Institutional Musicians. (Under the Direction of Jason Swarts.)

ABSTRACT CARRADINI, STEPHEN ANDREW. The Professional Communication of Extra- institutional Musicians. (Under the direction of Jason Swarts.) This dissertation focuses on the professional communication of extra-institutional musicians. The organizational support available for musicians has diminished over the past thirty years to a point where many musicians make careers without the assistance of a large organization. Technical and Professional Communication has explored how extra- institutional individuals use professional communication in their careers, but has not asked if musicians might shed light on how extra-institutional individuals communicate. Arts Entrepreneurship has begun to investigate how musicians make careers outside large organizations, but has not explored how professional communication is involved in those extra-institutional careers. This interdisciplinary dissertation investigates what professional communication musicians use, how they use that professional communication, and why they use that professional communication in the process of career-building. Using grand-tour and stimulated recall protocols, I conducted 80 interviews with 40 musicians (20 indie rock musicians, 20 classical musicians) about the professional communication used in their careers. I used quantitative (frequency, keyness, collocation) and qualitative (in vivo, provisional, and descriptive coding) methods to analyze the data. I found that musicians use a huge array of professional communication elements. Musicians used these professional communication elements as a means to complete music-oriented tasks, such as touring, publishing content, managing professional relationships, and developing a career. Indie rock and classical musicians used different professional communication elements and employed them to do different, group-specific tasks. This study investigated the reasons why these subgroups used professional communication differently, resulting in the discovery of four organizational structures that governed the use of professional communication in the lives of musicians. The build structure, teaching structure, repertoire structure, and composing structure each possessed unique characteristics that shaped what professional communication the musicians needed to use and reframed the exigences in which they used it. Musicians were able to participate in multiple organizational structures at once, but these structures largely operated independent of each other in the musician’s life—as if the musicians had two jobs. Further analysis of the organizational structures of musicians revealed that professional communication developed and maintained these organizational structures. Musicians used communication as infrastructure in the absence of organizational support: organizational structure was stabilized when musicians repeatedly responded successfully to the characteristics of organizational structure that manifested in multiple exigences. Musicians could project how to write future communication, even in exigences they had not encountered before, by creating professional communication that responded to the characteristics of organizational structure. This study adds to the understanding of extra- institutional individuals in Technical and Professional Communication. The professional communication and the tasks musicians were undertaking with them add to Arts Entrepreneurship’s knowledge of what communication is necessary in the lives of musicians and intervene in theories of organizing and the arts entrepreneurial mindset. Organizational structure for extra-institutional individuals allows for identification of genres within their work; without an organizational structure, genres are difficult to identify, because an organization is necessary for recurrence of stable exigences from which genres emerge. © Copyright 2017 Stephen Andrew Carradini All Rights Reserved The Professional Communication of Extra-institutional Musicians by Stephen Andrew Carradini A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty of North Carolina State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media Raleigh, North Carolina 2017 APPROVED BY: _______________________________ _______________________________ Carolyn Miller Melissa Johnson _______________________________ _______________________________ Jason Swarts Gary Beckman Chair of Advisory Committee ii DEDICATION For my grandparents: Thomas Cregge the first, Joan Cregge Siegel, Ric Carradini, and Ruth Carradini. iii BIOGRAPHY Stephen Carradini is a faculty member in Arizona State University’s Technical Communication program. He received his Ph.D. in Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media from North Carolina State University. His research investigates how people who work outside large organizations use professional communication to do their work. His work is published in the Journal of Technical Writing and Communication and on the website Genre across Borders. He writes music journalism at Independent Clauses and plays indie pop music on the side. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS As Bach appended to his scores: Soli Deo gloria. Thank you to my wife Barbara, who was on board with this whole dissertation thing since day one. You have been an unfailing encouragement and support through this process, even as work hours got longer and longer. I love you. Thanks also to Samuel Hazelwood Carradini, who came along right at the tail end of the dissertation process and more than once inspired me to keep writing. Thank you to all of my respondents, without whom this dissertation would have no data. I am deeply indebted to your generosity in giving up time out of your life to answer my questions. In your honor, I have tried to respond and will respond to pretty much every request for research interview I get. Kara Dahl Russell was a participant in this study; she asked to be named. Thank you also to the many people who recommended potential respondents at the beginning of this study. Thank you to Jason Swarts, who guided me through the CRDM program and continually pushed me to write more clearly and concisely. I am deeply thankful for all the work you put in to turn “I like music and writing” into a dissertation and research trajectory. Thank you to Carolyn Miller, who took me on as an RA and joined my committee even as she was retiring. I learned an incredible amount during the year we worked together. v Thank you to Melissa Johnson, who helped me develop the conference proceedings paper that became my first publication. Thank you for your help in the courses I took from you and in the dissertation process. Thank you to Gary Beckman, who introduced me to Arts Entrepreneurship. Thank you for introducing me to the ideas of Arts Entrepreneurship, but even more, the people of Arts Entrepreneurship. This interdisciplinary dissertation would not exist without your help and the knowledge I gleaned from the SAEE community’s three conferences. Thank you to Stacey Pigg and Victoria Gallagher, who wrote me letters in the job search process and contributed to this dissertation through good conversation and helpful advice. Thank you to Gwendolynne Reid and Cristiane Damasceno, who met with me weekly for mutual support, encouragement, problem-solving, accountability, and conversation. Our weekly meetings were hugely helpful in staying on target. Thanks to the rest of my cohort, with whom I spent many hours poring over theory and practice: Danisha Baker-Whitaker, Jason Buel, Jason Carabelli, Karl Feld, Adele Hite, Will Sink, J.J. Sylvia, and Dwiyatna Widinugraha. Thank you to Dad, Mom, Joe, John, and Grandma Carradini for encouraging me over and over through this entire process, and especially at the end of the thing. Thanks especially to John for sending gifs, memes, weird academic journal articles, and outrageous news articles as conversation starters. You da real MVP. Thank you to Chris Krycho, who fielded my many frustrations and fears with admirable grace in our Slack chat. You are the best friend I could ask for. vi Thank you to B. Burns, who has gone through the master’s and doctoral process alongside me. I couldn’t ask for a better friend and commiserating partner. Thank you to Kati Fargo Ahern, who mentored me through the job searching process. Thank you to IVGCF at NCSU, the members of which were a consistent, weekly source of academic, personal, spiritual, and emotional support from the first week I arrived in Raleigh. Special thanks to Jeff Miller, who picked me up from the airport more than a few times from late-night conference flights. Thank you to Clay Spinuzzi, whose name appears more than 60 times in this dissertation. I like his work a lot. Thank you to everyone in the CRDM who talked with me when I was taking breaks from dissertation writing. Special thanks in this arena go to Max Renner, Steven Smith, Katreena Alder, Mai Xiong, Krystin Gollihue, Melissa Adams, Sarah Evans, Josh Jackson, Keon Pettiway, Chen Chen, Justin Grandinetti, and Mark Bentley. Thank you to Larry Rosebure, who has given me solid life advice since I was 17 years old and also stopped me from quitting grad school once. Thank you to Jared Peterson and Duane Davis, who gave me solid life advice over and over. Thank you to Jeff Hinton for always answering my phone calls and geeking out with me. May we all be irrationally confident. Thank you to Kevin Graybeal, who did video game days with me. (Thank you again to Barbara, who let those happen.) vii Thank you to the

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