RESEARCH: FINDING A TOPIC

by Jeremy Ruth, The Clarinet [Online] Editor

Greetings, clarinetists! In the last issue, I highlighted the excitement and new possibilities that can come from commissioning and premiering new works. Now I’d like to highlight something that I believe is similarly exciting and valuable to the clarinet community, but can often seem opaque or difficult to start: research. I’d specifically like to focus on just the first step of the research process and how your ICA membership can help you. The first step is a confounding one that I see my students wringing their hands over every semester, and that any graduate student contends with as a thesis or dissertation requirement looms on the horizon: picking a topic. Maybe you already have a general, but undeveloped, idea of what you want to research, or maybe you feel completely lost—you know you want to write about something clarinet-related, but don’t know what.

Well, how to start? In a word: read. If you’re trying to spark ideas, the library is your best friend—many times, I’ve found myself literally wandering through my university’s music library, looking at titles and flipping through books and journals that look intriguing. I can’t guarantee that wandering through a library will immediately lead you to a topic, but if you see something interesting, it might just lead you down a rabbit hole that brings you to other sources and possible topic ideas.

Now how does your ICA membership help with this? One of the benefits of ICA membership is access to the James Gillespie Online Library, which is a digital repository of every issue of The Clarinet, going all the way back to Volume 1, Issue 1 from October 1973! You can also access a master index cataloging all articles by title, author, and keyword. If you want to write about something clarinet-related, scroll through the index and see if anything catches your eye. Find the article, read it, look up any sources cited, and read through those, as well. You might find yourself asking new questions that nobody has answered before, and before you know it, you have a research topic. Even if you already have a topic, searching for keywords in the master index can help you review existing literature on the subject. In either case, the Gillespie Library is an invaluable resource that I encourage you to utilize if you are researching anything related to the clarinet. Your journey doesn’t end there, but you will be well on your way.

The benefits of research are numerous and wide-ranging: it can influence the way we clarinetists interpret existing works, alter how we approach the physical and psychological aspects of performance, and uncover new ways to play the instrument we all love. The ICA holds a Research Competition every year, and the pages of this publication, as well as The Clarinet [Online], are filled with clarinetists investigating topics of interest and sharing them with the broader clarinet community. It is easy to feel intimidated or like your ideas are not worth submitting, but The Clarinet actually publishes most articles received. At the very least, you will get some feedback about your writing that can help you improve. I hope you will consider researching something that interests you, and if you are having trouble getting started, just give the Gillespie Library a look—you just might spark an idea, and before you know it, you’ll have your own article to submit!