Data collection and analysis

James, and the other keyboard learners participating in the first study chose 13 music skills and tasks as elements or items of experience for construct elicitation and grid construction several weeks before it began. They were: ‘listen to yourself’; ‘think about posture and touch’; ‘co-ordinate your hands’; ‘select style and registration’; ‘play expressively’; ‘count the main beats’; ‘read music’; ‘perform to others’; ‘practise’; ‘memorise’; improvise; ‘play by ear’; and ‘sight-read’. However, James engaged with 12 of them only, arguing that ‘select style and registration’ was not relevant for someone using the electronic keyboard like a piano.

He elicited his first seven constructs in conversation with me during his first interview which lasted nearly two hours (1 h 57 min). This was mainly using a triadic procedure in which I showed him a set of three element cards (triad) representing three musical skills and tasks such as ‘listen to yourself’, ‘perform to others’, and ‘sight-read’. I then asked him to select one of these which was different or opposite in some way from the other two. His explanation or judgement of why it was different prompted his own labelling of a construct which was then entered on the grid. Because the constructs were to be bi-polar, I asked him to suggest an opposite for each construct before moving onto the next. James sometimes supplied two explanations, the second of which became the basis of another construct in conversation without further use of cards. I supplied an eighth construct about music learning and ageing with his permission, because I wanted to explore that issue with him. Finally, James supplied a ninth construct without any discussion beforehand (see Table 1).

Using the same constructs in both interviews, James rated his skills on a scale from 1 to 5 which represented the construct continuum ranging from the construct label or similarity pole on the left of the grid through to its opposite, the difference pole on the right. Ratings of 1 and 2 represented the similarity pole, 1 being more extreme than 2, and ratings of 5 or 4 were for the difference pole, 5 being more extreme than 4. A rating of 3 meant any of the following: no strong feelings either way; mixed feelings which could either represent both poles at the same time or different feelings about the skill at different times; the construct was not relevant/could not be applied. Discussion with James about what his music learning meant to him took place before, during and after rating and completing the grid. This conversation was regarded as being more important and relevant than a quantitative analysis of his ratings (Pope & Keen, Reference POPE and KEEN1981; Pope & Denicolo, 1983).

Because meaning cannot be precisely quantified, for example no two participants will conceptualise their ratings and the gaps between them in the same way (Yorke, Reference YORKE1978), the ratings were viewed as evidence of general trends rather than numerical measurement of meaning. In other words, the rating numbers functioned purely as summaries of James’ judgements made through the filters of the constructs which he had labelled himself. For example, in 2005, he said that he felt that he couldn't achieve what he wanted when he practised. His rating of 5 for practising on his 6th construct ‘can get there vs. open ended’ expressed his view of practising in the language of the construct as being very much ‘open ended’, which he said meant that ‘you never do get there’ (see Table 1). In 2007, he told me that he felt more able to achieve what he wanted in his practising, and his rating of 2 in terms of the same construct indicated that he could now ‘get there’. Constructing the grids enabled James to focus on the many skills and tasks he needed for learning a musical instrument and to express his thoughts and feelings about them clearly.

James, who was very enthusiastic about the study, agreed not to remind himself of his earlier ratings before his second interview so as not to be influenced by it in any way and contaminate the data. The conversation in his second grid interview which lasted about an hour and three-quarters (1 h 41 min) was different from his first. In the earlier interview in 2005, we explored musical motivation and identity issues widely, using the grid as a springboard for much of the discussion (see Appendix 1 for first interview schedule). Two years later, using the grid in a similar way (see Appendix 2 for second interview schedule), we focused on how James’ learning in the piano workshop and in the folk group had affected his musical skills and attitudes since his first interview. James now decided to rate some of the skills for the dulcimer as well as for the piano because the dulcimer had become important to him and certain skills and attitudes were different in relation to it.

After both interviews, I sent James a copy of his grid with a verbatim transcription of his interviews and further interpretations of the data. I also sent him a grid which showed ratings from both interviews to make it easy for him to reflect on similarities and differences between them after his second interview (see Table 2). I contacted him by phone after both interviews to check that he was happy with the way he was being represented, and took his comments into consideration. These member checks increased data reliability (Cresswell, Reference CRESSWELL2003). James subsequently posted me a set of written comments about changes in his skills and attitudes without being asked to do so (see Figure 1 for facsimile). The transcripts, evolving data categories and interpretations of both interviews were validated by a disinterested researcher as part of a clear audit trail of research (Smith, Reference SMITH and Smith2003).

Table 2

A comparison of the grids constructed in conversation with James in 2005 and 2007

Notes:

• The number on the left in each cell is from James’ grid dated 03.03.2005.

• The number(s) on the right in each cell is from James’ grid dated 26.03.2007.

• Where there are three numbers, the one in the middle is the 2007 rating for piano and the one on the far right is the rating for Appalachian dulcimer.

• For notes on C6, C8, C9 and the absence of E4 see Table 1.

Fig. 1

James’ written comments on changes in his grid ratings

I analysed the qualitative data thematically using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). IPA, suitable for constructivist research, is a two-stage interpretation process or double hermeneutic: that of the participant trying to make sense of their world, and the researcher trying to make sense of what they say (Smith & Osborn, Reference SMITH, OSBORN and Smith2003). The first stage requires empathy and the second, critical questioning. See Taylor (Reference TAYLOR2011b) for more discussion about IPA. Simple visual clustering (Pope & Keen, Reference POPE and KEEN1981), made possible by colouring James’ ratings of 1 and 2 for the left pole red, his ratings of 4 and 5 for the right pole blue, and his ratings of 3 black, made it easier to read and analyse the grid data with him in his interviews.

What follows is an exploration of James’ musical skills, attitudes and related musical identity construction over two years with reference to the main thematic categories which emerged from analysis. They are as follows: enjoyment from achievement; choice; learning as a mature-aged adult; musical and social collaboration; the interaction of two music cultures; musical identity; and major changes in musical skills and attitude. The presence of overlaps between the categories mirrors the complexity of the interaction of music learning with musical motivation and identity construction. Source material includes qualitative data gathered during both interviews and afterwards with data from the grids. Data from another interview were used for peer appraisal of James alongside data from personal observation of his playing. All names except my own have been changed to ensure anonymity.

Enjoyment from achievement

Music listener James derived much of his enjoyment, the most important thing about learning an instrument for him, from the satisfaction of mastering things that were new and difficult:

Whilst James acknowledged that his progress was limited, it is clear that much of his satisfaction came from his pleasure at the new experience of learning to make music for himself as an adult. Although he did not label any of his nine constructs ‘enjoyment’, per se, three of them were about his achievement which related closely to it. They were: C1 ‘satisfied vs. frustrated’, C4 ‘improve vs. static’, and C6 ‘can get there vs. open ended’. Reflecting on his progress, James commented that:

His discovery that he could play pieces that used to be too difficult for him motivated him to carry on engaging with an instrument that was very challenging for him, and which interestingly, he had found boring as a child (see Taylor, Reference TAYLOR2011a). Despite his view of himself as someone ‘struggling to master the instrument’, he was regarded as an old timer by his peer Pat in the electronic keyboard workshop (see Wenger, Reference WENGER1998). She saw him as ‘someone who can just pick anything up, and they know all about music’, and she listened to his playing when practising in class.

Choice

James was a keen jazz fan, and for him the attraction of jazz was individuality and agency. He needed to be ‘able to hear things clearly . . . it's very much about sound . . . what one person makes one instrument sound like’. This might explain why he wanted to play the piano rather than make use of the mechanical features of his electronic keyboard. He wanted to be ‘pressing the keys and actually doing things with the instrument itself in a very positive personal way’. He labelled his second construct, ‘produce the music myself vs. instrument does it for me’, and the high degree of stability in his ratings (where the rating scores on the two grids were identical or one value apart) for that construct and for the skill ‘play expressively’ on all his constructs verified that this musical preference had not changed during that time (see Table 2). This was clear evidence of how important performer agency was to him. Yet when James reflected on what his music learning was doing for him as a person in his first interview, he told me that the extent to which ‘how important doing music for myself was’ had come as a surprise to him.

Learning as a mature-aged adult

Having chosen not to make things easier for himself by using the electronic facilities of the keyboard, because ‘having an instrument I want to do my own thing if you like, to make all the music from it . . . it's to do with making things from whatever’, James had to accept early on in his learning that now he was older he had some age-related difficulties with motor skills and it took longer to pick up new things (see Gembris, Reference GEMBRIS, Daubney, Longhi, Lamont and Hargreaves2008). He might not therefore be able to achieve the sophisticated end results he would have liked straightaway. His advice to others thinking of starting an instrument at a similar age to him was to:

He accepted that whilst skills such as E3 ‘co-ordinate hands’ and E7 ‘read music’ had ‘moved on a bit, improved a bit’, they had not improved as much as he would have liked. This affected his ability to play expressively which he said, ‘has improved, but it hasn't’. He explained that although ‘it's improved if things are relatively easy to play’, he still could not play fast passages in the expressive way that he would have liked.

James did not foreground himself as a mature-age music learner though, despite having had a heart attack some years earlier which had made him think, ‘Well if I can possibly, I'll do it now, tomorrow isn't there forever’. Nevertheless, he did take into account age-related health issues such as arthritis ‘my thumb joints are beginning to wear out’ (see Gembris, Reference GEMBRIS, Daubney, Longhi, Lamont and Hargreaves2008), and the fact that he worried more about things than he used to:

Growing older was also advantageous because he could enjoy the attendant sense of freedom and possibility that comes with greater self-confidence and from choosing how to organise himself (see Freund et al., Reference FREUND, LI, BALTES, Brandtstädter and Lerner1999). With his strong musical resilience James had a generally positive attitude towards learning as an older person:

Musical and social collaboration

James also enjoyed the company of his peers in the workshop:

James valued the social side of learning a keyboard instrument in the workshop when he could share his enthusiasm for music with others without being in competition with anyone.

Similarly, he played the Appalachian dulcimer in a folk group which he co-founded, making music informally with others much as he had done on the harmonica with his friends in his early teens (see Taylor, Reference TAYLOR2011a). A core of five people, ‘but other people come in and out’, met every week and James found that with his Appalachian dulcimer:

He could express his musical individuality in another music learning culture in a way that was completely new for him. This, together with the realisation that his playing was valued by co-performers and audiences alike, strongly motivated him to carry on with the group, and he went on to raise money for charities on a regular basis as well as playing for pleasure in it. Creating a musical role for himself in the community in this way enabled James to construct a social musical identity as well as a personal one, which enhanced his musical self-belief.

James enjoyed making music with his friends in the folk group which gave him a sense of well-being (see Coffman & Adamek, Reference COFFMAN and ADAMEK1999). He found it easy to pick out the song melodies around which the more experienced players in the group wove their improvisations, and more seemed musically possible for him than with the piano:

He found that playing with his friends improved his musical memory, and after two years performing with others had become easier and less frustrating for him: ‘That's improved yes, that's just doing more of it . . . that's all memorised really, acoustic music by tradition’. With more experience he now felt satisfied with what he could do. And he expressed that satisfaction in his ratings which shifted over two years from 4 (frustrated) in 2005 to 2 (satisfied) in 2007 along C1 ‘satisfied vs. frustrated’, even though it was ‘fairly obvious’ that he also found memorising harder to do now that he was older (see Pascual-Leone, Reference PASCUAL-LEONE, Peretz and Zatorre2003 about brain plasticity in adults).

James also felt that his improvising had improved over the two years, and on the dulcimer he was willing to try new things:

Clearly, his participation in the group stimulated his creativity and developed his musical skills. He found himself able ‘to get a good tune that everyone wants to play and it's great. That's definitely thinking of others’. There was a shift in his ratings for that skill from 2 (all for myself) in 2005 for the piano to 4 (doing it for others) for the dulcimer in 2007 along C5 ‘all for myself vs. ‘doing it for others’. Recognising the importance of musical collaboration was a sign of James’ increasing musical maturity.

The interaction of two music cultures

James was able to communicate musically with his co-performers in the folk group in an enjoyable way that was different from with his peers in the college workshop. Unexpectedly, yet critically, this creative musical communication (see Seddon, Reference SEDDON2005) seemed to fire him with the determination to achieve what he wanted with his relatively formal piano learning.

His goal for his first term in the new piano workshop, as someone too nervous to play his piece all the way through to the keyboard workshop group the previous summer, had been to perform ‘a party piece’ to the others. Well over 18 months later, three months after his second interview, he finally achieved his goal of realising a possible musical self as entertainer (see Cross & Markus, Reference CROSS and MARKUS1991) when he played a piece from memory to the class, straight from his two-week holiday in Greece. As he crouched over the piano staring at the keyboard during his playing, I felt that he looked like very much like a small child. He seemed to be what Biggs (Reference BIGGS1999) describes metaphorically as an expression of youthful potential trapped in an ageing container where the ageing body masks a youthful self. It could be that he was using his music learning to reconnect with his youthful musical self as well as to express his musical identity as a mature adult learner.

After his performance, James commented that having got used to picking up his dulcimer ‘for two minutes a dozen times a day’ at home, he now found himself doing something very similar on the piano when he knew that he was going to perform in the workshop. In a sort of reversal, which he described in his second interview, he also used the piano to help him to work out tunes for the dulcimer to play on Monday evenings:

James clearly benefited as a musician from being able to integrate the two different learning cultures he had chosen. Furthermore, because he felt that ‘particularly with the dulcimer again, it might help to know more about music to think about sort of harmonies and countermelodies and things’, he joined a music theory class where ‘George [his tutor] quite likes people trying to do their own thing’. However, when the class became too expensive for him, even though he felt that he had learned a lot, he left a year later after passing his Grade 2 ABRSM theory exam. It is tempting to speculate how James might have developed as a musician if he had been able to remain in this class where he was also learning to write his ‘own tunes’.

Musical identity

For James ‘music ha[d] been a significant part of all my life’ and when I asked him at his first interview whether he would call himself a musician, he told me that:

His musical self-belief appeared to be undiminished by the difficulties of learning a keyboard instrument at the early stages. Two years later, he had moved on from being ‘a wildly enthusiastic listener, at first’, and he was now ‘a budding player. Four or five years ago I didn't have any of this’. More seemed musically possible now. Whilst his wife and daughters were ‘intrigued’ by the substantial increase in his involvement with music over the years, ‘Penny [his wife] says it's getting better and better . . . she seems to think I'm getting on further with it than I do, I think’, James’ musician friends voiced no opinion of him and his music because, he explained, they were all so involved with playing music themselves. This suggests that they saw him as one of them, a performing musician, much as James himself now did. ‘I have no qualms about playing it, I mean you get odd professional musicians turn up, and you just you know play along with them’, he said. James had been able to realise a desired possible self as a musical performer who enjoyed what he was doing and was now recognised as such by others after more than 50 years of jazz appreciation as a listener (see Macintyre et al., Reference MACINTYRE, SCHNARE and DOUCETTE2012). He had reconstructed and empowered himself as a musician.

Major changes in musical skills and attitude

Whilst in 2005, James had been diffident about his progress as a performer, reflecting that ‘I'm not getting much better at it’, two years later he was more confident, and performing was one of the three skills most important to him. However, the most positive change in his feelings towards performing appeared to be for the Appalachian dulcimer rather than the piano. He felt satisfied with his performance skills on the dulcimer in 2007 ‘because it's a much easier instrument’ and rated it 2 (satisfied) for C1 ‘satisfied vs. frustrated’. This was in contrast to the piano where ‘there've been odd leaps forward, but it seems to keep stopping’, which he rated 4 (frustrated) for the same construct. This came as a surprise to me as his piano teacher, because I had not known that he had been playing the Appalachian dulcimer so much since I last interviewed him. Referring to the piano, James felt that his negative rating for ‘perform to others’ might have had something to do with not having played very well in a class concert just before his interview. It may well have been different if his second grid had been constructed three months later after he had performed his ‘party piece’ so well.

His perception of the performing process had become more sophisticated as a result of his music learning:

He explained the shift in his rating for performing to others from 2 (can get there) in 2005 to 5 (open ended) in 2007 along C6 ‘can get there vs. open ended’ in writing (see Figure 1) as being:

With experience he now had insights into performing that he did not have as an adult when he was a keen music listener who did not play an instrument, and he had consequently matured as a musician. This was also shown in a clear shift in his rating for playing expressively, ‘another one that's very similar’, from 2 (can get there) in 2005 to 4 (open ended) in 2007 along the same construct, C6. Likewise, he felt that his self-evaluation during performance had improved in that he was ‘just probably getting more, steadily more self-critical there’. His ratings for listening to himself had shifted from 3 in 2005 to 2 (improved) in 2007 along C4 ‘improve vs. static’, and from 5 (open ended) in 2005 to 2 (can get there) in 2007 along C6 ‘can get there vs. open ended’. He wrote that he had ‘a change in attitude perhaps. Now think listening can be more objective (e.g. are dynamics what was intended) and therefore more achievable.’ He was becoming aware of the many judgements that performers need to make which he had not thought about before learning to perform himself.

James’ perception of practising had matured as well. Although in 2005 his advice to others starting out on an instrument at his age was to ‘be very determined, and I think, do everything that is, to get some methodical means of trying to play a bit, every day’, he reflected about his own practising that ‘sometimes the time is not very organised, you know and I sometimes wonder, is this the most useful way of spending the time?’ However, in 2007 his practising, one of the three skills he felt that he had learned most about, the others being performing to others and listening to himself play, had improved:

James explained in writing that for practising he now had ‘Another change of attitude. I now find practice more structured, with targets and goals, and therefore more possible to get there.’ This was expressed in a clear shift for practising from 5 (open ended) in 2005 to 2 (can get there) in 2007 along C6 ‘can get there vs. open ended’, which endorses findings by Lehmann and Ericsson (Reference LEHMANN and ERICSSON1997) that structured practice is conducive for success in amateur players. Once again there was evidence in James of increasing musical maturity alongside skill acquisition as a result of his learning.

To sum up, James was an adult who had come to his learning with a high degree of musical self-belief and a musical sophistication borne out of a lifetime of jazz appreciation. His musical self-confidence was expressed in his love of music, his determination to learn and in his strong musical resilience. Over several years he learned to perform with and to other people successfully on both the piano and the Appalachian dulcimer, his progress strengthening his musical identity in a cycle of musical self-reciprocation. He chose to engage with music in two learning environments for the enjoyment which he got from music itself together with the satisfaction of being able to achieve something new in the company of others. Learning music informally in the folk group as well as formally in the college workshops had a highly positive impact on his musical skills, his musical motivation, his self-concept as a performer, his social musical identity and his musical maturity. By choosing musical participation and learning as a new leisure skill which brought intense pleasure and meaning into his life as a retired person (see Thompson, Reference THOMPSON1992), James was able to replace the work and parental roles he had lost and use music to frame a new identity as a retired person in his community (see Jarvis, Reference JARVIS2001, ch. 6). The empowerment gained from such musical reconstruction and self-regeneration was a critical factor in his well-being and self-fulfilment as a mature-age adult.