A musicologist’s wishlist: some issues, practices and practicalities in musical aspects of language documentation.

29 November 2006

This paper summarises some of the issues that have arisen for me in my collaborations with linguists in documentation of Australian song. It provides pointers for recording techniques and guidelines as to some of the things that musicologists would like to know about musical performance, especially in the case of musical traditions and practices transmitted orally within small language groups (as is typically the case for documentation of musical traditions in endangered languages).