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Research Update: Dana Greaves

 I hope everyone is having a great Friday and is excited for the weekend! It's Dana here to provide an update on my current research.

From previous posts, or if you have met me in person, you may already know that my research is on the perceived psychological effects from virtual group singing (VGS) participation. My main motivation in conducting research on this topic is because newer technologies can allow for new ways to observe the functions of singing and community building in group singing. I am quite interested in using VR specifically to isolate these functions to gain further insights into these relationships. As I research and better understand the field, I have had these questions pop up repeatedly:

What are the functions of singing and community building in VGS?

How can we use VR to separate these functions?

How important is making VGS as close to reality as possible?

And these questions have led me to my research question:

To what extent do the social elements of (virtual) group singing affect the perceived psychological benefits from that participation?

I have been designing my project and writing a narrative review with these questions in mind. What I believe this far is that many of the benefits being recorded are influenced significantly by the interactions and relationships built between the members of the group more than the musical aspects that come from group singing. Not to say that there is not a kind of "magic" that comes from the musical elements; the chills you get when your voices blend together in harmony, the synergy of having a bandmate riff off of your musical idea when improvising together, the pride you feel when you are able to finally nail that super difficult part of a song together. Arguably, it is the communication, production, and understanding of one another through music as a tool that creates this ineffable "magic" of musicking with others. So then, what happens if you remove it?

My hope is that my research can provide further insights on why a person's wellbeing can be affected so positively by group singing. These implications may inform how we use newer technologies to administer VGS, use group singing in the mental health sectors, and make group singing and musicking more accessible for all.

Although this post was a bit more of a think piece than an update, I am still in the beginning stages (and very prone to falling down rabbit holes!) and will have a better sense of my project design in the upcoming months. Currently, I am working on a narrative review that I plan to submit to a journal by the end of Summer. I will also be attending some fabulous conferences in the upcoming months sharing my research and raising awareness about our network. Stay tuned to see more from Singing in Balance!

-DG

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