There are several reasons why to write a book review. It is a good way to gain experience in writing. Publishing reviews is easier than publishing articles. One is not expected to contribute something completely new to the world of research. When you submit your review to a journal you usually receive feedback from the editor and that can improve the level of your writing. Another reason is that it may help you learn the book more thoroughly than if you would just read it. Good writing is a form of teaching. When one teaches something, one remembers it forever. Moreover, this is a way that other scholars in the field (especially the one whose book your will review) will know you and what you think. In other words, this is a way to start making a name in the field. Finally, if you where asked to review a book, although you will probably not be paid for it, you will receive the book. In this post I will mention some of the things that can help you write a good book review.

Read the book

Read review written by others

Do not be too critical

Balance your criticism

Show your personal reading

Be helpful

Listen to the comments of the editor

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One of the common mistakes of music students is to read letters, articles and other musical documents by composers, performers and musicologists, completely out of context. In order to achieve a more comprehensive understanding of what one reads, the reader must attempt to gain access to the context/s of the document. One can start doing so by asking to whom was the document written. The next second question could be: what was the writer seeking to achieve? Only these two questions may help avoiding many misunderstandings. To answer these questions, one often needs to do further reading of other documents. Further questions could help building a wider context: at what period was this document written? Are any of the key terms in the document being treated in a special way with regards to their history or the writer’s history? A practical example could help to understand what I mean when I say that a historical music document must be read in context.

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Giving a successful conference paper is not an easy task. I have seen more people fail communicating during conferences than people who presented their arguments in an affective manner. In my Review of the IMS conference 2008: what there is and what there is not to read in Hebrew in Music I promised to write about how to give a conference paper. In this post I will give several tips that might help improving a conference paper thus achieving better communication and a stronger effect.

Practice make perfect: read your paper before the conference and measure
Most papers are limited to twenty minutes (with additional time for questions). It is not uncommon to see scholars who do not finish their paper reading on time (I am speaking now about conferences that one reads from a paper). A simple way to avoid this embarrassing situation is to read the paper you plan to give a few days before the conference takes place, and measure the duration. If you measure the time it takes to read the paper you can decide to make changes accordingly. Take into consideration that the pace of reading during a conference is usually different than when you are more relaxed at home. It is better to leave two-three minute spare so that you do not feel in a rush during the reading. This will also give a more relaxed impression during your reading and motive more people to listen to you. I saw some experienced scholars to write on their papers instructions what to leave out in case that the time will run out.

Present your paper before family and friends and record it
It is very effective to gather a few people that you trust their opinion and read the paper before them. This could be an excellent way to prepare to the conference. Ask these people to tell you what they understood from your paper. Try that the audience will include people who have a potential to understand your paper and others who are not from the field of your study (perhaps even not scholars at all). Receiving feedback can help you understand how you look and what is actually being communicated to others. Recording the session can help you see how you are talking and this will surely help you improve.

Body language
Some people argue that eighty percent of what one communicates is body language. When you prepare your paper you can add performance signs that will refer to body movements that you would like to use in order to underline, illuminate or express the things you say. Take into consideration that movements are an excellent way to keep your listeners listening to you. With one an unexpected movement you might gain the attention of people many people who are otherwise lost, dreaming, or asleep. Yet it is important not to be rude or too sudden – you do not want to achieve listening, yet cause a bad effect on your lecture!

Using power point
If you decide to use power point or any other visual presentation of text, make sure that the text size is greater than 18 and that there are a relatively little number of words that are presented. The power point presentation (unlike the hand-out) is useful for two reasons: (1) it gives the listeners an orientation in case that they get lost during your lecture (trust me, this happens all the time); (2) it gives you structure to your lecture. Do not present table with lots of data that no one will see. In other words, keep your power point text very short.

Check that everything is working before the lecture
Make sure that you will have time before the paper giving to come to the place and check if everything is working. Check whether people can hear you. Check whether the person at the last row can read your power point presentation. Check whether people can hear your sound examples. Make sure that you feel at home (as much as possible).

Keep your ideas simple
Take into consideration that when one reads a text, one can stop and think about it, change the pace of reading, return to the text, etc. During the paper you give, people will not have the possibility to do so. This is why keeping the ideas simple and even repeating them (something that you would like to avoid in an article or a book) is important.

After you give the paper
Do not forget to speak to people that heard your paper in the conference. You will learn an important lesson on what you actualy managed to communicate and what not. Ask more than one person so that you will be able to receive more than one perspective.

Relevant posts:
The difference between a poor critic and a good scholar
How to write good texts about music

In the last two decades musicology and music theory are moving from text based research towards methodologies that include wider cultural and social contexts. One of the results of this shift is the need of scholars to include sound recordings and other multimedia features in the presentation of their research. This post will review some of the online music journals where one can publish and enjoy the vast possibilities offered by the web.

Before I will review the journals I would like to state briefly some of the advantages of publishing online:

More people read online articles
Search engines such as Google constantly scan the web and index any new information that appears on websites. When people search the web the search engines aim to offer them the most relevant information. In practice, this means that they are working for you for free. They bring you audience on a daily basis to your online articles.

More people quote your online articles
As a result of this, there is more chance that people will find your article and react to it. This is true also in the scholarly world. Today, any scholar who respects himself will use, not only university catalogs, but also the search engines and other online resources to find articles on music. Publishing on the web has the potential of making people quote your articles more often. In the academy, the more you are quoted, the more you are appreciated.

The medium is the message
Using the web offers you the possibility of linking to other resources, adding sound, video and other multimedia features. Music Theory Online is the most advance journal that is consciously attempting to implement these features.

Social reaction
Unfortunately, there is no online journal that is using the web as a truly interactive tool. In the Web 2.0 age, the internet is an excellent medium for scholars and other people to react (comments on articles, forums, sharing possibilities (such as Stumbleupon)) to the work of one and other in other formats than articles. We are still waiting for MTO or a new journal to take the initiative and implement these features.

A kleine disadvantage
Having said all this, there are some disadvantages in online publishing. One is the fact that it is hard to read an article on the web. The result is a kind of scan through reading that gives less attention to what the author wrote. Very few readers bother to print the article and fully read it. There are probably other disadvantages that I did not think of (feel free to comment below).

It seems to me that the disadvantage is negligible in comparison to the advantages that I just stated. This and the fact that my research often includes sound examples leads me to publish most of my articles in online journals.

I have gathered some links to online journals on music that can be helpful for anyone who wishes to find places to publish an article. In the following I will review some of these journals:

Music Theory Online
If you want a high level peer-reviewed scholarly journal on music you should first turn to Music Theory Online (MTO). This journal is live and kicking (not like most of the online journals that stopped publishing several years ago, or publish very rarely). MTO encourages the use of web features such as scans of sound examples in impressive formats, the use of recordings and probably anything that the web can offer. The articles are published as web pages (and not pdf of doc files). This is better for the search engines indexing. Yet, it is not easy to read through these long articles on the computer screen. Research shows that people do not usually read more than 600 words on one web page. The printing possibilities are still something that needs improvement in MTO. As mentioned above, that would be wise to include things like commenting, forum, web 2.0 sharing and other social features that can be useful in creating interaction between people and help the information spread on the web.

Journal of Music and Meaning
This journal is less popular and prestigious than MTO. Unlike MTO which includes everything. M&M encourages articles that deal with the meaning of music. It “encourages any multidisciplinary research on meaning that is able to challenge conceptions of music, or research that explores the notion of meaning by the study of musical phenomena.” It is a peer-reviewed journal and it has a forum (which is not very active)

Min-Ad and JSMI
These journals are local journals (in the sense that most people who publish there are locals). Min-Ad is from Israel and JSMI is from Ireland. They publish many kinds of things. JSMI attempts more than Min-Ad to be international by approaching authors from other countries. Another reason to speak about these two journals in one breath is the fact that their articles are published in pdf format. This has the advantage of easy printing in a professional format. There is the stated above disadvantage of being less friendly to the search engine robots (these articles therefore attract less web visitors).

Long live Gamut
Gamut is a new online journal on music. It is peer-reviewed online journal of the Music Theory Society of the Mid-Atlantic. Journals need money for editing and other activities, and only some rich universities have such possibilities. This is why most journals die after several issues. We hope that Gamut will have a different destiny.

Ethnomusicology Online - EOL and Journal of Film Music
There are journal that deal with very specific areas. EOL focuses on ethnomusicology and JFM on film music. If you have an article that falls in one of these areas, it would be wise to check these places first.

ECHO and British Postgraduate Musicology
If you are a student you should be aware that publishing is something that you would like to start sooner rather than later. This will help you find a job later on. ECHO and British Postgraduate Musicology are two places where students can publish. I must admit that when I started to publish online I approached MTO. Tina Ramnarine advised me: “Always aim high. Start with the most prestigious journal or publishing house and then approach the others”. Having said this, I did publish in local journals such as Min-Ad and Tav+ in order be locally known and support the latter journal in its first steps.

Semi online journals: RMA
There are many journals that have web pages with some information about their non-web articles and activities. Some journals publish online only abstracts and/or selected articles. The feeling is that the “real thing” is the paper journal. The Royal Music Association Journal does not pretend to be an online journal. However, Nicholas Cook arranged that it will have the possibility to add sound examples on the web. So one can read the paper article and then turn to the web to hear the sound recordings.

Other issues to consider
Before submitting your article to an online journal it would be wise to look who is sitting on the editorial board (this is true also for non-online journals). In order to avoid the process of being rejected (see Zoë Lang post on the challenges of getting published as a young scholar) by editors who are not in favor of your kind of scholarship, read or at least go through some of their articles.

Some journals, like JMSI, request the surfer to register before being able to read an article. This process discourages many surfers from going on and accessing the article. For the editors of journals registration might seem a small matter comparing to the advantages of reading the articles. However, for the web surfers this might mean going on to other sites.

How will look future online journals on music
There is a feeling that musicologists are still thinking in paper format when they create a journal of write on the web. Here are some points for those who will create the online music journal of the future:

(1) The will include text formats that will be friendly both for search engines and human readers.
(2) They will include possibilities of commenting and forum discussions.
(3) They will include possibilities of sharing information between users and sites.
(4) They will use all of the advantages of multimedia presentations on music and music related information.

One of the purposes of this site is to collect useful links for music (and other) scholars in Israel and the world. I have recently added a category to my research links page. The new category is called: “Postgraduate scholarships“. This page contains links to many very useful postgraduate scholarships. As usual, I tried not to make a list of everything, but to collect only the most interesting and helpful links. You can find in this site information about how to write a research proposal that may enhance the chances that you will receive one of these scholarships.

A powerful research proposal is something that is not easy to achieve. One needs a good idea, lots of inspiration and experience. However, there are several rules that can help you write a good research proposal. In this post I will write about the structure that I use when I write research proposals. You will also find here an example of one of my research proposals. A research proposal in music should include the following sections: context, research questions, aims/objectives, methodology, outcomes, potential significance, bibliography and discography.

Context

The ‘context’ section should be more than an introduction. It should give the readers a clear idea about the problems and issues that you are dealing with. In this section you will draw the frame of the picture and decide what will be part of the research, and what is not. You also give a brief reference to what other authors wrote on the subject. It is very important that this part will be focused. Try not to write about all the things in the world. Focus only on the most important issues that bother you. This will save you much energy in the future.

Research questions

‘Research questions’ deals with the questions that you want to answer after the research ends. When you write the proposal you do not know the answers yet. You might have a good guess or a direction, but you do not know for sure what the data will tell you after you will collect it.

Aims and objectives

This section presents to the readers of the proposal what you want to achieve. For example: ‘To understand the reception history of Op. 33a.’ or ‘To explore connections between the musical interpretations of Schoenberg’s circle, and other early performers, and their cultural contexts.’

Methodology

Methodology is very important since it demonstrates what tools do you have or intend to use in order to answer your research questions and achieve your aims and objectives. Methodology should also include the duration of the research and the library and archives that you plan to use.

Outcomes

This section includes information about what you plan to do with your research after it will end. Will you publish an article? Will it be a paper in a conference? Will it be a book chapter? The ability to publish is considered as a sign of scholarly strength.

Potential significance

Here you want to convince that your research is dealing with issues that may influence others. Both ‘context’ and ‘potential significance’ should give your readers a feeling that your research is dealing with problems that transcend your particular research.

Bibliography and discography

This section should contain a selected list of items that are most relevant to your research. I use a few research links that help me build this section in my proposals. People who sit in comities value good research proposals since they often predict whether or not a research will succeed. Investing thought and time in your proposal is extremely important. Here is an example of the research proposal that I have written for my postdoctoral fellowship in Berlin. If you will read the article draft you will see that there is a gap between the two. Nonetheless, the proposal was very helpful in focusing my research efforts. After the research starts, you should let the data tell you the story. Only this way one can really discover new things. If you have questions do not hesitate to comment on this post in the form below.

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