Confessions of an Amateur Percussionist - Part 1

"Music has always been a big part of my life".

A very common phrase, and one that's starting to sound a bit corny if you think about it. There are so many flaws to this generalised statement, and yet some of us just can't stop ourselves from saying it. Because such a broad and overarching statement is the only way we can express our love for this 'music', even if 'music' might just be the latest Taylor Swift track or a CD you got for your 15th birthday (Hah! Who still does this?). It just happens. So, what am I trying to get at? Well, this semester, I made a bold choice to take a music unit which involved actual music playing rather than theory (gasp!). The experience, while full of ups and downs, was both enriching and transformative for me. I found it thoroughly enjoyable (though finding out my actual marks was less-than-pleasant) and would recommend it to anyone interested in doing a 'easy' unit at UWA. Students kept a journal each week and used it as data to write up an essay about their experience as a final assessment. In this (and several upcoming) blogpost, I will share my experience as an amateur percussionist.

A major reason I am writing about this is because of the nature of the assessment; it intrigued me. Unlike writing a scientific essay, I got the opportunity to explore and write about myself, using 'data' I generated myself. In the following blog posts, I will discuss some of my 'findings'. 

One of the most prominent themes that emerged over the semester was how I interacted with my ensemble members. The biggest difference between ensemble and solo playing is people! You work with people, instead of alone. This provided a social dimension to my music-making experience, something I was not completely familiar with. I've worked with other people on duets but now we're talking about a group of twenty-ish students that I didn't know very well. While the incorporation of social aspects in ensemble groups have enabled participants to reap additional benefits such as garnering a sense of belonging, it's still rather unclear how and in what way this sense of belonging arises. Do people just blend in from day 1? Or do they have to 'earn' this belonging somehow? It is not unheard of that certain nonmusic students to find ensemble participation to be challenging, sometimes to the point of dropping out. My experience has served to elicit this process of obtaining a sense of belonging. In this scenario, I would brand myself as an 'introvert' with a mild case of social anxiety and this really shows in my weekly journal entries. A sizeable portion of my semester and journal was spent worrying about the social aspects of my ensemble.

When I analysed my weekly entries, I found a shift in feelings and perceptions. Thanks to studying this topic in Year 12, I managed to relate it to culture shock - the process of feeling belonged in a new environment, usually a culture. While many other shock-processes exist, such as role shock, which would fit my situation better, the literature hardly focuses on university and unit transitions, except within the context of international students studying abroad. I used Peter Pederson's "The Five Stages of Culture Shock: Critical Incidents Around the World" as a source material to complement my findings. The book was a similar record of a bunch of American students travelling around the world and writing critical incidents that can relate to culture shock. What I liked about the book was how it was qualitative, rather than quantitative, with majority being excerpts from these student journals. 

While many have debated over the 'correct' process of culture shock, the common one involves a five phases shaped in a U-shaped curve. You start off high, hit rock bottom but eventually get back up a high point again. Interestingly, a person is not guaranteed to be able to reach the final stage and exit this process, nor would the process progress in a straightfoward trajectory. Sometimes people rotate between phases back and forth and may revert to a precessing stage. These grey areas are the reason why many find it challenging to create a 'correct' model for culture shock. After all, human thinking and feelings are such enigmatic things.

Figure 1. The five phases of culture shock: honeymoon, disintegration, reintegration, autonomy and interdependence, along with associated emotions and feelings. 

Honeymoon Stage

The very first sentence in my journal had me describing my first rehearsal as 'giddy'. I was excited about participating in an ensemble, both musically and socially. While I was uncertain about many things, I tried to stay optimistic and happy. "This class would be different. It won't even be a 'class'. It'll be fun", is what I thought to myself. Interacting with my classmates was never my strong point. At university, what is a classmate, really? You sit in the same room for an hour each week for a semester and never see each other again. Anyway, knowing that we would have to rely on each other more than in an average classroom encouraged me to interact and think that interactions would be much simpler.

The first rehearsal went on well enough. I had not noted much about my interactions yet, probably because they were very limited. But I was still at a high. This was reinforced in our second week, where we had to play an ice-breaker game in order to get to know our peers better. I tried my best at remembering everyone's names, really. For the following weeks, I continued to stay optimistic with things. I tried my best to get to know my peers slowly, either by paying attention when their names are called or simply trying to have small talk with them. This was me in my honeymoon phase, full of excitement, fascination and adventure. I supposed everyone looked friendly enough.

I fully acknowledged that we would require some next level teamwork in order to pull our performance off. But more than once, my introversion made it difficult to really engage with them. My mind over-thinks and I usually end up missing opportunities to talk to them. My ability to engage was also limited geographically, based on where I was sitting and the time I had to work with. Coupled with our tight deadline, most of our time would be spent practicing and following our instructor's commands. Consequently, there were very few chances to start up a conversation with the person next to me, much less the person on the other end of the room. I would talk to Amy a little before we start the rehearsal and end up completely apart during rehearsals. 

This essentially sums up my honeymoon phase and sets things nicely (or poorly, depending on how you view this situation) for the next phase: Disintegration; which I will get into in my next update (trying to keep things as concise and short as possible).

Listening to Kirifuda - cinema staff

An Amateur Percussionist,

TK