Learning Music with Technology

Over the summer I started taking ukulele lessons. I’ve never played a string instrument before. I also haven’t taken music lessons in years. However, I felt inspired to learn something new. The ukulele seemed accessible, plus it’s small, lightweight, recognizable, and doesn’t require me to make reeds. It’s also relatively inexpensive so I figured the financial investment was small enough to take a chance.

It’s different learning how to play a string instrument. First of all, I can see my fingers. Secondly, I can sing or talk while I’m playing. And the added bonus of not worrying about what I eat and when because I don’t need my mouth to play the instrument. The pitches of the four strings still feel a bit confusing to me, but I’ve accepted this is how the uke works. Other than that, the chords are starting to make sense, even though I can only play about a half dozen.

What’s really surprised me is how the lessons are taught. There’s a monitor in the lesson room. Every lesson, the instructor pulls up something to teach on the screen. The first couple lessons it was images of the uke and a basic chord chart. Then it was “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” with the lyrics, notes, and chords all written together. I also got a printed version to take home for practicing.

For the last few weeks, we’ve been practicing strumming patterns with a talking metronome playing through YouTube during our lessons. Sometimes we play along with a video of the current song I’m learning. Last week, the instructor pulled up a metronome with some drumming beats under it. We played along and had a mini jam session.

I have to confess, the first time the metronome started playing on the screen I had a flashback to high school. I used to have a piano teacher who would place the metronome on the piano during my lessons. It was an old-fashioned looking wooden box with a lever that used to swing back and forth to steady ticking noise. To this day I can’t stand the sound of clocks ticking.

The new lessons, and method of teaching, are really fun and engaging. I know these types of options have been around for a long time, but I spent my youth practicing alone, with no technology, and it’s a hard habit to change.

Customized Jewelry

Last week I finally made it to a jeweler to get a few things repaired. One of my favorite necklaces broke at the start of the pandemic. The numerous lockdowns and restrictions kept delaying the repair. Eventually, I decided it was a priority. I’ve been missing the necklace for a long time.

The visit to the jeweler started out the same as any other visit. I showed him my broken jewelry. He assessed it, quoted some prices, and estimated the repair time. He placed each item into separate bags with a small handwritten note to indicate the repair. Then he handed me a paper repair ticket with an order number on it. Normally, this would have been the end of the visit. Except somehow or other, we ended up chatting about how he designs jewelry.

He fired up his computer and showed us a three-dimensional drawing of a ring he designed. Then he whipped out his phone to show us a photo of the finished product. Although a lot of professions use computers for drawing, designing, planning, I had never considered a jeweler using it. I suppose it’s because actual people create custom jewelry by hand. Each piece crafted individually. In fact, the last time I went to a jeweler for a custom creation, everything was by hand.

It was fascinating watching the jeweler show us all the different design options. He could change the cut of the stone or the color instantly. I particularly enjoyed seeing the finished product rotate in a three-dimensional view. Although there was clearly a good deal of imagination and creativity going into the design process, I left the store wondering about the future of jewelry design with AI (artificial intelligence). Similar to so many other professions, I’m sure it’s possible for non-jewelers to download some kind of app to custom create their own jewelry. After, a person might create the design. Or it might just be a sophisticated 3D printer ready to print gold, silver, and diamonds.

Unique, custom jewelry creations amaze me. Although it seems inevitable that this, too, may one day be replaced, or augmented by AI, for now I can enjoy the work of an artisan. I’m looking forward to seeing the repairs, something that at least for now, still requires a skilled human.

The Myth of Digital Storage

I finally ran out of space in my laptop. I purchased this particular laptop in 2017. To be fair, I’ve been accumulating, and purging things, for almost 20 years. So even though I’ve had this laptop for about 6 years, I brought things over from previous computers. For months I’ve been receiving warning signs about low storage, though I didn’t quite understand what it would mean. Since receiving the warnings, I’ve been diligently going through files, documents, music, images, videos, to start freeing up space. Unfortunately, it wasn’t fast enough.

Last weekend, when I really needed to do something on my laptop, the whole thing froze. Nothing would load, close, open, save, etc. My computer was immobilized. It simply didn’t have enough memory left to perform any functions. After a few (tense) minutes and frantic searches, I figured out how to restart my computer in safe mode. Once opened, I immediately started purging, emptying the trash, and getting rid of anything quickly and easily. It’s a temporary fix. Now I’m left with a dilemma, submit to needing more storage, or make some very hard decisions to whittle down 20+ years of acquired digital “goods.”

As The Deletist, I have to confess, I’m up for the challenging of deleting, naturally, but also a bit daunted about going through 20+ years of digital accumulation. To add to the challenge, my computer is maddeningly slow and constantly freezing. It’s a terrible dilemma. Things won’t load fast enough to do a proper purge, but I can’t purge without seeing them.

To be efficient, I’ve been reviewing my photos and videos. I have a lot of duplicates and photos that are blurry, too repetitive, etc. These all make easy deletion choices and a way to quickly get more space. And yet, the problem of the slow uploading is magnified with photos. This makes something that could be quick and ruthless, rather long and frustrating.

With physical storage, I’ve always been a fan of working within its constraints. The amount of my physical possessions limited by the space available. It seems now I have finally crossed that threshold in the digital world, though it took much, much longer. However, it’s not just in my laptop. I’m finding my cloud storages (e.g., Dropbox, Google Drive, etc.) are also reaching capacity. The myth of limitless digital storage finally shattered for me.

AI and Recording Audiobooks

I found one audiobooks series that I enjoy, almost more than reading it. The reason for the enjoyment is the way the actor creates the characters. Each character has its own unique voice. Even from book to book, the protagonist has the same voice so there’s consistency in the series. During this particular story, one of the characters gets a broken nose. The actor adjusted the voice for this character to simulate a stuffed nose and pain.

I’ve read that one of the many uses for Artificial Intelligence (AI), could be to create audiobooks. Once recorded (i.e., the author or actor’s voice), the AI would be able to create new audiobooks using their likeness. Likely this would take a fraction of the cost and time. A real human would only be able to read for so many hours a day. Certain small sounds we make, such as throat clearing or sniffing, would require editing from the recording. AI would likely be able to create a new audio recording instantly without those human noises. However, would AI interpret the meaning properly to match voices to action?

I’m not an actor, but actors are skilled at creating new characters, sometimes simulating different accents, inflections, moods, and emotions all with their voices. If the AI was creating an artistic reading, how would it be able to create new characters? Especially if the voice and character was new. it was one that the actor being imitated, had never used before. Would the AI pick up on changes, like a broken nose, to adjust the voice to match the action?

This would require a subtle understanding and nuance that I’m not sure AI is capable of doing. In my opinion, this is a good thing. Part of what makes the arts exciting is the way they constantly change and evolve. I enjoy this actor’s ability to create characters with his voice and express the emotions of the action. The voices and characters are different in every book of the series, with the exception of the main character, who remains consistent.

Even if the audiobook was something without characters, i.e., an author reading non-fiction, there would still be inflection, emphasis, cadences and the general rhythm of one’s voice. I’m sure AI could do a reasonably good job, likely good enough that most people wouldn’t notice the difference, but we would lose something intangible.

The Glory of the Analog Days

I’ve always considered myself lucky because I grew up using analog technology before migrating to digital. I’ve watched the transition happen. Even though I am sometimes a bit resistant, or slow, to adapt to new digital technologies, I appreciate that I know and understand both styles. As an added bonus, I also realize the meaning and history of many well-known icons, relics from the analog world, that may not have much meaning to somebody younger.

Here are some examples, though recognizable to us as digital icons for actions or objects, they all come from the paper world.


The phone is a receiver from the old-fashioned style with the curly cord connecting it to the base, or early cordless models.

The diskette for “save” is from the era of floppy disks.

Paste is an icon of a clipboard, something most people rarely use.

A piece of paper symbolizes document, or file.

A paperclip indicates an attachment, presumably to represent how it clips two things together. However, in the digital world, this doesn’t work the same way.

Aside from understanding icons used throughout the digital world, there are other advantages to the analog world. Though I took it for granted growing up, when I created something, I knew it was unique. It was one-of-a-kind. This was both a benefit and a detriment. One the plus side, I felt confident I had total control over that one physical instance of my creation. This is important for something confidential or private. On the flip side, only having one instance isn’t good protection against disaster. What if there was a fire, flood, etc.? Or I lost it?

I was reminded of these things while watching Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning the other week. The movie starts, predictably enough, with the protagonist receiving a recorded message that self-destructs. However, the message was on an old-fashioned mini tape recorder, including a few sheets of paper. Naturally the whole thing self-destructed within seconds of being read.

But in the digital world, could one ever feel confident that self-destruction included every instance? Could one ever feel confident that only one instance existed? The great benefit of digital technology is that it’s so easy to replicate. However, this is also a detriment with confidential or private information. Or if you feel inclined to send a self-destructing message to someone. It better be programmed to self-destruct in multiple places.

The Era of Beethoven’s 10th Symphony

As a hardcore Beethoven fan, I would personally feel gutted if some artificial intelligence (AI) churned out a “tenth” symphony in the same style. Beethoven had a unique talent and a distinct, yet recognizable style. For example, each of his nine symphonies are all incredibly different from each other. Yet each one is unmistakably identifiable as Beethoven. In this era of generative AI, is it possible that a machine could learn enough to compose like Beethoven? What would that say about the future of music? And more importantly, what would that mean for musicians and composers?

It’s curious to wonder what sort of skills we may be losing by incorporating AI more into our daily lives. For instance, will people still learn to compose music? Or will they instead invest their time in learning how to train, or program, a generative AI chatbot to compose something? With the latter approach, would a composer even need to learn how to play an instrument or read music?

These same questions are relevant in nearly every profession and art form. Even dancers, who need their bodies to perform, could have the choreography generated by AI. I’m sure in the future, AI will be powerful and accurate enough to simulate a dance performance without real people. Or maybe we’ll all just wear Augmented Reality glasses for the performance. There have been many headlines in the news lately about studios using AI to capture the likeness of an actor/actress and reuse his/her face in future productions.

I blogged about this issue a few weeks ago in “The End of Originality.” AI is good at summarizing and recreating, but can it innovate? And can it innovate as well, or better, than a human? Admittedly, our creations are based on our experiences. However, the interpretation and expression of our experiences is unique and offers limitless opportunities for innovation and originality. AI, by contrast, is trained and programmed to create based on what’s already available for consumption (i.e., the AI’s experiences). With so many people learning to use AI, we will definitely need to consider the ways in which we are being trained and reprogrammed.

Nobody will ever be able to compose exactly like Beethoven. And that’s a good thing, in my opinion.