I started posting writing online long before I had any academic ambitions. I wrote for self-promotion, self-expression, and because I wasn’t sure what else to do with myself. I did a lot of what I would now call a reflexive and reciprocal process for research into music and related topics. As it turns out, this was a good habit to have when I went to grad school. I have posted most of my masters and doctoral level writing assignments, notes, papers, and research materials on the web. In the process, I have met an incredible lot of people who I would not have met otherwise.
For a while I was only posting about innocuous music and technology-related topics: theory, production, general appreciation. But as I go deeper into the intersection of music education and hip-hop, my posts have been getting more political. This material attracts supporters and allies, which is gratifying, but also heated criticism, and, since the dawn of the Trump era, a growing volume of hate speech. The constructive feedback comes in the form of affirmation, social contacts, corrections, arguments, tips, and directions for further inquiry. Some of these interactions are direct, in the form of comments or replies on social media, but I also get plenty of indirect feedback via my Google alerts. Research and writing are lonely undertakings, and feeling myself connected to a lively conversation at all times has been an invaluable motivator.
Beyond internet writing, I have now done some “real” academic publications. The peer review process is crucial to establish validity, but as an author experience, it’s agonizingly slow. Months pass between rounds of edits. It feels more like carving monuments from stone than having a conversation. On the internet, feedback begins within minutes of posting, and conversations can last for years.
Kirkup (2010) observes that “blogging is a genre of writing with its own demands. Not only did I have to struggle with ‘what’ I could say in public, I had to develop a voice for the blog, decide the relationship between my public (blog) identity and other professional and private identities and think about my audience” (77). I have had the opposite challenge. I developed a strong blog voice early on, and have since had to tone it down to fit the demands of academia. My comfort zone is a slang-y, Gawker-style snark, but I recognize that formal and standard English is easier to understand for non-native speakers, and if you’re writing for people who disagree with you, a formal tone can be more persuasive. So while I sometimes chafe under academic editing and style guides, I’m trying to be a grownup about it.
Gregg (2006, 147–148) describes blogging as a form of “conversational scholarship” where academics engage the general public, not just each other. This is easier to do in the age of the internet, but it’s not exactly new; conversational scholarship follows “a tradition that includes independent and small press publishing, reading groups, salons and even café culture” (Gregg 2006, 153). However, Gregg also points out that these conversations are not always constructive. He attributes the frequent nastiness of online discourse to “a lack of common ground and/or vocabulary”, to the way that “writing fails to communicate intention”, and to “how much distance a tertiary education can put between people trying to engage in a conversation” (ibid.). This was all written before the online alt right mobilized trolling for nefarious political ends. Now blogging runs the risk of attracting not just isolated cranks, but also coordinated harassment campaigns. These attacks fall disproportionately on women, people of color and LGBTQ people. I have a devoted group of hate-followers, and I view it as my job to stick my neck out and engage them, because my privilege affords me plenty of protection.
Here’s an overview of my online presence as of October 2018.
This blog
Social networks come and go, but self-hosted WordPress sites are forever, or at least as long as I keep paying for the hosting and domain name, which I plan to do for the foreseeable future. You don’t have to be a tinfoil-hatted conspiracy theorist to be mistrustful of the social media platforms, which have a tendency to go out of business, or get acquired , or otherwise behave in ways counter to the wishes of their users. Running my own WordPress site requires more attention and willingness to deal with things like PHP than would be necessary if I entrusted everything to Tumblr or Medium, but I trust Tumblr and Medium about as far as I can throw them.
I started my WordPress blog in July of 2009. I did maybe a year or two of writing before that on a plain-HTML site I built myself. At the time, I was professionally lost at sea, and didn’t know what I was supposed to be doing or why. Writing was fun, it was a way to be socially connected, it was self-expression and self-promotion, and in general, it seemed like a smart thing to be doing. My motivation for the WordPress blog in particular was mostly self-promotional. I was doing various kinds of freelance writing and marketing work, and I needed a central hub for presenting myself. I even got a book agent interested in me, and we put some proposals together for a multidisciplinary scientific look at music, though we were never able to sell anything. I haven’t given up on that book idea, but I expect that it’s going to emerge out of my academic activities. (Update: I was right. My first book comes out soon!)
I came into academia through a weird and backward way, relatively late in life. I was in my mid 30s, working in marketing and hating it, doing music on the side. My wife convinced me that I would never be happy unless I made music my main focus, and getting a masters degree in music technology seemed like the best way forward. My ambition at the time wasn’t even to be a professor. I wanted to design software for music learning and creation. The Groove Pizza was my first attempt. I consider that to be an unqualified success, but I learned that I’m a much better writer and teacher than I am a programmer. Academic jobs started presenting themselves, leading up to my present doctoral fellowship in music education at NYU. I wouldn’t say that was entirely due to blogging, but it has been a substantial factor.
Here, by the way, are my ten most viewed posts.
- Scales and emotions
- The saddest chord progression ever
- How the heck do you know what scale you’re supposed to use for lead guitar?
- Why is son clave so awesome?
- Visualizing song structures
- The freakiness of melodic minor
- The blues scale
- Drum machine programming
- The happiest chord progression ever
- Learning music theory with Auto-Tune
I heard someone call Twitter “the golf course for geeks.” Aside from Facebook, it has been the best professional networking tool I have ever used. I also enjoy it as a literary form, especially for comedy, and for better or for worse, it’s my main source of news. Unfortunately, it’s now infested with literal Nazis, but as long as it’s also full of interesting people, I’m hanging in there with it.
What is there left to say about Facebook? It has evolved into an awkward blend of the personal and professional. There are lots of lively discussion groups for music educators.
This site transformed my musical life. As I started getting older, the appeal of performing in bars dimmed, and with small children it’s impossible anyway. But I find posting tracks online to be a good substitute. It isn’t as exciting as reacting to a good crowd, but it it’s much better than making background noise for an indifferent one. SoundCloud led me to The Disquiet Junto, to the idea of pedagogical remixing, to remixing as ethnography, and to music creation as a form of music scholarship generally. I don’t listen to other people’s music as much as I use it as an online archive of my own tracks, but once in a while I make a nice discovery.
I have an on-and-off obsession with Quora and have written an absurd lot of prose for it. Responding to specific questions is a fantastic motivator for writing. I posted so heavily on Quora in its early years that Clive Thompson put me in a book. Several posts on this blog started life as Quora answers. It influenced my teaching, too; rather than have my students write essays or take quizzes on their reading and listening assignments, I have them ask me questions. Then I answer their questions, both in writing and in class discussions. Everyone wins.
I keep my Insta private. It’s mostly pictures of my kids and graffiti trucks. I know it’s a very important platform for musicians, especially hip-hop musicians, but I’m too old to engage on that level.
References
Gregg, M. (2006). Feeling ordinary: Blogging as conversational scholarship. Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies, 20(2), 147–160.
Kirkup, G. (2010). Academic blogging: Academic practice and academic identity. London Review of Education, 8(1), 75–84.