I Don’t Want AI to Replace Artistry. I Want It to Help Artists.

A few days ago, I asked music teachers on Facebook how they feel about artificial intelligence.

The responses surprised me—not because people had strong opinions, but because there seemed to be so little middle ground.

Some were all in.

Others wanted absolutely nothing to do with it.

As the comments kept coming, I became curious about something else. I edited the post and asked people to share their generation—Boomer, Gen X, Millennial, etc.—because I wondered whether age might help explain some of the divide.

I'm still watching those responses come in.

But the whole conversation has made me think about my own relationship with technology—and especially about what happens when you're not just a musician or a teacher, but also a creator trying to get your work into the world.

In 2013, the year I started creating S-Cubed, I didn't know what I was doing.

When I created S-Cubed Sight Singing for Beginners, I had never created a PowerPoint in my life

Not one.

And it showed.  

I was a music teacher. I knew how to teach middle school students to sight-sing. I had spent 20 years developing a method that worked in my classroom, and I believed other teachers and students could benefit from it.

But turning that method into something I could share with teachers around the world?

I had no idea how to do that.

So I figured it out.

My early images were terrible. Most were pixelated. My PowerPoints weren't pretty. I was criticized for them.  I took them down from TPT, and I tried again.  Hours and hours of work.  

And, truthfully, graphic design still isn't my gift.

But I kept creating anyway.

There's a quote often associated with Sheryl Sandberg that became something of a philosophy for me:

"Done is better than perfect."

Thank goodness I believed that.

Because if I had waited until I could make everything look perfect, S-Cubed might never have existed.

Instead, I put my imperfect work into the world, and I was scared to death of the judgment.  

I still am...as I adopt AI to help my work.  

Thousands of music teachers eventually used it then, and are still purchasing it now for the Back to School season.  I am grateful.  

More importantly, their students learned from it.

That mattered more to me than whether every slide looked like it had been designed by a professional graphic designer.

Then AI arrived.

And I understand why musicians are uncomfortable with it.

I don't want artificial intelligence replacing composers.

I don't want it replacing singers, instrumentalists, conductors, teachers, or the creative process.

I don't want a machine to become a substitute for the messy, beautiful, deeply human experience of making music.

Ever.

And I don't believe it can.

But I've also started realizing something else:

AI can help me do things that have always been difficult for me.

It can help me organize my thoughts.

It can help me communicate an idea more clearly.

It can help me improve something visually when graphic design isn't my strength.

It can help me brainstorm, edit, analyze, question, and refine.

It can help me spend less time struggling with the things I'm not particularly good at so I can spend more time doing the things I am good at.

That distinction matters to me.

I don't want AI to create my artistry. I want AI to help me present my artistry.

And yes, there's another side to this for me.

Over the last couple of years, I've watched sales of S-Cubed change.  There are probably many reasons for that. Education has changed. Teachers have changed. Budgets have changed. The marketplace has changed.

But I also wonder what role AI is playing.

I've spent more than a decade developing, refining, documenting, and sharing a very specific method of teaching sight-singing. That work represents thousands upon thousands of hours of my life, and it still does.  

I worry that tools like AI make it easier than ever to take someone's intellectual work, strip away the name attached to it, and recreate something that looks remarkably similar.  

I hope that isn't happening with my work.

But I'd be lying if I said I haven't thought about it.

And that puts me in an interesting position.

Because the same technology that concerns me is also becoming one of the tools I'm using to make my own work better.

Maybe that's where the middle ground is.

We don't have to worship AI.

And we don't have to run from it.

We can ask difficult questions about copyright, intellectual property, creativity, compensation, and what happens to artists when machines can generate things that resemble human creative work.

We should ask those questions.

Some people are going to steal my work.  I faced that fact a long time ago.  

At the same time, I think artists have always had to adapt to new technology.

I certainly have.

In 2013, PowerPoint was new technology to me.

YouTube changed what was possible for me.

Teachers Pay Teachers changed what was possible for me.

Social media changed what was possible for me.

None of those things made me a better music teacher.

But they allowed the work I had spent decades developing as a music teacher to reach people I never could have reached otherwise.

I'm beginning to see AI through a similar lens.

And now I'm building with it.

I'm currently using AI as part of the next evolution of S-Cubed.

I'm developing an AI coach designed to help teachers work successfully through the first ten lessons of the program—the place where some teachers need the most reassurance and guidance.

The AI isn't inventing my teaching method.

It's helping me deliver the method I spent years creating.

That's an important distinction.

I want a teacher who gets stuck to be able to ask a question.

I want the teacher who feels overwhelmed to know what to do next.  That's what I did when I created the original, messy version of S-Cubed.  

I want someone who bought S-Cubed but never quite got it off the ground to have another chance at succeeding with it.

And ultimately, I want their students to succeed.

That's why I created S-Cubed in the first place.

I'm still a musician and artist first.

Maybe that's why this conversation about AI interests me so much.

I don't believe artists should surrender their artistry to technology.

I believe we should protect it fiercely.

But protecting artistry doesn't necessarily mean refusing to use the tools that are changing the world around us.

Sometimes it means learning how to use those tools in service of our artistry rather than in place of it.

Thirteen years ago, I didn't let my inability to make a beautiful PowerPoint stop me from sharing something I knew could help teachers.

Today, I'm not going to let fear of AI stop me from discovering how it might help me serve those teachers better.

I'll keep asking questions.

I'll keep protecting the human part.

I'll keep learning.

And I'll keep adapting.

Because perhaps the choice isn't between AI and artistry.

Perhaps the challenge for artists now is figuring out how to use one without ever surrendering the other.

And I'd really like to know where you land.

Has AI changed the way you work as a musician or music teacher—or are you still keeping your distance?