6/5 Did I write this chord app with AI, or did AI write it for me? Either way, the goal of playing arbitrary chord changes, with good voicing, at reasonable tempo, with little mental load, seems now rationally attainable, and before I had no idea how to get any closer to it. Everybody has their own learning methods that click with them, but honestly, I didn’t know of any before this.

6/4 Sign for the next protest: I CAME HERE FROM GERMANY BUT NOT FOR THIS.

6/3 Baylander evening. When your wife, with her strong opinions, tells you that one of your main gifts is to see every question from multiple angles – I have rarely felt so seen.

6/2 Chris agrees with my AI that my first and foremost goal should be to see the scales on the keys as if they lighted up. But he suggests a very different way to get there: less keys, less modes, instead play longer and more complex patterns.

6/1 Stefan Zweig, Die Welt von Gestern. I was surprised that, when I tried to buy it, I found it already in my library. I had apparently never bothered to read it even past the preface. That is different now.

5/31 In last daylight I took a walk around Downing Park, something I rarely do. Alongside Robinson Ave there is a commemorating plaque, dark bronze on white stone, flags and flowers in front of it. Young man in sneakers, of hispanic descent, walks curiously towards it to figure out what it says. – Something deeply disconcerting about this scene. Not because he is from a different time than this memorial, not because of his sloppy twenty-first century clothing. It is as if there could never have been a civilization on earth that would be able to make contact with such an object, much like the apes in the space odyssey.

5/30 The scales are starting to become a landscape, instead of randomly scattered whole and half steps. To remember them, I find myself, involuntarily, creating stories. “Play two whole steps, then a half step. After that, you can just keep going in whole steps. You will eventually reach your root again, and it will be a half step away.” Or: “Play the half step early. Then you can do whole steps. But watch out: don’t do them for too long, because you have to insert another half step. Trust your instinct. Or maybe, if you want to know it precisely: do the half step after two whole steps. Then just keep going in whole steps until you reach your root note again.”

5/29 The complexity of the musical concepts I discuss with AI bears no relation to my actual clumsiness on the instrument.

5/28 Unsure about my goals as a musician. What do I want, and what do I need to get there. What is the most efficient use of my time.

5/27 Had a scale drill program created for me. Discussions with Claude on how to memorize scales. Excited.