Recently I started to learn the piano on my own. With an app installed on my phone, I began to learn from the very beginning. Eventually I bumped into questions about music theory, so I incorporated ChatGPT and YouTube as learning partners.

I figured that being inspired by music in general would keep my motivation, so I started reading a book, :book: Absolutely on music, that is a conversation between the author and an orchestra conductor. One interesting thing about the book is that you can listen to the pieces they are talking.

This opened a fantastic door for me, which I continue to explore with the help of ChatGPT even after finishing the book. Here is a collection of conversations with ChatGPT that I’ve found interesting.

The first is a conversation about the end of the romantic period, the industrial revolution, postmodernism, and the contemporary classical music: Postmodernism, the industrial revolution, and contemporary classical music.

This one is part of a conversation about Mahler where ChatGPT called a piece of music philosophical, and we explored what that meant: Mahler and what it means for music to be philosophical.

One about Brahms as a continuation of Beethoven.

This one is about something called period music, which means trying to mimic the instruments of the time that the music was composed. Music played with period instruments sounds subtlety different: Period music and listening to subtleties.

A short conversation about a niche type of music called twelve tone music, where all notes are used.

A short conversation on Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps and his arrest.