Roanoke Fiddle Lessons

FREE LESSON!
To demonstrate how far AI has to go, I am offering a free 45-minute music lesson to the first person who can point out one of the TWO(!) errors in this AI explanation of the chords in A Harmonic Minor.
Instead of an A (minor), Google gets an F-minus (flat?) on the music theory assignment. I have every faith that you humans can do better!

Incidentally: Google, do better. Stop spreading misinformation. One of my cardinal rules as a teacher is, if I don't know the answer, I say so. I don't make up crap. You need to do the same.

We're putting on a bowing workshop! Space is limited, pre-registration is required. Send a message if you're interested!

Congratulations to the students who participated in the RFL Youth Winter Recital at Brandon Oaks!
You all did great, and everyone is so proud of you!
Thanks to Tresa at Brandon Oaks for your hospitality!

Another 5-star review! Thanks, Cathy!

IYKYK
Sound post surgery…

Arnold Schwarzenegger sounds like a hick.
No, really! When making the German-dubbed version of The Terminator, Arnold (one of my favorite actors) was not allowed to dub his own lines IN HIS NATIVE LANGUAGE!
Arnold is from rural Austria, and his accent is what most Germans would consider… rural.
Hard to imagine, but his thick Austrian accent was an impediment to his breaking out in Hollywood as well. In his first movie, Hercules in New York, his lines were hilariously overdubbed.
Now, his accent is almost as iconic as his muscles. And, as Arnold put it, he made a perceived liability into a distinctive strength.

I was asked the other day whether I teach Scottish style fiddling. I replied, I teach Geoff White style fiddling. My technique, my musical accents, everything I play is the culmination of the experiences I’ve had as a musician.
I’ve been exposed to many Irish styles, Scottish, Cajun, Appalachian, and Classical influences. There’s probably some David Gilmour in there too. I’d also like to think maybe some Adrian Smith when I play fast… 🤘
The point is, I view style like an accent.
If I’m teaching grammar, I’m not going to make my students speak with a Scottish accent, or an Irish acccent. And just whose accent are we emulating, specifically? Wouldn’t it be weird if we trained people to speak exactly like some famous celebrity? Wouldn’t that deprive the students of their own voices? Wouldn’t it be strange to have everyone affecting to speak just like Walter Cronkite, David Attenborough, or Arnold?
Style is the accent you pick up from the influences around you.
I can show you different ways of playing the same passage, and different ways to ornament it. We can change the bowing pattern, which beat we emphasize, whether we do a burl or a mordant, and where. But I’ve always found, the best way is the way that works best for the student. When we allow that to happen, the student’s own accent begins to shine through. As far as musical style goes: “Be yourself. Everyone else is taken.” Oscar Wilde

Here is Arnold talking about, among other things, turning his accent into an asset. https://youtu.be/1bumPyvzCyo?si=Uazr5b2uZHEqv4uK

And here’s a link to his book:
https://beusefulbook.com

Arnold Schwarzenegger Leaves the Audience SPEECHLESS | One of the Best Motivational Speeches Ever Arnold Schwarzenegger, former Mr. Olympia, Conan, Terminator, and Governor of California, delivers one of the best motivational speeches you will ever hear. ...

A quick word about instruments.
I recently saw a post from a string manufacturer saying, your instrument doesn’t go out of tune; your strings do.

Let me offer some more context:
A GOOD instrument doesn’t go out of tune—the strings do. A bad instrument goes out of tune no matter how good or stable the strings are.

I recently spent half an hour of a 45-minute lesson tuning a student’s violin. And it wasn’t due to any negligence on her part. It’s just a bad instrument.

A bad instrument (or a VSO—violin-shaped object) is a terrible thing. If the choice is between buying a VSO or nothing, I’d recommend buying nothing until you can afford a decent instrument. A VSO is a total black hole. It wastes time and money. It leads to frustration, which leads a student to quit. You’re actually better off setting fire to your money, when you consider the time and frustration that VSO will ultimately cost you.

I sell violins, but I don’t care if you buy one from me. I just care that you’re not buying a VSO that will waste your time, money, and sanity.

If you are ever in doubt about whether what you’re looking at is a VSO, message me, and I’ll help all I can.
One last piece of advice: if you’re shopping on that website that has everything from A to Z, I can almost guarantee you’re going to end up with a VSO.

Thank you for the latest 5-Star review, Jasmine!

Geoff not only helps me practice my violin lessons, but I also practice guitar lessons here! He's an amazing teacher, would definitely recommend!

AI is going to replace you.
Or, Rick Beato is just a cranky curmudgeon.

So we've talked about the role of AI versus the teacher. Teacher: 1, AI: 0

We've talked about the role of the amateur musician who just wants to create, learn, and express themself. Musician: 1, AI: 0

Now let's tackle the professional musician.

Who wants to pay for music? Who gets to earn our money? Let's break that question down into two parts: The music we seek out at home, and the music we seek out away from home.

The music we seek out at home may be incidental. It can be what we listen to while we're working, cooking, eating, chilling, etc. We have it on in the background. And one way or another, we have to pay for it. Whether it's ad-supported, or subscription-based, one way or another we pay for that music. Do we want to pay for musicians who work hard and create albums? Or do we want to pay for a computer to generate music we find pleasing? I can see this being a slippery slope where AI largely replaces the human. Yikes.
AI: 1, Professional Musician: 0 (And that's an overtime squeaker).

But then, when we really get down and LISTEN, I bet we're not going to be satisfied listening to a computer generate what could admittedly be some really terrific music. No one is going to sit and listen and say, "Huh, this is really powerful. I wonder what the computer was experiencing when it composed this music?"
We absolutely DO sit and say "Huh, I wonder what this person's emotional state was when they wrote that line?"
AI: 1, Professional Musician: 1

And then, when we go out of our homes and seek out music. I'm not even going to touch the music that gets played in Applebee's while you're eating a microwaved Quesadilla. It's background noise, and not a worthy addition to this discussion.

Music we actively seek out. Whether we go to festivals, bars with live music, or attend concerts.
I do not, even in my wildest Sci-Fi conjectures, see us going to watch computers play music. We go to experience the "warm thrill of confusion, that space-cadet glow" when we watch people play. We connect with them. We connect with each other.
AI:1, Professional Musician: 2.

Boom.

To research this, I went to one of the loudest voices talking about AI. Rick Beato has made a great living making YouTube videos talking about guitars, amps, recording gear, etc. He is very knowledgeable about the music business, and about the recording studio. He has testified in front of congress about AI and art. But some of the things he says are beginning to veer into "Get off my lawn!"

He recently posted a video where he lamented that technology makes music too easy. He began by comparing Frank Sinatra singing into a microphone, where the entire take had to be perfect, to the modern ability to punch in single lines or notes. Got news for you, Rick. People were complaining about Frank singing into a microphone, and how that wasn't how real music was made. I guarantee it.

And then he went on to the grand-daddy of the curmudgeon complaints: "The creative dependence on technology limits the ability of people to innovate." I laughed out loud.
Rick, people said that same thing about Pink Floyd and their use of electronic equipment. And I won't presume to say that it limited their creativity or innovation. I doubt anyone who really knows what they're talking about would dare suggest that.

So chill out, Rick. The sky isn't falling. Technology will help us unlock our creativity, not limit it.

So let's review. Will AI replace music teachers? Not the teachers who really know what they're doing.
Will AI replace the amateur musician who wants to grow as a human? No way.
Will AI replace professional musicians? In one way, to some degree, yes. But not in the ways that really matter.
When we look for music that speaks to us, that helps make a human connection, whether it's at home or at a concert, we're still going to be looking for humans making music.
If you're keeping score at home, I think that makes it AI: 1, Humans: 4.

In a four-game series, humans win the Cup.

AI is going to replace you.

Part 2.
Last week, I talked about being a music teacher and competing with AI. Today we're going to talk about the role of the student.

I am going to be brutally honest for a second.
What's the point?

No, seriously. What's the point? What's the point of learning to play an instrument? Someone else already plays it better. So why bother?

My response is, who cares if someone can play the instrument better than you ever will? There is a deep-seated need in us to strive. To come up against something that is difficult, and to get better at it. And when we achieve a certain amount of proficiency, we can find immense joy in exercising that skill. Whether it's knitting, or playing a fiddle, learning to create beauty with our own two hands is deeply rewarding.

It's getting to where we can go to AI and tell it, "this is the kind of music I like, make me more of it." And it will spit out a sort-of-new variation on the kind of music we told it to research. But we didn't make it ourselves, and the exercise, while pleasant enough, does not feed the soul.

Someone once said to me, if you're not moving forward, you're moving backward. Skating by on what we already know how to do does not feed the soul. Picking up and instrument like the fiddle is incredibly difficult, and therefore, incredibly rewarding. So let AI do its thing. And if AI or Bob down the street can play the fiddle better than you can, let them.

We can get in an airplane and fly above the mountains. That doesn't mean we stop climbing them.
So, to paraphrase Edmund Hillary, why learn to play a violin? Because it's there.

AI is going to replace you.

I hear that a lot, both as a teacher, and as a musician. Let's address this, one point at a time. We'll do this in a series of posts.

First, as a teacher. Perhaps AI will replace me. It may develop the ability to look at a student's technique and tell the student to adjust it. It may even develop the sense to know how to gently correct a student's technique without breaking their spirit.

I had a teacher in college who, after 5 minutes of our first lesson, gave me a laundry list over everything that was wrong with my technique. My left hand in the wrong position. My fingers were hanging out too high above the fingerboard. I wasn't putting all my fingers down like I should when playing third or fourth finger. My bowing was too close to the fingerboard. I was using too much forearm. Etc, etc, etc. When I asked what I should work on first, they said, "all of it." Heck, a computer could have done that.

I theorize that a better approach might have been to triage my technique, starting with the most glaring problem first, and working from there. Or perhaps working on the part of the technique that was holding me back the most. Or perhaps start small, with the most easily-fixed piece of technique, and building up from there.

These are all judgement calls. An experienced and empathetic teacher will be able to make those judgement calls.

The other day, I was working with a student who was really overthinking and second-guessing herself. A voice in my head told me to speed up the piece we were working on. If there's one piece of advice I live by, it's to practice slow. So it was pretty weird for me to go against that ingrained principle. But you know what? It worked. Going just a bit faster allowed the student to be in a better state of flow, giving her not enough time to second guess every note she played.

I wonder if a computer can ever make that judgement call, and know when to do something like that? It may happen sooner than we think. But for right now, no computer, algorithm, or AI chatbot has any hope of being able to read s student and know what to gently correct (and how to do it), and when to make judgement calls that put a student in the best position to be successful.

A good teacher absolutely CAN do those things.

So, find yourself a teacher who is going to teach YOU. Not teach to the problems they see, but to teach YOU, as you are, and take the time to understand what you need, and how to push you to achieve.