iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Yoshiaki Onishi @yoshionishi.com · 11/10/2026

So rainy today it makes me think of Paul Verlaine: « Il pleure dans mon coeur Comme il pleut sur la ville … »

Outside view from the window of where I live. An old factory, off-white colored wall, gray roof, all across the street all wet and no car is running. Rainy weather with thick clouds all over the sky

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Yoshiaki Onishi @yoshionishi.com · 07/09/2026

My boss’s response to the Labor Day

Dorian the cat, whom I affectionately call my boss, sleeps while his paws are crossed and face is down.

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Yoshiaki Onishi @yoshionishi.com · 26/08/2026

Today I sent a few photos for Dorian’s ophthalmologist to look at, just to be sure he is ok. He was, but in retrospect I feel like I sent three cute photos of Dorian just to show how cute he is. Well, he is cute. People may take away my job or whatever but not his supreme beauty.

Dorian the cat and boss on the armrest of the sofa

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Yoshiaki Onishi @yoshionishi.com · 23/08/2026

I've finally updated #LilyPond Contemporary Notation Cookbook. Now compatible with version 2.26. With that, I've included some new functions I recently developed. There are a few more I will add in the subsequent updates, which I expect to be more frequent. Happy LilyPonding!

A screenshot from Onishi's LilyPond Contemporary Notation Cookbook, this one with "Arpeggio with Arrowhead and Vertical Hairpins."

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Yoshiaki Onishi @yoshionishi.com · 01/08/2026

Note to self: an entry on vertical hairpin + directional arpeggio to be added in the next edition of my #LilyPond Cookbook (Earlier attempts on this post rendered the image pitch dark...oops)

A musical example in which a quartal chord has a directional arpeggio sign as well as vertical hairpin. I plan to include this in the next edition of my LilyPond Cookbook.

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Yoshiaki Onishi @yoshionishi.com · 30/07/2026

These days I am on LinkedIn not so much for its intended use, but for some thrills of chancing upon two posts on my phone screen that are so contrasting that it’s vertiginous and oddly aesthetic.

Screenshot of LinkedIn screen with two posts next to each other that can’t be any more contrasting. One is about how AI labs are buying, scanning, and shredding many copies of rare books, and right below it is the ad for “OpenAI for Business.” The OP finds that the contrast of these two posts is so jarring that it is, in a sense, aesthetic.

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Yoshiaki Onishi @yoshionishi.com · 03/01/2026

Here is Dorian listening to “La main gauche” attentively:

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Yoshiaki Onishi @yoshionishi.com · 29/11/2025

Dorian too is grateful, here posing in front of a very special birthday gift from dear friend @buddytwo.bsky.social (thank you!! 😭💝): the @academic.oup.com Handbook of Spectral Music, so thoughtfully edited by Amy Bauer, @liamcagney.bsky.social and @willmasonmusic.com.

My boss Dorian poses in front of the Oxford Handbook of Spectral Music, in which my music makes an appearance in Yayoi Uno Everett’s article. A true honor.

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Yoshiaki Onishi @yoshionishi.com · 05/10/2025

Meeting up with friends, some of whom I hadn’t seen in years, and then afterwards congratulating and hugging the composer himself was perhaps the best way to spend the afternoon in NY

Park Avenue Armory, NY; inside the hall, with 50 microtonal pianos placed around the audience. Performance of 11,000 Strings by Georg Friedrich Haas

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Yoshiaki Onishi @yoshionishi.com · 12/08/2025

On another note, some 1.5k lines later, I made the metric modulation equation work on LilyPond, which I am quite happy about. Probably I could tweak to refine the looks, and I admit my math might be off in the screenshot, but glad I made it. There is another version with the regular flags.

Screenshot of a musical example employing metric modulation equation, made with LilyPond. The screenshot itself is an excerpt from my “LilyPond Contemporary Notation Cookbook: Snippets and Their Grammars”, available from GitHub.

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Yoshiaki Onishi @yoshionishi.com · 10/07/2025

Here is my cat Dorian, whom I affectionately call my “boss.”

Picture of a gray tabby American medium/longhair cat, named Dorian

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Yoshiaki Onishi @yoshionishi.com · 06/06/2025

Why of course, my name is Zoshiaki

Picture of a computer keyboard in Germany. The placement of letters Y and Z is flipped from those keyboards commonly seen in the US.

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Yoshiaki Onishi @yoshionishi.com · 22/04/2025

Microsoft Word interprets new music

Microsoft Word automatically providing the description: "a pair of black chopsticks" to the exponential crescendo hairpin as the alt text

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Yoshiaki Onishi @yoshionishi.com · 25/03/2025

At least I am reminded to shrink something in my piece?

a sloppily written word "shrink" on a draft of a piece I am writing at the moment

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Yoshiaki Onishi @yoshionishi.com · 08/03/2025

Never have I ever doubted my boss Dorian’s modernist (meowdernist…!?!?) tendency

Dorian the gray tabby medium/long-hair cat is sitting next to the pocket score of “Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta” by Béla Bartók, published by Universal Edition.

Dorian the gray tabby medium/long-hair cat is sleeping and having his head on the pocket score of “Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta” by Béla Bartók, published by Universal Edition.

Dorian the gray tabby medium/long-hair cat is sleeping, with his head slightly off of the pocket score of “Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta” by Béla Bartók, published by Universal Edition.

Dorian the gray tabby medium/long-hair cat is sleeping, his head curled upside down next to the pocket score of “Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta” by Béla Bartók, published by Universal Edition. Clearly, he enjoys the piece. I mean, it’s a wonderful piece.

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Yoshiaki Onishi @yoshionishi.com · 26/02/2025

Some snapshots from the piano recital in Washington DC that I attended last week. As I read the news about Kennedy Center more often as of late, it might not be for a while until I feel compelled to return there.

Photo taken from a moving Amtrak train early in the morning, overlooking part of Chesapeake Bay. Very still, and you can see part of the horizon in orangish color, as the sunrise is imminent.

Another photo taken from a moving Amtrak train early in the morning, overlooking part of Chesapeake Bay. Very still, and you can see part of the horizon in orangish color, as the sunrise is imminent.

Street of Washington DC, taken in a very early morning. Central to but far away in this image is the US Capitol building, seen just the top dome portion of it, somewhat eerily lit, giving it a haunting look.

Inside the concert hall of the Kennedy Center, with its geometrically beautiful hexagonal pattern.

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Yoshiaki Onishi @yoshionishi.com · 23/02/2025

I was hanging out with a friend from Japan as part of the festival, and we were walking towards the High Line. We heard some chanting and all, and the reason was evident. At least to me. It made me wonder what people like him—far from the US politics—think about all the debacles.

A group of people protesting at the Tesla Showroom in NYC, on Feb 22, 2025

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Yoshiaki Onishi @yoshionishi.com · 19/02/2025

Update: I finally got the books I ordered and can’t wait to start reading them.

The three books I ordered but took a while to arrive because the initial package from the warehouse packed an audio converter instead of these three books: “Everything To Play For — How videogames are changing the world” by Marijam Did, “Minima Moralia” by Theodor Adorno, and “Les fleurs du mal” by Charles Baudelaire, in its bilingual edition, all published by Verso Books.

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Yoshiaki Onishi @yoshionishi.com · 06/02/2025

Checking out Flashes, Bluesky’s app that is in the beta testing version. It seems to be good so far. Of course I’d post something related to Dorian. Here he is studying to be a watch repairer.

My cat (and boss) Dorian is sitting on the bed, intently watching a watch repair video by Red Dead Restoration on YouTube. He might become a watch repairer soon.

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Yoshiaki Onishi @yoshionishi.com · 01/02/2025

Spending an evening in NYC. Attended a concert at @roulettenyc.bsky.social, featuring Ellen Fullman and Theresa Wong’s “Soundless.” Vast sonic landscape that reveals itself over the course of a little over an hour. An amazingly paced work, and it was a wonderful composition lesson for me.

View from the balcony at the concert at Roulette Intermedium in Brooklyn. The concert featured Theresa Wong and Ellen Fullnan, on their work “Soundless.” Some instruments, like electric guitar, cello, and the table with computer are on the stage. In front of the stage is Fullman’s Long String Instrument, strung nearly across the hall. So that people do not run into it, there are some pieces of papers hanging from the strings.

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Yoshiaki Onishi @yoshionishi.com · 31/01/2025

Another old post of mine on FB, a snippet of conversation I had with Fred Lerdahl when I was taking composition lesson from him that year. Since then for 15 years, masterpieces have always eluded me.

Old Facebook post from October 7, 2010, describing a conversation happened in the composition lesson with Fred Lerdahl:

"Happened this morning:

F.L. "How old are you?"
Y.O. "28"
F.L. "Okay, you are old enough to write masterpieces."
Y.O. "So I have your permission then!"
F.L. "Yes, you have my permission."

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Yoshiaki Onishi @yoshionishi.com · 23/01/2025

Going through my old posts on Facebook now from 2018. I stumbled upon this. I am not sure what the word was that I saw on NYTimes back then... But it feels oddly relevant today, and whatever the word was, we are probably immune to it.

An old post I made on Facebook on January 13, 2018. I am not sure what that word was or exactly in what context. The post reads: "This past week I gasped at the news alert of the NYTimes for spotting a word that I had not imagined that I would see in a journalistic publication. I wonder, 40 to 50 years from now, whether I would remember this appalling astonishment, or it will be a commonplace practice to have no self-control whatsoever of language use in the public space. I then remember Roland Barthes's "Writing Degree Zero" (Le degré zéro de l'écriture) that starts with a vignette of Jacques Hébert in Le Père Duchêne. The history repeats itself, almost centrifugally—in greater amplitude and severity each time."

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Yoshiaki Onishi @yoshionishi.com · 12/01/2025

Because I quit the other platform, I think it is justified to post these photos again to show support for @barenreiter.bsky.social; after all, who doesn't love good music editions? Dorian seems to agree, too.

Cat named Dorian sits pensively, looking away somewhere, as he does his signature cross paws next to the Bärenreiter Urtext Edition of Bach's Goldberg Variations.

Study scores published by Bärenreiter, owned by Yoshiaki Onishi. Three scores are shown: Debussy's La Mer, Bach's The Art of Fugue and Mass in B minor. Hard to see, but Debussy's La Mer score has some indentation on the upper right corner of the cover, made by Onishi's cat Dorian biting into it. Onishi likes to believe that the edition is so good that Dorian must have thought there are some fish in it.

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Yoshiaki Onishi @yoshionishi.com · 30/12/2024

This is how I will remember the former President Jimmy Carter: how his wife and First Lady Rosalynn Carter and he received Rostropovich, Messiaen, and Loriod at the White House in mid-November, 1978. From: Hill, Peter, and Nigel Simeone. Messiaen. Yale University Press, 2005. 321.

A photo taken at the White House in November, 1978. From left to right, Olivier Messiaen, Yvonne Loriod, President Jimmy Carter, First Lady Rosalynn Carter, and Mstislav Rostropovich, all smiling. The photo is seen in the book:

Hill, Peter, and Nigel Simeone. Messiaen. New Haven ; London: Yale University Press, 2005.

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Yoshiaki Onishi @yoshionishi.com · 29/03/2024

@santibeis.bsky.social and I worked so hard on this and I’m glad this has been released as of yesterday. Happy listening! tr.ee/YVfAHofbRt

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Yoshiaki Onishi @yoshionishi.com · 10/01/2024

I can’t really speak about the specifics of this book or the review, but it just seems there are many literary and music critics who don’t know how to read or listen. Whenever someone comes to me feeling discouraged about what someone else said about their music, I show this review I got once:

“A WASTE OF FINE INSTRUMENTAL TALENT!!!” — a review of Envoi II for string trio by Yoshiaki Onishi

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Yoshiaki Onishi @yoshionishi.com · 16/09/2023

I am not sure if the high-pitched sound I heard from the next door was a recorder or some kind of high-tech alarm system, but still, I’ve been having moments of tranquility at home.

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Yoshiaki Onishi @yoshionishi.com · 03/09/2023

Having finished the first week of teaching, I can say I am quite exhausted, but that’s because I still need to get used to the way of life here. I think it’s all going to be worth the effort in the end.

Dorian on his employee’s bed, looking outside and being deep in thoughts

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Yoshiaki Onishi @yoshionishi.com · 31/08/2023

Not that I post things that go viral, but the idea that the “formerly known as Twitter” now has even more control over the posted contents and that they could use AI to alter things and appropriate at will seems just so not cool. Considering to leave, though there are some cat contents I’ll miss…

My cat boss Dorian is hanging out with me in the living room as I’m working from home today.

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Yoshiaki Onishi @yoshionishi.com · 27/08/2023

It’s been a long, long time since I stepped into that shopping store that rhymes with the word coals... It’s been such a long time that my address on file was from three houses ago (!) … unrelated, here is my boss looking at me judgmentally

My boss Dorian the Cat looking at me judgmentally

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Yoshiaki Onishi @yoshionishi.com · 27/08/2023

@composeryokkun.bsky.social my boss Dorian helped me out with fine-tuning the syllabus today.

Dorian is sitting where I was sitting a minute before the photo was taken, and I am thinking he’d do a better job than I ever would.

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Yoshiaki Onishi @yoshionishi.com · 26/08/2023

My boss Dorian is very pleased to announce that his employee has now access to the Bluesky. We thank @linernotesdanny.bsky.social for the invitation. Who's around?

Photo of Dorian, YO's cat and boss, being meowjestic.

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