preamble
The blog articles (that you write) forms a large part of the public face of Stet Lab: it’s the first thing that a visitor to the Stet Lab web site will see.
These articles are currently (July 24th 2008) grouped into the following categories:
- News (including event announcements)
- Web site (administrative announcements and alerts)
- Reviews (Stet Lab event/performance lab reports)
It’s the last of these that I’ll be addressing here.
I leave the character of your article to you. It may be serious or humorous, sober or whimsical, personal or formal. It may indulge in showers of praise, or instigate a (musical) character assignation. Diplomatic or partial, (self-)congratulatory or (self-)critical, the only thing I’d recommend that you keep in mind is that the article is public, and, as we are publishing, try and keep libelous statements to a minimum (but that’s just my two editorial cents).
You may also want to read past lab reports to see what others have made of this.
purpose of the lab reports
The lab report is an opportunity for you (as improviser-musician-performers and as audience-listener-observers) to explore and explode the processes and practices of music in general, and improvisation in particular. I don’t care exactly how you approach this, whether as diary, story, narrative, essay or a blow-by-blow commentary, but what I would like to see is a critical and reflexive engagement with the practice of improvisation (but that again is just my two editorial cents).
Tell the reader what is was like on-stage (or off-stage); what didn’t work, what did; what you did to get it to work, what you might have done differently. Tell the reader the stuff that critics (in ‘real’ publications) never get to—stuff they never seem to get.
Consider the readership of these reports:
- Interested audience members
- Other organization and groups
- Fellow musicians
Let’s assume that the reader is one that finds the process of music creation—the improvisative—compelling. Your article is an opportunity to give expression to the pragmatic or philosophical, practical or metaphysical, dimensions of music-making.
Finally, you may find it useful (though not necessary) to have a read of past lab reports before you plunge-in.
specific style guides
The standard form of the review title is ‘Lab report’, followed by the date (in the form: month day year), followed by your own article title.
For example:
Feel free to use, or create, any tags (a.k.a. keywords) that you feel relevant to your article.
At a bare minimum, tag your article with the date of the event being reviewed (form: month year) and the name of any musicians you’ve discussed.
Please only mark your lab report with the ‘review’ category.
Categories allow readers to select articles that of interest to them. (Do not use ‘news’ or ‘web site’.)