摘要:Two musician sociologists asked themselves this question: how can four guys who have never met and who have no written music, meet, shake hands, and start playing in a way that sounds like they’ve been working together for years. Faulkner and Becker decided to answer this question with field research. Because they lived 3,000 miles apart they cooperated via e-mail, thus preserving a record of the creative scientific process as it really occurs. Key words: music, repertoire, fieldwork methods.