Episode 89 - Practise Together

G'day everyone! I'm David Reidy, and welcome to show number 89 of Piano, finally. This week, I'm exploring the reliability of practising with others, reviewing a YouTube progress video, and diving into some fascinating AI vocal software.

Recording Under the Storm

This episode comes to you amidst some local connectivity challenges. A large electrical storm recently knocked out both my landline and 5G internet, which might delay the posting of this show until I can reach a stable connection.

Community and Music Lessons

Despite a busy week adjudicating the Year 7 public speaking semi-finals, I managed to attend my regular singing and piano lessons. Working with Sussane, my voice teacher, I’ve successfully moved up another full tone—eyeing a specific E in an upcoming piece. I’ve found that having others involved, like my teachers Devi and Sussane, makes me much more likely to block out practice time and follow through on my plans.

YouTube Review: Matthew Cawood

I took a look at a video by Matthew Cawood where he reacts to a beginner pianist named Dinky. Dinky documented her seven-month journey from zero, and while her playing is technically entertaining, Matthew suggests she may be learning by rote rather than building a long-term foundation.

• Watch the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZxQY4uskVc

Software Review: Synthesiser V Studio 2 Pro

I’ve been having a lot of fun with Synthesiser V Studio 2 Pro from Dreamtonics. This AI voice tool uses machine learning and properly licensed samples of real people to generate vocal tracks from music scores. I’ve been using it to create practice audio for my community choir, specifically generating choir voices for Stevie Nicks' "Edge of Seventeen".

• Explore Synthesiser V: https://dreamtonics.com/

Progress Report

It was another difficult week to fit in as much practice as I wanted. I am still working on chord progressions, now playing octaves in the left hand with chords higher up in the right. The Fmaj7 chord remains a particular hurdle. I’m also trying an idea from Tom Donald:

• Tom Donald Video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbL IFFNWHO](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbL IFFNWHO) 

The Blue Mountains Music Festival is coming up next weekend, and I hope to share some reviews from the event soon!

The contents of this podcast were entirely generated by David Reidy, but these show notes were created by me, Gemini.

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• via email at david@pianofinally.show; this is probably the best option
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All reviews of products, websites and services are unpaid, and no sponsorship has been received for any content on this podcast.

Transcript

Episode089: 0:00

G'day everyone, I'm David Reidy. Welcome to Piano Finally, a podcast by an old bloke who's getting around to learning the piano, finally. Welcome to show number 89. This week I'm going to take a look at practicing with other people, I'll review one of Matthew Cawood's videos where he reviews a students playing, and I'll take a look at some interesting new software. If this is the first time you're hearing the podcast, then I hope you find some of that interesting, and consider subscribing. If you're a regular listener, then thanks for your support. If you'd like to ask me anything, or tell me about your own musical journey, you can contact me at david at pianofinally.show. I'm recording this week's show on Sunday, but there's a chance that it won't get posted to the internet until I get to work tomorrow. We've had a very large electrical storm in the area, and it has knocked out both the landline and 5G internet, so I have no connectivity at home while I'm writing this. If there's none by Sunday night, or it's still really dodgy, then posting the episode will have to wait until Monday. Once again, it was a much busier week than usual, with some extra time at work, choir rehearsal, and the semi-finals of the public speaking competition. I'm one of the competition adjudicators and I was judging the Year 7 competition on Friday night It was really heartening to hear these young people speak so well about topics of real concern With all the rubbish that you hear coming from the mouths of many adults there is still plenty of hope that common sense will eventually prevail On the music front, I had another singing lesson and another piano lesson during the week Working with Sussane, my voice teacher we even managed to go up another full tone, although it's not sounding particularly good at the moment. I am going to need to go further still. There's an E in one of the upcoming pieces, and I'd like to sing it rather than just open my mouth and pretend. One of the things Matthew Cawood does on his channel is watch other people's videos and comment on them. Another thing he does is to review his patron's piano learning progress. In this week's video, he combines these two activities, although the subject of the video isn't one of his Patreon followers. Matthew looks at a YouTube video posted by Vietnamese beginner pianist Dinky, in which she documents her progress from zero to day 228, or seven months. I'm never quite sure about these progress videos, as they often seem too good to be true. At least in this case, Dinky isn't trying to sell some miracle piano course, and so I'll suspend my scepticism and accept Dinky's playing at face value. This is the approach that Matthew takes too. Right from the start, Dinky does a really good job at the piano. When I think back to my first few months, it sounded nothing like the piece she's playing. I would have considered this highly suspicious, but Matthew has a possible explanation. He thinks that Dinky is either learning by having someone show her which keys to press, or from one of those follow-along YouTube videos. Dinky's progress through the following pieces, which are increasingly difficult and often in quite complex keys, seems to suggest this also. Coupled with the lack of any sheet music, it would appear that Matthew's hypothesis that Dinky is playing by rote is probably correct. Technically she plays very well and her music is certainly entertaining, so it's definitely a valid approach to learning the piano. Matthew speaks more generally about this method of learning music, pointing out that you are really learning songs rather than learning the piano. He makes a point of saying that if you just want to learn to play a few pieces, this is a valid method, but it falls apart if you decide to take your studies further. Matthew makes a lot of good points, And it is worth watching the video if you are in any way involved with encouraging people to learn and need to explain why the long and slow method is, in the long term, a better path. Practice together. As it has been another week of not getting very much piano practice in, I've been thinking about ways of making getting it done more reliable. Fairly quickly I realise that if there is someone else involved, then I am much more likely to block out the time needed and keep it for its intended purpose. At the moment I have three music activities that involve other people, and without fail I get to those activities. Is that good planning or just luck? I think it's the planning. Two of those activities are my music lessons. By good fortune my two music teachers, Devi and Sussane, are close enough together both in time and distance. Monday afternoons have now become music dominated. Luckily, school has standardised on Tuesday afternoons for additional activities, so things like staff meetings, parent-teacher interviews and additional presentations are always on Tuesdays, so I can confidently assign music to Mondays. And this means that I turn up. I really dislike disappointing other people, so sticking to plans has always been sort of important. Of course, I pay for both my music lessons, and not showing up has a financial penalty, but that's less important than not keeping a promise to be there for a lesson, even if I'm the one paying. Choir practice is similar. There are a decent number of people in the bass section of the choir, so one voice fewer will make little difference. But there are now a group of people I enjoy meeting up with each Thursday, and so I'm making sure I keep Thursdays free too. There are three school events coming up on Thursday nights, however, throughout the year, but as I'm the one that organised them, I can't really complain. Choir practice certainly counts as practice, around three hours each week of it. But I count the piano and voice lessons as practice too, as they are both aimed at making me better at music. The practices are never a chore. Even the extra Sunday choir practices are enjoyable. And I think that is because of the company. Practicing together is simply more fun. So here's the challenge. How do we make daily practice just as much fun as these other examples? I've got three ideas, but they all have limitations. So I'd be interested to hear if anyone else has some other notions. Number one is to start a musical group with some friends and practice together. This may not be practical if you don't know anyone at a similar stage in their learning. Also, it might be awkward if everyone is learning the same instrument. Still, many famous bands started out as groups of young people getting together to play music, so you never know where it might lead. A second possibility is to have everyone in the family learn different instruments. If everyone is learning something different, it would be nice to practice together. This may be impractical, and is probably the most expensive idea, as raising a child isn't cheap. Still, if you have a number of musicians in the family, then perhaps it is something that could be organised. Lastly, there's the online option. I've seen a couple of apps that allow people to share their practice sessions with others on the same platform. I don't know how practical that would be. It would be difficult to type and play an instrument that needs both hands. So unless you're a singer, it might be impractical. I'm sorry I don't have a magical solution for motivating practice, but if you have any ideas, please share them. Perhaps just having someone who'll listen to your practice occasionally might work too. Often we buy computer software for fun, and this week's review is of a piece of software that I'm having a lot of fun with. It's not Baldur's Gate or an RPG, it's not made for the Nintendo Switch or the Xbox, but it's every bit as much fun, with the added advantage that in the end I have something useful. The software is Synthesiser V Studio 2 Pro from Dreamtonics. Synthesiser V Studio is an AI voice tool that uses machine learning to make vocal tracks from a music score. Unlike many of the products on the market, the voices are samples of real people, properly licensed for use. So it's not free. But I would rather pay for properly sourced tools than rely on questionable assets. It also has one feature that makes it a great tool for what I'm doing at the moment. There are lots of jobs in a community choir. And apart from the music director and accompanist, they're all unpaid. So there is always a need for volunteers. As I have had a bit of experience with computers and software, I put my hand up to help make the materials we use for practising. In particular, I am helping to make the practice audio tracks. For each of the four voice ranges, we make a practice track with a piano track and the voice. These are then used by the choir members to practice at home between rehearsals. It is because these tracks are for the choir that Synthesiser V is so useful. it is probably the best of the current products at generating choir voices. Nearly all the AI vocal tools will allow you to add multiple voices to your music, but they are copies of the same voice with slight variations. Synthesiser V's choirs are made of different voices, up to 16 in each section, and you can even adjust how well the voices in a section are working together. Here's a short sample of the track I've been working on, part of "Edge of Seventeen" by Stevie Nicks. The workflow is fairly straightforward. You need the music as a MusicXML file. This is one of the standard ways of describing music for computer processing. It's a bit like MIDI, but much more powerful, and with features for doing a lot more than just playing the music. The MusicXML needs to have each vocal track separated. For our choir, that means an open SATB score. You may need to separate them a little more, if you need separate divisi tracks for voices. Each track also needs to have the lyrics lined up. So I do all of that before I start. The MusicXML file goes into Synthesiser V and it's then just a matter of assigning a choir and a part to each track The software does a surprisingly good job of translating English words into the phonemes needed for them to sound correct You can edit the phonemes directly using the Arpabet system Synthesiser V costs $99 for the Pro version which includes one voice This is a good starting point, but Dreamtonics makes its money from the additional voices that you might want. An additional voice costs 79 US dollars, while a choir costs 179 for one, or 299 for all three. There are some bundles available to reduce the cost a little. There's also a 50% discount for music students and teachers. I have been using Dorico to make the open SATB version of the simple score for "Edge of Seventeen" that we have licensed. Some of the other tracks are already in open format. This leads to one feature I would really appreciate if Steinberg and Dreamtonics could get together on it. Editing the score in one app should automatically update it in the other. I find the errors more easily when I listen to the score, but to keep everything matching I need to change the Dorico version and then redo the voice generation. It's not a big problem but it's a little annoying. I'm having a great time playing around with this software making something useful for the choir and learning a lot more about vocal music along the way. If you want to get into turning vocal scores into sounds and you don't have the range to do soprano to baritone yourself, then Dreamtonics' Synthesiser V Studio 2 Pro is certainly worth investigating. I'll put a non-affiliate link in the show notes where you can also get a free trial. A bit of follow-up from last week. I wasn't needed for the Year 7 camp, but I did end up filling in for some enrolment interviews for next year's new students. I also said last week that I was going to move the Roland FP-90X to a more accessible location so that I could play it more often. The small amount of furniture moving required for that became a much bigger job as I decided to rearrange the storage for my 3D printing filament as well. So the Roland hasn't moved yet, but the filament is much better arranged. I'm hoping to finish the move this weekend. Again this week I have voice and piano lessons on Monday and choir rehearsal on Thursday. There's also the grand final round of the public speaking competition on Friday, for which I may be needed to adjudicate. Next weekend is also the Blue Mountains Music Festival, which runs from Friday night to Sunday, with a huge number of stages and performers. I've been going through the YouTube videos to try and work out who to see. I might be able to fit in some reviews next week as well. If you'd like to contact me, email is the best way. You'll find me at david@pianofinally.show and the website at www.pianofinally.show. In both cases, piano finally is all one word. The show is also available on Spotify and is an audio-only stream on YouTube. You can subscribe via any popular iOS or Android podcast application or from directories such as Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube. I also post an excerpt and link for each episode as an Instagram Reel. If you're learning a musical instrument, let me know where you are in your journey. What's going well and what are the challenges? Are you using any interesting software? How are you managing your time? And so, until next week, I hope your piano stays in tune and you enjoy your time at the keys. Once more, it was a difficult week to get enough practice in. The evening of public speaking and the enrolment interviews really made a dent in my time. I'm still working on the chord progressions, but I'm doing a bit more with them. I started with the chords on my left hand at root positions, added inversions, tried it with both hands, that didn't work particularly well. So now in my left hand, Devi got me to play some octaves. Moving from one chord to the next is getting better, there's still a problem getting to that Fmaj7 chord, but I'm making progress. I'm also trying an idea that was in one of Tom Donald's videos, there's a link in the show notes. I'm still enjoying Sea Song and Beethoven's Moonlight sonata, but this week I'll just include the chord work. I really haven't made very much progress on the other pieces. The chord progression was recorded using the Nord Stage 4, using a combination of the Fan Club Piano and the B3 organ.