iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Tina Tallon @ttallon.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

Anyway, I highly recommend face tattoos. 10/10, no notes

Tina Tallon @ttallon.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

I don’t really have any comparable before photos, but here’s a #wokeuplikethis photo from Sept (with my viola duo partner - oh, I guess I buried that lede: I play the viola now, apparently)

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Tina Tallon @ttallon.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

(I know they’ll take at least a month to fully heal and settle in (and that the next two weeks will bring some drastic stages of evolution away from and back to this), but I am already thrilled to not have to draw these on anymore)

Shoulders-up photo of a white woman with long wavy brown hair in thick red squarer glasses smiling at the camera, and OOF, she looks tired and isn’t wearing makeup, but at least her eyebrows look well-contoured!

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Tina Tallon @ttallon.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

Got my first tattoo today, and I really went for it…I got it right on my face 🤘 (Spoiler alert: I got my brows microbladed 💅)

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Tina Tallon @ttallon.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

One thing I’m hyped about is that Audacity has released a public beta with a swanky new UI! (I only use it for quick and dirty things like topping/tailing, reversing, and Paulstretching, but they’re adding automation and spectral editing tools, which sounds rad!) www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2026/06/auda...

omgubuntu.co.uk

Audacity 4.0 beta lets you test its new (nicer) Qt interface - OMG! Ubuntu

Audacity 4's first public beta arrived this month with the biggest design change the iconic open-source audio editor has seen in decades. The audio

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Tina Tallon @ttallon.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

Suddenly struck by my seeming biannual urge to engage with Bluesky again (I blame the somewhat lonely doldrums of summer, and ultimately the residual burnout from the school year (which is causing me to procrastinate all the writing I need to do))

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Tina Tallon @ttallon.bsky.social · 15/01/2026

(I don’t know if he would remember this, but I very briefly dated Beau’s roommate back at Harvard; we all had Christmas together one year 😂 2019, I think? Good god, I can’t believe I just put that in writing on the internet)

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Tina Tallon @ttallon.bsky.social · 15/01/2026

When I asked him to be on my committee, I noted my interest in the 2013 Sievers et. al. PNAS paper, and he very humbly said: “I’m just one of four authors on that paper, and, in all honesty, not the main author at all (Beau Sievers did the lion’s share of the work, and emerged from Thalia’s lab).”

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Tina Tallon @ttallon.bsky.social · 15/01/2026

Oh man, Larry Polansky was another truly wonderful human as well as composer and scholar. He was on my PhD committee until UCSD changed the committee makeup guidelines about what constituted an “external” member (basically, external to the field, not external to the institution, as it was pre2017).

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Tina Tallon @ttallon.bsky.social · 15/01/2026

Anyway, the tl;dr: it is an enormous privilege to be able to teach David Huron’s work (and at OSU, of all places), and I want to encourage everyone to check it out. Not only was he an incredible artist & researcher, but he was also generous with his time and insights - even in retirement and illness

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Tina Tallon @ttallon.bsky.social · 15/01/2026

I promised to do a weekly share of some of the materials we’re engaging with in my course, but this feels like it deserves its own shout-out: If you’ve never read David’s 2006 book, “Sweet Anticipation: Music and the Psychology of Expectation,” please go do so ASAP. It legit changed my life.

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Tina Tallon @ttallon.bsky.social · 15/01/2026

So today, as we reviewed the syllabus, one of the music theory grad students saw that we’d start reading “Sweet Anticipation” this week and let out a reverent “awww.” The others had never heard of his work, so I realized I needed to add context. I started trying to describe it, and got choked up.

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Tina Tallon @ttallon.bsky.social · 15/01/2026

I owe so many elements of my career (including the current configuration of my job - salary, research funding, facilities, recruitment strategies) to him. And again, he responded to my email *within 24 hours.* (If I was retired, I would never check my email ever again 😂)

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Tina Tallon @ttallon.bsky.social · 15/01/2026

I’m always shy about telling my heroes how much their work means to me, so I tried to be chill, but eventually, I also sheepishly told him how his work influenced my decision to switch from bioengineering to composition/music research, and how surreal it was to end up inheriting his lab at OSU.

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Tina Tallon @ttallon.bsky.social · 15/01/2026

Despite having been retired for almost 5 years, he responded within 24 hours with an incredibly detailed accounting of everything, as well as a list of other people to contact for more recent perspectives. (He also gave me pointers about negotiation.)

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Tina Tallon @ttallon.bsky.social · 15/01/2026

While I was weighing the offer and negotiating, I mustered the courage to email him about lab specs (experimental setups, sound isolaton booths, etc), as well as any insights about how to carry out interdisciplinary work in collaboration with other depts on campus (psych, speech & hearing, etc)

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Tina Tallon @ttallon.bsky.social · 15/01/2026

When I got the job offer in 2024, part of the offer was his old Music Research Lab facilities. I never got the chance to tour them in person because they didn’t anticipate my work would overlap until my campus visit (it was a straight-ahead composition job, and they didn’t expect a researcher)

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Tina Tallon @ttallon.bsky.social · 15/01/2026

He was a juggernaut in music cognition and computational music studies, and had an enormous impact on so many peoples’ lives - far more than I can ever claim. But I do want to share one story (and perhaps one of the last where he was able to support a junior scholar in the most generous of ways):

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Tina Tallon @ttallon.bsky.social · 15/01/2026

His work on musical expectancy was paradigm-shifting for me as a young composer (and especially one who got the chance to work with music21 (which was largely inspired by Humdrum) in its very early stages), and knowing that he was at OSU was a huge part of the reason I applied for the job in 2023.

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Tina Tallon @ttallon.bsky.social · 15/01/2026

As I’ve done for the past four years, I’m teaching David Huron’s work in my AI & Music course this week (we engage with his work frequently during the course), and I actually got unexpectedly emotional introducing it now that he has passed.

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Tina Tallon @ttallon.bsky.social · 11/01/2026

My syllabi are updated, my Canvas pages are made…this is the most ready I’ve ever been for a semester. After teaching in higher ed for 8yrs (4 on the adjunct circuit, 4 in tt jobs), this is the first semester where I haven’t had to deliver at least 1 completely new or heavily re-written course.

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Tina Tallon @ttallon.bsky.social · 05/01/2026

Hahahahaha omg, so kikified; if boubafication was intended to make things less stressful, that was definitely exemplary of kikification (although tbh, I’m not mad about having an extra 48hrs to refine things)!

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Tina Tallon @ttallon.bsky.social · 04/01/2026

About to upgrade the OS on my computer and consequently need to back up my hard drive; this is a PSA to back up your computer if you haven’t done it in a while!

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Tina Tallon @ttallon.bsky.social · 04/01/2026

Thanks! It’s been a breath of fresh air for me and a very good “practice what you preach” moment…to an extent (it wouldn’t have happened if there was a score required for submission, because notating this is going to be a dumpster fire 😂)

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Tina Tallon @ttallon.bsky.social · 04/01/2026

Anyway, this is all admittedly pretty banal, but it does feel significant to be composing a new (non-installation) piece for the first time in a hot second, and I’m actually quite happy with how it’s going thus far!

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Tina Tallon @ttallon.bsky.social · 04/01/2026

(Also, it means that in order to get the raw materials they need to mock it up in a DAW, they often have to talk to performers for any instruments they don’t play. Turns out this is often the hardest part of the process 😂 (thankfully I have a viola right here so no problem))

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Tina Tallon @ttallon.bsky.social · 04/01/2026

(This is something that I encourage any students whose music focuses on timbre/gesture as a primary mode of discourse to do quite often to encourage them to arrange materials freely and without an imposed 4/4 q=60 grid, but honestly? My training was quite structuralist and I rarely do it myself.)

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Tina Tallon @ttallon.bsky.social · 04/01/2026

Two things that have been freeing: 1) sure, I won’t be winning awards for playing Bach any time soon, but I have grown very confident in my improvisatory abilities in line with my aesthetic preferences, and 2) honestly, working with my raw audio in a DAW prior to notating has been A+++.

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Tina Tallon @ttallon.bsky.social · 04/01/2026

Because I challenged myself to write this on a very short timeline (~1wk) and the adjudication reqs are loosey goosey (either a score, recording, or both - and you know they’re only listening) I’m recording raw materials into Logic, running them through Pd, and then sandboxing. I’ll notate it later.

A wine glass with red wine in front of a computer screen showing audio waveforms

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Tina Tallon @ttallon.bsky.social · 03/01/2026

I’m submitting it to ICMC (the International Computer Music Conference), which has a deadline of *checks notes*…tomorrow!…so anyway, violists, if you want a new piece, hit me up!

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Tina Tallon @ttallon.bsky.social · 03/01/2026

I ended up performing two other peoples’ viola+electronics pieces as a result (both of which thankfully involved quite a bit of improvisation, which is where I shine) and got quite a bit of surprisingly positive feedback, so I’ve decided to write another viola+live electronics piece.

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Tina Tallon @ttallon.bsky.social · 03/01/2026

I did, however, begin performing more over the past year. It began when I couldn’t find a performer for a viola+live elec piece of mine that got accepted to a conference, so I decided to do it myself (nb: I played violin for over a decade as a kid, but I am not a violist).

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Tina Tallon @ttallon.bsky.social · 03/01/2026

Because of the heft of my teaching duties (esp surrounding AI) and having to navigate two new tenure track jobs in the past four years, I haven’t actually written a ton of music in a hot second. I’ve vowed to change that this year.

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Tina Tallon @ttallon.bsky.social · 03/01/2026

(Btw it’s so much more than a “review of a decade of AI history;” that was merely one of the things that I was struck by!)

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Tina Tallon @ttallon.bsky.social · 03/01/2026

(The entire thing is fantastic, but for pedagogical purposes, I’d like to note that Chapter 4 gives a great primer on post-war AI research & culture, along with concise definitions of terms and concepts woven into the historical narrative. I’ll be assigning it for my AI & Music class this semester.)

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Tina Tallon @ttallon.bsky.social · 03/01/2026

Just finished my first book of the year: @karenhao.bsky.social’s Empire of AI. I can’t recommend this enough, regardless of whether you’re AI curious or a seasoned pro. As someone who has engaged with ML since about 2015, it was a fascinating and nuanced review of a decade of AI history.

Cover of Karen Hao’s book, Empire of AI, which fades from pink on the left to orange on the right. Text reads: New York Times Bestseller
Empire of AI
Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI
Karen Hao
New York Times

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Tina Tallon @ttallon.bsky.social · 28/12/2025

Since that post, I have managed to unpack a suitcase that I had neglected since getting back from my last conference on (checks notes) December 8th 🫠🫠🫠🫠

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Tina Tallon @ttallon.bsky.social · 28/12/2025

That fallow time of year where I consider re-engaging with non-IG social media (primarily spurred on by having mustered enough motivation to sit down at my computer to work only to find that my external hard drive was improperly ejected last time and now needs time to right itself)

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Tina Tallon @ttallon.bsky.social · 04/08/2025

I was recently talking to another professor who said that their students started referring to Pierre Schaeffer’s “Étude aux chemins de fer” as “The Choo-Choo Piece” and it is basically my Roman Empire (also probably why I’m randomly giggling to myself at any given moment)

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Tina Tallon @ttallon.bsky.social · 02/07/2025

✨📢 Heads up, Composer-land! 📢✨ Ohio State University is looking for a Lecturer in Music Composition to join us this fall! The position is full time and benefits-eligible. You can view more details and apply online at: osu.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/OSUCareers/j...

osu.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com

Lecturer

Screen reader users may encounter difficulty with this site. For assistance with applying, please contact hr-accessibleapplication@osu.edu. If you have questions while submitting an application, pleas...

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Tina Tallon @ttallon.bsky.social · 24/06/2025

Like, they couldn’t have interviewed people in oncology using ML to develop better cancer diagnostics, or people in astronomy who have been using it to discover new exoplanets (and doing so for like, 20 years? And teaching it, too)?!?! So silly

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Tina Tallon @ttallon.bsky.social · 24/06/2025

(In case it wasn’t apparent, I am rather strongly anti-LLM for many reasons, but I do allow my students to use them after they know what they are and how they work, along with very strict guidelines about citation. (Also, most of my assignments can’t be completed with LLMs, which again, arts ftw))

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Tina Tallon @ttallon.bsky.social · 24/06/2025

Thanks for reading! I’m happy to chat about some of the strategies/assignments that I employ (at the end of the day, I want to make sure students have the info and critical analysis skills they need to make informed choices about what tools they use and how)

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Tina Tallon @ttallon.bsky.social · 24/06/2025

Yeah, it was super weird that no one who has been using ML in sophisticated ways (and who has been including it in coursework for literally DECADES) was interviewed for this article, which again, says a lot about the reporting…there’s an obsession with LLMs that doesn’t characterize every use case.

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Tina Tallon @ttallon.bsky.social · 24/06/2025

But reducing it to “every student is going to write papers with LLMs” is a gross misrepresentation/unsophisticated reduction of what is actually happening (and yes, I realize that’s my own gross reduction of this reporting, but let’s be real, that’s kind of how people are reacting to it)

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Tina Tallon @ttallon.bsky.social · 24/06/2025

So all in all, I agree with the idea that we need to be addressing AI - and particularly machine learning (omg that’s another basic part of algorithmic literacy that doesn’t get communicated: all machine learning is AI, but not all AI is machine learning) - at some point in each student’s education

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Tina Tallon @ttallon.bsky.social · 24/06/2025

(Also, I’m really pumped for some of the artists-in-residence that OSU is bringing in this year through these AI initiatives; these folks are doing really awesome work that critically analyzes the development and use of these tools/systems/structures, and we desperately need that nuance)

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Tina Tallon @ttallon.bsky.social · 24/06/2025

Additionally, thankfully the arts offer us an opportunity to get away from LLMs (which I think are a net negative) and look at ways that we can engage with non-semantic computational creativity that benefits society.

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