Acknowledgements

This project was made possible in part by the Making Meaning grant from the Mellon Foundation from which I received a Digital Liberal Arts fellowship in 2022–23, facilitated by the Serie Center at Macalester College. This project also received generous funding from the Macalester College Library OER stipend in 2023–24.

This project would not have been possible without the contributions of many individuals, to whom I am indebted.

First, I would like to thank the Digital Liberal Arts team and DeWitt Wallace Library staff at Macalester College. Throughout the project Louann Terveer, Digital Initiatives and Scholarly Communication Librarian, has been incredibly helpful and my go-to person for any questions regarding OER. Her guidance and support have been invaluable to the success of this project. I thank Aisling Quigley, Digital Liberal Arts Librarian and Program Manager, for her steadfast support, meeting with me at the beginning of this project, and facilitating the Digital Liberal Arts fellowship. I thank Brooke Schmolke for her essential work in the background, keeping the Pressbooks platform up and running. I would also like to thank Annalise Record ’26 who assisted me in necessary but tedious formatting work in fall 2023.

I am grateful to Ginny Moran, Research and Instruction Librarian, who helped me think through best practices for fair use and gave me guidance on how to proceed ethically and legally with copyright matters. That said, I take full responsibility for all judgments regarding fair use.

I thank Joan Ostrove, Director of the Serie Center at Macalester College, for kindly overseeing the Making Meaning grant from the Mellon Foundation.

When I began my work on this project, I reached out to several individuals who have had success in creating online educational resources in music theory, and whose work I admire greatly. I am especially grateful for advice from Rob Hutchinson, author of Music Theory for the 21st-Century Classroom (including the reminder to move your body while sitting at a computer all day) and helpful guidance from Megan Lavengood, who is a co-author Open Music Theory, an invaluable contribution to our field.

Throughout my time teaching at Macalester College, I have worked with many extraordinary students and teaching assistants, who have made my teaching more effective and have influenced the creation of this book. I thank Honza Cervenka ’12, for encouraging me to use the opening measures of the first movement of Beethoven’s Symphony no. 1, when introducing secondary dominants (Example 31‑2). I thank Yihao Zhou ’16 who kindly prepared a figure digitally that appears in chapter 18 (Figure 18-2) when he was a student at Macalester. I also thank Anne Kaldjian ’22, who in an independent study worked with transcriptions featured in chapter 32, and who also gave me an example of a cadential six-four in chapter 26 (Example 26‑8). I am especially grateful to Sherry He ’16 who designed the beautiful cover art for this textbook.

I cannot thank my editor Erin Maher enough. Erin patiently worked with me, not only copy-editing all chapters with great attention to consistency and detail, but also teaching me how to more effectively write alt-text and to make my text more accessible for all users. While I take full responsibility for any unintentional shortcomings regarding accessibility, I remain indebted to Erin for her knowledge of Universal Design for Learning and keen eye for detail and clarity.

A number of colleagues have generously given me permission to use or adopt materials they have created elsewhere. Thanks to composer Judith Cloud, who kindly gave me permission to use the second movement of her Six Forays for Flute and Clarinet as Worksheet example 5-1. Thanks also to Kevin Holm-Hudson for allowing me to use an adapted version of his transcription of the Beach Boys’s “Good Vibrations,” in Example 21-2. I also thank Ben Duinker for permission to reproduce his transcription of The Chainsmokers & Coldplay, “Something Just Like This” as Example 22-18. I thank Matthew Boyer, who collaborated with me to create the sonata-form image (in the style of Andy Warhol) in chapter 49 when we were in graduate school together. And I remain firmly indebted to my longtime mentor, Rudy Marcozzi, not only for allowing me to share his binary flowchart for identifying intervals aurally, which appears as Figure 5.4, but also for inspiring me to pursue a career teaching musicianship.

Finally, I thank the copyright holders for permission to use the following musical examples: