[Action HOTBED team] where I’ve noted things we can do next session (some easier than others).

HOTBED team, CD and KM asking questions

6 students, principal study as follows

2 x 2^nd year pipers, 2 x 2^nd year fiddlers, 1x 4^th year fiddle, 1 x 4^th year clarsach

To get feedback on HOTBED concentrating on use in studies/resource use/why they might use it or not rather than HCI.

CD: explained aims, am was HCI, pm is how might use HOTBED in studies, how fits in with patterns of work; explain purpose of a focus group, a chat, asking for feedback and be honest

Q: What you think you might be able to learn from HOTBED, both instrumental study and academic work?

Historical background, for purposes of exams and audience intros.

Q: Is it necessary?

More interesting

Q: Why use HOTBED for this?

Because tunes are not widely available

Q: Do you use archival recordings apart from HOTBED?

Pipers [couldn’t hear] discussion of pibroch and how styles have changed over the years and advantage of hearing early recordings (c 1900)

Q: Ought to know about background?

Have got away without it for years – but whole purpose of this course to be informed

Q: Link to HOTBED with aural tradition in former times by aural dissemination?

Importance of having a source like HOTBED, a collection - there are other places, but won’t get all info from one source – hoping to get everything there, save having to look about in lots of places.

Q: Where would you look before HOTBED? Tutor?

Now and again tutors give notes, out of books; most often looking for info a week before need to prepare a programme note – then get advice from tutors (internet, library) – when you have to do it – otherwise it’s not volunteered the rest of the year

Q: Not encouraged to do background contextual stuff?

Do have historical studies class – taught about sources of resources, geared round research, but comes down to time. Can’t just jump on the bus and go to Perth – HOTBED is readily accessible, all none place, saving a lot of time.

Q: Would it change way you approach a tune – or would play it your own way anyway?

Can very much help the expression, to know the story behind things especially in songs

Q: What do you get from listening to older performances?

Stylistic differences in geographical region – wider stylistic vocabulary

That’s where video comes in – great idea to see HOW someone plays – very important

Q: Singers or instrumentalists?

More for instrumentalists – being able to figure out how someone’s getting round a particular phrase – can see, say what direction they’re using, how tackling ornaments

Q: What sort of tools would make that easier to look at? Same bit of video all the time or helpful to, say slow things down?

Slow down a great tool – easier to pick up tunes and slow down video to see which fingers were moving, and zoom in and enlarge

Thought markers and loop system really good as if you just had a 3-bar [sic] phrase to learn didn’t have to try and find the stop and start point, just have it going round until you got that bit.

If you could slow it down it would be even more straightforward

If you’re being taught a tune it’s broken up into smaller phrase so it’s good that you can put it on a loop to play it until you’ve got it in your head

Q: How would you normally learn a tune? Would you eg use CDs – and do that kind of thing on CDs?

CDs mainly and (notated music), or with friends, teach each other and it’ll be an aural thing – whatever definitely keep going back over

Q: So that facility made a lot of sense to you? And being able to have these facilities for video, as well as zooming in etc.

Yes

Q: Would you stick to your instrument on CDs – eg if a fiddle always learn from a fiddle CD?

No, but easier to learn from your own instrument – something you recognize.

Not for harp players- but that’s because there’s not so many tunes. Harp players would look a lot into the fiddle repertoire and pipe tunes – things like that

Q: What about pipers?

Don’t really listen to pipe music – listen to fiddle stuff (seriously?? - yes!) pipe CD to boring to listen to

Q: Extending your style?

Yes

Q: Back to HOTBED – not as many people are using as we thought perhaps might – why might that be?

Need to push more to the students that it’s here and this is what it does – I think we’re all aware that its; there but sometimes people think unless it’s put right in front of them they’ll not get to it and think they’ll look at that another time

Q: But that’s interesting – you are aware of it …

Most people know it’s there; but like myself today was the first time I’d used it – I knew it was there. You need to PUSH – bit more promotion

Might even be like the intro to Sibelius and IT classes – if we were given one or two sessions on HOTBED – because that’s the only reason I would go and use Sibelius – or go and use a computer as I have a bit of a phobia about using computers but I think one or two sessions of an introduction to HOTBED would be a good idea

Q: What can happen with training (eg Sibleius) is that unless you have a need to use that bit of training you can forget it

But I think if you offered it more people would follow on. I found it quite interesting today and maybe I’ll look at it. The thing is you need to have someone there – e.g. I called upon Stevie maybe half a dozen times asking I can’t get that, I can’t get that without him you might lose interest or just think – oh I can’t do that. Now I would feel quite confident and I’d probably have done lot more on HOTBED having spent 2 hours having figured it all out and knowing what’s there. Even one hour per year group to get them familiar with it a lot of them would go back and use it but it’s that initial thing they will NOT approach it and just shy away from it in a way.

Q: OK so what we could do to encourage more people is present sessions on HOTBED at the beginning of years in year groups – what about tutors?

Aren’t the tutors a bit like the students? They’re probably exactly the same in that […] it certainly wasn’t mentioned in my lessons – maybe keep plugging away at them

Maybe you should incorporate it into the coursework – you actually have to find it, go and do something on it and come back, like in Intro to Scottish music I learned my way around the library because we told to "look at this book" or take an extract of this book

Or even if it’s just in your individual tuition you can go and find out how they played it then come back

Q: So specific tasks rather than general awareness?

Even one task that the student would have to go and look at it and think – "oh that’s quite good" and then go back - you don’t think they’d do just the one task and leave it? HOTBED would be very much like Sibelius – a bit daunted by it, but once you actually get into it you really enjoy it and you will do it again. Sibelius was like that for me – I was thinking "Oh I know it’s there but I’m not very sure about it" until you get the hang of it you enjoy doing it and you will go back because in the end it’s a really useful thing to have

Q: Did you enjoy digging round the site this morning?

I even found myself doing one task but then going on and thinking "Oh I wonder what that sounds like" and going on

Q: Did you find you got interested and started searching for things (in a library you can look round a literally pull out a book) but did you find yourself looking around in HOTBED? And exploring?

Yes. It’s also because you’ve got the written material and the sound. Much better than in the library where you’ve got the written stuff but you have to go miles to the CD to find out what it actually sounds like whereas here you just press a button and it give you it all, quite apart from the musical notation – I didn’t mean musical notation I meant historical background

Q: You value the fact that all the info is together in the same place (textual info, translation, sound)

Yes – that’s good

Q: Should we go down that route more – be more all encompassing?

Agreement

Q: What about access? How easy is it to get at?

If you know what you’re doing it’s easy, but again, making students aware that it’s there who aren’t willing to go out and just figure it out

Even maybe if you had HOTBED posters stuck on one of the noticeboards in the IT suite that gave the HOTBED address people might say, yes I’ll look at that, cos the address is dead easy

It needs to be in your face more

It would be handy for other students other than the Scottish Music students as well – are they allowed to look at it as well? J Because that would get even more people looking at it - a lot of people do Scottish music blocks and it would given them a better insight into the music.

Q: So more info, more posters what about the actual logistics of it – is it easy enough to find a HOTBED machine with everything you need?

You can’t really practice in the computer suite. How many are there in practice rooms? Only 2?

There are 4 [where they are]

So again they need to know that –

But I think you need to target people first and do some training in the computer suite first rather than just going in to a practice room all on your own

Should have […] loads of advertising and stuff – let people know extacly what it does as well

And do Client services know that if you say to them "Look I need a room with HOTBED in it", to go to that room? Or would they say- "well, what’s that?"

Q: Do you think that could be a problem?

Well, if we’re none the wiser than them .. yes –

Q: But asking for specific rooms?

Only if it’s busy and we all know the busy times around exams and things like that – we’ve got priority in 259 – computer users have […] often a lot of people need the same stuff at the same time

Should be one of the advantages – if a whole class need to listen to a tune they can

Even get client services to put something on one of the screens, some of them are lying empty now as there’s no exam notices – just put "Do you know what HOTBED is?" – a lot of the screens are lying empty, so use them

Q: And you actually look at those?

Yes – the wee screen outside the pigeon holes [discussion about where the screen are]

Q: What do you think we should do next year – a bit more of the project to run – what would you like to see?

More commercial recordings – I know we have a library full of CDs but I’m talking about recordings of the Battlefield band, Silly Lizard, Ossian, bands that were out 25 years ago that are more difficult to get on CDs, or at least the earlier recordings of them. Just put them on because I think they’re an important part of our tradition and moved it on a wee bit

Q: Better to have it on HOTBED than to have the CD in the library?

I think if people start of USE HOTBED people will know more – when I came here first I knew who Ossian were, but most people in my class didn’t.

It also makes them more accessible as well because in the library you can only take out how ever many but lost of people have computers at home where you can listen to stuff

Q: You would see HOTBED as becoming the place where you go for all of your resource needs?

If you felt that enough was there yes

How difficult would it be to keep adding materials?

Copyright issues [explanation of copyright issues and online delivery]

I think that the recordings you have are good though, because they are less easily available – it’s bringing something new to us that we don’t actually have

That was the big idea with HOTBED [discussion of access issues at SoSS]

Q: Did you know that this material is available on cassette as well?

Yes

Q: Have you used them?

We were told to go … and check them out. You have to ask the person and then you get them and Yes .. they were quite difficult to scroll though because of the tapes - there’s about an inch of dust on them – and then you look at how few people have had them out and they were in sets why it’s so much better to put the tune name and it comes right up without having to stop and scroll. Probably again the fact that we were sent out to listen to them that I did, so you must send people out to listen to HOTBED

Q: Going back to what you’d like to see apart from commercial music – what else? Talked a lot about background info and text

I was quite in favour of seeing some notation as well …

see I don’t know about that. I think the whole HOTBED thing is bringing it back to our tradition which is an aural tradition and it’s encouraging people to learn by ear which is a great skill to have. OK we’re musicians and notation is one of the ways we communicate but bringing it back to the old ways kind of forces us – if the music was there we’d just press a button without actually sitting and listening. I think that’s a nice thing about HOTBED

Q: So you’d b really in favour of keeping it aural

I don’t disagree – I think it might be a nice backup, double checking, or if you really couldn’t hear what was being played you can see it – I just thought it would be a good thing. Could also help where the recordings are poor quality – scratches

Q: What do you think about the recordings? About those scratches? Can you hear your way through those to what’s behind? Or do you find it a barrier? Should we be cleaning up recordings?

I think sometimes they’re quite hard to listen to […] would be better to let people hear it more clearly

Q: Maybe that’s the sort of thing you could contribute – how do you feel about adding your own recordings? Your own version and adding it?

Yes – but I don’t think you should take away the older recordings – the poorer quality is part and parcel of the fact that they are so old. I think it would be a shame if everything was replaced by the same versions

– not saying replaced, but just having it alongside

Can you just keep expanding – could you have double of everything??

Not feasible […] – would have to be a compromise- we’re trying to find out what would be most useful [explanation about JISC and its role and the future]. That could be putting a cleaned up version next to a crackly version and then a modern version

That was the other thing I felt about the music – it would be a lot of man hours to do the notation.

Yes but we’re given a class here which is transcription and analysis and if you wanted the music you should be able to do it yourself […] It could put every class that we to use – it would help us in historical studies, in transcription and analysis, just being there for us – but we’re students - we’re supposed to work! J

Q: Do you actually see it also helping you learn a tune?

Yes yes- the only reason I’m saying about notation is that the recording might be so difficult to hear that it might be a useful thing, but I totally take on board what was being said about the tradition – I’m just talking about double checking

The way that we ornament tunes – the way that we play tunes is very much an aural thing – if someone handed me a sheet of paper that had grace notes – it don’t think it’s possible to write down what someone’s played – I think that’s the reason our tradition is aural – you’ve got to hear what the person’s playing and see the video idea, that’s a great idea I think that’s better than notation because you can see exactly what someone’s doing

Q: What sort of level [of notation]? Outline, or exact transcription?

Skeleton of the tune would be quite cool – it would be there just to get the melody and every musician interprets music differently it would be a shame to say this is the very set way you must play it, then they could put in their own grace notes and phrasing

Q: What about your own field work – is that something you’d see being added to HOTBED? Adding to the stock of knowledge about the tradition?

I was very disappointed to see that there was no tenor banjo!! J I could do a project on that and put more on – at the moment there’s nothing at all. I think for the fieldwork projects that the student put in sufficient work that the hopefully would be good enough to add and for other people to want to listen to

Something I would have found useful just within the academy would be sample recital programmes and if there had been a recording of …. When he did his I’d have loved to have heard that because to see what he did and how he was playing at that point. I walked in to the Academy and they said right you have to play an exam – I’d never done anything like that before and I didn’t know what they expected and it would have been nice to hear it – and student concerts and that sort of thing

[Discussion of recording of recitals and concerts and same issue about access]

Any other comments about HOTBED, about today?

Thought it was really good that that team had done really well – lives up to its name