Emily Babski Jounal #3

Source #1: http://jmt.sagepub.com/content/19/2/41.short

I found this first source from the VT Library database. This was an incredible source and I am so happy I stumbled upon it. I additionally learned many things from this source including a better understanding of music performance as a career, music teaching as a career, the motivation behind what drives people to continue with music as a career, and the expectations that undergraduate music majors have for what they think their future career's will contain. A few questions have been raised from this source however. I want to know if the satisfaction levels that these students wanted to get out of their career actually lived up to their expectations? I also want to know the turnout of successful musicians in the long run. This new source made me realize that music is a good career if you have immense talent and are not necessarily concerned about making a lot of money. The main motivation found in this survey though was that students chose music as a career so that they can share their love for music with kids through educating them. The author seems to speak from a perspective of possible experience, but mostly from a standpoint that is meant to inform the reader and relay information that was collected from research and data. I believe the audience is aimed at the general public. I did not see much biased, but the study may have a flaw considering the main source of research was from a survey. You never know how biased those surveys could be, so that may have a factor. There may be further questions and research that I will do because of this source, but overall, it is a very good first source to start with and I am very happy to have found it.

Source #2: Interview of John Walker and Alan Weinstein


 I interviewed these two musicians/ teachers at Virginia Tech about my topic. I learned many interesting things from these men, including why they chose to be musicians, how their life has been in this career, and what they believed about students who choose music as a career.  John and Alan have lived the lives as musicians and teachers which makes them very credible when concerning this topic. I will both be the author and publisher of this source so I am qualified because I know which questions to ask since it is my paper and my credentials are related to the fact that I have had both these professors as teachers and know that they are a reliable source. My personal interview with these musicians is very credible in the content because it is first hand, these men are people who live the lives as professional musicians every day, and they are obviously trusted by Virginia Tech to be knowledgeable enough to be teaching at this top university.  This source is very appropriate because it gave me some answer to some major questions I have surrounding my topic and give incite on how difficult (or easy) it is to live the life as a professional musician. After interviewing them, my thoughts have been strengthened. They both agreed that living lives as musicians is a hard way of life and that reaffirmed my previous perceptions regarding musician life. Alan and John were talking from experience but were aiming the information they provided to future and prospective music majors. They may have some bias because they are musicians and are fairly successful, because professors at a great college. From interviewing these men, I am curious to interview music majors at VT right now and learn more about what they are hoping for their future and what they are expecting as the lives as future musicians.