The map of the moment: the factors that afford identity in the recorded moment of the female singer songwriter in her studio performance

This research sets out to explore the ‘intangible something’ of a singer’s purposeful creation of particular vocal performances during recording. It investigates the actual moment when a supposedly ‘transcendent’ vocal performance comes into being and explores the series of actions and structural conditions that afford the embodiment of this intangible something. Using a practice-based research methodology it seeks to not only capture that intangible something in practice but also help explain what that ‘something’ might be, expose where it came from and examine how it works. As such, this creative project explores the multiple factors that contribute to the vocal identity of a female singer-songwriter when creating within different studio spaces, varying between analogue-based studios and using a digital audio workstation (DAW) as the primary tool. Using practice-based research has involved the researcher as an active participant in the investigation. The specific research methods or techniques used in this creative project included the making of recorded artifacts in various studio settings, as well as the keeping of an ongoing series of self-reflections in both written, and audio and/or visually recorded form which were kept in a creative journal. These principal methods were triangulated with a series of related interviews with female creative practitioners working in the same area who are also striving to capture their own vocal identity. Each of these sources of information were then used for the exegetical analysis. This analysis led to the conclusion that this creative process encompasses a confluence of factors – cultural, social, technological and biological – which, it is argued, must come together in order for the female singer-songwriter to embody that intangible something identified with the moment of creation. Four main areas of the researcher’s own creative practice – singer, song, studio, and sonic-witness – form the subsystems of the researcher’s moment of exception which help distinguish her from all others. These come directly from the working systems of the researcher’s actual practice and form the singer’s ecosphere in her recording-studio-performance. The employment of this framework has allowed the researcher to map this fundamental process and help discern the emergence of the moment of creativity.