This week, I chose to do something a little different with this project. I was curious to see if ChatGPT could write an accurate and beneficial weekly practice plan for the keyboard. To test this, I prompted Chat with “Write a weekly practice plan for a beginner keyboard player” and followed it all week (Monday to Friday).
This is what ChatGPT came up with:
Immediately, I noticed there were a few things Chat wanted me to practice that I do not usually focus on. For example, ear training is something I have not been working on. It was my least favourite part of music in high school, but I did work on it with it for the sake of the experiment.
Here is what I used for ear training:
I was not very successful the first time around, but I did enjoy that this video felt like a game. I also did not ear train every day, just on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I found it too time-consuming to do every day.
Since Chat wanted me to work on sightreading and music theory, I chose a piece written out rather than my usual YouTube video. I began by sightreading it on Monday and then practicing it for the rest of the week. I also broke it down the piece’s theory aspects to study.
Here is the piece I chose:
It is a really simple piece but in my defence, I have not had to read sheet music in a very long time and working on reading both clefs at once was enough of a challenge for this week.
As for technique, I continued working on my scales. This has been very helpful in getting quicker at following along with tutorials.
Overall, I think ChatGPT did a great job of covering every area of learning the keyboard. I really appreciated the reminder to rest when practising as I think many musicians forget this step. Since the plan required a lot of consistent practice, I do believe it helped me become a better keyboard player. This was a cool experiment!
See you next week!
