Musical pathways: exploring bodily movement and the context of others in improvised drumming

Here, trajectory implies a sense of direction informed by momentum and physical engagement, an open but intentional path shaped through motion.<br><br>The second section investigates the playing of other drummers, using video, text, and embodied analysis. Focusing on four improvisers, I examine physical movement as the basis for imitation and eventual assimilation. This leads to critical questions around identity and influence: when does copying someone, stop becoming copying someone?<br>The third section reflects on professional practice and how research manifests in the public sphere.

Through documented live performances, studio recordings, and collaborative projects, I explore how research is embedded in the act of music making itself.<br><br>Throughout, the work draws on enactive and embodied perspectives from the social sciences, not as contributions to those fields, but to highlight how we as highly skilled improvising musicians have inherent bodily knowledge of these principles, that which is felt understood and shared in the moment and in the movement.

This research offers value to drummers, improvisers, and researchers interested in embodied cognition, with its primary contribution being to the field of improvisation and the role of autoethnography in practice-based inquiry.<br>