Rachel Gain
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rachelgain.bsky.social
Rachel Gain
@rachelgain.bsky.social
Music Theory PhD candidate @ Yale. Tap dancer, baroque flutist, pit bull dad. I research tap & HIPP and theorize through instruments & bodies. they/her/their🏳‍🌈
Yesterday me and my friend took a trolley tour of Atlanta, and among all the planned sightseeing, the tour guide pointed out a man in the park who was powerlifting his cat 🐱
June 9, 2025 at 9:19 PM
Very happy to have received an SMT acceptance… and tickled to have received the news while editing that exact paper for a conference this weekend
June 5, 2025 at 5:03 PM
((Quietly waiting for people to start posting about the AMS career center))
June 3, 2025 at 10:35 PM
They say you have to anonymize your proposal, but nowhere does it say that you can’t use the Yale font…
February 18, 2025 at 3:06 AM
Do AMS and SEM have resources for writing good proposals for the annual meeting? E.g. an equivalent to this SMT resource societymusictheory.org/administrati...
Preparing a conference proposal | SMT
societymusictheory.org
February 7, 2025 at 12:00 AM
Just graded my students’ (excellent) finals and submitted grades… Almost done with my year’s worth of instructor of record duties.
Which means… time for… dissertation???????
January 4, 2025 at 4:26 AM
Grading at the Parlor Piano
January 3, 2025 at 6:00 PM
Me: Do a creative project as part of your final, here are some suggestions.

Several of my students: ok we covered sonata form in the last class so I’m gonna compose a 4–6-minute sonata-form movement that would probably get me accepted to grad school even though I’m only a freshman.
December 18, 2024 at 11:07 PM
Packing for a conference is so much easier when you didn’t have a chance to unpack anything except your meds and toothbrush after the previous conference 🙃
November 13, 2024 at 4:04 PM
Good news: SMT felt like a warm hug
Bad news: plane was delayed then had a midair mechanical error then diverted to Ohio then LaGuardia wasn’t accepting flights so I landed 5h late at JFK (1:45am) and missed the last train then we weren’t allowed to order Ubers until 2am but now I am headed to CT 💸
November 11, 2024 at 7:33 AM
My tap group does long finales made of multiple short songs. I’m cutting the music, and by complete coincidence, this year it goes BbM-BbM-AbM-F#M-F#M-EM. No one coordinated this.
November 26, 2023 at 12:23 AM
Reading a lot of dissertations. None of you are safe…
September 12, 2023 at 9:12 PM
Submitted my last qualifying exam today!!!! How I just need to survive the oral exam 🥲
August 19, 2023 at 3:20 PM
q u a l s 🥵
August 12, 2023 at 7:08 PM
Doing a 5-week summer course during quals was like finishing a half marathon then remembering that you’re somehow also doing a full marathon and you still have 10 miles to go
August 5, 2023 at 4:58 AM
I want to like bluesky, but I HATE that I cannot make my account private. I want to curate who can read what I post. There’s too many bad actors out there.
August 4, 2023 at 4:24 PM
The local donut store just put a sign up saying “NO DONUTS ON MONDAYS.”

…???
August 2, 2023 at 8:26 PM
I can’t believe he actually went through with the X thing
July 25, 2023 at 12:35 AM
Tapped til my body screamed at me and now I have to go read til my brain screams at me. Love quals summer!!!!
July 14, 2023 at 7:58 PM
Why is someone on this train repeatedly blaring “All I Want for Christmas Is You” from their phone?!?! It is almost midnight and it is JULY
July 9, 2023 at 3:41 AM
I’m reading about 1920/30s dance marathons as the predecessor of reality TV, and it’s both fascinating and horrifying…
July 6, 2023 at 1:58 PM
“So is this the town of New Haven?” does not inspire confidence in your Uber driver…
July 6, 2023 at 12:46 PM
Always making good decisions, like doing qualifying exams, German reading class, and a tap festival with a 5-hour round trip commute at the same time 👍
July 6, 2023 at 12:42 AM
Explain to me how I ended up with a dog who’s afraid of everything except fireworks
July 5, 2023 at 2:20 AM
At Tap City (NYC Tap Fest) this week! And by “at”, I mean commuting 2.5 hours each way and also taking classes elsewhere in the afternoons ‘cos I’m too scared to do a choreography residency. Learning lots of cool things from the greats!
July 5, 2023 at 2:05 AM