Introduction

Everybody’s talking about AI. It seems to be everywhere in conversation and in the news these days, and it’s already changing our lives in some major ways. Programs like ChatGPT are revolutionizing many industries with their ability to summarize, synthesize, organize, communicate, and even create information.

As an innovator, I’m always looking for ways we can harness new technology to improve the experience of playing and learning to play music. I started BagpipeLessons.com in 1999, and it was the world’s first bagpipe educational website. My goal with this site was to provide high-quality information to anyone, anywhere, who wants to learn to play the pipes.

Embracing New Technologies

Over the past 25 years, I’ve continued to use new technologies to help pipers. I taught the very first ever webcam bagpipe lessons starting in 2003, I launched the first-ever downloadable bagpipe tune lessons in 2006, and in 2011, I launched the world’s first online bagpiping competition. I’ve also invented piping products used by pipers around the world, including my popular and award-winning Tone Protector, InTune Mic, Bagpipe Gauge, and many others.

As a bagpipe teacher, I’m very interested in finding ways to help people learn more effectively and efficiently. With the growth and proliferation of these AI tools, I’m excited to explore how we can use the power of AI to help people learn.

The Two-Sigma Problem

Educational psychologist Benjamin Bloom discovered that an average-performing student could improve significantly and get into the top 2% with personalized one-on-one tutoring. This amazing discovery showed that a student could improve by two standard deviations from the 50th to the 98th percentile with one-on-one tutoring. Sigma is the Greek letter used to represent the standard deviation, and Bloom described his discovery as the two-sigma problem.

While the benefits of one-on-one tutoring are clear, providing tutoring at that level to every student in the world would be practically impossible due to the high costs and resources required. Tutoring might be available to a student with the resources and connections to hire a tutor, or with a family member with the skills, training, expertise, and time to devote to this training. But for most, private tutoring would be out of reach.

I recently watched a TED Talk by Sal Khan, the founder of Khan Academy, a non-profit educational resource with over 10,000 videos and growing on a wide range of topics. Sal Khan believes we can solve the two-sigma problem by using AI to provide high-quality personalized tutoring and training.

Custom GPTs & BagpipeGPT

Custom GPTs allow users to upload their own information, documents, images, spreadsheets, and text to create a specific knowledge base, ensuring accurate and context-relevant answers. Over the years, I’ve built up a pretty big body of work related to bagpipes and education, including blog posts, workshop handouts, magazine articles, YouTube videos, product instruction manuals, hundreds of lessons, tunes, and several hundred hours of video from the weekly classes I’ve taught to members of my BagpipeLessons.com Inner Circle.

By uploading these materials into a custom GPT, I created BagpipeGPT, an AI-based learning tool specifically for bagpipers. This tool uses all my teaching materials to answer questions and provide detailed, accurate, and practical information. For example, BagpipeGPT can give step-by-step instructions on eliminating crossing noises, create practice plans, troubleshoot issues, and offer performance tips based on my teaching materials.

Practical Applications of BagpipeGPT

BagpipeGPT can combine information from multiple sources within its dataset to provide comprehensive answers. When you interact with it, you know that the questions are answered with the information I’ve uploaded, ensuring relevance and accuracy.

One of the amazing features of BagpipeGPT is its ability to cater to different learning styles. Whether you prefer paragraphs, lists, outlines, or bullet points, BagpipeGPT can adjust to suit your needs. It’s also fully customizable, allowing you to ask for explanations in simpler terms, more details on specific sections, or alternative explanations and examples.

The Future of AI in Bagpipe Education

I believe that AI tools like BagpipeGPT will evolve to provide real-time feedback, personalized learning plans, and interactive experiences through voice and video. Imagine an AI bagpipe teaching assistant that can listen to you play, offer specific feedback, and provide tuning help or new tune recommendations. Such advancements will accelerate learning, facilitate deeper engagement with the material, and reduce barriers to education.

AI has the potential to democratize education by making high-quality resources accessible to anyone, anywhere. With AI, learners will have all the world’s best resources right at their fingertips, making learning faster and more efficient.

Conclusion

I don’t think AI tools will entirely replace music lessons taught by real human teachers, but I do believe they will expand access and enhance learning experiences.

Tools like BagpipeGPT are already proving themselves to be incredibly useful for pipers who are using them. I use it myself as a quick way to access all the information I’ve created over the years, and it’s an amazingly powerful tool for teaching and learning.

As AI technology continues to evolve, I’m excited about the future of learning and what we can achieve together as students, teachers, and musicians. I’m looking forward to a world where barriers to learning are reduced, and anyone motivated to practice and learn can access the best educational resources available.

For anyone interested in trying BagpipeGPT, please visit bagpipegpt.com and sign up for access. Let’s embrace this exciting future together and see how far we can go in sharing our music with the world.