Process

       In developing what to examine for our project, we decided to look at a field of jazz where we do not see many women participants. We often hear about women as jazz singers or pianists, but we do not hear about many women composers or brass instrument players. We started by utilizing the Hamilton College Fillius Jazz Archive as the basis for our research. The Jazz Archive features interviews and transcripts from various jazz musicians.
 
       Within the archive, we found four women composers who have significantly contributed to jazz music; Jane Ira Bloom, Marian McPartland, Ann Rabson, and Maria Schneider. From there we did our own research to discover the contributions and the struggles that each woman had to deal with in their rise in the world of jazz.
 
       We took video of the four women from the Hamilton College Fillius Jazz Archive and downloaded each video and used IMovie to edit each video together. We also took the transcripts and used Scalar as our digital platform to distribute our media project. This book includes songs, images, videos, and the actual words from each woman and hopes to highlight these four amazing jazz musicians.
 
April 13, 2016:
       Tonight was very efficient. We all sat together and broke off to work on different sections that were assigned for tomorrow. While Adrian was working on the introduction, Paige and Sam were watching clips on Ann Rabson and collaborating on what to include in her entry, while Jenna was working on other DH methods. While we all were working on separate tasks, the collaboration was still relevant and present. We all contributed ideas to each other’s work and discussed elements that should be involved in everything that was written.
 
April 19th, 2016:
       We worked in class to discuss final layout strategies, such as what paths we may apply to our project. We were able to gain experience using and manipulating Scalar, as we continued to learn how to import media and organize each page. Although we remain largely unsuccessful at uploading pictures and music, we continue to improve our understanding of Scalar, and are more determined than ever to master it.
 
April 21, 2016:
       While in class, we worked mostly on uploading videos and photos to Scalar. The videos were a bit tricky to upload, as we ran into quite a few technical difficulties on how to make the image the header of the page, and how to save it in a way that Scalar can support. Today was a learning process where we improved our Scalar abilities greatly.
 
April 26, 2016:
       Today was focused on group discussion, as we tried to determine how much work there was left to do and how we would split it up in a fair, accomplishable way. Once that had been discussed and decided, we moved on to continue working on each of the women's bios, deciding what paths we would like to create, and adding more to our overall Scalar project.
 
April 28, 2016:
       Today we worked in class and added the paths to Scalar. We continued to add and edit the biographies and themes. We also cut more of the videos and searched for better photos to upload for each of the women. In our discussions we have connected these women and found their similarities and now we need to add what we have vocalized to the pages on Scalar.
 
May 2, 2016:
       Today we used our time finalizing what was written and adding to sections that we felt were not complete enough or lacked information. It has been hard to keep track of a process journal though as we all have worked on our own adding to pages and haven't meet completely as a group in a few days. Rather, we have been emailing and working on the same Google doc to go over our project and editing each other's sections.
 
May 3 & 4, 2016:
       Today we met with Dr. Nieves and he eased some of our stress. We came up with a plan for "Race in our Project" and finished our three themes regarding our women. We switched around some images and spent the majority of the time creating our presentation for May 5th. We created a new plan for our DH method and had Adrian Photoshop an image. Besides putting in the clips that have already been edited and making final adjustments to our photos and pages, our project is pretty close to being finished and being able to be published on Scalar.