Developing a research question/topic

Research Question:

How does Japanese ambient music reflect local culture, philosophy and identity?

Directions:

a. Identity: What kind of historical background and globalisation influences artists to create such music and how it reflects contemporary Japanese culture.
b. Philosophical Influences: How to express the beauty of such mutilation as wabi-sabi aesthetics through sound, e.g. the irregularity and randomness of ambient music.
c. Musical structure: how to incorporate the traditional pentatonic scale or natural sounds into electronic music

Literature and materials:

David Novak, Japanoise: Music at the Edge of Circulation (2013)
Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto. Sound, Space, and the Japanese Aesthetic (2018).
Hosokawa, Shuhei. Noise, Music and Perception: the Japanese Approach to Sound (2005).