Can computers teach me to play music?

of it. Okay, So we wanted to talk today about technology and how it's playing an increasingly important role in music education and learning to play musical instruments, and how you can actually learn to play certain musical instruments using simple programs or or hardware. And I know what you're thinking. Actually I don't know what you're thinking, but you might be thinking that, Yeah, you know, I gotta get your our hero. But I don't see how that's gonna make

me pick up a guitar and start playing. But you'd be dead wrong. Well maybe not dead wrong, well you'd be you'd be seriously hurt wrong. Actually, you know, guitar guitar Hero and rock band have inspired some people to start playing the real instrument. Now we should go ahead and point out, of course, that guitar hero and the guitars in rock band they don't really give you a feel for what playing a real guitar is like, not

at all. Really, No, it's true. I'm sorry, no, no, I was just gonna say, you know, it's the in the in the interests of simplifying it into a game mechanic, you know, having five buttons and a strumming button of some sort, that's not the same as you know, having you know, a strained guitar. It's just not gonna it's not going to be nearly the same kind of effect

that you would have if you're playing a real musical instrument. Now, guitar hero and rock band, at least the guitar parts there their rhythm games um and uh, you know, it's kind of useful for drumming, you know, the drum part in the in guitar hero and rock band or the guitar heroes that have the rock bands world tour um that you know, obviously is a rhythm situation, and the microphones are actually you know, singing trying to hit the pitch,

but the guitars for those of you who haven't tried it, basically ask you to press a certain button for a certain note at a certain time. That's what the strumbar is for, um. But you're not really learning how to hit a certain pitch or any music theory or how to play chords or any of that. Yeah. Yeah, for chords, you're just play pressing multiple buttons at the same time while you hit a strong bar. But that's not the same, you know. Obviously that's a far cry from actually learning

how to play chords on the guitar. But the nice thing is, I mean, a lot of us have that inner rock star that's just dying to get out, you know. I mean, and and we maybe didn't have the opportunity or the desire when we were younger to pick up a musical instrument. Um, and maybe we don't have the time to really to vote to learning a musical instrument. But these games gave us the opportunity to, you know, pretend like we're rock gods and just you thrash out

a blistering guitar solo and make us feel great. And then some of us take that feeling and say, you know what, maybe this is worthwhile. Maybe I should make time to actually pick up a musical instrument and learn how to play it for real, zies. That's true. That's true. UM, if you haven't seen how the guitar parts work in these games, Essentially, the dots representing certain notes come down the screen and it looks like they're coming down a

fret board prob a guitar. That's the long uh, the long part of the neck where you can actually see the lines across that and the strings, uh, you know, go across that and the notes are coming down what would be the strings and you're supposed to play you know, red or green at a certain time. Well, somebody has actually put that into practice and helping you learn how to play UM an instrument. And uh, we have an article on their own website that Dave Russ wrote called

how Piano Wizard works. Yeah, and UM the Music Wizard group UM actually has put this into practice. Now, this is a program for your computer and you plug in a USB keyboard and UM it's a little different because there are a series of stickers. UM actually edited that article and then went out and bought the program. And it is very cool because you placed the certain stickers on the keyboard, so you have there a lot more than just a five and guitar hero there's it represents

the entire octave UH, including half steps UM. So there are a variety of variety of colors that go there, but UM each represents a note. So when you're on the easiest level of Piano Wizard UH, the notes come down from the top of the screen and you're supposed to hit SAYT beige and then blue and then red, and they correspond to the notes in a chord, for example,

the one, three, and five UM. Gradually, as you go the songs get more complex, and then you can switch into a different mode where instead of the notes coming down from the top of the screen, they're scrolling from left or right, but they're still multicolored. And then in the third step they become actual notes, the notes that you might see on a piece of music. And then finally, in the last stage, they become black and white notes.

So suddenly you've gone from the colored dots coming down from the top of the screen to reading black and white music as it scrolls left or right on your keyboard, and you're learning the actual notes where they appear on the music and where that belongs on the keyboard. So really it's sort of it's almost subversive in the way that you're just picking up on it from having, you know, having the practice, and at the same time you're getting used to how your hands fit on the keyboard. Um.

And it's a pretty nifty idea there. They also have something called a Guitar Wizard UM which is sort of a similar thing, although it uses the Fisher Price I can play guitar uh instead of a USB keyboard to hook up to it. So I'm so hard not to laugh now. Yes, but if you learn guitar, you know, I'm just imagining a toddler smashing a Fisher Price guitar on a stage. Well, that part of it's not in the game totally should be, I tell you, end every

every like major Monster set. Yeah, but that's the funny thing that Guitar Hero and rock Band and Piano Wizard, which is actually a learning tool, are not that far apart in the very basic methodology, and it's teaching kids and even some older people who learn how to play

other instruments how to play the piano. Yeah, that's uh, you know, it's a very good point and of course, like we were talking about earlier, with rock band, you can or even you know, Guitar Hero World Tour that has the drums instruments right when you when you add the drum kid in there, you actually are learning kind of the rudimentary uh steps into learning to play the drums. Now I happen to be sitting with a drum god, Chris Pallette here right. You may not know, but he's

he's a drummer. Um well, I think they know now now they do. Yeah, yeah, he uh, he's he's one of those rock gods that we all adore and idolize, including myself. Yeah, I got up in noon today. Yeah, nice crack of dune. And uh So I have a question for you, Chris, as as an actual drummer who has used real drum kits, what's your opinion on things like rock band and even say electric drum kits that

are you know that that synthesize the drum sound. Well, they've I've been a drummer now for twenty eight years, and uh when I started learning how to play the drums in the nineteen eighties, um electronic drum kits were just starting to become very popular. And for those of you who are in your thirties or maybe older or even I guess late twenties, you might remember those hexagonal uh new wave electronic drum kits like people used to use that sounded awful. Yeah, yeah, well they were. The

whole point of that was to be different. You didn't want them to sound like acoustic drums and uh, you know, professional drummers, a lot of them at the time, uh, sort of had a lot of disdain for these these kits. Now, UM, the machines and rock band and UM, guitar Hero are pretty scaled down from that, um, you know, because they still make electronic drum kids. And as a matter of fact, you can believe it's the guitar Hero version that can be used with an Elysis drum kit. UM, and essentially

you could just use that when instead. Um. But the electronic drums can be very, very sophisticated. They're essentially just what they call the trigger pad um, which is a surface that responds to the stick hitting it or your hands hitting it. There are versions of acoustic drums you

can play, you know, hand drums if you will. Yeah, essentially, um, they have different spots to play, you know, a rim shot or the center of the drum, so it represents different parts of the drum like you would play with your hands. Um. But uh, you know, actually these are they they're sensitive to the amount of pressure with which the stick hits the drum um. And uh. The other part has a brain, which is basically a big electronic

computer that stores all the sounds in it. So the nifty thing about an electronic drum kit is you can have a variety of different drum kits stored, you know, with the We talked about Ray Kurzweil a long time ago in one of our other podcasts and his work in electronic music and how electronic instruments didn't really sound like real instruments until his company did work with that. Well, um, that's sort of the way it is for electronic drums now too. I mean a long time ago people didn't

talk about how realistic electronic drums might sound. But now you can have all kinds of things in there, and you might even have things like Latin percussion or sound effects, cowbells and things you don't have to carry around. I'm not making it. I'm not gonna do the cowbell reference just okay all right, because you know we could all this podcast could use more cowbell, Yes it could, but you wouldn't have to necessarily carry around all that stuff

with you. What what you might be surprised to know, we call toys, Um, you know all those extra instruments. Uh, you know, you wouldn't have to carry this with you. So there's an advantage to to do in that. And if you don't plug it into an amplifier, you can use it as a practice pad kit. Sure, um, but the stuff that they have with the games, it is a little bit more scaled down. Um. But that's really

all you need to to to learn basic drumming. Um. And you know if you have your your bass drum pedal and your snare drum, that's you know the foundation of most rock songs right there. Yeah, you could do most of the Dave Clark five just with those. So uh, when I was at CS I got to stop at the roller booth, which was pretty amazing. Now, Roland they make sound cards for computers, but they also make lots

and lots of different um music equipment. Yeah, you're not just you know, not just music, all sorts of stuff. But the two things they had that were getting a lot of attention. Actually I guess three they had. They had some guitar stuff which was getting a little attention. They had some keyboard stuff as in pianos that was getting some attention. But why got the most were their

drum kits. And they had a lot of electronic drum kits there, and some of them were really really impressive, like the uh, let's see as if I get this right, the t D Dash twenty s which has has a high hat, has three symbols and six drum pads, so it's a pretty big electronic drum kit. I mean, you know when you think, okay, so rock band that that basic kit has the four pads and then the the the kickpadis you know the kick pedal. Um this one

had has many more than that. But the neat thing that Roland's doing is that they've got this software, this tutoring software that kind of mimics the rock band approach

where that's one of the modes you can use. It has multiple but because so many people have gotten used to rock band, Roland has decided to act on this and they have this software where you can learn to play drums by kind of following along with songs and and acting off of visual cues like you would in rock band, to learn to play the drums for certain songs. And then you eventually progress very much the same way that the piano program you were talking about, UM kind

of similar. You know, you get each step is a little bit more challenging and and you have to rely more on your memory and about how this works, UM until you get to the point where you're actually just playing the drums. And uh, that was really neat. It was also kind of interesting to see all these executives in suits and ties, uh, all with these headphones on,

just rocking out. I talked with the one of the representatives from Roland and she told me that some of these guys would come in, sit down and be there for forty five minutes playing on electric drum kit, and then maybe they'd even come back later in the day to play some more. Because it was just it was so, you know, it's that whole rock band thing, an idea of hey man, I can I could be a musician too, and uh, and it's interesting that we see technology now

kind of catering to that. Yeah. Yeah, I mean even even your beloved Apple is catering to that. That's true. Uh. In the newest version of I Life, which is I Life oh nine. Um, they've updated Garage Band yet again. And as someone who plays melodic instruments a little bit, um, Garage Band is really nifty, uh, really nifty beginner's tool kit. I mean we're not talking. You're not writing high high

end notation stuff like you would see and something like Sabellius. Um. You're not um putting down tracks like you might in pro tools if you're going to record an album, but if you wanted to, uh to create a demo or learn how or just write a song, write the basics of a song so you could take it back to your band or even just hey, fool around with it. Um. You know, Garage Band is a pretty nifty uh, pretty

nifty piece of software. But they've had a sort of a new feature to the two thousand nine version of it, and it's um it's a learned along with the prose of thing. And they've got some big name people, yeah like Sting Yes who will teach you how to play Roxanne on the guitar and uh. Other people include um, Sarah McLaughlin, Fallout Boy, Nora Jones, Colby k a Um, Sarah Burrellis, ben Folds Yep, yep, John Fogerty, and One Republic.

I'm just sad that ben Folds teach teaches you how to play Brick instead of any Waits any ways, is my favorite ben Folds song For those of you listening who want who are just curious, that's all right. My my trivia with ben Folds goes back to my high school days. Speaking of high school band, when I marched next to the drummer for ben Folds five, Darren Jesse. See if you're just one drummer spot off from playing for the ben Folds five, if you had just stood

a little to the left. Um. So yeah, I mean, these programs are letting you actually learn from the pros. They show you how to play these songs and then you know, I'm not granted, it's not as interactive. You can't they're not gonna stop and say no, no, no, I said, see major, Yeah, that's that's not gonna happen. But it's interesting that it's an interesting approach and in an in an era where music programs are getting cut

back in schools. Um, it's nice to see that there are some other things that you can do to bolster your kids education or your own education. There's no reason why, uh we as adults can't look back on that and go, you know what, I've always wanted to learn how to play guitar. Yeah, and and these kinds of things can help you do that. Uh, you know, bolster your love

for music, share it with other people. I mean, there's no reason why you can't get garage band and lay down something and play it behind your podcast as you create your podcast. You know, you know you're the copyright holder. I think I think we need to get a house stuff for its band together the go we've got We've got some pretty talented musicians. I am not one of them.

I play two instruments, the penny whistle and the Appalachian dulcimer because you know that's the kind of rock god I am so uh but hopefully other people play better instruments. They would make a much better band. But uh, yeah, it's so interesting that you can get this kind of stuff and if you really do have the drive and the energy for it, I mean, go for it, guys.

I mean this stuff is out there and there's there are plenty of programs out on the internet now that are they're free, their shareware and their freeware programs that you can look at to learn things like keyboards and stuff. Now, granted they won't be as sophisticated as the ones we've been talking about, but it might be a nice place to start, that's true. And um, you know, there are

all kinds of other opportunities out there there. Chord charts, plenty of those out out there for those of you who are learning to play streamed instruments, and uh, all kinds of other references, even uh how stuff works podcasts. Yeah, you know, if you're interested in catching up in the latest music stuff stuff from the side, it's an excellent podcast. Highly recommend it. Well, this was a good conversation. And and before we go, I would like to once again

refer to our listener mail. I'm just gonna keep doing it that way. You know that, right, Okay, So this one comes from Brendan Davey, and now Brendan rights to give us a clarification on our Fishing and Farming podcast. I remember that, right, I do too, So he says in your podcast on Fishing and Farming, you said that before clicking on a link to check the bottom left of your screen to see the U r L of the link. However, you can use HTML to make the

link look like it's going somewhere else. For example, a link says click here, and when you put your mouth on it, the bottom left says it's going to Google. When you click on it, it actually takes you to Yahoo. And so the only way to prevent farming is to type into the website yourself, like, type in the address of the website. Um, thanks Brendan, that is true that you can spoof u r l's like that. It's it's

actually called hyperlink spoofing sometimes web spoofing. However, you did say that the only way to guarantee was to type in the address yourself. I'm sad to say that's not true either. Um, there is really no guarantee if someone has committed a d n S cash poisoning attack. It is possible to create a man in the middle attack where you type in a U r L and you know that it's a legitimate U r L and you hit enter, it can get intercepted and sent to a

farming site. So it's possible even taking the biggest precaution we can say, which is type out you're the the U r L. Even that can can backfire on you. However, I should also point out that those kind of attacks are not common and they usually only affect certain I S P s. Uh. You know, it's not like it's a web wide attack, thank goodness. But it is possible, and it is usually. It's the kind of thing that would happen very seldom, and it's also the kind of

thing that would probably be discovered fairly quickly. Yeah. Yeah, that's the sort of thing where, yeah, it can happen, but someone's gonna find out about it fast, they're going to react. Uh. So it's not something to really stay up nights worrying about. But we should point out, in the interest of full disclosure, that it is possible. True, But yes, you're right. The best way to do that is to type it in yourself, and that's your your best chance of getting when you're really trying to go.

So thanks very much, Brendan, And if you want to email us, you can send an email to podcast at how stuff works dot com. If you want to learn more about music and technology, well check out our website, how stuff works dot com. Um, and we'll talk to you again really soon. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. Let us know what you think. Send an email to podcast at how stuff works dot com. Brought to you by

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