Phase 1: Group Assessment

Digital humanities is an inherently process-based discipline, which relies on the delegation of responsibilities, playing to the strengths and weaknesses of each of the collaborators. Thus, when we first were assigned our groups, before getting into the project, we got to know each other. We each talked about our majors, strengths and weaknesses, and which aspects of the project would complement each member’s capabilities. For example, Lucy is an English minor, so she was keen to write, Chenchen has a concentration in Computer Science, which catered her efforts towards the design and technology side of the project. We were lucky to have a breadth of concentrations and variable strengths which guided our project through an interdisciplinary lens, making each aspect accessible to people with different interests.

Phase 2: Research

During Phase 2, our objective was to decide exactly which aspect of jazz and education we wanted to explore. Given the breadth of the discipline and the many directions in which we could take such an assignment, we first looked into jazz history to better focus our argument. In group meetings, we each researched different aspects of jazz education that would be interesting to pursue. After each presenting our different ideas and discussing which would further the discipline of jazz in education the most, we decided to focus on the relationships between jazz musicians and their mentors.

Phase 3: General Organization

During Phase 3, we began to delegate tasks to improve project efficiency. We first decided that each group member would focus on one musician, each specializing in a different instrument, who engaged highly with jazz education. The musicians were selected from the Hamilton Jazz Archive. The decision to research individual musicians allowed each member to get an in-depth look at jazz talents, but moreover, allowed each of us to learn about the musician and engage with the project at hand. With respect to this delegation, each member was asked to make their own clips from the Hamilton College Jazz Archive and provided their own annotated bibliographies corresponding to the research conducted on their musician. Subsequently, we looked to each member’s strength to divide up additional project steps. Charlie is very detail-oriented, so it made sense that he took the rubric. He also had a very good grasp on the content of our project, so was able to write the Introduction in a very concise and coherent manner. Dylan is very creative, so he was tasked with developing our Digital Humanities tool. He also is a strong writer and did a good job researching the history of jazz education and incorporating relevant aspects into our project. Chenchen volunteered to investigate Scalar, because she has a background in coding and working with different interfaces. She helped design which orientation of images and videos would look the best and work the best for our content. Ian is very good at synthesizing the big-picture, thus he was able to develop a compelling conclusion. Because Lucy likes to write, she offered to document our process on a weekly-basis and discuss race as a social construct.

Phase 4: Focusing in

During Phase 4, we decided as a group that we would not pin down the thesis until we had the appropriate evidence to back up our claims. Thus, we took a class period to investigate the different interviews in the Jazz Archive, and choose artists that would complement both our topic and the other incorporated musicians. Because we were interested in seeing how wide-reaching jazz mentorship is across the instrument class, we each chose a musician who played a different instrument. After diving into the transcripts and assessing different possible musicians to spotlight, we found improvisation and mentorship to be a driving principle for nearly all musicians regardless of what instrument they played. After being able to locate specific quotes, we were able to develop our thesis and focus in on our goals for our audience.

Phase 5: To Scalar!

During Phase 5, we began to elucidate the importance of one-to-one mentorship in jazz. With Chenchen’s debriefing of the different functions we could incorporate in Scalar, we designed our pages. Despite the wide-ranging differences of these jazz musicians: race, gender, time period, geographical location, instrument etc., they all shared the same adoration and appreciation of mentorship. Thus, we thought a good way to show the unity of jazz mentorship is to make all of our pages follow the same format. We picked a brick background for our pages, which situates our content in an aesthetically pleasing and content-matching way. Furthermore, this background is emphasized in our opening page providing continuity from page-to-page. Next, we decided that providing photographs of musicians "jamming out" would introduce their individual pages nicely. For the pages that were not dedicated to a specific artist, we chose heading images that fit the content. We also chose other key images to integrate into the content of the biographies. Additionally, we put our clips of each musician talking specifically about their mentorship and thought on mentorship as a whole on each page to act as the central conduit for supporting our thesis. Because jazz is music, our project would not be complete without samples of our artist’s music. Though we ideally would have liked to have had the audio playing right when a page visitor enters a page, Scalar’s maximum for storage was too small to allow this feature. Thus, we combatted this limitation by include videos showing album covers or in some cases with the musicians performing live. This decision created more sensory experience for each page with music and visuals.  

Phase 6: Digital Humanities Tool

During Phase 6, we wanted to incorporate a digital humanities tool that was correlated with our thesis. Dylan came up with the idea of an interactive Google Map, displaying where the musician began their career and where the musician is today. The map is both visually enticing and goes to show that mentorship is integral to jazz as a genre, not simply to a single musical community.

Phase 7: Peer Review