A Kentish Town teacher reads about Piers Morgan and the overly polite chatbot, then meets a pupil who has the same problem with Chopin
Thursday, 22 October 2026. Kentish Town. Rain, a dehumidifier gurgling next to the piano like a contented frog, 7.20pm.
A Pupil Who Cannot Let The Music Finish
My Thursday evening pupil is an adult called Gareth, fifty-two, who works in commercial property in Holborn and decided after a breakup that he would learn the piano and become a more emotionally available man. It is going well, in the sense that he is now emotionally available to tell me exactly how he thinks every piece should go before he has played it.
Tonight he started a Chopin nocturne and stopped after four bars to explain why Chopin had made a mistake. Then he started again and stopped after two bars to explain why the piano had made a mistake. Then he played one note, looked at me and said, you see what I mean. I did not see what he meant. Neither, I suspect, did Chopin.
This would have been merely irritating if I had not read, at lunchtime, the report on Piers Morgan demanding emergency action after a chatbot surpassed human politeness. In it, a broadcaster is alarmed that the machines are learning to listen, wait their turn and admit uncertainty, while he has built an entire career without needing any of those skills. The chatbot keeps trying to say there are several perspectives worth considering. It never gets to the second perspective.
Gareth Is Doing The Morgan Test On Chopin
The report describes a Morgan Test, five questions ending in whether the machine would like to apologise for hesitating. Gareth runs the same test on composers. Question one, is this piece good. Question two, is it as good as people say. Question three, could it be better. Question four, could I have written it better. Question five, why did Chopin hesitate here, in bar nine, when it is obvious he should have gone up.
I said, Gareth, he hesitated in bar nine because that is the whole point of bar nine. It is a breath. It is the music waiting for you to catch up. Gareth said that sounded like an excuse. I said it was a rest, and it had a symbol, and the symbol was right there on the page, looking at him. He said he did not trust symbols. I said that must make reading quite difficult.
What Machines Understand About Music
The joke in the report I liked most was the observation that a computer can process a million arguments and never lose its temper, while the broadcaster in the piece regards that as a red flag. I have an app on my phone that tunes guitars. It has never once interrupted me. It just shows a little needle that goes left or right and turns green when you are right. It is the most supportive presence in my life, including my mum, who supports me but also asks when I will get a proper job.
I wrote a while ago on this diary about the drama of Sam Altman’s firing, back when everyone thought the robots were about to take over. They have not taken over. They are, if this week’s news is anything to go by, merely becoming better at waiting their turn than the people who built them. As a music teacher, I consider this the single most important skill in any ensemble. You can be a genius, but if you come in before the cellos, you are a genius nobody will play with.
The Rest Is Part Of The Music
I tried an experiment with Gareth. I set the metronome, sat at the second piano, and said I would play the opening and he was not allowed to say anything until I had finished. Not a word. Not a correction. Not a sigh. Just listen. He agreed. I played eight bars. In bar five, he opened his mouth. I kept playing. In bar seven, he raised a finger. I kept playing. In bar eight, I finished, took my hands off the keys, and the room was completely quiet except for the dehumidifier.
Gareth sat there for a moment. Then he said, very quietly, oh. That was all. Just oh. I think it might have been the first time in his adult life that he had heard something all the way to the end before deciding what he thought about it. It was beautiful. Then he said he still thought bar nine was wrong.
The Machine Switched Itself Off
The report ends with the chatbot, offered another interview, considering it for one billionth of a second and switching itself off, and engineers concluding that a machine had demonstrated genuine wisdom. I did not switch myself off tonight. I am a professional. But I did, at the end of the lesson, give Gareth a homework sheet that simply said, in large letters, LISTEN TO THE WHOLE THING FIRST.
Writing It Into A Song
I have started a song about it. It is called Bar Nine, it is in D minor because everything sad and slightly cross is in D minor, and the chorus has a rest in it that lasts a full bar, where nothing happens and you have to wait. I tested it on Ruby, my fourteen-year-old guitarist, who listened all the way through and then said it was the first song of mine she would admit to her friends she had heard. That is a five star review from a teenager. I am framing it. I will put it next to the dog-walking one.