Music & Soundscapes of our everyday lives: Music & Sound-making, meaning-making, and self-making

The aim of this professional Doctor of Creative Industries (DCI) Research Project was to investigate music-making practice and self as a practitioner in the process of creating and producing a DIY music artefact, specifically to investigate why I as the practitioner felt an authentic connection with one form of music-making (acoustic instrument-based) and not a connection with another form of music-making (digital virtual-based). As a phenomenologist, I situated self into this auto-ethnographic study in the dual roles of researcher and practitioner, developing first-person narratives of my personal journey, critical reflection, and reflexive practice. The holistic and multidimensional nature of this research has provided rich and nuanced data, illuminating the co-constituted nature of self, interpreting meaning, and practice. In particular, the research study contextualizes contemporary DIY creative practice relative to three interdependent tenets: Music & Sound-making practice, meaning-making, and self-making, where these tenets are understood in terms of hybridity, agency, and subjectivity. The emergent cultural production artefact exemplifies a broader interpretation of Music & Sound-making practice: an authentic, subjective, auto-ethnographic Music & Soundscape.