ABSTRACT
The kinds of skills that scholars of sound employ in listening to, finding and in the recording of data have methodological and theoretical implications. In this section I discuss the need for a methodological eclecticism within the field of sound studies – by which I mean an open-mindedness that refuses to be drawn into methodological specialisms that might be associated with any traditional or indeed innovative subject area. The types of questions that sound scholars have been asking themselves involve what, if any, are the distinctive characteristics of studying the sonic, as against any other sensory mode? In order to ask these questions, issues of periodicity become important due to the absence of recorded sounds before the age of mechanical reproduction. What challenges does this periodicity then pose for historical research? In parallel to this is the contemporary question as to how we might research the sonic in an age of sonic databases and archives deriving from the late 19th century when sound recordings began to the present day?
