21st Century Music Practice

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Research Projects

The research agenda of C21MP addresses a fundamental challenge: music practice—whether in performance, composition, production, or pedagogy—generates knowledge that resists conventional academic representation, yet this knowledge is essential to understanding how music works in the world. Our research programme seeks to develop robust methodologies for capturing, analysing and sharing practice-based knowledge whilst simultaneously investigating the substantive questions that such methodologies enable us to address.

Our work operates across three interconnected scales. At the micro level, we investigate the embodied, cognitive and creative processes of individual practitioners—how skills become tacit knowledge, how aesthetic judgements form, how technology shapes musical thought. At the meso level, we examine collaborative practices, pedagogical relationships, and the social dynamics of music-making communities. At the macro level, we analyse the structural forces—economic, technological, institutional—that enable or constrain musical practice across different contexts and cultures.

This multi-scalar approach recognises that understanding music practice requires both inductive investigation of specific cases and deductive application of theoretical frameworks. We draw on diverse disciplinary perspectives—from embodied cognition and phenomenology to science and technology studies, from sociology and economics to affect theory and cultural studies—not as competing paradigms but as complementary lenses that illuminate different aspects of musical practice.

Central to our research philosophy is the conviction that practice research should serve practitioners. This means developing methodologies that respect the integrity of creative practice rather than forcing it into unsuitable academic moulds. It means producing knowledge that can inform pedagogy, policy and professional practice, not just scholarly discourse. And it means recognising that the people making music in bedrooms, studios, classrooms and concert halls possess expertise that academic theory must engage with rather than speak over.

Our research clusters—spanning pedagogy, methodology, socio-cultural impact, technology and creativity, industry transformation, creative strategies, performance-composition relationships, and governance—are deliberately designed to interconnect. Questions about how technology shapes creativity cannot be separated from questions about who controls technological infrastructure. Pedagogical practice cannot be understood without investigating the embodied knowledge it aims to develop. The relationship between performance and composition illuminates broader questions about creative agency and collaborative authorship.

By bringing together researchers working across these areas, we aim to identify patterns, test frameworks and develop theories that are grounded in the actual practices of diverse musical communities worldwide. We privilege questions that practitioners themselves identify as important over those that fit neatly into existing academic categories. We value research that changes how music is made, taught and understood, not just research that advances academic careers.

Ultimately, our research programme seeks to demonstrate that rigorous critical thinking about music practice—informed by evidence, open to diverse methodologies, and grounded in practitioners’ own knowledge—can coexist with the creativity, spontaneity and affective power that makes music matter. We aim to build intellectual infrastructure that supports rather than constrains musical practice, and to produce knowledge that genuinely serves the global community of music makers and educators we represent.

Our Research Formats

The research centre publishes work based on the eight-fold modular system developed by Octopus.ac in conjunction with JISC – the UK Research Council’s organisation for supporting digital technology and data. These eight submission types are:

  1. Research Problem – What are the goals that your research project is trying to achieve?
  2. Rationale / Hypothesis – While the rationale will explain why those research goals are important they will also demonstrate why and how existing research has already contributed to the question and where the gaps in the existing knowledge are. This might, therefore involve a traditional literature review but also might include a survey of existing practice and/or online discussion. For the hypothesis element, a statement of the theoretical framework plus references and/or examples of research that take a similar approach would be relevant.
  3. Method – Quoting from the octopus.ac website: “A ‘method’ publication is a detailed description of ways of testing a hypothesis, or carrying out a theoretical rationale. You can include links to sites such as io to give more detail of the method if that would be helpful to readers”. Alternatively, if you are proposing a project based on one of the C21MP Research Challenge protocols, you can link to that.
  4. Results / Sources – Octopus.ac describe this as “either the raw data or summarised results collected according to an existing published ‘method’, or any existing evidence or material that form the object(s) of study for the research”. Within practice research, research creation and ethnography this tends to overlap somewhat with ‘Analysis’ if only because the selection of what is considered relevant material (e.g. clips extracted from several hours of video) obviously involves value judgments. Given the research centre’s modular approach, several independent researchers might produce evidence (and separate publications) about the same Research Problem. An example of this would be in the Research Challenge format where multiple researchers conduct the same experiments but also provide additional contextual evidence such as their experience and background.
  5. Analysis – This might take the form of more ‘traditional’ analysis such as thematic or statistical analyses or it might be more entwined with the presentation of the data / evidence, for example, the sequential ordering and focus of a series of video clips to demonstrate the developmental narrative of a technique or metaphor. An example from the modular Research Challenge format would be the initial analysis that team members would produce in the form of discussion.
  6. Interpretation – This is where wider conclusions are drawn from the Results / Sources and Analysis stages. Once again, the modular system means that there might be multiple individual interpretations but also that the centre might stage recorded discussions between multiple contributors that could be edited down into a group authored video output that serves as a collaborative Interpretation.
  7. Applications / Implications – The Octopus.ac description says this “describes how findings might have (or have had) an impact in the real world or for others in the field of study”.
  8. Peer Review – The peer review process is “open and post publication” and the centre will encourage a two-way non-anonymous process. In addition to published individual reviews which might be submitted the centre will sometimes commission individual and group discussion on projects that will also be published.

Thus, using performance in the studio as an example, the research lead might have developed a Research Problem relating to how performers alter their practice to accommodate the possibility of editing in a recording context. Another member might propose an additional Research Problem within the same project about how the nature of the recording environment affects performance practice and yet another might propose one on how the commercial features of the project affect attitudes and approaches to performance. In addition, another might address the same Research Problem as one of the others but with a different theoretical basis (Hypothesis) and Method, and yet another might conduct another study using the same methods that produces different data (Results). And another might organise a discussion session that brings all these researchers together to produce new Interpretation based on how their research contributions interact. It all adds up to a highly flexible collaborative research platform

How to Get Involved

There are three main ways (outlined below) in which you can contribute to the research outputs of the centre. However you want to contribute, please contact us by emailing info@c21mp.org with a written proposal or a link to a video proposal (or a combination of the two).

We envisage that most new project proposals will fit within the existing framework of eight main projects (see above) although we also recognise that many may span two or more of those projects. For example, a project about finding ways for an independent artist to promote themselves via social media whilst protecting their mental well-being might fit within ‘Technology & the Business of Music’ and ‘The Socio-Cultural Impact of Music Practice’. The ways you might propose a new research project include:

  • Writing or making a video about a research problem that would sit within the eight main projects and potentially including rationale / hypothesis and methods outlines as well (see above). There are hierarchies of research problems and your proposal might sit anywhere within that hierarchy. For example, your proposal on ‘Alternative Sonifications of Bach Keyboard Scores’ might sit within the ‘Creative Strategies for Musical Practice’ project which already includes the ‘21st Century Interpretations of Classical Repertoire’ sub-project and your proposal might sit alongside other projects within that sub-project.
  • Writing or making a video about an alternative approach or method to addressing an existing research question. Thus, if someone had submitted our ‘Sonifications’ example mapping MIDI files of the scores onto filtering of found sound, someone else might propose an alternative method: perhaps a Max Patch that sonifies a video analysis of the original hand-written manuscript.
  • You might also want to propose another ‘main project’ that you think is important to the remit of the research centre but which isn’t covered by the eight existing projects. Or you might nominate someone as a potential lead researcher on one of the existing ‘main projects’ because you think that the current research problem statement is missing an important aspect of the topic. Either way, you need to write a proposal.

The modular approach to research projects that the centre has adopted means that any of our members can contribute to existing projects. Thus, for example, if you watched the Results / Sources and Analysis videos from our ‘Creative Use of Guitar Tuning Research Challenge’ you might decide to conduct your own experiments and produce your own videos that contribute extra ‘data’ to the project.

As mentioned in the Our Formats section, one of the key aims of the research centre is to encourage collaborative and positive discussion about your research as well as producing and promoting the research itself. This kind of collegiate discussion often takes place on semi-public transient platforms such as conferences and symposia. It has also happened historically in letters pages and more recently on email lists and social media. While some discussion will be more free and open if it isn’t going to become part of a public record, we also feel there is room for formalising some of it into research publications. The centre’s research publication format allows for projects to include multiple analyses, interpretations and reviews, but further than that, we would also like to stage communal online and IRL events that record these opinions and discussions. So, in addition to submitting analyses, interpretations and reviews of various aspects of the centre’s works, we’d also like to hear proposals for panel discussions, Discord Channel debates or other community activities on particular aspects of research. That might include debates about directions for further work as well as evaluation of work that has already been done.

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