iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Emily Doolittle @emilydoolittle.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

The piece itself would sound the same whether I had used dice to generate random numbers within my given parameters, programmed it myself (which I don't know how to do) or used the AI to program. I don't think I'd use AI to program anything if I couldn't verify that it was doing what I asked.

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Emily Doolittle @emilydoolittle.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I have used AI to program for me. I spent months verifying by ear that it was processing numbers/pitches the way I wanted it to! Obviously when I talk about the piece that uses this program, I'll talk about the AI use. The AI did not make creative decisions, it just made the program.

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Emily Doolittle @emilydoolittle.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I'm not ok with it for brainstorming or organising etc. But the main thing is for the journal to be clear about expectations, and people to be honest. (I don't want to read anything that uses AI beyond the ways in which I've described though).

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Emily Doolittle @emilydoolittle.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I want any AI use to acknowledged. I think it's ok for some kinds of searching, not asking for the answer but asking it to locate something. I think it's also ok for non-native speakers & ppl with language disabilities if it helps express ideas/voice more clearly, not if it obscures ideas/voice.

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Emily Doolittle @emilydoolittle.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I also once had a teacher who was so scrupulous about never wanting to put female students in an uncomfortable position that he never socialised with us at all -- he'd invite all the male students over for drinks, but not the female students. That also was not a good solution!

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Emily Doolittle @emilydoolittle.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I've been very lucky & have mostly been well treated. But sometimes I think of all the composers I didn't study with, classes I left, gatherings I avoided. It makes me sad when I hear beautiful music/ideas/experiences from these ppl that weren't available to me or would have come at too high a cost.

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Emily Doolittle @emilydoolittle.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Very much enjoying my new hobby of making #crochet #mushrooms and photographing them in their natural habitat. Here are some collared earthstars! (Is there a month where people share mushroom art like there is for invertebrates?)

Crocheted collared earthstar mushrooms, photographed on a forest floor.

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Emily Doolittle @emilydoolittle.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

FWIW, I don't know any computer scientists who never use it.

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Emily Doolittle @emilydoolittle.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

I just read some things by Carl T. Bergstrom that I liked (I haven't read his book, but I skimmed through the online course and I like his approach). A lot of my work is interdisciplinary, and I also find it a bit jarring how differently people in different fields see it.

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Emily Doolittle @emilydoolittle.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

I'd like to learn more about how to program, but that will be a very longterm project (it's not something I can prioritise right now). It was amazing to discover that I could use a chatbot to make the program I needed (despite my misgivings about AI more generally).

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Emily Doolittle @emilydoolittle.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Oh -- I asked it to annotate the program and explain to me what it is doing, so some of the text is that.

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Emily Doolittle @emilydoolittle.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

I wouldn't use a chatbot to write text, but I've been using it to program. I don't know how to program, but I need a program to do a specific thing for a piece I've been trying to figure out how to realise for years! These exchanges are all part of getting it to write the program.

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Emily Doolittle @emilydoolittle.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

It's weird how hard it is to get it to stop doing that. Whereas it cut out the sycophancy right away when I told it to.

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Emily Doolittle @emilydoolittle.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Here are a few: and this is after I spent lots of time trying to get it not to do this. I want it to sound like a computer, not like it is trying to be a person! Plus it's easier to search through conversations if they aren't wordy. In all these cases "genuinely" doesn't add any meaning.

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Emily Doolittle @emilydoolittle.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Oh, I'll share it with you next time I see it. I've spent a lot of time trying to get Claude (which I don't use a lot, but have used for coding) to get rid of emphasisers, with only moderate success!

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Emily Doolittle @emilydoolittle.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Emphasisers are ok where needed, but AI uses them in _genuinely_ pointless contexts!

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Emily Doolittle @emilydoolittle.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

On a tangentially related note -- when I was using a chatbot for programming, I found it quite easy to get it to stop with the sycophancy and to cite its claims, but I could not get it to entirely eliminate "genuinely".

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Emily Doolittle @emilydoolittle.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

(Say "genuinely" 20 times in a row and it genuinely stops sounding like a genuine word!)

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Emily Doolittle @emilydoolittle.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

It's not my imagination: there genuinely has been a genuine increase in the overuse of the genuinely meaningless word "genuinely". I'm genuinely disappointed we can't blame this genuinely annoying trend on AI as the genuinely exponential increase of "genuinely" genuinely started in 2000.

An n-gram of the use of the word genuinely, showing an exponential increase in its usage beginning around 2000.

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Neil Banas @neilbanas.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

@emilydoolittle.bsky.social , Michelle Campbell, Preeti Pansare, and I are in Studio 110 at The Briggait in #Glasgow this weekend with the #doorsopen (waspsstudios.org.uk/open-studios...). Triangles, #crochet, and #invertebrates in many combinations. Drop by!

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Emily Doolittle @emilydoolittle.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

This is the funniest unasked-for AI Overview that I have encountered! (I'll use this next time I need to talk with students about how, whatever the uses of AI may be, saying truthful things is not one of them.)

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Emily Doolittle @emilydoolittle.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Looking fwd to answering @soundscotland.bsky.social Composer Helpline, Weds 1-2 UK time. Open to all new music ppl anywhere, all levels. Sign up here to meet w me (or one of my great colleagues Lisa Robertson, Ruta Vitkauskaite, Pete Stollery or Fiona Robertson). sound-scotland.co.uk/event/compos...

sound-scotland.co.uk

Composers' Helpline - Sound Scotland

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Emily Doolittle @emilydoolittle.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

sound-scotland.co.uk

Composers' Helpline - Sound Scotland

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Emily Doolittle @emilydoolittle.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

I'm preparing for my UK driver's test, and I was not expecting quite so many questions about sheep! (I don't remember any questions about moose when I took my Canadian driver's test, though in retrospect there probably should have been!)

A picture of a UK driver's test question. There is a picture of a road with sheep, and multiple choice answers 1) briefly sound your horn, 2) go very slowly 3) pass quickly but quietly 4) herd them to the side of the road

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mhoeschele.bsky.social @mhoeschele.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

Our book, "Nature Beats" is finally out. It talks all about how we can study rhythm across species and what that can tell us about the evolution of music. link.springer.com/book/10.1007...

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Moira Donegan @moiradonegan.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

I also appreciate Emily Wilson as a woman in a male dominated role, by which I don’t mean translator or classicist or public scholar but rather “curmudgeon.”

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Emily Doolittle @emilydoolittle.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

The dog never really comes when we call "Idris". But he always comes running when he hears us open a plastic food package. I think this means his name is now effectively "[crinkle crinkle]"!

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Alex South @amsouth.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

It's great to see The Biology of Music - Interdisciplinary Insights edited by @andrearavignani.bsky.social out in the wild! I have a co-authored chapter in there on #animalmusicking, with @emilydoolittle.bsky.social and Pralle Kriengwatana. academic.oup.com/book/63102.

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Emily Doolittle @emilydoolittle.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

An enormous and well-deserved congratulations Dr Jules! It was such a pleasure and privilege to be your supervisor for this PhD!

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Emily Doolittle @emilydoolittle.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

Adding some random-hyphens between words and making some non-standard compoundwords to fit within the wordcount... (Not really, but I consider this every time!)

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Emily Doolittle @emilydoolittle.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

This isn't big, but before having kids I thought I mostly didn't like film & video game music. Since having kids I've become fascinated by it. I mean, some I like, some I don't, but same for any genre. Maybe this would've changed anyway, but I think it's b/c of seeing how much it means to my kids.

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Emily Doolittle @emilydoolittle.bsky.social · 29/06/2026

In my honest opinion you can absolutely recognise when something is AI-written because of the overuse of genuinely pointless intensifiers... (This is not AI-written though, I'm just channeling the style for illustrative purposes.)

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Emily Doolittle @emilydoolittle.bsky.social · 28/06/2026

I'm sorry, I hope the anxiety goes away soon!

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Emily Doolittle @emilydoolittle.bsky.social · 28/06/2026

People like to quote Bartok's (apocryphal?) dictum "competitions are for horses, not artists", but I always find myself thinking: what use has a horse for a competition? While highly flawed, competitions have some potential benefit for artists, whereas I imagine horses do not care about them at all!

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Emily Doolittle @emilydoolittle.bsky.social · 28/06/2026

What novel should I read next? (The last few novels I've read & enjoyed include Nonesuch, Houses of Ravicka, The Safekeep, Birnam Wood -- not sure if that amounts to a coherent genre, but stuff like that!)

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Emily Doolittle @emilydoolittle.bsky.social · 28/06/2026

That looks really good! Nice work! I notice that the text/layout doesn't resize when I change the size of my window (on a Mac) - I've included a screenshot as an example. I'm not sure if that is something that is easy to fix. All the content on the site looks great!

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Emily Doolittle @emilydoolittle.bsky.social · 28/06/2026

I'm at that weird stage of getting into composing a new piece where I'm alternating rapidly between "I'm so excited, I've written 8 minutes of music" and "this is terrible, I'm going to scrap it all, I've done nothing!" Usually this stage settles down after a few weeks...

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Emily Doolittle @emilydoolittle.bsky.social · 27/06/2026

It doesn't have to be this way. (Climate change, rising fascism, increased bigotry and xenophobia, out-of-control capitalism, destruction of habitat, etc., etc.). Can we please make it not this way?

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Emily Doolittle @emilydoolittle.bsky.social · 27/06/2026

It doesn't have to be this way. (Climate change, rising fascism, increased bigotry and xenophobia, out-of-control capitalism, destruction of habitat, etc., etc.). Can we please make it not this way?

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Emily Doolittle @emilydoolittle.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

1/3 In my 30 years as an artist, I've seen the success rate of some grants go from, say, 1/3 to 1/30. Of course if you're 10% as likely to get a grant, that doesn't mean you spend 10% as much time on it: more likely you work harder. Instead of spending 3 hours on it maybe you spend 5.

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Dr. Kendra Preston Leonard (she/her) @kleonardphd.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

Time to re-up it, or, Why Nadia Boulanger Isn't Your Poster Child for Women in Music kendraprestonleonard.hcommons.org/2018/04/05/m...

kendraprestonleonard.hcommons.org

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Emily Doolittle @emilydoolittle.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

* have spent -- somehow I'm incapable of seeing typos until after I post!

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Emily Doolittle @emilydoolittle.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

3/3 No wonder artists are tired and stressed!

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Emily Doolittle @emilydoolittle.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

2/3 So, assuming you are averagely likely to get a grant, in past years you might have spend 9 hours applying to get 1 grant (3 grants * 3 hours/each = a decent likelihood of getting a grant). Now you'd have to spend 150 hours (30 grants * 5 hours/each) to have the same likelihood of getting it.

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Emily Doolittle @emilydoolittle.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

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Emily Doolittle @emilydoolittle.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

I hear traces of birdsong in my music even in non-bird-related pieces. I thought this was b/c I listen to birds so much. But I just listened to one of my pre-birdsong pieces & it sounds bird-ish too. Maybe it was my innate motivic & structural tendencies which drew me to birds in the first place?

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The Cosmic Shambles Network @cosmicshambles.com · 21/06/2026

Ep 1 of For the Record delves into the world of music in the animal kingdom. 3 of the experts we spoke to were bird song expert, @dominiccouzens.bsky.social, zoomusicologist @emilydoolittle.bsky.social & oceanographer @helenczerski.bsky.social Ep one out Jun 25 on youtube.com/cosmicshambles

a man in a khaki polo and grey hair in front of a background of a stylised record

a woman with brown curly hair and glasses in front of a background of a stylised record

a woman with brown hair in front of a background of a stylised record

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Alex South @amsouth.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

Very happy to be visiting Fetlar (Shetland) 9 June to perform music by @emilydoolittle.bsky.social inspired by the folk tale Jan Tait and the Bear, plus works in which the clarinet evokes the sounds of gannets and whales.

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