Faculty Scholar Series

Program

Katherine Meizel, ethnomusicology

Title: A New Resource on Disability and Accessibility in the Voice Studio

Abstract:
Since originating as a discipline in the 19th century, modern voice pedagogy has maintained its foundational grounding in medical and scientific research. Because of these roots and the institutional ableism that excludes many disabled singers from pre-professional study and professional work, there is almost no relevant literature examining voice pedagogy from the perspectives of disability advocacy and disability studies. But these frameworks, focusing on the lived experiences of those with disabilities—who are the experts—are essential for all studio voice teachers as they work toward the removal of access barriers in vocal music. To address this lacuna, and with the financial support of Open Educational Resources, my colleagues and I have created an accessible, multimedia open access educational resource that will be available in Fall 2026. This collection centers writing and videos from disabled singers and voice instructors, as well as related research from other contributors, all sharing experiences and suggestions toward making the singing world more accessible.

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Per Broman, music theory

Title: AI as a Pedagogical Provocation: Generating “Good” and “Bad” Analytical Examples Through Rule-Based Composition

Abstract:
The surge of user‑friendly generative‑AI tools has entered the music‑theory classroom, shaking up how we teach and assess (though the impact is not as dramatic as in subjects like literature or computer science). The problem is not new: a new gadget lets students finish familiar assignments faster and with less effort. What worries me more than cheating or outright automation is how AI flips the notion of “getting the right answer.” When an exercise is primarily designed to test whether a student can follow a checklist and hand in a technically correct result, AI simply highlights an existing weakness—the task may be measuring obedience more than musical judgment.

In this paper I ask what happens if we stop treating AI as a rival that spits out the “correct” solution and instead view it as a provocateur that throws ideas at us. A system that pretends to have interpretive authority is risky because it can hallucinate or mistake a label for insight. By contrast, a system that generates example material provides concrete artifacts that students can examine, critique, and learn from.

For this project I combine rule‑based composition with AI‑assisted coding to produce short, symbolic musical snippets grounded in explicit theoretical frameworks. My pilot case is Paul Hindemith’s exercise‑driven pedagogy from The Craft of Musical Composition. I focus on the workbook’s rules for one‑voice melodic writing and two‑voice counterpoint: range limits, closure, directional changes, repetition, sequences, skips, and the placement of the climax. The resulting material shows that following the right procedure does not guarantee understanding, exposing both the strengths and limits of the rules and demonstrating that a classroom task ends too soon when the answer is technically correct. It also enables richer pedagogy: students not only apply the methods, but also question them, identify and understand errors, and create examples that sound musically convincing.