Hi, I’m Ryan Galik. I’m a full-time master’s student studying music theory and composition at Michigan State University. Before that, I was an elementary music teacher from around Princeton, New Jersey, and taught for three years. I earned a Bachelor’s in music education from The College of New Jersey in 2018.

These days, I’d say I’m more of a theorist than composer, but both are things I can’t imagine I’ll ever stop poring time into. If you’re interested in my compositions, I’d suggest you investigate my “works” page; I think the pieces speak for themselves.

On the theory side, I would say that my interests are most firmly in what’s typically called “music perception.” I want to know why we enjoy certain music, what psychological models support our listening habits, and what sort of things music has the power to express through metaphor and enculturated symbols, or what it means to “pay attention” to music at all.

Lately, I’ve been fortunate to share some research through national and international conferences. My research on ambient music, pinning Tim Hecker’s Virgins against traditional models of ambient music and reconciling its deviations through a product of flow states, schematic expectations, and information density is my most substantial work. It was awarded the Dorothy Payne Best Student Paper Award and just recently selected for the Student Presentation Award during the 2023 annual SMT meeting in Denver. (More on that here).

I’m currently engaged in some exciting studies on musical recursion and self-reference, looking at “diegetic hierarchies” in music and examining the ways they interact and form some interesting paradoxical relationships. In its earlier stages, I presented that research at the Texas Society for Music Theory (video here), and was very fortunate to have it be awarded the Colvin Best Student Paper Award.

I’ve also presented about a few other topics, from extended just intonation in Ben Johnston’s String Quartet No. 4 to more general thoughts on aural skills pedagogy for undergraduate students. If you want the full list, my CV is available under the “about me” tab.