Episode 83 - Who’s Listening

G'day, everyone! Welcome to show number eighty-three. I’m writing this week's show from a slightly different location:under the shade of a Eucalypt tree at the Stargazer Lawn in Barangaroo. It is the day of the dress rehearsal for the Belong Choir's performance at the Sydney Festival Vigil. The atmosphere is buzzing with activity as chairs are set up and the area is taped off. It’s been a busy weekend, but a privilege to be part of such a special event.

YouTube Review: Three Elton John Songs for Beginners Coincidentally, just as I decided to look into learning some Billy Joel and Elton John music, a video popped up from the London School of Contemporary Piano featuring Tom Donald. Tom breaks down "Your Song," "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road," and "Sacrifice" as a way to teach chords. He moves from simple root position chords to more complex progressions and arpeggiation. It’s a great resource if you want to understand the structure behind these iconic tracks.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPm05-5KBz0

Essay: Who's listening? Inspired by a video from David Bennett, I’ve been thinking about Artificial Intelligence in music. While AI might inevitably take over "unimportant" music—like the hold music I used to license for my scuba shop—I believe there will always be a place for "important" music where listeners crave a human connection. We want to know the stories behind the songs, whether it’s Taylor Swift’s romances or Mozart’s final days.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrcUJI197Vs

Review: Billy Joel and Elton John sheet music I recently purchased two sheet music collections from Amazon to expand my repertoire. Unfortunately, upon arrival, I discovered they were print-on-demand books manufactured by Amazon with absolutely no publisher details or copyright acknowledgements. I don't believe people should profit from the work of others without proper compensation, so I’m sending them back. A warning to be careful when buying music online!

Progress Practice has been a bit spotty this week due to holiday tasks like writing school programs and tidying the house."Sea Song" is coming along bit-by-bit. regarding "A Wild Chase," I’ve made an executive decision to ignore the "As fast as you can" instruction. I’m going to play it at a speed where the notes actually sound musical rather than just noise. Work also continues on "Trumpet Tune" and memorising the chord progressions for the "Moonlight" Sonata.

If you'd like to get in touch, you can contact me at david@pianofinally.show.

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

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Chapters

• 0:00 Opening
• 0:15 Welcome
• 1:45 YouTube - 3 Elton John Songs for Beginners
• 4:10 Essay - Who’s Listening
• 9:14 Review - Pirated? Music
• 11:53 Closing
• 13:31 Progress

Transcript

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 83. Thank you very much for downloading the show. If you're a regular listener, then thanks for your support. But if this is the first time you're hearing the podcast, I hope you enjoy what's in the show, and if you like what you hear, consider subscribing. Are you also learning a musical instrument? If you are, let me know how you're going with it. You can contact me at david@pianofinally.show. I'm writing a lot of this week's show in a different place. It's Saturday, and today is the dress rehearsal for the Belong Choir performance tomorrow, so I'm sitting in the shade of a Eucalypt tree at the Stargazer Lawn at Barangaroo. I got here early as I wasn't sure what the parking situation would be like, with the train service to here cancelled for the weekend. Parking turned out to be simple; there's even a lift up to the lawn. There's a lot of activity at the moment with the area being taped off and chairs moved in for the choir. There are chairs today, the rehearsal is scheduled for three hours, but it's standing for most tomorrow, the performance is only forty-five minutes. As I won't be recording the show until Monday morning, Sunday is going to be very busy, and I won't be home until late, I'll let you know how it all went in the closing section of the show. I'll do a full run-down in next week's show after everything has settled back to almost normal. I was looking for a YouTube video for this week's show after I had written about deciding to learn some Elton John and Billy Joel music, and what should pop up but the newest video from the London School of Contemporary Piano with Tom Donald. It's called "Three Elton John Songs for Beginners", a pretty nice coincidence. In the video, Tom looks at three of Elton John's songs as a lead-in to teaching chords. They vary in difficulty from reasonably straightforward to quite complicated, but not in that order. He starts with "Your Song", looking at the root position chords that make up the first part of the song. He explains the chord progression and how to use the left hand to provide a bit of a pedal note under the right hand. Tom shows the fairly simple right-hand position needed to get quite a good-sounding result with very little effort. Though I think it would still take a decent amount of practice to play it as smoothly as Tom does. Tom continues by introducing some arpeggiation in the right hand, but he doesn't explain the pattern. It looks like 1-5-3-5, like an Alberti Bass, but in the other hand. Anyway, after this addition, the song sounds even better. The pace Tom sets means that you won't get it all from one watch, but support material is also available from the school's website. The second song is "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road", and this is a complex piece of music. Tom goes through the chord structure and key changes, but you are going to need a pencil and paper if you want to get started on the piece. At each step, Tom explains what is going on, but there is a lot of information to take in. You could definitely learn to play the piece from this guide, but it will take a fair few rewatches. Tom finishes with "Sacrifice" because, as he points out, after the complexity of "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road","Sacrifice" is one of the few Elton John songs that only uses four chords, mostly. If you like Elton John's music and want an introduction to what goes into playing it, this video from the London School of Contemporary Piano and Tom Donald is well worth a look. I'll include a link in the show notes. Who's Listening? I was watching one of David Bennett's videos during the week, in which he was speaking about the use of artificial intelligence products being used for the production of music. It appears that some of his views line up with some of mine, that AI generation will get used for music that is not important, but perhaps not used so much for music that matters. I'll include a link to David's video in the show notes. I was thinking about how people listen to music and how that is going to influence whether the music counts as important or not, and whether AI is going to make an impact. It is also going to affect how musicians get paid. Back in the late 1990s I owned and managed a scuba diving shop; amongst all the other things that had to be organised for the shop was the on-hold music for the phone system and background music for the shop floor. To do this legally, we paid a fairly hefty annual licence fee to APRA,(the Australian Performing Rights Association) for the rights to use copyrighted music for those two things. This wasn't just because I thought it was important to pay for music; APRA employed people to walk into businesses and asked to see the licence if there was music playing, and the fines were quite high; we knew of people who had been caught. Although that was nearly thirty years ago, I still see the licence stickers on businesses' front windows, although they are now sometimes for other licensing organisations. Now, clearly, this falls within my definition of an unimportant use for music. Of course, the music itself is not unimportant; many of the tracks we used in the shop were very popular, good pieces of music, but we were using them so people wouldn't wonder if the phone line had gone dead, or to fill the silence of the quiet shop. I don't think anyone ever rang us to listen to our choice of hold music. So could this use of music be replaced by AI-generated tracks? Yes, and the AI tracks may even have an advantage. One of the things we had to be very careful about was that the lyrics of any songs we played were appropriate for playing in public, not just the language; playing the theme from "Jaws" would not have been appropriate for a scuba diving shop. Also, as the AI music copyright belongs to the person who makes the prompt, at least under current Australian legislation, there are no royalties or licence fees to pay. For a retail shop, APRA's OneMusic licence fees are around $75 a month. I think that it is almost inevitable that AI-generated content is going to move into this space. So what do we do about it? If AI is going to move into unimportant music, we need to make sure that there is a place for important music, because I think that is where listeners will want a real connection with the artists. Taylor Swift's music is popular, partly because much of it is catchy, but also because of Taylor herself. This woman's success story, from playing tiny out-of-the-way venues to her recent Eras tour, is inspiring to anyone and shows what you can do if you make the effort. AI might be able to make a song that sounds like Taylor Swift, but it can't mimic the person. I think that artists need to start promoting themselves just as much as their music, and that we must become more intentional listeners. I want to know the stories of the people I am listening to. We also need to encourage intentional listening. Listening where the music itself is the primary focus. I think this is one of the real advantages of going to see live music. I can put a recording of a symphony on while I do something else around the house. Often I'll select a Stage+ performance to put on in the background while I'm writing, but when I'm at the Opera House for a Sydney Symphony Orchestra concert, I'm not doing anything else. I'm watching the performers, I'm listening to the music and nothing else is going on. I find I get a lot more from the music in that situation than just having it on at home, despite how good the performance is. I think we need to tell the stories behind real music. The mother Mary in "Let It Be" was a real person, Mozart's Requiem was composed as Mozart himself was dying, Bach wrote to show off and get himself a job, and Taylor Swift writes about her successful and unsuccessful romances. All of those are things that an AI track can never replicate. We need to play up those human elements because although complex algorithms and high-speed logic gates can emulate musical notes, they can't emulate being a human. I thought I should have a look at some music to expand on the classical pieces that I'm learning in my formal lessons with Devi. A lot of modern pop music is written for bands with multiple instruments, and although there are piano arrangements available, they are not the same.

Luckily, two of the musicians I like to listen to both write their music at the piano, and both are known as mainly piano performers and singers: 9:30

Billy Joel and Elton John. So I went looking for their piano music. I had a look on Amazon and found a collection of Billy Joel sheet music for piano, a look at the back cover showed twenty-six scores, mostly for pieces I know and like, so I decided to buy it. It was quite reasonably priced. It arrived just before Christmas, and I put it aside until I picked it up again this week. As I went to write this review, I looked for the author's name and publisher, only to find that neither is printed on the book. A thorough search found a line that said the book was manufactured by Amazon in Sydney. It's a print-on-demand publication. This leads me to wonder if any of the music in the book has been properly licensed. Certainly, there is no attribution to a publisher anywhere to be seen. Each score has Billy Joel listed for words and music, but no copyright acknowledgement. So I did some digging. The copyright on the tracks is held by Joel Songs, mostly in the 1970s and renewed in the 2000s. That information is very easy to find on the legitimate sheet music internet sites. The book is still in the Amazon return period, so I'm going to send it back. I don't think that someone should be profiting from the work of others without proper compensation. I'll let Amazon know the reason, and if I can find a contact, I'll inform the copyright owner. The Elton John book is the same, manufactured by Amazon as print-on-demand, and with no copyright attributions. It's going back too. I think it shows how careful we have to be when we are looking for music. There are lots of dodgy websites that have dubious or pirated copies, but I would have expected better from a company such as Amazon. Not only should they check what they are selling, but in this case, they appear to be complicit in producing the books. Caveat emptor, I suppose. There won't be a link in the show notes for the books in this week's review. So, the Belong Choir performance went really well. There was an audience of more than a thousand people sitting on the lawn, and around 280 of us in the choir. Being part of this has been a great experience, and if it's happening next year, I'm going to try to be part of it again. I'll cover the whole thing in more detail in next week's show when I have had more time to write about it. As far as I know, there isn't an official recording of the performance, although there might be some coverage on the ABC News on the evening of the 26th. 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, pianofinally is all one word. The show is also available on Spotify and as 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 You Tube. I also post an excerpt and link for each episode as an Instagram reel. If you're learning an instrument, let me know where you are in your journey. What's going well, and what are the challenges? How are you managing your time? What pieces are you enjoying the most? So, until next week, I hope your piano stays in tune, and you enjoy your time at the keys. Practice has been pretty spotty over the last week. I think the problem with having more time in the holidays is that I filled it up with a whole lot of other things that needed doing, like writing school programs and tidying the house. As a result, there wasn't much extra time for practice after all. I'm still enjoying "Sea Song" and it is coming along bit-by-bit."A Wild Chase" is getting more even, but it is nowhere near the indicated speed. I do think that I'm going to take advantage of having my own interpretation though. Played as written, I really don't like the ending of the piece. The notation says "As fast as you can", and if you heard the recording in last week's show by Roderick MacFarlane, you know just how fast that is; the last six notes and final chord just sound like noise. I'm not playing for an exam, so I'm going to get it to a speed I like the sound of, and leave it there. I'm still working on "Trumpet Tune" and the "Moonlight Sonata" and getting better at remembering the chord progression in "Moonlight". Thank you. Thank you.