Week 1 Piano Progress
My first update on a 12‑week journey to learn Still D.R.E.. on piano
Below: a short video of where I’m at after Week 1, and some thoughts about using AI as a practice coach.
Without further ado.. week 1
Some high and low lights I noticed:
- I felt like I made progress!
- Understanding some scales
- Understand some notes
- Brain to finger pathways need development, particularly on left hand
- No rhythm, not surprising.. I never have had it
Week 1 Strategy: Artificial Intelligence, Real Wrong Notes
Enter the Robots…
source: giphy.com
I asked several AI tools for a 12‑week practice plan. What I found was interesting, and a little frustrating:
- Different AIs, different strategies. Not surprising , there are multiple valid learning paths and I see this as having different teachers.
- Some notes and chords were incorrect. A few suggestions were flat‑out wrong. They simply were not the correct notes
| ChatGPT | ClaudeAI |
|---|---|
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source: giphy.com
- The song key varied between answers. My plan was to improvise on some scales then lead into the riff, but I could not get a clear answer on what key the song is in
| ChatGPT | ClaudeAI |
|---|---|
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 |
So where exactly is AI getting its data, and how do we know what’s reliable?
Sometimes I could persuade the AI to change its answer, but only after I’d gone out and found the right information myself. That was a big red flag: the tool sounded confident, but it hadn’t actually checked against a single authoritative source.
Teaching AI now?
What I had built: a tiny, local chatbot
During a past project I wanted to see if could create a chatbot for my students. It was surprisingly simple with some python coding and helped my understand just what AI is doing on a smaller scale.
I made a script that fed a single PDF into a chatbot powered by ChatGPT’s LLM (Large Language Model). The script chunked the PDF into small sections so the model could search them and answer questions based only on that file. This is basically what larger AIs do, just with vastly more reference data. That explains both their power and their occasional errors.
Simple metaphor: AI is like a gigantic library where the books have been shredded into tiny pieces. It learned patterns from those pieces and now predicts the next most likely words, it doesn’t “look up” facts the way a person would.
Quick takeaways
- AI = fast guidance
- Not a definitive source
- Double‑check with ears & other sources
- For now, AI is my guide
Leading into Week 2
Next week: my next step was YouTube, which I use a lot in my day to day life. Turns out the platform brings its own set of surprises, and intentional design choices that don’t always help focused learning. Stay tuned to see what I mean.
It’s great that you’re learning piano through AI. I had to laugh when you said in your video, “first step, maybe learn how to turn it on” that was hilarious! You’re right though, it does take a little power to get the music going. This is such a valuable skill to learn, and I’m sure you’ll be able to pass it along to others. Best of luck on your journey!