The Practice Problem
By day, I teach computer programs how to learn. By night, I build apps that teach people music. The longer I do both, the more I see they are the same job. A learner tries something, finds out how it went, and needs the next challenge to be just a little past what they can do. We got very good at this for computers. For people learning music, we still hand out the same old lesson books.
I play piano, guitar, trumpet and violin. I studied music at Stanford. I have built and shipped these apps. Here is what I believe.
1. Time at the instrument is the real problem, and every app ignores it.
A grown-up with a job gets maybe 30 minutes a day at the piano. You can't learn piano without a piano. But a big part of music doesn't need the instrument at all. Reading rhythms, naming notes by ear, reading music — you can practise all of that on your phone while you wait in line. So split it up. Do everything you can on the phone. Save your piano time for playing. Every choice I make starts here.
What actually transfers away from the piano →
2. Lesson books teach things in a certain order just because they always have.
Ask why a beginner book starts where it starts, and the honest answer is "tradition." But music skills stack like blocks. Some skills need other skills first. If you map out which skills need which, you can start from the song a student actually wants to play and work backwards. That's how adults learn everything else. Nobody finishes the whole Spanish textbook before ordering food in Spain.
3. If an app doesn't keep track of what you know, it's just a pile of videos.
Every time you try something, the app learns about you. A real teaching app should guess what you can do, watch how you do, and fix its guess after every try. Then it gives you the next exercise — not too easy, not too hard. This is the real magic of a good teacher. Not the showing. The knowing. Software can do that now, and almost no music app does.
4. We teach reading music before hearing music. That's backwards.
The best language courses figured this out long ago: listen and speak first, read later. Words on a page should stand for sounds already in your head. Music lessons do the opposite. They hand kids symbols for sounds they can't hear yet, and then wonder why kids hate it. Train the ear first. Once the sounds live in your head, the written notes make sense fast.
5. Your instrument already knows what you played. Stop making people write it down.
A digital piano records every note you play. An app can look at that and figure out what song you worked on, where you slowed down, and which parts you skipped. The practice log can write itself. When people write down their own practice, they guess and fudge. The piano doesn't lie.
6. The computer can plan tomorrow's practice from what you played today.
Your playing from last night shows exactly where you rushed and where you stumbled. New AI tools are good at turning that into a plan: "Today, work on these four measures, slowly." A teacher does this once a week, from memory. Software can do it every single night, for everyone, from the real notes you played.
7. Training wheels have to come off.
Apps love helpers: lighting up the beat, labelling the chords, slowing the song down. Helpers are fine — if they fade away. A helper that never leaves isn't teaching you. It's making you need the app forever. When I build a helper, I decide how it will fade before I build it.
8. Streaks measure tapping, not learning.
Some apps keep people tapping every day for years without really teaching them. The test that matters in music is simple and harsh: can you do the skill at your instrument, at full speed, in a real song? If an app can't measure that, it's measuring how hooked you are and calling it learning. I'd rather have a smaller number that's true.
9. A 30-second quiz in a video feed is a real lesson, and I'm not embarrassed by that.
Serious musicians roll their eyes at TikTok. But that's where millions of people who love music actually are. A quick "name that chord" video is ear training that takes zero effort to start. If you build it right, the fun video and the lesson are the same thing.
10. Private lessons work. They just cost $80 an hour.
One teacher, one student, once a week: check what's weak, assign the fix, check again. That loop made every great musician you've ever heard. Most people on Earth can't afford it. I'm not trying to replace that teacher. I'm trying to turn that loop into software — so it works for people who will never get the lessons.
The missing piece isn't the technology
Reading and writing spread to everyone because of the printing press. Music has been waiting for its printing press. The pieces finally exist: instruments that record themselves, computer programs that can hear and plan, and phones in everyone's pocket. The missing piece isn't the technology anymore. It's someone stubborn enough to care about music teaching and software building at the same time.