music studyblr (transsexual coded)

tee jay / 19 / 3rd year BME choral ed student main blog @genderificationbeam <3

[mediantriaad]

pinned post <3

hej! im t.j (or teej or tee jay or whatever), im a second year bachelor of music education (choral focus) student at a public university and im mostly here to post my notes and talk about my nerd shit :)

he/him it/its pronouns pls.

once i graduate i plan on trying to land a choral conducting job someplace, and then eventually going back to school for (a) graduate (degrees?) in either choral conducting or musicology depending on how that goes lol

currently reading:

bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress

Christopher Small, Musicking: The Meanings of Performing and Listening

bell hooks, The Will to Change

Matthew L. Garrett and Joshua Palkki, Honoring Trans and Gender-Expansive Students in Music Education

Liz Jackson Hearns and Brian Kremer, The Singing Teacher's Guide to Transgender Voices

if you wanna know more about me my main is @genderificationbeam !

I don't really use the queue or tag anything except my own posts, but lmk if youd like anything specific tagged and i'll try my best (unfortunately i have a lot of memory issues which is partially why i started being so meticulous about my notes in the first place lol)

"Don't play everything (or everytime); let some things go by. Some music just imagined." - Thelonious Monk

[tenorgender]

god didn't give me a dick because he knew I'd get hard when I heard a rich choral harmony

[mysterybones]

If it sounds like the composer is trying to blast you with the orchestra until you're as deaf as he is, it's Beethoven.

If it sounds like the composer might be a vampire, it's Bach.

If it sounds like the composer is trying to set the violins on fire, it's Vivaldi.

[frenshaped-deactivated20241222]

If it sounds like the composer is trying to shoot you, it's Tchaikovsky.

If it sounds like the composer is mansplaining to you, it's Wagner.

If it sounds like the composer is making fun of you, it's Mozart.

[realgoogleclassroom]

If it sounds like the composer is being a father figure to the music itself, it's Haydn

If it sounds like the composer is playing Star Wars 60 years early, it's Holst

If it sounds like the composer is trying to incite a riot, it's Stravinsky

[cparti-mkiki]

unfortunately have to go with the flow on this one… don g might really have the best opening AND closing twenty minutes of any opera ever lol

[the-real-google]

Friends, allies, foes...I know we've had our differences in the past but please let us work together today to beat our common enemy.

[spotify-official]

Agreed

[penguininmypocket]

[nelson-riddle-me-this]

found this gem on reddit:

[mahoganyamore]

dangerous as any beautiful unfinished thing

[monsterlets]

I may be becoming the guy at work who won't let people talk bad about their own singing voices, but to be fair people keep talking bad about their singing voices to me

[monsterlets]

I mention karaoke offhandedly and people start describing ways that their singing voices are supposedly bad and I just

[monsterlets]

"people tell me I sing along to everything an octave lower than it's supposed to be" yeah dude you have a deep voice. that's what you're supposed to do when the song isn't in your range and you're not trying to sing harmony. you bring it into your range while still following the melody. and you're doing that without even thinking about it!

[monsterlets]

one of my coworkers was at karaoke with me and they were talking shit about their voice too like bro. sure it was off sometimes but when it was on you sounded like a fuckin angel. I am tapping the sign. I can tell you what you picked out as sounding bad, it was lack of airflow control and occasionally some notes that may be out of your range

[monsterlets]

what gets me is like. it says something about societal messages around singing when a bunch of teachers, who will talk about growth mindsets all day long, are like "oh yeah I'm just naturally a bad singer and always will be"

like I said in another reblog chain, singing is a skill. or really a bunch of complicated interweaving skills. and if you don't wanna improve your singing that's cool, but you absolutely could if you wanted to

[genderificationbeam]

im a little sloshed. anyways who wants to listen to the Have A Nice Life cover i did for my music tech class

Visit Original Link

[thefloralmenace]

I've seen people resonating with my Emergency Lab Pants project (providing a box of loaner pants for college science labs to accommodate people who forget to wear long pants) in the tags again, especially with the phrase "You can't disincentivize forgetting things."

I want to go into a bit more detail on that because I'm sure there are people who would argue harsh policies (like getting a zero for lab if you show up in shorts) do reduce overall incidences of noncompliance, even when no one would ever not comply with the policy on purpose (i.e. noncompliance only happens when people forget), but I want to explain what's happening there.

You are not disincentivizing forgetting. You are not forcing people to remember. You are forcing people with memory issues/anxiety to come up with adaptations that result in them achieving the desired result, whether they remember or not. Ex: being sure they show up to lab wearing long pants.

Prior to my box of emergency lab pants, I was so worried about accidentally forgetting that I established a lab uniform for myself. I wore the same shirt and long pants every Tuesday for lab. I laid out all my clothes a week at a time and put that outfit on every Tuesday. I was supplementing my memory with routine. No thinking, no remembering: just get dressed.

When I was a kid in elementary school, you'd get yelled at for forgetting a book you needed for next period from the cubby in your homeroom even though all the classrooms were connected so that you were always literally feet from your cubby. Like you could go back and get the book in under 60 seconds, but no: You'd get the speech on how you were irresponsible, and sometimes they'd force you to share a book with someone or work without it to "teach you a lesson." I was a sensitive child with an imperfect memory, so what did I do? I carried all my books with me all day and never used my cubby while my classmates just picked up the relevant materials between classes. That behavior lasted all through high school. Got made fun of for constantly carrying every textbook, but guess who never got in trouble for being forgetful or "unprepared"?

I never got a better memory. I just realized people didn't actually care if I remembered; they only cared if I showed up the way they wanted with the stuff they wanted, so I came up with adaptations so that I couldn't forget.

Which begs the question: Why create harsh punishments that force people with imperfect memories to invent these adaptations on a sink or swim basis rather than teaching people coping strategies for when they need to remember things? Like carry everything with you. Or if you need to bring an item you don't ususlly bring with you somewhere, shove it in the bag you always carry. Or leave yourself notes on the door knob of the door you have to exit through to go outside. Or set a reminder on your phone for one minute after your alarm, so you know you'll be holding your phone when the reminder goes off, ensuring you'll see it.

OR, as with my Emergency Lab Pants, just accommodate for when people inevitably do forget instead of riding the whole function of an event/program on a bunch of different people's memories?

[lytefoot]

The other important effect of this sort of zero-tolerance policy is to reduce noncompliance by excluding the people effected by these issues from the sample. This is a major equity issue in higher education.

If you tell someone, "You can't be a scientist unless you can memorize these formulas," you're not going to incentivize them memorizing the formulas, you're effectively telling them they can't be a scientist. Obviously, the audience most receptive to that message is those who have traditionally been excluded from higher ed. The message is, "People like you don't belong here."

The Emergency Lab Pants send the message that yes, people like you belong here. We're all like you, we all forget sometimes, that's okay and normal.

[cloudgenderkaiju-deactivated202]

My kid gets "speech" services at school. They brought home a worksheet from the speech teacher for homework (which she forgot to do and was panicking about one morning before school, incidentally). I helped her with the writing while she told me the answers.

The interesting thing to me was that this worksheet listed a "problem solving" flow like this: CAUSE (kid doesn't know how to do the assignment) -> PROBLEM (kid breaks their pencil, cries) -> suggest solutions. This is fucking awful and nonsensical. The PROBLEM for the school is the kid's "behavior." You can't solve behavior. So what is the problem causing the behavior? The problem is actually that the kid needs more support doing their assignment. Any "solutions" that don't solve this problem are not going to address the behavior. I hate that the only reasonable option for us at this point in our lives is to send my kids to public school, because they teach kids to feel shame. My kid is terrified of crying at school, which happens when she's confused or upset. Making her more scared to have her uncontrollable reactions does not solve the problem; she's just more scared of herself and of those situations in school. And @lytefoot nailed it - the point is to exclude people who need more support. Schools do their utmost to avoid providing services because teachers and schools are generally underfunded and really can't provide everything that kids need. So on a systemic level, they choose options that punish nonconformity, push urgency, and exclude kids from receiving education and services that they need. On the off chance any educators or parents want the info - the "CPS" model by Dr. Ross Greene focuses on identifying actual problems without treating behaviors as issues by themselves. It's made a huge difference in our lives and is (mostly) compatible with a lot of liberatory politics.

https://livesinthebalance.org/

[people-too]

[opera-ghosts]

Coloratura Comparison! Four historic sopranos wind up Olympia's DOLL SONG, High E-flat THE SONGBIRDS: - Alice Zeppilli (1885 - 1969) was born in France of Italian heritage. She made her debut in Milan in 1901 and appeared regularly in Monte-Carlo and in the U.S. (Chicago, New York, and Philadelphia). This is one of only two arias she recorded. THE MUSIC: Jacques Offenbach composed at least 100 works for the stage in the 34 years between 1847 and 1881. Yet only his masterpiece “Les Contes de Hoffmann” lives in the standard repertory, deservedly so. According to operabase.com, “Hoffmann” is the second most performed French opera in the world, after “Carmen.” The first of three fantasy lovers that the poet Hoffmann conjures in the story is Olympia. Initially she appears luminous to Hoffmann, but she turns out to be a mechanical doll. She only has one aria in the opera, "Les oiseaux dans la charmille," commonly referred to as the Doll Song. And what an aria it is -- an extremely popular and challenging coloratura showpiece. This ditty is so ubiquitous that it’s easy to overlook how clever and original it is: Offenbach ingeniously composed an intricate and precise coloratura vocal line to convey Olympia's wind-up doll characteristics, all with a bit of a wink. It's inevitably a crowd pleaser for sopranos who can display their technique and have a little fun at the same time.

[cafffine]

my prof just explained on the syllabus that he’s included more pionts in the class than we needed to pass, so we could skip up like?? 20 small assignments/quizzes/participation!! and still get a very high grade!!

the idea was that we could focus on assignments that played to our strengths - only do the participation stuff if we like to talk out loud - only do the quizzes/readings if we want to do the class remotely - only do online discussions if we like to talk and share opinions but struggle with anxiety in class ect.

and that’s cool enough but then he pulled up DnD character sheets with drawings he’d done of these hypothetical student player classes and how our various accessibility needs could be gamified to ‘max out’ different aspects of the class to get high grades and like!!!!!

hell yeah!!!! let’s treat accessibility in higher education not just as a necessity but as the fun, engaging, and creative aspect of learning that it is!!! I love this!!

[cafffine]

other profs: sobbing and screaming bc someone needs to take notes on a computer

this dude: I record and upload every lecture for the paladins, monks, and rogues, but barbarians can watch them too I guess. Bards you only get one participation point per class, even if you talk multiple times, it’s only fair.

[steviestudying-deactivated20180]

Shout-out to people studying with a mental illness.

You’re doing this with half your brain tied behind your back and that’s pretty badass

[dirtbagbarbie]

“Half your brain tied behind your back” is truly the most accurate description of my life I could possibly imagine

[slut-jpeg]

snoopy image of the day

[dude-ew-gross]

[certifiedlibraryposts]

Certified Wizardry Library Post

[homoeroticjunoincident]

people NEED to stop gatekeeping making music like ohhhh i don’t have an instrument ohhhhh i don’t know music theory ohhhhh i’m not gonna pay for some program. SHUT UP. take my hand.

you need NONE of that shit!!!!! there’s a website called beepbox.co. literally all you have to do is press things until it sounds a modicum of nice. it’s easy it’s free and it works on anything which has a browser because it’s a website.

if even ONE person starts making music bc of this post it will be worth it.

making bad music is just as important and okay as it is to write badly or draw badly or sing badly. you AREN’T BEHOLDEN TO MAKE GOOD MUSIC. making music is not utilitarian HAVE FUN. HAVE FUN!!!!!!!!!

[homoeroticjunoincident]

love how people will encourage people to just start making shit and see what happens when it comes to drawing and writing but when it comes to beginner musicians (music makers if you wish to be less formal) it’s just COMPLETE RADIO SILENCE. it feels like no one even knows you MAKE music it just sprouts up from the ground one day and some guy picks it up. am i alone in this dark cave

[godofautism-deactivated20240303]

Fuck it

I'm gonna try and make music

Call me betovan bc I'm deaf as fuck /j

[terri-theslime13]

HELL YEAH!!!

[unhinged-popsocket]

Alternatively if you wanna get into music producing in a more “proper” way, you still don’t need any money.

Ableton has excellent free websites to learn the basics:

Learning Music

Learning Synths

You can learn basically everything you need on YouTube. I recommend:

Mercurial Tones Academy

Dan Worrall

Bthelick

A lot of your favorite artists, mainly in electronic music, likely have done track breakdowns, you can watch those to learn how they do things.

DAWs (Digital Audio Workstations) ultimately all do the same things, and Cakewalk is a great FREE fully fledged one. Sure it has some issues, and doesn’t have many plugins included, but it works just fine. All the music I released so far was made there, before I made the jump to Ableton.

As for VST plugins:

Vital is an excellent free synth

Native Instruments Komplete Start is a good free collection of plugins

TDR Nova is a great free EQ

There’s a lot of others and I don’t wanna name everything I’m aware of here, but feel free to DM me for more (Or if you have any other questions and stuff too).

And as for samples, you can get a bunch of free ones at:

Cymatics

Ghosthack

Having good headphones is nice and what I’d recommend you invest in first once it comes to it, but even your current ones will probably be fine, mainly if you slap AutoEQ onto them to flatten the frequency response. And ultimately, music isn’t all about the mixing, the most important part is conveying an emotion.

I know this goes against the spirit of the original post a little, but I want people to know that getting into music production also no longer costs thousands, you can just do it at home on your computer without no money.

[unhinged-popsocket]

Yeah, there is still quite the learning curve, I get that, though it’s also why it’s managed to hold me as a hobby for so long.

I do however have something of the exact opposite variety too, the most simple way to make music I know of, and a wonderful little semi-social experience, along the lines of the game Journey:

The New PLINK! is the long overdue update of #plink by @DinahmoeSTHLM. Jam with friends and strangers all over the world.

[plaguery]

hi op i think you should know that i did indeed make a song for the first time because of this

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[charaznablunt]

Tickets are live now for my choir's winter concert! TRANScend is an all-trans/gnc choir and we will be performing Saturday, December 16, at 7:30 EST, at St. John's in the Village in NYC. Not a New Yorker? No problem - streaming tickets are available at the link. I hope you'll join us in celebrating the winter season!