Field Notes

Cong Yu Fang

1003145349

Community: Toronto Chinese Music School

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
CONTENT Page Number
INTRODUCTION 3
SUMMARY 3
EVALUATION 4
NEXT STEP 4
APPENDIX A: CONTACT RECORD WITH THE COMMUNITY 5
APPENDIX B: PICTURES TAKEN WHILE VISITING THE COMMUNITY 8
APPENDIX C: NOTES TAKEN BASED ON COMMUNICATION WITH THE KEY 12
STAKEHOLDERS
APPENDIX D: TRANSCRIPT OF THE MEETING WITH THE KEY STAKEHOLDER 15
APPENDIX E: PICTURES ON GUZHENG TERMINOLOGIES AND NUMBERED 16
MUSIC NOTATION
APPENDIX F: DATA COLLECTION METHOD 18
APPENDIX G: RESEARCH ABOUT MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS 19

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Introduction:

As I attempted to find a community to get involved with, I chose to find one based on my
personal interests. Therefore, I decided to contact a music school. I searched for and went to several
musical school in GTA, most of schools said they were too busy to schedule an interview with me this
week. Toronto Chinese Music School was the only community which was interested in the project and
the vice-president of the school allowed me participate in her class [Appendix A Figure 3]. Thus, I
decided to follow up with this community and schedule an interview through E-mail and phone calls
[Appendix A Figure 1 and Figure 2].

Summary:

When interacting with Toronto Chinese Music School, I mainly used Participant Observation and Key
Informant Interview [Appendix F Figure 1]. This way, I was able to get some first-hand information based
on my own observation and understand more about community by interviewing the key stakeholders. I
watched the teacher giving lessons to students and took notes [Appendix C Figure 2]. Then I talked
about my observation with the students and parents [Appendix C Figure 1]. After that, I observed more
specifically on the problems the students indicated and finally talked about all the information I got with
the teacher [Appendix C Figure 3]. The summary of my observation is as follows:

The scale of Toronto Chinese Music School is relatively small. The school only consists of four
classrooms [Appendix B Figure 1]. The lobby of the school is large compared to the classrooms
[Appendix B Figure 2 and Figure 3].
Toronto Chinese Music School mainly focuses on teaching traditional Chinese musical
instruments. The vice-president of the school teaches Guzheng and Pipa (Traditional Chinese
Musical Instrument) [Appendix B Figure 7 and Figure 8].
One student indicated several difficulties in terms of learning Guzheng.
o She needs to put on and take off fingerpicks before and after practicing using special
type of tapes [Appendix B Figure 4].
o The body of the instrument wobbles [Appendix D Conversation 1].
The teacher revealed that the major difficulty while teaching is that most students have learned
to read notes on staves. However, when learning Chinese musical instrument, they need to
learn numbered musical notation [Appendix E Figure 1], which is a completely different
system. It takes a while for them to understand how the notation works [Appendix D
Conversation 2].
The body of Guzheng should be supported by the stands with four points of contact [Appendix B
Figure 5]. However, there was a minor gap [Appendix B Figure 6] between the instrument and
one of the stands, where the stand and instrument should touch and it caused the wobbling of
the instrument.
The teacher gave some comments and suggestions to some of difficulties indicated by the
student mentioned above.
o The students have to get used to wearing fingerpicks. Southern-style Pipa performers
could use a special type of fingerpicks that are capped onto their finger tips yet others
do not have that [Appendix D Conversation 2].
o The distance between the pair of stands is not fixed and the floor or the carpet is never
perfectly flat. Therefore, it is hard to find the right position to place the instrument

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 stably. Students could use table leg pads to fill in the tiny gap between the instrument
and the stand [Appendix D Conversation 2]. Some performers have the special Guzheng
where the stands are attached to the instrument and the stands are adjustable
[Appendix D Conversation 2 and Appendix C Figure 1].

Evaluation:

The key stakeholders of the community are the teachers, students and students parents. As I
researched before went for the interview, I noticed that all the terminologies are written and explained
in Chinese [Appendix E Figure 1]. Therefore, before the interview, I thought the primary difficulty would
be translating those terminologies to people dont know Chinese. However, as the teacher revealed,
most musical terms have official translation in English and they can use analogy to western musical
instruments to explain the terminologies. Moreover, most students learn by imitation so language is not
a problem [Appendix D Conversation 2].

The information that surprises me is that Guzheng wobbles on the stands. The musical instrument
has been played and improved for centuries yet the traditional stands still have many drawbacks. This is
what I would never think about unless I talked with the stakeholders. This leads me to question why
people are still using the traditional stands instead of the adjustable ones mentioned by the teacher.

Next Step:

The problems posted by the stakeholders are

1. Students hope to have a faster and easier way to put on fingerpicks.

2. It is difficult make the instrument stably placed on the traditional stands.

Next, I would research more about the problems to see whether there are existing solutions or not. I
would like to interview the students and the teacher again and ask if people have allergy to surgical tape
would be able to use tape the fixate the fingerpicks. Also, I would like to ask more about the adjustable
stands. I need to know if the adjustable stands (or the stands of other instruments) [Appendix G Figure
2] could fully replace the traditional ones or we should try to improve the traditional stands. I would try
to avoid leading questions when doing interviews. For example, I would ask about the advantages and
disadvantages of adjustable stands and traditional ones rather than asking whether the one could fully
replace the other. I would ask about the Furthermore, I would find out more about other instruments,
for example, zither, guitar [Appendix G Figure 1] or the Sothern-Style Pipa to see whether the
fingerpicks of those instruments could be adapted to Guzheng players. After the further interview and
research, if the two problems above could be valid opportunities, I would discuss more about this
community with my group members to decide on the opportunity for the Design Brief and RFP.

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Appendix A: Contact Record with the Community

Figure 1 Email with stakeholders

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Figure 2 Phone log with stakeholders

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Figure 3 Business card of the stakeholder

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Appendix B: Pictures Taken While Visiting the Community

Figure 1: lobby of the school

Figure 2: Picture of the classroom 1

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Figure 3: Picture of the classroom 2

Figure 4: Teacher helping the student to put on the fingerpicks

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Figure 5: Four points of contact between the body of instrument and the stands

Figure 6: Gap between the instrument and the stand

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Figure 7: the teacher teaching Guzheng

Figure 8: the teacher teaching Pipa

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Appendix C: Notes Taken Based on Communication with the Key Stakeholders

Figure 1: Noting taking when interviewing the teacher

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Figure 2: Notes taking when observing

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Figure 3: Notes taking when interviewing students and parents

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Appendix D: Transcript of the Meeting with the Key Stakeholders

Conversation 1: with students and parents

Me: [self introduction] are there any particular difficulties with learning Guzheng?

Student: too hard to put on all fingerpicks.

Parent: right now, she pretty much depends on us (parents) and the teacher to help her with that. Also,
the standard stands for the instrument is too high for kids. We need a low stool for her to put her feet
on.

Student: also, the body of the instrument wobbles a bit when I play it.

Conversation 2: with teacher

Me: I realize that there are lot of special terminologies on the techniques of playing those Chinese
instruments. How would you translate those into English or teach the students doesnt understand
Chinese?

Ms. Ho: there are equivalence to most musical terms. Or we can use analogy to western musical
instruments. Most students would learn by imitation teachers movement and gestures. As long as we as
teachers demonstrate how the techniques work, they are fine. Then they would remember the special
notation indicating the techniques. The actual difficulty is that most students learned how to read the
notes written on staves before, but now they have to learn the numbered musical notation, which is a
completely different system than the staff. It takes a while for them to understand.

Me: I heard from the kid that she felt it is too hard to put on the fingerpicks.

Ms. Ho: It wont take more than one minute if they actually get used to that. Also, the southern-style
Pipa performers could use a special type of fingerpicks that could be capped onto their finger tips yet
others dont have that.

Me: The student said the instrument wobbles as she plays it. I also noticed that it seems the instrument
should be supported by the stands by four points of contact. But there is a minor gap between the
instrument and the stands here [showing the picture Ive taken], where the stand and instrument should
touch.

Ms. Ho: the distance between the pair of stands is not fixed. And also the floor or the carpet is never
perfectly flat so it is hard to find the right position to place the instrument stably on the stands if they
are moved. Normally I would suggest the students to buy some table leg protection pads from dollar
stores to fill in that tiny gap. However, as performers, we also have those specially made ones, where
the stands are attached to the body of the instrument itself and those stands are adjustable in terms of
length. That way even when the instrument has been moved to a new place the stands can still fully
accommodate the situation.

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Appendix E: Pictures on Guzheng Terminologies and Numbered Musical Notation

Figure 1: Guzheng Terminologies listed in Chinese

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Figure 2: Numbered Musical Notation

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Appendix F: Data Collection Method

Figure 1: Data Collection Method: Participant observation and Key informant interviewing

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Appendix G: Research about Musical Instruments

Figure 1: guitar fingerpicks

Figure 2: Guzheng placed on the stand of electronic keyboard

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