Megan Non Brevis
@theorymeg.bsky.social
Music theorist, early music specialist, mezzo soprano, feminist, yogi, hiker. Into equitable pedagogy. Author of Hearing Homophony (OUP 2020: http://bit.ly/341RhmB). She/her/hers.
Reposted by Megan Non Brevis
Congratulations to everyone who submitted applications to grad school today (and earlier)! 🎉
December 1, 2025 at 8:47 PM
Congratulations to everyone who submitted applications to grad school today (and earlier)! 🎉
See also: instill in your junior colleagues that they can and should ALWAYS ask for help from more senior folks whenever they have ANY questions about tricky students, tricky essays, etc.
While I was TAing during my first MA, we were tasked with solo teaching a couple sections a semester. Our advisor encouraged us to bring these types of situations (really any situation we didn't know how to handle) to her to resolve. We were students still learning, & our tenured profs protected us
If you are a chair of a department or supervise grad students, it might be important to collaborate with your colleagues on ways to strategize when a "problem essay" comes down the pike. It's one small way of protecting each other.
December 1, 2025 at 9:57 PM
See also: instill in your junior colleagues that they can and should ALWAYS ask for help from more senior folks whenever they have ANY questions about tricky students, tricky essays, etc.
December 1, 2025 at 9:56 PM
"I hated music theory" or "I'm a great musician and I don't need music theory" are probably the two most common responses when people find out I'm a professional music theorist.
Not a question, but as an English professor I get, “oh, I hate reading” which is honestly a wild thing to say to a professional reader 😅
What’s the worst question someone can ask after you tell them your profession? For linguists, it’s definitely “how many languages do you speak?”, but I’m curious what else is happening to the rest of y’all out there?!
December 1, 2025 at 9:55 PM
"I hated music theory" or "I'm a great musician and I don't need music theory" are probably the two most common responses when people find out I'm a professional music theorist.
Reposted by Megan Non Brevis
If you are a chair of a department or supervise grad students, it might be important to collaborate with your colleagues on ways to strategize when a "problem essay" comes down the pike. It's one small way of protecting each other.
December 1, 2025 at 7:29 PM
If you are a chair of a department or supervise grad students, it might be important to collaborate with your colleagues on ways to strategize when a "problem essay" comes down the pike. It's one small way of protecting each other.
I cannot overstate what a game-changer the "show completed jobs" section of the print queue has been for me.
Yes my office is a two minute walk away from the printer why do you ask.
Yes my office is a two minute walk away from the printer why do you ask.
December 1, 2025 at 6:59 PM
I cannot overstate what a game-changer the "show completed jobs" section of the print queue has been for me.
Yes my office is a two minute walk away from the printer why do you ask.
Yes my office is a two minute walk away from the printer why do you ask.
Reposted by Megan Non Brevis
And, necessarily connected to this, we should relentlessly advocate for the kinds of systems where teachers feel joy and inspiration in the material they bring to students bc there is no greater force for learning than a curious instructor excited about the topic they are teaching.
December 1, 2025 at 3:40 PM
And, necessarily connected to this, we should relentlessly advocate for the kinds of systems where teachers feel joy and inspiration in the material they bring to students bc there is no greater force for learning than a curious instructor excited about the topic they are teaching.
One of my favorite things about teaching here is that we give everyone space to teach core theory and aural skills however they want. Use the materials, strategies, vocabulary, repertoire, etc. that make sense to you. When we teach better, and from a place of excitement, our students learn better.
One of my heartfelt beliefs is that different teachers will be better at teaching different texts different ways w/in the same topic. To force a fixed curriculum is to intentionally elide that teachers are individual human beings w unique engagements w the ideas they communicate to students.
December 1, 2025 at 6:55 PM
One of my favorite things about teaching here is that we give everyone space to teach core theory and aural skills however they want. Use the materials, strategies, vocabulary, repertoire, etc. that make sense to you. When we teach better, and from a place of excitement, our students learn better.
🙌
I’m struggling with my focus today. So I wrote out everything I’ve done this year, long hand and in a proper notebook.
I decided that the problem may be that I’ve done enough.
I decided that the problem may be that I’ve done enough.
December 1, 2025 at 6:03 PM
🙌
The fact that so many of us are tempted to use genAI for rec letters is a real indication of how pointless the letter of rec has become as a document. A cliché-laden regression to the mean where every student/colleague is superlative in so many ways ... can we please go back to making phone calls?
Writing recommendation letters is one of the few activities for which I’ve been tempted to use genAI, and I don’t, but that instinct is probably a clue that “recommending people just so they can check that box” is a genre of activity that is not actually served well by the craft of writing.
December 1, 2025 at 6:02 PM
The fact that so many of us are tempted to use genAI for rec letters is a real indication of how pointless the letter of rec has become as a document. A cliché-laden regression to the mean where every student/colleague is superlative in so many ways ... can we please go back to making phone calls?
Reposted by Megan Non Brevis
"Interpassivity is so dominant that doing+making are referred to as obstacles to pleasure. You don't read a book because reading is work, LLMs can summarize. You don't learn an instrument because practice is work. Skillsets distract from the time we might set aside for passive consumption."
This week I reach back to the 1990s and the concept of “interpassivity,” a critique of the widespread idea that “interaction” was inherently liberating for an audience. But to think in nuanced and critical ways about creativity with generative AI, the “gesture of disappearance” has new salience.
From Interactive to Interpassive
Where AI Art Meets Cognitive Offloading
There is the joke about AI: we wanted robots to do our dishes so we could have time to make art, but we got robots that make art while we do the dishes. We can...
mail.cyberneticforests.com
November 30, 2025 at 2:20 PM
"Interpassivity is so dominant that doing+making are referred to as obstacles to pleasure. You don't read a book because reading is work, LLMs can summarize. You don't learn an instrument because practice is work. Skillsets distract from the time we might set aside for passive consumption."
Reposted by Megan Non Brevis
“Based on the available evidence, the skills that future graduates will most need in the AI era—creative thinking, the capacity to learn new things, flexible modes of analysis—are precisely those that are likely to be eroded by inserting AI into the educational process.”
“When you allow a machine to summarize your reading, to generate the ideas for your essay, and then to write that essay, you’re not learning how to read, think, or write.“
November 30, 2025 at 11:10 AM
“Based on the available evidence, the skills that future graduates will most need in the AI era—creative thinking, the capacity to learn new things, flexible modes of analysis—are precisely those that are likely to be eroded by inserting AI into the educational process.”
Reposted by Megan Non Brevis
I am convinced that one reason why NPR’s Books We Love has been so successful is that while it allows you to filter in a bunch of ways, it also emulates elements of browsing. In its regular cover mode, it’s not a list, it’s an array, and when you refresh the page, it shuffles. (1/)
The death of browsing is part of the reason art is the way it is now. Our opinions are largely fed to us by algorithms. Spending a spare 15 minutes wandering around a bookstore or comic shop or video rental place was how you found stuff you wouldn't ordinarily pick up and thereby expanded your taste
Bookselling is like the most "people go to the store and buy what looks cool to them without a particular agenda" type business left, and your purchases have a huge influence on what is ordered, what is displayed, and what is recommended.
November 30, 2025 at 1:54 PM
I am convinced that one reason why NPR’s Books We Love has been so successful is that while it allows you to filter in a bunch of ways, it also emulates elements of browsing. In its regular cover mode, it’s not a list, it’s an array, and when you refresh the page, it shuffles. (1/)
This times 1000
One is that teaching university students *well* requires much more work (and frankly, compassion) now than it did when I started nine years ago. 2/
November 29, 2025 at 6:38 PM
This times 1000
Reposted by Megan Non Brevis
And I don't know if the answer is: everyone is too traumatized to do work and we need to reinvent society. Or if it's more like: generations are losing their cognitive abilities and willpower due to destructive technologies. Or: we all have post-viral brain damage. Or: all of the above.
November 28, 2025 at 11:34 PM
And I don't know if the answer is: everyone is too traumatized to do work and we need to reinvent society. Or if it's more like: generations are losing their cognitive abilities and willpower due to destructive technologies. Or: we all have post-viral brain damage. Or: all of the above.
Reposted by Megan Non Brevis
I had a great conversation with a librarian last year where she said the instability and general inability to reliably trace bots as a reference source are sort of a perfect storm. Students "research" w the tool, but repeating the search doesn't yield a stable output.
November 28, 2025 at 2:28 PM
I had a great conversation with a librarian last year where she said the instability and general inability to reliably trace bots as a reference source are sort of a perfect storm. Students "research" w the tool, but repeating the search doesn't yield a stable output.
Check out not one but TWO great SMT-V articles about this project! www.smt-v.org/archives/vol...
November 26, 2025 at 8:06 PM
Check out not one but TWO great SMT-V articles about this project! www.smt-v.org/archives/vol...
What a beautiful description of the magic of studying the humanities.
Pope Leo XIV told students not to use artificial intelligence for homework, saying that AI ‘won’t stand in authentic wonder before the beauty of God’s creation.’
Even God Is Worried About ChatGPT
Pope Leo XIV told students not to use artificial intelligence for homework, saying that AI ‘won’t stand in authentic wonder before the beauty of God’s creation.’
www.vulture.com
November 26, 2025 at 6:37 PM
What a beautiful description of the magic of studying the humanities.
Reposted by Megan Non Brevis
Music is already accessible and democratized. You can sing acapella. You can play spoons or acrylic nails as percussion instruments (check out Dolly Parton doing the latter). The long 20th c has shown us basically anything can be a musical instrument.
All AI music does is devalue the work done by human artists. It’s not accessibility, it’s exploitation. We need real protections for artists against AI!
BTW — even if you had access to this AI startup as a child, you still wouldn’t know how to make music.
BTW — even if you had access to this AI startup as a child, you still wouldn’t know how to make music.
November 26, 2025 at 5:48 PM
Music is already accessible and democratized. You can sing acapella. You can play spoons or acrylic nails as percussion instruments (check out Dolly Parton doing the latter). The long 20th c has shown us basically anything can be a musical instrument.
It's the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, which can only mean one thing: time to write all those letters of recommendation due 12/1.
November 26, 2025 at 3:55 PM
It's the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, which can only mean one thing: time to write all those letters of recommendation due 12/1.
Reposted by Megan Non Brevis
November 25, 2025 at 3:34 PM
SMH iMessage auto-corrected "monochord" to "mooched."
November 24, 2025 at 8:03 PM
SMH iMessage auto-corrected "monochord" to "mooched."
Reposted by Megan Non Brevis
For years I’ve been talking about the idea that content (“documents,” articles, posts, messages, whatev) is defined by the intentional message present in the artifact; it is a way of transmitting something that embodies a perspective to an audience. LLMs do not have perspective, only context
October 21, 2025 at 5:00 PM
For years I’ve been talking about the idea that content (“documents,” articles, posts, messages, whatev) is defined by the intentional message present in the artifact; it is a way of transmitting something that embodies a perspective to an audience. LLMs do not have perspective, only context
Reposted by Megan Non Brevis
Most of the freshman in my courses don’t know the difference between a song and a symphony. If they’re majors, they might know a little more—but they’ll take 2-3 courses in my field, max.
If you want me to also teach them to parse AI slop music criticism, change the degree requirements.
If you want me to also teach them to parse AI slop music criticism, change the degree requirements.
I will add the following: our students lack the research skills required to audit an LLM essay for errors. They don’t arrive on campus with these skills; we teach it to them over four long years. So throwing freshmen in the deep end and saying “swim your way to a shore of rectitude” is folly.
November 24, 2025 at 3:34 PM
Most of the freshman in my courses don’t know the difference between a song and a symphony. If they’re majors, they might know a little more—but they’ll take 2-3 courses in my field, max.
If you want me to also teach them to parse AI slop music criticism, change the degree requirements.
If you want me to also teach them to parse AI slop music criticism, change the degree requirements.
Reposted by Megan Non Brevis
This is not the way, and @cnygren.bsky.social and I lay out in detail why it isn’t in this essay here. static1.squarespace.com/static/55577...
November 24, 2025 at 1:16 PM
This is not the way, and @cnygren.bsky.social and I lay out in detail why it isn’t in this essay here. static1.squarespace.com/static/55577...