ABSTRACT
The discussion in the preceding chapter, concerning the ‘beginnings’ and ‘ends’ of acquiring popular music skills and knowledge, sets the context for examining what went in-between. How do the musicians get from those beginnings to those ends? This chapter will consider the main learning practices through which the professional musicians in the study had arrived at, and the younger musicians were going about working towards, their ends. In interviewing the older musicians concerning this aspect of their experiences, I was relying to a large extent upon their long-term memories. The younger ones, by contrast, were often talking to me about what they had done that day or the week before. All the accounts were nonetheless largely commensurate with each other, age and experience featuring as interesting parts of the musicians’ perspectives whilst introducing no glaring contradictions. The accounts also tied in with existing research into popular musicians’ practices.1
