Are You A Robot?!

Hey, are you a robot?

If you’re anything like me, you are sick and tired of answering those CAPTCHAs online, where you’re presented with a grid of images and you have to identify every one with a bicycle in or something.

And sometimes it’s easy, and sometimes it’s like “Well, that one has a handle, like a bit of a handlebar in. Does that count?”

And you click through, and then it gives you new images, and you go through, and you go through… and you start to second guess yourself. And you start to wonder “maybe I am a robot?!” right?

But what I want to talk about today is being a musical robot. What that means, how to spot it and what you can do about it.

So, I had a funny moment yesterday working with my daughter on piano. And I’ll just say, I seem to be coming up with a lot of examples with my kids recently, and I am not the kind of person who goes on and on about their kids normally. But I realised it’s because, you know, if you tune into our Coaches Corner episodes, our Next Level coaches share all of these amazing anecdotes and examples from their day-to-day coaching with a range of clients.

And I very intentionally did not put myself on the roster as a coach. And if you think that’s odd, please check out the previous episode “I am not your guru”. That’s one of many reasons I am not one of our Next Level coaches.

But it means that a lot of my day-to-day experience with teaching musicality and helping people understand actually these days is with my two kids. And so I hope you’ll forgive me for all of the examples of my kids!

But this was an interesting one because I was working on piano before school with my 8-year-old, and she did something that I see musicians do all the time, and I used to do all the time.

And it really reminded me that I wanted to talk about this topic because it’s such a biggie for a lot of people. And if that question of “have you ever felt like a musical robot?” hit home with you, I hope what I’m going to share today will really help you understand what’s going on and what you can do about it.

So, my daughter was working on that song from Frozen, “Do you want to build a snowman”. And she was doing what is totally normal in the piano world, which is to assume a position with your fingers, and your fingers are in a certain spot related normally to the scale or the key of the piece.

And what I watched her do was start to just really mechanically think about which fingers to twiddle, in which order. And I could watch as she stopped reading the notes on the page, and she clearly wasn’t listening, and she was just thinking about it’s this pattern of fingers.

And that’s not in itself a bad thing. That is part of learning piano fingering, and it’s fine.

But the danger and the trap and this real issue of becoming a musical robot is when that’s ALL that’s going on, right?

And so, you know, obviously not to criticise my daughter, she’s eight, and I’m there to teach her, but I kind of stopped her, and I was like “okay, hang on, hang on. Can we sing this phrase? Can you sing to me how it’s meant to go?” And just kind of got her back in touch with listening and thinking about the notes she was playing.

And it’s funny, this topic of being a robot. I feel like in the current age of burgeoning AI, there’s this whole other side topic that we’ll probably have to cover on another episode around, you know, artificial generation of music and the role of musicians in an age where computers can generate realistic sounding music on the fly.

There’s been a really interesting discussion going on in the members website about that topic, and whether it’s good or bad or how it affects the songwriting or composing you do, and so on. So I think we’ll probably cover that in a whole separate episode.

But just to say, I think it’s front of mind for a lot of people these days is, you know, what is the significance of our humanity or the soul in creativity and the uniqueness we bring as humans to this art, which until kind of now, was only really done to a proficient level by human beings.

And at the same time, this idea of being a musical robot has been with us from the beginning of Musical U and even before that, in Easy Ear Training, because in a nutshell, it’s the problem we most help people with.

You know, when we talk about musicality, it very much is the polar opposite of being a musical robot.

And a lot of people who come to us, when they talk about what they’ve been doing and how it’s been going, what they’re describing is someone who is really just feeling a bit unmusical, and they feel like they’re going through the motions and they’re getting the notes right, but they don’t actually feel like they’re bringing music out from inside them. And so we’ve been talking about this for a long time, and you know, what It looks like in practice is you sit down and you’re probably learning only from notation. You’re not using your ear very much.

The epitome of this these days drives me crazy. Again, a topic for another day. But you know, the instrument-learning apps.

And to be clear, I’m a big fan of apps. I love technology. But a lot of the current apps to help you learn an instrument are very robotic.

It’s like “when this light goes on on the screen, press this button with your finger” without any concept of how the music should sound or how to bring expression to it, or the kind of music you’re trying to make.

Anyway, just to say this has been a longstanding problem, now made worse with the instructions-on-screen apps that are essentially turning you into a music playing robot.

And we all know instinctively that’s not what music’s about, right?

And yet, when you learn purely from notation or a YouTube tutorial that’s showing you exactly where to put your fingers on guitar each and every moment, it’s so easy to lose sight of the actual music.

And that’s what was happening with my daughter. And it’s what happens to day after day for so many of the musicians who find their way to us at Musical U until they introduce the musicality side of things.

And so the result, unfortunately, is really a significant factor in why so many musicians, adults in particular, give up on music.

Because after day after day and week after week of getting the notes right and seemingly making progress, you’re left feeling a bit unnatural, a bit unmusical, and you start to question whether you’ve got what it takes.

Because even when you make progress on paper, you’re not feeling any more like a music-maker, you’re not feeling all that much more musical.

So, you know, coming back to that AI idea, people, I think, are really starting to question, what is the spark? Like do we think there is a difference between very convincing AI-generated music and a human being creating the music? Is it going to end up being indistinguishable? And if so, what does that mean for us as musicians?

But whether or not you have an opinion on that question, purely for yourself in your music making, I think this should always be front of mind: “what am I bringing to the music? How am I bringing my humanity, my personality, my unique sense of music and my instinct for music, how am I bringing that to the music?”

Because I think if you stop and ask yourself, you know, why am I learning my instrument, why am I trying to get better on guitar, on harmonica, on mountain dulcimer, whatever it may be. Why am I doing it? It’s almost certainly about self-expression, whether you’ve thought of it in those terms or not.

I think what drives us to pick up an instrument or start to sing or start to compose music in the first place is our love of music. And that doesn’t come from an intellectual place, right? It doesn’t come from wanting to tick boxes and pass grade exams and get the answers right.

It comes from that passion for music and that deep connection to music. So, yes, we want to get the notes right. Yes, we want to have proficient technique, and, yes, repetition is essential for learning and improving.

But really, we’re in it for the emotion, right? We’re in it for that deep feeling and that connection. That word “connection” comes up all the time at Musical U, that sense of connection to music, to other people, through our instrument.

And something we talk about quite a lot, is blurring the line between practice and performing.

Because the really painful thing that a lot of musicians stumble into is they practice robotically, mechanically. They kind of improve, in a sense. And then they go to perform, and it feels really lifeless, and it feels like they’re just trying to pass a test.

And we know that’s not what makes for a spellbinding performance, right?

In our Supernatural Performance course, or the Performance chapter of the forthcoming musicality book, we talk about connection as this central part of what makes for a great performance.

And we want to blur the lines between practicing and performing, because one way I like to put it is “if you practice like a robot, you’ll play like a robot”.

We somehow think that if we practice mechanically and robotically and we get all the answers right, then when it comes time to perform, we’ll magically bring this amazing performance out.

But actually, if we’ve never practiced doing that, if we’ve never thought about expression in the practice room, if we haven’t focused on that connection to music and the emotion of it and what we’re bringing to it as a human, we’re never going to play like that when it comes down to the wire.

So my challenge to you today, if any of this resonates, if you’ve ever felt a bit mechanical or you feel like you’re just going through the motions, or you feel like a robot, my challenge to you is when you next sit down to play music, when you next sit down to practice, even when you just sit down to listen to music: are you really there? Are you really present? What are you feeling? What emotions are you connecting with, and how are you connecting with that music in a human way and bringing your own humanity to it?

If you go back to a previous episode, we did an Inside The Book on expression, and talked about some of the ways you can bring emotion to music. Like, in a very practical sense, what could you be doing in the practice room to learn to play more expressively? Or if you’re a member of Musical U with access to The Fountain, you’ll find the Expression And Emotion course in there.

And it really helps you understand, in practical terms, what does it mean to play with expression.

And, you know, hopefully, it’s clear this isn’t just a philosophical question. Yes, we could have a whole debate about AI and what it means to be human, but really, this is about the motivation for music and making sure that your music-making is based on what really matters to you.

Because I’m willing to bet it’s not just, you know, “passing the test” in music. If you really focus on this emotional feeling side of it, and if you’re really being present in your music making, not only will you feel much more fulfilled and expressive and satisfied and joyful in your music making… What’s fascinating is that we’ve also discovered, through combining our superlearning material and our creativity frameworks at Musical U, we’ve come up with this approach called Creative Superlearning.

What we found is that if you do that, if you focus on the creativity and the expression, you’ll actually learn a lot faster, too. Because, you know, so much of the superlearning material, so many of these techniques, are based on the idea that if you do things robotically, if you do them mechanically, if you just go through the repetitions, going through the motions, as it were, your brain switches off. And that’s not a coincidence!

You know, the art of learning – it’s an art. And it’s something that you need to bring creativity to, and you need to bring mindfulness to and be present for.

So, yes, repetition is important, but it turns out if you always repeat things in exactly the same way, the brain’s like “oh, yeah, we’re just doing this again. I don’t need to pay attention”.

So through bringing creativity to it, and to put it another way, bringing that humanity to it, with each and every repetition, you actually keep your brain in that fast learning mode.

So it’s not an either or choice. It’s not “I can, you know, be very intellectual and mechanical about it and get the answers right and improve on my instrument OR I can be artsy-fartsy and, you know, philosophical and try and bring emotion to it”. These two go hand-in-hand.

And if you want to make the fastest progress and feel the most fulfillment, you really need to lean into this humanity, this expression, this playing with feeling.

So that’s my question for you today.

Where are you currently being a robot in your musical life? Where are you just going through the motions? Where are you, you know, feeling virtuous for putting in the reps and being diligent about your habit of practice, but actually your brain is switched off.

If you’re in that spot right now in any particular area, chances are you’re not making that much progress. Your motivation is starting to wane. You’re starting to feel a bit fed up. You’re starting to feel a bit unmusical.

And if you identify that, what are you going to do about it?

Hopefully some of the ideas I’ve mentioned today give you some new inspiration.

You know, really, it can be as simple as: okay, I know I need to practice this session. I know I need to put in the reps to help my fingers do what they’re going to do. How can I make it interesting? How can I keep my attention really present? How can I make this fun and different to the way I did it yesterday?

And when you start to ask those questions, when you start to challenge yourself to do it differently each time, to be creative, to be exploring rather than just repeating, that’s when you’re going to unlock the greatest satisfaction, the greatest fulfillment, the greatest expression, and the greatest progress.

Hopefully that hit home with you.

Let me know in the comments or you can email [email protected]. I would love to hear both:

A. Your thoughts on AI and creativity and humans and music. And
B. Where have you been a robot in your musical life? And what could you start doing about it that would help unlock this greater fulfillment, greater humanity, greater expressiveness and greater progress for you?

That’s it for this one. I’ll be back next time with a chapter-by-chapter breakdown of our new musicality book. I’m really excited to share that with you. You can learn more now at musicalitybook.com. That’s going to be our next Inside The Book episode, coming up next.

Cheers! And go make some music!

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