Music Lessons With Tavonna

05/24/2025

How does your body feel when you make sounds? As a singer, it’s important to understand and know your body by exploring how it feels when you make healthy sounds. A healthy sound doesn’t need to be pitch-perfect. Instead, focus on using your voice so it doesn’t cause strain, discomfort, or pain:

1. Always do a quick warm-up to stretch your vocal cords before you sing.
2. Don’t overuse the extremes of your voice (screaming and whispering).
3. Avoid singing from your throat, sing from your diaphragm.

For more practical advice, you can check out my podcast Music Lessons About Life (check out my website or Apple Podcasts)

05/18/2025

Attending this year was every bit of the massive information update I needed, especially as the music industry experiences another modern day “Napster” with music-generating AI models that have infringed upon copyrighted materials at scale aka “The Great Scrape.” It was time to bring the music business leaders together from around the country and the world to discuss strategy, policy, and all the latest industry trends. I can’t wait to come back next year for another information update & to make some new connections!

06/25/2024

I live for this gig! What an honor! Visiting Faculty at Berklee College of Music’s Annual Songwriting Workshop! When I came here as a student, I felt like I finally found my type of people in the Songwriting Department! I wish that feeling on allll my students ! I love you, !

05/21/2024

Made some news !

Tavonna Miller has joined the Music Library staff for five weeks as an intern. Ms. Miller is an adjunct professor at the C.W. Post campus of Long Island University, where she teaches voice and songwriting. She is also a matriculating student in the library and information science program at Post. Ms...

04/16/2024

I have been waiting for Timnit Gebru and her collaborative researchers to publish this paper for a while. It is FINALLY HERE!

A deep approach to understanding the push for reliance (and over-reliance) on Ai. The TESCREAL ideology bundle behind it all. https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/13636

It was affirming to read very thorough research regarding the history of eugenics and its influence on the TECREAL ideology bundle driving the oncoming 4th Industrial Revolution.

There are many benefits to how much Ai has enhanced various processes across industries but, I have long resented the downplaying of the proven risks and harms of over-reliance on Ai enhancements in education, particularly when it comes to the reading & comprehension skills of both learners and teachers.

Research has proven that , despite holding some of the most Higher Ed degrees in the WORLD, American college graduates are STILL globally scoring as AVERAGE in both numeric and linguistic literacy.

That was BEFORE generative Ai language processors like ChatGPT.

Now, with the over-reliance on Ai enhancements in education, American college students are reading, comprehending, investigating, criticizing & inquiring even LESS.

As both a professor and Higher Ed student, I have witnessed the direct impact of Generative Ai over-reliance on watered-down, Ai-generated synopses of prescribed reading material, which directly affects the quality of critical dialogue within the classroom.

When over-reliance on Generative Ai (G*i) is valued higher in assessment than the human skill of reading for comprehension, college students are not incentivized to become discerning readers who will increase their lexicon, recognize claims, investigate the basis of claims, recognize logical fallacies, make critical inquiries or build their own arguments based on research & historical account.

With the increasing availability of asynchronous Higher Ed programs by America’s Top 50 Universities, one of the shining advantages of participating in the modern classroom in person is the possibility for deep , critical discussion grounded in current research & history.

As a Gifted Adult Learner, the impact of over-reliance on G*i in education is producing diminishing returns in the modern classroom which underscore the advantages of asynchronous learning.

I’m patiently waiting for more data and statistical research to be published about this.

For now, Timnit Gebru’s published paper is a great starting point to begin a public and deeply intellectual evaluation of the benefits and harms of Ai advancements across industries.

The time to start talking about it is HERE.

The TESCREAL bundle: Eugenics and the promise of utopia through artificial general intelligence Authors Timnit Gebru Émile P. Torres DOI: https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v29i4.13636 Abstract The stated goal of many organizations in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) is to develop artificial gener...

12/24/2023

The semester’s end. This professor is back to books and note-taking by the fireplace 📚📚🎄🎄🎄

Happy holidays, everyone!

10/02/2023

A quarter of the way through my Songwriting 1 Course at the University! It brings me so much joy to share my love of song with this new generation of creatives❤️

09/05/2023

So thankful to begin my 3rd academic year as a professor ! Looking forward to giving my students my best each year!

06/26/2023

Last week, I was honored to be one of the faculty at Berklee’s Songwriting Workshop once again! Thank you to all my amazing colleagues, peers, mentors for inspiring me & encouraging me! Thank you to the amazing students for helping me create a collaborative and complete learning experience in each and every class! Thank you, !