Step-Side-Together
In case you haven’t noticed, AI is here to stay. Just in the last few weeks, I’ve had many fascinating talks with colleagues in the arts who are using it in various ways in their organizations.
Full disclosure: I’m generally pro-AI. Like most any tool, there are going to be good ways to use it and bad ways to use it. You can read of unbelievable medical uses, and you can also imagine many ways it can go off the rails and hurt lots of people.
But this isn’t a post on the ethics of AI. It’s far too complicated—and fraught—for me to attempt in any meaningful way.
At my age (46), I was a teen when e-mail started being used widely. How quaint, right? There were some who embraced it; some didn’t. It became a dividing line for a lot of people in my parents’ generation, and I wonder if we’re in a similar moment now, maybe even more pronounced. The AI moment feels like a freight train at light speed; the e-mail moment now seems more like a sedan out for a Sunday drive.
I think about it a lot. I’m trying to embrace tools and processes which better help our ability to serve students at the school. It’s baked into many of the tools we use already, so again, it’s here to stay whether we like it or not. If you’ve ever used auto-correct of any kind, you’re using AI.
And honestly, I think deeply about how it relates to the future of music. Some of the possibilities aren’t very good at all. There are musicians being displaced in real-time by schlock that computers generate. That doesn’t help anyone, at least in the sense that I believe our creativity is baked into our human wiring and loudly calls for an outlet.
The good news is that I think a place like Pakachoag can help. The pursuit of music—done with real people and in person—is AI-proof.
Somehow, I’ve now ended up with two piano students. If you recall from earlier posts, I never explicitly set out to teach when I came on as executive director. But I will say that it has been a surprising and delightful turn of events.
There was a fun moment recently.
One of the piano students came to a page in his method book which had a waltz. There were a couple of sentences at the top which tried to explain how to “feel” a waltz (down-up-up), but it wasn’t landing. I quickly scrolled my mental rolodex for something—anything—that might help.
I stood up.
“Imagine we’re in the 1800s in a European royal court. Fancy clothes, proper manners, powdered wigs. Now THOSE people would know how to waltz.”
And then in my most gangly way, I waltzed around the room singing the song.
“Your turn.”
He looked terrified.
I had him stand up. I took a seat at the piano and promised I wouldn’t turn around. I’d simply play, and he could waltz around the room to their heart’s content. Step-side-together, step-side-together.
I had the student sit back down at the piano. “Now play this page, using what you just felt.”
Ladies and gentlemen, we had a waltz.
Now, I don’t use this to extol any particular learning methods I bring to the table, but I do think it’s an example of what I see and hear our teachers offering to our students every day. And these are the moments that are AI-proof and why I think they’ll continue to exist now and long into the future.
AI can do remarkable things. It can assess pitch, track rhythm, generate exercises, and personalize feedback at a scale no human teacher could match. I genuinely believe it will make some parts of music education better.
But it can’t stand up and waltz around a room.
It can’t read a eleven-year-old’s face and know that what they need right now isn’t an explanation. He needed an experience. Human to human, ridiculous and all.
That’s what community music schools have always offered. It’s more than just instruction. It’s the beauty and creativity of music, passed from one person to another, in the same room, in real time.
That’s been happening at Pakachoag for over forty years. I don’t think AI changes that. If anything, it makes it even more relevant.
Note by note,
Nick
