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Welcome to Musician's Journal Club

Musician's Journal Club

@musiciansjournalclub

Musician's Journal club logo with blue background. Text says "Musician's Journal Club: Applying Medical Research to Advance Musical Careers
Musician's Journal Club: Applying medical
research to advance musical careers

Welcome to Musician's Journal Club, an online, social-media based community for musicians to investigate how scientific research can improve musician health and wellness. Each week, we will look into a new peer-reviewed research article in one relating to one of three pillars of musician health: musculoskeletal health, mental health, and auditory, vocal, and pulmonary health. Throughout the week, you'll have opportunities to interact on Instagram (@musiciansjournalclub) to ask questions and engage with discussion questions to learn how this research can apply to a variety of musical professions. I'm excited to have you around to learn more about the science behind healthy musicians!


Musician's Journal Club is a social media community for musicians interested in exploring how scientific research can affect musical performance and careers. Each week, we'll explore a peer-reviewed scientific article, posting about its content, answering questions about the science, and posing discussion questions for the community. Musician's Journal Club will focus specifically on medical sciences, looking at research that can help us be healthier musicians for longevity in musical careers. The goal of this page is to facilitate discussion among musicians about science and to aid in translating scientific research to musicians and music students, so no scientific background is required to participate!

Why This Project?

As a dual-major in flute performance and biomedical engineering, I am always interested in how these two fields relate to each other. Personally, I have dealt with injuries worsened by playing my instrument and have seen many friends and peers struggle with playing-related pain and injury. I am passionate about scientific literacy and music education, and want to use my training in science to help translate scientific research into a musical setting. I am also working on a thesis project studying biomechanics of flute playing, and I wanted this project to serve as a partner to it, exploring the current literature while (hopefully) developing literature of my own. The video below shows some more about this thesis study.


Presenting research at the 2020
Orthopaedic Research Society Conference
In the past couple weeks setting up this project, I've discovered a wealth of research into musician health. Even though there are still obvious research gaps, there's plenty of existing research that isn't broadly known. I've categorized the literature I've found thus far into three main categories: musculoskeletal health, mental health, and auditory, vocal, and pulmonary health. Starting each week, I'll be posting specific articles on the Instagram page alongside explanations and discussion questions. I hope you'll join me on this exploration of the science behind musician health!





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