AI in Music Education

If you've ever taken a Home Ec class or learned about knives, you may have been taught "A dull knife is more dangerous than a sharp knife." This is literally true, but also metaphorically pertinent to thinking about the tools we use in the classroom and how we use them. I think of AI as a toddler that's been given a Swiss Army Knife, and is eager to help in the kitchen. Unsupervised this will surely end with an inedible disaster... even with the most careful instructions and guidance, it can still end in a similar disaster. But bringing a toddler into the kitchen with you isn't about now, it's about the future. And over time they will go on to cook things we can't currently imagine.

One of the most impactful lessons I had growing up was "making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich". I don't even remember what subject it was supposed to be for, but our teacher told us to exchange roles with her and teach her how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. She followed our instructions alright, but deliberately ignored context or human understanding of what a sandwich is. In one case the peanut butter and jelly were facing outward, in another they were spread onto the crusts, much to the outcry of the students. As an adult teacher now I'd love to go back and Reverse-Uno the lesson and break it. "Dearest teacher, here is a picture of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Using the ingredients and tools in front of you, use your own cognitive ability and unsatiated hunger to create your own concept of a sandwich and eat it." Decades later, this is essentially the art and science of computer programming and AI prompting.

Here is a taste test of what AI is capable of right now, cross-tested between ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude.

"Create the largest resolution poster image you can of the circle of fifths"

ChatGPT

Gemini

Claude

To the untrained eye (ear) this is plausible. It would take true understanding of the material to fix the mistakes in the ChatGPT and Gemini posters, either through successive iterations of prompts, or with brute image editing. As is, they perhaps capture the intended "poster aesthetic," but are unusable due to the lack of accuracy. Claude impresses this round with "less is more (accurate)." However understated as the winning strategy, it's also less useful in conveying the concepts of the circle.

"Create a poster depicting "Good use of AI, Bad use of AI"

Claude

ChatGPT

Gemini

"make the chart again and circle your own typos"

Gemini

Interestingly Gemini caught many of its own mistakes when given the chance, but not all of them.

I've tried to use AI to write before, and it was almost reverse-cheating. I spent way more time and effort editing the AI text to make it sound like my writing than it would've to just write it in the first place. So we're back in the kitchen. If the teacher really wanted to eat a sandwich of course it would be easier to make it herself. But that toddler wants to help...