Collective art production and artists’ development in a dialectic perspective The rock band as an example

By Lars Brinck

We often conceive of composing a musical work or writing a song as an individual endeavor. However, a vast majority of songs within popular music are composed and arranged through collaborative processes. How does this work influence the individual musicians’ development? Two Danish rock bands with a special interest in collective compositional processes are observed. A situated learning theoretical analysis of the musicians' changing participation is integrated with a work analytical perspective.

Through long-term parallel analyses of how the changing music and the musicians’ changing participation in those processes dialectically entwine, the research aims to contribute to our understanding of collective creative processes also as processes of learning.

The project is supported by the Danish Ministry of Culture’s funds earmarked for artistic research and is expected publicated 2018.