Exploring Music Creativity: Digital Annotation and the Role of Knowledge Hierarchies

Researching creative processes in music has been the goal of various disciplines of music research, answering various questions and using multiple methods. Apart from some exceptions, the main focus has been on reconstructing, and describing the creative process of individuals—mostly in retrospective. This paper gives an insight into possibilities of widening this approach in two crucial ways, i.e. towards researching creative processes a) in small groups and b) in situ, meaning while they are happening. Implicit knowledge hierarchies play an important role in both the research setup and the analysis processes. In particular, two intertwined levels of the annotation process need to be further discussed: first, the pre-developed categories that serve as the basis for the analysis, and second, their digital representation. This paper examines these two levels in the context of their inherent relationship to the technical possibilities and necessities of study design.