The Music Monkey

I have a new enemy in my war against procrastination – my piano. 

I once read a book that suggests that in order to motivate yourself you should make claims about yourself to motivate you to be the person you claim to be. I think that is nonsense, because by that token I can claim to be a pianist. 

I am not a pianist. What I can say is that I am a very bad pianist who can play very simple tunes but mostly makes silly mistakes that frustrate me to the point where I feel like getting up and walking away forever. 

Nevertheless, in my war against procrastination, I have managed, somehow to find some willpower that I didn’t think I possessed. When I walk upstairs I see the back room and there, taunting me, is my piano and I can see it through the open door. It says to me:

“Come and have a play if you think you’re good enough”.

And to be fair, I have started doing that more often. I am a big fan of routine and habits and this has helped me in my battles with procrastination. One habit I have created is to play the piano daily – and it works. Well – when I say “play the piano daily” what I really mean is “try to play the piano daily” or “play the piano like a blind baboon daily”.

It is working. Slowly but surely, I am actually improving. I can play simple versions of tunes like “Greensleeves”, “O Sole Mio”, “Little Brown Jug”, “The Can-can” and “Scarborough Fair” – sometimes without any mistakes. 

Learning to play the piano was meant to be a retirement hobby but I got so excited by the idea that I started three years before I actually retired. Mrs PM can play a little too (she had some lessons as a child) and she plays fairly regularly too. She is much better than I am. 

And now that I am retired, I can in theory spend more time learning. 

My big plan and goal was to learn the piano and perhaps start creating some music of my own. I consider this to be a project rather than anything more serious. And before I retired I thought at some point I could invest in a synthesiser and perhaps have some fun making mp3’s via my laptop. 

Then two things happened. 

First, I have a friend, an ex-colleague who retired some years ago who told me that he his making music. I was interested and then amazed when he told me that he had published it on Spotify under the name Methyl Orange. I went home and discovered that he had recorded two albums at that point. And now he has a total of four albums. 

Here is one from his latest album:

The second thing that happened was that my company decided to buy me a retirement gift. I opted to leap ahead and I chose this little beast:

I have spent some time in the last three months getting used to it. It is a surprisingly complicated device with a program menu that you can easily get lost in. I also know nothing about the various electronic music terms that are required to use such a device, things like MIDI, “Attack/Decay/Sustain/Release”, Envelopes, Gain, Oscillators – the list goes on. 

But, dear reader, I am getting hooked. And I think I need to sit down and learn the terminology before I can get further anyway. That said, I have had a play with my new gadget and my knowledge is increasing to the point where I have managed to produce some weird musical snippets that actually sound okay (in my view). 

Being a technophile, I now need to wrestle with the geek within who wants to blindly dive into the world of electronic music, and the creative person who wants to learn the piano, I am sensible though and I realise that learning the piano is the mandatory precursor to learning the synthesiser. I can however work in parallel to a certain extent. To be honest, anybody can make a synthesiser tune with little musical knowledge but it is so much better if you have the musical knowledge of how to play the piano. 

You may think that this is where the story ends. It’s not. 

There is a third component that is also important. This is software that runs on your laptop and is called a Digital Audio Workshop (or DAW for short), which enables you to record songs, mix songs and add even more effects. You can do things like play a guitar via your keyboard, the guitar being a “virtual instrument”. This opens up a whole universe of music creativity. Also there is so much to the DAW – it is a complicated tool. 

Here is a demo of a DAW:

I haven’t even begun to scratch the surface yet. I need to improve my piano playing as a priority, I need to learn how to use my synthesiser properly, I need to get to grips with electronic music production, effects etc. and I need to learn about DAW that I have installed. 

I am quite pleased that I have a technical background. I think I’m going to need it. 

Mind you, AI could come to my rescue. I posted about the possibility of becoming a lazy blogger by allowing ChatGPT to write my blog posts for me. You can read about it here:

The Fake Plastic Mancunian 

There are websites out there that will write songs for you that you can use on podcasts, websites etc.

I did try a demo on a website called Soundraw and asked it to write an ambient song. It actually wrote six of them for me. Had I not been a tight-fisted old git and actually put my hand in my pocket I could have paid for the songs and shown them to you. 

You can of course try it yourself for free to see what I mean.

I will post my progress on this blog whether I succeed or not. At the moment I want to try to create something myself rather than trying to be lazy and letting AI do it for me. 

It's quite exciting and a little bit scary because what I thought of as a simple  and this project of my has, in the words of an ex-colleague of mine, “grown arms and legs”. 

How am I going to find time to write, learn languages and create music? 

It’s a tough dilemma to have – but an enjoyable one. 

The Fake Plastic Mancunian

A lot of people are scared of Artificial Intelligence (AI) – possibly because they have considered the movie, The Terminator, to be a documentary rather than a science-fiction movie. My career was IT, and towards the end of that career, the role of AI started to grow in importance to the point where, now, it is a science in its own right and is improving massively. 

I never really encountered AI during my career at all but it has always been there, probably since the very beginning when I was at university, grappling with computers for the first time. I seem to recall there was a course in my final year on that very subject (we are talking 1983 or 1984 here). 

AI is definitely not a new concept. 

The difference is that now a lot more people know about and use AI. And of course it has evolved spectacularly in the last 40 years or so. Equally, a lot of people are expressing concerns about the spread of AI and what people are using it for. 

A good friend of mine is a huge fan of AI. I studied the same course as him at university and recently he has been working a lot more with the concept. A year or so ago, on a university reunion in Amsterdam, he introduced me to ChatGPT and I was very impressed by it, I have to say. My mate is using it for a project he is currently working on. We also had chats about it on the most recent reunion in Budapest and, now that I am retired and have more time, I thought I would have a little play with it myself. 

Here are some initial findings.

If you aren’t familiar with ChatGPT, you can ask it to do things like write an essay about what to do in Amsterdam in the style of Jeeves and Wooster and it will go ahead and do it for you. There is also a lot more it can do - but in today's post I will just scratch the surface.

I have given ChatGPT two simple tests. The first is:

Tell me about “The Plastic Mancunian” Blog. 

Here’s what it said:

The Plastic Mancunian is a personal blog started in 2008 by a blogger known as "PM." It covers a wide range of topics, including personal reflections, pop culture, music, and humor. The blogger often shares opinions on politics, such as their dissatisfaction with certain political figures like Boris Johnson, and thoughts on various life experiences and social topics.

PM also interacts with readers through comments, often discussing shared interests like cats, spirituality, and even delving into more lighthearted exchanges about food or travel. PM is candid, sharing both humorous and serious takes on life, including memories of being bullied in school and reflections on taking politics more seriously in recent years.

In addition to the main blog, PM runs two other related blogs: The China Chronicles, documenting travels in China, and The Plastic Mancunian's Eye, which seems to focus on photography.

The blog offers a blend of entertainment, personal anecdotes, and community interaction, making it a relatable and engaging space for readers.

I'm quite pleased with that. Not only does it "know" about me, it was quite generous and kind. It also provided a couple of links to one or two of my blog posts. 

My second test is a lot trickier. I want to see just how good ChatGPT is. Here's what I have asked it to do. 

Write a blog post about how boring chess is in the style of “The Plastic Mancunian Blog”. 

Let me tell you now – the result is scary because it is quite accurate and reflects how I would pontificate about how boring chess actually is. I could have written this myself. Here is the blog post in full – written by ChatGPT in my style. It has even given it a great title:

Chess: The Cure for Insomnia?

Let’s talk about something that is universally acknowledged (well, at least by me) to be the most boring pastime ever created: chess. Yes, I know, it’s supposed to be the “game of kings,” the ultimate intellectual showdown where grandmasters furrow their brows, pondering moves with more depth than a philosopher on an existential bender. But seriously, after a few minutes, I’d rather be watching paint dry. And that’s saying something.

Chess aficionados will tell you how “exciting” it is, filled with strategy, cunning, and the thrill of outwitting your opponent. But, as I see it, here’s the actual process: move a piece, wait for what feels like an eternity, watch your opponent do the same, rinse and repeat. I mean, where’s the action? Where’s the fun? It’s just two people staring at a board, trying to remember if a bishop moves diagonally or in zigzags (I’m joking, I know how it moves… sort of).

Honestly, I’ve tried to understand the appeal. I’ve even dabbled in it myself. I can grasp why some people love the mental challenge. But for me? I’m more likely to enjoy watching grass grow. It’s not that I’m against intellectual games—give me a good puzzle, a riddle, or even a quiz night at the local pub. At least then, there’s a bit of interaction, a bit of spice, some banter.

And don’t get me started on those chess commentators during the big matches. They whisper excitedly, “Oh look, he’s moved his knight to C5!” while I’m over here thinking, “Mate, he just moved a horse-shaped piece from one square to another. Wake me up when something explodes.”

Now, some of you might be thinking, PM, you’re just not patient enough. Well, I am the first to admit that I am a person who needs some form of entertainment that doesn’t require a magnifying glass to detect. Chess is too slow. By the time a player’s checked mate, I’ve mentally redecorated my living room, reorganized my sock drawer, and questioned all my life choices.

To be fair, I know it’s a game that demands skill. And hats off to those who can sit through it. It’s just not for me. If you ever invite me for a chess match, don’t be offended when I politely decline and suggest a game of something more... lively. You know, like Monopoly. At least then we can have a proper argument over fake money instead of waiting 10 minutes for someone to decide if they’re moving a pawn or a knight.

So, my friends, if you ever find yourself unable to sleep, forget counting sheep—just watch a chess tournament. You’ll be out cold in no time.

How scary is that? To be honest, I also feel a little flattered because I think it has almost managed to copy my own style, using phrases that I would use and also capturing my light-hearted and humorous observations about the subject matter,

A tool like this could potentially write all of my blog posts for me.

Of course, I will never allow that to happen because the whole point of writing a blog post is that it is something you created personally and there is a certain pride in that. 

I want to say "I wrote that!" rather than "ChatGPT wrote that for me!"

Having said that, I can definitely see its potential and how it can make life easy for people. 

I don’t have a huge problem with that but for me personally the whole point is that I have created it from my own brain rather than posting how a piece of intelligent software interpreted the way I would create something. 

To conclude (for now) I would like to thank ChatGPT for such a nice summary of my blog and also for a great attempt at writing a post about chess being boring in the way that I would have written it.

There is much more to come from me on this topic because I have decided to dive in and see how far I can go with this. There will definitely be more posts on this subject. 

Watch this space.

P.S. You can rest assured that future posts will be all my own work.