant in modern society?
• Should music festivals have age restrictions for attendees?
• Is it fair for musicians to be judged on their personal lives?
• Is the current state of the music industry sustainable?
• Should musicians be held accountable for the messages in their lyrics?
• Is the role of the record label still important in the age of digital music?
• Should musicians be able to express their political views in their music?
• Does the use of music in movies and TV shows enhance or detract from the storytelling?

Interesting Music Research Topics

• The impact of music on athletic performance
• The use of music in advertising and consumer behavior
• The role of music in enhancing cognitive abilities
• The effects of music on stress reduction and relaxation
• The cultural significance of music in indigenous communities
• The influence of music on fashion and style trends
• The evolution of protest music and its impact on society
• The effects of music on Alzheimer’s disease
• The intersection of music and technology in the music industry
• The effects of music on emotional intelligence and empathy
• The cultural significance of hip hop music in the African diaspora
• The influence of music on human behavior and decision-making
• The effects of music on physical performance and exercise
• The role of music in promoting social and political activism

Research Paper Topics On Music

• The effects of music on the brain and mental health
• The impact of streaming on the music industry
• The history and evolution of rap music
• The cultural significance of traditional folk music
• The use of music in video games to enhance the gaming experience
• The role of music in religious and spiritual practices
• The effects of music on memory and learning
• The development of rock and roll in America
• The intersection of music and politics in the 21st century
• The cultural significance of country music in the South
• The use of music in autism therapy
• The impact of social media on music promotion and marketing
• The influence of music on the LGBTQ+ community
• The effects of music on social behavior and interaction

Argumentative Essay Topics About Music

• Does music have a negative effect on behavior?
• Is streaming music harming the music industry?
• Can music censorship be justified in certain cases?
• Is cultural appropriation a problem in the music industry?
• Should musicians be held accountable for controversial lyrics?
• Is autotune a helpful tool or a crutch for musicians?
• Should music education be a required part of the curriculum?
• Is the use of explicit lyrics in music harmful?
• Should music festivals be required to have safety measures?
• Does the use of profanity in music undermine its artistic value?
• Can music be used to promote political messages effectively?
• Should musicians be allowed to profit from tragedies?

Current Music Topics To Write About In 2023

• The rise of TikTok and its impact on music promotion
• The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on UK music
• The use of virtual concerts and live streaming during COVID-19
• The influence of social media on music consumption and trends
• The emergence of new genres and sub-genres in popular music
• Talk about cancel culture in music
• The debate over the use of explicit lyrics in music
• The impact of climate change on music festivals and events
• The use of artificial intelligence in music production and composition
• The influence of music on political and social movements
• The rise of female and non-binary artists in the music industry
• The effects of globalization on the diversity of music around the world
• The role of nostalgia in the popularity of music from past decades

Musical Topics About Famous Musicians

• The life and legacy of Beethoven
• The impact of Elvis Presley on rock and roll
• The career and contributions of Bob Dylan
• The influence of Michael Jackson on pop music
• The musical evolution of Madonna over time
• The enduring appeal of the Rolling Stones
• The career of Prince and his impact on music
• The contributions of David Bowie to pop culture
• The iconic sound of Jimi Hendrix’s guitar
• The impact of Whitney Houston on the music industry
• The life and career of Freddie Mercury of Queen
• The artistry and impact of Joni Mitchell
• The groundbreaking work of Stevie Wonder in R&B
• The musical legacy of the Beatles and their influence on pop music

Music Research Paper Topics For College

• The cultural significance of the accordion in folk music
• The use of sampling in hip-hop and electronic music production
• The evolution of the drum kit in popular music
• The significance of Taylor Swift in contemporary country-pop music
• The effects of drug abuse in the music industry
• The role of music in shaping political movements and protests
• The impact of streaming services on the music industry and artists’ income
• The significance of the Burning Man festival in music and culture
• The emergence and growth of Afrobeat music globally
• The role of musical collaboration in the creation of new music genres
• The use of autotune and other vocal processing tools in pop music
• The effects of social and political issues on rap music lyrics
• The significance of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in pop culture
• The impact of music on emotional regulation and mental health

Our Controversial Music Topics

• The controversy of the “cancel culture” in US music
• The impact of music piracy on the industry and artists
• The ethical concerns of music sampling without permission
• The controversy surrounding lip-syncing during live performances
• The debate over the authenticity of auto-tune in music
• The controversy surrounding the use of profanity in music
• The debate over the cultural appropriation of music styles
• The controversy surrounding music festivals and their impact on local communities
• The debate over the role of music in promoting violence and aggression
• The controversy surrounding the ownership of an artist’s discography
• The ethical concerns of musicians profiting from songs about tragedies and disasters

Captivating Music Thesis Topics

• The role of music in promoting social justice
• The impact of music streaming on album sales
• The significance of lyrics in contemporary pop music
• The evolution of heavy metal music over time
• The influence of gospel music on rock and roll
• The effects of music education on cognitive development
• The cultural significance of hip-hop music in America
• The role of music in promoting environmental awareness and activism
• The impact of music festivals on local economies
• The evolution of country music and its impact on popular music
• The use of music in advertising and marketing strategies

Classical Music Topic Ideas

• The influence of Baroque music on classical music
• The history and evolution of the symphony orchestra
• The career and legacy of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
• The significance of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony
• The evolution of opera as an art form
• The role of women composers in classical music history
• The impact of the Romantic era on classical music
• The use of program music to tell a story through music
• The significance of the concerto in classical music
• The influence of Johann Sebastian Bach on classical music
• The contributions of Antonio Vivaldi to the concerto form
• The use of counterpoint in classical music composition
• The role of chamber music in classical music history
• The significance of George Frideric Handel’s Messiah in classical music

Interesting Music Topics For High School

• The history and evolution of the piano as a musical instrument
• The significance of Beethoven in classical music
• The impact of Elvis Presley on US music
• The emergence and growth of the hip-hop music genre
• The role of music festivals in contemporary music culture
• The effects of technology on music production and performance
• The influence of social media on music promotion and distribution
• The effects of music on mental health and well-being
• The role of music in popular culture and media
• The impact of musical soundtracks on movies and TV shows
• The use of music therapy for individuals with autism spectrum disorder
• The significance of the Coachella Music Festival in modern music culture
• The cultural significance of the ukulele in Hawaiian culture

Awesome Music Research Questions For 2023

• Should musicians be required to use their platform to promote social justice causes?
• Is music piracy a victimless crime or does it harm the industry?
• Should music venues be required to provide safe spaces for concertgoers?
• Is the Grammy Awards selection process biased towards mainstream artists?
• Should music streaming services pay musicians higher royalties?
• Is it appropriate for music to be used in political campaign advertisements?
• Should music journalists be required to disclose their personal biases in reviews?
• Is it ethical for musicians to profit from songs about tragedies and disasters?
• Should music education be funded equally across all schools and districts?
• Is it fair for record labels to own the rights to an artist’s entire discography?
• Should music festivals have more diverse and inclusive lineups?
• Should musicians be allowed to use drugs and alcohol as part of their creative process?

Fantastic Music Topics For Research

• The evolution of the electric guitar in rock music
• The cultural significance of the sitar in Indian music
• The impact of synthesizers on contemporary music production
• The use of technology in the creation and performance of music
• The influence of Beyoncé on modern pop music
• The significance of Kendrick Lamar in contemporary rap music
• The effects of misogyny and sexism in the rap music industry
• The emergence and growth of K-pop music globally
• The significance of Coachella Music Festival in the music industry
• The history and evolution of the Woodstock Music Festival
• The impact of music festivals on tourism and local economies
• The role of music festivals in shaping music trends and culture
• The effects of music piracy on the music industry
• The impact of social media on the promotion and distribution of music
• The role of music in the Black Lives Matter movement

Catchy Music Related Research Topics

• Is hip-hop culture beneficial or harmful to society?
• Is it ethical to sample music without permission?
• Should music streaming services censor explicit content?
• Is auto-tune a valid musical technique or a crutch?
• Does the music industry unfairly exploit young artists?
• Should radio stations be required to play a certain percentage of local music?
• Is the practice of lip-syncing during live performances acceptable?
• Is music education undervalued and underfunded in schools?
• Does the use of profanity in music contribute to a decline in society?
• Should music venues be held accountable for the safety of concertgoers?

Informative Speech Topics About Music

• The history and evolution of jazz music
• The cultural significance of classical music in Europe
• The origins and development of blues music in America
• The influence of Latin American music on American popular music
• The impact of technology on music production and distribution
• The role of music in expressing emotions and feelings
• The effects of music therapy on mental health and wellbeing
• The cultural significance of traditional music in Africa
• The use of music in films and television to create mood and atmosphere
• The influence of the Beatles on popular music and culture
• The evolution of electronic dance music (EDM)
• The role of music in promoting cultural diversity and unity
• The impact of social media on the music industry and fan culture

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Music Research Paper

This sample music research paper features: 6800 words (approx. 22 pages), an outline, and a bibliography with 49 sources. Browse other research paper examples for more inspiration. If you need a thorough research paper written according to all the academic standards, you can always turn to our experienced writers for help. This is how your paper can get an A! Feel free to contact our writing service for professional assistance. We offer high-quality assignments for reasonable rates.

Introduction

The meaning of music and dance, performance, sacred performance, chant and recitation, instruments, critical musicology, globalization, gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity, nationalism, medical ethnomusicology, applied ethnomusicology.

• Bibliography

Ethnographic approaches to music and dance in the 21st century explore how modes of expression and performance practices are involved in the making of lifeworlds. Cultural production is situated in specific contexts that generate meaning as particular sonic and kinesthetic phenomena relate to discursive processes and social structures. Scholars of music and dance engage with cultural flow through dialogic encounters and interpretative analyses. These studies help illustrate how performance practices produce meanings, mediate socialities, and configure political relations.

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Ethnomusicology, which generally encompasses anthropology, dance ethnology, folklore, musicology, and sociology, situates specific theoretical issues in comparative social and historical contexts. Up to the late 1960s, the discipline explored and indexed the musical phenomena of non-Western cultures in ways that resonated with concurrent anthropological trends in area studies. Critical analysis of these approaches led to a rethinking of music in which music became not the object of culture, but rather the product and expression of human experience. In his writings on the relations between music and society, anthropologist John Blacking (1995) proposed:

We need to know what sounds and what kinds of behavior different societies have chosen to call “musical;” and until we know more about this we cannot begin to answer the question, “How musical is man?” As “humanly organized sound,” music is a bearer of meanings insofar as it exhibits and necessarily demonstrates a set of values that the society that generates it would otherwise lack. (p. 5) Relations between music, dance, and society are thus viewed as complex networks of interdependence through which a given act embodies temporal and emplaced experiences that structure social processes. Contemporary ethnomusicology pursues a rigorous analysis of how cultural production generates social significance by positioning the individual as the agent of social change through historical encounter. (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});

Theoretical Approaches to Music and Dance

Musical and social structures mutually constitute each other through human interaction. This cultural-studies approach derives from the seminal work of Raymond Williams, who claimed that culture is not fixed as a bounded work or elite mode of production, but is instead embedded in everyday experience and activity. As a cultural materialist who challenged orthodox Marxist accounts of historical epochs or phases, Williams framed cultural practices as sites of political contestation through which groups reproduce and resist modes of domination, particularly those that critique industrial capitalism (Williams, 1977). Critical to his work are structures of feeling that configure the ways in which particular generations and social classes experience difference among social relations. These feelings beget a lived experience of a particular moment in society and history that brings meaning into the lives of individuals and the lifeworlds that they constitute. The production of cultural meaning is a fluid and dynamic process that emerges as a necessary process in which “new meanings and values, new practices, new relationships, and kinds of relationship are continually being created” (Williams, 1977, pp. 122–23).

Musical meaning is not itself generated through aesthetic critique, nor by reference to something extramusical, such as an emotion, landscape, or harmonic figure. Rather, musical elements and structures discursively relate to lived experience by an act of representation that fixes musical experiences to metaphoric and metonymic structures, forms, and works. These bounded entities are placed in a network of complex relations that can be explained through systems of representation in which musical ontologies serve as interpretive frameworks for diverse musical systems, whether Western symphonic music, Hindustani classical music, or Japanese gagaku court theater, or for categorization of musical cultures as classical, folk, popular, and traditional. Categories, however, do not necessarily correlate to an intrinsic value, but more productively relate to “how they are used and embodied in community relations to become structuring forces in musical life” (Holt, 2007, p. 29).

Ethnomusicologists today explore the discursive production of musical meaning as a contemporary response to what comparative musicologist Charles Seeger (1977) problematized as the “musicological juncture” (p. 16), or the gap of representation that occurs when communicating about one system of human communication (music) through another (speech). To redress claims that music is “untranslatable and irreducible to the verbal mode” (Feld, 1982, p. 91), ethnomusicology suggests that musical practice is less a latent mode of (artistic) representation but rather a (socially) active and engaged mode of producing reality. If speech is the communication of “worldview as the intellection of reality,” then music is the communication of “worldview as the feeling of reality” (Seeger, 1977, p. 7). What we perceive as “feelingful” occurs through the “generality and multiplicity of possible messages and interpretations . . . that unite the material and mental dimensions of musical experience as fully embodied” (Seeger, 1977, p. 91). As suggested by interpretive approaches to cultural anthropology, ethnographers study not experience, per se, but the feelingful and discursive structures through which experience occurs.

Musical experience is constituted as meaningful when social structures conjoin with individual consciousness through structures of feeling. Whereas structures suggest fixed relationships that are rigid and determined, feeling inflects the intense and personal experience of what is “believed, felt, and acted upon” (Frith, 1996, p. 252). This becomes important with regard to the construction of cultural forms, whether musical genres and styles or social categories and spaces. How people behave with regard to sound relates to what they perceive and think about such behavior. Anthropologist Alan Merriam (1964) proposed a model of musical anthropology that triangulates these axes of sound, concept, and behavior. This tripartite structure has been redressed by an interpretive analysis of dialectical processes that consist of historical construction, social maintenance, and individual adaptation and experience; in other words, an agency-centered inquiry into how people create, experience, and use music (Rice, 1987).

Feelingful experiences occur through culturally specific processes that produce and perceive sound. Recent directions in the phenomenology of acoustic phenomena argue that sound is not the property of a musical object separated from its origin, but rather, sonic significance lies in the encounter of sound as musical. Sensory dimensions of experience suggest that sonorities may be heard as affective, feelingful, and emotional when perceived as musical patterns in specific cultural contexts. Phenomenological studies suggest the ways in which people relate to each other through senses of hearing. A hearing culture may make it “possible to conceptualize new ways of knowing a culture and of gaining a deepened understanding of how the members of a society know each other” (Erlmann, 2004, p. 3). In turn, individual and social processes perceive musical encounter “not through layers of cognitive categories and symbolic associations, but with a trained and responsive body, through habits copied from others and strictly reinforced, by means of musical skills” (Downey, 2002, p. 490). Listeners’ acquired habits of assimilating sensory experience to musical systems affect them viscerally, and lived bodies are fashioned by patterns of acting in relation to music at the same time that they are responsive to sonic textures.

Performance emerges through the interaction of corporeal gestures, discursive tropes, and performative utterances in social settings that situate these actions as musical or extramusical, verbal or nonverbal, cognitive or affective, sacred or secular. These actions are held together by aesthetic principles that are represented in the social and material world, just as the social and material world is imbued with extraordinary value. Performance and listening are intersubjectively and physiologically experienced in a trained and socialized set of artistic bodily movements that reflect values and ideas (Meintjes, 2003, p. 176).

Embodied realms of experience situate cultural practices in the physiological and expressive body and the social forces that operate through those bodies. Performativity asserts the materiality of nonverbal communication and expression and the presence of the body as it is mediated by the production of sound. Whether sound is produced by a singer, a musician, or mediated by technology, the presence of the medium leaves a material trace that regulates its origin (Barthes, 1978). For example, analyses of timbre consider the grain of the voice in recording—in addition to elements of texture, attack, delay, and pitch—and interpret studio techniques as signifying practices that are deeply connected to the discursive production of style and genre (Théberge, 1997).

Embodied performance by a socialized musician or dancer suggests how bodies may be regulated or may resist forces of power (Comaroff, 1991). The discourse of bodies in motion at Greek weddings, for instance, produces the dialectical relationships and mutual dependencies that are also regulated and constrained by their repetitive power as a body politic, or collective unit. By introducing nonGreek Roma musicians at wedding parties as daulia, or drums (Cowan, 1990, p. 102), Greek townspeople exert power over the materiality of both resonant and outside bodies. As sites of reception and agency, bodies bear narratives of time and place that coalesce into corporeal memories. The ways individuals perform these narratives construct identity and differences that endow sound and movement with the capacity to represent lived experience.

As forms of social action and as meaningful activity, music and dance create and give expression to human and social experience. Epistemological concerns have critically responded to the ways in which a kinetic body and a sound dialogically compose form through performance events, structured practices, and representational strategies. Rather than treat music and dance as objects of discourse that possess meaning in and of themselves, or frame body movement techniques and sonic phenomena as abstract properties that may be reconfigured according to context, ethnographers seek to localize the very terms by which understanding and knowledge of these performative dynamics are produced.

Music Research Topics and Issues

Music plays a significant role in preserving and transmitting the world’s religions in terms of history, culture, and practice. The study of music in religious practices considers the ways in which music transforms experience into sacred meanings, narrates religious myths, and structures religious ritual and communities. The performative conditions associated with religious practice consider sacred sound not as the taxonomy of a particular belief system, but rather as a sensory spectacle through which experiences become enchanted. The sacred nature mediates by sonic utterances that may induce a phantasmagoric state of being, encode sacred language, or embody affective experience. Sound indexes religious experience through the presence of sacred instruments and the act of listening to liturgical chant. Sound also marks sacred spaces through pilgrimages and festival rituals, among other religious practices (Beck, 2006; Berliner, 1993).

The efficacy of music in sacred spaces suggests the ways in which sound may be sacred and how this sacred nature may be mediated through sonic practices. How sound conveys sacred meaning and experience in specific contexts raises ontological distinctions in that what is often perceived as musical in European and North American contexts may be considered nonmusical and sacred in other sacred spaces.

Contexts may determine how sound is received and interpreted and in what ways sound may be ontologically separate from music. Interpretation of sound also structures power relations, in which religious authority is maintained by ideological boundaries of sound seeking to differentiate between sacred practices and secular forms of expression (Baily, 2003).

Ethnographies of sacred performance practices have tended to focus on the capacity of music, dance, and ritual drama to organize religious activity through modes of social interaction that produce webs of associative meaning (Reily, 2002). Performance has been conceptualized as a medium through which participants demonstrate religious conviction and commitment; as a means to structure time, narrative, and symbolic systems; and as a mode of interaction that codifies organizational patterns and the conditions of participation in religious activity. For example, the sacred voice is a medium that binds individuals communally in religious activity. How these experiences shape and are shaped by musical practice is determined by the theological ways in which individuals engage with music and music making. More recently, ethnographers have considered ways in which religious-ritual activity depends on the act of performance in order to be perceived as sacred and, in particular, how sound and movements are mediums that frame a ritual act as sacred. As individuals negotiate moral boundaries between the sacred and the profane in contemporary contexts, the act of producing sound and movement becomes a contested arena where religious authorities judge the ethics of cultural production. Performance through music and dance may allow departure from the profane and entrance into the sacred, mark the aesthetic boundaries of secular space, or itself articulate the boundaries between the sacred and the profane by which religious practices acquired enchanted and sacred meaning.

Several bodies of scholarship have addressed musical change, religious renewal, soteriological potential, musicoreligious orthodoxy, and other related issues. These different forms of religious practice, or syncretism, may be marked through distinct genres and styles that expose moments of encounter and uneven relations of power. In colonial spaces, religious repertory may occupy cultural spaces in ways that reproduce a hegemonic religious order and erase subaltern religious practices (Comaroff, 1991). Folkloric ensembles typically relate to historical or contemporary religious practices through complex processes of aestheticization that problematically blur distinctions between sacred worship, cultural traditions, and popular culture. These distinctions are in part based on a collective memory of the sacred that is translated through aesthetic ideals. The embodiment of these ideals demonstrates how religious ideologies are manifested through bodily practices that themselves produce sacred sound, movement, and performance.

The power of sound embodied in speech patterns, or chant, may preserve and transmit knowledge and religious authority as well as mark historical change. For example, the Rigvedic texts of the Harappan in Pakistan and northwestern India are considered sacred when correctly rendered through transmission and pronunciation of Vedic hymns. Recitation of these hymns occurs through three types of spoken accent with a melodic contour dependent on the succession of accent in the sung syllables, as well as the duration of each relative pitch. The consideration of Vedic chant as the foundation of contemporary Hindustani music in South Asia is, in part, attributed to its preservation through Brahman recitation. Codification of early performance practices, such as Gregorian chant in southern Europe, began when clergy notated plainchant in order to correlate its liturgical function with the medieval Roman liturgical calendar. Compositional practices that developed from these notations are widely considered to be the conceptual and historical basis for Renaissance and late European courtly arts (Bergeron, 1998).

Some religious cultures regard practices of recitation, or the sounding of religious text, as the divine act that makes speech patterns sacred by mediating the transmission of sacred texts through the vocal performance. The significance of such performances is governed not only by the syntactic conditions such as pitch and duration, but also by audition, or the appropriate response, performed by the ethical listener (Hirschkind, 2006).

Instruments embody religious experience when endowed with the capacity to produce sacred sound. In some ritual practices, performance on a particular instrument, such as batá percussion ensembles in Cuban Santería, realizes the divine potential of the ritual event and produces religious transformation. Instrumentalperformance practice marks the shift from secular to sacred contexts; produces the appropriate performance conditions for trance, ecstasy, possession, and other states of heightened sacrality; symbolizes tropes of religious narrative and function; and transfers knowledge and participation among believers (Hagedorn, 2001; Rouget, 1985; Wong, 2001).

Sacred musical practices are often narrative—telling stories and relating myths to generate a sense of historical and religious meaning. Narrative may be considered musical through, for example, the ways in which music marks the passage of time in ritual performance and in the narrative sequence of events, or through the juxtaposition of different musical genres that layer and texture religious stories. Instruments often play a significant role in narrating epic myths with sacred content, such as within bardic traditions or Sufi mysticism. One way in which narrative components of sacred music may shape a religious community is by mediating a sense of place. The act of recalling an original event, such as an act of martyrdom or a miracle, links the event to a specific site. When enacted through song and other musico-poetic genres, the act of recall layers subsequent events to that site in ways that parse history as locally meaningful in religious communities.

During the early 1990s, musicologists readjusted paradigms in which musical performance expresses a natural mode of human existence or formalizes a universal set of aesthetic ideals (Solie, 1993). The critical inquiry espoused by “new musicology” advocated for the deconstruction of ideologies into iconicities of style that are reproduced and transformed by acts of performance. Performance practices now produce social relations that are represented in different categories of gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity, generation, class and nation, and other forms of identity. Cultural meaning is discursively constructed by specific practices of signification, and links between signifier and signified are not fixed but arbitrary. These practices may construct meaningful experience in ways that depend on conventions of taste and class that are situated in a particular time and place.

Studies of place tend to be located in everyday life and explore the tactics by which people interact and engage with their environment. Gatherings, such as rehearsals among English rock musicians, are not only mediated by these practices, but also produce affective relationships to the settings in which social activities take place. Yet, as conditions of modernity separate space from place in lived experience, the physical settings of social activities are “thoroughly penetrated by and shaped in terms of social influences quite distant from them” (Giddens, as cited in Stokes, 1994, p. 1). Therefore, approaches to place, music, and dance seek to relocate cultural geographies within specific social, economic, and political spaces by addressing how individuals produce sound and movement in order “to reestablish their presence, situate events in a fixed place and time, and reembed actions within social structures” (Stokes, 1994, p. 3). Place becomes meaningful through affective processes that recognize and enable different experiences, mediate emotional relations to an environment, or produce nostalgia through acts of memory that bestow music and dance “with an intensity, power and simplicity unmatched by any other social activity” (Stokes, 1994, p. 3).

As individuals perceive what takes shape around them, they participate in the construction of a soundscape, or an environment structured by the perception and reception of sound. Soundscapes are differentiated not only by dynamics of power, class, and difference, but also by sentimentality, or the emotional and affective relationships that constitute a sense of place (Feld & Basso, 1996). An acoustemology of sound analyzes the sentimental relations to place that are embodied by sound production and reception among, for instance, Kaluli people in Papua New Guinea. Through interlocking, overlapping, and alternating singing that mimics bird calls in the rainforests, Kaluli voices index the natural environment; mediate places as sites of memory; and express an ecological sense of self, place, and time (Feld, 1982). Acoustic environments have also been critical to the historical progression of musical form in bourgeoisie European society and the displacement of instrumentalists to the role of musical interpreters. Early performance practices were comprised of extramusical, literary, or narrative material that was, in part, marked by a musician’s individualized embellishment of musical material.

In the 19th century, the concert room emerged as a performance setting that aestheticized the impression of immediate contact with the music as a listening ideal. Musical practices shifted to uphold universalist aesthetic ideals not only through listening appreciation, but also in celebration of a composer’s genius. Dramatic structures were communicated by composers such as Beethoven through “the abstract logic of pure form” and the formal properties of the music itself in ways that privileged structural-listening practices in European art music. Thus, the commodification of musical knowledge and musical emplacement fetishized sonata form in the historical development of instrumental Western art music (Leyshon, Matless, & Revill, 1998).

The commodification of musical place in a globalized world has induced a certain anxiety among critical musicologists over the ways that disembedding music and dance practices stimulates desires for authenticity by late-capital consumers in a hegemonic economic order. While the capacity for music to travel has augmented an appreciation for place and dismantled cultural borders, the poetics and politics of this have problematically differentiated relations between self and other. World music, and related configurations of art music, ritual, folk and ethnic genres, and world beat and roots music (Aubert, 2007), are authenticated by conditions of place. By privileging the geographically local as authentic, the particular can be naturalized in ways that fetishize locality through terms of belonging. The act of splitting sound from its source and reproducing it depends on uneven processes of representation that contest cultural rights and negotiate various modes of ownership (Feld & Basso, 1996). Styles associated with world music then demarcate community by linking dispersed places and allegiances that, through subjective identity, allow the strategies by which individuals register difference (Erlmann, 1999).

The globalization of world music has also been critiqued as a pastiche, or a process of reconfiguring time and space that detemporalizes the encounter between self and ethnographic others into an event beyond history, or perhaps at the horizon of a certain historical moment. For instance, the production and consumption of alternative folk rock links different historical moments into one bounded cultural space, while world-dance music may layer disparate local styles into a repetitive, temporal sequence (Erlmann, 1999). Cultural interchange and interaction in popular music thus depends upon a concept of culture that binds territory to groups in ways that demand the political engagement of cultural critique. Whereas narratives of cultural interchange such as hybridity, creolism, and syncretism tend to privilege myths of origin, postcolonial analyses encourage new approaches that no longer engender forms of being by binaries of self (self and ethnographic other), place (here and there), and time (then and now), but rather by a third space that is constituted by these boundaries.The circulatory relations of cultural flow have furthered understandings of how historical consciousness may undermine essentializing cultural strategies. Studies of the black Atlantic (Gilroy, 1993) address how black popular music and dance styles shape and are shaped by particular African retentions and situate the Atlantic as a site of crossings, mediations, and exchanges that continually reconsider the cultural flow of African and African American expressive forms.

In response to large-scale processes of migration, globalization, and transnationalism that destabilize structures of belonging, critical approaches to place have also emphasized the production of locality through cultural practices. Tropes of place may uneasily mark displacement from an imagined structure of belonging, for instance when tropes of the crowd and the machine in the South African vocal genre of isicathamiya signify a sense of nostalgia for rural agricultural economies among populations who migrated to cities in search of labor opportunities. Another example can be found in how the mapping of memory fragments onto musical events, instruments, and kinship narratives of a retired Jewish community in Liverpool, England, shapes collective relations that in turn construct an immigrant neighborhood whose identity is nurtured by newly mediated and localized imaginaries of home and community. Locality may also be produced by sound-engineering practices that index a particular place and authenticate a musical style through the technological reproduction of sound in specific performance conditions such as “live” Austin country music (Greene & Porcello, 2005).

Gender and sexuality analyses situate performers and their texts within specific musical worlds and examine how these worlds produce gendered ideologies through performance practice, singing style, repertory, performance events and occasions, lyrics and elaborations, and instrumental practice. Thus, gender and sexuality are mutually constitutive of cultural experiences, and also mutually construct processes of subjectivity and alterity in ways that have been binarily opposed to biological explanations of lived experience. As a method of cultural critique, gender and sexuality studies analyze the ways in which ideology is maintained and transformed through the performance of a gendered self. These studies also examine the ways that musical practices mediate social relations as variously gendered—masculine, feminine, and perhaps hyperreal. Because gender theorists have understood sexuality as constitutive of gendered norms, distinctions between gender and sexuality have been largely premised on identity construction as theorized in psychoanalytic discourse. Lacanian theory argues that linguistic signs triangulate the enlightened self from its other in ways that destabilize a sense of identity by the desire for an object that might represent such identity. By reading social and cultural texts for hidden and repressed desires, critical theorists reveal conditions of heteronormativity that shape and are shaped by cultural practices. Ultimately, gender and sexuality studies suggest how social distinctions may be magnified rather than ameliorated by the performative act of music making and structured movement.

A substantial body of literature has been devoted to highlighting and documenting women’s contribution and women’s roles in musical performance. As professional entertainers, as dramatic personalities, and as audiences, women convey social values and transmit cultural meanings in ways that may be different from those performed by men. The expression of sentimentality by women through forms and repertoires, such as sung poetry among Bedouin women in upper Egypt, resist, maneuver, and maintain patriarchal norms of modesty, honor, and shame that have been typified in Mediterranean studies (Abu-Lughod, 1986), whereas songs sung by Berber women in northern Morocco strategically empower potentialities of marital life (Magrini, 2003). Performance events and contexts have been analyzed with discourses surrounding these practices through elements of lyrics, style, technology, and appropriate behavior. These suggest how identity may be encoded and performed as masculine, feminine, or ambiguously gendered. Postmodernist approaches to the paradigmatic relations between musical and social structures have produced seminal readings of the gendered hierarchies in composition, such as immanent relations between the masculine and the feminine in sonata form (McClary, 1991), formulations of the Western music canon, constructions of ontological difference through gender (Solie, 1993), and the potential of music itself—as a performance rather than as text, to disrupt the masculine musicological narratives within which it is often contained (Abbate, 1991).

The broad compass of vocal performance in different registers constructs gendered and sexualized identities by embracing some, and refusing other, conventions of style and genre. Voice may characterize a range of erotic and emotional relationships among women who sing and women who listen in ways that “resonate in sonic space as lesbian difference and desire” (Brett, Wood, & Thomas, 1994, p. 28). This sapphonicvoice is found in operatic practices by female singers who assume “pants” roles, or castrato male roles sung by women, as well as other singers and singing personalities (Brett et al., 1994). Koestenbaum (1994) argued that the brea between registers is a gendered split that emplaces a voice between male and female. The ways in which the brea is negotiated may be “fatal to the act of natural voice production” (p. 220) when gender and sexuality are transferred beyond normativity, such as the sapphonicvoice’s synthesis of register; this replaces its splitting, or the falsetto register’s failure to disguise this break. The combination of different registers may refuse vocal categories and polarities of natural and unnatural, and may establish interpretations of female desire, male desire, and the relations of class, age, sexual status, and identity through vocal performance (Koestenbaum, 1994).

The performance of gender engages with the kinds of subjects that musical and dance performances engender, both onstage and among audiences, and the ways that such performance relates to everyday life as lived, embodied, and theorized. For instance, a feminized atmosphere at a wedding in Morocco is not dependent on the presence of female dancers, but rather on the performance of femininity among communal relations that may differentiate between gender, sexuality, and class. Perceptions and representations of Asian American femininity have shifted due to North American taiko performance that represents social space through gesture, movement, and the presence of women in drumming practices. In post-Apartheid South Africa, Zulu ngoma song and dance is critical to the performance of masculinity and the anxieties of retaining the presence of individualized expression and stylized body movement in the midst of unemployment, an AIDS epidemic, and a history of violence in KwaZulu-Natal (Meintjes, 2003).

Critical race studies examine how constructions of difference on the basis of body type and color are perpetuated by the representation of essentialized metaphysical conditions. Concepts of race are linked to the emergence of modern scientific inquiry into the natural world and are largely considered a product of Enlightenment thought and observation. The late 18th century produced a world “observed, processed and remapped on the imagination of Europe” (Radano & Bohlman, 2000, p. 13) in which race and music constituted logics of difference that categorized the natural world and sought to make it understandable. Moreover, racial discourse contributed to the formation of musical difference as human difference was mapped onto musical difference, that is, to the object of music itself. The epistemic model that measured harmonic relations on a mathematically proportionate scale and unified differences in pitch influenced Enlightenment thought on the structure and substance of not only resonating, but also racialized bodies. How music participates in the construction of race and racial imaginaries ultimately raises ontological questions of whether music itself represents these qualities, or whether our understandings of music are shaped by and through racial relations.

Racial constructs are connected to music through structures of understandability, that is, the capacity of sound to signify and communicate meaning, and through materiality, or the technologies, objects, and bodies that represent music and musical histories through particular ideologies (Brown, 2007). For example, the 19th-century German composer Richard Wagner claimed that the language of European opera and vocal music was degraded through the inability of European Jewish composers to fully control the language of music, which Wagner instantiated in terms of 19th-century German universalism that was first and foremost predicated on language and an assumption that music instantiates comparative linguistic properties. Elsewhere, race interacts with other systemic hierarchies, such as the historic provision of wedding and court entertainment by Jewish musicians in predominantly Muslim worlds situated along the Silk Road, from Bukharan weddings in central Asia to the Abbasid and Omayad caliphates of the 11th century. Categories in which instruments function as a racial mapping of power relations may be critiqued by participants themselves, such as Karnatak and Hindustani musicians who negotiate caste systems in South Asia that distinguish between the permissibility of Brahmin performance on the Karnatic vinalute and the delegation of instrumental performance on untouchable leather-skinned drums to less privileged castes. Conditions of difference, shaped by cultural practices, help to better understand relations of power in systems based on class, caste, kinship, religion, and other forms of belonging and ownership.

Racial conventions of blackness, whiteness, and other morphologies play a critical role in ideological distinctions of music as rational and intellectual, or as orally transmitted, communal, and embodied. The naturalization of certain structures as African retentions, such as improvised movement, antiphonal oppositions, and repeated cycles of interlocking rhythmic patterns, reinforces the putative inseparability of music and dance in the African diaspora (Meintjes, 2003). This becomes problematic when what is musical and universal is defined against conceptions of blackness as physical and embodied.Yet, performance practice and histories may join as lived experience in ways that affirm how blues practices in African American working-class communities in the southern United States influenced the emergence of jazz, gospel, soul, R&B, rock, hip-hop, and other black vernacular music. The problem of race translates into a cultural critique in which creative strategies destabilize the tropes through which they emerge by means of intertextuality, subversion, and other signifying techniques (Radano & Bohlman, 2000).

Ethnicity, like other forms of difference that participate in processes of exclusion and inclusion, is constructed on the basis of shared beliefs in a “common ancestry, memories of a shared historical past, and elements in common, such as kinship patterns, physical continuity, religious affiliation, language, or some combination of these” (Shelemay, 2001, p. 249). Musical and dance practices instantiate ethnic relations by performing social boundaries that reproduce and subvert ideologies; these relations simultaneously also produce meanings, that is, “a patterned context in which other things happen” (Waterman, 1990, p. 214). Ethnic identity is often discussed in terms of minority relations and population movements that are themselves predicated on political difference. Often, ethnic boundaries “define and maintain social identities which can only exist in context of oppositions and relativities”; thus, ethnography can engage with how “actors use music in specific local situations to erect boundaries, maintain distinctions between us and them, and use terms such as ‘authentic’ to justify these boundaries” (Stokes, 1994, p. 6).

Cultural nationalism is a complex process by which institutions and actors integrate diverse populations into structures of national belonging. Ethnography investigates the ways in which music and dance practices—and the discursive spaces that are dialogically created and inhabited by such practices—generate national imaginaries in local contexts. Early forms of nationalism celebrated the universal claim to a single shared language and a set of particular customs and traditions situated in an ethnonational framework. Scholars have since criticized collective national identity as a product of state apparatuses that seek to reify lived experience into internationally recognized forms. Thus, the invention of tradition has been linked with nation-building projects in which state power emerges through the performance of national imaginaries and the efficacy of imagined communities (Askew, 2002). The extent to which symbolic production produces and sustains state hegemony through particular genres suggests whether these processes might be “multivalent, multivocal, and polyphonic” (Askew, 2002, p. 273) and how agents and institutions are involved in negotiating, defining, and contesting that which constitutes the nation. Musical ethnographies reveal the strategic shifts that characterize nationalist projects, ask whether events coincide with or interrupt official ideologies, illustrate why specific forms are chosen to represent the nation, and address how issues of authenticity and preservation are managed in these endeavors. Though global capital flow, access to electronic media, and transnational migration of people have decentered and deterritorialized processes of nationalism, the mediating structure of the nation continues to relate how people cross lines of difference through local transactions and cultural production.

Representation of the nation through music depends on a belief in the representational potential of music, that is, music’s capacity to embody a cultural whole that exists prior to its mediation. The production of national symbols, therefore, depends upon a modern discourse that is represented by cultural mediation. This discourse emerged from Johann Gottfried Herder’s claim that based national identity on the common narratives and histories of a given people and, in particular, on the capacity of language and folksong to represent such shared experiences. Herder’s proto-nationalist theory is comprised of a geographic model where music marks a place, such as the landscape of the nation, an acoustic model whereby sound distinguishes the nation as a whole, and a narrative model in which music encodes stories that represent the history of the nation (see Bohlman, 2004). The quintessential image of the nation, or a “preexisting entity that is more indefinite than definite,” is reflected by national music, “for whom it becomes the task to bring out as much of the definition as possible” (Bohlman, 2004, p. 83).

Conversely, nationalistic music does not harbor relations among a nationalized people, but rather services competition between nation-states. Nationalistic music secures the geographic identity of the nation-state by marking borders and producing alterity through the production of national difference. Alterity may be differentiated on the basis of class, race, ethnicity, and gender dynamics that exclude those whose presence prescribes the need to regulate desires and who trigger ambivalence as a condition of modernity. The marking of borders is instantiated by a presentation of the nation that embeds power in performance, or through a means of communicative interaction in which the act itself is privileged over that which it mediates. Thus, nonverbal performance may communicate messages whose meaning is located in elements of sound and movement and in dialogic interaction between performers and audiences, or between modes of modernity—contingent on the specifics of the temporal and spatial moment.

Early studies of population movement addressed patterns of assimilation and acculturation through theories of culturecontact that failed to engage with political disparities and the contradictions of multiculturalism in modern societies. More recent approaches redressed these patterns as a postmodern condition that negotiates instantiations of nationalism, transnationalism, and displacement through the appropriation of expressive culture and the making of political alliances among transnational populations (Garofalo, 1992). However, the rigidities and essentialisms of diasporic identity created by multiculturalism may articulate or contradict the politics of national, postcolonial, and minority identities even as they stress emergent forms of culture, uneven relations of cultural hybridity, and ambivalent relations to national homelands (Ramnarine, 2007). Contemporary diaspora studies thus emphasize the “newness” of the diasporic experience, and address political belongings and further substitutions as historically specific and shaped by a historical consciousness. Fragments of this consciousness are inscribed within an in-between space by which immigrants may register a sense of loss, exile, and rupture through cultural production. Diasporic music making may thus be a practice of everyday life in local communities by individuals making strategic choices through music festivals, individual biographies, song texts, musical instruments, and intellectual movements. Politically articulated readings of these social relations and creative processes reveal economies of desire in colonial encounters, performances that mourn and remember ancestors, intercultural borrowings in African-Peruvian theater, or state interventions in the creation of broader diasporic groups (Ramnarine, 2007).

Studies of popular culture and music have helped to differentiate between experiences of voluntary and forced migration. The actions and behavior of refugees affect how groups produce and give meaning to their music as they negotiate loss and trauma, and pursue a state of stability that is represented by resettlement. For instance, Vietnamese refugee communities in the United States tend to display a preference for love songs and Western-oriented popular music that convey anticommunist nostalgia for a pre-1975 period of French, U.S., and Japanese colonial influence in Vietnam (Reyes, 1999). Other histories of dispossession and violence have prompted ethnographers to consider the social construction of place, self, and other through aesthetic experience as a means for understanding the performative capacities of particular histories and repertories of violence and “the ensuing meanings violent performances carry for victims, perpetrators, and witnesses alike” (McDonald, 2009, p. 59).

Future Directions

Medical ethnomusicology seeks to integrate disciplines of music; health sciences; integrative, complementary and alternative medicine (ICAM); the physical and social sciences; medical humanities; and the healing arts through integrative research and applied practice. Research in music, medicine, and culture recognizes the dynamic and diverse practices by which specialized music and sound phenomena function as therapeutic strategies and as a means to cure illness and disease. Ethnomusicological discourse has demonstrated the extent to which specialized music emerges from a spiritual or religious ontology and is practiced in ritual or ceremonial events. When music combines with or functions as prayer or meditation, it may constitute preventive and/or curative practices that can be situated among a set of local medical practices. Medical ethnomusicology focuses on the performance of healing and the culture of health in order to better understand disease and illness, health and healing, as well as the performative nature of diagnosis, treatment, and healing. Recent studies and interventions include locating sites of ritual healing in ngoma practice among disparate communities; correlating beliefs about spirit possession to the intricacies of indigenous health care systems in Tumbuka communities; advocating and critiquing how the decline of HIV infection rates in Uganda correspond to the use of local musical traditions that support medical initiatives; engaging with science and religion through a focus on music, prayer, meditation, and healing; and the ways that these processes intimately link with transformational cognitive states in Tajikistan (Koen, 2008).

Applied ethnomusicology refers to work in the public sector that encourages the advocacy, curation, documentation, education, and performance of music and dance. These efforts apply the perspectives, principles, theories, and methods of ethnomusicology to encourage public awareness and participation in broadly defined fields of cultural practice. Advocacy engages with public-policy issues, such as arts access and participation, artists’ rights, censorship, intellectual property, and cultural heritage through institutional and noninstitutional efforts. The Society for Ethnomusicology debates and assumes positions on the ethics of music and fair use, music and torture, and the rights of human subjects in scholarly research. Cultural initiatives facilitate opportunities for performers and performance practices through festival and concert organization, recording and documentary film production, and museum exhibitions.

Efforts to document and archive materials are encouraged through the acquisition and digitalization of archives, collaboration between institutions, improved access, and the support of scholarship, publications, and public programs. Public education and outreach develop curriculum at the primary and secondary levels; establish performance ensembles and programs to nurture skills; and foster audiences and public awareness through the promotion and distribution of related events, productions, and publications. Performance of music and dance by specialists is encouraged not only as a research method in observing participants, but also as a means to preserve, transmit, and produce communities based on knowledge production and creative expression.

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Organizing Committee

General chair, program chair, workshop chair, workshop chair assistant, tutorial chair, competition chair, data and benchmark chair, diversity, inclusion and accessibility chair, affinity chair, ethics review chair, communication chair, social chair, journal chair, creative ai chair, workflow manager, logistics and it, mission statement.

The Neural Information Processing Systems Foundation is a non-profit corporation whose purpose is to foster the exchange of research advances in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, principally by hosting an annual interdisciplinary academic conference with the highest ethical standards for a diverse and inclusive community.

About the Conference

The conference was founded in 1987 and is now a multi-track interdisciplinary annual meeting that includes invited talks, demonstrations, symposia, and oral and poster presentations of refereed papers. Along with the conference is a professional exposition focusing on machine learning in practice, a series of tutorials, and topical workshops that provide a less formal setting for the exchange of ideas.

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