I’ve had the same editor since 1967. Many times he has said to me over the years or asked me, Why would you use a semicolon instead of a colon? And many times over the years I have said to him things like: I will never speak to you again. Forever. Goodbye. That is it. Thank you very much. And I leave. Then I read the piece and I think of his suggestions. I send him a telegram that says, OK, so you’re right. So what? Don’t ever mention this to me again. If you do, I will never speak to you again

Maya Angelou on the joys of being edited

This feels personal. Also perfect. #nuntastic

Has someone finally Listened To Us?

I know professors who put a lot of effort into their final class meeting, striving to bring their course to a close with a culminating insight.

Not me. My courses just stop.

This is essentially the argument of my new book on Renaissance solmization.

Opinion | Don’t Use A.I. to Do This

good morning colson whitehead, most accomplished of maker workers!

"Some people say, “I just use it to brainstorm ideas.” If you don’t know what to paint, or compose, or write, you’re in the wrong job. Art is the business of making up stuff — go make up some stuff."
www.nytimes.com/2026/04/15/o...

The shift from a landscape dotted by collective learning to one dotted with data center and distribution warehouses is the most dystopian feature of the present moment

I'm just a girl standing in front of MS Word asking it not to make the default shape blue with a shadow.

This is the performer version of making your phone grayscale.

I'll add that as an author this makes me despair. What's the point of writing a sustained argument that unfolds across many chapters if presses are increasingly unwilling to package the whole thing together? I might as well start a blog; at least I could cross reference between posts there.

I've never once wanted to take a music example over to the piano to play it. But if I did I could just take my entire computer and set it on the music stand right?

And who uses pesky features like bibliographies, endnotes, tables of contents, indexes, and cross references anyway?

As I build my personal library — which currently consists of a mix of books I own and books from our library — I'm excited to add a bunch of broken/unstable links that will degrade over time. I'm sure they will hold up as well as my copies of print books from the 1950s.

When I think of what I'm looking for in my scholarly reading experience, it's reading single chapters out-of-context without any paratextual information, all while sitting at my desk staring at a screen that I cannot annotate in any way.

Thrilled my library is only buying digital copies of scholarly books, and that the platforms have wonderful features like:
- only download one chapter at a time
- limited access to index/bibliography
- impossible to read endnotes
- read in proprietary software
- different pagination from print book

I am being physically harmed by this image.

This is so, so well-articulated.

100% my experience with every project I have worked on. I spend years finally figuring out the argument only to discover the overwhelming majority of that argument in notes from half a decade before.

Writing a book is having—and forgetting—the same epiphany over and over until you die or finish the book, whichever comes first.

Today is your last chance to nominate your favorite book, article, or public-facing scholarship for an SMT publication award! Don't be shy -- nominate work that you enjoyed and don't hesitate to self-nominate. societymusictheory.org/grants/publi...

SHOUT IT FROM THE ROOFTOPS! Also: please teach The Youths about files. Signed, someone who received an .HEIC photo of a MS Word document and a screen recording of a voice memo as homework submissions this week.

Was feeling stuck writing a very thorny theory portion of my book manuscript, so I switched to some good old fashioned music analysis for a couple days. WOW I feel like a new person.

35 of my 40 theory 1 students are music theater majors this semester. Did I take this opportunity to make music theater versions of half of my handouts and homework assignments? YOU BET I DID.

Why does live music hit different? Our new paper has a neural answer: EEG in a concert hall showed stronger brain-rhythm phase locking during live vs. recorded Bach violin — and that predicts higher pleasure & engagement. 1/2

SMT-V 07.4, "I Don’t Care if I Never Get Back: Optimism and Ascent in 'Take Me Out To The Ball G... YouTube video by SMT-V: The Society for Music Theory Video Journal

What better way to celebrate the start of the baseball season than with @michaelbuchler.bsky.social's wonderful SMT-V on "Take Me Out To The Ballgame"?

youtu.be/M1nQIlttJvA?...

What’s a cheque?

What currency do you use, Blue Jays tickets??

More than once I have contemplated just abandoning an honorarium to avoid filling out one of these forms. And heaven help you if you go to Canada — I had to get a form notarized just to get a $300 honorarium.

Not only do I have all notifications turned off (as well as most of the little red bubbles), I also keep my phone across the room while I'm writing. I absolutely could not have written my book with phone distractions breaking me out of flow state!